The writer slips, rough-shod, on his sounds. He gives no care to the staves of the barrel of his words, looking only to whether or not the metaphorical wine stays put when it pours. And it never rains but it pours, does it? The sound of his tired cliché escaping him, he reels in, mock terror. "Oh no! What will Chuck Palahniuk or David Foster Wallace or Steig Laarson think of me now?" These masters of the public opinion, so far below me in their art, the art which we share at a breakfast table over toast after I slept in their beds and drooled on their pillows and found their secret stash of pornography (Meyers' trilogy) under their mattress, these I use to level my table when I have need.
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Meyers and DFW. Things must be bad.
ReplyDeleteTransgressional fiction and that oh-so-interesting tattooed girl.
True horror.
Did I tell you my aunt with the brain tumor is dying again? Did I tell you that the way my uncle took care of her tirelessly for more than a year without telling anyone what was happening, much less letting us help, reminded me so much of that piece you wrote years ago ("all he wanted was for her to hurt less"), that I tear up every time I think about it?
I'm telling you this because what you write matters, because you understand things without ever having experienced them, and you can express it to others in a way that helps. (I think probably it's mostly just that you do your best to be honest, which is what those other authors lack.)
I think that gift, that determination, is probably why your metaphorical wine stays where it's poured, regardless of your satisfaction with your too-new or too-old or too-torn wineskins.
I agree. Robby, what you write matters, whether or not this was fiction-y or not. (Ha. More hyphens.)
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm not worried about what I write mattering so much as I am worried about what they write being blindly accepted by everyone else, all the time, forever.
ReplyDeleteBothers me.
That seems like a magnificent waste.
ReplyDeleteWhat they do and think and accept is their business, not yours.
I guarantee that many of the people who like those authors do so because they want things to be easy, which is too bad but still their business. But probably some of them aren't blindly accepting the things they like, even if you don't like them.
Have you read the girl with mythical tats or dfw? They're terrible.
ReplyDeleteI have. Both.
ReplyDeleteNo. If it doesn't interest me, I don't read it. (Exception made for textbooks and required books in classes.)
ReplyDeleteSorry, Janelle. What drove you to that?
ReplyDelete... you did.
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed at your subtle Auden reference. "Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead." Also, I want you to know that I can no longer even hear the name David Foster Wallace without hearing you sneer in my head. Yes, your imagined facial expression is so annoyed that it makes a sound.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it ruins things for you, but I've never read Auden. Sounds good, though.
ReplyDeleteIt's just that quote I mentioned. Every English textbook gives him a shout-out, so you probably subconsciously picked it up. OR MAYBE YOU ARE SLEEP DEPRIVED AND YOU ARE CHANNELING HIS GHOST
DeleteGO TO BED
MWAHAHAHAHAHA
ReplyDelete