Being and Formulating

I came across an interesting quote about writing in The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh from his chapter on Right Speaking:

“Writing is a deep practice. Even before we begin writing, during whatever we are doing–gardening or sweeping the floor–our book or essay is being written deep in our consciousness. To write a book, we must write with our whole life, not just during the moments we are sitting at our desk.”

Discovering a new writer is such a joyful and annoying prospect. Joyful, of course, because I love to read. Annoying because I discover them faster than I can read them.

I had heard of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges before but couldn’t tell you anything about it, not even the name of its author. But I just read a short essay by and an interview with Nathan Englander in New Letters (74:3 2008). In addition to Urges, Englander also wrote The Ministry of Special Cases and the interview focuses on this latter work.

Of course, the short essay, “The Quick and the Dead” (about his visit to Argentina to visit cemeteries) and the interview made me want to read his books, so onto the pile they go.

Although the interview focuses on The Ministry of Special Cases, he does make some interesting observations about novel writing in general. Since part of my hope for this blog is to chronicle interesting and helpful quotes about writing, I’ll pass along a couple from Englander:

On plot:

“From reading the book it would seem that one outcome is much more likely fated, but I like to think that, as in a haiku, if a novel is functioning, there’s a momentum to the ending.”

On getting the details right:

“Because fiction has to be this unbroken dream. If a reader says to himself that street doesn’t go that way, or you wouldn’t hear the airport from there, he isn’t in the dream. To me that’s a failure, because it’s a question of effort.”

And since it’s November:

“Some people write a book just because they can, and those people are scary to me.” (The connection of this quote to nanowrimo is mine not Englander’s but it seems apropos.)

I have been critical in the past of the seeming lack of culture in Las Vegas. The perception that it is a crass, consumer driver, environmental nightmare of a place in many ways holds true. But, at least, they make no pretense to the contrary.

That’s not to say there isn’t anything intelligent going on here. They hold a modest and growing First Friday for the art galleries every month. There is one independent bookstore in Vegas (located in a casino, natch), although rumor has it it is on the verge of closing. And there is some fascinating mid-century architecture. And, I am sure, there are plenty of other things going on that I have yet to discover during my first year here.

This past week was the Las Vegas Valley Book Festival, and I was fortunate enough to see Michael Chabon give the closing keynote at the Clark County Library. Unfortunately, I had not heard anything about the festival until seeing an ad that Chabon was going to speak and I was under the false impression that he was giving the opening and not the closing keynote. That could partly be attributed to my lack of careful reading of the ad and partly because there was more buzz for the concomitant Professional Bull Riding event. To be fair, back when I lived in Philadelphia, there was more buzz for the Wing Bowl than for any literary event. All I know is that next year, I’ll have to keep my eyes open for the Book Festival.

For a long time, Michael Chabon had been someone whose work appealed to me, but until a friend gave me a copy of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh for my birthday last year, I had not read anything. I enjoyed Mysteries but was not overly impressed. It is, as they say, a good first novel. But after seeing him speak, I definitely want to delve more deeply into his work. I was quite moved and amused by what he read that night: Conquering the Wilderness: Imaginative Imperialism and the Invasion of Legoland.

I think one reason I was impressed with this piece (which does not seem to be published) is that Chabon is only a few years older than I am so his reflections on growing up resonated with my experience. The crux of his essay is his analysis on how different growing up today is than it was during the 60s and 70s. He laments the loss of unstructured time now that so much of a child’s day is planned and protected. He notes how kids are no longer free to wander the neighborhood and are instead driven directly from place to place, from event to event. I certainly remember having the freedom to ride my bike where I wanted, to spend all day in Burholme Park and the woods that ran behind Fox Chase Cancer Center, to go to anyone of my friend’s houses on a whim. The only usual restriction was that I needed to be home before the streetlights came on.

Another reason I warmed up to Chabon’s reading so quickly is that he mentioned Wawa early in his essay. Since moving to Las Vegas, I have become sentimental about all things east coast. Perhaps I imagined this, but I recall Chabon pausing as he uttered that word that must sound so strange to lifelong desert dwellers. It seemed that when he paussed, he looked around the audience to see if anyone caught the reference. I was with a couple of other ex-east coasters, and we bristled with excitement when he touched on this little piece of “home.” But we were off to the side and out of Chabon’s sight.

Because of the Wawa reference, his tales from his childhood, and many of his pop culture references, Chabon felt like kin, both generationally and geographically. I’ll certainly be adding his other books to my big and ever-growing list of things I want to read.

I mentioned in my introductory post that I had a short-lived blog, Being and Formulating. Although that blog never became what I wanted it to be, I am still quite fond of the quote that inspired the title. The title comes from a quote from the diaries of Anais Nin. I came across this quote second-hand from Brassai’s book Henry Miller: The Paris Years:

In Miller’s mind…to commit the events of one day, or even one hour, to paper takes days if not weeks. Anais would therefore never catch up with events, and her Diary would never be truly current. Moreover, all she was doing by trying was postponing the exhilaration of life, the moments in whose heat you would never think of writing. The pulse of life makes any formulation impossible…All the diary can reflect are life’s stagnant period, what Andre Breton called the ‘empty moments’ of existence. Anais wouldn’t always avoid throwing herself into the current of life. She too would directly confront the dilemma of whether to live or to write. She herself says as much in her Diary: ‘The river of life divides into two branches: being and formulating.’

I decided to re-post it on this new blog because the sentiment translates well into the world of blogging. And this would be the optimistic reason why people start and then abandon blogs. People are too busy “being” to take the time to write about their lives. Were I to focus on the pessimistic reasons why people give up their blogs, I would have named that blog “Being and Laziness” (or “Laziness and Laziness”).

Of course, I’m making assumptions here that seem obvious but might not be. I have my experience of Tombrarian taking a life of it’s own while several other attempts have failed. I’m curious to hear other people’s experience with trying various blogs and having some succeed while others fail.

Being and Formulating is the personal blog of Tom Ipri. I also post to my professional blog, Tombrarian. The title comes from a quote from the diaries of Anais Nin. I came across this quote second-hand from Brassai’s book Henry Miller: The Paris Years:

“In Miller’s mind…to commit the events of one day, or even one hour, to paper takes days if not weeks. Anais would therefore never catch up with events, and her Diary would never be truly current. Moreover, all she was doing by trying was postponing the exhilaration of life, the moments in whose heat you would never think of writing. The pulse of life makes any formulation impossible…All the diary can reflect are life’s stagnant period, what Andre Breton called the ‘empty moments’ of existence. Anais wouldn’t always avoid throwing herself into the current of life. She too would directly confront the dilemma of whether to live or to write. She herself says as much in her Diary: ‘The river of life divides into two branches: being and formulating.’”

Although the quote obviously speaks to a period of time well before anyone blogged, it certainly speaks to the recent explosion of this technology (and certainly speaks to the on-again-off-again nature of my posting. So, if I’m not posting, assume I’m “being.”) I love this quote and decided I wanted to use something from it for the name of my blog: my choices being either “Being and Formulating” or “Life’s Stagnant Period.” While the later has certain panache, I opted for the former.

My other blog, Tombrarian, has existed since March 2006. I had another blog before that which launched in April 2005, and when that one met its demise, I uploaded all its posts into Tombrarian. Since its inception, Tombrarian had been both a personal and professional blog ; however, this duel use has caused some apprehension on my part. I’ve hesitated posting some lengthy library-related ideas fearing that I’d bore family and friends and have hesitated posting more personal thoughts concerned that they are not professional. Thus the creation of Being and Formulating.