A Reader on Reading

The book I finished was not what I had imagined, but now I too was a writer. Now I too was in the hands (in a very literal sense) of readers who had no proof of my existence except my book, and who judged me, cared for me, or, more likely, dismissed me without any consideration for anything else I could offer beyond the strict limits of the page. Who I was, who I had been, what my opinions were, what my intentions, how deep my knowledge of the subject, how heartfelt my concern for its central question were to them immaterial excuses. Like a hovering and persistent ghost, the writer wishes to tell the reader “you might laugh at the absurdity of this passage” or “you might weep over this scene,” but then the reader is bound to answer: “If you’re so anxious to have a point made, why don’t you make one yourself?” Whatever I had not managed to convey in my novel wasn’t there, and no self-respecting reader would supply, out of nothing, the laughter and sorrow that I had left out. In this sense I’m always puzzled by the generosity with which certain readers agree to mend the deficiencies of dismal writers. Perhaps a book has to be not just mediocre but outright bad to elicit this Samaritan response.

I don’t know what — from the mass of advice given to me by the masters, of the books that set examples, of the exemplary events I witnessed and the cautionary gossip heard throughout my life—was responsible for my few successful pages. The process of learning to write is heartbreaking because it is unaccountable. No amount of hard work, splendid purpose, good council, impeccable research, harrowing experience, knowledge of the classics, ear for music, and taste for style guarantee good writing. “No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination,” wrote James Joyce to his brother on 7 December 1906. Indeed.

Something, driven by what the ancients called the Muse and we bashfully call inspiration, chooses and combines, snips, stitches, and mends a coat of words to clothe whatever it is that stirs in our depths, ineffable and immaterial, a shadow. Sometimes, for reasons that never become clear, everything fits: the shape is right, the point of view is right, the tone and coloring are right, and, for the space of a line or a paragraph, the shadow can be seen fully fledged in all its awful mystery, not translated into anything else, not in service of an idea or an emotion, not even as part of a story or an essay, but as sheer epiphany: writing that is, as the old metaphor has it, exactly equivalent to the world.

During the first half of the eighteenth century, it was customary in France for theatergoers, if they were rich, to pay for seats not in the orchestra or the boxes but directly onstage, a practice so popular that often this intrusive public outnumbered the cast. During the premiere of Voltaire’s Sémiramis, there were so many spectators onstage that the actor playing King Ninus’s ghost stumbled and nearly fell, thus spoiling a key dramatic scene. Among the ensuing peals of laughter, Voltaire is said to have stood up and cried out, “Place à l’ombre!” “Make room for the shadow!”

The anecdote is useful. Like the stage, the writing life is made up of carefully balanced artifice, exact inspirational lighting, right timing, precise music, and the secret combination of craft and experience. For reasons of chance, money, prestige, friendship, and family duties, the writer allows onto the stage, to sit in on the performance, a crowd of intruders who then become involuntary participants — taking up space, spoiling a good effect, tripping the actors — and who eventually turn into excuses, reasons for failure, honorable distractions, and justifiable temptations. Success in writing (I mean, writing something good) depends on tiny, brittle things, and while it is true that genius can override all obstacles — Kafka wrote masterpieces in a corridor of his father’s hostile house and Cervantes dreamt up his Quixote in prison — mere talent requires less crowded, less constrained mental settings than those that most writers usually enjoy. The shadow needs room. And even then, nothing is promised.

For the time being, the reader I am judges the writer I managed to become with amused tolerance, as he invents strategies for his new craft. The shadow flitting in the gloom is infinitely powerful and fragile, and immensely alluring and a little frightening, and beckons (I think it beckons) as I cross from one side of the page to the other.

On Being Jewish

“Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the Unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?”

Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter 7