“Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” – Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum.
Has anyone among my friends read much Erdrich? I’ve had a few of her novels for decades but haven’t read them yet. I also have two unread Kingsolver (Unsheltered, The Lacuna) and a handful of unread Morrison (Love, Paradise, Recitatif, Jazz, and some nonfiction).
Something happened to me in my late 30s/40s when I was so buried in work: when I fell in love with authors, I had two disincentives to reading them:
- Beautiful story/beautiful words made me crave writing my own. But being responsible for the daily well-being of my two children, a young nonprofit, and the formerly homeless women and kids who lived there with us exhausted me. I had no resources with which to write. And I desperately wanted to go back to school, to immerse myself in writing fiction as I had with poetry in my 20s, to see what I could do. But I couldn’t go. So I’d start reading a book then have to put it down because the way it both pulled me in and pulled on my own unarticulated voice was too painful. That probably makes no sense if you’re not a writer. Or maybe even if you are.
- At the same time, the novels by these authors felt so valuable, so rare – we had to wait years between them. Each time a new one came out, I feared there wouldn’t be another. I hoarded them from myself, putting them on a shelf as “someday” treasures. The exception was when Demon Copperhead came out this year. As soon as I got through the batch of stories I was editing for a client group, I read Demon in two days.
I started editing other people’s novels five years ago, and my own pleasure-reading dropped off. It wasn’t relaxing anymore. I’d already been bingeing some TV shows – The Office, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend – but I turned to TV almost exclusively for late-night relaxation. Occasionally I’d read a suspense novel, and for a couple weeks I went on a Lisa Gardner binge. I’d read any new Diane Chamberlain. But mostly my brain shut down at reading something I didn’t have to.
I’ve already declared 2024 as the year I will learn to make a successful chocolate cream meringue pie. (The photo tells you how far I have to go.) Since I’m retiring from my last grant-writing job now, and since, thanks to Peter, I can limit how much editing/coaching I have to do, I’d like also to make it the year I finally read the rest of Morrison and Kingsolver and all of Erdrich. I’ll have the mental energy to “taste as many” as I can.
If their books stir that writing thing in me, I should have more time next year to explore that, too.
Who are the authors you cherish?
