The expatriate’s fate escaped
Yesterday I wrote that the reason I didn’t take any Hem to Thailand with me was because it made me into a rank imitator. Perhaps I should have re-read some more before I left:
Hem living it up at a Paris cafe with fellow ruined expatriates
You know what’s the trouble with you? You’re an expatriate. One of the worst type. Haven’t you heard that? Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers … you’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.”
Maybe if I’d re-read that, from The Sun Also Rises, instead of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, I’d have reconsidered my trip, which ultimately lasted five and a half years. Well – now safely ensconced back in America’s cold embrace and thus free of the danger of detriorating into a dithering expat – seems to me that the equivalent of the Paris cafes of the 20s are the lit blogs. To wit, from Hem’s “A Paris Letter”:
“… loafers expending the energy that an artist puts into his creative work in talking about what they are going to do and condemning the work of all artists who have gained any degree of recognition. By talking about art they obtain the same satisfaction that the real artist does in his work.”
Except on many a lit blog, they don’t condemn, they praise to ridiculous excess. Daisy chains of unearned affirmations. Writers writing about writers writing about writing. Hem would not approve. Hem also spent many an hour in the cafes of Paris. Anyone care to sort out the moral of the story?
Court Merrigan
Well, they did it too. Only they did it over drinks at a cafe instead of the buzzing thin wires of the Internet. But in the end, Hem stopped gabbing with his buddies and went home and banged out the paragraphs. He produced. It’s the ones that don’t do the paragraph-banging that end up finding their satisfaction in the gabbing because it’s the only option they have.
Now I wonder if McCarthy does it? Does he “gab” with someone? A couple of folks? His editors?
Pure isolation is extremely hard to work from. It requires reserves of confidence that few have, I think.
I think I read somewhere that McCarthy has lots of friends, just that none of them are writers. He’s evidently got lots of scientist buddies at that one place where he works in Texas, evidently. So I don’t think he’s totatlly isolated. Which, as you say, would be pretty hard to take.
So when I was living in Paris i.e. a few weeks ago, the writers I met were a hard working bunch of wild eyed youngsters. I guess the older guys were probably at home on the internet.
I think it is good to spend some time with other writers talking writing when you haven’t yet started making money for it, or saying “I’m a novelist” with a straight face at parties and you want some reinforcement.
I think there is an unspoken understanding that you will find the positives in each others works and offer largely technical advice. But after a while you can get to know how far you can push a fellow writer in making them work better. Easier to get that over a bottle of wine than online.
Any way, i have been an expat for 15 years now, so I wish I had come across this quote some time back. Could have saved on ink and notebook expenses.
As much as I have webblogged about writing in cafes, it must have been expected that I could have something to add here; not only literary cafe life, but expatness and writers hanging out with writers. Except for the occasional travelogue about Buenos Aires or such, that’s about all I blog about.
I’ve noticed a flush of embarrassment when I write the word blog. I wrote about that at some point, too; that it sounded like the sound made when clearing one’s throat and spitting on the sidewalk. I always feel a twinge of guilt and more than a twinge of embarrassment when I blog, as one should. (My wife has a better one — she thinks blog sounds like a word for being constipated.)
Rather than belabor this in a repetitive way, I would say here that it is wiser to ignore what writers say, any writer, about writing and what “the writing life” is all about. Including me, for sure, and Hemingway above all. I understand the tug exerted, the desire to take an inherently alone and isolated way of working and try to somehow socialize it.
I have a hard time thinking of cyberspace as something real. I’m just a substance sort of person, I suppose. Therefore, the people I have contact with only in cyberspace, are not friends, and may not even actually exist, as for as I know; although about half the people who exchange comments on my blog are friends, people I know in the substantive world. I have two friends who are published novelists: I last saw each of them in the flesh around 20 years ago, and we exchange a phone call about once a year, email once or twice a year, and a letter from time to time. I suppose that’s why we are still friends.
Mostly I hang out with people who do not understand and do not really give a shit that I write novels. That way, I am never compelled or urged to “tell us about what you’re writing.” Next to the most hated question ever devised — “what is your book about?” — that one makes me gag.
Oh, before taking up anymore of Court’s space here, I still struck by the hopeful word “yet” in marchorne’s comment above. … haven’t yet started making money for it … ” Gadflying for a moment, I should point out that the last time I saw an Author’s Guild mention of this, less than 1 % of published novelists can be said to earn a livable annual income from their writing alone; less than 5% ever earn more than a few thousand dollars in a lifetime; more than 90% (these are published novelists, not unpublished writers) will ever seen more than advances of pocket change.
So yet is a hopeful word indeed.
Oh, one more thing, having been living as an expat for well over 20 years, the ink in my notebooks is the most valuable of all my possessions.
Hemingway could be a brilliant and innovative writer, but he had no lock on making sense of that life, certainly not his own.
Oh, and Brad, for Chrissakes, the buzzing thin pixels on the Internet have nothing whatsoever in common with, and nothing of the value of, spending one evening in a cafe with amiable companions. Twenty years of pixel life cannot equal two hours of drinks with good companions in a good cafe.
IMHO … don’t you just hate that! Initial shortcuts instead of saying what you mean.
Marc, I could have saved a bundle on the same, too. I don’t know if it’s better to spend time real actual physical time around other writers or not. 95% of my writerly contact has been online. I had a chance to go to an MFA program once but I turned it down, largely because I didn’t think it was a good idea to spend that much time around other writers. A good idea? Dunno.
Donigan, I thought you might want to weigh in. Very, very true: Hem has no lock on describing the writer’s life. He just did it so very well, if spitefully, that his influence on the “writer’s life” narrative is outsized. Hem did note, however, what I think is a fundamental truth about any writing life: its occupational hazard is loneliness. Which hazard, I think, drives many a writer to the various cafes, be they actual or online. Myself, I’ve never been much driven to discuss the mechanics of writing with anyone, let alone other writers. Never thought much of writing groups, either. I did do the Zoetrope thing for a while, but quickly tired of that. On that note, I would point out our generational differences again, and just note that I’ve spent many interesting and rewarding hours online, and many hours of drudgery in cafes and bars. Such drudgery is alleviated by good companions, sure, but good companions are hard to come by and are often busy when you’re not, and vice versa. Whereas the online world is always there whenever you are.
Sidenote: I don’t expect to ever make a living from my writing. I entertain enough foolish vain hopes without trying to support that one, too. That’s why I’m looking for a sustainable trade.
Why am I thinking about the Lotus Eaters when I read those passages? But, aren’t we all Lotus Eaters, when we can manage it?
Hem had his moments, surely, but I think you have to understand the neurotic side of the guy. One word of caution in taking to much of Hem to heart: shotgun.
Should say TOO much…blame it on the late hour.
I cast my vote for a sustainable trade, or a fine marriage, or a patron prince(ss). I have made something of a living as a writer, not counting my journalism days of yore, because I was accidentally smart enough to have invested in real estate the largest single chunk of money I ever got for writing (a trilogy), and then managed to use that to augment the much smaller income that followed. I was inclined to drink it away, but fortunately did not.
The substantial trade that I believe is bad for a writer, for the work, is the teaching of writing, which has been the end of many a fine potential career. Better to pump gas or sell shoes. Although teaching itself, something other than writing (I taught philosophy for some time), is pretty good; must take off the summers, though. I have mentioned before that my best non-writing job was a janitor in a gym.
On loneliness: I accepted this fate long ago. I knew it came with the art. I do get mighty sick of it sometimes, and probably put too much responsibility on my wife for entertaining me. Being married to one’s best friend and most amiable companion alleviates some of the natural loneliness. Further, it is probably a chicken-egg problem to figure out whether there is something in the personality (inclined toward solitude and individual work) for the person who becomes an artist in the first place, or if the inherent nature of the work forms the personality … or both. I believe there has always been a lot of the curmudgeonly hermit in me; it is good to have an occupation that supports it.
Hemingway’s vision of the writer’s life was a vision of his own writer’s life, which was for the most part the lifestyle of an extraordinarily rich and celebrated man, a life lived by hardly a handful of all the authors who have ever lived. And Charlene’s note of caution cries out. Writers I know do share certain distinct aspects of life, but those aspects belong to the nature of this sort of work, nothing social. We all fret over the words, we all feel certain twinges of jealousy, we all have the good fortune of passion, and we have most of the same worries. A rare, rare few can still live anything approaching the writer’s life Hemingway described so eloquently and profoundly — not counting the dilettantes who sample bits of desired lives as just another part of growing up.
I believe I am among the rare few who has lived something like that lifestyle for the better part of forty years, and if there were a god to whom responsibility could be assigned, and if I believed in such things as responsible gods, then I would be its strongest acolyte. What I do believe is that I got a lucky toss of the dice. It is nothing more than that.
I would far rather have this conversation in the cafe I am leaving for in about two hours rather than typing to an anonymous name in Cyberspace … alas.
I know I am part of the generation (probably the last of the breed), who thinks of the Internet as a cross between a somewhat silly toy and the best vehicle so far invented for increasing the craziness of crazy people.
Well, look at it this way: by typing these words instead of uttering them in a crowded cafe, they are preserved. Possibly forever, or at least the “forever” that includes 1′s and 0′s. That’s a pretty nifty trick, isn’t it?
But the real question, Donigan, is this: which of your books ought I be reading?
The only two currently in print are Possessed by Shadows and The Common Bond; a new one, Island in the Pines, will be out late next spring. I suppose it depends on whether you prefer a background of mountaineering (Possessed) or a background of commercial big game fishing (Bond). Pines is set in the heyday of the civil rights movement in southern Arkansas (mid-60s). Possessed is set in California and Central Europe. Bond is set in California, Iowa, and Hawaii. So you can decide which of those backgrounds and settings most appeals to you. Possessed is my wife’s favorite of my work.
My 1s and Os will exist until the owner of some server somewhere decides to erase them, and by and large, that will probably be a good thing.
Read Possessed by Shadows first. I wrote a review of it here. Donigan probably doesn’t like to talk much about them, but the first book in the Hatch Trilogy, Hatch’s Island, is very good too so far. It has one of the most brutal beginnings I’ve ever read in a piece of fiction. I believe I actually gasped. I was hooked and involved for sure.
There’s a different tone and perhaps style to the earlier works of his. Ignore the cover on Hatch’s Island. Just turn to page one and start reading. The first part of Common Bond is very inventive in its tense structure as well. Memory plays such a huge role in that book. It forces itself into the present tense, as memory is wont to do. I found it interesting because Don always appears to be such a literary conservative, however he mucks with tense and he often doesn’t adhere to a linear track in the narrative. Makes me wonder when I’m going to encounter some surrealism.
Thanks for the kind words, Brad.
You’re right about never talking about earlier books, and that’s why I wrote about having a part one and a part two career in writing. It’s not that I no longer like what and how I wrote the original of what became the Hatch trilogy, because I am still pleased enough with it; it’s just the ripping off of my Conrad and Greene and turning it into Rambo. How would you like to have covers like that following you around? It’s like having a prison record.
Literary conservative? No, not really. Just a curmudgeonly throwback to the time of books and writers and storytellers, who remains dubious (my nicest word) about what passes for books and writers and storytellers these days in the world of Cyberspace pixels.
But while I’m on the subject — sorry for hijacking a bit of your blog, Court — I am not consciously being “inventive” with tense and structure when I am telling a story. I just tell it the way it appears in my mind as the words are being put on the page. I am also not conscious of telling the story around about and in and out and back and forth; it’s just that from time to time, as the story progresses, I find that something has happened or the characters have grown up enough to where they can make demands of me, so I feel compelled to go back and explain something.
Then during detailed copy editing, I look for internal inconsistencies.
I leave surrealism to the religiously and superstitiously inclined. (I also don’t read science fiction.) In other words, I do not venture beyond the real, where I have more than enough trouble.
Thanks for the insight into your method, Donigan. Both the books you mentioned are currently available on Amazon, so, if the public library lacks them, which I suppose it will, I’ll order one or both of ‘em up. Any chance I could get a Kindle edition?
Glad to see, too, that another book of yours will be coming out this spring. Perhaps a review, something I’ve been seriously neglecting around here, is in order.
You’re right that the cover of Hatch’s Island leaves something to be desired. I guess that’s where the old adage comes from, eh?
Brad, how did you come across Donigan’s works? I came across him through your blog, so how did you get there?
Oh, and Donigan, you go ahead and take all the space you like around here.
Court, unless you live in a town with a very small library, I would be surprised if your library doesn’t have either one or both these in print novels. I have yet to have anyone I know not find copies in their local libraries. Both books got really nice reviews in Library Journal, from which most libraries make their orders.
I haven’t checked, but I don’t think either book has been Kindleized.
I’ll have a review copy of the next book sent to you and will get an address when the time gets closer.
I found Brad, rather than Brad found me. But now I haven’t any idea how that came about.
I think Don found my blog through the MetaxuCafe site. I haven’t been there in ages, but I suppose I’m still hooked into them. At any rate, he commented on this post and things moved on from there.
Donigan – I hate to be the first, but the Scottsbluff (pop. 14k) Public Library failed to have a copy of any of your books. As it failed to have any Salter, or John Williams before that. They do have a nice selection of Dr. Suess, though, which is why we keep going.
Now in the bad old days, this would have necessitated a 4-hour drive to Denver to the Tattered Cover Bookstore, which may or may not have had the desired books in stock. Amazon, needless to say, sorts this out nicely. Score one for the internet on that front.
I would be very flattered to receive a review copy, Donigan, if that is possible, thanks.