Expository Writing: Shaping Information Diane Ackerman

The city was dirty, broke, perverse, and cruel. The schools ­were bad, ser­vices ­were compromised by shrinking revenue, drugs ­were rampant, and everyone seemed to be trying to live somewhere ­else. Philadelphia had become one huge pathology of modern life. In fact, the city was modernity as pathology. I suppose its downfall began with the riots of the 1960s, or perhaps it began with school integration, which didn’t seem to work, or perhaps it began with the creation of the interstate highway and the lawn which made the suburbs a place to live, a place to escape to.

When I saw Dirty Harry, all the horror and fear of living in the city in the early 1970s descended on me with such surreal vividness, with such compelling anguish, that it was all I could do not to rush from the theater in a delirium. (I saw the movie in downtown Philadelphia one spring afternoon in a ­run-­down theater that had once been a pop culture palace when I was a child. No one was in the theater but derelicts and me. The setting augmented the depression and fear the film induced.)

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When I left the theater and started walking home, I hadn’t gone very far when I spotted a friend, a boy I had grown up with. I had not seen him for a few years, and I was surprised to see him at that moment. He had been a fundamentalist Christian, a Jehovah’s Witness, actually, and he nearly talked me into joining the group when I was about fourteen or fifteen and vulnerable to that sort of thing. His maturity, the assurance of his answers to all questions, the fact that he thought he had answers to all questions, his neat, disciplined appearance, quite impressed me in those days, and being a Jehovah’s Witness or any sort of fundamentalist seemed a considerable hedge against the growing chaos of the city’s culture. Indeed, I was spellbound and it took a strenuous effort on my part not to succumb to the romanticism of certainty.

When I saw him on that day in the spring of 1973, he was among a group of transvestites, dressed as one himself, wigged, ­made-­up, in women’s clothes. I was walking by a corner that had become something like Philadelphia’s ­small-­scale version of 1970s Times Square, an area of male and female prostitutes, drug pushers and junkies, pornographic theaters and strip joints. I was so taken aback to see him there, selling himself on a street corner, dressed as a woman, so different from how I ­remembered him, that I actually turned for a moment to stare at him. (It is an odd coincidence that I was to have nearly an identical experience with another boyhood friend a few years later.) He saw me, too. He looked almost amused when he recognized me — he even seemed to smile. I thought he was about to call my name. I turned and ran as fast as I could. I was disgusted by what I saw. My friend’s new life, or hidden life that had now become open, shocked and shamed me, even worse, mocked me. I finally stopped running when I felt that I was far enough away.

I ran because I was afraid, but it took me several years to realize the exact nature of my fear. At first, I thought I was scared by what my friend had become, of how the corruption and filth of the city had overtaken his life, reduced his life, wrecked his life, destroyed his certainty and fundamentalism. But as I grew older and more sober (I was twenty when this happened), I realized that I was afraid of something ­else and something more: I was afraid that when I saw my friend, I was looking at myself. I was afraid, not because he was foreign, but because he was familiar; not because he was uninviting, but because he was seductive again — not in his literal imitation of a woman, which was completely unappealing to me, but in his willingness to be so brazenly what he was; not because of how he ended up, but because it seemed a fate that I could have had, a fate that someone could even want. How much, in the end, did I want to wallow in the mud? How much of myself did I not even want to face? That was the horror of the city, really, as a Dirty Harry vision: fates ­were anonymous, shockingly reversible, and interchangeable. Noir taught me that much about how absolutely unknowable fear really is, and how utterly accidental all fate is: we are, in varied and complex ways, what we fear.

II

September 11 is an odd, contradictory date in the history of American ­self-­definition. On the one hand, we see ourselves, as a result of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as having entered the community of nations, experiencing something that has become nearly commonplace in the world: mass murder as a po­liti­cal statement. We now know what the rest of the world feels like and the kind of uncertainty and insecurity that other people must accept as routine. On the other hand, the attacks seemed to have intensified our perception of our exceptionalism: how dare anyone attack the most powerful nation on earth, indeed, the most powerful nation in history? Or, expressed ­another way in our bewilderment over the attacks: how dare anyone attack the best nation on earth, a nation as good, kind, and generous as the United States? This combination of arrogance and innocence, our country being trapped in the clashing notions of seeing itself as an isolated fortress and as a holy redeemer, is the hallmark of our ­self-­regard. It is the singular result of our geography, our grand fortune and good luck, our demo­cratic institutions, our simplistic and implacable greed, our obsession with ­self-­improvement, our provincial yet remarkably guileless sense of morality, and our complex sense of fear.

Both the left and the right see the other as a cabal, plotting and scheming, a subversive network of disinformation and manipulation. Both sides want the certainty of orthodoxy and the constant reassurance that their enemies are real, undeterred by momentary defeat, corporately organized, and, indeed, evil (much like villains in Hollywood action movies, our ­latest cultural repre­sen­ta­tion of paranoia as artistic catharsis). The objects of our paranoia must be worthy of it. September 11 intensified this paranoia on both sides because the stakes became bigger: Can the country be made secure, or will the right become even more authoritarian and compromise civil liberties (of course, many on the right are as concerned about civil liberties as liberals are)? Who are the traitors who made us vulnerable to such an attack? Was it the ­weak-­willed, ­defense-­slashing, ­anti-­intelligence-­gathering left (most defense slashing in the United States is bipartisan)? In this sense, patriotism becomes not simply a nationalistic expression of pride but a combative, psychological hedge against the fear that makes patriotism possible.

Chinese premier Chou En-lai was once asked what he thought the impact of the French Revolution on world politics had been, to which he replied, “It’s too soon to tell.” It was not entirely a ­tongue-­in-­cheek answer. To understand, in some mea­sure, how complex fear is in the United States, it is necessary to think about perhaps the past sixty years, the scope of American history since the end of World War II, when the United States emerged as, unquestionably, the most powerful nation in the world. With great power comes not only great responsibility but also tremendous fear of losing that power or of misusing it in such a way as to compromise one’s moral entitlement to it. (And Americans feel eminently entitled to the power they possess.) It may be too soon to conclude much from a period that is so recent, but we might learn a few tentative things.

Having been born during the Korean War, the military gambit that truly convened the post–World War II epoch in American history, and having grown into young adulthood during the Cold War, what was most striking to me about that era of our nation’s confrontation with communism was not simply the fear but the character of that fear. If the United States was, as one famous historian put it, a country shaped by war, it had been culturally and psychologically shaped by fear. In its earlier years, there was fear of the wilderness (the Puritans referred to their journey ­here as “the errand in the wilderness”), a mirror reflecting the darkness and chaos of the human soul, that had to be tamed, controlled, and harnessed; and the fear of the inhabitants of that wilderness, the Indians, who had also had to be controlled, harnessed, tamed, if not eliminated entirely. There was fear of the African slaves, whose rebellion would have been justified in the eyes of many whites, including Thomas Jefferson, by the treatment they received. And in a ­market-­driven economy, there was fear of failure, of not seizing or even recognizing the main chance when it came. In a highly individualistic society, there was a fear of conformity and not being sufficiently oneself, and in a society of joiners, there was a fear of being too individualistic and not belonging.

During the Cold War period, several threads of fear intertwined and perhaps even fed one another. As a result of atomic power, there was the fear of science as a destructive force. Most of the science fiction movies of the 1950s relied to some extent on this sort of Pandora’s box theme. Even a noted children’s book of the early 1960s, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, which was highly derivative of the science fiction films of the 1950s, made use of such an idea: the quest for knowledge had to be tempered and humanized, which seems to me, in retrospect, an obscurantist redundancy. Tele­vi­sion shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, with their predictable bourgeois morality (nearly apotheosized in A Wrinkle in Time), also explored the fear of science in many of its episodes.

This fear of science was occurring at the same time as our obsession with communism had become a new national policy. But the focus on communism led not to a direct confrontation with it but rather to the idea of containment, that is, confining it and controlling it in some way, as if it ­were a communicable illness. Maintaining fear was important so that we as Americans never became complacent about containment. Science made the containment possible because each side, the United States and the Soviet ­Union, had sufficient nuclear weapons to destroy the other but also had something to lose in using them. (This deterrence would seem to exist for the United States even in dealing with “rogue” nations. Didn’t a dictator like Saddam Hussein have as much to lose in using a nuclear weapon against the United States or supplying one to a terrorist group to use against the United States as any Soviet dictator in the 1960s or 1970s? Clearly, Hussein wanted more than anything ­else to stay in power, and wouldn’t using some sort of weapon of mass destruction against the United States assure that he would not only lose power but that his country would probably be vaporized in retaliation? After all, so far, the only country in the world to have used nuclear weapons is the United States.) Containment, to be effective, had to breed paranoia. But this at­mo­sphere of fear flourished during what Stanley Crouch has called “the Age of Redefinition,” the civil rights era, a time that inspired the push for widespread human liberation in the United States. This challenge to the status quo naturally heightened the fear of change and the fear of a change in status for the social and po­liti­cal group being challenged. This apprehension, coupled with the general paranoia of the time, led some to the conviction that the communists ­were behind the civil rights movement. (The left, indeed, was, but Christianity was a much more central force.) The ­bug-­eyed monster ­sci-­fi art of the 1950s and 1960s was not only about fear of science but also about the challenge of otherness, the tolerance, or lack thereof, of difference. It is difficult to tell whether most of those symbolic repre­sen­ta­tions of the civil rights struggle in science fiction movies, comic books, and tele­vi­sion shows of the period endorsed the paranoia or mocked it — or, in fact, did both simultaneously, like Marvel comics.

It might be argued that the unease we feel in the United States today, post-9/11, is different in degree and kind from the paranoia of the Cold War. I am not sure this is true. Most of our Cold War concerns remain: fear of science in the form of modified foods, food additives, indeed of food itself, as we increasingly embrace “the natural” as something opposed to science. Our fear of otherness remains as well: the poor, as always, continue to be misunderstood and largely seen as a nuisance (why can’t they be like us?) or a mission (let’s make them into us!); homosexuals are the latest battleground of tolerance. Are they like us, fundamentally, or are they really different? We have additional fears: of ­self-­indulgence, of our own triviality, which perhaps helped to fuel the fear created by 9/11. We had lost our sense of mission, of purpose in the world, so 9/11 was somehow biblical, a cosmic ­wake-­up call to honor our greatness. And who can say it wasn’t that? Despite President Bush’s pre­-emption doctrine (not new in American po­liti­cal history), it is not likely that the United States, in the end, will adopt any other approach over the long haul but containment and ­co-­optation. How can we eradicate Islam, fundamentalism, Arabs, radicalism, poverty, hatred, or terrorism as the warfare of the weak unless we eradicate the weak or weakness as a condition, both of which are ­impossible? And so we Americans will soldier on, ­part-­swagger, ­part-­jog, ­part-­limp, wrestling with our de­vils and angels. Ah, the price that must be paid, the burden that must be borne, when, in Cole Porter’s words, you’re the tops.

The Reader’s Presence

1. ‑The essay is divided into two distinct halves. What is the relationship of the first half to the second? Why do you think Early begins the essay the way he does? Are the connections between the two sections explicit? If not, what evidence is presented about the relationship between the two sections? How would each section have functioned alone?

2. ‑In what ways is fear a component of American identity and a recurring theme in our history? List the different ways that fear has influenced our culture and history. Would Early agree or disagree that the fear emanating from the events of 9/11 is a different fear than Americans have experienced before?

3. ‑Early juxtaposes personal experience and discussion of a greater context of American identity and politics in his discussion of fear and fate. Compare the way Early uses structure to the way Don DeLillo does in “In the Ruins of the Future” (page 361). Why do you think each writer chose to make distinct section breaks between each segment? How do the two works compare in the way they juxtapose personal and general discussion?

1Dirty Harry: A movie starring Clint Eastwood as a renegade policeman, which was directed by Don Siegel and released in 1972. — Eds.

2John Birch Society: An ultra-right wing anti-Communist organization founded in 1958. — Eds.

Lars Eighner

On Dumpster Diving

Lars Eighner (b. 1948) was born in Texas and attended the University of Texas at Austin. An essayist and fiction writer, he contributes regularly to the Threepenny Review, Advocate Men, the Guide, and Inches. He has published several collections of short stories, essays, and gay erotica. His most recent publications include a camp novel, Pawn to Queen Four (1995); a collection of essays, Gay Cosmos (1995); an erotic short story collection, Whispered in the Dark (1995); and WANK: The Tapes (1998).

Eighner became homeless in 1988, after he lost his job as a ­mental-­hospital attendant. “On Dumpster Diving” is Eighner’s ­prize-­winning essay based on this experience, later reprinted as part of his ­full-­length book about homelessness, Travels with Lizbeth: Three Years on the Road and on the Streets (1993). Eighner and Lizbeth, Eighner’s dog, became homeless again in 1996. Friends organized a fund under the auspices of the Texas Observer and obtained an apartment for Eighner and Lizbeth in Austin. Lizbeth has since passed away.

On what is required to find success as a writer, Eighner has said, “I was not making enough money to support myself as a ­housed person, but I was writing well before I became homeless. . . . A writer needs talent, luck, and per­sis­tence. You can make do with two out of three, and the more you have of one, the less you need of the others.”

Long before I began Dumpster diving I was impressed with Dumpsters, enough so that I wrote the ­Merriam-­Webster research ser­vice to discover what I could about the word “Dumpster.” I learned from them that “Dumpster” is a proprietary word belonging to the Dempster Dumpster company.

Since then I have dutifully capitalized the word although it was lowercased in almost all of the citations ­Merriam-­Webster photocopied for me. Dempster’s word is too apt. I have never heard these things called anything but Dumpsters. I do not know anyone who knows the generic name for these objects. From time to time, however, I hear a wino or hobo give some corrupted credit to the original and call them Dipsy Dumpsters.

I began Dumpster diving about a year before I became homeless.

I prefer the term “scavenging” and use the word “scrounging” when I mean to be obscure. I have heard people, evidently meaning to be polite, using the word “foraging,” but I prefer to reserve that word for gathering nuts and berries and such which I do also according to the season and the opportunity. “Dumpster diving” seems to me to be a little too cute and, in my case, inaccurate because I lack the athletic ability to lower myself into the Dumpsters as the true divers do, much to their increased profit.

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I like the frankness of the word “scavenging,” which I can hardly think of without picturing a big black snail on an aquarium wall. I live from the refuse of others. I am a scavenger. I think it a sound and honorable niche, although if I could I would naturally prefer to live the comfortable consumer life, perhaps — and only perhaps — as a slightly less wasteful consumer owing to what I have learned as a scavenger.

While my dog Lizbeth and I ­were still living in the ­house on Avenue B in Austin, as my savings ran out, I put almost all my sporadic income into rent. The necessities of daily life I began to extract from Dumpsters. Yes, we ate from Dumpsters. Except for jeans, all my clothes came from Dumpsters. Boom boxes, candles, bedding, toilet paper, medicine, books, a type­writer, a virgin male love doll, change sometimes amounting to many dollars: I acquired many things from the Dumpsters.

I have learned much as a scavenger. I mean to put some of what I have learned down ­here, beginning with the practical art of Dumpster diving and proceeding to the abstract.

What is safe to eat?

After all, the finding of objects is becoming something of an urban art. Even respectable employed people will sometimes find something tempting sticking out of a Dumpster or standing beside one. Quite a number of people, not all of them of the bohemian type, are willing to brag that they found this or that piece in the trash. But eating from Dumpsters is the thing that separates the dilettanti from the profes­sionals.

Eating safely from the Dumpsters involves three principles: using the senses and common sense to evaluate the condition of the found materials, knowing the Dumpsters of a given area and checking them regularly, and seeking always to answer the question “Why was this dis­carded?”

Perhaps everyone who has a kitchen and a regular supply of groceries has, at one time or another, made a sandwich and eaten half of it before discovering mold on the bread or got a mouthful of milk before realizing the milk had turned. Nothing of the sort is likely to happen to a Dumpster diver because he is constantly reminded that most food is discarded for a reason. Yet a lot of perfectly good food can be found in Dumpsters.

Canned goods, for example, turn up fairly often in the Dumpsters I frequent. All except the most phobic people would be willing to eat from a can even if it came from a Dumpster. Canned goods are among the safest of foods to be found in Dumpsters, but are not utterly foolproof.

Although very rare with modern canning methods, botulism is a possibility. Most other forms of food poisoning seldom do lasting harm to a healthy person. But botulism is almost certainly fatal and often the first symptom is death. Except for carbonated beverages, all canned goods should contain a slight vacuum and suck air when first punctured. Bulging, rusty, dented cans and cans that spew when punctured should be avoided, especially when the contents are not very acidic or syrupy.

Heat can break down the botulin, but this requires much more cooking than most people do to canned goods. To the extent that botulism occurs at all, of course, it can occur in cans on pantry shelves as well as in cans from Dumpsters. Need I say that ­home-­canned goods found in Dumpsters are simply too risky to be recommended.

From time to time one of my companions, aware of the source of my provisions, will ask, “Do you think these crackers are really safe to eat?” For some reason it is most often the crackers they ask about.

This question always makes me angry. Of course I would not offer my companion anything I had doubts about. But more than that I ­wonder why he cannot evaluate the condition of the crackers for himself. I have no special knowledge and I have been wrong before. Since he knows where the food comes from, it seems to me he ought to assume some of the responsibility for deciding what he will put in his mouth.

For myself I have few qualms about dry foods such as crackers, cookies, cereal, chips, and pasta if they are free of visible contaminates and still dry and crisp. Most often such things are found in the original packaging, which is not so much a positive sign as it is the absence of a negative one.

Raw fruits and vegetables with intact skins seem perfectly safe to me, excluding of course the obviously rotten. Many are discarded for minor imperfections which can be pared away. Leafy vegetables, grapes, cauliflower, broccoli, and similar things may be contaminated by liquids and may be impractical to wash.

Candy, especially hard candy, is usually safe if it has not drawn ants. Chocolate is often discarded only because it has become discolored as the cocoa butter ­de-­emulsified. Candying after all is one method of food preservation because pathogens do not like very sugary substances.

All of these foods might be found in any Dumpster and can be evaluated with some confidence largely on the basis of appearance. Beyond these are foods which cannot be correctly evaluated without additional ­information.