The fiction of the audience.

Last night, for this and that reason--fine, okay, because the historian went up to Logan to give a talk about Utah socialists, while I stayed here and went to a reading and reception, and when he got home I felt like I ought to get out of the pool, aka stop being on the internet, to say hello--I didn't write a blog post. I started one, but I hated it and deleted it and here we are, Friday morning.

Postulate 1: Who cares?

Corollary 1.1: Basically, to keep writing, you kind of have to summon up the notion that someone, somewhere, might care, even a little. 

Corollary 1.2: The notion that people keep writing just for themselves--not just occasionally, but day after day, in a way that makes writing itself part of identity--seems like bullshit to me.

So today, while I was at Target for the second time in two days, to get the things I regretted not getting on the first trip, I thought of this topic, which I'm going with for my should-have-been-Thursday post. Because I also spent yesterday sending my work out to literary magazines.

Postulate 2: OMG I have submitted so much work, and the rate of return, outcome-wise, is so terrible!

to wit:

Corollary 2.1: What does this mean? Why send stuff out? There is no rational basis. NIHILISM.

Corollary 2.2: OR in the face of the math (see Venn diagram above), one must simply say, as my friend the poet Jennifer says, 'Rejections mean that I am a working poet.'

Corollary 2.3: OR in the face of the math (see &c &c), one can say, as my friend the poet Wade says, 'I just send out a poem I like every Friday.'

SMALL DIGRESSION: This morning, as I chatted about these potentially soul-saving points of view with the historian, he said, 'So, it's kind of like Stan 'The Man' Musial, who could say, Well, I only get a hit one out of every three pitches. But that doesn't make him a failure, it just makes him a working baseball player. A Hall of Famer! and Karl 'The Mailman' Malone could say, I only make a basket every other time I shoot! But that doesn't make him a failure, it makes him a working basketball player. A Hall of Famer!'

I did have to point out that both Stan 'The Man' Musial and Karl 'The Mailman' Malone have better averages than I do. By a long shot.

MOVING ON: 

In other words:

Postulate 3: Being a writer is a fictive activity.

Corollary 3.1: we imagine readers to whom we have no access, and then we hope for the best.

Corollary 3.2: the messages we get from our readers are sometimes robotic...

Corollary 3.3: ...but on occasion, we get a message from a human and, for a brief moment, feel real.

Let me conclude with two anecdotes from the fictional world of sending writing out for consideration:

Anecdote 1: I sent some poems to a venerable journal. I used their online submission portal. My cover letter was, as it always is, brief and grateful. The response--which is automated--said the following: 

"While we try to respond to submissions within six months, it often takes longer for a manuscript to be read. We ask for your patience as we do read every submission we receive.  

If you haven't heard anything from us within a year, you are welcome to send us a status inquiry. Meantime, we hope you will take comfort in knowing that the longer it takes us to respond, the further up the ranks your submission is likely moving."

Within a year!?! I find this hilarious.

Anecdote 2: Today, I sent some poems to a journal that I have periodically tried, one that I honestly think suits the kinds of poems I write quite perfectly. However, the last time I tried them, I submitted work at about 9:15 p.m., and the following morning, in a reply time-stamped 6:04 a.m., said:

Your manuscript has received a careful reading, but we have decided against holding it for our second round of deliberations.

A careful reading!?! Before I even got out of bed, I laughed really hard. Although the person did go on to compliment one of the poems in the submission in such a way that, if I'm not mistaken, he patronized the whole batch. That could totally just be me.

Sometimes the fictive writer is a little bit oversensitive. But sometimes the fictive reader is a little bit of a jerk.

These are my secrets. And these are my other secrets.

I have one thousand scarves.

I want to be a rodeo rider.

I bury my tea leaves.

I am hybridizing a red rose with a redder rose.

Once I fell in love with an assassin,

which would have been all right,

except I hated how his skin smelled of knives.

My volumes of piano etudes, sonatas, nocturnes,

preludes, fugues, variations on a theme, 

scherzos, valses, and concertos,

stacked one upon the other,

would total four feet seven inches high,

although the volumes are dispersed to several locations,

and some are hidden even from myself.

I play the piano every afternoon from four to five,

and afterward drink a cup of mint tea

and eat a single piece of almond shortbread.

I am growing an almond tree. I scent my environs

with almond oil.

I sometimes dream that my children are friendly 

with dangerous animals.

Today I met with a student who smelled of candy and flowers.

Once I picked squash beetles from my plants by hand.

Once, I lived in a village where the migrating butterflies

covered the shrubberies, the walks, the pavement.

In my heart of hearts, I am judging you, 

but only as practice for when I become a judge.

In my heart of hearts, I judge myself, 

but only as practice for when,

in my heart of hearts, I judge myself.

Primary are the colors of all the walls 

of my proto-crypto dream house.

Big fat novels.

Taking a page from Dr. Write:

I find that I don't read longer works--by which I mean anything longer than a long New Yorker article--these days, particularly during the school year. I could moan about it, but I've mostly accepted it as a fact of my life. But! I hold in my heart the fond, fond fondness for long novels, the longer the better (assuming that they're delightful to begin with). Here is a list of long novels that I have loved at different points in my life:

1. Middlemarch. I wrote my master's thesis on this book and it is canonical to me, as in, it is a kind of secular scripture that I consult, at least in memory, to help me live my life.

2. Our Mutual Friend. It is my favorite Dickens, and I love many Dickens novels, including Bleak House and David Copperfield and Little Dorrit, sometimes known as Little Dork at my house.

3. Humboldt's Gift. I read this when the world was in thrall to Bellow, and I know that Herzog is considered his masterpiece, but I love Humboldt the best, partly for the part where the narrator reports that a woman had taken refuge in Humboldt's bathroom, whereupon he importuned, "Open the door! I have a big cock!" It tells everything you need to know about poets--a lot of them, anyway.

4. The Thorn Birds. This falls into the category of "unworthy, really, of your time, and don't you have something better to do?" Except it was for a class! in contemporary American fiction! and the professor, whom I loved--he had a buzz cut and a big belly and a hilarious, cartoon character voice--chose it as a representative of the popular novel. I loved that he did that. I was pregnant when I read it, and I stayed in bed all day, exaggerating a slight illness and missing a French literature exam to do it.

5. Harry Potter (take your pick). Ever since college daughter, who was then junior high daughter, read the very first HP on the drive up to Idaho, and kept saying, "This is amazing! This is so good! Wow" etc. until I wanted to rip the book from her hands and let her drive, I have had the most fun reading these books, and also had the joy of a genuine shared literary experience with my kids and extended family, reading, anticipating, and arguing fiercely over these books. Definitely one of my best reading experiences ever.

6. Cloudsplitter. I read this book on a vacation, a dark winter vacation in Mendocino during the week between Christmas and New Year. It was gray and cloudy and rainy most of the time. We stayed in a lot, bundled up, by the wood stove and read and read and read. This book, based on the life of John Brown and told from the fictive point of view of one of his sons, was an apocalyptic read. Matched up very well with the darkest part of the year.

7. Underworld. I know I have already raved on about this book, but truly. It is the greatest of great books in my pantheon of greatiosity. I love its scope, I love that all of the characters feel like people and not like "characters." I love Delillo's writing--the way he makes a sentence. I will never quit Delillo. Never.