Sunday, January 10, 2010

Ah, misanthropy!

Was lying in bed thinking about Constant Tower. It's a novel about humans and being trapped with humans but it doesn't have the passionate dislike of humans which I'd like.

We belong to so many tribes: race, wealth, class, education, religion. And it is that rare person
who totally fits in in all the tribes to which he belongs.

Christians who aren't cookie-cutter Christians tend to be wounded by other Christians.
Blacks are often wounded by other Blacks.
But then Christians are also wounded by atheists, New Agers, Buddhists, agnostics, intellectuals.
And Blacks are often wounded by whites, reds, browns, and yellows.

So how to portray that in a novel? By creating a misanthropic world.

Constant Tower has a smoothness that works but --now that I've come back from working on Onion where I talk about the cruelty down by churchianity and by Black-on-black cruelty-- I sense that I've really toned down the raw anger and isolation one feels in the world. (Okay, that I myself have felt in the world.)

So, on to getting the anger and raw emotion from my heart into CT.

Why? Because it is bitter and because it is my heart.

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