A friend who is also a Here We Go reader (and so the very best kind of person, obviously) asked me for advice for writers, a while back, and though I will admit that I feel largely unequipped to offer any such thing, beyond also getting a job that offers health insurance, I have certainly read a lot of this type of thing, and this in particular came to mind, from Amy Hempel’s excellent Paris Review interview, which offers a sort of generosity of spirit and a general appetite that I think the practice of writing well usually requires:
I always have in mind certain sentences friends have written, and I try to pull myself up with them. There is the extraordinary large-heartedness of the late Christopher Coe, dying of AIDS when he wrote, “It was possible to love life, without loving your life.” Or a similar construction from Jim Shepard, “It was possible to have kinds of homecoming without home.” I think of Gary Lutz’s all-new sentences; for example, where a lesser writer might have a divorced narrator say he has custody of his son twice a month, Gary writes, “I was in receipt of the mothered-down version of the kid every other Saturday.” I think of Rick Barthelme using a natural wonder turned tourist attraction as a verb, saying that a place in the desert had been Carlsbad Caverned. I think of Rick Moody’s italics retrieving trash language; Pearson Marx amplifying musings on romance to the level of philosophy—“It is as cruel to deprive a person of doubt as it is to deprive a person of hope”—Julia Slavin reviving metaphors and clichés by taking them literally, so that a “consuming passion” becomes a woman who swallows the lawn boy. I think of the first sentence of Gordon Lish’s story “Frank Sinatra or Carleton Carpenter,” and the incantatory effects of repetition: “The man who stood, who stood on sidewalks, who stood facing streets, who stood with his back against store windows or against the walls of buildings, never asked for money, never begged, never put his hand out.”
Whew!
My point: when I don’t know what to write and I have to write something, either because someone is paying me to or for some sort of larger sense of mental relief, the only 100% reliable course of action I’ve found is to read. (I used to also copy out particularly good lines, too, sometimes whole passages like the above, because I am a full and total nerd, resulting in an endless notes app hodgepoge I review from time to time during moments of easy dullness in need of a boost.) Reading by itself usually does the trick, though—I think it gets the juices flowing, gives you a break from circling the same idea you’re having trouble with, reminds you you’re not alone, far from it, in this occasionally dumbfounding (or worse) pursuit. Reading is never a bad idea, in my opinion. Or maybe you’re like Maggie Rogers, who I interviewed for the latest cover of L’Officiel and who I found very inspiring in terms of how she thinks about creating. She uses a lot of chewy, synesthetic language to talk about the way she experiences music and the world, which she perceives as waves of color washing over a concert crowd, a smell in the air. She stays open, I guess. That’s good advice too. I enjoyed it, and her, and her new album, Surrender, enormously. You can read that interview here, if you’d like.
In other news, I’m back from my week in Florence and London, I finished season 2 of The White Lotus (excellent) right along with many of you, I’m sure, and finally watched a bunch of movies I’d been meaning to see on the interminable flights (some of which—Everything Everywhere All At Once, Marcel the Shell—I really liked, some of which—Where the Crawdads Sing—I saw snippets of on my neighbors screen and looked almost impressively bad???, some of which—Bodies Bodies Bodies— were fine). I saw a few episodes of the bewildering Yellowstone prequel 1883, despite never having seen Yellowstone, and I don’t know if it was the sleepless 11 hour flight or the show itself but it took me a full episode to realize the stars are… Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. Okay! (Also Sam Elliott, carrying the whole thing on his moustache and gravely timbre.) Sexy pioneers! Not sure I recommend it but if you have a long United flight coming up, go nuts, it’s free. I didn’t really shop while abroad, though I intended to in both places, and London was magic in the fresh snow, but I did get some beautiful vintage cashmere sweaters in lipstick red and marigold yellow. I guess I’m going to be a bright colored sweater person in 2023. I guess it’s almost 2023! Crazy how that happens.
I’ve also been reading old Bookforum pieces, because Bookforum is to be no more, which is depressing not least because it was traditionally the type of place where you could find writing like the kind I’m talking about up top, writing that made you want to write. Some especially good examples: Mary Gaitskill on Gone Girl (“It’s not exactly a new idea: Women are filthy, vicious idiots who must compensate with extreme self-control—dress exactly right, talk exactly right, pluck, diet, dye, and, hell yes, bleach—then claw at each other/bond over who is doing it best, and wow, is it ever cute!”); Eileen Myles on Tristram Shandy “Reading it can feel like being in prison with someone or being in a very small apartment during a pandemic, but then you begin to play word games both near and afar, and at that pitch of closeness you find your heaven”); Joy Williams on Ernest Hemingway (“An acolyte said he could be forgiven anything because he wrote like an angel. But during the last long years of Hemingway’s life, the angel had pretty much left”); Gary Indiana on Renata Adler (“For slightly over a year in the late ’60s, she was the daily film reviewer for the New York Times, a job no one else has filled quite as memorably since. [“Even if your idea of a good time,” began her first review, “is to watch a lot of middle-aged Germans, some of them very fat, all reddening, grimacing, perspiring, and falling over Elke Sommer, I think you ought to skip The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz”]). RIP Bookforum! Not enough good criticism in the world these days. And yet somehow everyone’s a critic!
What else? Well, why not a tour of Barbie’s dream houses? I kind of want this, though I need more art books like I need a hole in the head. Who knew she had such good taste in architecture?
Maybe you’d like a few quick last minute gift ideas, like an attractive pair of drinking glasses, or cozy, happy socks for cozy, happy feet, or a fun, dressed-up iPhone holder for your chic friend who takes the best pictures so you definitely do want her phone close at hand. Here’s an ingenious layering piece for your stylish sister who gets cold all the time but loathes “bulk.” It’s the little things, you know. Like the world’s best panettone. And look: most panettone is not good!!!!! This one REALLY IS. (Hot tip: From Roy’s flavors switch up all the time and the ones with chocolate/caramel/oozy sticky goodness are typically the best bets, i.e. the pumpkin maple caramel over Thanksgiving, but regardless, they’re all really kicking the butt of your average coffee cake.) More? Personally I’m still dreaming of these precious gem tassles, the lapis and ruby earrings being the big, big winner, but the rondelle chains alone are nothing to sneeze at either. If I were a different kind of person, namely one who didn’t gesticulate wildly, this would also be top of my list. Alas, I’d probably hit myself in the eye with it, or whoever happened to be sitting next to me. Maybe it’s so chic they wouldn’t mind? Stay tuned to find out!
Okay, that’s all for now. More to come next week. As always, if there’s anything you want to talk about, let me know: hearing from you is my favorite thing. Thanks for being here. I love you.