Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Existentialism in Writing

Things that didn't work out as planned. Missed connections. Rejection slips on seemingly irresistible manuscripts. Unrequited affection. Characters who'd rather appear in someone else's story. Outrageous run-ins with your spell checker. A freight train rumbling through, drowning you out at the precise moment you ask someone significant for something significant. The market being out of Mirror Pond or Blue Heron ale. The same market being out of Wolf Brand chili, thus robbing you of the chance to have Wolf Brand chili with a cold Mirror Pond. Being convinced you are in advanced stages of absent mindedness when in the same twenty-four hour period you misplace your check book, reading glasses, Moleskine notebook, credit card holder, and favored fountain pen. Finding all of these in perfectly logical places. A cat whose origin in your life remains a mystery, bringing a hunting trophy into your work area, therein to perform an autopsy. Your dog seeming to think this is funny. Being asked (volunteered by a superior ) to serve on a committee dealing with a topic in which you have no interest and containing at least one other individual you consider a crashing bore. Final episodes of favored TV series (Homicide, West Wing, The Wire). A book you're reading, falling apart around mid point. A book you're writing, falling apart anywhere. While reading something written several hundred years before you were born, the discovery of an idea you'd just reached and thought to be original. Not getting the meaning of a joke everyone about you considers side-splittingly hillarious. Thinking you're too old or too young for something (anything!). Playing in a pick-up game of baseball and being told by someone half your age, Throw it over here, sir. Pasta in a non-Italian restaurant. Your ongoing attempts to carmelize onions. Your lousy average in preparing hollandaise sauce that does not curdle. You have two pair of reading glasses, Longs Drug specials; always the one with the least scratchy lenses suffers a broken temple.

Disappointments.

The yeast of story, making story rise to fluffy brioche heights.

Disappointments, vulnerability of one or more characters, conflicting agendas, misunderstandings as a consequence of naive narrators expectations (see Middlemarch), blunted ambitions.

Being preternaturally good at something of little or no consequence to you while at the same time attempting to achieve expertise at some ability of consuming consequence to you. Being told to get a real job, to grow up, to act your age, to major in something with a practical application, to save for a rainy day, to carpe diem, to get your act together.

In his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus posited that Sisyphus was in fact a happy man.

The adagio from Mozart's Concerto for Clarinet.

A fence as an instrument to keep things from getting out while simultaneously preventing things from gaining entry.

Having existential qualms as a delivery boy for the Miami Herald when encountering signs on various Miami Beach apartments that announced Restricted Clientele.

Potential violation of federal statutes because of behavior as a temporary mailman caused by the recognition of the name Ray Bradbury on certain thick envelopes from Thrilling Wonder Stories and Planet Stories.

Having a picnic lunch with Christopher Isherwood, prepared by Hindu nuns, midway between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.

Having nightmares while a student at Ida M. Fisher Junior High School in Miami Beach, Florida, in which you would never get back to California.

Having nightmares while a student at John Burroughs Junior High School in Los Angeles about dreadful teachers.

Having qualms.

Making a choice.

Making the choice.

7 comments:

Matt said...

My favourite subject, if only because I can't stop writing about it. The novel I'm working on has a central character experiencing an existential breakdown on various levels. The trick (and one for which I struggle to earn my blackbelt) is to make it engaging for the reader and not a stream of solipsistic drivel. Via humour, via magic, via madness, all of which are touched upon in your entry.

Which is good, because it means I'm probably on the right track, except for that bit about "A book you're writing, falling apart anywhere". Some days there appears a bell beside my laptop (or notebook), like the kind they have in diners or restaurants. On these same days, when I'm revising the book, I just want to reach over and *ding*, signifying that I give up. Done. It's good enough. Which brings us back to your note about Camus...

Anonymous said...

Existential is like irony--not a word I'm comfortable with although I recognize many moments you've written here.

Is there a choice making deadline? I mean, aside from the Final Deadline?

Anonymous said...

. While reading something written several hundred years before you were born, the discovery of an idea you'd just reached and thought to be original.

Shelly, you've given me a good laugh this morning, especially with this one!
Karen D

lowenkopf said...

Karen, vanity of vanities, the prophet saith, the joke is always onone's self.

Wild Iris said...

Matt's comment reminds me of a play I watched at one time. I say play, but really it was a series of small skits tied together with one theme called "All In The Timing." In the first skit two people meet at a cafe and there is a bell between them. They begin to converse, and as it does if something does not meet one of the party's expectations or desires, they hit the bell and the conversation does a short rewind. There are days that I wish I had a bell like that.

Anonymous said...

"being preternaturally good at something of little or no consequence to you while at the same time attempting to achieve expertise at some ability of consuming consequence to you"

Hey, that's me!- and I'm right smack in the middle of existential doubt because of it-

lowenkopf said...

Sarah, me too. I had no thought to be an editor, or a teacher. And yet. Although I did just get a raise without asking on my book reviews.