Plausible Story

Anyone understand the insurance industry?

I sure as hell don't. I thought I knew the basics—pay a regular premium to your insurance company and when something bad happens, they pay to fix it. What could be simpler? But how do the insurance companies decide what premium to charge? There must be a formula—actuarial tables built on algorithms time-tested and market approved. You'd think so. But get this: I recently changed my auto insurance, bought the same amount of coverage, and saved $1,692 a year. I kid you not—$1,692! The cost of my new six-month premium costs just a bit more than what my MONTHLY bill was with my old company. Either my new company is taking a tremendous hit on me, or I was being robbed.

I take some measure of responsibility. When I first started paying high insurance rates, I didn't question it. I had just traded in my ten-year-old rust bucket for my first brand-new car, a 2004 VW Golf, and figured my rates would be going up anyway. Not only that, within two weeks of driving my new car off the lot, I crashed into the rear-end of an SUV. The SUV's bumper needed snapping back into place; my entire front end was crumpled up to my windshield. If you've never done something this stupid, you might not appreciate how humbling it is to stand on the side of the road beside a destroyed hunk of metal for which one owes five figures. So thank god for insurance, right? They were very nice about the whole thing. After my $500 deductible, they paid for the car to get restored like new, and it cost them about half the value of the car. I felt indebted to them. And boy, was I ever, to the tune of $2,200 a year.

But fast-forward nearly five years. I haven't had any other accidents (knock on wood), traffic violations, or black marks against me, and I've paid my bills with reasonable promptness. Indeed, I've now paid that insurance company more than they paid me for my accident. But my rates remained the same. Until one day last month, when they sent me a nice letter informing me that they had been undercharging me. "Have no fear," they generously told me (I'm paraphrasing). "We won't back-charge for our own mistake. That would be unethical. We just wanted to let you know that from now on, you'll be paying the 'correct' rate."

Call me ungrateful, but this letter got me wondering how they calculated their correct rate in the first place. I decided to see how a different company would calculate it. And the very first company that gave me an estimate—even taking into account my 4 1/2-year-old accident—offered me a policy at a clean quarter of what I had been paying. Twenty-five percent! 75% off! What gives? How can they afford that? Or: how can my original company get away with robbing me?

Before I made the final switch, I called my insurance agent and told my story. Don't worry, I was very polite. Out of some residual brand loyalty, I had decided that I might be convinced to stay with my original insurance if they could somehow do right by me, even meet me halfway. "I'm sincerely curious," I said. "Why have my rates been this high?"  

"Can I call you back?" my insurance agent asked.

She never called back. I cancelled my policy.

It's not the company. Several friends and relations have told me their version the same story, only with the companies reversed. Perhaps in ten years my now-new insurance will be through the roof, and I'll revert back to the old, which will be offering me a sweet discount. Or maybe by then we'll have high-speed rail and I won't have to own a car at all.

Look, I understand that a great deal of what makes capitalism run is the ability of business to set prices that the market will bear; i.e., that suckers like me will pay through our noses because we don't know any better. Certainly the flip side of that is that when we suckers get wise, we can take our business elsewhere. That's called competition. But still, it amazes me that value can be so arbitrary.

The Double

On Monday, I finished reading The Double, by José Saramago (whose strangely mesmerizing allegorical novels I've been working my way through, even though I'm not sure I like like them). If you haven't read it, no spoilers here, but it's the story of a depressed schoolteacher who discovers, to his psychological and moral discomfiture, that he has a double—an exact "twin" who resembles him down to the minutest scars on his body.

So today when I went to pick up my car at the dealership (no, I'm not always at the dealership; it just seems that way on this blog), the receptionist looked up from her desk and said, "Oh no, your husband already picked up your car!"

I must have looked dumbfounded, because she said it again before I could conjure up a coherent rebuttal. "But I'm not married."

"But he was here just half an hour ago!"

"I don't think so."

"Yes, he was, I swear to god! . . . Wait a minute. Is your name [somebody else's name]?"

"No."

"I swear to god, she looks just like you."

Now, if this were a José Saramago novel, I'd be compelled (by my author) to hunt down my unsuspecting doppelgänger and do—whatever my author decided I should do when the time came for us to meet (see, I said no spoilers here). And for a moment I wondered what I'd have to do if the receptionist had, indeed, handed over my keys to some imposter, or rather, some imposter's husband. Would I still have to pay the bill?

Fortunately (or unfortunately, for my bank account), my car was right where the mechanics had left it, new oxygen sensor, brake pads, rotors, and all.

More Grace Paley

The first time I heard Grace Paley read, about eight years ago, she reminded me of my own grandmother—physically, I mean, and in her enjoyment of certain foods and phrases. The resemblance ended there; my grandmother had led a much more timid life. If she was capable of expressing depths of passion—and I believe she was—she only hinted at it. Could she have said the things that Grace was saying in her poems and stories? If only... but she might have recognized something of herself in what Grace had to say.

After that reading, I wrote this little Grace-inspired story, which, who knows, Grace herself might have enjoyed. And so, in honor of her Grace Paley's life, and my grandmother's, my poor imitation:

[Continues below the fold]

Grace Paley has died

From the New York Times obit:

Grace Paley, the celebrated writer and social activist whose short stories explored in precise, pungent and tragicomic style the struggles of ordinary women muddling through everyday lives, died on Wednesday at her home in Thetford Hill, Vt. She was 84 and also had an apartment in Manhattan.

Some critics found Ms. Paley’s stories short on plot, and in fact much of what happens is that nothing much happens. Affairs begin, babies are born, affairs end. Mothers gather in the park. But that was the point. In Ms. Paley’s best stories, the language is so immediate, the characters so authentic, that the text is propelled by an innate urgency — the kind that makes readers ask, “And then what happened?”

Open Ms. Paley’s first collection, “The Little Disturbances of Man,” to the first story, “Goodbye and Good Luck”:

“I was popular in certain circles, says Aunt Rose. I wasn’t no thinner then, only more stationary in the flesh. In time to come, Lillie, don’t be surprised — change is a fact of God. From this no one is excused. Only a person like your mama stands on one foot, she don’t notice how big her behind is getting and sings in the canary’s ear for thirty years. Who’s listening? Papa’s in the shop. You and Seymour, thinking about yourself. So she waits in a spotless kitchen for a kind word and thinks — poor Rosie. ...

“Poor Rosie! If there was more life in my little sister, she would know my heart is a regular college of feelings and there is such information between my corset and me that her whole married life is a kindergarten.”

Hooked.

Grace was a familiar figure in my community. Twice I heard her give readings. I've often seen her, hunched and bright-eyed, at college events or local school programs for her grandchildren, her gnomelike husband Bob at her side. She was a fearless advocate of peace. She belonged to a generation of the politically awakened that is fast disappearing. Awakened, I mean, in the sense that she connected the small details of everyday life with the large struggles. If only she could have seen the end of this war! Let's end this war...

[NOTE: Rumors of the demise of Plausible Story have been greatly somewhat exaggerated. Life has gotten in the way (in a good way), but I shall return!]

Seven Minutes

Forgive the indulgence, but if I had known about this seven-minute summary, I wouldn't have had to watch six years' worth of the Sopranos in a month. I present this to you, dear readers, to spare you that lost month. Thank god for other people's obsessions.

Torture

I don't own a television. Nor do I get cable. Nor do I have the time to guarantee that I will be free for nine (9) successive Sundays in a row this spring. Therefore, I do not want to hear about the final nine (9) episodes of the Sopranos. I do not want to read about them. I do not want to know what happens to Tony. I do not want to speculate in what terrible fashion Christopher and/or Anthony Jr. and/or Paulie and/or Silvio gets whacked, or by whom. If Carmela never makes a profit off her spec house, if she never figures out who killed Adrianna, I don't want to know. Do you hear me? I don't care if Tony reaches self-actualization, or finds god, or goes to jail, or becomes a grandfather. I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW.

Background: earlier this year, on the recommendation—nay, the command—of my thesis advisor, I rented and watched the first season. Then, on my own recognizance, I rented the second season. Things went downhill from there, and turned into the third, and the fourth, and yes, the fifth season in quick succession. This is how novels don't get written. By the time I finished Season 5, the first part of the sixth season was already in the video store, so I had to watch that, too. Then the show stopped. Then I discovered what the rest of the world already knew: nine more episodes in the pipeline, set to debut this month.

I don't care. You can't make me care. I'll see them on dvd or not at all. Spoiler comments will be deleted unread. You have been warned.

Update: I knew there was a reason not to watch the season premiere.

Bull

I misquoted Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit yesterday, and out of context, too. To be fair, I didn't have the book in front of me; its final line, or my approximation of it, simply got stuck in my head. Here, then, is its background. He writes:

The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality, and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These "antirealist" doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry.

Basically, he's saying that people have stopped thinking critically, and that this makes people susceptible to the idea that the world is too mysterious even to try to understand. Think of how the creationists push "teaching to the controversy" regarding the origin of species when there is no scientific controversy about evolution, sowing doubt, in effect, in empirical reasoning.

He continues:

One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself.

This may be a straw-man argument. I'm not sure I follow (or agree) that disbelief in determinate truth in the external world would lead someone to solidify their self-construct. On the other hand, George Bush has styled himself "the Decider," and his self-construct seems indestructible, even when the world he acts upon is objectively de-structible. Replace the word "sincerity" with Stephen Colbert's "truthiness" and the passage makes more sense.

But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake. As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them.

If we can't understand the world around us, he says, how can we expect to know ourselves?

Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself that is easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial—notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things.

Selves are slippery fishes, he says. And this is where the promises of the motivational gurus to provide us with the keys to our self-actualization fail. The promises might sound convincing, buoyed as they are by our individual need to have those keys open our doors (okay, now I've mixed the metaphors of buoyant fish and locked entryways—nice). Which is not to say that the words of any guru, heard by a self at the right moment, might not trigger an actual bout of growth. What he's saying is that self knowledge is more difficult than other forms of knowledge, and someone who promises otherwise is probably bullshitting.

This leads to his (much qualified) punch line, which I had earlier misquoted:

And insofar as this the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.

Perhaps this is also bullshit. The whole essay can't help resembling its topic to some degree, and this concluding line packs such a neat wallop that he just ended the argument right there.

Sincerity

Michael J. reports that he walked on hot coals this weekend. He and 4,000 of his closest friends. All part of this guy Tony Robbins and his motivational seminar megachurch.

I happened to run into Mr. J. at lunch, and he filled me in on some of the specifics. The 4,000 people. The guided meditation. The ninja staffers in black masks. The staffer who gripped his shoulders, put her face to his face, and yelled, "HAVE YOU WALKED YET?"

As he spoke, I tried to eat my sandwich. Mr. J. (a pretty smart guy) is thrilled with the experience. But his story made me feel increasingly nauseous. I mean, let's review:

• mob-sized crowd
• hyper-charismatic preacher
• black-clad agents
• $900 workshop fee tithe x 4,000 people = $3.6 million gross to the charismatic preacher and co. (not counting book sales)
• hot coals

Actually, on reflection, the thought of hot coals themselves isn't what gave me the heebie-jeebies. Implausible as it sounds, there's a fairly simple scientific explanation for why humans can walk on coals. If I desired to walk on burning coals, and someone I knew and trusted offered to assist, and 4,000 of my closest friends were nowhere in sight, I might consider doing it. I can't see wanting to do it—I'll ski Tuckerman's for my next adrenalin rush and keep my $900, thank you—but to each her own.

There's also a fairly rational explanation for why large crowds are susceptible to suggestion and charisma. My stomach's churning just thinking about it.

Don't get me wrong; I know that hordes of people love to brush elbows with hordes of other people and pay lots of money to hear mellifluous-voiced evangelists proclaim the answers to all life's problems. It's the not-so-secret Secret. It's the Power of Positive Thinking (TM). The preachers drip with sincerity and embrace every word they speak, and if we could only follow them—if we could only follow them—if we could only follow them ... (and if it doesn't work, it's our fault) ...

Many people also, I know, approve, admire, and envy the capitalist drive to connect the twin forces of mob mentality and adrenalin. And lord knows where the world would be today if enterprising individuals hadn't motivated the mobs around them.

An aside. Just this morning, I finished reading Harry Frankfurt's recently reissued treatise, On Bullshit. My mother lent it to me over the weekend, probably at about the same moment Mr. J. was walking on fire. It's a slim little essay that leads up to a quite elegant punchline:

"Sincerity is bullshit."

What, I wonder, would Harry Frankfurt make of Tony Robbins?

Toto, We're Not in China Anymore

Remember how your mother used to tell you that if you dug a hole in your back yard all the way through the crust and mantle and core of the earth and back through the core and mantle and crust of the other side, you would end up in China, upside down?

Well, she was wrong. At least from this latitude and longitude. From this office where I now type, procrastinating procrastinating the Very Important Work I Have to Do Today, if I dug my hole straight down, no detours, I would wind up —

off the coast of Australia.

See for yourself!

Calculus

I dreamt that I was taking an exam involving differential equations. I don't know why I dreamt about differential equations. As far as I know, I've never dreamt about them before, not even when I took calculus, lo these many years ago. I did pretty well at calculus in high school, but it's been—let's practice some subtraction now—17 years since I've had to solve a differential equation, or do any higher math than that required to fill out a 1040A.

What I learned from the dream is this:

I don't know how to solve differential equations. I used to know. I don't know now. I don't even know how to begin.

Also, I wish I did know.

Duotrope's Digest

My newest form of procrastinating from writing is browsing the website Duotrope's Digest. This free interactive database of literary venues tracks your submissions, describes and links to more than the usual literary journal suspects of all genres, has a powerful search engine, reports on response times, and washes your dishes while you surf.* It also allows you to pretend that you aren't procrastinating from writing. Hey, if my literary career is ever going to take off, I need to be organized about getting my work out there!

Not that I'm procrastinating or anything. In the time I had allocated to writing chapters 2 and 3 this month, I managed to knit and felt a really cool pair of slippers and watch six year's worth of The Sopranos. That's productive, right?

*Note: dish washing not available on all browsers.

Ravenous Hannah the Kraken

Apparently, this is how my name translates into squid. Seriously. I discovered this at my new favorite website.

Wild Kingdom II

Cross-country skiing on Sugarhouse Road. Pickup tracks over old ski tracks. Rabbit, deer, titmouse, porcupine, squirrel all have crossed this path. Chickadees calling to each other, flitting from tree to tree.

A grouse feather in the trail. Then another. And another, blowing in the chill morning breeze. A line of them, growing thicker, stretching for a hundred yards along the road and then halfway up the bank to the base of a dormant tree. All around the tree, feathers in snow, a wing, a bit of intestine. Signs of struggle, but no tracks. Not a single track leading to the tree or away, not even the footprint of the grouse, not even a clear brush of wing from the hawk or owl that must have pounced on its fat prey from above, or dropped the captive from the air. No blood or bone left from the feast; no sign of where the hunter flew. Just a heap of feathers blowing, one by one, one by one, down the hill, telling the tale.

Wild Kingdom I

My cat caught an ermine this morning. Yes, an ermine. Nevermind that the ermine was probably doing a better job controlling the mouse population in my apartment than my cat (though I have to hand it to Shudi; he's killed two mice already this year, more than in the past three years combined).* I'm grinding beans for coffee when all hell breaks loose in the living room closet, fur and claw. Next thing I know, Shudi is parading across the kitchen floor, carrying this long white mammal by its neck. Smaller than a weasel, but the same pointed face. A blacked-tipped tail. The thing has emitted a nasty, musky smell, not quite as sweet as skunk, but full of the same mortal fear. Shudi walks right up to me to give me the squirming fur ball; an early birthday present. I get a vision of an injured, angry carnivore set free at my feet, so naturally I take a few steps back. Rebuffed, my ferocious killer of a housecat takes his prey to my office and lets it go under my desk. "Just kill it," I tell him, but no, he wants sport. Though bleeding profusely, the victim has just enough strength to drag itself into the narrow space between my filing cabinet and the wall, just out of reach of Shudi's claws. Shudi skulks around the cabinet for a while, but now he's asleep on my bed, dreaming, I'm sure, of his hard morning's work. I know I should put the poor thing out of its misery, but I'm not sure what would happen if I pulled out the filing cabinet to get at it. What if it's not so injured as it seems, and decides to charge? What if it escapes and goes to die in some unreachable hidden corner where I'll never find it?

UPDATE: I went out to run some errands, and when I came back, the ermine was no longer behind the filing cabinet. The bloodstain was still there, so I didn't imagine it. Anyone know how to get ermine blood out of unfinished pine? (Yes, there is an injured or recently dead ermine in some unreachable hidden corner in my house. I can't let this worry me too much, though).

* To all the animal lovers out there who might complain that domesticated cats are decimating the wildlife population, I agree with you. My cat is an indoor cat, safely removed from the daily rigors of the predator-prey dynamic. With this caveat: if the prey comes to the house, it's fair game.

"The Frontier of the Implausible Is No Longer Under Guard"

In my ongoing series of comments by writers on writing comes a new essay by Milan Kundera on the uses of the novel. Plausible Story readers will have no trouble guessing why the following caught my attention. (Note that I'm not sure why he uses "problematic" as a noun; perhaps it's a fluke of translation [though no translator is named in this essay], or perhaps I just missed that era of lit-crit jargoneering. In any case, it's not a problem, or a typo.)

Two great stars brightened the sky over the twentieth-century novel: that of surrealism, with its enchanting call for the fusion of dream and reality, and that of existentialism. Kafka died too soon to know their writers and their aesthetic programs. Still, and remarkably, the novels he wrote anticipated the two aesthetic tendencies and—what's more remarkable still—bound the two together, placed them in a single perspective.

When Balzac or Flaubert or Proust wants to describe someone's behavior within a specific social milieu, any violation of plausibility is out of place, aesthetically inconsistent, but when the novelist focuses his lens on a problematic that is existential, the obligation to give the reader a plausible world no longer comes into play as rule or necessity. The author can be far more casual about the apparatus of data, descriptions, and motivations meant to give his story the appearance of reality. And, in some borderline cases, he can even find it worthwhile to put his characters in a world that is frankly implausible.

. . . .The more attentively, fixedly, one observes a reality, the better one sees that it does not correspond to people's idea of it; under Kafka's long gaze it is gradually revealed as empty of reason, thus non-reasonable, thus implausible. It is that long avid gaze set on the real world that led Kafka, and other great novelists after him, past the frontier of the plausible.

—Milan Kundera, from "Getting into the Soul of Things," Tin House 30, Winter 2007

If you can get your hands on this essay you should read it. Although he does set up an entire straw man of an argument in defense of the novel's right to inject philosophical treatises into its pages. Somebody must have written a bad review of The Unbearable Lightness of Being long ago.