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发帖数: 7881 | 1 WHEN asked to name the influences on my fiction and nonfiction, it’s become
fairly customary, and perhaps a little pretentious, for me to cite the
literary gods Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and George Orwell. And while it’s
not untrue to say that these three legends, who broke such fertile ground
in portraying the struggle of the alienated Everyman, made me want to be a
writer, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge a fourth artistic
influence, one who might not come so readily to mind when thinking of
literary inspiration but who is equally important to me: the radio host
Howard Stern.
For example, it’s 2 o’clock on a Monday afternoon, and rather than do work
, I am listening to Mr. Stern’s show as someone called Tan Mom informs me,
quite candidly, of, among other things, her recent attempt at sobriety, her
online sexual behavior and her utter dislike of someone called Teen Mom. I
have no idea what Tan Mom actually looks like — which is probably for the
best — but based on her name, the sound of her voice and the physical
details that Mr. Stern occasionally mentions in passing, I have formed a
lurid vision in my head. Lurid visions, as we know from our nightmares, are
often more vivid than reality.
Here, then, is the first significant overlap between the world of Mr. Stern
’s show and the world of the writer laboring at his desk: to achieve,
through restricted means, a visual effect on the audience. In Mr. Stern’s
case it’s the listener; in my case it’s the reader. Yes, ours are waning
skills in industries that have been given up for dead. Still, we eschew
progress for the pleasure of our modest tools. We are like primitive beings
— or fools — dwelling in a futuristic age of technological ease, where
movies and pictures can now be created and exchanged so effortlessly. And
yet I would no more want to see an actual picture of Tan Mom than I would,
say, a picture of Kafka’s protagonist Josef K., so fully formed these
intimate strangers have become in my mind.
Howard Stern, as of last year, has reasserted himself in popular culture as
a judge on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” appraising our nation’s
singers, dancers and aerial balloonists. I don’t care about this. After
five minutes of watching Episode 1, I turned it off. It’s Mr. Stern’s
storytelling that I’m after, his uncanny ability to create scenes on the go
, to locate and draw out drama, to introduce surprise, to leaven pain with
humor. Or to put it another way: what I’m trying to do.
His radio show, on Sirius XM Radio, is usually live Monday through Wednesday
, from 6 to 10 in the morning, but runs on a loop throughout the day, and
also on the weekends, and if that’s not enough, on a second channel where
archived shows, some dating back 20 years, are frequently broadcast. This
does not bode well for me, a writer who writes from the comfort of his
living room, who seeks, like all writers, distraction.
After years of dismissing Mr. Stern as a sexist, racist potty mouth —
without having ever listened to him — I happened upon his radio show purely
by accident one morning about 10 years ago, and I was struck by a measured,
thoughtful tone that did not precede him. Not only was he funny, but I
found that his troubled childhood as an isolated Jewish boy in the
predominantly black town of Roosevelt, N.Y., also dovetailed nicely with my
unhappy childhood as an isolated Jewish-Iranian-socialist boy in Pittsburgh.
This identity of the alienated, forged in the crucible of early youth, is
the engine that drives Mr. Stern’s radio show toward the elevation of
outcasts, the disassembling (read: humanizing) of superstars, the impulse to
say, no matter the cost, what you really think and feel. “Tonight we honor
the sick, the retarded, the slow-witted, the sexually promiscuous, the
morally bankrupt,” Mr. Stern says by way of promotion.
My mother was a devoted member of the Socialist Workers Party; my father
left home when I was 9 months old; and the subsequent severance from the
mainstream community that I underwent in my formative years convinced me
that I was intellectually odd, physically ugly and doomed to be forever on
the outside. No doubt, this is why I have so strongly identified with
characters like Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, Orwell’s Winston Smith and Beckett’
s tramps, and why, now, decades later, I identify with Tan Mom and the host
of other strange, deluded figures who parade in and out of Mr. Stern’s
studio.
This procession of regulars happens to include, at 11 o’clock on a Tuesday
morning, Jeff the Drunk and Eric the Midget. Jeff is a chronic, unredeemable
alcoholic, Eric a dwarf who uses a wheelchair. Eric deplores being referred
to as a midget and favors the sobriquet Eric the Actor. Mr. Stern, through
some finagling, has arranged for them to phone in to audition for a film
director for parts in a movie. They are real roles in a real movie, but one
of the roles is that of a gay character, and this has caused Eric, who is
concerned that people will mistakenly assume that he himself is gay, to
refuse to audition, despite Mr. Stern’s importuning. “Who cares what
people think of you?” Mr. Stern exclaims, a sentiment that I myself have
never been able to follow.
Is Eric’s reluctance a failed opportunity for comedy? No, with any good
artist a creative misstep can be turned into something better, and in this
case, Mr. Stern proudly takes on the role himself, playing it to the hilt,
reveling in the freedom of the part, seemingly making a point about sexual
expression and the roles we are all forced to play. Beneath the laughs
something more serious is at work.
None of this would be effective if Mr. Stern didn’t submit for examination
the most interesting character of all: himself. Bathroom habits, sexual
behavior, overblown insecurity — all are laid bare for the inspection of
the listener. Mr. Stern is, remarkably, the only one on the show who evinces
awareness of his own peculiarity. If these are freaks, he seems to be
saying, I am a freak among them.
Very few guests appear to have gone on Mr. Stern’s show thinking themselves
at all odd. Even Jeff the Vomit Guy, an emetophiliac, asks, almost as a
mantra, “Am I the crazy one here?” The lesson is that we are all the crazy
ones here. We are all Gregor Samsa, we are all Tan Mom. The only question
that remains is how much we are really willing to reveal about ourselves.
Any writer would do well to make this his mission.
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is the author of the short-story collection “Brief
Encounters With the Enemy.” |
