Spontaneous Musings

Ack, ack...I think I have the dreaded cold bug that has raced through most
of the people on my friendslist. The culprit? My Sisinlaw who gets sick if someone breaths on her the wrong way. She also gave it to my nine-month old niece. Yesterday - I stocked up on tissue, jello, herbal tea, vitamin water - defense (c+zinc), power c (c), benedryle, chicken, soup, water (I miss the days in which I could trust my tap water not to tast like dirt), and veggies.
I stumble home, encased in my knee length down jacket, felt knitted black hat, gray scarf, with just my face peeking out - and wonder what I must look like to the passer-by.

That paragraph was more poetic in my head last night, somehow I lost the words in the space between...

I wonder if what we read affects how we write? Our tone? Our style? If that is the case - anyone who was privy to my friends locked posts of the past few weeks - and enjoyed them - will enjoy the Fortress of Solitude.

I was reading that novel at the time and I can't help but think that the push and pull of those words, their rhythm and sound, did not in some way influence the push and pull of mine inside my mind. Some writers believe firmly in *not* reading anything while they write - because they fear the influence of another's words upon their own style and verbage. Some won't read in the genre they write in - fearing they'll steal someone else's idea. As if most writers don't steal ideas from one another anyway to some extent - it's impossible not to-often expanding on them, pulling a new twist, telling a new angle. We don't live in a vaccum after all, we are influenced by everything around us - it all goes in our filter - so why attempt to write in one? Plus doesn't reading other genres, other tales, still influence, still affect the writing? Some will read only non-fiction - but wouldn't that also affect the style and verbage? Most likely. As well as the story - I'm certain. In fact it may sound almost journalistic, academic like the non-fiction work. And then there are writers who don't read anything at all while writing. I've met several. Stating - it's the only way to be certain of not polluting your own voice, style, with someone elses. To stay constant.

But for me that would be akin to punishing myself for writing. Not read while I write? I might as well not read at all. Or breath for that matter. If I were to follow that practice, then I'd never write because to not read a work of fiction, a story, a tale, would be akin to not being allowed to breath. And not writing, in order to read - ah, the same problem. It is like being told you can only breath in, but not out. Or only out but not it.

Of course there's another solution - just read certain types of novels while you write. But I find that limiting as well. Like being told I can only breath mountain air or city air or sea air. I want to read everything. The better works - the poetic, stream of consciousness ones that oddly fit my own style better - take me longer to read. They are the ones that I not so much devour as allow to become a part of my psyche, that become slowly imbedded because I have to re-read every sentence every paragraph at least three times, until I see more than reads, I see the place, feel the word, smell it. These works take me a month to read, sometimes two. And while reading them, I'll whine, complain, struggle, want to tear them to shreds, adore them, hug them, fight with them, consider abandoning them, yet can't bear to be parted until the last sentence is consumed and embedded in me. It is akin, I think, to a love affair with all its assorted ups and downs. These books, I do not need to read again, because they have become a part of me somewhere along the way.

When I say I read slowly - I'm not sure I'm being honest. Truth is it depends on the work. If it is a contract - I can read it in five minutes possibly ten, no matter the length - and analyze most of it. Business reports? Same deal.
Most posts on the internet, take me very little time to scan, figure out, and respond to. Popular fiction such as Grishom, Clancy, Da Vinci Code, Janet Evanovich, Harry Potter, that takes maybe a week, sometimes two, sometimes just three days - depending on my interest and what I'm doing and I seldom remember the story a month later. They are devoured and expelled much like junk food. But I do enjoy them. To be told not to tast them, not to read them, would be like being told not to touch a new fabric or eat a piece of cake or eat a piece of chocolat.

Books such as Joyce's Ulyssess, Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles, Possession by Byatt, Faulkner's Sound and The Fury, Garcia's One Hundred Years of Solitude or just recently Lethem's Fortress of Solitude - those books are a love affair. A love/hate relationship for some, just plain love for others, all
take me time and all leave me haunted, changed, altered in some small way for consuming and embedding them into my psyche.

I suppose this is a long way of saying that while I may have struggled with Fortress of Solitude, I did enjoy it. Am somewhat haunted by it. Left a tad discombulated and disoriented. Yet at the same time snarky and irritated at parts of the work. It was not a comforting novel, nor one I identified with entirely. Yet at the same time it was comforting, was something I identified with. The contradiction that it leaves me with - fascinates.

Do I recommend it? Well, if you enjoy stream of consciousness prose, somewhat poetic in flavor and not much dialogue - you will enjoy this book. The story is in a nutshell - about two boys, one white jewish boy, and one black jewish boy. They grow up about five or six blocks from where I currently live. Except in the 1970s. The main character is actually just three years older than I am, right now. So his childhood memories are the urban male version of mine. At many points - the lead character's memories reminded me of my younger brother.
Like my bro - this guy was a huge Brian Eno fan, loved the Talking Heads. Unlike my bro - he adored comic books (bro dabbled in comics but lost interest pretty quickly, I didn't get into comics until I was a freshman in college and for far different reasons and into different sorts of comics). The tale is about these two boys, their relationship, and their fathers and tracks back and forth throughout the contrast between the two. Often commenting on the
black experience through an urban white boy's eyes. The white boy's guilt, fear and at the same time envy of that experience. It also comments on the difficult relationship between father's and son's or how the two relate. Actually - I think the best part of the book is the father/son commentary. That is the part I enjoyed and haunted me. The part of the book that irritated me is the commentary on the black experience, which felt at times heavy handed and presumptious, as well as just a tad cliche. I give the writer credit for attempting to look at it - but I'm not so sure he did a good job of it. The older I get the more I realize that it is impossible for someone who is a member of the so-called racial majority to understand the experience of someone who is not. We can try. Sure. But often we end up, I think, projecting our own guilt, own preconceptions onto the other's experience. I think I need to read Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man soon. Don't I? That book is about the black man's experience through a black man's eyes. In which case, maybe I'm not giving Lethem enough credit here - he is not attempting to tell us what the black urban experience is really like - rather he is writing what it appears to be in a urban white Jewish boy's eyes. The word Jewish is emphasized here - because this is how the boy identifies with his friend - in his eyes they are both Jewish - even though neither practices their faith, nor do their fathers, nor is the religion ever really emphasized outside of just saying - "we're both Jewish". The attempt to find the common demoninator.
And if that in truth is what Lethem was attempting to do, convey how a urban white Jewish boy raised in a black neighborhood sees the black urban experience - he succeeded. The fact that I find what he conveyed unsettling and disturbing - probably means that the book worked. Something tells me that's what the author wanted - to unsettle me. Fortress is not meant to be comforting, it's meant to unsettle you, to make you ponder. It goes for the hidden emotions, the ones we don't want to look at, beneath the surface. And that's why it haunts.



[As an aside - I am friends locking most of my posts now. Which is why I friended everyone who friended me on the my flist. The reason for this is simple - the internet can be a risky place. Just took an information security course at work, then saw a news broadcast on people getting fired because of what they inadvertently wrote on their blogs and oh boy, even though I tend to be pretty cautious about what I write online - friends locking as much as possible from now on.]