There's Writing, and then -- There's Writing

People have the idea, the notion, the belief – that because they can use a computer, that makes them a writer. Nothing could be wronger.

In the summer of 2019, I became weary of the stories I was reading in print and out in the world. Whatever form the stories were abiding in, there was no blood in them, no marrow. Breath had departed from their bones – they were “literate dead.” And they were dead because everything was, for the most part, quick. Technology and social media’s seductive umbilicals had infiltrated psyches; the printed news was chopping block bits of words that often had misspelled or missing words; news channels spouted newscasters and guests who forgot how to spell “respect.” How am I supposed to follow a conversation when people constantly interrupt or talk over each other? How am I supposed to follow contentious and dueling conversations, one piled on top of the other like a verbal multiple vehicle crash? The communication channels for “news” were thin, like watered down soup. Where was the rich stock, the savory stew that filled a belly and made one feel satiated, and satisfied?

Reputable newspapers employed writers who couldn’t spell, or wouldn’t avail themselves of the spell checker function, or were too unenlightened to realize that they, potentially, were smarter than their computers because they understood context, while their typing machines did not. I have considered the possibility that there were deadlines, and some things, like the right words, had to be sacrificed. Whatever the reason, it made me tired to read what I was reading. And if it was because the writers were too tired to take the time to write a good story, then that made me more tired.

Where had beautiful and coherent language gone? Where was the aural, the visual delight of words strung together, like the ordered placing of clothes on a clothesline – perhaps childhood memories of how neatly my mother hung wet laundry on a line to take advantage of every inch of space.

The world, to me, had gone off its rails, depriving me of well-told stories.

Now you might think – well, what’s a misplaced word here or there? Or a wrong word? Or a misspelled word?

The reason is that I love to read. And I love to read well-crafted thoughts, sentences, stories, and books because the good ones carry an innate rhythm. Can you imagine how it would be to your visual sensibilities if one of the gargoyles on Notre Dame Cathedral was an elephant’s head because someone wasn’t paying attention the day they mounted the gargoyles? That’s what it’s like when I read a story in which the supposed writer has not taken the time to read, re-read, edit, edit, edit, use the spell checker, and edit again to assure that the context is intact. It’s like a visual hiccough. Something destroyed the pleasure I was enjoying of words strung together into thoughts into phrases into sentences into paragraphs – into a story. Someone destroyed the “rhythm.” And then I have to go back and re-read to try and figure out what the writer meant. Or read the miscreant error “correctly” and then weave it back in.

So one day, I decided to read the Pulitzer Prize novels. I started when the Pulitzers started – 1918; I’m at 1982.

These were stories whose characters I had a chance to become acquainted and sometimes fall in love with: I rode and camped and starved as I traveled West on the Oregon Trail; I lived with a school teacher in Illinois farm country as she took over working the farm when her husband died; I watched decayed aristocrats living in a Southern city, and followed the path of two marriages; I witnessed the conditions in a Confederate prisoner of war camp during the Civil War; I came to know the parish of a middle-aged recovering alcoholic Catholic priest in New England; I was part and parcel of the dramatic changes to a town and region due to rapid development and industrialization; I wore the clothes of a Jew unjustly imprisoned in Tsarist Russia; I walked on the land and through the lives of a family’s three generations; I traipsed through the halls of government, privy to political machinations; I stood on the bloodied field of Gettysburg.

I knew these people. I knew them so well that if I passed them on the street, I would first have stared, as if seeing a long lost friend, and then I would have greeted them. They were indelibly etched into memory; they had installed themselves as what worthy heroes and villains felt and looked like, what the fleshed out garb of humanity wore, on the printed page.

There was, for me, a feeling of family when I read these novels. Family that I grieved for when they were no more because they died, or when I read the last page and closed the book – because they were no more on the page. Except in memory. And some lingered for quite a spell.

And isn’t that what we want a good book to do? Cast a spell? Take us out of our ordinary lives into someone else’s ordinary life made extra ordinary by their life circumstances.

That’s what I want a good book to do.

In the Pulitzer novel list, there were some disappointments, but more were page turners than not. When was the last time you read one of those?

Some of the books woke me in the middle of the night because there was more they wanted to tell, more they wanted me to know. They were like an insistent child with a secret to reveal or something wondrous to show me. Some of the books kept me up hours past my bedtime because they were damn well-written. There was blood, and there was marrow that I could suck from the bones; it nurtured and it nourished – when the spirit is not fed, there is so much more at stake in your world than in the world outside your door.

So I continue to read the Pulitzers. Next I may look at the Man Booker Prizes, the John Newberry Medal winners, the Edgar Awards, the Prix Goncourt, the Miguel de Cervantes Prizes, or the National Book Awards. This could be addicting. Which is not to say I don’t read other books; I do. If one catches my attention, I will follow it like a bloodhound. I trust where my literate and literary senses lead me.

The award of a Pulitzer is not perfect, and some noteworthy books are ignored. That’s why it’s important to follow bloodhound sensibilities. If a book shows up on my radar, I check it out. If, after the first few pages, it doesn’t pull me in, then I close the book. I wasn’t always able to do this because I felt a duty, an obligation, to the book; no more. Our time to read books is limited, and there are only so many good books out there, and an even fewer number of those that you will [probably] have an opportunity to read in your lifetime.

Find a page turner. After all, shouldn’t that be the motion of your life?

Shouldn’t the language be beautiful and gripping, even if crude or a dialect or speech pattern you’re not familiar with? Shouldn’t the characters be noteworthy and recognizable, the companionship unmistakable and welcome? Shouldn’t it connect you to your humanity with all of its flawed and glorious threads – disturbing, comforting and reaffirming? Shouldn’t the story be familiar and unfamiliar? Shouldn’t the story travel you down roads not yet encountered? Shouldn’t a good story widen your curiosity and knowledge of the world you live in? Shouldn’t the story draw from you the deepest emotions, stir what you may have forgotten or tried mightily to? Shouldn’t the story buffet your sensibilities and wake you up? For me, the answers to all my questions are a resounding sky- and heart-rending YES.

For what I have discovered and rediscovered is myself, and pieces of me that were caught and entangled in other things that fragmented me, made me forget who I was. There are pieces of me in all the characters I have met. There are pieces of me I have recognized, retrieved, welcomed home, cleaned up, or let go of in these books. Call it a literary soul retrieval. Call it a literary redemption. Call it a Literary Love Fest. Whatever you call it – give me a good and worthy story.