There’s been much ado lately about the state of publishing on this eve of the e-book. The Kindle and iPad are supposedly revolutionizing publishing. We’ll see. As my friend Jenny says, was the paperback really such an unwieldy form? Let’s see– it’s light, portable, effective for conveying the written word. Doesn’t blink off when the battery is dead.
But, cry the devotees, you can’t download the entire New York City public library with a mere paperback! What if you don’t like the book you’re reading when you’re on vacation at the beach? With the iPad (and stale gum for that matter), you can toss one and unwrap another. (But…can you actually see the screen on the beach? And what about the sand? My god, the Kindle might be the end of beach reading!!)
As for the presto-change-o availability of books on the e-reader, I have to side with Paul Theroux in the most recent issue of The Atlantic. When asked whether the migration to e-readers increases access to good stories or diminishes it, he agrees that it greatly increases access. “I could not be more approving,” he says, “But free libraries are full of books that no one reads.”
Sigh– and so true.
In the same article, he also has this to say about advice for young writers.
Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their succes? “She drove me to my practice at 4:00 in the morning” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write: leave home.
(Notice how I brought this back to young adults.)
Anyway, he’s right. Leave home and/or have a crazy mother. That’s the ticket. I think I had both.
Leaving home injects you right into the unknown–that stressful, exhilarating world of newness that fires the creative spark (as well as brooding depression–always a plus for a writer). My first sniff of independence came during the many trips to Minneapolis (the Cities, as we call them in StA) with my parents.
It was there, sitting alongside the adults in the Little Wagon, Russells, and a steak joint whose name escapes me that I caught wind of a different life. The glamour (mink coats!) and the fun they all had, cocktails in hand, telling jokes that went right over my head. And what characters those Grain Exchange men were. Bob White– a 6′ 5″ Mr. Magoo with a serious cocktail habit–was my favorite. He’d tower over everyone with his loud jackets and white leather shoes (it was the 70s– we can forgive him). He wheeled and dealed at the Exchange, dodged taxes, never put an asset in his name, and drove a Cadillac always with a “traveler” in his makeshift cupholder. His second wife, Elly, was a gravely voiced former hostess who lit up a room. They lived the high life– a life absolutely anathema to the prim streets and neat corn rows of rural Iowa. And I sat with my Shirley Temple and took it all in.
From then on, I fancied myself a city girl. But it was a summer or two later, when I was about 12, that the freedom and anonymity a city offers really sunk in. We were visiting my Aunt Bette and Uncle Dick in Philadelphia. It had been a long day of sightseeing and as we emerged from a museum with a stoic set of stairs not unlike those Rocky Balboa scaled, my Aunt Bette unceremoniously plopped down (as only Bette can plop) on the steps. I was so trained in the small-town obsessions of what other people think and what someone might say, that the thought of just sitting down on the steps was shocking. No one else was sitting!
I looked around–mainly at my horrified mother–and sat down beside her. No one cared! No one even looked at us. What freedom. Truly, if you’ve never lived in a small town, where your every move is dissected, you don’t know what I”m talking about here. Life in a small town is like living in a bell jar. Even today, after more years living in cities than in small towns, I feel the eyes on me as I walk (walk!) to the grocery store or head to the tennis courts when I’m home visiting my parents. No wonder no one goes out, except to the safety of their back yards. Small towns are seemingly empty of people, because when you do go out, everyone watches you from behind the curtains. Believe me. Even when you simply walk around, you feel judged.
So it was to a city I fled when I turned all of 18. Whether it made me a writer, I can’t say. But the trials and newness, the new friends and new ideas, and yes the loneliness and confusion–they all contributed to an adult life that has challenged me at every turn. There’s nothing like realizing you’re just a little fish in a big pond to drive you on. And there’s nothing like realizing you can metaphorically sit down on any old set of steps and just be.
So, living at home might be safe (and cheap), but life only really begins when you leave.
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We were lucky. Mother’s can be so inspiring, and horrifying to us kids all at the same time. Had I been with you on that trip to the museum, I might have been one that was shocked or embarrassed at my Mom’s behavior. But I think she had a knack for knowing exactly what to do, and when, that would have just the right effect on those around her. Some would be shocked, and they needed it, and some would be delighted, and join right in. I don’t think she was ever aware that she was doing anything of the kind, but her nature was to forge ahead and leave the hung up types, with jaws dropping, in the dust. The bystanders could take of it what they needed at the time.
My mother was no saint, thank heavens, and for the most part could care less what people think of her. I followed my Dad’s nature more with his Episcopal sense of propriety and wanting to fit in, but Mom was always there to shake things up, and more often than not, leave us laughing. I have ended up with a healthy dose of both.
While visiting Mom during a hospital stay a few years ago, Vera and I went in to see how she was and asked “How are you doing?” Mom’s reply: “I’m just laying here where Jesus flang me”
She still has the capacity to surprise and amaze, and above all, amuse. Bob
LOL! I can just hear her: laying where Jesus flang me. Your mother is an inspiration to me in so many ways. That day on the steps was just the beginning. Some people shape your life in ways you never suspect–she’s one of those people for me.
So I’m reading this and agreeing with you, but then I remembered that part of what the research shows is that those who linger at home longer and get their ducks in a row are more successful in the long run. We’re talking about seriously mixed feelings here. Kids who launch too soon may not be as successful in the long run, but isn’t there something to be said about the freedom of blundering about for twenty years and just doing what comes naturally? Sigh. Perhaps we coulda been contenders Babs, but then we probably wouldn’t have met or experienced all of our adventures that made us who we are.
RDR
Yes, Rex…you have indeed suffered through this writing process long enough to have picked up one of the book’s messages! yea. But the difference is, when we were growing up, times were a little easier and less competitive. We could find a space, even after blundering about, mainly because there was a wider variety of good-paying jobs in the end. We also can’t forget that we had the privilege of blundering about–you as a white male with a college degree, me as someone with a family safety net.