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I wish I could say that during the infrequent moments when Bob and I aren’t having yet another argument about all the fabulous advice I’m ignoring, we’re immersed in high-brow discussions about the nuances of language, the power of metaphor, or the mechanics of sustaining narrative arc. Of course, we do talk about these things—sometimes. Mostly, though, we just drink. And when we’re not drinking—and, now that I think of it, often when we are drinking—we tend to do things like pounding nails, chopping wood, misusing power tools, taking his dogs for a walk, cleaning the outhouse, and any number of chores at his homestead nestled among the fragrant junipers and the soaring ponderosa pines.
If such activities, shared between a mentor and his protégé, were taking place in say, Japan, there might well be a series of profound lessons residing within each task. And at the appropriate moment, Bob would turn to me and say something like, “So, Grasshopper, can you hear the sound of the one hand clapping?” However, since this is not Japan but, alas and wondrously, northern New Mexico—where folks prune the sunflowers from their alfalfa fields with chain saws and use their washing machines as lawn art—the chores we perform are devoid of any larger meaning. Indeed, they have no meaning whatsoever other than the fact that they’re all part of an elaborate campaign on Bob’s part to procrastinate the pain of having to drag his sorry ass back to his writing cabin and resume work on his novel. And it is this, the subject of pain, that has opened the door to his greatest gift.
When I wandered into my colleague Priscilla Painton’s office all those years ago at TIME, I was partly in search of concrete tips: how to talk to sources; how to follow a lead; how to schmooze people over the phone. What I really wanted, however, was simply to watch a writer at work—a desire that, by virtue of my relationship with Bob, has finally been fulfilled. By hanging out at his cabin and insinuating myself into his life, I have at last been given the chance to take a peek under the hood to see how the pistons fire, the cylinders compress, and the engine of writing thrums to life. Now that I’m privy to the spectacle, let me assure you, it is completely horrifying.
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For Bob—and thanks to Bob, for me too, because his curse is contagious (Damn you, Bob!)—writing is searing agony. He puts it off as long as possible; and when guilt, shame, or the looming specter of financial apocalypse prevent him from doing so any longer, he shuffles into “the pain cave” of his writing cabin and thrashes around like a Cyclops whose eye has been poked out with a sharpened log. For the full details, you can read his story (Fear and Loathing in a New Mexico cabin, page 12), which should dispel any delusions you may be nurturing about the romance of writing. But what’s relevant here is the unsettling fact that, even for the recipient of the National Book Award, the Prix de Rome, and a final nomination for the New Yorker Magazine Book Award for Best Nonfiction, nothing about this process comes easy.
The pace of the work is glacial (poor Bob has been hacking away at his current book for more than six years). The act of summoning beauty from the ether of nothingness inflicts torments that can be assuaged only by alcohol, drugs, or not writing. Most daunting of all, however, is the loneliness of the labor itself, a desolation of the soul that may perhaps best be likened to a kind of self-imposed solitary confinement in the Abu Ghraib of one’s mind. Labor done in silence. Labor devoid of companionship. Labor performed for weeks, then months, then years without the slightest notion of whether anyone will read it, respond, or even care.
Watching Bob raise the scaffold of a novel upon the rock of his imagination is so awful that I sometimes wonder why I don’t just give up writing altogether and explore a less unpleasant line of work like, say, mining coal or cleaning airport bathrooms. Partly, I don’t do that because at the age of 42, it is simply too late for me to switch gears. But the real reason I haven’t run screaming for the door has more to do with the example my mentor has set. An example that, God help me, has instilled an unwilling acceptance of what I imagine to be one of the fundamental truths of this craft.
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In my view, there is perhaps only one great truth about writing, which resides in the fact that it is done alone. The quality of what you produce—good, bad, or indifferent—isn’t something anyone can bequeath you. But what a mentor can give amounts, in my experience, to two things. First, a glimpse into the nature and the depth of solitude: its terrifying severity, its austere magnificence. And second, a demonstration of the courage that is required to chase the tail of one’s own truths, whatever they may amount to and wherever they may lead, into the face of that void.
A mentor, an uber-mentor, who is capable of imparting this kind of understanding—and who, by force of example, can help steel you to the prospect of stepping into the abyss yourself—isn’t someone you will ever be able to search out, or cultivate, or conjure from the darkness of your own desperation.
In the end, such a person finds you.
Kevin Fedarko chronicles his apprenticeship as a Grand Canyon river guide in the July 2008 issue of Outside magazine.
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