You wouldn’t know that I’m not normally prone to nostalgia, given the number of my posts on this blog dedicated to remembering days gone by. I’m rather future-oriented, in Real Life. When I write, however, I realize I’m not much more than a note-taker, a regurgitator of events or episodes that have actually happened to me or someone I know…most of the time with a bit of embellishment, just to keep it interesting.
Some writers invoke times, places, and people that do not exist. I admire many of them: Lewis, Tolkien, Tad Williams, Robert Jordan, David Mitchell. The magic they wield is the power to show us ourselves through a looking glass so warped, so distorted, that we see with more clarity than we ever dreamed. They paint pictures of universes that put legs to our childhood games of Pretend, and remind us those games taught us volumes about the here and now.
Perhaps one day I’ll draw a world that is real only in my imagination, and invite you to join me there. For now, that magic is not mine.
Other writers create characters that simultaneously fascinate and repel me, characters I hope never to meet when next I’m in an airport or getting my hair done. Chuck Palahniuk comes to mind. How he could dream up a violent antihero like Tyler Durden and make him likeable, sexy, and apocalyptically unstable is beyond me. Where did Chuck dig him up? I don’t know.
Perhaps one day a character that bears no resemblance to anyone I know (or hope to know) will spring fully formed from my frontal lobe, like Venus emerging from Zeus’s forehead. For now, I gather up discarded scraps from those around me and knit them together, waiting - like Dr. Frankenstein - for lightening to strike.
I am a taxonomist.
I unearth the fractured shards of ordinary people’s ordinary minutes and hold them up to the light, looking for a clue, looking for the connection between this broken piece and that one. I classify the jagged bits of hilarity and heartache and hum-drum and try to remake a vessel that will startle me with recognition. That’s what I want, in the end: to be surprised by what’s familiar.
So I keep taking notes, cribbing away all the funny things you’ve said, all the naked moments you’ve allowed. Perhaps one day I’ll get out my tape and super glue and the shreds of paper will amaze me because you’re already there, waiting for discovery.
I’d say you’re in pretty good company as a writer: David Sedaris, Dostoevsky, Mark Twain, David Copperfield, note-takers all.
It’s funny, I was just reading Alan Jacobs’ essay on the Harry Potter phenomenon, comparing it to the world-building of Tolkien (though not Lewis, who allows his world to be penetrated by aberrations). His point is that in Tolkien’s world, as in Rowling’s, the feature that we find most compelling is that our human experience, particularly in its moral expression, transposes into that new world. It is the existence of the familiar within the other, the small finding courage to confront the big, the irrepressible value of true friendship, the power of choices to establish our character, these are the things that we see mirrored in those writers who create new worlds.
Ok, seriously, either I need to go through some Alan Jacobs withdrawal counselling, or he needs to get off his ass and write a new book every month.
After that response I feel completely inadequate to leave any praise. Pretty much the extent of my reading lately has been One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish so my brain cannot handle comparison and contrast. All that to say that I think Aly, you are an incredible writer and I am compelled to read the things you have written.
Karen
Ah, the Dr. Seuss classics. Karen, thanks for the encouragement - and don’t ever apologize for filling your mind with the literary genius of The Suess.
Mike, get some counseling. Also, I think you mean Charles Dickens. Unless you’re referring to the magician David Copperfield. If so, my bad. In any case, thanks for putting me in the company of the Greats, however undeservedly. Someday…
Alot of people don’t know this, but Dickens actually, um, went by the name, um, David Copperfield, which is sort of his, you know, like, fictional autobi …
… aw crap, forget it. I screwed up.
Does that mean we get to start a laminated sheet for you too, or do we have to wait until you get all uppity?
ταξινομία
Taxonomists are my fave, Aly (didn’t know they were called that but I DO NOW). And those fantasy and sci-fi writers are, like Michael said (sort of) taxonimists that put people in a saddle on a dragon or what-have-you.
Cerise