A Creative Crisis and Thoughts on Hope

After reading a book discovered in a Coos Bay street library, I immediately began questioning my writing about the homeless, my writing in general, American writing by liberals in general, and the role of the liberal American writer in the authoritarian age of Trump and MAGA disease and dominance.

I would describe it as a creative crisis.

Disturbing the Peace, by Vaclav Havel, prompted the investigation. Published by Alfred Knopf in 1990, the book consists of Havel’s lengthy answers to a long-ranging interview conducted by a Czech journalist named Karel Hvizdala in 1986. The interview covered all of Havel’s extraordinary literary and political achievements that many readers here may recall: his national and international renown as a playwright of the absurd under Communist rule; his role during the Prague Spring in 1968 when the Soviet Union invaded and crushed rebellion; his courageous dissidence, his leadership role in the writing and dissemination of Charter 77; his nearly five years in a Czech prison for protesting human rights abuses; his books and plays censored for decades; and so forth and so on.

In late 1989, Havel would become President of Czech Republic after leading the Velvet Revolution and Frank Zappa would play at his inauguration. But that remarkable event was still three years away when the interview took place.

I read some of Havel’s writing in the early 90s and remember absolutely nothing about it.

Disturbing the Peace describes Havel’s life as a dissident and writer under an authoritarian regime during the Cold War and how Eastern European writers and artists played such a major role in toppling the Soviet Union and their client states. Indeed, artists wrought the most power to foment the eventual revolution! It was educational and inspiring and also utterly disillusioning at times because as I mentioned above, it made me call into serious question what the hell I am doing with my writing about the homeless or any writing for that matter. It made me feel depressed how impotent, outdated and utterly useless so much writing by liberals (if not all of it) in the mainstream liberal press (print and online) is today in the face of Trump’s cruel madness and evil and illegal execution of power.

Yes, all of that editorial upheaval and waves of refection from reading an obscure book last checked out from the Coos Bay Public Library on December 29, 1990, (I have the card) which is presumably why it found its way into a Coos Bay street library. I used to disapprove of public libraries discarding books that hadn’t been checked out for decades but since finding so many of these gems for free in street libraries across Oregon or costing quarters in library book sales, I now applaud the distribution. Give those dead books molding on the stacks new life! Their random discovery can change a person’s life and I would know from personal experience.

What follows will be observations, meditations, imaginations and questions about my writing and publishing generated by reading Disturbing the Peace. I would characterize what you are about to read as my way of working through the aforementioned creative crisis. This process will be my way of trying to concoct some advice, perhaps even a solution/remedy, or a fresh path, as I move forward into a new phase in my writing and publishing life, assuming there is to be one.

Is my writing about the homeless people I encounter in Coos Bay useless or impotent? In Portland, my writing about the homeless was coupled with an attempt, ultimately successful, to get my friend Mark (and other members of the Old Crow Book Club) into housing. I’m not helping anyone into housing or access any services in Coos Bay.

What does my writing about the homeless in Coos Bay offer readers?

Maybe I should end my Substack newsletter, The New American Diaspora. Maybe there is nothing left for me to say as the project begins its fifth year in September.

Has any of my recent writing about the homeless spurred any positive action on behalf of the homeless?

Perhaps I need an entirely new editorial direction for my writing, all of it, inspired by Havel. His writing mattered. It led to overthrowing a totalitarian regime and without violence.

I have a collection of my Christmas tales about homelessness in Oregon coming out this holiday season. Should I even bring it out? Is it pointless? I like these tales a lot and they brought me immense joy to write. So what? Perhaps I really need to dive into journalism and eschew fiction and poetry altogether when it comes to homelessness. Journalism takes so much time and energy; it is the hardest and most thankless type of writing. I wish someone would cut me a check for $10k and say: “Hey, here’s a grant to go out and do some reporting in Oregon that might make a real difference. So go out and make a damn difference!” Do things like that happen anymore. They once did for me.

Do I have such a journalism project in mind? Perhaps.

I am toying with starting a print publication, a quarterly or perhaps bi-monthly newspaper where I cover only my neighborhood of Empire, perhaps try to enlist some contributors.

Sure, that’s a a great idea in an era when newspapers are almost dead and never coming back.

But, still, I’ve always had a dream of starting my own newspaper. I know exactly how to produce one and distribute it in Empire. As Henry Miller wrote, “The most important thing (for a writer)—how to reach the public, or better, how to create your own public—still remains to be faced. Without a public it’s a suicide. No matter how small, there has to be an audience. I mean, an appreciative, enthusiastic audience, a selective audience.”

That could be a newspaper in Empire. Analog. No digital presence. Take it to the streets, I mean paperboy old school! And as Havel suggested, advocate for one concrete action and then hit it with everything you have.

Toward the end of Disturbing the Peace, Havel says, “…each of us must find real, fundamental hope within himself. You can’t delegate that to anyone else.”

It occurs to me that when I write and share my observations and interactions with the homeless in Coos Bay (and previously from Portland and elsewhere around Oregon), I am doing it primarily because I am trying to find hope, a sliver, a glimpse, a vapor of hope in that particular grim or ghastly moment—hope for that person, myself, or American humanity, or even a dog that is helping a homeless person survive. I often see hope in the dogs of the homeless. I often see hope when they tell me a funny story. I often see hope when they decorate their bikes and weird trailers for Christmas.

I have no idea where I am going with this piece, but I feel a lot better after writing it. I also hold out hope that I can materially help one homeless person in Coos Bay find a new, better path. There’s always that chance every time Elmer and I walk out the door and head to the beach.