Readin' to Write

"Read even bad fiction" advised one of them college professors.
He said it makes ya work all the harder to write better.

I'se noticin' how many folks on the blogblock is somehow interst'd in writin'...Bawgs has a new scribe gig and shur enjoyed Bawgs' plagerism post and the comments over theah'bout it. And Bird has standards for teachin' writing and thinkin....Contessa Infinitessima (love name!!) is wrapped now in her own writin', Hail-Pig has his own Pigazette!Ardlair wants software snoops to keep writers and test takers honest.

Guess it is natural, ain't it--after all, bloggin' is writin', right?

But to write with sompin' to say that other folks can lap up, latch onto or chew on or even taste and spit out takes some far rangin' readin'so as to have a perspective longer than the end of our noses. Yer could say wide range readin' makes good writers. As Bawgs notes, "clarity amid the muck"(which always reminds me of "Love in the Ruins".)

One thang wide readin' does is give ya a nose fer derivatives, cant, rant written as rave for the contrary, and a new respect for original sources read without filter of various interpretations. It's jes' wonnerful when ya finds true wonder and discovery.

I gits a panic when I visit the liberry--all them books and not enough years left to read em!!


But that same professor done said sompin' real curious: read stuff that is too hard to grasp at first--stretch yourself, read subjects that are unfamiliar. I done a bit o' that, but not enough. Need more science. More Russian lit. Did read a thin Turgenev, Diary of a Superfluous Man--(oh dear)

Mostly I am scatterbrained bout it --I been readin' all over the map in the last year. I ain't got no plan, and mah list is not a recommendation for ya'll jes' a looky at the books stacked on tables, under the bed, in the flowered (Yick--old lady stuff!) three totin' bags I'se draggin heah and theah, plus piled on the floor in my matchbook study. Yep, and even stacked in the bathroom, I'ma reader in the bathtub.

(ain't sayin' I read them all, but I'se read IN them all, fer sure--did read most of most of em')

On the bottom of a chair no one uses at the table: some catlogs for travel gear, gardenin' goodies and three book catlogs (Bas Bleu, Regnery and Ignatius Press), plus Niall Fergurson's Cash Nexus. And, Frog and Toad all Year, The Grumpy Bunny and a coloring book. On the table at one end is Sibley's bird bible.

In first tote bag (green hopsack), Flannery O'Connor's Habit of Being, Mystery and Manners, MFK Fisher's Art of Eating (Read it till its ragged), Muriel Spark's Memento Mori (hysterical!) and Cormac McCarthy's Cities of the Plain (not for fainthearted)

Tote Bag number two (blue and rose colored tapestry bag) Agustine's City of God, Neil Postmans's Technopoly, Alan Tate(ed.) I'll Take My Stand, Walid Phares' Future Jihad, and Reading Lolita in Tehran. Hooper's The New Spaniards, Faulk's Birdsong.

Tote number three (Brown and olive tapestry) Dorothy Sayers' Nine Tailors, Alan Furst's Polish Soldier, PJ O'Rourke's Peace Kills (very funny!), Ellis Peters' Holy Thief, Ruth Reichel's Tender at the Bone (you'll love it).

On floor by by bedroom chair: Road to Santiago, Don Quiote, Idlylls and Rambles, The Field of the Star and Lost in the Cosmos (Walker Percy). Holdin' all this up is The Lovliest Towns in Portugal.

On the chair: Crocker's Triumph, Burtchell's Dying of the Light, Karl Stern's Flight From Woman, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, Lapsing into a Comma(yep--two M's), The Unseriousness of Human Affairs, A War like No Other War,and Collapse. (OK, ok...Plato's Republic, but I keep tryin', but never finish it...did finish Burke on French tantrum of 1789...and I really did read Tacitus)

By the bathtub, catalog from Willimas Sonoma,French Kitchen Gardens, 100 most common mistakes in English. Leerin' at me from the top of the file cabinet, an implementation manual for the Convention on ...nevermind.

Books given away to read are too nummerous to cunt but two good ones: The Last Duel (midieval judicial duel) and Embers--gorgeous prose from Sandor Marai whose psychological dipiction of men as friends/enemies is the best in 20th cent.

This ain't even scratchin' the other bedrooms (one filled with juvenalia) or my study or any bookshelves or the back seat o' mah car--and Uncle Aloyisus done hollered at me:

"Doan buy one more book"

What could that man be thinkin'??

So I said,
"OK puddin...doan buy one more shot gun shell"

He's buying shells as fast as I stack up them books.