Favorite Living Writer

"Focus on the Words - Not on the Writer." (link via Mental Multivitamin) Any essay with that title is sure to get my head nodding, as are words like the following:

What matters is the book, and the book has to stand on its own merit. What the author accomplishes, or doesn't, outside of the book is fine for the gossip pages, but it doesn't merit mentioning in a book review.

So it shouldn't matter whether a writer is a nice guy or a jerk, looks like a cheerleader or a troll, lives like a hermit or a media whore, is a normal mild-mannered person or suffers from a raging narcissistic personality disorder (which might, actually, be the norm for writers), or is living or dead. What matters are the words.

I was therefore surprised to read, in the same essay, that a particular writer was the essayist's "favorite living writer."

Does the essayist also have a favorite dead writer? A favorite ugly writer? A favorite red-haired writer?

Do words on a page read differently while the writer maintains a pulse? If a writer dies while you're reading his book, would his words suddenly lose their appeal? Or, as in some other branches of the arts, would they suddenly improve?

I was also surprised to see the essayist's photo at the top of the essay. If the essay's point is words are all that matters, why is his face the first thing we see? Was he thinking "words are all that matter" as he sat for his head shot?

And at the end of the essay, the last words we read aren't the essayist's well-written and persuasive conclusion, they're instead a short biographical note informing us that the essayist is the author of a novel and erotica collection. Is this to assure us that we have just read are not the wannabee-writerly words of a disgruntled no-name never-published blogger shamefacedly hiding behind a picture of P.G. Wodehouse but, instead, the extra-writerly words of a published novelist and erotica-collection-producer not afraid to display his face for all to see? Or is it just a product plug?

If all that matters is the words, nothing else should matter.

But of course it all matters. Whether we like it or not. We're all human, even the essayist, and being human we have an insatiable curiousity about other humans, particularly those closest to us. That closeness can be actual or virtual. Those who are actually close to us include family, friends, neighbors, co-workers. Those who are virtually close to us include the actors, athletes, musicians and, for the few who still read, writers whose work speaks to us, moves us, so much so that we admit them into our lives.

Gossip is a good indicator closeness; the drinking problem of a friend, or a cousin, or a musician or actor you admire is far more interesting to you than the drinking problem of some guy on the other side of town you've never met and never will, or a musician or actor whose work has never reached you. Some of us resist gossip's allure better than others, but none of us is completely free from its grasp. Except maybe the psychopaths.

Publishers, like other media magnates, recognize this, so while pushing their product they do everything they can to push our human buttons.

We are attracted to attractive people, so if a writer is attractive, you can be sure we'll see a huge professional head shot on the dust cover. We care more about people we know, so if a writer is a celebrity virtually "known" by millions, you can be sure his words will be published and purchased and maybe even read without regard to the merit of the words themselves. We tend to like things other people like, so if a writer has ever touched a bestseller list, even if only for a few minutes, even if only in his local bookstore after he surreptitiously purchases all its copies, all his books for the rest of his life will describe him as a "bestselling" writer. None of these features of the word trade have anything to do with the words themselves, but they strongly influence our reading choices and therefore have become ubiquitous.

I've thought a lot about the importance of words versus the importance of the writer since I started writing this blog.

One of my first decisions was to write anonymously. At the time, I had my reasons, principally a desire to preserve some level of plausible deniability should my initial stabs at writing stink up the room. If anyone ever looked my way, brows arched and nose plugged, I could always point at the dog and say "bad boy!"

But after a while I began to appreciate another reason for writing anonymously: It liberated my words. Without my name, or my picture, or any idea of my background, expertise or experience, all you, the reader, have is my words. If you like them, it's not me or my face or my background or my expertise you're liking, it's just my words. If you hate them, it's not me you're hating, it's yourself, for only an incredibly self-loathing person would stoop as low as to hate inanimate objects like words. Or maybe, just maybe, it was my words you hated. But in any event you weren't hating me.

This anonymity has also liberated me. When I first started writing, I thought anonymity would give me the freedom to shade the truth when convenient but I've since discovered that anonymity actually gives me the freedom to tell the truth, even when it's not convenient. I've got nothing riding on these words, other than the hope that you keeping reading them. So all I have to do is keep them true. I have no reputation to uphold or resurrect. I have no money-making plans for my writing (which is good because no one has any money-paying plans for my writing). I haven't even scored with any high-class literary groupies. All I get out of this is the satisfaction of churning out words others are willing to read.

I've thought of making this process even purer. I could disable comments, removing any temptation that I’d ever twist my words to garner gushing comments. I could also disable my email account, cutting off any possibility that I'd be tempted by gushing comments by email, or hateful comments, or comments offering v1agra or peni5 enlargement pills. I could ignore, or better yet remove, my stat counters, further obscuring the extent of my obscurity. And I could continue alienating you with self-congratulatory screeds like this.

I probably won't do all that, for I've allowed enough of my ego to get entwined with Outer Life that I get a rush when someone says something nice, or links to something I've written. So it's not all about the words. Or, said another way, it is all about the words, but despite my best efforts the words here still retain a little piece of me.

A Familiar, Consistent and Predictable Story

Lately I've been on a book buying binge.

They're coming in much faster than I can read them, and I have this thing against shelving unread books, worried that once they're up there I'll forget to read them, which is, in fact, what tends to happen, so I stack them on a table next to my desk, a crude but effective self-regulating temporary storage system that keeps them in my line of sight and therefore in my mind so that when I'm looking for something new to read I'm more likely select one from the stack, thereby maintaining it at a manageable size, except, that is, when I start binge-buying books like a drunken professor, disrupting the fragile equilibrium of the pile's ecosystem with an uncontrolled influx of new volumes until, one day, the stack hits the tipping point, both in the sense that at that point it's gotten so big my wife figures out I'm on a book buying binge, something I'd rather she not know because she'll make me stop, and in the more literal sense that at that point, the stack, grown to a teetering tower, topples onto my desk and the floor, making it all but impossible for me to get any work done, let alone get within two feet of my desk, which is exactly what happened last weekend.

So I've got to shelve them. Problem is, I don't have the shelf space. I have enough space for shelves, but not enough shelves in that space. That's because my plans to convert our living and dining rooms into a library annex have, thus far, been stymied by my wife's steadfast resistance, forcing me to squeeze my infinitely expanding book collection into my all-too finite shelf space.

Something's got to give so, with a stout but heavy heart, I resolved to cull my books to clear enough shelf space for all the new editions.

This won't be easy because I've been culling my collection for years, giving away most books after I finish with them, shelving only those books I need to consult (in the case of reference books) or liked enough to read again (in the case of all other books). So there shouldn't be much low-hanging fruit left to be picked.

Or so I thought, as I started the grim task of reaping my way through my books. Instead, I noticed that while I have, indeed, continued to consult the reference books I thought I would consult, and therefore can't possibly get rid of any of them, I've actually re-read very few of the other books I once thought I'd re-read.

A lot of this is due to the sudden realization that hit me a few years ago as I entered my middle ages: I will die. I understand a lot of us formerly feckless get the same sudden realization around middle age. What this means for me is that there's a finite number of books left for me to read, so for every book I re-read, there's an unread book I'll never read. Those great books I shelved in my twenties, back when I had all the time in the work, now look a lot less attractive next to the great books I'll never get to read.

So, mindful of my mortality, and needing to clear a lot of space to shelve the bounty of my most recent book buying binge, I vow to be ruthless.

Genre books are the easiest target.

Some of this is due to changes in my reading tastes -- as a pimply-faced socially-inept teenager subsisting on a steady diet of science fiction, I never imagined there'd come a day when I'd lose my fascination with escapist futuristic fiction, but that improbable day did come. Right around the time I lost my pimples. And, come to think of it, my virginity. Anyways, three decades later, I've still got a shelf stuffed two deep with sci-fi paperbacks exploring futures already passed, yellowing reminders of a past that's also passed. It's time to say goodbye.

And some of this is due to sheer volume. Normally when I read a good book I don't feel the need to read every other book written by the author. I appreciate the book as an individual book, and move on with my reading life. But when I read a good genre book, I rejoice to learn there are 25 others by the same author with the same characters in the same situations, and I eagerly anticipate reading every one of them, in chronological order, knowing all along that, apart from the names and some minor details, I'll effectively be reading the same book 26 times.

And keeping 26 copies on my shelves. After I go to the trouble of tracking down all the books in a series, I'm loathe to get rid of any single volume, no matter how bad. After all, if I ever read the series again, I'd have to track down that missing volume. And in the meantime, any gap in the carefully-assembled series on my shelf would constantly nag at me, like a tongue that can't stop probing the empty socket left behind by a missing tooth.

So, when culling my book collection, if I decide to ditch, say, J.A. Baker, I'd lose one book taking up less than half an inch of shelf space. And a great book at that, so even though I'll probably never read it again, there is some cost and very little benefit to getting rid of it. The cost-benefit isn't compelling, so it stays.

But if I ditch Gregory Mcdonald, I'll lose thirteen Fletch books taking up about a foot of shelf space. I like the Fletch books, but I've already read them and being now all-too aware of my mortality I now know I'll probably never re-read them again and, best of all, getting rid of them will free up space for at thirteen new books. Some cost but great benefit, so away they go.

This calculus turns out to be common, so after an afternoon whacking my way through the shelves, I free up big chunks of free space and end up with two boxes of discards comprised, disproportionately, of series books.

It wasn't easy, and I didn't toss all my series, being unable to part with a few too near and dear to my heart. The exercise reaffirmed my affection for all these series books, both the gut wrenching agony as I tossed some, and the relief I felt in saving others, and it got me wondering why I'm so attached to these books in the first place.

Within each genre, the books pretty much follow the same formula. They start the same, they end the same, they adhere to the same story rules, their main characters share the same fundamental traits. The books differ chiefly in color, style and setting, and some manage to take minor detours off the well-trod plot path, but they're all much more alike than different. Which is what makes them genre books, of course.

As if this general genre uniformity wasn't uniform enough, the most successful genre books are part of a series offering the same character, the same setting, the same color, the same style, even the same detours off the plot path.

It's easy to denigrate genre books. They are, after all, formulaic by definition, and "formulaic" is a pejorative word indicating lack of originality, reminding us that it is, of course, originality that we value.

What's a lot harder to explain is why a people who profess to value originality so often devour books defined by their lack of originality. I've often wondered that about myself. Over the years, I've entertained a number of explanations, none wholly satisfying.

Perhaps because I read genre books, I don't believe those who read genre fiction are necessarily inferior readers, rubes lacking the education and enlightenment needed to venture beyond formulaic entertainment. I've known too many educated and enlightened people with a fondness for genre fiction, sometimes a secret fondness for a guilty pleasure, but a real appreciation nonetheless. It may be pap, but it's pap they keep consuming long after they've cut their teeth on the hard stuff.

Genre books are like comfort food. Variety may be the spice of life, but it's only a spice, not the main course, which for most of us remains your basic meat and potatoes. Or, in another strained food analogy, genre books are like Saltine crackers, cleansing the mental palate between forays into originality.

My current thinking is that our brains have evolved to prefer genre fiction. (Note: Not being a scientist, or even particularly knowledgeable when it comes to scientific matters, you'll find my scientific pronouncements refreshingly free of pesky limitations imposed by facts, knowledge, understanding or accountability, more informed by a mixture of "just so" stories from preliterate days and sci-fi I consumed while a pimply-faced teenage virgin than the latest peer-reviewed papers and objective studies. So please do not quote these theories at cocktail parties unless you either (1) seek to cultivate about yourself an aura of ignorance or (2) can imbue them in the telling with sufficient sarcasm and detached irony that others will merely see it as a feeble attempt at meta-humor.)

The brain prefers the familiar; genre fiction is nothing if not familiar. Long ago in our primordial past, as our ancestors migrated around the world they encountered new potential food sources. Some of these were food, and nourished them, while others weren't food at all, and killed them. Those who evolved a preference for eating the same old same old over and over were more likely to survive long enough to reproduce, while those who couldn't resist sampling the root or berry du jour were more likely to die young. We are descended from the survivors, so embedded deep within our brains is a built-in preference for the familiar. While we work our way from A is for Alibi to Z is for Zee Final Book, our brains signal "survival," but the minute we pick up a slim volume of modern experimental fiction, our brains signal "death."

Similarly, the brain seeks recognizable patterns; genre fiction provides stories with recognizable patterns. Bombarded with billions of sensory signals, how does a brain manage to get through the day? By seeking recognizable patterns and discarding the rest. If in the sea of signals it detects A and B in the context of C, it knows to send the D signal. So, if A is the flash of anger on your wife's face, and B is a verbal threat from your wife, and the context of C is her standing in the middle of your toppled pile of books, evidence of your ill-advised and heretofore hidden binge buying spree, and she's holding one of them like a frisbee, that's all your brain needs to send a frantic D for "DUCK!" signal immediately before the book hurtles towards your head. Genre books send similarly recognizable patterns to the brain, soothingly massaging it with the assurance that it can make sense of the world. Reading a genre book, you know that A and B in the context of C will always mean D. If instead, in the example above, the book in your wife's hand turned into a giant rat chanting Bushisms in Spanish with a Castilian accent while dancing the can-can around your now-befuddled wife, you'd have an original and challenging work of modern magical realism but a very unsatisfying pattern for your brain to process. Is it any wonder the brain seeks the formulaic and so often rejects the original?

In short, the brain works 24/7 to construct meaning, so it latches onto the familiar, the consistent, the predictable. But much of the world is unfamiliar, inconsistent, unpredictable, making it very difficult, maybe impossible, for our brains to explain what it all means. Genre books offer a safe haven to a mind frazzled by reality, a mini-world consisting only of the familiar, the consistent, the predictable, allowing us to find, if only for a moment, the meaning that eludes us outside the pages, where we're just one of billions, in a world that's one of billions, in a galaxy that's one of billions in a universe so inconceivably vast that it might just include, somewhere, a giant dancing rat who speaks with a slight lisp and has it in for Bush.