5.12.2016

What Do I Want to Write?

That's always the biggest question, isn't it? And yet, for as many words as I've combined together, through keyboard or pencil or pen, it is still a difficult question to answer. Why do I write? Because I have to, I say, and so say the writers. The philosopher in me has to doubt: and he has to doubt that I actually want to write.

Because I have to doubt anything I think I want.

I can only want what I have been exposed to. I can only think I know what I want based on my experiences, which are based on my circumstances, which alas, I have not entirely decided on my own. /enddigression

One key to understanding what I want to write is understanding what I want (or "want") to read. Lit Reactor had a post today about lazy readers ("lazy fuckers") who are too dependent on Amazon. I am not one of these readers. I thought it curious that the writer of this article assumed their readers all depended on Amazon for their next book purchases as opposed to going to a bookstore. Is this really the state of the book-buying public? Perhaps that shows my own bias: I am fortunate to live in a city with a plethora of stores: one Myopic would be more than enough for a single town, yet I can go months (years?) without having shopped there due to going to other bookstores.

Likewise, I travel, and when I travel, I make it a point to visit bookstores (see: St. Louis / San Francisco).

You find books you never knew you even wanted to read. It's the same with record stores as I've made this point before: you don't know what you really want and being surrounded by all of these possibilities is so much grander experience than relying only on Spotify or Amazon. /enddigression

My main reaction to Lit Reactor, one they also didn't post, is that one should read widely. One shouldn't always read in the same genre. One should read good books they didn't expect and shitty books they did. Yes, read Calvino and Borges and Kafka, but read a random bookstore find you have never heard of before. Which is to say: take a chance. Which is to say: yes, there are a lot of lazy fuckers out there.

I read Nikolai Gogol today for the first time. It was the first story in a collection that I picked up late last year, but I've finally gotten around to it. I don't know why I picked up this story collection. I don't remember the first time I'd heard Gogol's name, and probably only remember it because I was more familiar with gypsy-punks Gogol Bordello (who yes, did take their name from the Ukrainian writer). Based on the introduction to this book, I probably first heard of Nikolai Gogol from Dostoevsky's the Idiot, which I read in spring of 2009.

Gogol isn't too much of a deep cut. But I assume I "wanted" to read this book based on the subtitle: "and Other Tales of Good and Evil." More and more I find myself unattracted to anything pre-World War II, but I am teaching myself that there is still value in older literature; I am a link in an eternal chain of communicating, and it would erroneous to forsake my elders (no, don't ask me what I thought of Don Quixote, I'm getting to it OK?).

The first story in this book is "The Terrible Vengeance." The story, and presumably further Gogol stories in this collection, is a paradox. It's heavy with old-school (excuse me) "traditional" Christian morality, which of course in this particular point in space-time, includes a heavy amount of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and sexism, all of this at least form the character's standpoint. Does it still makes sense to read this work written in 1831? It's a work older than the city I live in. Did Gogol anticipate what future readers on the opposite side of the world from him would say? Did he even care? Should I care if he thought he cared?

Should I care what future readers will say of my own writing?

And that's back to the point: what do I want to write? I can write fairytales of a land without bigotry or hatred. Or I can write realism full of racial slurs, police brutality, future dictatorships, blood, devastation, death, war, and horror. Or I can write both. Or of neither.

Anyway, I rely on this advice more than anything:
Keep living and you will know what to read. Keep reading and you will know what to write. 
It hasn't worked yet, no, but that's life. 

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