About a year ago I attended a reading given by one of my favorite authors, Jane Urquhart. At the end of the evening Jane fielded questions from the audience, and when asked about her own favorite authors, she named William Maxwell first. I took note, for I had never even heard of Maxwell prior to this. Revering Urquhart's opinion as I do, I put a few Maxwell items on my wishlist.
My good friend and reading partner was already aquainted with Maxwell's work, and sent me a couple books, one of which I intend to begin soon.
Last night she emailed me, saying how she had been reading a collection of his short stories, entitled, All The Days And Nights.
In the preface, Maxwell tells how he was going to go to sea because he thought, if you were going to write, you needed "something to write about." He had abandoned his quest to become an English professor and, thinking it was necessary to have some kind of adventure in order to become a writer, set out to garner experiences before settling down to write.
Turns out that the position he thought he could get on the ship was not open and so he gave it up.
And henceforth, concluded:
"I had no idea that three-quarters of the material I would need for the rest of my writing life was already at my disposal. My father and mother. My brothers. The cast of larger-than-life-size characters -- affectionate aunts, friends of the family, neighbors white and black - that I was presented with when I came into the world. The look of things. The weather. Men and women long at rest in the cemetery but vividly remembered. The Natural History of home: the suede glove on the front-hall table, the unfinished game of solitaire, the oriole's nest suspended from the outermost tip of the outermost branch of the elm tree, dandelions in the grass. All there, waiting for me to learn my trade and recognize instinctively what would make a story or sustain the complicated cross-weaving of longer fiction."
-- William Maxwell (1908-2000) --
I thought that this was a fabulous way of saying that all of our lives contain the stuff of novels.
The stuff of story.
I think he is right.
Have a great Thursday!
I totally agree.
ReplyDeleteI guess the skill level factors in also, so that what a person writes inspires other people to READ it. But yes, there is no such thing as an uninteresting life, really.