A Walker in the Suburbs

In his farewell to Washington Post readers yesterday, reviewer Jonathan Yardley said that throughout his 33 years at the Post (writing more than 3,000 book reviews), he came to the task as a “journalist not a literateur.”

I have high literary standards and delight in
the expression of strong opinion, literary and otherwise, but I also
read a book as if I were a reporter: looking for what it is “about” in
the deepest sense of the word, determining what matters about it and
what doesn’t, trying to give the reader a feel for what it is like as
well as passing judgment on it.

When I led workshops at the Writer’s Center, “what is it about?” was my standard question. It’s the one I ask myself as a writer, too. I suppose journalism has a lot to do with it, but it seems like common sense, too. If a writer has nothing to say or if the point is hopelessly muddled, there is no communication.

I like to think my journalist roots keep me honest, anchor me in sound thought and clear language. Often this is more aspiration than fact. But it’s a worthy goal — and one I was glad to see confirmed.

First she made a joke about being shorter than the other people at the podium.  Then she told the audience that she was sharing her award —the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters — with fellow fantasy and science-fiction writers. Then Ursula LeGuin said this:

I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of
writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through
our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways
of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope.

We will need
writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a
larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the
difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of
an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We
live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right
of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings;
resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the
art of words.

I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company,
and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American
literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward
is not profit. Its name is freedom.

 Within an hour I was at the library checking out three books by Ursula Le Guin. Here’s a writer whose voice I want to read.

At my writer’s group last night we had a difference of opinion. Half of us thought a short story ended with a narrator’s father in the intensive care unit of a hospital, and the other half thought it ended with the narrator herself there.

The other half was right, said Cathy, who wrote the story.

But this raises some questions, the kind you can’t help but ask yourself if you believe that the endpoint of self-expression is to communicate with an audience. Because the essay or novel, play or story takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? It is reshaped and relived every time a new reader comes to it, takes its words into her mind, makes it her own.

Even though I stood corrected, even though I realized that I had to some extent missed the point, the piece I read worked well on its own, the details of landscape and sky were no longer that of a pain-fogged dream but of an actual journey through a quiet forest. Because when the words leave our pen or keyboard they stop being ours and become the reader’s. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, I think. In a very important way, that’s the point.

Speaking of ink on paper, today we upload  the files of the magazine I’ve been working on these last few months. I’ve been thinking about the way it used to be, other magazines I’ve worked on and how those files were delivered — on boards via Fed Ex or (when we were too late for that) via a package delivery system called “Delta Dash.” I used to send articles to magazines in hard copy, too.

It’s much easier now, of course — write the article in a Word file, attach it and send it off with the click of a mouse or the touch of a finger. Upload whole magazines that way, too.

But the other way — the “old-fashioned” way — had a certain drama. There was the last-minute rush to the post office or Fed Ex, often with a child or two in tow. There might be minutes left before the place closed down. I would scribble my editor’s name and address as quickly as possible, then stuff the manuscript in an envelope and send it off. This was always the day before the deadline, of course.

Now I push some keys and it’s gone. I don’t want to go back. Don’t get me wrong. I’m just remembering.