Just got back from Jonathan Safran Foer reading... thoughts swirling... need to get this all down.
JSF is intensely devoted to his work. He is intensely literary. I don't know that I want to be that, necessarily, but what can I get from that? That this man puts all of himself behind his work. You get the idea he lives and breathes his work... that his work suffuses every atom of himself. When he interviews he's boring, when he talks he is slow and measured and heartbreakingly intellectual... and he is a man who writes. He gets stuff done. He wrote Everything Is Illuminated right after graduating (undergrad or grad?), and I'm thinking, God damn it, this guy believes in himself, he takes his own work seriously, he labors over it, believes in it, sees its potential.
Don't know if I want all of that. The believing part, though—I am, starting this very instant, going to do that more. Believe in my own work, see its potential, and work toward that potential. JSF is a great author who does great work... and I think it's because he believes so intensely in his own ability. I will, starting now, borrow that intensity of belief from him.
Thinking...books...could I write one? And what would it be? I'm thinking of this blog, I'm thinking of all these snippets of things. These moments in time. Short story collections don't sell. But The Things They Carried sells. Is TTTC a novel? To me, it's a collection of short stories... I guess you'd call it a series of interconnected stories. But, really, it's just a bunch of different attempts to get at some sort of truth. Attacking this thing called war from many different angles, different perspectives, different times... that, to me, is not daunting. That, to me, sounds fun. That is something I could do. What about? Subject matter... of course... the death of a mother. That, for me, is the heart. When I say that I think, Won't readers think, Oh great, another novel about a dead parent. That's my biggest hang-up about all this. Does anyone really want to read about that? About all of these depressing things? But isn't there beauty in it?
Tim O'Brien says that he dives into this huge pile of shit called War and tries to find some beauty in it. It's diving into this enormous mess and trying to salvage something. Couldn't I do that? Couldn't I dive into my mom's death and salvage things?
Wouldn't want it to be too sentimental. That's always my fear with this stuff—too sentimental, too this, too that—really, though, did that ever get anyone anywhere? Write your things, if it's too much cut back—but don't cut back before you've written the damn thing.
To me, that sounds like all sorts of heaven. Going at my mom's death from different angles. Tackling it with different pieces. Working around it, coming at it from under, the side, looking at it from up close, from far away.
Read TTTC and see how O'Brien does it? That could be good.
I also think of Vonnegut. Telling stories in these very small bite-sized chunks. Think Slaughterhouse-Five. Think any novel by Vonnegut. All these small chunks—that appeals to me, I think I can do that. These short little bursts of things... these short little bursts that, when you step back and look at them, are a Whole Thing.
And that's it. Wow those thoughts flew out of me, and I'm excited about these ideas. That maybe this blog-style writing isn't necessarily in vain. And I could have stories, and poems, and pictures, and I could have these what if things, like my What about an infinite telescope?
What if it was a boy's diary? What if I assume the character of a person trying to make sense out of all these things. A person who just throws all of these different things at this problem trying to make sense, trying to figure something out, trying to get something out of it.
Gets to the heart of: what am I interested in writing? What really captivates me? I love what if questions. I love bending reality. I love magical realism. I mean, we could tell false stories about what didn't happen. I love those, like in ELAIC at the end when Oskar talks about what it would be like if 9/11 played out in reverse, or when he invents things like the singing tea kettle, or the underground skyscraper that holds dead people. I love suffusing a text with those elements—it creates possibility. Best to do that early—show the reader the ropes—in my world, these are the possibilities, in my world, these things can happen, in my world, you have to be ready.
Read TTTC, read SH5, read ELAIC. That should be my spring break homework. Yes.
And let those ideas run.....~~~~
and run~~
and run~~~
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