The growth of words

Last year sometime I read a book by Michael Chabon. It had won the Pulitzer, and despite my waning respect for that award, I picked up The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay expecting good things. I believe a book can't be all bad if it is at least partly about Comics.

It was, in fact, a phenomenal book. In Chabon's deft and confidently long-winded sentences, I saw what my writing might be like if I was better at doing it. It sparked for the first time a real desire to get better at writing. I wanted to work to those heights.

This weekend, while taking my friends on a tour of Seattle area book and other media stores, I came face to face with more of Chabon's work. This was a used book store, so the selection was sparse. There was a copy each of books I hadn't read, and one of the covers had Michael Douglas' self-satisfied and rheumy gaze in extreme close up. I love the movie version of Wonder Boys, but hate editions of books that have anywhere on them "Now a major motion picture from [X]" or pictures of actors. This forces real human faces into the mental space used to create the characters internally. This destroys the process of discovering a book for me.

I also like my book collection to feel timeless.

So I chose The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Chabon wrote it when he was 24. It reads like it. It has the same over-long sentences, but with almost none of the confidence I admired in Kavalier and Clay. He overwrites, forces hackneyed metaphors, struggles with narrative voice. He wastes sentences. He says dumb things, silly things. He struggles with the odd nostalgia some young men have after a first or second real love. This is a nostalgia I have and hate.

It's also a beautiful and real story I would be finishing off right now if I didn't have to pack for a trip to Boston.

It reminds me that all the literary conceits in the world are no match for characters you can care about and an accessible story. It lets me know that great authors were once insecure authors.

There are millions of insecure authors though, and most never get published. The difference, I think, is courage.

Chabon's Mysteries is a book about exactly that. Not courage in the characters themselves, who retreat into various forms of self-destruction and conformity. The courage is in the writing itself, in fleshing out ideas onto paper, and figuring out how to order them thoughtfully. It feels like a very painful autobiography. There is an internal conflict that surfaces later in Kavalier and Clay (there were also hints in Wonder Boys) over sexuality, ethnicity and identity. Where, in Kavalier and Clay, Chabon is able to affect a certain distance from his subject(s), Mysteries feels gutwrenchingly close and real. Maybe that's the difference between being 24 and being 40ish, I don't know. It makes me think though, that out of a style and temperament I hate in myself now, might one day come something admirable, something to be proud of.

From the bubbling praise on the book's jacket, I realized--maybe for the first time--that perfection in writing and crafting taut imagery is secondary to telling a passionate and enthralling story.

I think I've been preoccupied with the former for too long. I've been analyzing my own writing through the lens of well-practiced and confident wordsmiths and I think, missed much of the point of writing. Maybe that confidence comes with time. Maybe it won't come at all, but I think I need to stop worrying so much about it.

I also watched, after much anticipation and laziness, Garden State, and I can say unequivocally, it is most definitely NOT "this year's Lost in Translation." I'll probably complain about that tomorrow.

Have you heard the Shins? . . . They'll change your life