5.12.2016

What Do I Want to Write?

That's always the biggest question, isn't it? And yet, for as many words as I've combined together, through keyboard or pencil or pen, it is still a difficult question to answer. Why do I write? Because I have to, I say, and so say the writers. The philosopher in me has to doubt: and he has to doubt that I actually want to write.

Because I have to doubt anything I think I want.

I can only want what I have been exposed to. I can only think I know what I want based on my experiences, which are based on my circumstances, which alas, I have not entirely decided on my own. /enddigression

One key to understanding what I want to write is understanding what I want (or "want") to read. Lit Reactor had a post today about lazy readers ("lazy fuckers") who are too dependent on Amazon. I am not one of these readers. I thought it curious that the writer of this article assumed their readers all depended on Amazon for their next book purchases as opposed to going to a bookstore. Is this really the state of the book-buying public? Perhaps that shows my own bias: I am fortunate to live in a city with a plethora of stores: one Myopic would be more than enough for a single town, yet I can go months (years?) without having shopped there due to going to other bookstores.

Likewise, I travel, and when I travel, I make it a point to visit bookstores (see: St. Louis / San Francisco).

You find books you never knew you even wanted to read. It's the same with record stores as I've made this point before: you don't know what you really want and being surrounded by all of these possibilities is so much grander experience than relying only on Spotify or Amazon. /enddigression

5.06.2016

Tim Kinsella - Let Go and Go On and On and Coincidences

May 4th, 2016: The anniversary of the tragedy at Kent State where members of the National Guard murdered unarmed students. The same day, I read a passage of this novel where a radio broadcaster details the fallout of the tragedy.

May 5th, 2016: Woody Allen hates bike lanes. I read a chapter of this novel titled 'Annie Hall (1977)' where the main character, based off the life of actress and model Laurie Bird, has fictional interactions with Woody Allen.

May 6th, 2016: I read the passage of this novel where Laurie Bird and her boyfriend Art Garfunkel have dinner with Ringo Starr. I get off the couch, return to my bedroom, and hear my upstairs neighbors playing 'A Hard Day's Night.'

As any good atheist and/or existentialist, I don't think there's any inherent meaning in coincidences likes these. However, it does force me to take at least some note of these connections. I believe that is the thing that makes a good writer or an artist: to be able to establish connections where there may not seem to be any.

5.04.2016

Literary Chicago: F. Scott Fitzgerald - 'Tender is the Night'

via Calumet 412
If I knew this book was going to have so many great references to Chicago, I would have read it sooner. The city can be both stuffy and vulgar. Interesting to read about the North and South Sides in literature, particularly from 80 years ago.
"Once in his youth he could have gone to Chicago as fellow and docent a the university, and perhaps become rich there and owned his own clinic instead of being only a minor shareholder in a clinic. But when he had thought of what he considered his own thin knowledge spread over that whole area, over all those wheat fields, those endless prairies, he had decided against it. But he had read about Chicago in those days, about the great feudal families of Armour, Palmer, Field, Crane, Warren, Swift, and McCormick and many others, and since that time not a few patients had come to him from that stratum of Chicago and New York." (126)

"Well there's a North Side and a South Side and they're very much separated. The North Side is chic and all that, and we've always lived over there, at least for many years, but lots of old families, old Chicago families, if you know what I mean, still live on the South Side. The University is there. I mean it's stuffy to some people, but anyhow it's different from the North Side. I don't know whether you understand." (152)

"Suddenly Nicole interrupted in succinct Chicagoese: "Bull!"" (154)