Back when this blog was just a little tadpole I posted a typical conversation between Mark and I titled A Day In My Life. I did it because whenever Mark and I get onto a subject that he knows more about than I do, which is sadly almost everything short of pop culture, it's like I'm being asked to take a pop-quiz, in Greek, out loud and my entire life depends upon it. Well... it would be like that if I didn't enjoy it so much and could stop laughing. Please, the man is a genius and I am a mere mortal!
But I digress. Today I present yet another example of one of our typical conversations but this time you get to find out what it is like from his perspective. I have to confess that when Mark first asked me to read his post I began to mentally shrink back and out of the room. Then he used the magic words, "It's about you." I was back in the room, sitting in the chair and reading before the last word had left his lips. As a man who knows his wife well, he understands that I am fascinated by anything in which I feature prominently, or even slightly, as a character. (Yes, I suppose I do have a fairly healthy ego -- although after reading this you'll probably wonder why.)
Oh, before I forget and because after reading this you might not trust my judgment in these matters any longer, I wanted to get in an early plug for summer reading lists like this one that Alicia-the-great put together. Although at my current pace (read what he wrote and you'll understand this better) it should probably be called an annual reading list!
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What Seashells Say When They Roar
by J. Mark Bertrand
Laurie slides through the open door, stopping at the window so I can admire the way the sunlight sets off all the complex hues in her new red hair.* "That book you gave me," she says. "It has a sentence that doesn't stop for a whole page." She sounds miffed, like it's a sneaky thing to spring such a book on her, like I've broken the delicate membrane of trust between recommender and reader.
"Oh, yeah?" I say, buying time, trying to think of what book she means. Then it comes to me. "You're talking about The Corrections?"
"You know what happens to me when I read a sentence that never ends? I hold my breath. And then I start racing along as fast as I can, looking for the period."
She makes reading sound like exercise, and I like the idea. If big books and sentences that refuse to end could somehow be imbued with aerobic value, the whole order of society would be transformed. I imagine buff bookworms kicking sand in the face of men whose principle reading consists of stats running on the ticker at the bottom of an ESPN screen. But Laurie, who is always looking for ways to lure me outside for a walk, isn't impressed by Jonathan Franzen's run-on sentences. Or is she?
"Bring it here," I say, and she trots of to her bedside, returning with a thick paperback. I've had The Corrections on the shelf for several years, but I've never gotten around to reading it. Last summer -- or was it the summer before -- Liv Booth had just finished the book and declared it brilliant. Like Dickens, she'd said, and that stuck with me. Laurie has been on a Dickens kick recently, so when she finished her last one and asked for a recommendation, I thought of Franzen. She's had the book for a couple of weeks now, but as she hands it over I find her bookmark -- and the offending page-long sentence -- on Page 11.
"You're only on page eleven?"
"I read a couple of pages a night."
She scans the page over my shoulder and points out the beginning of the Sentence That Will Not End. I start reading aloud. This sentence is like a seashell I hold to my ear in anticipation of a roar. The funny thing is, I can't get her "racing to the period" line out of my head, and try as I might, I can't seem to read at a normal pace. Semi-colon after semi-colon, arranged like hurdles on a track -- and my foot catches on a couple of them as I pick up speed. Is this the subliminal effect of her description? (I'm highly suggestible in this way; reading about James Joyce's glaucoma, for example, convinced me that I had glaucoma, too.) Or is this always how it goes with long sentences? I'm reminded of the way people talk about the German language, where you dive into a long, twisting sentence (packed with long, twisting and often capitalized words), desperately grasping at the verb at the end to make sense of it all. That's how I feel as I read Franzen's sentence -- and yet, the sentence, long as it is, doesn't feel like a stunt. It's good. Quite good, actually. The sort of sentence I wish I'd written.
Laurie seems to come around, too. As I finish and the sound of my voice trails off, she crosses her arms and gives the reading an appreciative nod. "That's really good."
It is good, and the way I know is that I can't help feeling a little jealous. The same thing happened a couple of years ago when I turned Laurie on to Martin Amis, one of my favorites from way back. She read London Fields and started quoting lines about the monstrous infant Marmaduke. In the past, she'd always read things I praised and say that I could write just as well myself. But when I praised Amis and said I'd never be able to write like that, she didn't argue. Now the same thing is happening with Jonathan Franzen. Actually, it isn't -- not yet -- but I can feel it, and like a reader trapped in a run-on sentence, I'm holding my breath until the expected end comes.
"Yeah," I say. "It's good. Yet another writer who's better than me."
I don't mean it, of course. I may know objectively that other writers are higher up than me on the foodchain of greatness, but it's as difficult to believe that subjectively as it is for a child to accept mortality. It's true, but somehow not "true for me." Which is a good thing. A writer has to believe in himself much more than his talent warrants to persevere. The obstacles are great, after all, and the encouragement as whispy as an old man's hair. Or something like that.
Laurie takes in my mood at once, and rewards me with an indulgent smile. "Yes," she says, "instead of being inspired by great writers, why don't you just pretend they're poking and taunting you."
But they are poking and taunting me, I want to say. With their run-on sentences and their clever words and their stories about nothing that somehow manage to be about everything. They're jabbing me with their sharpened pencils when she isn't looking. And I must be a masochist because I love it. I've never gotten much out of a book I reckoned I could have written better, but the ones that smite me somehow win my love. The books that are hard on me, the ones that put me in my place.
I don't know how other writers feel about it, but for me reading a great book instills fear. Not the knee-knocking, teeth-chattering kind, but the sort of trepidation you feel watching a diver leap to the water from the heights of a rocky cliff. An adrenaline-saturated fear that drives me forward, that makes me want to jump, too. Those words, those menacing, spiraling run-on sentences are like a reckless dare. Come on. Let's see if you can do this. And even if I know I can't, I have to try, because who can back down from a challenge like that? An invitation to match wits in the longest running game in town.
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*Yes. I am now the proud owner of red hair! I was having an "oh-my-goodness-I-have-got-to-do-something" moment and hair has always been the easiest thing for me to change. And yes, I love it!
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