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Saturday, Nov 28, 2009
The more of Sun Tzu I read, the more clearly an image began to form within my mind of the writer I might become under his influence, a cross between Robert Redford in "All the President's Men" and Chow Yun-Fat in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon": the freelance journalist as general of the armies of an ancient Chinese city-state. I would be constantly prepared for action, having studied carefully the terrain in which I was operating. I would know which magazines might be interested in a particular field, how much they paid per word, and what the personal intellectual proclivities of the editors were. I would know how many interviews were necessary to execute a particular type of piece, and what sorts of questions I needed to ask to elicit the relevant material. I would lie in wait for subject matter to present itself, and then, like lightning, I would strike. "Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of a trigger."
When recalcitrant sources retreated behind walls of obfuscation and denial, I would know how to tease them out into concrete and provocative statements. "If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve." Or I would simply abandon the engagement, cut off my interview peremptorily, leaving the stunned official gasping in his office, and find a more pliable source elsewhere. "You may advance and be absolutely irresistible, if you make for the enemy's weak points."
This, of course, was all well and good; but I needed something more specific. How was I going to implement these ideas? How would I transform myself into a journalistic warrior? I sat down to sketch out a plan.
Pretty quickly, however, I realized that I had absolutely no idea how to apply any of Sun Tzu's rather opaque observations to the problems that were actually facing me at the moment. In particular, I had a long series of articles I had promised to do on a particular topic that were proving far too complex to undertake. Sun Tzu would probably have advised me to abandon this subject, hide out in the mountains, and take up the campaign at a more favorable moment. But this wasn't really an option; I was already past deadline. What was I supposed to do?
I looked for a verse that might apply most closely to my present situation; at last, I found one. "Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all," it began. "Amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat." Now, this was me -- disorder, confusion and chaos! So, what was the key? How could I make myself proof against defeat? Sun Tzu continued:
17. Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline,
simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness
postulates strength.
18. Hiding order beneath the cloak of disorder is
simply a question of subdivision; concealing courage under
a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy;
masking strength with weakness is to be effected
by tactical dispositions.
I found this advice unsettling. It wasn't clear to me why I should be "simulating" disorder for some unnamed observer or enemy. Who was the enemy here? What was the point of "concealing courage under a show of timidity?"
Then, abruptly, a rather different image began to form, an image drawn not from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," but perhaps from "Kung Fu Hustle" or "48 Hours." It was the image of a wimpy, uncoordinated loser, clumsily miming a martial-arts stance and trying to stare down a bully. The image of a hopeless nerd, powerless against his enemies, pretending that he was only "concealing courage under a show of timidity," "masking strength with weakness." I'm not really timid and weak -- just wait till I show you my kung fu moves! You'll be sorry then!
This, I realized, was why Peter K. had been carrying around "The Art of War." It wasn't the key to his eventual professional success. It had just been a nerd's lonely defense against overwhelming power, a weakling's fantasy of hidden strength. If, that is, Peter K. ever had carried the book around in the first place.
And who, I wondered, had the historical Sun Tzu been? Probably some desperate freak living in a cheap rented room in Kaifeng, scribbling away at this manuscript, pretending for posterity that he was the greatest general of Wu. While, on the dusty fields of Jiangsu, the real generals of Wu and Yueh hurled men and chariots against each other in wheeling agonies of bronze and blood.
I am not, in fact, the first to have this idea. Lionel Giles, who published the authoritative translation of "The Art of War" in 1910, notes in his introduction that a 12th century Chinese literary scholar named Yeh Shui-Hsin thought Sun-Tzu couldn't have been a real general. Yeh wrote that Sun Tzu was more probably "some private scholar." "The story that his precepts were actually applied by the Wu State, is merely the outcome of big talk on the part of his followers," continued Yeh, who was a pretty skeptical guy for the 12th century. "The story of Ho Lu's experiment on the women, in particular, is utterly preposterous and incredible."
Giles disagrees, but for my money, Yeh was right. The real Sun Tzu was probably ... a total nerd.
So much for "The Art of War."
