by Brian Doyle
And there are so very many more digitious communications; not to mention the millions of people who speak with their hands in sign languages of endless shapes and sorts, among them interestingly a language called baby sign, by which infants can communicate before they have learned to manipulate their magical tongues to form words with their mouths; and then there are the thousands of infinitesimal gestures and shivers and flutters and flickers of fingers individually and collectively that deliver messages by punch and caress, touch and poke, thump and knuckle; and then there are the eloquent messages of hands at rest, flung or folded, holding a steaming cup, waiting patiently on nervous knees at the doctor’s office, patient and still on the tiny chest of a child with a fever; and so we circle back to my sons at the table, boys who were once tiny children with fevers and worse, on whom my hands rested worried a thousand nights and more, but now their hands are fleshy comets and bony boulders, one son insisting on his linguistic prowess and the other insisting he is a doofus and there is no such thing as a finger of speech, ask dad!, which they do, and I tell them that they are both right, which as usual does not settle their seething; but I use a forefinger to indicate where they can take their debate, and shuffle off to my desk, and sit down to make a note on the mystery of the matter, my fingers stooping on the story like hawks.
Mr Hillerman
I had the pleasure, some years ago, of having dinner with the late Tony Hillerman, of New Mexico, and that long gentle vernal evening comes back to me now in cheerful memory, for not only was he the most genial and attentive and unarrogant of famous authors, but his wife Marie was even cooler, as is so very often the case with writers of the male persuasion; and some hours of riveting and fascinating conversation passed, in which the Hillermans were astounded by my alluring bride, and we were delighted by the wry genuine honest unadorned brains of the Hillermans, and as Mr Hillerman said, it was a good thing that he did not have to stand and deliver remarks, for he would much prefer to sit comfortably and have a second beer and continue to talk about books and deserts and the Dineh people of the southwestern United States and his days as a Catholic schoolboy in Oklahoma and his service in the war. He had been an infantryman, he said, a regular old grunt; and it was only some days later that I discovered he had won two medals for courage under fire, and a Purple Heart for incurring damages, and that his knees and eye didn’t work right because he had been blown up by the Nazis.
He talked about his love for newspapers (he had worked for papers and wire services in Texas and Oklahoma and then been editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican). He talked about teaching at the University of New Mexico, which he did for a long time. He and Marie talked with great high glee about their children. He talked about how she was way smarter than he was and she talked about how she had helped him become a novelist by saying do it and this was when they had six little kids and hardly a penny.
We talked about how the essay might be the coolest form of all and how he loved writing essays but hardly ever made the time, to his regret, and how novels grow on their own once you have written enough for the characters to take over. We talked about other American writers we admired, most of all Twain and Willa Cather, who if all she ever wrote was Death Comes for the Archbishop that would have been masterpieces enough for one writer, said Mr Hillerman.
We talked about how history is stories and research is asking questions about stories and how novels are really collections of stories about the same characters. We talked about how you can always be leaner in your writing and the first rule is indeed slay your darlings. We talked about the Navajo and he said you could spend ten lifetimes listening to stories from the Dineh and never hear but a small percentage of all the Navajo stories there are. We walked about how a lot of writing is just trying to catch and share stories before the stories vanish for one reason or another. We talked about being Catholic and how the deepest way to be Catholic was to not take religion seriously but to take spirituality very seriously indeed. We talked about how writing was spiritual in nature when it was witness, and how witness was really the final gift and responsibility and accomplishment of the writer, if you woke up enough eventually to realize it wasn’t all about you.
Right about there Mrs Hillerman said she thought that humility and mercy and kindness were the final frontiers for human beings to achieve, and Mr Hillerman said see, this sort of remark was proof that Marie was smarter than he was, and then we talked about the joy and chaos and hilarity and tension of children, and then, the dinner being at the university where I work, other people began coming over to shake hands and have their photographs taken with Mr Hillerman, and the cheerful intimacy of our dinner ended, but I have never forgotten how unarrogant that man was, how warm and friendly and unadorned, how unimpressed with fame and plaudits, how in love with his wife he was, how happy he was to be himself, unpretentious and unpretending. History will remember the wonderful writer, one of the best to sing the West; but I remember the man who, when I asked him his greatest feat, said, why, asking Marie to marry me!
A Note on the Misuse of Adverbs
One time my brothers and I were sitting at a balcony table in an ancient pub in New York City, conducting scholarly research, when my brother Thomas overheard a conversation below us and embarked on a memorable adventure that I believe should now be shared with the world, as his prompt and courageous action in the face of what some might call an emergency is something of a lodestar to us all even now, many years later.
We were perhaps ten feet above the floor tables, my brothers and I — high enough for a semblance of privacy, but not so high that you couldn’t hear shreds and shards of conversation from the floor. Just below us was a young couple, the woman eager and attractive and the man cocky and fulsome. He was oiling her up at such a rate that finally my brothers and I slowed our conversational ramble and bent to listen. We debated the right word for the young man: unctuous, said one brother, sharkacious, said another, oleaginous, said a third, horny as Howard Hughes’ fingernails, said a fourth. Finally there was a moment when the young man leaned toward the young woman and gently covered her exquisite digits with his offensive paws and said, hopefully, you and I… at which point my brother Thomas stood up suddenly, launched himself over the balcony rail, landed with a stupendous crash on their table, and said to the young man, Never, and I mean never, begin a sentence with an adverb.
We had to take up a collection to pay for the table, of course, and we were ejected from the premises, and the young man made a show of glower and threat until my brother Thomas told him gently to stop, but to me and to my brothers, and to my mom and dad when they heard about it, my dad being a newspaperman and my mom a teacher and so the both of them relentless sticklers for good grammar, they were the sort of parents who would instantly correct you when you started a sentence Tom and me instead of Tom and I, which drove us all insane, but it worked, because even typing the words Tom and me here in the prospective context of the beginning of a sentence gives me the willies and makes me expect to hear the polite dagger of my mom’s voice from somewhere near my shoulder blades saying if you say that again I will sell you as a slave to Malaysian pirates, a sentence my brothers and I heard more than once, and to which one time my brother Tom replied is that a conditional statement?, for which he was sent to his room for a week, but anyway, my point was that my brother Tom’s quick and decisive action is still a beacon and compass point for us all, and something we should remember when we are daily faced, as we are daily, by the egregious misuse of adverbs.
We need not cower and quaver, we need not flee and wince, we need not resort to long whippy sticks like the nuns used to use with such effect, o how they plied those sticks willy-nilly among the crania of their students, the secret was all in the rolling of the wrist, you just sort of snapped your wrist sharply as if you were throwing a curve, and that thin lathe of ash or willow would flash out and cause wailing and gnashing of teeth, not to mention a welt the size of Utah. One time Sister Rose Marie caught
Danny Murphy right in the eye and his eye fell out! and rolled under the desks in the third row! but that total suckup Margaret R. Sullivan picked it up right quick and raised her hand and said here it is, Sister! in that total suckup voice that melted nuns like butter and Sister stuffed Danny’s eye back in his head so fast that some kids said it didn’t even pop out even though later you could pay Danny a dime to see the dust threads on his eye and how his eye was all discombobulated because Sister didn’t have her feet set when she crammed it back in Danny’s head, and good footwork is crucial.
Margaret R. Sullivan, boy, that R. drove us nuts, it was bad enough she insisted on writing it whenever she wrote her name on test papers or the chalkboard but saying the R. when she said her name, Margaret RRRRRRRR. Sullivan, like when she was named May Queen and got to say the prayer and started the prayer by saying I am Margaret R. Sullivan, Queen of the May, as if we didn’t know who she was, well, you wanted to hit her with a long whippy lathe, but you can well imagine why any boy who even approached the holy lathe got lathered with it right quick as punishment for evil ambition, and anyway we got even with Margaret R. Sullivan by teasing her the rest of the year about the the there, Queen of the May, what did she think May was, a battleship?
In conclusion, the adverb is a crucial and necessary element of the language, and should be respected as such, and used with caution. We do not drive cars without first checking to see if there are enough cigarettes in the glove compartment; why then do we handle adverbs so carelessly, as if they were a resource that could never run dry? So I leave you then not only with a useful story, but with an unforgettable image, one that speaks powerfully and poignantly about the character of Americans, their dash and brio, their verve and grace, and their mordant attention to the rules of grammar. I give you my brother Thomas, one hand on the railing of the balcony, the rest of his long self aloft, his boots pointing grimly toward the smoked salmon salad below, his hair aflutter, his face alight with joy, the moment pregnant with possibility, as all moments are. Such holy battleships, moments; we are granted so many, and sail so few.
A Modest Proposal for Poetry Inspectors
All male human beings, I suspect, have, when young and stupid, endured a brief infatuation with a girl who thought she was a poet, and so all men have, at some point in their shuffling existences, suffered through poetry readings during which small quiet poets gripped lecterns like the steering wheels of vast ships, explained at incredible length the circumstances under which they committed their poems like raving sins, whispered their elephantine incoherent epic, and then, incredibly, explained at herculean length how the birds in the poem are actually symbols of revenge, at which point many members of the audience are contemplating the latter, and imagining a world where poets actually do have to get poetic licenses, and swear that they will not suddenly use French phrases in their poems, and vow to never personify favorite body parts of lovers, or write poems in which birds represent anything but birds. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Dreaming about that glorious world a little, a world that would require poetic administrative staff, men and women who would design and inflict licensing exams, and take poems out for test drives, and revoke privileges on grounds of obscurity (busted, Wallace Stevens!), and flag down poems that don’t meet clean-language standards, I imagine a raft of poetic inspectors, wearing shoulder patches with William Stafford’s gnomic smile, and also a whole corps of poetry injectors, cheerful citizens responsible for bracing up the boring — editing traffic signs to add a little wit and lilt, repairing droning political sermons, running retreats for ministers whose homilies have no heft, souping up newsletters, spicing up voters’ manuals, and sponsoring an annual Switch Day during which, for example, Walt Curtis enlivens the State Legislature and Ted Kulongoski shouts wild poems on the steps of the Multnomah County Library, Lawson Inada is appointed police chief for 24 hours, and Ursula Le Guin speaks directly by webcamera to every child in every school in Oregon. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Think of the advantages of a world with poetry inspectors and injectors: no Hallmark card ditties, lots more Billy Collins, all copies of Paradise Lost returned posthaste to England for imprisonment in the Tower, no one pretending to be influenced by Rimbaud ever again, the admirably clear and piercing Wislawa Szymborska an honored guest on Oprah every week, a small sharp poem on the front page of every newspaper every day, the seething youth of America competing hourly for the coolest arrow of a text-messaged poem, Walt Whitman back in the forefront of the litry canon, a President who opens his weekly press conference quoting Linda Pastan or Marie Ponsot or Mary Oliver…
A more musical and rhythmic world, perhaps — certainly a world with more of the electric darts to the heart that great poems can be; for poetry at its very best is the greatest of literary arts (not the greatest of arts, mind you — that would be music, or brewing beer), the one with the most power and passion in the least amount of space, the one that tries most gracefully find the music in the words we swim in, the one that delves deepest into the wild genius of language itself, the one that takes the sounds we make with our mouths and uses them as keys to the deepest recesses of the heart and head.
It is entertaining, at least to grinning essayists, that the price for poetry’s occasional unbelievable power is the incredible ocean of self-indulgent, self-absorbed, whinnying, mewling muck produced and published annually under the tattered banner of the Poem; but it is an ancient and useful human truth that every real feat is built on a mountain of failures. For proof consider your short-lived early love affairs, especially the one with the poetess, what was her pen name, Willow? Nighthawk? Kulongoski?
How Did You Become a Writer?
A question asked of me surprisingly often when I visit schools, which I much enjoy not only as part of my overarching subtle devious plan to get on the good side of the children who will soon run the world, but also for the consistent entertainment of their artlessly honest questions (the best ever: is that your real nose?), and for the sometimes deeply piercing depth of our conversations; we have suddenly spoken of death and miracles and loss and love, while we were supposed to be talking about writing and literature; and I have wept in front of them, and they have wept in front of me; which seems to me a sweet gift, to be trusted that much.
But in almost every class I am asked how I become a writer, and after I make my usual joke about it being a benign neurosis, as my late friend George Higgins once told me, I usually talk about my dad. My dad was a newspaperman, and still is, at age 92, a man of great grace and patience and dignity, and he taught me immensely valuable lessons. If you wish to be a writer, write, he would say. There are people who talk about writing and then there are people who sit down and type. Writing is fast typing. Also you must read like you are starving for ink. Read widely. Read everything. Note how people get their voices and hearts and stories down on the page. Also get a job; eating is a good habit and you will never make enough of a living as a writer to support a family. Be honest with yourself about the size of your gift. Expect no money but be diligent about sending pieces out for publication. All money is gravy. A piece is not finished until it is off your desk and onto an editor’s desk. Write hard and then edit yourself hard. Look carefully at your verbs to see if they can be energized. Learn to ask a question and then shut your mouth and listen. Use silence as a journalistic tool; people are uncomfortable with it and will leap to fill the holes, often telling you more than they wanted to. Women especially will do this. Do not misuse this great secret, son. Everyone has sweet sad brave wonderful stories; give them a chance to tell their stories. So many people do not get the chance. Listening is the greatest literary art. Your ears are your best tools. No one is dull or boring. Anyone who thinks so is an idiot. Read the Bible once a year or so, ideally the King James, to be reminded that rhythm and cadence are your friends as a writer. The best writers do not write about themselves but about everyone else. The best writers are great listeners. That is how fiction is hatched.
The best fiction is more deeply true than the best nonfiction. Most religious writing is terrible whereas some spiritual writing is stunning. The New Testament in the King James version, for example. Many fine writers do not get credit for the quality of their prose because they were famous for something else: Lincoln, for example. The best writing is witness. The lowest form of writing is mere catharsis. Persuasive writing generally isn’t. The finest writers in newspapers are often sports and police reporters. When in doubt about a line or a passage, cut it. All writing can be improved by a judicious editor, except the King James Bible, and even there we could stand to lose some of the Old Book, I think. Don’t tell that to your mother. Do not let writing be a special event; let it be a normal part of your day. It is normal. We are all storytellers and story-attentive beings. Otherwise we would never be loved or have a country or a religion. You do not need a sabbatical or a grant to write a book. Write a little bit every day. You will be surprised how deep the muck gets at the end of the year, but at that point you can cut out the dull parts, elevate your verbs, delete mere catharsis, celebrate witness, find the right title, and send it off to be published. Do not expect money. Money is gravy. The real reward is to be read; and if you get a letter in response, well, then, you have been paid in the most valuable of coins, the music of another heart. Any questions?