All of a sudden, me and my cousin rich from pressin' buttons
On rigor
A conversation not long ago about theology (it had begun as a conversation about writing and writing groups) turned, at one point, to a conversation about rigor. The idea was to move from the kumbaya energy of certain Bible Studies to a more exacting engagement with Scripture, and while the goal was the same—how to understand this instruction on self-betterment—one methodology promised a longer, richer process than the other. An epilogic promise, then, was of a richer reward, the coda to the journey a brighter, more coruscating enlightenment. Then we moved on to another topic, assuming that the injection of rigor into this sort of thing was an assumed good. A thing we wanted. It has flavored my engagement with so much else—television, literature, political science—and so it seemed only natural that engagement with God, that reaching, should strain every muscle in the body, the traps, the quads, the heart, the mind.
But now, on the other side of the weekend, another thought has entered the ring. A question. “What about enjoyment?”
There’s this trend that’s been popularized over the past decade, having migrated from academia to the mainstream, of injecting demographical and social analysis into every piece of entertainment. Some of it’s done cheekily, but, in other cases, when the perpetrator is deadly serious, it kills the joy. Why did you have to point out that when Goku turns Super Saiyan, he’s adopting the Aryan Ideal? Blond hair? Blue eyes? Just let me have this fight sequence with Freeza.1 But a loved one and I have been watching The Penguin and while neither of us has said the words “Marxist class analysis” out loud, I do sometimes refer to the show in my head as The Proletarian. Still, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Some things, some aspects of life, lend themselves eagerly to rigorous engagement: an appreciation of nature, of natural wonders; scientific study; home improvement projects; Thomas Mann novels. For others, the appeal is more sneaky. Is Attack on Titan an indictment of anti-semitism, an apologia for fascism, or a gruesome and enthralling villain origin story? The genius of the specificity of human experience is that it can be each of things to different people, that each of us is singular and so is our agglomeration of experiences and understandings and hurts and healings and fascinations and fears, and that each brings the divine mystery of our individuated soul to the thing in question.
But if I bring my training in political science to Attack on Titan, if I bring my study of the Holocaust, what I know of Japan and its forced post-WWII adoption of pacifism and the subsequent resentment that boiled amongst those sections of the populace emasculated by the atomic bomb, if I bring what writing and reading has taught me about human psychology, behavior and all of that, does Attack on Titan become less enjoyable?
Sometimes rigor is your job. Working in film and television has taught me, more than anything else, that it is a miracle when a thing gets made. Even if it’s called hot garbage in the end. Lift the moss-covered log and witness an entire biome at work not just sustaining itself but producing…something. And here, being able to dissect the pacing of an episode of television or guess when a compromise has been forced in location demanding an improvisational note in the dialogue can engender in the viewer a grander appreciation for the artifact they’re engaged with. “I can’t believe they pulled that off.” Apocalypse Now defies belief.2 I can’t believe they pulled that off. Red Dead Redemption 2 defies belief. How tf did they get this to happen?
And then a counterbalance enters the thing. The faults, the glitches, the bugs, they’re not only more obvious, they’re insistent.
I’m playing a game now, and I don’t know that I’m enjoying it.
It’s growing on me and there are parts of it I give in to with increasing willingness, but I’m complaining now, and I never used to do that with games. The combat is easy and smooth, but I wish there was more of this other version. The turn the story takes, a development I greatly appreciated, is abandoned in order to force you into more open-world exploration. Unserious dialogue used to wash over me, but now I have to strain to keep from rewriting it in my head. Sometimes, rigorous engagement can unlock wonders. Sometimes, it can blight an otherwise beautiful thing. “But the vistas are gorgeous,” half of me pleads to the other half who can’t wait to be done with the thing. In moments like that (and so many others), I wish that I knew less, that I could walk backward to a time when this was good enough to be great.
Earlier this year, I finished writing the book I’ve referred to affectionately as “the Russian novel,” and to keep post-novel ennui at bay, I’ve already begun planning the next two. The ship sails on to new adventures but worry barnacles to the hull. Because these next works will require me to write about, to know more about, things I used to know precious little about and could thus appreciate without rigor. A dear friend and fellow writer is one of the best music writers I know. He’s so good that I don’t bother to feel envious of his talents. I am simply in awe. And one of the aforementioned projects will involve, will demand, writing about music. I don’t know that I’ll be able to write around certain aspects of the art form the way Roberto Bolaño did with poetry in The Savage Detectives, so I may very well be called upon to write through it. I may very well be called upon to jettison my ignorance and open myself up to the blighting. Adjusting the prescription of my glasses so that I will, at some point in the future, be able to look at gold and see it for the rust that it is. Another project, not part of two alluded to above is a potential book about an art form I’ve, for most of my life, engaged with uncritically. I know a bit more about it than I do about music, but it is still mostly enjoyed without that type of rigor I’ve been talking about. But to plunge into it with my scalpels and buzzsaws…I feel like I’m on the precipice of performing a defilement.
But maybe.
Maybe I’m opening myself up to new worlds of wonder. Maybe I should make the pact that will allow me to see the fay in the forest.
Does it have to be either-or? A joke I heard once and have subsequently forgotten has for its punchline “why choose when I can collect?” If ever there was a life motto. Is there a way, then, to apply rigor to my rigor? To demand of the impulse to demand? To tell it to thread itself with compassion? Leaven itself with appreciation for the thing? To forgive the bug, the glitch, the fault? I’m a science fiction author, so it is entirely possible to create a world where I can have my cake and eat it too. Let’s bake us some quantum immortality.
Whatever else Attack on Titan was, it was a thing I enjoyed. I told myself, upon beginning William Gaddis’s The Recognitions, that I was hell-bent on enjoying the book, critics and detractors be damned, and not once during the reading did I find myself rewriting the book in my head.
Rigor, you would do well to remember that love is part of the bargain.
A beloved told me once, as I was complaining to her yet again about the game I’ve been playing, that I spoiled myself on masterpieces, and now I’ve met something that doesn’t meet my exacting standards. She’d watched some of my Cyberpunk 2077 playthrough, and the word masterpiece applies.3 Before that, there was Shadow of the Erdtree, The Last of Us Part II, God of War Ragnarok, the list continues. It’s the same way with books. For just about all of my life, I’ve glutted myself on the chefs d’oeuvre. And if I’ve read a book that couldn’t live among those, it was likely because I had to. Still, there is virtue in the reaching. In the ambition. I find, the more I read, the more I play, the more I watch, the more I’m able to appreciate that straining. And I don’t think that rigor in the doing can exist without any attendant rigor in the seeing and playing.
It is, after all, my job now. The impulse for rigorous engagement is an imperative. It can be for better or for worse, but I choose “for better.”
“I loved this because” still contains the words “I loved this”.
Currently reading: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena - Anthony Marra
Currently listening: Gospel - Rich Brian, Keith Ape, XXXTENTACION
Who has the nasty habit of saying “monkey” with the hard-R.
If you can, watch the Redux version of the film, if for no other reason than the French plantation scene.
I did wait maybe a whole year before playing Cyberpunk, which taught me the virtues of waiting at least a few patches before picking a thing up. Growth is waiting until a game is on sale to buy it.
That Russian novel, though…where’s it at?