Under The Table

Dear Friend,

This is my first blog entry, which I think of as a letter to you, for though we may not know each other, I am grateful for your interest in what I may have to say.

I am fifty-eight. I came of age as a writer before the advent of computers. To this day, I compose by longhand the drafts of everything I write, including this blog entry. I am convinced that writing by hand is a beneficial practice for any writer. I am further convinced that the decline in the quality of our literature is directly attributable to the loss of the depths of expression that writing by hand may produce, but that typing on a computer keyboard rarely can. Why would this be?

My hypothesis is that typing on a keyboard while staring at a computer screen is a left-brained activity, mechanistic and analytical. If this is true, we might as well try to grow vegetables in cement as write creatively on a computer.

This hypothesis of mine tends to anger writers who compose their novels and stories and poems exclusively on their computers, and I certainly don’t wish to anger anyone, but to encourage writers to make writing by hand a part of their practice.

I have coached hundreds of writers, both amateurs and professionals, and when these writers agree to create their first drafts longhand for me, they all experience immediate improvements in the quality and clarity of their writing. But what is far more profound—and is experienced almost universally by those who have heretofore only composed on a keyboard—is the fantastic experience of writing down what flows from the unconscious, rather than writing down conscious thoughts based on what they think they should write.

“But writing by hand is too slow.”

“Too slow for what?”

“I might lose a thought if I don’t get all my thoughts down quickly.”

“I doubt you will lose any thought of value by writing longhand. What’s more, I know you’ll find that writing longhand will open up a veritable treasure trove of thoughts and feelings and images. Relax and take your time, and you will only gain by the process.”

These notions may seem antithetical to the ethos of the computer, but I beg to differ. I love my computer as a helpful adjunct to much of my creative life. I simply don’t make the computer the starting point, the final arbiter of style, or the center of my practice, but rather create my initial drafts and drawings and songs on a table void of electronica.

I append here a recently published article you may find entertaining, and two recent drawings.

Best to you,

Todd

 

Jewish Jokes

By Todd Walton

A press release for my new book was loosed upon the nation. A response came from a Jewish publication. “Is the author Jewish? If so, we would like a review copy.”

“Funny you should mention it,” is what popped into my head when I heard this question about my ethnicity.

Jewish jokes are funnier told than written because Jewish accents are often funnier than the jokes. Indeed, for non-Jews, Jewish jokes (as opposed to anti-Jewish jokes) aren’t particularly funny because they reference behavior most non-Jews know nothing about.

For instance: A teacher asks her second graders to tell about their summers. A boy stands and says, “I’m Mike Jones. I went scuba diving and found a bird’s nest.” A girl stands and says, “I’m Fiona Parker. We went to Yosemite and I saw a bear.” Another boy stands and says, “My name is Jaime Goldberg. I pledge ten dollars.”

When my mother’s mother told this joke, she began to laugh midway through, yet never disrupted the narrative flow. No easy feat.

So…over drinks two Jewish guys reveal they gave their sons the same graduation present—a trip to Israel to find their Jewish roots. Lo and behold, while traveling in Israel, both sons became Christians. Outraged, the guys rush to the synagogue and demand an explanation from God. Thunder rumbles and God’s voice intones, “Funny you should mention it.”

My grandmother Goody was born in the Detroit ghetto, the Jewish one, in 1900. Her father, a cantor, earned a pittance preparing boys for bar mitzvah. Her mother kept a grocery store and was the family breadwinner. Goody was formally known as Gertrude, an anglicized Golda.

My Jewish grandfather was known by his nickname Casey, and more formally Myron. Whenever I pressed him to tell me his Jewish name, he would rattle off Yiddish that sent Goody into gales of laughter.

Until I was twelve, I didn’t know Goody and Casey were Jewish. I thought my mother was a Winton who married a Walton, only to find out that Goody and Casey changed their name from Weinstein to Winton during the Depression so, as Casey put it, “Someone would give me work so we could eat.”

Twice in her childhood in Los Angeles, my mother was stoned by other children when they discovered she was Jewish. Thereafter, she hid all traces of her Jewishness, married a non-Jew, and became overtly anti-Semitic, an ironic disguise, since my father’s parents disowned him for marrying a Jew.

So…I’m twelve years old at a party at Goody and Casey’s. Goody deposits me beside a Jewish matron and says, “My grandson Todd,” and hurries away.

The matron pinches my cheek. “What a good looking Jewish boy.”

“Only I’m not Jewish. I’m Unitarian.”

“You’re Avis’s boy. You’re Jewish.”

I shake my head. “Not Jewish.”

To which she replies, “They would have burned you.”

Baffled, I ask my father for an explanation. “In Hitler’s Germany, and according to Jewish law, anyone with a Jewish mother was Jewish. So you would have been a Jew in Nazi Germany, sent to a concentration camp, and probably killed.”

“Mom is Jewish?” I ask, stunned.

“No,” says my father. “She is of Jewish origin. There’s a difference.”

For the next twenty-eight years, when asked if I was Jewish (and I was often asked) I replied, “I am of Jewish origin on my mother’s side.”

So…there’s this priest in the booth, a slow day in the confession business, when in comes an old guy who kneels at the little window and says, “Bless me father for I have sinned. I’m eighty years old. I’ve been married for sixty years and never once cheated on my wife. Yesterday I met a gorgeous woman. We went to her apartment and had fantastic sex all day long.”

The priest considers this sin and asks, “How long since your last confession?”

“Oh, I’ve never confessed.”

“You’re a Catholic and you’ve never confessed?”

“I’m not Catholic. I’m Jewish.”

“You’re Jewish? Why are you telling me?”

“Telling you? I’m telling everybody.”

But seriously, folks, when I was forty, my life in ruins, I entered therapy. Four months into the process, I’m face down on the floor of the consulting room, shaking uncontrollably. I have no conscious understanding of why I’m so terrified, but I’m absolutely scared to death. My therapist touches the center of my back and says, “Right there. What’s that?”

And I shout, “I’m Jewish!”

And I know with every fiber of my being that storm troopers are going to kick down the door and drag me to my death. I don’t imagine this. I don’t think it. I know they will kill me because I violated the great taboo and revealed that I am Jewish. This taboo was implanted in me in my mother’s womb and amplified every day of my childhood, though it was unknown to my conscious mind.

To further conceal this terrible truth, I was commanded (through emotional osmosis) to never stand out and never succeed in a big way, lest my origins be discovered and death would quickly follow. This was the programming of my psyche—hardwired.

“Is the author Jewish. If so, we would like a review copy.”

Now for a mohel (pronounced moil) joke.

A mohel performs the circumcisions that Jewish boys undergo eight days after birth. Imagine my tiny grandmother laughing until she cries as she tells this joke.

So…in the front window of the mohel’s shop is a grandfather clock. A guy from out of town sees the grandfather clock, enters the shop, and says, “I vant you should fix my vatch.”

“I don’t fix vatches,” says the mohel. “I’m a mohel.”

“You’re a mohel? So vuts vid the clock in the front vindow?”

The mohel shrugs. “If you vas a mohel, vut would you have in the front vindow?”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.