The life that matters

In some ways I am reading the novel as I walk, or nap, or drive to the store for milk. When I am away from the book it lives its shadow life, its afterlife, and that, as the believers have always insisted, is the only life that matters.

Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies

Writing doesn't just happen while words are being put down on paper or on a screen. Writers write while they are walking, driving, reading, preparing a meal or even sleeping. Writing stems from thought, and thinking, much of it at the subconscious level, can take place anywhere at anytime.

What is true for writers is also true of readers, as Sven Birkerts points out in his book The Gutenberg Elegies.  You don't stop reading when you put down the book, at least not if the book has in any way engaged you. If it's a novel you are reading, you may wonder why the characters did what they did. Or what will they do next? What is the significance of this or that in the plot? A work of nonfiction, especially something full of ideas, might provoke thoughts of another kind. Can this be true? What does it mean? What does it mean for me? How does this change what I think about that?

Birkerts calls such thoughts about a book its afterlife. A good book's life does not end when the last page is turned. Like a pebble tossed into a pond, it produces ripples. These ripples may continue for minutes, hours or days. Sometimes they can affect us for the rest of our lives. We never stop reading the book, even if we never open it again.

Familiarity breeds cliches

The difference between originality and cliche is familiarity. Those expressions we think of as cliches are that only because we have heard them so many times before. The first time we heard them, they probably seemed clever.

This occurs to me while browsing through Happy as a Clam, a collection of similes more than 200 pages long complied in the 1990s by Larry Wright, an owner of a bed and breakfast along the Mississippi River who obviously had lots of time on his hands.

Take the expression "good as gold" as an example. A cliche? Yes, indeed. But it probably wasn't back in the 19th century when Charles Dickens put it in one of his books. How about "easy as falling off a log"? I'll bet it was thought original and amusing when Mark Twain first used it. Twain also wrote "easy as playing hooky," which may still sound amusing to us because we probably haven't heard it as often.

As for "happy as a clam," that is apparently so old that Wright couldn't find anyone to attribute it to. "Happy as a lark" goes back to Anne Bronte. Other similes may seem better to us, in part, because they less familiar: "happy as a new millionaire" (Margaret Mitchell), "happy as a pig eating pancakes," "happy as a kid with a new astronaut suit," "happy as a fly in a molasses factory," "happy as a lizard on a sun-washed rock" (Dean Koontz).

"Read him like a book" is now hopelessly cliched. But not "read him like a fifty-foot 'See Rock City' sign" (Robert R. McCammon). McCammon, the author of horror novels, pops up often in this book, an indication not just of McCammon's gift for clever similes but also Wright's reading taste. Both Stephen King and Dean Koontz are also well-represented here. King has given us "hard as trying to swallow a doorknob," "glared at each other like motorists with tangled cars" and "useless as talking to an empty cat food can."

Short similes, such as "happy as a clam," seem more likely to turn into cliches, simply because they are easy to remember and repeat (even if we have no idea why a clam would be happy). Meanwhile, "rear end as wide as a bank president's desk," also by Stephen King, will probably always bring a smile because it is too long to repeat endlessly.

Writers who read, or not

Should a writer of fiction read the fiction of other writers? There appears to be two schools of thought on this question, perhaps three: 1) Yes, you might learn something. Besides writers should like to read. 2) No,   you don't want other writers influencing what you write. 3) Read, but do it between your own writing projects. Most writers always seem to have a project in the works, so I don't know how practical the third option may be.

James M. Cain

I recently came upon an interview with novelist James M. Cain, author of Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, published in 1983 in The Armchair Detective. Cain recalled meeting Dashiell Hammett without realizing at the time that the man was Dashiell Hammett. The stranger had complimented Cain's work, and Cain said he faked a polite reply. He not only didn't recognize Hammett, but had never read his books.

"I am often somewhat embarrassed talking to other novelists because I haven't read their work," Cain admitted. "Partly because I'm afraid to."

Cain explained, "I don't read a novel just to be reading it. When I read a novel, I'm rewriting it in my own mind, I'm tearing it down, I'm building it up ... it exhausts me."

Then he added that writers who admire other writers can sometimes start imitating them,, whether deliberately or not. He mentioned Rudyard Kipling writing like Bret Harte and Ring Lardner writing like Frank Sullivan. Many writers have copied Hemingway's style.

I happened to meet Mark Winegardner shortly after reading his novel Crooked River Burning, and I commented that the book's style reminded me of John Dos Passos. Winegardner admitted that he had been reading Dos Passos just before he wrote the novel. I wish I would have asked whether the style choice was deliberate or whether he was just under the Dos Passos influence when he wrote the novel. Winegardner later wrote some successful Godfather novels, proving that he is skilled at copying another writer's style.

Other writers could never refrain from reading books by other writers as Cain did. They simply enjoy reading too much. They like seeing how other writers solve writing problems. Or they earn extra money by writing book reviews or even by teaching college literature classes. Obviously no one answer to the question above works for all.

Books in boxes

A book never looks more alluring, more essential, than when it is about to get packed away in a box.

Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies

I seem to recall writing once before about the appeal of books in boxes, though I believe my focus on that occasion was on taking books out of boxes, not putting them into boxes.

Sven Birkerts

I read the above line by Sven Birkerts while I was still heavily engaged in the act of putting books into boxes. I have since moved from my three-bedroom Ohio house to a two-bedroom Florida condo, which unlike the spacious house has virtually no room for books.

About half of my books in boxes went to the auctioneer (trothauctions.com),who soon will have some tempting bargains to offer collectors and dealers. Fine first editions of Lonesome Dove, The Killer Angels, Death Wish and The Queen's Gambit among many others will soon be up for grabs. Mostly what I've kept are reading copies and personal treasures, and most of these are now stilled boxed in a storage unit.

If there's anything more alluring than books in a box it is books in a closed and sealed box. Except for labels like "nonfiction, mostly unread" and "fiction, read, A-C," these boxes are each a mystery. What exactly is inside? When will I be able to open it? When will I be able to read those books, or at least look at them again?

I have focused up to now on just one if the adjectives Birkerts uses to describe books in boxes: alluring. But his other adjective, essential, seems apt as well. When I was busy for days putting books into boxes, some to sell and some to keep, almost every book I picked up seemed essential somehow, even when I couldn't put my finger on why. How can I part with this book when I haven't read it yet? Or, how can I hide this book away in a box when I haven't read it yet. This book is too good to put in a box. That book I had forgotten about, but now I want read it immediately. And so it went.

In one sense books are easy to pack away in boxes. Find the right box — not too big and not too small — and books will fill it up neatly and quickly. I discovered that most liquor boxes worked perfectly, and I found myself — someone who never drinks liquor —visiting a liquor store once or twice a week seeking empty boxes. Even then I couldn't find enough. Yes, packing books into boxes was easy peasy, yet at the same time it was one of the most difficult tasks I've faced in my life.

Beginning again at square one

I have no memory, but I am not stupid.

Christine, in Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson

Imagine waking up each day remembering nothing about the day before. So it goes with Christine Lucas, the woman at the heart of S.J. Watson's 2011 novel Before I Go to Sleep. The man in bed with her is a stranger; the face she sees in the mirror looks decades older than the one she thinks she should have.

Christine narrates her own story in the form of a diary she begins at the suggestion of a doctor who works with her in secret because her husband disapproves. Dr. Nash calls her each morning to tell her where she has hidden the diary. She reads it to discover anew what few details about her life she has been able to gather and record. Yet these details are often contradictory. Did she lose her memory because of an accident or as a result of a beating? Did she once write a novel or not? Did she have a son named Adam, and if so, is he dead or alive? Why are there so few pictures of her life? Did her best friend really move to New Zealand? Who is lying to her, Dr. Nash or this man who tells her each morning that he is her husband? Is there anyone she can trust?

To make such a story both believable and thrilling takes great skill and diligence, and Watson performs masterfully, which explains why this was a best-seller a decade ago. The reader may figure it all out before  Christine does, but the reader has the advantage of being able to remember the previous chapter.

Winter sports words

For several years now I have been checking the Sol Steinmetz book There's a Word for It in November to see what words entered the English language 100 years previously. Steinmetz lists year by year the words that first appeared somewhere in print.

Ulrich Salchow

Looking at the 1921 list I notice that several new words that year had to do with winter sports: goalie, power play, salchow and slalom. I don't know why this might have been so, but it may have had some connection with the Winter Olympics that would be held for the first time in 1924 in France. Perhaps sports like hockey, figure skating and skiing were just gaining popularity in 1921. These words may have already been in use among insiders who actually participated in these sports, but now they were starting to appear in newspapers, magazines and books. I'm just guessing here, but that seems to be the way new words come into the language: First they are mentioned in speech by a few people, then somebody writes them down and they gradually become familiar to the general population.

It seems easier to understand why certain other words appeared on the scene in 1921: Chaplinesque, Chekhovian, Gandhian, Dodgem, Fascist, Kiwanis and Tarzan, for example. The pogo stick was invented in 1919, but it apparently didn't get its name until two years later.

Some of the more intriguing words to show up in 1921 were blankie, bouncy, dehumidify, expressionistic, featherbedding, go-getter, goofy, goon, hicksville, peppiness, pin curler, postmodern, razz, saboteur, tearjerker and teenage. There's got to be a history behind each of those words, but that would be somebody else's book.

Difficulties of family

He stuck his head in the room and said my name but I did not answer. He closed the door and moved to his room and I lay in the dark thinking about the difficulties of family, how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be.

Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers

The "difficulties of family" lie at the heart of the crazy and crooked story that is The Sisters Brothers (2011) by Patrick DeWitt.

Professional hitmen weren't called that in the mid-19th century. Eli and Charlie Sisters are just hired guns, sent by a wealthy man to eliminate rivals and annoyances. They are good at their job, or at least Charlie is. He can kill easily and without remorse whether he gets paid for it or not. Eli, the novel's narrator, follows his brother because he is his brother, but his heart isn't really in it. He craves the love of a woman and the pleasure of staying in one spot for awhile.

Most of the novel tells of their travails on the road to their target, a man who has discovered a seemingly magical, yet dangerous, way to extract gold from a river. Should they kill him as ordered or go into business with him?

As with DeWitt's later novels, Undermajordomo Minor and French Exit, The Sisters Brothers has enough hilarity to make you think it is a comic novel, while the author actually delivers a serious story about the human struggle to cope with life.

By the end of the novel, the Sisters brothers are quite different men and their relationship has changed dramatically. Reading their story is a pleasurable adventure.