Why We Write: The List

I’ve been doing these Why We Write posts for a while now, so before I add more authors to the list (and I have plenty to add), I thought I should do a little combo of all of them. Call it an opportunity for readers to get caught up. Call it a craven attempt at added hits and blog traffic. Call it anything.

So, here we go! Below are the quotes and links to my inane little comments on them:

Don Delillo:

“Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.”

Blaise Pascal:

“Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless.”

Tom Wolfe:

I think I am starving for publication: I love to get published; it maddens me not to get published. I feel at times like getting every publisher in the world by the scruff of the neck, forcing his jaws open, and cramming the Mss down his throat — ‘God-damn you, here it is – I will and must be published.’

You know what it means – you’re a writer and you understand it. It’s not just ‘the satisfaction of being published.’ Great God! It’s the satisfaction of getting it out, or having that, so far as you’re concerned, gone through with it! That good or ill, for better or for worse, it’s over, done with, finished, out of your life forever and that, come what may, you can at least, as far as this thing is concerned, get the merciful damned easement of oblivion and forgetfulness.

John Updike:

“I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody’s head.”

Joseph Heller:

“Every writer I know has trouble writing.”

Ray Bradbury:

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

E.B. White:

“All writing is both a mask and an unveiling.”

George Orwell:

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

Graham Greene:

“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.”

There you go folks! Check out all the links for author photos and comments. And as I said earlier, I’ll keep adding to this list. It’s inspiring to me, so hopefully it is to some of you as well.

C.T.

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Why We Write: John Updike

“I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody’s head.”  ~John Updike

Updike (Photo credit: WBUR)

Every semester I ask my students a question: How long could you go without your smart phone?

I ask and inevitably, hands go to foreheads in faux swoons, people gasp, jaws drop. This isn’t every student’s reaction mind you, but in some classes, it’s an overwhelming majority. Every student has a smart phone now, and the more they rely on them, the harder it is to even consider giving them up, even for a day. We need to be forever connected, plugged in, stimulated. If we aren’t, we wither and die, apparently.

So Updike’s quote strikes me in a particular way, because I wonder if this issue, overstimulation, is the kind of traffic jam he had in mind. (To be frank, I think I have a bit of it myself.)

If this is the case, then Updike seemed like he really wanted to perform a public service. As an author, he wanted to help people decompress, relax, chill. So, in a real sense, authors are providing a service for an over-stimulated populace. Well that certainly puffs my feathers out. “Hey, I’m serving the world! Read me and be relaxed!”

Okay, it’s a bit much.

Perhaps Updike was referring to a creative traffic jam, and his writing was intended to open up a reader’s mind to deeper levels of meaning and thought. In that case he was trying to challenge rather than relax. I suppose this is an option too.

Honestly, I need a little relaxation, so I’ll go with Option A. But that’s just me. What do you all think?

C.T.

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