Friday Filler! Therapy Session on the Virtual Couch!

This morning I was waiting for a bus in the University Street Metro station when I saw Jon Evison, best-selling author of West of Here and All About Lulu, walking along on the opposite side of the station, pulling a suitcase and garment bag behind him. Jon’s on his way to the Virginia Book Festival. He spends a lot of time on the road, giving readings and meeting readers and encouraging up-and-coming writers from coast-to-coast. I could’ve yelled Hey, Evison! across the big gap between us and even though he and I have only met twice in the last three years, Jon would’ve remembered not only where and when he’d seen me last, but also what my name was and that I was a writer. Jon Evison has that sort of memory, and he’s that sort of people-loving guy. So while I’m sure he misses his family when he’s on the road, he’s also made friends all over America and he really loves meeting new people and he loves doing readings. Still, I had the disturbing thought later this morning that Jon Evison, best-selling author, is now sort of a traveling salesman, and I think of him standing alone with his suitcase and garment bag on the Metro platform, off to SeaTac and nine or ten hours of traveling to get him to his hotel in Virginia. It did not strike me as a good thing. But it’s the artist life, isn’t it? Mozart toured Europe, conducting his symphonies and giving recitals and dedicating new works to various crowned heads, hoping that someone would give him a decent regular gig. A self-employed artist must constantly hustle his wares, it seems. Not much new there.

Yesterday, in the comments of a blog dedicated more-or-less to reading 19th-century literature, someone mentioned that her husband only reads “classics,” working through a list provided by Clifton Fadiman (I assume it's Fadiman's "Lifetime Reading Plan"). She went on to ask, partly in jest, why we should read anything being written now? Most of it’s probably crap; let time sort out which will become classics, and let readers of the future enjoy them. We have more “classics” available right now than anyone will have time to read in a lifetime.

This gave me pause. I’m one of those people writing novels now, and I have no way of knowing if my novels aren’t part of the “most of it’s crap” pile. I think it would be nice if tens of thousands of people bought my books, but I can’t honestly say that my books are worth the time to read. None of us can honestly say that about our own books. No, we can’t, no matter what you might think. No, we really can’t say. So I have no real idea of the “worth” of my books. I agree with you that terms such as “worth” and “classic” are poorly understood and indefinable, but let’s pretend they do mean something and move on.

So, I can’t claim that my books are worth reading. I also can’t claim that most of the books I read are books written by living authors. I’m one of those people who read capital-L “Literature” (another very slippery term) and most of my bookshelves are full of books by people who are long dead, some having gone to their graves thousands of years ago. It’s a constant struggle for me to find living authors whose books I want to read, so I’ve got Bulfinch and Walter Scott and Nabokov and Chekhov and O’Connor and Faulkner on my “to be read” list right now. I can depend on those people not to waste my time. All of this might make me think that I have no justification behind asking living readers to give my books a try. And yet I will. This line of thought confuses me. Why am I writing when, maybe, all the good books have already been written? When’s the last time a really great book came out? No, I can’t tell you what I mean by “great,” either.

This is all pretty grim stuff for a Friday morning, and I apologize. Very likely it’s just that I’m in the vasty emptiness of the middle of a new novel and being there always makes me question the value of my own writing. Why this book? I ask myself. What’s the point? Who’s going to want to read this, for gosh sakes? It’s just a phase. I’m in a chapter that’s hard to write, introducing a new character and a significant plot point and I worry that I’m going to screw it up so I put off working on the book and pretend I’m doing research or that I’m too busy to finish the chapter. So I should just finish the damned chapter and move on with my life. So, yay me. Problem solved. So glad we had this chat. Happy Friday.

Happy First Day of Spring

It's the first day of Spring, the season of rebirth and renewal and all of that. It snowed here on Saturday and Mighty Reader worried about the daffodils, tulips and crocuses that are all just pushing bravely up into the world. On Monday morning the world was covered with frost and Mighty Reader took photographs of the ice-crusted parsley and thyme out back. Today it's gray and windy. March is not, as they say, going out like a lamb.

All of which I say to no point, and I don't have a metaphor to flog this morning. But it is the first day of Spring, and I for one am glad to say "so long" to Old Man Winter. Some day I'll wake up and the furnace won't have kicked on. That'll be nice.

In my writing world, Spring isn't necessarily signaling any sort of rebirth or renewal, alas. I'm currently reading Volume 6 of Tales of Chekhov in my attempt to finish the entire 13-volume set this year, and I'm also reading the Norton Anthology of Poetry in my ongoing search for English-language verse I both understand and like to read, and I've got a couple of non-fiction titles going as well. Business as usual for me. Mighty Reader and I just finished our two-person read along of Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend. Some time this summer, I think, I'll read Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov and maybe Mighty Reader will read along with me for that, too. I like it when we can talk about books in common. We have thousands of books in our house but sadly we don't have all that much overlap in our literary Venn diagram, but I'm working on it.

One other thing I'm doing lately is re-reading a couple of my old novels. I haven't looked at them for some time and I have, happily, forgotten a great deal about them so this is a chance to come at them as a stranger, sort of, and it's enlightening. I'm delighted with some of what I see and disappointed with other bits but all in all, it's encouraging. The delight encourages me to keep writing and the disappointment likewise, because it means that I've grown and am becoming a better writer year-by-year. The bad thing is that I have an urge to rewrite these old novels, but I won't. One of them's already been sold to a publisher and the other one is fine as it is; I'd do it differently today but it's not badly written so I just need to keep my fingers off it and move on with my life.

Which is, maybe, the metaphor for Spring I didn't know I was looking for. We rise from the soil, which isn't dead and dirty but is rich and earthy and full of nutrient and we come up into the air and light and we try again to be what we are as best as we can. Things germinate, gather strength and then burst forth to do what they're meant to do. I've been gathering my strength to write the second half of my novel-in-progress and to do a load of carpentry work in the upper floor of the house Mighty Reader and I have been finishing. What have you been waiting to burst forth and do?

Monday Trivia

It looks like Dr. Davin Malasarn is still away on business, so it falls to me to post some kind of placeholder filler material. I shake my fist at you, Dr. Davin Malasarn.

Anyway, I found out today that John Updike, best-selling author of a bazillion novels, never had a literary agent. He dealt directly with his publisher (Knopf) and let them negotiate paperback rights for him (he did pretty well with that). Updike also didn't take advances, and lived off his royalties (he did pretty well with that, too). Though I can't help but wonder if more of his books would've been made into films had Updike had an agent. You never know.

Also: Has anyone else read both Nabokov's Pale Fire and his translator's notes to Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time? I think the latter clearly informs the former, as Nabokov was as much editor/commentator as he was translator, and--in true Nabokovian fashion--little by little he takes over the narrative. You can't read Nabokov as translator and then see Kinbote's notes to "Pale Fire" the same way ever again. I am tempted to work with footnotes and the idea of countering the primary text in some future novel. Yes, I know: plenty of people have already jumped onto that bandwagon, but it looks like fun.