Crow posted:

jools posted:

jesus, writing about things has nothing to do with writing on things

Good point. Listen up you dumb whore bitch, you are so talented, and i know you so well, how smart you are, but you a re a fuckin dumb ole broad, and dont you know this? What is wrong with your Faggot ninja head

what the fuck is your problem

getfiscal posted:

here's some advice to lurkers: in star trek, james t. kirk took a test called the kobayashi maru during starfleet academy. the exercise is designed in such a way that there is no way to normally successfully complete your mission. it is designed to teach humility and the acceptance of risk. but kirk found a way to beat the mission: he cheated. is this not the essence of communism? in a system that is rigged, the only way to win is to cheat. likewise, the workers face a system rigged against them, so they must destroy the system.

but, my god, is it not the case that it is the system which has corrupted kirk in this case? for as we know, from the series, james kirk is a good man trying to do the right things and also sometimes okay a lot of times have some fun on the side. and confronted as he was with an unwinnable situation, a framework in which his death was assured, he was unable in this case to come to terms with the horror of his reality. no! kirk instead seeked to escape his situation by constructing another, by becoming the very same neurotic schizophrenic that is today's citizen of global capitalism.

The interviews were conducted over nearly a year between the beginning of January and the end of December 1996. Most sessions took one or two hours, but some lasted for as long as four hours. I recorded everything.

The tapes were then transcribed, which naturally generated a huge volume of text, much of which digressed this way and that, lost the thread completely, then pulled back into focus. Just like everyday speech. This was edited, reordered, or rephrased where necessary to make it more readable, and generally worked up into a manageable book-length manuscript.

Occasionally, when the transcript seemed to lack something, I had to go back and listen to the original tape.
Only once did anyone refuse to be recorded. Although I had mentioned over the phone that I’d be recording the interview, when I pulled a tape recorder out of my bag the interviewee claimed not to have been told. I spent the next two hours jotting down names and figures in longhand, then another few hours writing up the interview the moment I got home. (I was actually rather impressed that my own all-too-human powers of recall could reproduce an entire conversation from a handful of notes—no doubt daily fare to professional interviewers, but new to me.) Still, in the end I wasn’t granted permission to include this interview in the book, so all my labors came to nothing.

Two assistants, Setsuo Oshikawa and Hidemi Takahashi, helped me track down the interviewees. We used one of two methods: scanning all previous media sources for listings of “Tokyo gas attack victims”; or asking around by word-of-mouth if anyone knew someone who’d been gassed. Quite frankly, this proved more difficult than I expected. So many passengers were on the Tokyo subway that day, I told myself, getting statements would be easy; after all, there was no formal legal ban on “external testimonies” during the trial, except as concerned the court or police investigations. They had a duty to protect people’s privacy, and the same went for the hospitals. All we had to go on were newspaper listings of the hospitalized from the day of the gas attack itself. Names only; no addresses or telephone numbers.

Somehow we came up with a list of 700 names, of whom only 20 percent were identifiable. How does one go about tracing an “Ichiro Nakamura”—the Japanese equivalent of “John Smith”? Even when we did manage to contact the 140 or so positive identifications, they usually refused to be interviewed, saying “I’d rather forget the whole incident” or “I don’t want to have anything to do with Aum” or “I don’t trust the media.” I can’t tell you how often people slammed down the phone at the mere mention of publication. As a result, only about 40 percent of the 140 consented to be interviewed.
After the arrest of the principal members of the Aum cult, fewer people feared retributions, but still the rejections persisted—“My symptoms aren’t really serious, so it’s not worth making a statement.” Or, in more than one case, the survivors themselves were willing but their families were not—“Don’t get all of us involved.” Testimonies from public servants and the employees of financial institutions were likewise unforthcoming.

For practical reasons there are also relatively few female interviewees, because they proved harder to trace by name alone. Unmarried young women in Japan—and this is pure conjecture on my part—don’t appreciate strangers asking too many questions. Nevertheless, some did respond “despite family opposition.”

Thus, out of thousands of victims, we found only sixty willing respondents, and that took a huge amount of dedication.
In the process of shaping the written interviews, drafts were sent to the respective interviewees for fact-checking. I attached a note asking them to let me know if there was anything they “didn’t wish to see in print” and how the contents should be altered or abridged. Almost everyone asked for some changes or cuts, and I complied. Often the forfeited material had illuminated details about the interviewees’ lives, which I, as a writer, was sorry to lose. Occasionally I came back with a counterproposal for them to approve. Some interviews went back and forth as many as five times. Every effort was made to avoid any exploitative mass-media scenario that might leave disgruntled interviewees shaking their heads, saying, “It wasn’t supposed to be like this” or “You betrayed my trust.” Things took time.

After such delicate and laborious orchestrations, we had a total of sixty-two interviews. However, as stated previously, there were two last-minute withdrawals, both very incisive, telling testimonies. Discarding the finished texts so late in the game, I honestly felt as though I were cutting away parts of my own flesh, but “No” means “No,” especially when we had made clear from the start our intention to respect each individual voice.

Put another way, every remark in this book is a completely voluntary contribution. And by way of final confirmation—I am very pleased and grateful to say—almost everyone agreed to use his or her real name, which adds incalculably greater impact to the words: their words, their anger, their accusations, their sufferings … (this is not to slight those few who adopted pseudonyms, for whatever personal reasons).

At the beginning of every interview I would ask the interviewees about their background—where they were born, their upbringing, their family, their job (especially their job)—in order to give each a “face,” to bring them into focus. What I did not want was a collection of disembodied voices. Perhaps it’s an occupational hazard of the novelist’s profession, but I am less interested in the “big picture,” as it were, than in the concrete, irreducible humanity of each individual. So perhaps I devoted an inordinate proportion of each two-hour interview to seemingly unrelated details, but I wanted to make sure readers had a firm grasp of the “character” speaking. Much of this extra dimension did not, of course, survive into print.
The Japanese media had bombarded us with so many in-depth profiles of the Aum cult perpetrators—the “attackers”—forming such a slick, seductive narrative that the average citizen—the “victim”—was almost an afterthought. “Bystander A” was glimpsed only in passing. Very rarely was any “lesser” narrative presented in a way that commanded attention. Those few stories that got through were contextualized into formulaic glosses. Our media probably wanted to create a collective image of the “innocent Japanese sufferer,” which is much easier to do when you don’t have to deal with real faces. Besides, the classic dichotomy of “ugly (visible) villains” versus the “healthy (faceless) populace” makes for a better story.

Which is why I wanted, if at all possible, to get away from any formula; to recognize that each person on the subway that morning had a face, a life, a family, hopes and fears, contradictions and dilemmas—and that all these factors had a place in the drama.

Once I’d discovered the real person, I could then shift my focus to the events themselves. “What was the day like for you?,” “What did you see/experience/feel?,” and, if it seemed appropriate, “In what way did you suffer (physically or mentally) because of the gas attack?” and “Did these problems persist?”

The degree of suffering inflicted by the Tokyo gas attack varied considerably from person to person. Some escaped with little actual harm; those less fortunate died or are still undergoing therapy for serious health problems. Many experienced no major symptoms at the time, but have since developed posttraumatic stress disorders.

I interviewed people even if they were virtually unaffected by the sarin gas. Naturally those who escaped with relatively slight injury had been able to return to everyday life more quickly, but they, too, had their own stories to tell. Their fears, their lessons. In this sense, I did not practice any sort of editorial “triage.”

One cannot overlook someone simply because they exhibit only “minor symptoms.” For everyone involved in the gas attack, March 20 was a heavy, grueling day.

Furthermore, I had a hunch that we needed to see a true picture of all the survivors, whether they were severely traumatized or not, in order to better grasp the whole incident. I leave it to you, the reader, to lend an ear, then judge. No, even before that, I’d like you to imagine.

The date is Monday March 20, 1995. It is a beautiful clear spring morning. There is still a brisk breeze and people are bundled up in coats. Yesterday was Sunday, tomorrow is the Spring Equinox, a national holiday. Sandwiched right in the middle of what should have been a long weekend, you’re probably thinking, “I wish I didn’t have to go to work today.” No such luck. You get up at the normal time, wash, dress, breakfast, and head for the subway station. You board the train, crowded as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary. It promises to be a perfectly run-of-the-mill day. Until a man in disguise pokes at the floor of the car with the sharpened tip of his umbrella, puncturing some plastic bags filled with a strange liquid …

discipline posted:

jools do you sound this patronizing when you discuss the same subject with your egotistical male friends with blogs? or am I just somehow exceptionally irritating and gross?

did you forget that huge thing i wrote a few months back or something? you know, about how terrible "writing" is, especially at the moment?

tpaine posted:

Crow posted:

getfiscal posted:

when i tried to become a pundit jools came to my house and punched me in my gut. i only bring this up because i just felt it (i'm fat).

what is it with you and pundits? what are you talking about? what are these two unemployed weirdos talking about, can any Lurkers come in here and clear the air?

let's see what redfiesta thinks about all this

SariBari posted:

discipline posted:

jools do you sound this patronizing when you discuss the same subject with your egotistical male friends with blogs? or am I just somehow exceptionally irritating and gross?

see one big ass long thing about why writing sucks and doesn't help anything is exactly like making personal attacks on a little known writer, repeatedly, and dropping personal shit inbetween. another cool thing is that this is the 3rd or 4th thread in as many weeks time where a topic that has nothing to do with Discipline the Intellectual Traitor turns that way midway. for a dictator you suck at expunging those who regularly attack your unconscionable, elitist, meaningless regime.

i dunno i guess it is completely unreasonable to get mad about someone you considered an irl friend going down a completely horrible path that ends either in disappointment or a column for salon dot com.

i dunno i guess it is completely unreasonable to get mad about someone you considered an irl friend going down a completely horrible path that ends either in disappointment or a column for salon dot com.

i am going to bed for a job interview in the a.m. but in the meantime instead of just asserting that she is a dumbass wannabe pundit since n o o n e else can seem to understand WHATS REALLY REAL, could you provide some concrete shit she has written to earn your repeated ire and exactly which populations she inappropriately represents? also, do you feel the need, for one moment, to acknowledge the fact that the person who you are supposedly tough lovin' on feels randomly attacked? thanks again for shitting up my lurker mic check, with this much needed intervention on a person who has a blog with 12 followers and a brokeass twitter

jools posted:

SariBari posted:

discipline posted:

jools do you sound this patronizing when you discuss the same subject with your egotistical male friends with blogs? or am I just somehow exceptionally irritating and gross?

see one big ass long thing about why writing sucks and doesn't help anything is exactly like making personal attacks on a little known writer, repeatedly, and dropping personal shit inbetween. another cool thing is that this is the 3rd or 4th thread in as many weeks time where a topic that has nothing to do with Discipline the Intellectual Traitor turns that way midway. for a dictator you suck at expunging those who regularly attack your unconscionable, elitist, meaningless regime.

i dunno i guess it is completely unreasonable to get mad about someone you considered an irl friend going down a completely horrible path that ends either in disappointment or a column for salon dot com.

yeah its a good idea to publicly flog them and humiliate them until you can reduce them to a sobbing-shut-in mess that stays up all night and is ridden with anxiety attacks, very good thinking, any Lurker lifecoaches can give this man certification? Very smart, well-read man. Who knows, one day she could've had HEALTH insurance! *shudders & turns into a puff of coal smoke, disappearing into the ether* sskREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

jools posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

jools posted:

discipline posted:
jools do you sound this patronizing when you discuss the same subject with your egotistical male friends with blogs? or am I just somehow exceptionally irritating and gross?


did you forget that huge thing i wrote a few months back or something? you know, about how terrible "writing" is, especially at the moment?

I agree but sometimes you just gotta express yourself

well express yourself then, don't do stuff like take the police murder of a black kid and the response of righteous anger and wrap it up into a box for other white europeans and label that box "welcome to #USA", don't write your narratives on other people. it's disgusting.

Its disgusting, @BlackfriendFromStates told me as much. *sniffs towards throne room* Z44SLAM131L care t o weigh in ? Mweeaaaaaaah??

thirdplace posted:

man i just don't get twitter

its really serious. just ask @horse_ebooks