Even if you insisted on finishing your novel, what for? Novels sit unpublished, or published but unsold, or sold but unread, or read but unreread, lonely on shelves and in drawers and under the legs of wobbly tables. They are like seashells on the beach. Not enough people marvel over them. They pick them up and put them down. […]
Writing a novel is a tiny candle in a dark, swirling world. It brings light and warmth and hope to the lucky few who, against insufferable odds and despite a juggernaut of irritations, find themselves in the right place to hold it.
Books behave in a way not dissimilar to the gods, in my life at least. The instant I even suspect I might lose faith, a messenger (of usually odd and abstract sorts) is sent to bestow divine light and a transcendental sense of Higher Power upon my wretched and misguidedly sheepish soul.
A while ago, it was in the shape and form of marionettes…Oh yes, and automatons… First came Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret (that inspired my first blog)… Then, Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore…
And Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop (a purchase based entirely on my love of Nights at the Circus and very attractive book-binding courtesy of Virago Press)… While a revisit to the illustrative works of Sara Fanelli (who warrants something of an infatuation) led me to Emma Rose’s translation of Collodi's Pinocchio for the Walker Classics range… Hereafter, it was Joanne Owen’s Puppet Master (although here I can hardly feign surprise at the subject matter!)…
But believe me when I tell you, they find me in theme, and in secret longings, and seek me out…
And when it is not the books themselves, it is the writer speaking on their behalf, reminding me I may be ill-advised in my passion but surely not Wrong…
Or, at least, not alone.
Or, at least, not alone.
And reading Lemony Snicket’s address to writers was like some god of all things Book throwing a playful pebble into a puddle, and a veritable force in a teacup it turned out to be.
What was designed as a whimsical ‘deterrent’ to fledgling authors – determined as we are to support a dying and irrelevant art – became not only a mission statement for me (as I’m sure many others), but something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Really, such an address on the art of storytelling lies at the heart of my blog. Some people build shrines out of red candles lit on Spanish mountain tops, or big green trees and fairy lights and miniature barns with synthetic straw. I build mine out of my small space in Google. And while the book-makers and writers and illustrators I worship might barely know of my existence, I pray that these affections are not lost in the greater cosmic pool. I build these shrines because I remember how close Tinker Bell came to the deathly knoll, and I want to scream from rooftops and bell towers and precariously-strung scaffoldings,
‘I BELIEVE IN IMAGINATION!’ (Very loudly.)
And as if this is not sufficient, as if Lemony Snicket’s words are not plucky enough, it is not even a day and I have stumbled on a shoe-box of children’s books outside a mega-Spar, selling for a rand or two or three a-piece.
The Girl Who Would Rather Climb Trees
by Miriam Schlein
pictures by Judith Gwyn Brown.
Staple-bound and easily undetectable. But here I am, with just enough money in my small wallet for such a purchase, with a mint plant thrown in to sweeten the deal. (Simple explanation: the shoe-box bookstore extended to accommodate a makeshift-nursery.)
Published in 1975, and by the same author of Metric – The Modern Way to Measure, it tells the equally modern story of Melissa who “you could say” was in fact “a lot of different Melissas.” From “Melissa the reader” to “Melissa the bird-watcher,” “the puzzle-doer” and “the ballplayer,” there isn’t much Melissa can’t do... Until her mother and her grandmother and her mother’s best friend present her with a doll in a carriage. Deciding that there is not much to do with a doll, other than to carry it from one room to another in “the correct way,” Melissa-the-all-rounder finally wheels the doll into her room before “tiptoeing out.”
“Shhh […] Dolly’s asleep,” she whispers to her grandmother, her mother, and her mother’s best friend, before going outside “to have some fun” and climb “three trees in a row.”
Doing exactly what a picture book ought to - with a story simply told to hit all the right notes, accompanied by pictures that leave us with no choice but to know and love Melissa-the-all-rounder - I am dumbfounded. The odds of chancing upon the other book by the author of Metric-The Modern Way to Measure (and to take it home by the kind of chunk-change that even Coca Cola would discredit) feels not unlike changing water into wine with a little help from my dad.
Similarly, Brown’s Café in Humansdorp (a great haunt for chancing-upons) relinquished Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Folktales as retold by Alison Lurie, and illustrated by Margot Tomes. Apparently, the Juvenile Section of the Port Elizabeth Library no longer wanted it. This was intimated by the faint green (and somewhat out-modish) library stamp. (I meanwhile and momentarily imagined a reckless corner in the public library where the books once childishly dog-eared their weaker peers…)
And who would not want a book that rescues women in fairy tales from the fate of those ‘heroines’ who ought to be “persecuted by wicked stepmothers, eaten by wolves, or [if nothing else!] fall asleep for a hundred years” while the ‘heroes’ “seem to have all the interesting adventures…” ? Lurie salvages Clever Gretchen, the most-wise Manka, the lucky and brave Elena (thwarting, as she does, my most beloved villain, Baba Yaga), and wide-awake Kate Crackernuts (in a subtle Scottish twist on “The Twelve Dancing Princesss”). And while part of me feels ashamed that any Juvenile Section should lose her, as it goes, their loss is my gain and treasure.
Lemony Snicket is right. Not nearly enough people marvel over them.
But I marvel, and promise not only to reread, but to marvel again with each reread. I promise never to fall out love.
(And if I may please borrow your words, Lemony Snicket…)
It is against insufferable odds and despite a juggernaut of irritations, that these tiny candles seek me out in this dark, swirling world.
I count myself one of the lucky few, to be in the right place to hold them.
(Follow the link for full 'pep talk' by that brazen Snicket.)
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