Counterbalance

Formative Reads

I've had the same conversation several times over the past few weeks at various bookish events. It never starts the same way, but it invariably gets to the same spot: a few novelists I discovered in college and in the years just after that I find myself wanting to revisit.

I believe it began with Muriel Spark which led to Jeanette Winterson which somehow led to Graham Swift. Julian Barnes was required reading for my french film studies (the film: Madame Bovary, the required book: Flaubert's Parrot) and Barnes somehow led me to Banville.

I'm strangely possessive of these writers because they gave me so much to think about and seemed to "get" me and the kinds of things I'd hoped to write at the precise time in my life when I needed to be gotten, so confused was I about my own talents and aspirations and dreams in the literary scene. (Working for a not-so-lovely lit agent did not help matters, but I digress.)

I've never re-read their work because I've somehow relegated their novels and essays to that time in my life, that period of grasping onto ideas and devouring them whole, keeping whatever literary nutrients I could to propel me forward. There was also, of course, my near total obsession with Vintage International books at that time. It didn't hurt that many of these books were issued by Vintage with their delectable and infinitely collectible color-coded spines. (Another digression, worthy of many posts.)

It may be that I'm nostalgic for all that grasping and hoping. Or perhaps I'm just tired of the new new new novel that has become de riguer reading in many literary parts. These writers and the works I read back then are calling to me in a way I can't ignore. Just thinking of Swift's Waterland brightens me up. Spark's Loitering With Intent is a classic I'd like to be steeped in again. Winterson's Art & Lies is begging to be rediscovered. A re-read of Banville's Book of Evidence sounds like home.

The Strangeness of Old Words

I've been road-traveling again. Not in California. I've got an entirely new batch of roadside insights to share that have nothing to do with old memories conjured by familiar landscapes and much more to do with deeply buried dreams unlocked by entirely new scenery. More on that soon.

When packing for a trip that was all about seeking out snow (new snow, powder snow, the kind you will not currently find in Mammoth or Tahoe), I felt instinctively that two things would be the things to bring with: an old journal filled with old writing scraps (time to make something of it all, perhaps) and a copy of Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet.

What I could not have known as I was flurry-packing down jackets, wind-block shells and low-light ski goggles is that these two items were, in fact, the items. I read a few scraps of my old work and had a strange sensation. I put them away. Picked them back up again. Felt strangeness again and again. Who had written these words? How was she so confident years ago in a way that I am not now? Where has she gone and can I get her back again?

I set my old words aside for the rest of the trip. This adventure was to be about fun, about snow, about wide open Wyoming spaces, about après ski and conversation with interesting locals. My old words had conjured up more than I intended. They'd made me feel somehow less. Somehow diminished. Somehow wishing the less wise me of years ago could re-emerge, then merge with the wiser (but meeker) me of now and embolden my future writings. It was too much to think about so I set them aside and didn't open them again.

I did, however, crack open Pessoa's disquieted thoughts. Here's what greeted me in fits & spurts throughout the entire first section:

"In the ordinary jumble of my literary drawer, I sometimes find texts I wrote ten, fifteen, or even more years ago. And many of them seem to me written by a stranger."

                                     

"I often find texts of mine that I wrote when I was very young--when I was seventeen or twenty. And some have a power of expression that I do not remember having then. Certain sentences and passages I wrote when I had just taken a few steps away from adolescence seem produced by the self I am today, educated by years and things. I recognize I am the same as I was. And having felt that I am today making a great progress from what I was, I wonder where this progress is if I was then the same as I am today. There is a mystery in this that reduces my worth and oppresses me."

                                     

"How did I advance toward what I already was? How can the person who knows me today not know me yesterday? All this confuses me in a labyrinth where I am with myself and wander away from myself. I wander with my thoughts and I'm sure that what I'm writing now I already wrote. I remember."

                                     

"Once again, I have found something of mine, written in French, over which fifteen years must have flown now. I've never been to France, never dealt face-to-face with the French, never, therefore, exercised that language in which I had ceased to be fluent. Today I read as much French as ever. I'm older, a more experienced thinker: I must have made some progress. And the French in that passage from my distant past possesses a confidence which today I do not possess. The style is fluid, but in a way I could never be today in that language, with entire passages, complete sentences, forms and modes of expression that demonstrate a control over that language that I lost without ever remembering I had it. How is it possible to explain that? Whom did I substitute inside myself?"

                                    

"But what am I experiencing when I read myself as if I were someone else? On which bank am I standing if I see myself in the depths?"

                                     

"At other times I have found things I've written that I don't remember having written -- which is shocking -- things I don't even remember being capable of writing -- and that does frighten me. Certain phrases belong to a different mentality. It's as if I'd found an old picture, unquestionably of me, in which I had a different physique, unknown features -- but features undoubtedly mine -- all horrifyingly my own."

Though Pessoa tends toward the dramatic, I know (without question) that bringing along my old writing and casting it aside amidst a range of uncomfortable emotions only to pick up Pessoa's ramblings on the same is not an accident. 

I don't know what else it might be, but I am for the moment reassured by his words.

That many believe he was crazy is, obviously, beside the point, no?

On the (Writing) Road Again

I've been traveling a ton this past month and it is the kind of travel that has put me in a very specific kind of mood: the writing mood. What kind of travel does that? Road travel does it for me every time. Sure there are characters in the average airport who make me curious. Fancy hotels have their story to tell, too. Yet there's something about the scenery rolling by out the window, the long stretch of highway, the bizarre little towns along the way and the people who inhabit them that I find utterly fascinating and oddly in need of closer examination.

I've lived in California my entire life. I've driven these long stretches of freeway from San Francisco to San Diego, SoCal to NorCal and back again and again over many years. When I travel these roads, they feel like my roads. The strange people in the strange shanty towns feel like my people, the towns feel like my towns. The passing of the same landmarks, the same red rock formations, the same snowy peaks through so many phases of my life gives me a history to refer to, a future to look forward to.

A trip up to San Francisco from LA, then, is not simply a trip. It is a chance to remember what that trip was like when I was 13. Then 24 and in love. Then 30 and single and full of ideas anew. Then that time we all fought in the car, alternately shouting and laughing and stewing in anger. Then that time we were headed to a funeral, silent and sad. I remember the albums I discovered with each trip. The songs I played on repeat until my heart stopped aching. The beats I tapped on my steering wheel drive, drive, driving along. With every trip I take up and down this state, I revisit all that I have been and all that I hope to still become.

I've been on three California road trips in almost as many weeks. I have a lot of stories, real and imagined, to tell.

A Bit About Lingo

I'm still thinking about Maud's NYT piece on David Foster Wallace's language and her take on how his language has permeated blogging syntax. As in, you know, this is how I'm thinking right now and what do you think and I can't be bothered to be precise in my language and that may be a reflection of my inability to be precise in my thinking or it may be an intentional style thing or whatever et al.

As I said this weekend, I'm guilty of this. I could be more precise in my language. I could be more convincing in my arguments. I often riff in an off-handed way because I'm writing quickly, or I am afraid you'll think I take myself too seriously, or I want you to enjoy books as much as I do, or because I'm very into the rhythm of how something sounds when read aloud or some odd combination of all these things and more.

But the thing is - I don't dislike my writing style. You may dislike it. You may deem me somehow less of an intellectual mind, incapable of rigor, as a result. I'm okay with that. There are many other places you can go for rigor-reading. I also firmly believe that just as wine appreciation can get snotty beyond all enjoyment, so, too, can literary banter. Life is short, wars are being fought, loved ones are dying every day...must we really be so intense about our books?

Ed has a more thought-provoking (see? perhaps there is something to my rigor-less thinking as seen in my rigor-less speech...) reaction to the piece and takes to task the idea that DFW's work in particular is to blame. Yet the thing that is still on my mind from the piece is that while I may be opinionated, I tend to shy away from being overly clear about my position on touchier literary-sphere subjects. I will get angsty about a thing, but I won't cite clear examples of what makes me angsty, if those examples involve my peers. That's not cool. I'm unimpressed with this tendency of mine. So the notion that my lack of clarity is in some way tied to my need to be liked (or, more precisely, not hated) is spot-on.

To cite an example (see that rigor?): I wrote a longer post about book reviewing a few months ago that remains unpublished in my post queue. I think it offers a decent look at some of the reasons we could celebrate books more vs. rail on them and their authors. Yet it is light on examples because I didn't want to piss anyone off. And what is that? That is a form of the very bullshit I often rail against.

So. I may or may not post that longer bit on book reviewing nonsense. I may or may not add examples to it before hitting Publish. Maud's piece has got me thinking on two entirely different tracks: on the one hand, I'm okay with my imprecise writing and on the other, I'm not. Whether it came from DFW is not my cross to bear (more precise minds will further this discussion, I'm sure) but it has given me pause in how my writing on this blog has come about and how its imprecision can at times serve me or discredit me.

DFW's Slacker-Lingo and Aw-Shucks Blog Prose

Maud Newton has an interesting piece at the NYT about the many linguistic gambits of David Foster Wallace and how such gambits made their way into blogging lingo. I read her piece with a smile on my face, but must also admit plainly: my writing on this blog is largely made up of many gambits she decries.

I could make excuses for this. I could point out that my day job requires a different, far more rigorous kind of writing. Or that I actually like that sort of writing in doses. Perhaps even large doses. Large doses in, say, the form of a David Foster Wallace novel. I suppose that makes me less academic-paper worthy, but I cannot undo six years of blog posts. You cannot unread them.

What did strike me, though, is that I could be infinitely better at these bits (emphasis mine):

"Even if you reject, as I do, the universality of her diagnosis, Smith has pinpointed the reason so much of what passes for intellectual debate nowadays is obscured behind a veneer of folksiness and sincerity and is characterized by an unwillingness to be pinned down. Where the craving for admiration and approval predominates, intellectual rigor cannot thrive, if it survives at all."

"But the idea is to provoke and persuade, not to soothe. And the best way to make an argument is to make it, straightforwardly, honestly, passionately, without regard to whether people will like you afterward."

Food for thought.

Writing Whilst Buying Shoes

In the November/December issue of Poets & Writers - The Indie Innovators issue - Adrian Versteegh has a brief piece on the challenge writers have in shutting out the noise of the internet so they can get some writing done.

The usual suspects are cited, from Jarod Lanier of You Are Not a Gadget to Nicholas Carr of "Is Google Making us Stupid?" and The Shallows fame. Write Room, Dark Room, Q10 and Writespace are noted as vital tools that allow one to write without the distractions that TweetDeck and Facebook and Tumblr throw up in unwitting writer's ways when all they really want to do is get back to their plots.

All good. All well. All fine. I get it. (Other than, um, why have most "distraction-free" options opted for a horrific green screen vibe? Must distraction-free also mean design-free? Pfft.)

What I loved most, however, is Wells Tower's approach. He "maintains two separate writing spaces: one with an Internet connection (for research and magazine work), the other without." The money quote?

"It's difficult to write good sentences and simultaneously buy shoes."

Indeed. Yet, I try in vain to accomplish said feat on an alarmingly regular basis.

{Insert Big Idea to Save Books & Reading & Literacy Here}

I have spent most of my life reading and writing. I've spent my entire professional life working at digital agencies. There is a congruence here that I've tried very hard, for most of my life, to ignore. Or keep at bay. I'd felt for so long that my marketing strategy, digital agency life had so little to do with my writerly, readerly, let's study meta-themes and discuss Proust until we're blue in the face life that I worked overtime to keep them separate. 

I was wrong.

They are inextricably linked (most notably because both parts exist within me and it's been hell trying to keep the two separate all these years) now because of the ever-shifting world of publishing in the age of digital. I can't tell you what a relief it is to see that external forces now match my interior state. I can now set aside my George Costanza-esque need to keep my agency friends separate from my literary friends. To keep my thoughts on marketing authors quiet, my desire to develop "social reading" tech solutions unknown, my obsession with geolocation and the impact it might have on hyper-local reading patterns a secret. I can finally talk about books with my tech friends and marketing strategy with my publisher friends and no one gives me crazy looks. I'm freeeeee....

However.

The road ahead for authors and publishers and readers and booksellers and libraries and kids who can't read has gotten better and murkier and worse and clearer all at once. There are so many tools and communities and technologies that have furthered the cause of reading and have extended the reach of independent publishers and their authors. Yet, these are also difficult times for authors to get paid what they deserve, digital rights management being what it is, big publishers being who they are, the structure being what it is. You know the drill.

I haven't been able to absorb it all and make sense of it yet. None of the big, lofty ideas swirling in my head over the past few months have coalesced into anything tangible, into anything valuable that will solve these problems or even some of them or even one of them. But at the beginning of every day and at the end of each long night...this is the big problem I come back to. This is one of the big ideas I want to meditate on, tease apart, figure out.

Call me idealistic, call me crazy, call me whatever you will: I believe reading changes lives and perspectives and prejudices and communities and nation's futures. I believe everyone has a right to learn how to read and I believe everyone should have access to every book they desire so they can dream big and change the world they live in...whether that's a room away, a street away, a block away, a town away, a country away, a world away. 

I don't yet know what the solutions look like to these problems and I know I'm not the only one who wants to solve them. What I do know is this: I am now certain that part of the reason I'm here is to help figure this out in whatever capacity I'm able, in whatever way I'm needed.

My big fancy dream is to find a way to have all this brilliant technology and the social web (and whatever else we've yet to discover and coin) do the one thing I care about most: get more people to read. Who's with me?

Tempted

It took me two months to finish reading Reality Hunger. I wasn't reading anything else. It's silly, given that it's short and I read quickly. I haven't even posted my notes yet about the David Shields panel at the LA Times Festival of Books from a few weeks ago. Also silly and smacks a bit of laziness on my part.

There's a reason.

I'm fascinated by the hullabaloo surrounding this book and the notions of novel & narrative it seeks to open up for discussion. I'm fascinated by the anger and contempt it has inspired. I see where the haters are coming from, but I also kind of dig the subject matter. I agree with Shields 50% of the time and disagree with him the other fifty. Or perhaps it's 60/40. I also really dig the books he digs, which to me says so much about a writer and a mind that...well...even if you want to hate him, how can you really when he admires so much of the work that you admire?

I get that the argument is far more complex. I get that this has all been said before. Shields is hardly the first one to the dance. I get that Shields has perhaps muddied the waters with his self-promotion. I get that declaring the novel dead smacks of a way to protect oneself from never having to write (or having written) a brilliant novel. I get that novelists the world over hate him on spec. They have to...he's called their craft bogus at best.

And yet, and yet.

What Shields is trying to say - though it's been said before - is worth hearing. So what if it's been said before? It bears repeating. I think. Just as all the counter-arguments (lest we forget they've also been argued before) deserve another airing. Reality Hunger has me more fired up about writing than anything I've read in a long time. (And yes, I realize that saying this may mean many of you will no longer take me seriously.) I found myself saying "Yes!" out loud so many times while reading it that I felt a little groupie-esque and a bit of a writer-ly fraud, but that's the truth. I'm sure that's why it's taken me so long to finish it or have any cogent thoughts about the whole matter. He's also reminded me, as if I needed any prompting, why I loved loved loved Carole Maso's Ava all those years ago & why I still fiercely defend it to anyone who seeks to sully it.

There is something here, a truth or a lie or a fake reality or false prevarication or some mad intertwining of each, that has my mind working in a way it hasn't ever worked. Skewing in a way I've never skewed. The result? I've got the crazy notion to explore it by spending a good chunk of time (not sure how long it would take, a year? less?) reading all of the books Shields listed in his post at The Millions and all the other books he's cited as inspirations along the way. I've read many of them, but never in this context. I'd also like to fully explore all the reactions to his work. Is this crazy? I'm certain of it. Will this jack up my novel-reading plans for the year? Definitely. Will this help pay the mortgage? Nope. Will it distract terribly from the work I do that does pay the mortgage? You bet. Even so - I want to tease apart whatever this is that has me sitting up and taking notice, Shields critics be damned. I also think there's a healthy debate & dialogue to be had, rather than the extremes on each side standing as the only reactions to this book and the many topics it raises. Can't we have a conversation about it without everyone fighting? I think we can.

You in? I'm tempted.

Make Something from Nothing

Much as I try, I can't get this film out of my head.  It wasn't revolutionary. It wasn't well-shot. It wasn't a documentary that you tell friends about, pressing them to see it at once, because it will change their lives or their perspectives or their...something.  It isn't that kind of film.

Yet, it has changed my life, my perspective, and a lot of my somethings.

Beautiful Losers is intense, but is so quiet in its intensity that I suspect others may view it as nothing more than a film that highlights some now-well-known artists who were once underground but who made the art they wanted to make, despite all that it cost them in the early days...or in some cases, what it is still costing them to this day. It is perhaps even easy to dismiss some of these artists now - Shepard Fairey, Barry McGee - who have achieved such critical success that if you did not know their earlier work, did not follow them as they struggled, you might not get what they are about at all.

And that's fine. As a documentary about artists and how they got where they are today, it succeeds at the basic levels.

What moved me though, what shook me up, was how these artists that I've long admired really did do whatever they had to do so they could create. This is something I've struggled with a lot in my life.  I can even pinpoint certain decisions made long ago, specific moments when I had a choice between a more artistic life and a more commercial, stuff-filled one. At nearly every turn, I chose the professional opportunities & financial gain & really great shoes over my artistic endeavors. Much of my working life has even halted my artistic endeavors for painfully long stretches at a time. The whole of 2009 on this blog is but one obvious testament to that.

I'm not particularly proud of those decisions I made long ago, but I made them and here we are. They make up my truth. The one that was confronted in a very real way as I watched this film.  We each bring our own life experiences to any piece of art we see - a film, a painting, a novel - and my life experiences allowed me to see Beautiful Losers as one long series of questions directed at me: How much longer will you put off the writing? Will you be writing fiction at all in this life, or just focusing on unrelated work things? Because if you plan to focus only on work things and shoes and your clients, Callie, let's just call it a day.  The wavering isn't doing any of us any good. The pretending is painful to watch.

Longtime readers of this blog don't need me to rehash my work/writing balance struggle. This blog is called Counterbalance for a reason. It is for this reason. I want to write fiction, but I don't. The reasons are many and they reach a very long way back and are intermingled with fear and insecurity and so much baggage that I've stopped even trying.  Resigned myself, really.  Resigned myself to more work. I'm very good at what I do professionally, I've just left a work situation that stifled me, so I'm now able to focus more on doing, professionally, what I love.  

Beautiful Losers forced me to question where the writing might be in my newly created 2010 life. I don't yet know. All of my professional work won't prepare me for feeling my way through this writing thing for the umpteenth time. This can't be achieved with a marketing plan and carefully outlined strategies & tactics that will allow me to knock out a novel by year's end. I'm not able to map out all the success metrics I'll setup and track. There is no monthly reporting that will work here.  There is no social media campaign I can architect that will produce a brilliant literary novel in a few week's time. Google Adwords does not a novel make. It's easy to see why my working life is so satisfying - the results are swift and measurable. If something's not effective, it is easy to know exactly what it is and tweak accordingly.  Not so with the novel writing, not so.

Adding to the potency of Beautiful Losers is the terribly sad death of Margaret Kilgallen. She was so talented, lived a life that allowed her to create the art that she wanted to create, and just as she was gaining critical success, died of cancer a few weeks after giving birth to a baby girl.

If that is not a wake-up call, I don't know what is. Not sure what that means yet or what that looks like for me and the non-writing. I know I've written this post before. Many, many times before. But I'm writing it again, after seeing this film. That's something.

Finding Inspiration in Unusual Places

It has been so long since I blogged properly (tweets don't count) that I didn't even know my login/password to Typepad.  That's a sad, sad state of affairs.  I'm still questioning many of the points raised in my post on loving books/being done with books - namely having something of value to add to the mix that isn't already being added by the vast number of those who blog about and report on books.  I've also been working my ass off, so there's that.  Mortgages, taxes, a family member with cancer, and neighbors with attorneys can seriously hamper your productivity.

What it all comes down to though is this - I need to be writing a book.  And the more time I spend writing about the writing of books, the less I write my book. Simple, you'd think. But oh so not. I believe there is something else I wish to do with it all - some site, some group blog, some channel that will take everything to the next level.  I don't know what that is yet (do you?) so I'm taking my inspiration where I can find it and remaining open to many creative/design influences. That "next level thing" is in me somewhere, I just need to tap into it.

Until said thing is located, here's what I've been inspired by lately:

  

(Loeffler Randall's Poppy Perforated Sandal, Man on Wire film, David Turbridge's stunning Floral Pendant, Amienne font by ascender fonts)