Often I go to blog and the damn essay vanishes, often because I don’t save it or whatever Gates has perversely devised. The last few days I have not felt the urge to write, for whatever reasons. I wrote a short piece which you can read in Pages called “The Artist Is Never Poor.” The upshot is that the well of the artist is continually flushed with writing water. So it isn’t that I have “dried” up. It is something else, a disinclination, if you will. I just associated to my birthday which is tomorrow. I will be 68. What is fire? What is love? What in the hell is 68? In Our Town Wilder talks about the passage of time in his homely and earthen way. I recall a line in which he says that the person across you in the morning at breakfast has eaten with you for about 50,000 times. Suddenly, you are there; suddenly you are old; “suddenly” which has taken years to manifest itself.
Well, I just saved that paragraph. I hope it doesn’t vanish. Of late I have been querying bloggers and reviewers about review copies often sent many months ago. Some of the responses are empty, unkind or insensitive, some dramatic or some odd. To wit:
“I decided not to write a review since it would have been mostly negative. It’s subjective I know, and I’ve seen several positive reviews and note that you have won several awards for your stories. But for me they read more like a pyschologists [sic] case notes than stories. I’m sure it’s just me and not the stories, since as I’ve noted it appears I’m alone in my disappointment.”
Go figure. As I said in my announcement that I will review books, I don’t buy into a non-review. I can take the heat. Life is short, nasty and brutish, good old Hobbes opined.
And then I receive this response.
“Matt,
“I am so sorry. I have fallen extremelly ill over the increasing months and have had to move home to be taken care of. Sadly it is more serious than I would have liked and I am not sure of my status. I hope that you can forgive me.
“I will try to rewrite a review soon but just to warn you I may be hospitalized in the near future. I apologize for my lack of professionlaism in this matter.”
It tears your heart out, doesn’t it. I sent him a few kind words; perhaps if he writes back I will direct him to my blogs on the colonoscopy. In this case fuck the review and take care of yourself, Doug.
It all comes down to priorities; that is why I am no longer bent out of shape by the weird responses I get to my work. Some bloggers, I sneakily detect, pile up books like Don Quixote so that they can admire them on their shelves, show others how “learned” they are. The job of a reader is to give the book away to another. I’ve become aware of blog “challenges,” in which — and I may have this altogether wrong — bloggers try to read as many books as possible under the challenge of a set amount of time. I resented that when my book was part of a reading challenge. So it isn’t what you read so much as it is how many books you read under the gun. Americana. Good old capitalistic competition. Nauseating.
Sixty eight years ago, a few months before Pearl Harbor, my mother in a hospital ward spread her thighs and a random presence was born. In August 1945 I dimly remember her getting excited about Japan’s surrender. And so time adds up.
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