Ghost at the Machine: A Writer's Manual for Apocalyptic Times
Unfortunately, Dear Writer, you've landed in the Dark Ages of Storytelling.
Sorry, but your timing is a bit off.
You want to be a writer. You want to write fiction, stage drama, screenplays. But unfortunately, you’ve landed in the Dark Ages of Storytelling.
The storyteller, you see, is an extinct species. Just as much as the T-Rex and the Dodo.
In older times, the storyteller promised to tell us something that might manifest a glimmer of the point of existence. Yet today’s storyteller lives in an age that has trouble recognizing that existence has a point.
The art of storytelling had a good run. But our age has put its faith, not in age-old notions of truth and wisdom, but in science and technology. Indeed, storytelling itself is fast becoming just another technological enterprise. AI now proposes to write your script for you, and then act it out on screen.
So, the day has come when you, the ghost that haunts the cosmos, are replaceable by an even more ghostly presence: a nameless but aggressive aggregator living inside your laptop.
But wait! you say. Storytelling will always remain vital. And you will point to the oft-quoted Joan Didion meme: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” When you read this, you feel that Ms. Didion is speaking the language of your heart—the language of the human.
But apart from the fact that Ms. Didion does not tell us which stories are so vital—does she mean any and all stories? Episode 14 of Season 5 of Breaking Bad as well as Dante’s Commedia?—how can Ms. Didion, or any storyteller, claim knowledge of what it means “to live” when science and technology have sucked all meaning out of the cosmos, leaving a race of ghosts to float amid the detritus of the calamity?
Ghosts? Yes, because since the 17th century (at least), we humans have been doing all in our power to alienate ourselves from ourselves and from our place in the cosmos.
In aspiring to make ourselves sovereign in our all-conquering sense of personal authenticity, we have ended up making ourselves wandering shades, isolated consciousnesses deracinated from the native soils—religious, political, cultural, even bodily—in which the self was once situated and at home.
Faith? Oppressive patriarchy.
Politics? Playground of power and corruption.
Culture? Playground of the elite.
The body? An encumbrance.
But what is left after the self has alienated itself from everything beyond itself?
Nothing—save the self’s own gut sense of who it really is.
Nothing—save a spectral presence inside a cranium, an ego covered by a bedsheet with two holes for eyes holding on tight to its self-affirmations.
Nothing—save a small mental auditorium of hyperpalatable representations floating through the cosmos on a creaky bipedal apparatus as on a spaceship.
To be sure, there are probably more writers today than there ever have been in the history of the planet, and these writers have more “platforms” than ever from which to tell their stories.
Yet you had hoped that stories would be “equipment for living” (in Kenneth Burke’s quaint phrase). But all we seem to have left are ghost stories, but ones without any frisson of the uncanny or supernatural.
Here’s a thought, however.
If it really is the Dark Ages of Storytelling, might there not be some Benedictine monks meticulously copying the manuscripts that will preserve civilization?
Might there not be a scriptorium somewhere, where a writer might discover the craft of storytelling as you would like it to exist—as a kind of Socratic inquiry into how one should live, as indeed equipment for living?
The answer to these questions is affirmative. The writings that encapsulate this older tradition have been collected, copied, and preserved.
In the coming weeks, I aim to offer a summation of this tradition, a vade mecum (“Come with me”) or pocket reference that I call, Ghost at the Machine: A Writer’s Manual for Apocalyptic Times.
** Image of ghost courtesy of Kurtkaiser at Wikimedia Commons.
McINERNY’S MUSINGS
A couple of weekends ago I gave a presentation at a donor event at Christendom College, where I teach, a summer consortium devoted to the life and thought of Pope St. John Paul II. My presentation was entitled “Karol Wojtyla: The Actor,” and in it I focused on the subversive wartime theatrical activities of the young Karol Wojtyla, which is the subject of my play, The Actor, set to premiere at Christendom College November 8-10, 2024. In fact, the heart of my presentation was four scenes from the play featuring four most intrepid and gifted actors: Miss Sarah Morales and Miss Meg Meehan (Class of 24 graduates of Christendom), Mr. Sam Phillips, Director of Admissions at Christendom and a talented actor whom I was glad to coax out of retirement, and Mr. Aron Forthofer, another talented actor and a rising senior at Christendom. With very little rehearsal these four actors turned in performances that captivated the audience. If you’d like to view my presentation and the scenes from the play, simply scroll down this page reviewing the summer consortium.
In case you’re not aware, on June 3rd Word on Fire Academic released my latest philosophical work, Beauty & Imitation: A Philosophical Reflection on the Arts. The book is selling well and is starting to receive reviews on Amazon. As of this writing, I’m a notch above Aristotle’s Poetics in Amazon’s “Philosophy Aesthetics” category, which is a bit awkward given that Aristotle is the chief guide in my thought about the arts. One Amazon reviewer of the book, a classical educator, writes the following:
“I'm excited about a more robust framework for my lesson-planning this summer, and I'm thankful I started out the summer by reading this book. I think classical educators will be talking about Beauty and Imitation for years to come, but it's not just for teachers. It's for anyone who engages with mimetic art (which is everyone) and wants to understand what art is for. It's for anyone who wants to recover this mode of seeing truth on their own quest for happiness.”
This reviewer is not the only educator who has indicated to me their appreciation of the book. Because of this, I’m planning, for mid July, a video Q&A with teachers. If you’re a teacher and would like an invite to this free Q&A session, please email me at danielmcinerny@gmail.com.
Another key guide to my thinking in Beauty & Imitation is Monsignor Robert Sokolowski, Elizabeth Breckenridge Caldwell Professor of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America and a revered professor of mine in my days as a graduate student at CUA. This past weekend my wife Amy and I were in Washington, D.C. and were able to dine with Msgr. Sokolowski, now 90 but still teaching and going strong. We had a most delightful dinner with him at DeCarlo’s Italian Restaurant in Woodley Park, catching up and solving all the problems of the world.
Last Saturday in D.C. I also enjoyed a pleasant sojourn to the National Gallery of Art, where I was charmed by this painting by the 19th-century American painter, Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904): “Sunlight and Shadow: The Newbury Marshes” (1871/1875)…
In Beauty & Imitation I argue that even a landscape such as Heade’s can be taken as a narrative argument about human happiness insofar as it is, in the words of Msgr. Robert Sokolowski, “presented as a background for the possibility of human choices.” The hay bales in the frame indicate that this is not simply a piece of geography, but a setting for human choices, a place, a “landscape,” where human beings are busy working out their happiness.
I do have a new work of fiction in progress, as well as a piece of philosophy as well, a sequel to Beauty & Imitation in which my aim is to do the work I chose not to do in the work just published, and that is pursue an engagement with modern, nonmimetic conceptions of art. These projects, along with Ghost at the Machine, occupy my golden hours of deep work.
But the main work of art I’m concerned with today is my grandson Raffi’s puppet show. He celebrated his 2nd birthday earlier this month and this weekend all the kids are descending to celebrate three of our family’s June birthdays: Raffi’s, my daughter Lucy’s, and my daughter-in-law Caitlin’s. I always made puppet shows for the kids when they were small, and on Saturday night the tradition continues with Raffi!
Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby continues to be, for me, the perfect summer fiction read.
If you’re looking for a great summer piece of fiction, I hope you will consider my novel, The Good Death of Kate Montclair, and, for the kids who are middle grade readers (approximately 9-14), my humorous Kingdom of Patria series.
