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Anyhow… yes, Chris Jones’s article is touching. It is sad in places – in the places where such stories are supposed to be sad. And it is inspirational in its description of Roger’s perseverance and courage and prolificacy in the wake of his life’s recent misfortunes. But the feeling I came away with was an overwhelming sense of shame. Here is where I am posting the link to the Esquire article. Click it. Read it. How dare I complain about a lack of inspiration? How dare I wax quasi-poetical on the modern rat-race world’s intrusion on my personal creativity? How dare I make excuses for why I do not write? Here is a man for whom writing is all that is left. He cannot speak, eat or drink. He is disfigured (though not horribly, I must point out… I enjoyed Jones’s observation and description of Roger’s permanent smile). He struggles to walk. He has endured numerous surgeries – mostly, it seems, failed attempts to restore some of the more basic faculties that we, the unafflicted, take for granted. He must write to communicate with his family, his friends, and the world. For him, every word counts. Each is important. To write is to live. That is an oversimplification, of course. By all accounts I’m sure he still enjoys movies. He enjoys the companionship of his wife. So on. Etcetera. Still, even though he has always been a writer, now he writes not simply by choice, but out of necessity. Meanwhile I am content on most nights to procrastinate – to put off writing until tomorrow. Until there is time. Until it is convenient. Until my muse inspires me once more. What a crock. I understand why so many people feel moved by the story. It is uplifting and inspirational and absolutely should be read by everyone. Take those words as ones with real gravity – as they come from someone who carries a hearty disdain for celebrity profiles and pop culture pieces. We all know I have not been writing much, but… I have been reading quite a bit. So instead of writing about how I’m not writing, I think I will share some of what I have been reading. (These are not going to be book reviews. Follow the links or wikipedia the authors if you want to know more about these works.) Let’s begin. Book-wise, I finally finished David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men – a collection of short stories that I began on my flights out to California and back in January. If you are looking for some edgy, disturbingly insightful material written both ingeniously and more than just a little irritatingly, this may be the book for you. My reaction is a sort of ‘wow, that’s really brilliant, but enough with the abbreviating and the footnotes already.’ And how in the world has John Krasinski turned this into a film? I also took a couple of days and read the finally-published (against the great author’s expressed wishes) fragments of Vladimir Nabokov’s The Original of Laura. While I find the punch-out-and-rearrange index cards a bit gimmicky, the actual material is amazing. For a Nabokov fanatic, being able to see his handwritten words, his margin notes, scratched-out lines and first thoughts is breathtaking. The book is not even close to being complete… in fact, it does not really contain a cohesive narrative, though you can see where it was going to some degree… but if Nabokov had been able to complete his final novel, it would have been tremendous and complex. I put the book down feeling sad, exhilarated and teased. In a very good way. Now I am one and a half novellas into Edith Grossman’s translation of Álvaro Mutis’s The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll. Thoroughly enjoyable thus far, though I guess we’ll see how I feel about things 500 pages later. In closing, and in honor of the upcoming Valentine’s Day weekend, how about a love poem (of sorts)? This is "Cascando" by Samuel Beckett (which I found by way of Kate Zambreno’s blog, whose commentary on Beckett’s poem and love and loss I will not even try to compete with here). Mit liebe,
Is that not gorgeous? Tags: alvaro mutis, blogs, david foster wallace, Links, samuel beckett, valentine, vladimir nabokov | Slap me. |
In the cabinets under the bookshelves among the untrashable clutter of the home office, my stacks of black notebooks silently age – curling and yellowing their pages imperceptibly but as surely as time clicks on and on, all the while growing no taller. Stunted. It is not for lack of time. Even now, during my busiest quarter, there are plenty of hours in the day. That is no excuse. And I know I could, if I wanted to, blame it on a profession where creativity has no value. But that is unfair and untrue. My career allows me to keep my personal expressive endeavors entirely separate from my livelihood. My burnout has no effect on my earnings or my job performance. See: compartmentalizing even now. How many posts have I devoted to categorizing my life? Even if there is truth to it, or even if there is some merit in examining one’s existence and ensuring order and meaning in its routines and processes, you still must at some time reach the point of diminishing returns. I am stuck in a muddy pit and, instead of grabbing a rope, have been content to sit and describe the mud. While I starve, the rope dangles right there above my head, well within reach. There must be a way to jumpstart the growth again. And I am fairly certain the answer is something along the lines of giving up trying to find the right tools, the right mindset or the right voice. Giving up and just jumping in and doing what you have always done… what you used to do without hesitation and without restraint. Giving up and giving in and allowing yourself to be reckless and raw and unedited and piss-poor. Starting. Starting now. Begin. |
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