Q&A About "Live Bait"

My story "Live Bait," which first appeared online and in print in 2004 in Qwerty, was interrogated by students in Montreal this past year. In 2007, the story appeared in Writing at the Edge: Fiction that takes risks (Siren Song Publishing). That anthology is being used as the source text for a course at Marianopolis College.

Two groups of students sent me questions. I posted both the questions and answers below. Interestingly, both groups of students were presenting a psychological reading of the story.

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FIRST GROUP

Hello,

My name is ..., a student in Zsolt Alapi's english class. Myself and my group are currently organizing a seminar presentation about your story "Live Bait", and were wondering if it would be possible to ask you some questions about this particular story as well as your writing in general.

I've attatched seven questions focusing on the short story itself to save some time between emails, I hope it doesn't seem to presumptious...

1. Why focus of family neurosis?
2. In the story, Jake engages in a lot of "enlightened" discussion and use of narcotics. What is the relationship between enlightenment and drug use, does drug use lead to enlightenment, or the other way around? Or would you say that Jake has simply deluded himself into a state of pseudo-intellectuality?
3. Throughout, it seems hard to pin-point Jake's exact age. Based on the age of the father, we assume he is in his fourties or so, however, he seems to be, in some ways, very sophmoric. Is this a reflection, perhaps, or his own lack of identity?
4. Is it impossible to have intimacy without intoxication?
5. Is Jake's inability to have a serious relationship the result of his father's inadequacy, or would you say that Jake sees his father through the lens of his own failures.
6. Death appears prominantly throughout the narrative. Why the obsession with death? Is it perhaps a result of Jake's guilt over his sister?
7. What is the significance of the title?

Lastly, I'd just like to ask whether it would be possible to write you back at a later point in time with a few further questions. And if so, to which address would you prefer we write?

Thank you,

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Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:01:14 -0400
From: michaelbryson@rogers.com
Subject: Re: "Live Bait", questions for Zsolt Alapi's class
To:
Hi -

Answers below. Cheers!
If you have any questions about the answers, feel free to ask more questions.

> 1. Why focus of family neurosis?

> > I'm not sure that "family neurosis" is the focus of the story. It's certainly an element of the story, though. The central relationship ofthe story is father/son, and that relationship is complicated by anumber of factors, one of them being mental illness. The story beginswith the father and son alienated from each other. The son has lost hismother to cancer and his sister to suicide, and now he seems to havelost his father to depression. The son's attempts to have meaningful relationship with women have also been problematic. He asks: "What islove?" His attempts to have fulfilling relationships seems to be abetrayal of the promise of love, that one can be lifted out of the troublesof the everyday and taken to a "higher plain." The father's story about hisextra-marital encounter many years earlier suggests the promise of love is not hopeless (or is it?). The story ends with the son's renewed attempt toconnect with his father: "hey pop, talk to me."
> >
> > 2. In the story, Jake engages in a lot of "enlightened" discussion and use of narcotics. What is the relationship between enlightenmentand drug use, does drug use lead to enlightenment, or the other wayaround? Or would you say that Jake has simply deluded himself into a stateof pseudo-intellectuality?

> > There's two questions there; I'll take them separately. First, I don't see any connection between enlightenment and drug use. Drug usedoes not lead to enlightenment, nor does enlightenment lead to drug use.(Incidentally, I don't believe marijuana is technically a "narcotic."There are no narcotics in the story.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcotics

> One of the themes of the story is the subjective nature of"reality." Drug use alters perception (as does mental illness), but so do manyother factors: age, gender, culture, class, race, level of education,to name a few. One of the key lines in the story is "realism is onlywhat has been traditionally represented as real." That's a tough notionto unpack, but it's what the story is trying to illustrate.

> > About Jake's "pseudo-intellectuality" ... I would not say he has deluded himself. I would say he is attempting to live through a difficultsituation. He's looking for something objective and solid and notfinding a lot to hold onto. He might be a victim of the post-moderncondition.

> 3. Throughout, it seems hard to pin-point Jake's exact age. Based onthe age of the father, we assume he is in his forties or so; however,he seems to be, in some ways, very sophomoric. Is this a reflection,perhaps, or his own lack of identity?

> > Interesting question. I see him as mid-thirties. It's fair to say he's sophomoric. In some ways he's classically Gen-X, an aging slacker.But I would go back to the theme of hyper-subjectivity and argue thathe doesn't lack an identity; it's just that his identity is unsettledby questions about "what is real and what is not" (to quote BobDylan). Jake's mother asked him to help his sister, yet his sister killed herself. His failure to save his sister distresses him and pushes his toask the general question: "Why bother?" Jakes seems to be surroundedby signs of collapse (the snow storm, his father's mental health), buthe keeps trying to move forward. He may be sophomoric, or he may be akind of anti-hero, trying to keep making meaning against heavyodds.
> >
> > 4. Is it impossible to have intimacy without intoxication?

> > Isn't intimacy a kind of intoxication? We make meaning in our lives through the use of figurative language. Fiction, on the other hand, should be read figuratively. I'd ask you to avoid the temptation to linkthe story to literal, real-world conclusions. In the story the newgirlfriend needs to get stoned before she can "take her clothes off."This is a metaphor about barriers to connection between people, not justsexual intimacy. There are many other instances in the story ofmissed or broken connections between people. Articulating patterns in thelanguage gets at the story's purpose or meaning.
> >
> > 5. Is Jake's inability to have a serious relationship the result of his father's inadequacy, or would you say that Jake sees his father through the lens of his own failures.

> > The story says Jake's father was the rock of the family and never missed a day's work in 25 years, even when his wife was dying. So I don't think his father is inadequate; he is mentally ill (depressed),which is a recent occurrence. I don't think Jake sees his father throughthe lens of his own failures. I think Jake sees his fatherrealistically; his father is sick. What Jake struggles with is, what to do aboutit? His father's collapse parallel's Jake's inability to find solidityin other areas of his life. Once again, there's a pattern here. Ithink there's something deeper going on in the story than Jake's inabilityto have a serious relationship. Perhaps he's overwhelmed byhyper-subjectivity. Maybe his expectations about the power of love areunrealistic. Maybe he's been let down by people he thought he could trust. Ithink he has had some serious relationships, and maybe all of the aboveare the lessons he's learned from them. He hasn't managed to find a long-term successful relationship, but that's different from being "serious," isn't it?
> > >
> > 6. Death appears prominently throughout the narrative. Why the obsession with death? Is it perhaps a result of Jake's guilt over hissister?

> > Sex and death. Eros and thanatos. The two great themes of literatureand life. Creation and destruction. Beginning and ending. The storytries to grapple with big issues. I think it's as simple as that.
> >
> > 7. What is the significance of the title?

> > This is the toughest questions you've asked me. The image on the T-shirt in the story actually comes from a real experience. I saw a girlwearing a T-shirt just like that, and the image stuck with me, and Ifound a place for it in this story. I think it's an outrageous image,because it's self-derogatory. It's a self-putdown, which is so sad --and sadly predictable. I saw it worn by this beautiful girl and thecontrast between her beauty and this disturbing image struck me. Ofcourse, one can make too much of this also, because there's a kind ofrisqué sexual humour present too. And perhaps the girl was well aware ofhow she was advertising herself. This is a topic that could engender alot of discussion, I'm sure.

> > But back to the phrase "Live Bait," as title. I don't think I can outline its significance definitively. I like titles that are suggestive, ambiguous, open to interpretation. I also like titles that have aconcrete image, not an abstraction (i.e., the title could have been "ThePower of Love," but it isn't). So I'm just going to throw this oneback to you, if you'll pardon the fishing pun. Hopefully, there's enoughin the story to open many doors of perception and mystery.

(See "TheFiction of Douglas Glover" [opens outward into mystery] essay....)http://www.danforthreview.com/features/essays/glover.htm

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STUDENT RESPONSE

Hello again,

Firstly, thank you for the answers to our questions.

Secondly, no, we didn't forget, but as our presentation happened to be a long way off, and we tend to procrastinate, we kind of put our project on the backburner until necessity forced us to get down to serious work.

Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, your answers really were helpful in getting a better grasp of the story on our second, third, and nth reads through it. Currently, we've more or less finished the presentation, as in, it's tomorrow, at 8:00am, and I'm currently taking any excuse to further procrastinate designing the last few slides. So I've decided to send a last few questions, just for interest's sake, recognizing and not at all expecting to recieve a response before the 8:00am deadline.

Our given topic was to analyse your story in the context of psychoanalytic criticism, and as I was writing the presentation, I wondered about your opinion on this type of criticism, as an academic and a writer.

1. What do you think about Freud, generally speaking?
2. What do you think about Freudian literary criticism? What do you think about Jungian archetypes? Do you feel one approach is more apt than the other?
3. Do you feel that psychoanalytic criticism at times goes too far in connecting the work to the author, that is, on a personal, biographical level?
4. You mentioned in your responses to our questions that you'd like us to avoid linking the story to "literal, real-world conclusions". Do you feel psychoanalytic criticism can be limiting in this way? That is, do you feel this type of criticism applies a focus to the more "real-world", concrete interpretation of a given piece of literature?
5. How do you think this type of criticism might be applied to "Live Bait". This is a really general, vague question. I'm really just curious as to how you would approach the type of topic we were given, where would you start, what would you focus on, generally speaking?
6. How exaggerated -or not- do you feel use of the Oedipal Complex is in literary criticism?
7. How do you feel about caffeine pills? Have you ever used them? Does anything beat that warm, 4am cup of black coffee?

Please don't hold any spelling or grammatical errors against me. I'm pretty tired just now. Thanks,...

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BRYSON RESPONDS

Hi -

Good luck with your presentation. Here's some quick answers to your questions ....

1. What do you think about Freud, generally speaking?

Freud, simply put, was part of a wave of thinkers that defined what it meant to be modern. Marx illustrated the hidden forces at work in the economy. Freud articulated the hidden forces at work in human behaviour. The popularization of these thinkers had a profound effect on history. At the same time, what they told us were INTERPRETATIONS of phenomena. They were part of an ongoing process of the enlightenment to articulate how the world works, a process which may or may not be doomed.

My thought about Freud is that he's a good writer. I read some of his "analyses" of patients as part of a course on biography (Freud's theories had a profound impact on how people wrote biographies and autobiographies -- using psychological motivations for behaviour). I was quite impressed with Freud as a writer and interpreter. He had a flare for dramatic interpretation.... which isn't quite how one tends to think of him.


2. What do you think about Freudian literary criticism? What do you think about Jungian archetypes? Do you feel one approach is more apt than the other?

About Freudian literary criticism, I'd just note that its changed how we think about our motivations and the motivations of characters. Jane Austen's characters had never heard of Freud, but we can now do a psychological interpretation of their movitations. Are we any further ahead? Maybe, but probably not. We're just somewhere we wouldn't have been before. Perhaps a more interesting place, perhaps not.

About Jung. He had a different framework than Freud. It also produced interesting insights. Is one more apt than the other? I couldn't say really.

3. Do you feel that psychoanalytic criticism at times goes too far in connecting the work to the author, that is, on a personal, biographical level?

Well, I don't think psychoanalytic criticism is really about going back to the author. That seems like a fallacy to me. To go back to Jane Austen, we can talk about the psychological motivations of Emma et al without looking into the biography of Ms. Austen. I'd think that each novel, each short story, is a universe unto itself, and the interpretation of the meaning of the text should be found within the text.

4. You mentioned in your responses to our questions that you'd like us to avoid linking the story to "literal, real-world conclusions". Do you feel psychoanalytic criticism can be limiting in this way? That is, do you feel this type of criticism applies a focus to the more "real-world", concrete interpretation of a given piece of literature?

In short, no. But in some ways, yes. Psychoanalysis seems to me to be about the universe of the subconscious, not the world of concrete objects. The subconscious is a world of symbols and motifs. For example, to simply, girls like princesses and boys like knights. I happen to have an eight-year-old step son who is obsessed with his mother. He is in the midst of an Oedipal romance -- which Freud would say he needs to break free of so he can "self-actualize", become a separate and whole individual. I'd agree!! There's a real-world example for you. But we're talking about literature here. If we read THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, do we look at Holden Caufield and say he's a dopplegagger for JD Salinger and all of Holden's issues actually belong to JD. I hope not. That would be an unfruitful way of reading the novel to my mind. The novel doesn't lead back to the real world in that sense. It leads to broader associations of the imagination, just as Freud's theories lead to broader associations, or interpretations, of the subconscious and hidden and therefore mysterious motivations that drive behaviour. Why does a character in a novel or story act a certain way? There are multiple, equally accurate and convincing reasons. To go back to the real world of the author's so-called history (also open to interpretation) is limiting. Interpretation should lead to openings, not closings. More questions, not "the answer."

5. How do you think this type of criticism might be applied to "Live Bait". This is a really general, vague question. I'm really just curious as to how you would approach the type of topic we were given, where would you start, what would you focus on, generally speaking?

I'd start by asking who is the protagonist. That'd be Jake. If Freud had Jake on a couch, what would he say? Tell me about your childhood. Jake's father is the dependable rock, until he cracks after the death of his wife. Jake's mother is the caregiver, then she dies. Jake's sister commits suicide, even after Jake was asked to save her. Jake's attempt at reconnecting with the feminine (he's attempts to keep a girlfriend) all fail. Jake's attempt to be "a man" are complicated by his encounter with feminism (which he accepts, but doesn't know how to integrate into his life). One might say Freud gave us tools to try to understand why we do what we do. Why does Jake do what he does? He doesn't know. He's confused. He would like to understand. In the end, it's the collapse of his father (the solid male figure in his life) which is the focus of the story. He would like to rehabilitate his father. Is this a way of rehabilitating his own manhood? His father wants to reconnect with a teenage girl he met decades earlier. Is this a way of restoring his manhood? The questions are left unanswered in the story, but they remain for us to ponder.

6. How exaggerated -or not- do you feel use of the Oedipal Complex is in literary criticism?
No comment on this one. As I said, I see it in my own home!

7. How do you feel about caffeine pills? Have you ever used them? Does anything beat that warm, 4am cup of black coffee?

Scotch on ice!

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SECOND GROUP OF STUDENTS

Dear Mr. Bryson,

I am in Dr. Zsolt Alapi's English course at Marianopolis College, and I have just read your story "Live Bait." I am planning to lead a seminar on a psychoanalytic interpretation of "Live Bait" and I was wondering if you would be able to answer a few short questions about yourself and the story, and about the process of writing the story.

Thank you for your time,

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Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2008 14:05:51 -0400
From: michaelbryson@rogers.com
Subject: Re:

sure thing. send them along.

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Dear Mr. Bryson,

Here are the questions:

1) Do you feel a connection to, or affinity with, your characters? Are they analagous to any of the people you have met or known during your lifetime?
2) What are your favourite pieces of writing? Who have your artistic influences been, and who are your favourite writers?
3) What do you think of writers such as Matthew Firth? Are there any writers on the Canadian or American scenes whom you find interesting at the moment?
4) Would you describe your writing as "Urban Writing?"
5) We notice that in "Live Bait," the sexual encounter between the protagonist and the young lady he meets at the party has certain post-modernist characteristics. Are we mistaken? What is your opinion of Post-Modernism?
6) Who are your philosophical and intellectual influences? What do you think of the findings of thinkers such as Freud, Jung, Campbell, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche?
7) Did you have an intended meaning or message when you wrote "Live Bait" (If so, what is it?) ? Do you feel that as the author you have a priviledged access to, or interpretation of, the text?

Thank you for your time,

--------------------------------------


Hi Nicholas -

Here are the answers:

1) Do you feel a connection to, or affinity with, your characters? Are they
analogous to any of the people you have met or known during your lifetime?

- I'd say my characters are like estranged cousins. I sort of know them, but
they exist in a world I only visit in memory and imagination. Ultimately,
they're mysterious to me, as everyone is. We can move towards knowing each
other, but there's anyways more to know (the same, I believe, is true about
our relationship with ourselves...).- Short answer about "analogousness"... no. My father did have a period of
serious depression. However, my mother is still alive. I don't have a sister.
No one in my family has committe suicide. I've never smoked pot with my
father. Nothing that happens between Jake and the women in the story ever
happened to me. I've never owned a car. And so on. I've always said that I
can't pretend that my stories don't expose my subconscious, because they do.
However, the facts in the story are all made up. The facts of the story don't
correlate to my autobiography.

2) What are your favourite pieces of writing? Who have your artistic
influences been, and who are your favourite writers?

- I'm not sure I have favourite writers, but there are a handful of Canadian
short story books I'm always happy to promote:

- 19 KNIVES by Mark Anthony Jarman
- WHITE BUICK by Greg Hollingshead
- 16 CATEGORIES OF DESIRE by Douglas Glover
- Other Canadian short fiction writers I'd recommend: Zsuzsi Gartner, Neil
Smith, John Lavery, Craig Davidson, Tony Burgess, Barbara Gowdy, Lynn Coady,
Tim Conley. Alice Munro, too, of course: she is our Chekhov.

- Re: influences. You might be interested in Harold Bloom's view of literary
influence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxiety_of_Influence). My opinion
about influnces is that you discover them, like mentors (or lovers), but the
germ of the relationship pre-existed the discovery. In other words, you find
the influences you need to find in order to better be the writer you always
wanted to be. For example, twenty years ago I kept writing stories with
narrators/protagonists who were largely passive. I thought I was doing
something wrong. Then I read Raymond Carver's short stories and found he was
writing similar kinds of stories. I learned some things from Carver, but I
was writing like myself before I was "influenced" by Carver. (Similarly, it's
easy to see Hemingway's influence on Carver...).

- I'll just way one more thing about my influences, which is: I try to bring together in my writing both "realist" and "fabulist" elements. I've learned from writers like Terry Southern, J.G. Ballard, Milan Kundera, Philip Roth, Kafka, Douglas Glover .... how to meld these traditions. In Canada, it seems to me, our criticism tends to divide the "realists" from the "experimenters,"
as if you need to be one or the other and can't be both. (Probably because our criticism has centred on what makes CanLit "Canadian," i.e., real, rather than what makes it "literature" in the broader sense.)

3) What do you think of writers such as Matthew Firth? Are there any writers
on the Canadian or American scenes whom you find interesting at the moment?

- There's lots of interesting books/authors. I've named some above.

- Re: Firth.... I've known Matthew about 10 years or so. I like him as a
person very much, and I'm always interested in what he's doing in his
writing. As you probably know, his work is all part of a bigger project he's
extremely dedicated to. He could describe it better than I can, but I'll just
call it "telling the truth through fiction about working class life." He'd
probably find my answers to your questions here far too much
"intellectualizing." His work is about trying to capture honest, truthful,
real representations of life as lived. I have deep respect for all of that,
but the graduate student in me always concludes with the fact that fiction
is, at the end of the day, a construction of language. And that raises a host
of questions about "truth."

- Actually, this kind of reiterates what I was saying above about my
"realist" and "fabulist" influences. I want to write truthfully and honestly
and communicate what it feels like to be alive (from my point of view). But I
also see fiction as a playful thing, existing in a rhelm that isn't make of
objects and facts. It's a connundrum!

4) Would you describe your writing as "Urban Writing?"

- Is urban writing the opposite of rural writing? Do those categories mean
anything?

5) We notice that in "Live Bait," the sexual encounter between the
protagonist and the young lady he meets at the party has certain
post-modernist characteristics. Are we mistaken? What is your opinion of
Post-Modernism?

- I'm not sure what you mean by "post-modernist characteristics." Also, I
don't think it's up to me to tell you whether or not you are mistaken. The
story is open to many interpretations. I don't think I'm in a position to
invalidate any of them.

- Re: Post-modernism. I think the best thing I can do is recommend Linda
Hutcheon on this subject; my take is she's got it right. These links are a
good place to start:
- http://individual.utoronto.ca/lindahutcheon/
- http://www.ualberta.ca/~jwilliam/eng478/pomo.htm
-
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/postmodernism/modules/hutcheon
postmodernity.html

6) Who are your philosophical and intellectual influences? What do you think
of the findings of thinkers such as Freud, Jung, Campbell, Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche?

- I like Wayne Gretzky: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
- Also John Lennon: "Well, you know, you better free your mind instead."
- Bob Dylan: "Don't follow leaders, watch parking meters."

7) Did you have an intended meaning or message when you wrote "Live Bait" (If
so, what is it?) ? Do you feel that as the author you have a priviledged
access to, or interpretation of, the text?

- No intended meaning or message.

- As above: "The story is open to many interpretations. I don't think I'm in
a position to invalidate any of them."