That was my reaction after I finished my pastiche of Baker's The Mezzanine. I was surprised; a) because I'd just written a full two pages about one single strawberry (complete with three footnotes), and b) because it had gone by so quickly. I found it so easy to sit down and let ideas come to me. Once I'd found my main topic (the strawberry that I'd happened to be eating at the time...) I wrote without filter. Normally when we write papers and essays for school, or even when we're writing something creative like a short story, we don't just write the first thing that comes into our heads. Well, we might do that to start off, but eventually we have to edit things out because they just sound weird. But writing this pastiche, I literally wrote about the first thing that came into my head. Just a teensy tiny little thought, and I ran with it. Whole footnotes about cat food, and taking an imaginary bus to an imaginary street to obtain said cat food; creating Marshall's Seedless Jams, a factory specializing in...seedless jams; all of it, I was able to do, because I was pretending to be Nicholson Baker.
Who, incidentaly, borders on the insane. He must do if he can write without filter for an entire novel, not just two pages. But, not only do I question his sanity, I admire his decision to write in this manner. It was so liberating to sit down for an hour or two, and write write write about...nothing! Or everything, if you want to look at it through Howie's eyes. Everything was important, everything was a big deal, I didn't have to omit anything because I thought people would think it was stupid, or because it just plain was stupid. It was great. And if it was this liberating for me, Nicholson Baker must be an extraordinarily liberated man indeed.
2 comments:
The question is, Does that writing about "nothing" for two hours eventually turn into *something*? Is there inherent value in subjecting the daily experience of being alive--in the actual stuff our days are made of--to detailed, imaginative scrutiny? Is it actually important or worthwhile, as Howie insists (or is he tongue-in-cheek? I think he's dead serious), to treat changes in milk-delivery devices or stapler design or paper-tearing technology as worthy of a museum or a field of academic inquiry? If so, why? Is the mere fact that it's actually pretty interesting to read this stuff, to learn about and think about stuff you didn't even know was interesting, enough? When I'm reading Baker (not only this novel), I think so. (So, did writing about a strawberry for two hours get *you* anywhere? Will you manage to make it *interesting* for a reader?)
Mr. M: I think if it's written in an engaging style, and if the author offers some insight into what he/she is writing about, then I think the subject is interesting to read about. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved The Mezzanine, but I could definitely imagine a book where someone talked about the same things that Howie did, and made them sound super boring.
BMD: Yeah, I wonder if he had to work at it. I would imagine that the writing would sound very forced and strange if it didn't just automatically pop into his head. He'd be sitting there trying to think of a witty thing to say about a stapler...that seems like it'd be pretty awkward. :D
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