Writing Down the Greats

February 21, 2008

I was somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the compulsion to quote famous authors in a blog began to take hold. You see, intense deadline pressure and 17 hours on the road will drive the heartiest of travelers to extremes, writers and artists doubly so.

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

Need a blog entry tout de suite, do you? Here’s one for you, you mother … and make no mistake, if a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; hell, the “Ode On A Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies.

So you “borrow” a little from The Greats. Nobody’s going to notice anyways, save the bibliobibuli, and there’s scant few of them around these days.

You’re with me, right? There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander though this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

It could be argued the bibliobibuli deserve envy rather than scorn, if you believe, as at least one notable author I know of does, that an existence predicated on literature is truer than most. All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened, and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.

That’s the miracle of great writing. From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. But what about all the reasons that no one knows?

Like the desire to explain life, the universe and everything, which amounts to nothing but a monumental waste of energy: There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another that states that this has already happened.

Then there’s novel writing for the sake of profit, which is, at best, damn near impossible for most hacks. No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well-worn or commonplace to him … the conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart’s blood.

No easy task for mere mortals with a decided lack of something to say. For them, it is no doubt better to keep their mouths shut and appear stupid than to open them and remove all doubt.

Besides, why say anything when everything worth being heard has already been put forth by The Greats? I am not ashamed to admit that I belong to those who fantasize that literature is capable of bringing new horizons and new perspectives – philosophical, religious, esthetical and even social. I only wish I could effect such change with the written word. Hell, I wish I could write just one original thing of consequence.

This frustration is heightened by the contemplation of the words of The Greats, and accompanying feelings of inadequacy. As I drove near Barstow on the edge of the desert, I damn near abandoned all hope of ever connecting with readers in an enduring fashion. I damn near abandoned writing altogether, thinking the wheels were spinning in place.

Then I realized that we all have dreams accompanied by feelings of inadequacy and of opportunities squandered. Yet still we look to the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther … and one fine morning –

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

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