Читать книгу The Story I Am - Roger Rosenblatt - Страница 7

From the Memoir Kayak Morning

The characters in a novel I’m writing have lost control of themselves. The one-eyed hag has become a two-legged dog who travels solo in a red cart and plays bluegrass on the banjo. The gatekeeper has become a beekeeper. He’s so out of things, he tries to open and close a gate made of bees. He drinks. The hero of the piece is spread in a hundred directions like the roots of an old tree. As for the villains, there are so many by now, I’d be better off yoking them under a single name. This is what happens when you do not pay attention to the novels you write. Oh yes. And Death. A character called Death has stuck his Roman nose into the plot. He plays a vampire who needs a transfusion. It’s a bad idea, don’t you think? To give a transfusion to a vampire?

I sometimes wish I owned a shop instead, where I sold coconuts or objets d’art or Bowie knives—anything but books. People would come to my shop to get things they want. And I would give them what they want, and we both would take satisfaction in the transaction. The trouble with writing is that you give people what they don’t want, and by the time they realize they needed what you gave them, they have forgotten where your shop is located. You, meanwhile, never noticed them in the first place. You were intent on your work, which consists of patricide and theft. I read Cavafy the other day, cover to cover, for the sole purpose of robbing his grave.

There’s only one point to writing. It allows you to do impossible things. Sure, most of the time it’s chimney sweeping and dung removal. Or plastering. A lot of the time, writing is plastering or caulking or pointing up the bricks. But every so often there is a moment in the dead of morning when everything is still as starlight and something invades your room, like a bird that has flown through the window, and you are filled with as much joy as panic. And then you think: I can do anything.