Falling in Step with Literature

I have about 70 pages left in the book I’m reading—In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu by Tony Ardizzone. It’s been an odd reading experience; I sailed through the first 90 pages, then trudged through the next 100 or so, and now am sailing again. Of course, it’s fair to disclaim my reading with the fact that I was turning in graduate school applications in that middle section of it.

That small caveat being what it is, I’ve never let responsibilities (work, sleep, eating, etc) distract me from a book that I’m heavily invested in. In fact, right now, my eyes and fingers are itching to get back at their work. But I think last night’s epiphany is worth documenting before I move forward. It is the progression of a reader contrasted with the progression of a book, and an important look at the delicate dance that both the book and the reader have to give themselves to.

When I first began the book, I enjoyed what I was digging into. It is well written, with poetic language and a real “storytelling” vibe. I also was stuck for a few hours doing nothing in the emergency room, so that helped motivate my reading. Then I stalled—the novel wasn’t exactly what I expected. I like experimental writing, I generally enjoy a book that jumps perspectives (if nothing else, I admire how one writer can capture multiple voices within one work), but something about this bogged me down. It was hard to read the book—which melds a realistic story of an immigrant family with a familial mythology, each chapter “told” by a different family member—because the interjection of mythology made it hard to cleanly follow the characters and their unraveling “real” stories. Realistic fiction is what I particularly enjoy, so while mythology is fun, I found it distracting.

Last night, though, I was able to shift my perspective, and it is amazing how easily a book can shift from tiresome to engrossing. Because I realized what this book is, and how to read it: it isn’t a novel, despite the stamp on the cover. It is a series of short stories, anecdotes, engaging tales told over a dinner of fresh sweet bread, minestrone soup, and a pasta whose name I likely can’t pronounce. While the ribbon of continuity is there, I was spending so much mental energy attempting to follow it rather than enjoy the individuality of each story. And the truth is, as I’ve relaxed my hold on the story as a whole, each anecdote has been easier to follow and insert into the weave of the “novel” in its entirety.

And so the book has changed. It is no longer a frustrating task I am trying to firmly hold, chart, and analyze, but it is a dinner amongst friends, whose stories elicit rolling laughter or heartbroken, sometimes bitter, tears. I knew from the beginning that the book was well written, and I have long held that any story, if it is well-written enough, should be enjoyable. So the stymieing effect this novel had on me was particularly unsettling; it assaulted my most basic philosophies of good literature. Instead, though, it just took work to shift my perspectives, and hammered home how much of the relationship of reader to novel really forms what the novel is. It is a dance, and I had to learn to follow the books’ steps before I could appreciate the tone, rhythm, and beat of the music.

Doubt

What a bastardly force. It creeps in everywhere, every moment, to the point where I am convinced I am not and never will be good enough.

I am Patrick Eckhardt. Tests taken as a child put me in the top 1% of the nation in intellect. I was a high school valedictorian, a state-qualifying athlete, and a National Merit Scholar (top 1.5% I think). I was the life of the party in college. I was Prince Harry, sitting in the pub brimming with promise. I was loved and respected and admired. I am.

I am as bold as a lion.

Monday evening freewrite

Tomorrow is December first, meaning as of midnight tonight I have exactly one month to finish grad school applications. In the range of the 140 American MFA programs in Creative Writing, I will apply for one school in the top 15, four in the top 50, possibly another in the top 100, and one in the bottom 16. If I can't get into one of them, I will be in a very tough place.

And this is the problem with writing: its only value is in the public forum. The naive purist, I suppose, will point to the value of personal enrichment and growth, but truth be told, every piece of writing is ultimately written for public consumption. The risks of seeking a public forum are, of course, both success and failure. It would be nice to say failure is not an option, but frankly, it is. Not even just an option, but a mathematical probability.

Giving up, on the other hand, doesn't have to be an option and won't be. But persevering in the face of failure is enough to cause any person to question every step that led to the point of failure, and every step to come.

Success, I am sure, breeds its own perils. But that is a bridge I am more willing to cross when I come to it.

Making moves and enjoying words

Today was a good writing day. Between last night and this morning, I re-wrote and refined the first six pages of what I plan on being my writing sample for grad schools. I scouted out the very initial threads of a personal statement, and it is something I think can be good, once it is refined.

I don't know what I can do about a statement on teaching writing, although I think it is just a matter of time until it comes together. These things are coming together. Just need to find a way to nail the GRE, and things will be ready to roll. After that, it's a waiting game.

The good we try to do

I read a friend's blog tonight, a friend who I love dearly and talk to sparsely. I really wish I were better about things like that, but for whatever reason I am not. Perhaps all it takes is effort, and I know I have effort in me, but my brain does not remember to do what my heart wants.

He is a dear friend, one of the dearest, who I think for a season in life understood me better than anyone else, and probably still understands me better some days than I understand myself, because we are so much the same. There was a trying time in his life a few years back that he talked about, a time in his life where I tried to help him. It was romance, of course, but then the Bible uses romance as an archetype of our relationship with God, so romance is never just romance. It becomes, quite literally, supernatural--bigger than life.

I thought I knew what was best, and I'll be damned if i didn't try my hardest to make sense of his relationship, I knew her and him very well, and maybe it was just selfish of me, to try to help work out a relationship that was out of my fantasy as much as anyone else's.

In the end, they broke up, and are still both broken. In different ways, but there is brokenness there. And there is brokenness with God then, a shattering, a cracking that let in doubt, bitterness, pain, disillusionment--and I wonder, what could I have done to make things better?

I tried, I really did. I tried and I loved and I gave of myself to them and it didn't just fail, it supernova-ed. It exploded and destroyed entire solar systems. The good I tried to do--how much of it is my fault, years later?

"ditto"

Really?

A lesson in math

A 400 page word would contain approximately 100,000 words. Given a pace of 1000 words a day, hard to stick to as evidenced by my lack of consistency, that would take 100 days, or 14 1/4 weeks. Add in a weekly day off, and that adds another 14 days, or two weeks. That makes it about a 4 month project, assuming consistency, determination, etc, etc, to complete a 400 page work.

Which says nothing of shaping the lumpy manuscript from something worth writing to something worth reading.