The Lonely Work and a Turtle Named Whitman

Am I done with the new novel? Yes! Absolutely. I'm done. Or at least I'm probably...sort of done. I mean, I think the characters are all there. The story moves. But the ending might need a little work, and there's a chapter in the middle that's probably a little too long, and I still don't know if I'm quite comfortable with the opening and...no, I'm not done. But I will be. Someday.

And I'll have these pages on the left to thank. The notebook was a gift. It's large and floppy, with a kind of faux leather cover, light brown, and newsprint-like paper inside. For a year I didn't write much in it because of the paper. I'm fairly particular about my paper. When I'm writing fiction by hand, I have to use either a legal pad, because my father writes on legal pads, or the thick, bumpy, really nice paper that comes in really nice notebooks. This one on the left was not up to par. Or so I thought. Then, a few weeks ago, I had the chance to see a rare first edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass stashed away in the Providence Athenaeum. The paper was very similar to the stuff in my disrespected newsprint. There's a character in the novel who is found of Whitman, and a turtle named after the poet, too, so I took these little connections as signs, and put away the legal pad in favor of the floppy notebook. Plus, the paper is made in Japan and this novel is all about ninjas.

This week I spoke with engineers and scientists about cloud storage and the technological alternatives to testing new cosmetics and drugs on animals. These stories are not related. But they've got me thinking about sheep with too much lipstick and rouge grazing on the tops of clouds or maybe storing their excess makeup in these clouds so that their shepherd does not find them and use them himself. Or maybe they store their makeup in the clouds because they're afraid that if the shepherd finds them then he will realize they are smarter and more image-conscious than he thinks. He'll sit there under the stars and think, "Forget sheep-herding. There's no money in it. What I'll do is take these image-conscious sheep and go on the road. Start a song-and-dance show. With sheep!" Meanwhile, all the poor sheep want to do is hang out and graze and wear their makeup.

No, that's not right. I'll keep those stories separate.

Now for something completely different. Here's an NFL analyst and former quarterback, Trent Dilfer, talking about another quarterback, Terrell Pryor:

"He's putting in the lonely work that it takes to be successful at any position in this league."

The lonely work. I love that idea. And I think there's an element of lonely work to any pursuit or passion. The guy who plays quarterback in front of 80,000 people or the musician who sings before a packed stadium - they put in the solitary work to get to that crazy, crowded point. Unfortunately it appears that Pryor needs to put in quite a bit more lonely work, since he's not having a very good season.

From the NFL to the South African artist William Kentridge:

"There's always discovery in the making...the making has to be loose enough and open-ended enough for there to be a place for discovery."

And:

"In the work that I do there's a lot of place for not the unconscious but the non-planned to have a place and to lead to ideas...that's where the art comes from."

Scatalogical Stravinsky and the Taste of Crayons

This past weekend, at the Rhode Island Festival of Children’s Books and Authors, I had an amazing time talking with a bunch of great authors and illustrators. So, what do writers talk about when they hang out together? Books, naturally, and rainbow loom. And whether one should drop lemon wedges into glasses of water or just squeeze in the juice. And this guy, the Irish novelist Flann O'Brien, on the left. Another writer turned out to be a fan and I don’t often meet too many lovers of The Dalkey Archive. At one point, a few of us were stuck trying to remember the library song from Beauty and the Beast. That's when I knew I was with my kind of people. The author/illustrator Laurie Keller and I also had a great conversation about the necessity of working on your weird stuff, the art or writing out there on the fringes, which is often the material that keeps you inspired. So I’m going to spend a little time on the adventures of a character named Tim this week. He’s very odd.

Speaking of illustrators, a few months ago I met the artist Greg Hildebrandt, who, along with his brother, created the iconic Star Wars movie poster with Vader looming in the background. At the time I was actually interviewing an amazing kid named Justin Beckerman, who built his own one-person submarine, and kind of thinks with his hands. If Justin wants to understand how a motor works, he doesn’t look it up online. He takes the motor apart, moves things around, cleans different parts, replaces things, and then just gets it. The final story is here, and I probably could have written it without visiting, but I just had to meet this kid. Naturally, he was standing outside in his driveway taking apart a broken jet ski when I arrived (at night!), and it was quite a bonus when he took me next door to meet Hildebrandt, his neighbor.

The artist shared a few great stories about his youth, including the time he ate crayons because he wanted to know what the colors tasted like, and this little pearl of wisdom about creative work:

“It’s not all about inspiration. It’s about slow, steady, forward movement.”

Now on to the latest installment of Emersonian Reading Series. At the Providence Atheneaeum, a wonderful library, I read the first few pages of the famous composer Igor Stravinsky’s autobiography and found this delightful passage:

"...one of my earliest memories of sound will seem somewhat odd...I can see it now. An enormous peasant seated on the stump of a tree. The sharp resinous tang of fresh-cut wood in my nostrils.  The peasant simply clad in a short red shirt. His bare legs covered with reddish hair, on his feet birch sandals, on his head a mop of hair as thick and as red as his beard - not a white hair, yet an old man. He was dumb, but he had a way of clicking his tongue very noisily, and the children were afraid of him. So was I. But curiosity used to triumph over fear. The children would gather round him. Then, to amuse them, he would begin to sing. This song was composed of two syllables, the only ones he could pronounce...he made them alternate with incredible dexterity in a very rapid tempo. He used to accompany this clucking in the following way: pressing the palm of his right hand under his left armpit, he would work his left arm with a rapid movement, making it press on the right hand."

That's right, ladies and gentleman, one of history's greatest composers was drawn to music because of some guy making fart noises.

A nice image early in Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October:

"The water was coated with the bilge oil of numberless ships, filth that would not evaporate in the low temperatures and left a black ring on the rocky walls of the fjord as though from the bath of a slovenly giant."

A fragment from a great passage in one of Roberto Bolano’s big books:

"...and he dreamed that to escape the bullets he ducked underwater and let himself be carried along by the current, coming up only to breathe and going under again, and in this way he traveled miles and miles of river, sometimes holding his breath for three minutes or four or five..."

And here’s the Irish playwright JM Synge, in his memoirs of time spent on the Aran Islands, noting what sounds very much like an early minimalist running trend:

"Michael walks so fast when I am out with him that I cannot pick up my steps, and the sharp-edged fossils which abound in the limestone have cut my shoes to pieces. The family held a consultation on them last night, and in the end it was decided to make me a pair of pampooties, which I have been wearing today among the rocks. They consist simply of a piece of raw cowskin, with the hair outside, laced over the toe and round the heel with two ends of fishing-line that work round and are ties above the instep."

Is anyone surprised the Irish were early proponents of minimalist running, though? They invent everything first.

Finally, after much internal reflection, I have arrived at an answer to a question a budding writer named John posed to me earlier this year during a school visit: How do you research a subject that is entirely fictional? So, to back up, in my talks I stress the importance of becoming an expert in whatever subject you happen to be writing about. Cryptography or baking supply chain logistics, for example. But John was confused because he wanted to write about mages and mages don’t really exist. To most people, anyway. So when John first asked me the question, I suggested gathering as much information as he could from other works of fiction.

Now I’ve got a better idea. John, you might not like this, as it does mean more work, but I think you have to write the book you would need to read to write your book. Hmmm....let's try that again. So, to become an expert on an imaginary person, place, or thing, you have to really think through and flesh out that subject. If you want to write a book about an alien planet, you have to build that planet in your head. As for mages, I’d at least sketch out The Complete History of Mages or Mages 101 or The Guide to Becoming a Mage, or maybe even all three, before you start writing your book. Look at that Rowling lady. The imaginary book Tales of Beedle the Bard became so real in her head that she actually sat down and wrote it out!

Sorry if that’s disappointing John, but I could tell you were a bright kid, so I’m sure you’re capable. 

Oh, and in other news, I found out one of my articles from last year was cited as a kind of honorable mention in the Best American Science & Nature Writing 2013. So that's nice.

Everyday We Know a Little More

When I spotted this sculpture on a lawn down in Providence, I desperately wanted it to get up and walk. For this strange desire I blame Matt Denton. He's the ingenious fellow behind the Mantis, a massive, six-legged ride-able robot. I wrote about his work in Popular Science; the article is here.

While we're on journalism, here’s a quote from a scientist I interviewed recently: “There is no way human beings can comprehend the deepest secrets of the universe, but everyday we know a little more. We accumulate more knowledge so we can appreciate our life in the universe a little more.”

To a young reader named Devin: I'm sorry, but I lost your address. Thanks for the notes. That's so cool that you have a fort down the road from your house and that you discover something new every time you go there. As for the changes to Fish, I like your suggestion. Thimble definitely could have been Thread. But there's something about the name Thimble that works a little better for me, and connects more with the other, not-very-pirate-like side of him.

Some kind of illness knocked me out last week, and I took advantage of the time off to read both versions of Kerouac’s On the Road. I’m speaking of the original draft, which he wrote in three weeks on a single piece of paper taped together at numerous points, known as the scroll, and the finished, published version that came out several years later. Comparing the two, and reading them back to back, made me want to yell at his editor. The finished one feels and looks like a novel, but the original is a madman’s soul spilled out on the page. It is real. I did not feel like I was reading the work of a writer. I felt like I had a seat inside someone's brain. And I love that the narrator does not refer to himself as a writer in the original scroll. He’s just telling this insane story that he absolutely, desperately has to tell. The final, published version is more polished, and has many of the same lines and scenes, but it lacks that frantic energy.

A few lines great lines, which do turn up in both, I believe:

“I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”

“It was like the arrival of Gargantua; preparations had to be made to widen the gutters of Denver and foreshorten certain laws to fit his suffering bulk and bursting ecstasies.”

That last one reminded me of the great Sappho fragment, via Salinger: "Raise high the roof beams, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man."

This scene also stood out:

“When Pauline saw me with Neal and Louanne her face darkened...she sensed the madness they put in me. ‘I don’t like you when you’re with them.’ ‘Ah it’s allright, it’s just kicks. We only live once. We’re having a good time.’ ‘No, it’s sad and I don’t like it.’”

You’re mostly seeing this story unfold from the narrator’s perspective, and he’s generally thrilled and excited about all that’s happening. Now, though, he lets Pauline speak, and as a reader you’re left with a better sense of what it might have been like to be around them. There had to be a powerful undercurrent of sadness or desperation.

This is a common writer’s trick – the narrator suddenly noticing someone reacting differently to a scene or sequence. As the reader you’re exposed to the narrator’s perspective, and he or she is convincing you that everything is one way, and then they point out that someone’s crying, and you recall that you’re only seeing this story from one particular vantage point, and that it might be a wholly different story to the others on the scene. Look for it. Unexpected tears are everywhere in fiction.

And speaking of roads…I could not throw away an old plastic shower curtain last week. Just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Why? Because of The Road. The insane, post-apocalyptic Cormac McCarthy novel. I have the audio version and listen to it often and when I was trying to throw out the old curtain I kept thinking how the man and the boy really could have used that plastic sheet while they were wandering around, to use as a roof or cover from the rain. So it’s in my garage. Stuffed in a corner. In case there’s an apocalypse.

It's Just Not Like Music

This well-dressed gentleman on the left greeted visitors to the Martha's Vineyard Agricultural Fair this summer. Who would have thought the grim reaper would go in for a strapless dress?

The summer was moderately hot, but our local power company recently informed us that we are far more efficient than our neighbors, and it’s only right to thank Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Ever since reading this passage from Love in the Time of Cholera -

“…in the end they were convinced of the merits of the Roman strategy against heat, which consists of closing houses during the lethargy of August in order to keep out the burning air from the street, and then opening them up completely to the night breezes.”

- we have been using the technique at home. 

In the past few weeks, I spoke with various experts about cryptography, neutrinos, viruses, and the process by which bread, rolls, and other freshly baked goods move from ovens to delivery trucks. Surprisingly fascinating. In fact I’m embarrassed to confess that I found the baking supply chain stuff more interesting than the secret sharing. Perhaps this was due to degree of difficulty.

Recently we took our kids fishing for the first time, and in doing some reading beforehand I came across this line from the nature writer Ellington White:

“I have never yet caught a fish on a first cast, nor have I ever made a first cast without thinking I would catch a fish.”

The kids were surprisingly patient and eventually pulled a few snappers out of the bay. Here’s a very different quote, from a physicist I recently spoke with about the challenges of communicating science to the public:

“The language and the concepts are built on so many layers. It's just not like music. You can know nothing about music and still appreciate the song. Science is much harder that way.”

One of our neighbors recently had their house painted. The painters posted a sign with the following words outside: "Led Paint. No Drinking! No eating!"

When I noticed this misspelling - LED is the acronym for light-emitting diode, a cool and bright little light source – en route to work, it set me thinking about a paint filled with these little lights, and what would happen if you were to ingest it. Would your stomach shine? Would bright light rush out from your nostrils, mouth, and ears? After a moment or two spent imagining that, I started wondering why the painters felt the need for that sign. Had some desperately thirsty neighborhood flaneur drank their paint before? Had he or she mistaken it for a container of almond milk, perhaps?

Here’s a good quote from the dog in those movies with Charles Grodin:

"Don't only practice your art. Force your way into its secrets."

Speaking of art, there has been progress on the art side of the soda bottle book. I hope to have more updates soon. 

And, finally, a correction, and a writing lesson. In my first children’s novel, Fish, the main character tries goat milk for the first time and describes the flavor as somewhat grassy. We are all different, and I suppose someone could draw that conclusion from a sip of the stuff, but I recently bought a pint and tried it with my kids. We concluded that it is actually quite creamy, with a more tangy ring to it than regular milk. I don’t know that my uninformed description in Fish damaged the book substantially – Saul Bellow wrote a novel about Africa without setting foot on the continent! – but given all my prognosticating about the importance of becoming an expert, I feel it’s only right to admit my error.

Maybe in a Fish sequel I’ll have him revise his assessment.

The Selective Rendering of Otherwise Disparate Materials

On Monday night, after an insane thunderstorm, a strangely beautiful yellow light shone in through the windows around dusk. The houses and trees across the street get the best light at that hour so I went outside to look at them. The yellow light was everywhere and the most incredible rainbow arched perfectly across the sky. This rainbow was thick. Honestly. If I had a spoon with a long enough handle I'm convinced I could have scooped some out. Would it have tasted like sherbet?

I don't know, but every single color of the spectrum was clearly delineated. The sky inside the arch was bright blue and to the right of the right arm of the rainbow it was several shades darker. There was a faint second rainbow as well, which you can kind of see in the photo above. So I grabbed the half-sleeping kids out of bed and they asked if we’d find a pot of gold. Which reminds me...

Both of my daughters found a four leaf clover this week. One through determination, the other through luck.  

I stumbled across a great cartoonist. His work is here.

At night I’ve been reading the Irish writer Edna O'Brien’s memoir, Country Girl. It’s wonderful so far. I became stuck on this sentence, though: "It was the first time that I came face to face with madness and feared it and was fascinated by it." I really wanted her to add another “I” before “feared it.” But that would alter the meaning; she had probably come face to face before and not feared it.

Her recollections of a farmhand named Carnero are wonderful.

The illustrator Katherine Roy and I are working to come up with some titles for the soda bottle book. The working title had been BOTTLE OF POP. But that does not get to the fantastic journey element of the story. So we’re still thinking.

In doing some research for the ninja novel I read an incredible story about an ancient samurai. It’s at the end of a battle. This samurai sees another warrior fleeing across the river. He calls him a coward and challenges him to stay and fight. The other warrior comes back. The samurai defeats him and sees that he is barely older than a boy and resembles his son. He wants to let him go, but other samurai are coming. They will kill the boy if he does not. So the samurai kills him, granting him a more noble death. Then he looks inside the young warrior’s satchel and finds a flute. He retires his sword and never kills again.

That’s how I remember it, anyway. I could have messed up some little details, but the one I clearly remember is the flute. Who would think he’d find a flute? It’s such a gentle, peaceful, human object. And it really shows the power of detail in a story.   

Sometimes when I become derailed at the computer, and find myself reading something unrelated to the task at hand, I close my eyes and remain in place for five or ten seconds. That usually works. Soon enough I refocus.

During one of these derailments I found an amazing story from 1966 about Celtics legend Bill Russell redesigning the basketball shoe and insisting it be affordable. What a change from today’s stars. He even redesigned the tread on the bottom to make it easier to stop short. The sports world needs more people like him. 

And a few quotes from the week’s readings...

A biography of TS Eliot by Peter Ackroyd:

“Eliot could, as it were, pick up a poem where he had left off. He had an extraordinary gift of synthesis so that what seems to be one poetic persona, or one melodic shape, is in fact the result of compression and the selective rendering of otherwise disparate materials.”

A few years ago I met the writer Louis Auchincloss and he told me he had the same ability. He could work on a story while sitting in court, waiting for his case to be heard, then switch into lawyer mode when his turn came, and promptly pick the story back up where he left off while riding the subway back to his office. I’m not so lucky. It takes me some time to return to the world of the story if I’ve been away.

45. “Then in the summer of this year he travelled to Munich, where he completed ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ He transcribed it into his notebook and then forgot about it. Conrad Aiken said that he had been ‘heartlessly indifferent to its fate.’”

Ah, but this makes sense! He wrote something great. He was satisfied. He expelled the story and the idea and the emotion from his head and his heart and got it all down on the page. When you do that well enough, publishing is an afterthought. It’s business. It’s nothing.

And a quote from Dr. Seuss, from the book The Cat Behind the Hat:

"If I can be of influence to one child in this great vice-ridden country, my life, I feel, has not been lived in vain.”