Salinger

JD Salinger: I've loved him my whole life. I wish I had written this.

"Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will."

To the man who gave us Esme, Franny, Zooey, Seymour Glass, and the best literary character in a red hunting hat, Holden Caulfield, rest in peace. Thank you for your contribution to the American literary canon, and on a more personal note, thank you for your voice that, generation after generation, helps get kids through that fucking awful time called adolescence. You have always been and always will be a revolution. I'll sit on top of the Atomic Bomb with you any time you want, baby.

"Mount Rushmore Carved With a Swiss Army Knife"

With the theatrical adaption of The Road finally arriving, Cormac McCarthy's ol' mug has been popping up everywhere - newspapers, magazines, online, right here. I remember reading The Crossing in high school, the second installment in his Border Trilogy, and not liking it. Despite its beautifully described violence, which I didn't know could exist, I was confused and too young to understand such a sparse world and such a different view on humanity. The Road, however, destroyed my preemptive and immature view on McCarthy's writing. With 2010 quickly approaching, it will undoubtedly be considered one of the best books of this decade.

This is not my point though. Neither is Hilcoat's film adaptation of the book (I haven't seen it yet, but his previous film The Proposition was certifiably "badass," so I have pretty high hopes). My point comes down to this sweet little bitty right here:

This is Cormac McCarthy's typewriter. As the New York Times article explains, he bought it in 1963 for $50 and typed every novel of his on it.

And he's giving it away.

The proceeds, which are expected to be between $15,000 and $20,000, will go to his beloved Santa Fe Institute. Glenn Horrowitz, the rare-book dealer handling the sale, marvels at the "talismanic" quality to the typewriter that wrote novels like The Road, Blood Meridian, The Crossing, Child of God, etc.: "It's as if Mount Rushmore was carved with a Swiss Army knife."

I love typewriters. I love Olivetti typewriters. I love a writer of a bygone generation who refuses a computer, a word processor, electricity. But is not some part of him sentimental over the typewriter? Despite buying an exact replica on Ebay, won't he be nostalgic for that one he spent so many hours with, clacking away on his novels? I guess, as his literature would also lead you to believe, Mr. McCarthy is not a sentimental person. The typewriter must seem just an incidental tool in the process he loves and slaves over. He says in this great interview with The Wall Street Journal, one of two ever granted (his one with Oprah is dreadful and awkward to watch, but inspiring if you just close your eyes and imagine it's on the radio), writing itself is the vacation:

"I have no desire to go on a trip. My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold and anything else is just a waste of time. [...] I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing."

As always, well said.

In other news, YouWillGetPapercuts will be accepting tax deductible donations, anywhere from $5 to $15,000. Or $20,000. Whatever you can spare.

2666: Fears of a Fiction Writer

"Ivanov's fear was of a literary nature. That is, it was the fear that afflicts most citizens who, one fine (or dark) day, choose to make the practice of writing, and especially the practice of fiction writing, an integral part of their lives. Fear of being no good. Also fear of being overlooked. But above all, fear of being no good. Fear that one's efforts and striving will come to nothing. Fear of the step that leaves no trace. Fear of the forces of chance and nature that wipe away shallow prints. Fear of dining alone and unnoticed. Fear of going unrecognized. Fear of failure and making a spectacle of oneself. But above all, fear of being no good. Fear of forever dwelling in the hell of bad writers."~ Roberto Bolano

I like that he suggests that the day (or that one, shocking, Romantic moment) when a person decides she will be a writer and nothing more can be "fine" or "dark." Now you recognize your own identity but now that you recognize it, fate ties you inextricably to it. And that idea of darkness, I think, Bolano connects with the fear he so aptly describes. Because ultimately who can measure the goodness or badness of writing? What makes one writer better than the next? What makes one writer worse than all the rest? When a serious writer acts as his own judge, how can he accurately and fairly judge himself without severely hating or fiendishly loving everything that he writes? A writer is an egomaniac by nature, and I think Bolano is saying that too because there is a great anxiety about going "unnoticed." We want recognition and validation for our life paths we have chosen (or that have chosen us.) But the writers that inhabit Bolano's world don't just want to be famous writers of the Stephenie Meyer variety. They want to be famous and loved for their greatness and talent and genius, say, like Roberto Bolano himself. Don't we all.

"But the real romance is being young and writing with your friends."

Yesterday I finally had the chance to catch up on my Interview subscription, and in the September 2009 issue with Natalie Portman on the cover, there's a great interview that Aziz Ansari does with Jason Schwartzman. You can read the entire thing here, but I isolated this portion, about Schwartman's experience writing The Darjeeling Limited screenplay.

SCHWARTZMAN: The writing process was incredible. I wrote it with Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, and it took about two years. We ended up finishing the script in the Himalayas.

ANSARI: Wow! Geez. That's awesome.

SCHWARTZMAN: Yeah, it was fun. And then we came back and had to rewrite it all in New York. It sounds so romantic- and it was romantic, because I was with my two great friends and we really were working on something very personal- but it wasn't romantically beautiful all the time. It was rough at times. But the real romance is being young and writing with your friends.

ANSARI: Do you have any advice for young actors, such as myself?

SCHWARTZMAN: You don't need any advice from me, man. You're incredible! You're like the funniest motherfucker in the world.

ANSARI: Aw, come on.

SCHWARTZMAN: I'm serious. But let's see. I'm not really one for advice other than, if you can write, write. If you have the ability to write, then you should write. Be diligent about it.

Schwartzman knows that a lot of the best art was created by groups of 20-somethings who had nothing better to do than sit around all day drinking and talking shit and smoking unfiltered cigarettes in dingy apartments and unfurnished houses. Think H.D. and Ezra Pound. Think the Beats. Think Warhol's Factory (hello, that's how Interview mag started anyway). Let this Interview snippet be a rallying cry for all you writers out there and get your pens (or keyboards) moving! Jason Schwartzman commands it.

(image from Interview Magazine.)

Anger = Fuel

"I will confess to you now that anything I have ever accomplished as a writer, as somebody doing TV, as anything I have ever done in life down to, like, cleaning up my room, has been accomplished because I was going to show people that they were fucked up and wrong and that I was the fucking center of the universe, and the sooner they got hip to that, the happier they would all be … That’s what’s going on in my head."

-David Simon,

creator of "The Wire"

I am an unabashed fan of The Wire and David Simon has in many ways become the end-all-be-all to me, not only in his being a journalist, a screenwriter, a novelist, a newspaper advocate, etc., but because his anger seems palpable in anything he pours himself into. His ego may seem bigger than Baltimore, but at least he's a screenwriter with convictions.

His statement also brings up one of the bigger(biggest?) questions about writing, whether it's short stories, poems, essays, articles, novels, blogs: Who are you and why does what you're writing matter to me in my separate universe?

Sometimes, definitely in Mr. Simon's case, anger and self-righteousness can help the writer blaze on through that question. Others, as Dubus' quote a few posts back about Hemingway's "lack of talent" shows, have doubts about their worth as writers and their perception on the human condition.

So maybe we should take a lesson from David Simon every once in a while. If we hit a brick wall or come to an impasse filled with doubt, tear that shit down and shout, "I am the smartest motherfucker who ever constructed a sentence."

You Got Served

I'm a waitress and a poet. Sometimes these two roles intersect: I try to focus in on "the image" of a customer who's ordered something specific. What does calves liver say about you? How about French-toast-style bread pudding? So far many assumptions commonly made based on food prejudices have been wrong.

In the case of a woman I call “Veggie Burger,” she is not super friendly and organic-crunchtastic as one would guess. She’s actually a big time complainer and one of the most impatient and unhappy people I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how her husband puts up with it.

And then there are the old men who order spaghetti and meatballs. You expect them to be pretty uptight and a little mean, but they turn out to be the sweetest customers and the best tippers.

How about the guy who always orders orange juice, even with dinner? Is he concerned about his tooth enamel, because if so, I should really give him a straw. Does he have super evolved health consciousness? Is he warding off a cold? Was this his favorite childhood drink? I have so many questions and only one object- a citrus beverage- to act as the answer. So in the spirit of trying to use my day/night job as fuel for my writing, here’s a little poem (it’s bad) that I wrote the other night as an exercise in streamlining my money making talents with my love for lyricism:

orange juice

you ask for

orange juice,

and we’ve joked

about this drink

for weeks—whether

you’ll have that or

cappuccino instead—

and I want to tell you,

“forget the OJ

and take me,”

but I carry the cup

to your table. this glass

of orange juice

is nothing. it’s all the things

I could give you:

watercolor sketches

of west end avenue,

free tickets

to the new museum,

my body to hold

as you sleep,

homemade lentil

soup on saturday

mornings.

In Defense of the Word

"One writes out of a need to communicate and to commune with others, to denounce that which gives pain and to share that which gives happiness. One writes against one's solitude and against the solitude of others. One assumes that literature transmits knowledge and affects the behavior and language of those who read... One writes, in reality, for the people whose luck or misfortune one identifies with-- the hungry, the sleepless, the rebels, and the wretched of this earth-- and the majority of them are illiterate."~ Eduardo Galeano, 1978, translation by Bobbye Ortiz