Fear of the Middle

The suburbs of language and more

Hello friends,

It’s been a while. I’ve been spending any minute not wrestled away by the toddler or baby on a second novel, a very bad first draft of which birthed itself on Friday. The passive tone is somewhat intentional. Writing, when it really wishes to happen, wills itself into being. I didn’t work on the book for months, blocked by doubt, the publicity work for American Fever, and a lack of inspiration. Then I ended up writing more than half of it between the months of January and March.

A few weeks ago, I had friends over for dinner, and someone talked about the fear of the middle. They said they’d rather live either in a big city or in complete wilderness, and something about a ‘convenient suburb,’ that very American form of ugly functionality, really rubbed them the wrong way. As someone who spent her formative childhood years firmly entrenched in the middle class, in all its fears and hypocrisies, I reacted powerfully to that. On the one hand, the middle way of doing things, the Goldilocks way of life, has always made inherent sense to me. It’s how I have been taught to live life. On the other hand, perhaps because of that indoctrination, I found this concept, of rejecting the middle in every form, quite intoxicating and refreshing.

The Urdu language has three pronoun forms—the very informal tu, the standard / still informal but somewhat respectful tum, and the formal aap. Punjabi, the other language I grew up with, eschews the middle form of address, leaving you with a binary decision between the informal or formal. I have always used the tum address for friends and siblings, and aap for strangers, parents, and, interestingly enough, my children. I was trained to never, ever use tu for anyone, except, even more interestingly, for God. Urdu poetry frequently uses it for the beloved as well. It seems odd, then, to have a ‘middle’ form that seems to exist almost to put someone at a distance, to tell them they are neither respected enough to be an aap nor intimate enough to be a tu. Is tum the suburb of the Urdu language? Please discuss.

For now, where I have settled on with this question is that everyone should have a few things, or even a thing, that they are extreme and fanatical about, in which they do not seek a healthy balance. It can be writing, or children, or food, or coffee, or whatever. It seems that we need that as much as we need balance in the rest of our lives.

I’ve also been thinking about conservation, and how it is often invisible work. Quite literally. I finally finished the PBS documentary on New York, an episode of which spoke of the efforts of people like Jane Jacobs to save the city from the destruction of urban renewal projects cooked up by Robert Moses et al. Among their achievements was being able to stop the construction of LOMEX, a 8-lane highway that would have torn through Tribeca, SoHo, and Nolita, spanning the entire width of the island’s southern side. Their work is very well-documented in papers, and in the hearts and minds of urbanism experts and aficionados, but there is no physical proof of it. They conserved a way of life by stopping an encroachment on it, but that success resulted in an absence, a lack of proof. Often, we think of change as an inevitable fact of life. One might look at the Bronx Highway, another of Moses’s notorious project that was allowed, and led to pollution, congestion, white flight, and a general destruction of communities, and think, “Well, it was bound to happen. As unfortunate as it is, that’s how cities and countries progress.” But one also progresses by rejecting change, by deciding that the convenience or shininess of a new project is not worth the threat to one’s culture, heritage, or environment. Speaking of urbanism, the panorama of New York City at the Queens Museum is a treat to visit.

What else? I’m reading Barbara Ehrenreich, and wishing I had read her sooner. I read Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class (Can you tell my new project is about the middle class?) and am now rushing through her pièce de résistance, Nickel and Dimed. She writes with wit and empathy and intelligence about class issues in America. She died recently, which is how I discovered her. I feel that all these luminaries keep passing, and their passing is how I discover them. Etel Adnan, Barbara, Mike Davis. Of course, that is why one writes. At some very egotistical level, it is a desire to outlive oneself. Rachel Cusk, who I have somewhat complicated feelings about, says it is an attempt to “get the footprints in the sand to stay.”

More later. Thanks for reading.

X,

Dure