Word Wizards
Posted on February 25, 2008
Filed Under fiction, meme, praise, recommendations, writings | 12 Comments
Today I meme. It’s a literature-meme, so I’m excited…
Mizmell has tagged me and I am supposed to grab the book nearest to my left elbow and open to page 123. I am to find the fifth sentence on the page and copy the next three sentences after the fifth here in this blog. And while three sentences in the middle of a book aren’t usually all that telling or descriptive of a novel or a writer’s talent as a whole, when I selected the book nearest me and opened to the designated page, I liked what I found. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Amy Hempel is a wizard with words and even the sixth, seventh and eighth sentences of the 123rd page do her justice. I keep her compilation of short stories on my desk beside the laptop. I begin my day with her. Opening the book at random and finding inspiration in the way she strings a sentence together.
This is how it looked: a car in the driveway, a light on upstairs. But nobody answers the door. I know what I would have done as a child if there was somebody home on Halloween night who did not bother to answer the door. I would have come back with shaving cream and eggs, with toilet paper and friends.
~Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories
She’s nailed it. It’s a simple thing but she has conjured memory: me and Megan Cisneros tormenting the neighbors who failed to produce adequate loot on Halloween night with mailbox pranks and doorbell ditching and all manner of obnoxiousness well into November. Now, twenty year’s later, I can only think that the citizens of Fredrickson Road can thank their lucky stars that paint ball had not been invented in 1983.
But there are other books here in the stack beside my laptop and I can’t resist the urge to see if these authors, the ones I begin my day with, like stretching my calve muscles or exhaling deep breathes, the ones who help me prepare to write, will they manage the same brilliance on a random page, mid-story?
Next in the stack is Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America.
“Bill, divorced only once, is here tonight with Debbie, a woman who is too young for him: at least that is what he knows is said, thought the next time it is said to his face, Bill will shout, “I beg your pardon!” Maybe not shout. Maybe squeak. Squeak with a dash of begging.”
Okay, I allowed for four sentences but they were short and the fourth really just modified the third and seemed too brilliant and utterly necessary to Bill’s character and predicament to have left it out.
I could go on like this forever. The stack of books beside me is rather monumental. I could open each at random and see what wordy treasure lies within. It’s an enticing way to spend a weekend, but, in the interest of time and because memes are supposed to be short, slap dash, even whimsical, I’ll just do one more. It’s here and it’s handy: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.
“I have donated to the couple from the women’s shelter, and to the little boy from the youth group, to the woman from the Green Party, the kids from the Boy’s Club, the pair of solemn teenagers from SANE/FREEZE. The Berkeley-ness of Berkeley, so charming at first, is getting old. The bell rings.”
The bell rings. Did you read that? Of course the bell rings and Eggers has me reading on to see who will answer the bell, to find out which needy pan handler is on the doorstep. This is the beauty of Eggers, I think I’ll read three sentences and a half hour elapses and I’m well into page 150 when I remember that I’ve got a post to finish.
And just for kicks, I want to see how I stand up to the professionals. So I randomly select a page from my own story, Habeas. Since I have not written 123 pages, I settle for page 43, five sentences in:
“The interior of my mother’s car her true reflection, a jumble of paper coffee cups, packages of wasabi peas and soy nuts, a full ashtray, discarded tank tops and blousy skirts, windows clouded with road salt and the dingy filth of cigarette smoke, the windshield hazy and opaque with neglect. She bends forward over the steering wheel and her arm shoots out in front of me at every stop as if to stall my possible trajectory through the front windshield. I am forever ten year’s old in her mind.”
There’s my shameless pitch for my own writing and for that of Hempel and Moore and Eggers and of course for Amazon book sellers and all things reading related. Go forth and be literate. (I’m supposed to tag some others, so Jennifer, Slouchy, Xsd and Ron, if you’re having a slow week and feel like sharing a passage from the book beside your left elbow, please play along.
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