5 posts tagged “writer”

We lost John Updike today (actually, yesterday; it is four o'clock in the morning as I write this). It caught me by surprise; apparently I thought he was going to live forever. Yes, he was seventy-six, but he had that long, lean look that some men manage to carry effortlessly into their eighties and nineties. I came to Updike late, for reasons that are too stupid and fatuous to relate now, but I'm so glad I found him. He was a great writer and there is a lot left for me to read. For that I'm grateful, but I'm still sorry to see him go.

John Updike

I found out a little more about David Foster Wallace's death. His father said he had been on anti-depressants for twenty years, but after experiencing side effects, he went off them in June 2007. Then they tried to find something else that would work for him, another antidepressant, but nothing worked. He had been in the hospital over the summer, more than once, and had received electroshock therapy. Nothing worked. After more than a year of this mess, he probably felt as if he had never been happy, or, at the very least, would never be happy again.

I feel bad for his wife, coming home to find him that way. It's so grisly; I couldn't do it to someone I loved or even liked. Wouldn't the face turn purple? And it would hurt. I know that when we are depressed, we don't actually mind hurting ourselves so much, but that would REALLY hurt. No. No, there are easier ways. If I had to do it, for some unimaginable reason, I would take the easy way out. Little pastel pills, or fumes, or gases. No broken bones or blood--or burning, thanks. If I had to. But I don't have to, and I don't want to, and I won't.

David Foster Wallace was widely acclaimed as a genius. This sort of thing always makes me jealous, though to be fair, I am not a genius and I do not deserve to be called one. So I asked myself, which would you rather be: a dead genius, like Wallace, or a reasonably intelligent writer who lives out her natural life in contented obscurity? Now, you would think that this would not be a difficult choice, and it isn't, but I am surprised at how grudgingly I give up laurels I have not earned and am unlikely to get. Some part of me really wants to make a contribution to the world of letters. I tell myself I have no ambition, because that's how it seems. But it is not really true. What I lack is discipline.

I am going to try to take something useful away from this sad story. I will push myself to write, because I can. Because I will wake up tomorrow and because ... well, Christopher said he keeps working because he believes he has a gift and that is what he's supposed to do about it.

I believe I have a gift, too.

David Foster Wallace committed suicide yesterday. Suicides always make me angry, and then I feel guilty for feeling angry at someone who was apparently in great distress. I just wish I could stop people from doing it. I do not believe in an afterlife, I believe that this is the only life we get, and to waste it is an affront to the memory of people who wanted to live, but couldn't. These beliefs seem mean-spirited somehow, but they have helped me to avoid that end. But what mattered more, this last bad time, was knowing that I have three young children who are depending on me in every sense--even as they develop their independence. I can't help but wonder if Wallace would have made the same choice had he had children.

Dfwallace

WARSAW (Reuters) - A Polish crime writer has been jailed for 25 years after authorities found he had committed a murder that had been described in one of his thrillers, officials said Wednesday.

In his 2003 book "Amok," Krystian Bala described in detail the brutal murder of a Polish businessman.

Police found that the fictional crime had similarities with a case in 2000 when a body was fished out of the river Oder in the town of Wroclaw, near the German border.

Prosecutors said Bala had humiliated, tortured, starved and later killed his victim, who had a love affair with the writer's wife.

"The court has sentenced Krystian B. to 25 years in prison for the murder of his ex-wife's lover," said a spokesman for the court in Wroclaw.

Bala told authorities that he had taken details of the case from press reports and made up other aspects of the story.

I couldn't think of anything interesting to say about myself, which is the not the same as saying that I doubt that I am interesting in any way. It's just that what makes me interesting isn't a single, stark detail, such as having had a limb chewed off by a shark. It's more that any given accumulation of my details makes for something notable, incongruous: interesting. Mildly, anyway.

This reminded me that I have yet to really show myself here. It's a time-consuming process, I suppose. So I will start small. I will tell you about myself in increments of words, beginning with five.

Single mother of invention reinvents.

Now fifty words.

I am a friendly but reclusive mother of three trying to restart my career as a freelance writer. Before, I was homeschooling my children and teaching classes part-time, but this summer my marriage imploded. I'm fair, fat, and fortyish; literate and curious, if a bit coarse. I live in California.

Next time, it'll be five hundred words. But I don't want to do it right now. I'd rather do my Christmas cards.