Sometimes I go on what I call "book phases," periods of time where I read everything that falls into a specific category. My categories can be very vague ("dark and creepy," i.e., Tom Franklin's Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, Deb Caletti's He's Gone, and Graham Greene's Brighton Rock) or extremely specific (any Agatha Christie I haven't read except for the one where Hercule Poirot dies).
Lately, I've been on a non-fiction kick. It started back in February, when my dad and I went to the Southern Voices event in Hoover, Alabama. Ann Patchett was the headlining author, and since I'd just started keeping this blog (and it was my birthday), my dad bought me her book of essays, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Prior to this, I'd read some non-fiction - The Perfect Storm, A Death in Belmont, In the Heart of the Sea, and a few such others - but specifically non-fiction that really qualified as narrative non-fiction. An avid novel reader, I was reluctant to stray too far away from the concept of a clear narrative. I loved reading my mother's eloquent essays, but the thought of sitting down to read a collection of essays was somewhat bizarre to me. It felt eerily similar to doing school reading, except this time I was the person forcing myself to do so, and I wasn't going to get an A for it.
I began reading Patchett's book on our flight coming back to Boston. I was quickly sucked into the work. Each essay was different from the one preceding it, although her love of books was, obviously, pervasive throughout the whole collection. I loved reading about experiences that I couldn't relate to, like the story of her first and unsuccessful marriage, and even more about the ones that resonated deeply, such as her attachment to real, brick-and-mortar, independent bookstores. The whole time I was reading her essays, I kept thinking to myself, "Wow, I should definitely be a writer, too," or "I should take out a loan and start my own bookstore somewhere." (Needless to say, I have accomplished neither task, but at least for the duration of her book I felt like I could, someday).
After Patchett, I took on Paris to the Moon. Since childhood I've been a Francophile--or maybe a Paris-ophile is a more apt term--and again, I found the book riveting. Perhaps because I'd also lived abroad for several years, I loved reading about Gopnik's attempts to assimilate. In Poland, unlike in Paris, you don't purchase Christmas lights that are on a wire hoop (a struggle Gopnik experienced every Parisian Christmas). But you do get your Christmas tree right before Christmas, which is difficult for an American to come to terms with. (I'll never forget the look of pity and revulsion a shop owner gave me when I asked on December 1st where all the trees were). It's trite and cliched to say it, but often reading reminds readers that their experiences, no matter how personal or deeply felt, are never real lonely. There is inevitably someone else in the world who has felt similarly or dealt with the same problem, and books can be a comforting reminder.
Wishing to remain in France in my reading travels, I picked up A Moveable Feast next. I should preface this paragraph by mentioning that I am actively not a Hemingway fan. I found The Old Man and the Sea (required reading in high school) tolerable, but could barely stand to finish Farewell to Arms. Spending a year doing my Master's in an English department made me aware of his reputation as sexist and misogynistic. (I won't comment on whether or not I think this is a useful train of thought when one is reading. Suffice it to say, I did not like Hemingway's style and planned to avoid him forever). Somewhat to my surprise, I found the Hemingway in A Moveable Feast rather likable, and more importantly, I found his musings on life abroad quite touching and beautiful. He is so earnest (pardon the pun), and while it may be entirely a pose, it's convincing nevertheless. The last line, where Hemingway writes, "But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy," made me weep, because it reminded me both of my parents and of my own courtship with my now-husband. My parents didn't have a lot of money for a good long while when they were first together, and often my dad ends stories of their early courtship by saying, "We were poor, but we had love." As a child, I always pitied my parents when I heard this, even though I recognized its beauty. But my husband and I were also financially insecure for the whole time we were dating. Gordon would sometimes go play his guitar on the street and earn the equivalent of about $20 in an hour. He'd bring back most of the money, but on his way home, would always stop off at my favorite cukiernia (similar to a bakery, but with only sweet baked goods) and bring home two paczki filled with rose preserves. It was difficult and horrible to be worrying about money always, but we're past those times now, and we joke that we'll never get divorced, because we've already gone through tough times together and got married in spite of it all.
The point of that lengthy digression is that I loved A Moveable Feast. However calculated the earnestness and naivete are, they are utterly persuasive and charming and it's hard not to understand the magnetism that so many of his acquaintances observed in Hemingway.
The book I just finished also struck a chord, but in a different way. I read the memoir Townie, by Andre Dubus III. I had just met Mr. Dubus--for only a moment--at the Newburyport Literary Festival. It's a rather odd feeling to read a memoir by someone you've met, however briefly. Memoirs are so personal, so intimate, that it feels awkward to read them, unless you know the author is safely long gone.
I couldn't put Townie down. I was reading it in hardcover, but I lugged it along with me everywhere. Nothing about Dubus's experiences is remotely similar to mine, other than that both of us have fathers who are writers. My parents may not have had a lot of money during my early childhood, but the depths of poverty Dubus lived through were far worse than anything I experienced. My parents, especially my mother, worked a lot, but were still home for much of the time, and always on hand to drive us to ballet or piano or school. Until I went to college, I never skipped a class, and was scandalized when a high school friend once decided to skip Physics. I never did drugs and had my first tiny taste of alcohol toward the end of my first year of college. I didn't box or feel enraged or damaged. But the way Dubus has evoked his life is so novelistic that you can almost forget you're reading a true story. That's not to say the details aren't vividly rendered, because they are. But he has such a powerful narrative voice that the story in the memoir is inescapable. In the end, I read the book so voraciously not because I was eager to know about this author's life, but rather because I simply couldn't not read the story to see how it turned out.
And Dubus writes about his early writing attempts so starkly, and with such brutal honesty, that it's all the more wonderful to know he's become a hugely successful author. While Hemingway was earnest and naive, his confidence in his own writing never wavers, at least not on paper. A Moveable Feast is in no way a book about how a writer became a writer. Although many critics have pointed out that episodes in A Moveable Feast are drawn out in novels Hemingway wrote, the truth is that the book is really about life in Paris. Hemingway's life, to be sure, but certainly not about his life as a writer. Townie, on the other hand, although it is less self-conscious, is on every page the story of Dubus's becoming a writer.
After I finished reading, I couldn't help but wonder why so many of the best writers have come from tough backgrounds. Certainly many great writers grow up in the lap of luxury, or at least in a happy and secure lap. But I don't think it's a stretch to say a majority of them have had a lot of heartache to deal with. It seems too easy to say that unhappy children write to create a new and happier world. If that were true, nobody would ever write a sad book or a memoir. (And as we all know, these days if you're young and can rattle off a memoir about drug addiction, you're destined for the bestseller list). I also don't think it has anything to do with escapism, although I've heard that answer offered. Sometimes I've wondered if I could ever be a fiction writer. My life has been so happy that I feel my only recourse is to write essays about real experiences. I don't think I've had all that many experiences out of which to create a fictional universe. But it's hard not to think that something else must compel people to write. After all, many unhappy people don't grow up to become writers.
I suppose I'll wonder forever about this elusive, mysterious, writerly quality that drives people to write. Maybe, probably - it has nothing to do with being an unhappy child. There is almost certainly something else that all writers have in common. It might just have to do with needing to write, needing to tell stories. And perhaps it's a good thing that it's impossible to identify. Whatever it is, I will never cease being grateful that writers write.
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