LAURA ADAMS
201
get that call through . It 's almost as if there is something in the center of
electricity that mocks us. I've felt this with all sons of electrical phenomena .
It's possible I' m more charged, have more electricity about me. I don't
mean that as any agreeable or attractive condition , it's bound to be
disagreeable, but possibly I could have more effect upon electrical
instruments than other people , a little more effect , ten per cent more ,
whatever. At any rate , to go back to
An Amen'can Dream,
my point is that
there wasn ' t a sing le phenomenon in that book that I considered dreamlike
or fanciful or fantastical. To me , it was a realistic book, but a realistic book
at that place where extraordinary things are happening. I believe the
experience of extraordinary people in extraordinary situations is not like our
ordinary realistic experience at all. For example , one of the reasons I've
never written about great prizefighters in a novel is that the experience they
have in the ring is, I think , considerably different from what we believe it is.
More intense, more mystical, more "spooky" if you will, than anything we
see on the outside. Who wants to write about a fight the way sportswriters
do, or even as fighters discuss it after the fight: "I was waiting to set him up
with a good right. He dropped his guard and I popped him. " That's the
way they talk. Only, it isn't their experience.
In! :
I grant you that the characters in
An Amen'can Dream
perceive and
experience reality altogether differently from us ordinary folks. Still , it
seems to me that their literal reality has a metaphorical level as well, just as
your literal realities nearly always turn into metaphorical ones linked to the
central set of metaphors regarding the existence of God or the Devil. I've
come to see them as metaphors for our moral directions, which in the
absence of absolutes become existential, unknowable as good or evil.
Mazier:
My metaphors explain more phenomena to me than any theology I
can adopt. I was an atheist for years because I couldn ' t stomach the notion
of the all-good, all-powerful God who calmly watched all sortS of suffering
which by any extension of our human imagination could not be productive
of anything , not even productive of future karma . In other words that
whole waste of human possibilities of the most grinding, grim, dull sort. It
seems to me that the only explanation is God is not all-powerful: He's
merely doing the best He can.
Int:
But how literally does God exist'
Mazier:
I believe He exists literally.
Int:
How?
Mazier:
It's not for me to know how or where He exists. It's reasonable to
assume He exists in a great many ways, in places we can comprehend and a
great many where we cannot . All I'm saying is that He does not have
to
be
all-powerful. What is there that makes Him all-powerful? He was powerful
