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Last week I received an e-mail from Roger Hodge at Harper’s Magazine, saying, in effect, time to climb back into the saddle. Where would I like the magazine to send me? What would I like to write about? The fact is I haven’t had a word published in Harper’s since 2000, which is also the last time I saw Lewis Lapham, who told me–I’m not kidding–to *** because I had the audacity to be nominated for an award by The New Yorker for my book on Haiti. And I haven’t dared in years to look at the masthead to learn if I’m still listed as a contributing editor. One must sweep out the deadwood every so often, I understand, and as a magazine correspondent, deadwood, however painful the description, describes me these days accurately.
I have become, not with any enthusiasm but of my own free will, a recluse, hunkered down in the wilderness, betrothed to a monstrous novel. Novel writing, Russell Banks once told me after finishing his book Affliction, is like living in an airless, lightless cave married to an ugly, depressed person, year after year. I concur with that grim assessment, with the caveat that for a garret-bound writer, life is just this: merely work, and hard, and not romantic, and not noble. The struggle has little to do with cosmic truth or mankind’s troubled soul, and much to do with energy and concentration and the monotony of the dream-like repetition of one’s lonely days. |
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Above: At midday, Bob walks to his writing cabin, plugs in his laptop and resists the urge to gallop for his horizon.
Below: He ends each day with 300 to 400 new words – and the dogs dancing around his chair in anticipation of a pre-dinner walk. |
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Being a correspondent, on the other hand, is like flinging yourself into whirlwind affairs with one fascinating partner after another. Seduction runneth over. I miss the road. I love it so, love the gravity of the illusion that out there–on the move minute by minute–life is finally, indisputably, meaningful, one’s intentions to contribute something useful to society are being consummated, one’s insatiable curiosity is getting a good soaking, et cetera. But I don’t much miss editors, except for the very few great ones who aren’t insulated morons or breathtakingly negligent and careless, who aren’t shameless lying bastards, who aren’t visionless mandarins of the status quo, air-headed cheerleaders for fatuous trends, or tyrants of self-aggrandizing little fiefdoms. The truly good ones, though, are like second, better, selves—precious and indispensable, a writer’s grace and blessing. |
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Novel writing, Russell Banks once told me after finishing his book Affliction, is like living in an airless, lightless cave married to an ugly, depressed person, year after year. |
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Each day at midday, after I have dragged my heels through the morning chores, I walk the short distance from the main cabin to my writing cabin, plug in my laptop, survey the symbols of grievous temptation nailed to my walls, resist anew the daily urge to gallop for the horizon, and start my writing day by fighting off the overpowering desire to take an undeserved nap, as if I’m a wayward bear in Yellowstone darted by an invisible park ranger. Give me go-fast drugs to stay awake and I will take them, gratefully and guilt-free. (Frankly, I’m more comfortable with the CIA running drugs than the Taliban, Al Qaeda, FARC, the Chechens, the Sicilian mafia or the Jamaican, Dominican and Mexican cartels. But that’s quite another story).
Sometimes I do fall asleep, which makes me feel miserable in every conceivable way. Neither sleep nor stimulants have any effect, however, on the speed at which I write these days, which is glacial. I begin each session by revising the 300 or 400 words I extruded–wrenchingly, haltingly–the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, and I end each session with 300 or 400 new words, the dogs dancing around my chair in anticipation of their before-dinner walk. This process goes on and on and on, a type of limbo that terminates in the next as yet undetermined stage of my life. A quiet retreat? Flowers and kisses? I have no idea, and don’t much care. I just want to get there, be there, take a deep breath, and start again. |
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