Why Do Writers Write? (And What Should a Reader Read?)

I enjoyed this post at Metaxu Cafe about writers and ambition. I think she hits the nail on the head:

Like most writers, I write because I’m mysteriously impelled to do so and have been since childhood. If I was never published anywhere, I would probably continue—simply because I have no idea how to stop. But writing only for myself has never been my goal. I write to share who I am and what I know, what I’ve seen and heard and felt; I write to resurrect the lost and to give flesh and voice to the ghosts who often take up residence in my study.

I also write with the hope of earning a living that will save me from ever having to hoist another waitress tray. Until the sale of my first novel last November, it looked like I might end up slinging hash until I drop. It’s still a possibility. And if it happens, I can’t complain. I’ve tossed everything I have on the writing table; if I lose, there will be no one to blame but myself.

I wonder how many Emily Dickinsons or Jane Austens we never read because they had no family to cossett them, no private wealth to nurture their dream, because their hours and days and lives were lost to the exigencies of making a living in factories and mines, in domestic service or on farms. Their stories remain untold, their novels and plays and poetry unwritten. By some accident of history, a few of us are getting a chance that our ancestors could never have imagined. Only base ingratitude could prevent us from celebrating every small or large success.

UPDATE: Mary G. shared this great quote in the comments—wanted to make sure no one missed it!

Here’s a quote from JP the Great that sums up why I write: “”Those who perceive in themselves this kind of divine spark which is the artistic vocation — as poet, writer… — feel at the same time the obligation not to waste this talent but to develop it, in order to put it at the service of their neighbour and of humanity as a whole.”

As usual, no one puts it better than he.

On a completely different note, this blogger asks a fun question: what one book (not too heavy, not too small) should she take on her three-day camping trip?

It’s an occasion-specific question, of course, really just a variation on the “what should I read next?” question that faces every booklover on a regular basis. It amuses me how often my next-read choice is not something from the premeditated to-be-read pile on my nightstand, but rather an unexpected grab from the shelf.

Tags: John Paul II, writing, writers

I Know I Did Something Else Flaky, But I Forget What

This one goes with the toenail-painting blunder. You know your brain is going when you start calling friends by the wrong name. The other day, when I said—

A Room of One’s Own, which I somehow never got around to meeting until last year, became at once a close friend, Anne-and-Diana close, a book I felt I’d known all my life before I was three chapters in. It is for me an August book, to be reserved for a certain kind of sun-drenched day, when the air is heavy but the heart is light.

—I meant, of course, A Room with a View, a golden book, not a gray one. A Room of One’s Own is February reading, and we are only on gravely polite terms.

Tags: literature, children’s literature, children’s books

How Do the Seasons Affect Your Reading Habits?

The potted peach tree on our deck has burst into bloom. This may be Virginia, but on overcast mornings with the fog rolling up from the creek valley and the trees shrouded in a “misty green veil” straight out of The Secret Garden, it’s easy to imagine myself in England. Always at this time of year, I find myself reaching for old favorites like Burnett’s classic tale of the reawakening of a neglected garden and neglected souls. I crave L. M. Montgomery, too; so far this spring it has been Anne of Windy Poplars—not at all my favorite of the Anne books, but what I was in the mood for—and The Blue Castle. This is the season in which my children rediscover Beatrix Potter and Brambly Hedge. I ransack the shelves for Katharine White’s Onward and Upward in the Garden, a collection of wry horticultural essays by the wife of E. B. White.

E. B.’s work, now, that’s summer reading. Charlotte’s Web may be the finest American summer novel ever written. I’ll have to think a bit to see if I come up with anything that tops it. In winter I want Beowulf, the Heaney translation, with a good fire going and, if possible, a howling wind rattling the windows. And Lord of the Rings, that’s definitely hunker-down-under-the-quilt material for me.

I was thinking about this tendency of mine to return to certain beloved novels over and over, interspersing them between new-to-me works of fiction and nonfiction, and it reminded me of the discussion of how long a book “stays read.” This time that question struck me from a new angle: I realized that I don’t necessarily want a book to stay read. The books that have touched me the most—books by Dickens, Austen, Tolkien, Alcott, Montgomery, Lovelace, Wilder, Eliot, Hardy, Wharton, Lewis, Forster, Byatt, Michael D. O’Brien, the incredible Fred Chappell—these are the books I return to time and again for refreshment of spirit and nourishment of mind.

I don’t think I want my own books to stay read. I want them to be books people return to with the joy and eagerness of reuniting with an old friend. How disappointing to be a passing acquaintance! Let something linger, yes, let some part of the book become a part of the reader; but let it be a relationship that renews itself from time to time.

There are many books I have read and lost: Gatsby, as I wrote in that earlier post, was one of them. After revisiting it as an adult, I find it has moved into the “will visit again with joy” category. The Pickwick Papers, though, that was most definitely a one-time read for me—and a long, hard slog it was. We shall have a nodding acquaintance, but I’m afraid we will never be close. A Room with a View, which I somehow never got around to meeting until last year, became at once a close friend, Anne-and-Diana close, a book I felt I’d known all my life before I was three chapters in. It is for me an August book, to be reserved for a certain kind of sun-drenched day, when the air is heavy but the heart is light.

*UPDATE: Final paragraph has been corrected: see explanation here.

Tags: literature, children’s literature, children’s books