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[...] That’s the feeling in the air as she stands and looks out over the water during what will become the last ten minutes of her life not only as a character but as a soul because she’s mine and my soul, and not only did I make her but she made me—she gets, standing there, that feeling you get in the summer on hot, hot days, of impending evening, a feeling that rises up shortly after two o’clock when the sun, having reached its summer zenith, begins the slow descent into the pines and maples and ragweeds tearing up the edge of the land; the vacant lot behind the cottage seething with dry brittle sounds; fences that lead nowhere. Her body is long and sleek and in a way has reached a zenith (the extra two pounds aside) of perfection that she is aware of fully; she feels hairless and slick and ready to slide into the water, to slip into it, soundlessly, to become part of it; her legs are long and (Tony says) fine, shaved smooth just the night before, oiled down. She ran the flat of her palm along the top of her leg amazed at the sharpness of it; then, straightening herself, she pressed her arms flat to the sides of her thighs, lifted up onto her toes, considered her trajectory and the depth of the lake at the end of the dock, and, out of my control, launched herself into the horizon.
[...] In the stories I used to write the ending would be neither happy nor sad; you’d be driven to go back for clues, for gentle hints of her future; you’d be the soothsayer, the story, the crystal ball, no word out of place.
not sure why but i find this moving
Of course I thought I was Jo in Little Women. But I didn’t want to write what Jo wrote. Then in Martin Eden I found a writer-protagonist with whose writing I could identify, so then I wanted to be Martin Eden—minus, of course, the dreary fate Jack London gives him. I saw myself as (I guess I was) a heroic autodidact. I looked forward to the struggle of the writing life. I thought of being a writer as a heroic vocation.
[...]
Later, when I was thirteen, I read the journals of André Gide, which described a life of great privilege and relentless avidity.
asked about role models
Reading—which is rarely related to what I’m writing, or hoping to write. I read a lot of art history, architectural history, musicology, academic books on many subjects. And poetry. Getting started is partly stalling, stalling by way of reading and of listening to music, which energizes me and also makes me restless. Feeling guilty about not writing.
[...]
I write in spurts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence that something has matured in my head and I can write it down. But once something is really under way, I don’t want to do anything else. I don’t go out, much of the time I forget to eat, I sleep very little. It’s a very undisciplined way of working and makes me not very prolific. But I’m too interested in many other things.
when asked what helps her get started, and if she writes every day
Well, it does educate us about life. I wouldn’t be the person I am, I wouldn’t understand what I understand, were it not for certain books. I’m thinking of the great question of nineteenth-century Russian literature: how should one live? A novel worth reading is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility, of what human nature is, of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.
whether the purpose of literature is to educate us about life
Whenever I avow to being influenced, I’m never sure I’m telling the truth. But here goes. I think I learned a lot about punctuation and speed from Donald Barthelme, about adjectives and sentence rhythms from Elizabeth Hardwick. I don’t know if I learned from Nabokov and Thomas Bernhard, but their incomparable books help me keep my standards for myself as severe as they ought to be. And Godard—Godard has been a major nourishment to my sensibility and therefore, inevitably, to my writing. And I’ve certainly learned something as a writer from the way Schnabel plays Beethoven, Glenn Gould plays Bach, and Mitsuko Uchida plays Mozart.
Don’t dare. Don’t want to. But, anyway, I don’t write because there’s an audience. I write because there is literature.
whether she thinks about her audience
De Iuventute
When I was a young man
chasing girls I was so
hot to get into them I
never had time to learn
to savor the pleasures
of it. Fuss and rush
was all it was. And on
to the next.
Now that I'm old and
girls will have none
of me I must try to
imagine what it would
have been like with
each of them if I
had taken some pains
to learn to please them.
Prince understands. He is the only one who understands me.
Then one day I come in from the porch. It’s starting to get dark so early, now that it’s winter. I come into the living room and it’s all in shadow. I can’t see anyone’s face clearly, all I see are their teeth shining.
It is so quiet. Then I hear their breathing, each one of them separately like singers not in harmony. They are all waiting for something.
“I wish I had a steak,” says Eliott, his voice strained and high.
A pause.
“In Africa they eat grubs and things. Maybe there are worms in the backyard,” says Pat.
“You can eat dandelion greens. I’ve heard of a dandelion salad,” says Eliott.
Pat says, “I heard in Korea people eat dogs.”
No one says anything. I can see the room get darker.
Then my dad stands up.
“What are you doing?” my mother says. He doesn’t answer.
“Where are you going? Howard—don’t —don’t—”
My dad is reaching for his gun. My brothers stand up.
“What are you doing? How can you even think of—”
They are walking slowly to the door.
“He’s a man, Howard! A man! You can’t—” my mother screams.
“He’s a dog,” says my dad. “He’s an animal.”
And then I see the door swing open, see Prince lift his head expectantly. I see my dad lift the gun and aim. I’m trying to get over there, I can’t get there fast enough, the air is too thick.
Sometimes I am so lonely the phone
will do.
Sometimes I am so lonely and you are not
dead, you
live in Brooklyn Heights yet I cannot
touch you.
I have spent 30 years trying not to write
this poem.
Sometimes I am so lonely the phone
will do.
excerpt from the poem Phone Sex