Curious Notions

I’ve had A Million Miles in a Thousand Years on my to-read list for a while. I think I was first interested in the book because I thought it had something to do with storytelling and I love me some books on writing and storytelling. (Check my post on Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.) I finally got around to reading Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and it is not exactly a book about writing.

Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, writes about how he was approached by the movie industry to turn his book into a movie. Through this experience, he learns that he wasn’t quite living a movie quality life. This catapulted him into exploring a new way of living. Live as if your life is a story. If your narrative is not worth watching in a movie, perhaps you’re doing it all wrong.

It was an interesting read and inspired me to examine my own life and question what kind of tale I’m weaving.

I find myself using book reviews as an excuse to share my favorite excerpts.

Favorite Excerpts from A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

My uncle told a good story with his life, but I think there was such a sadness at his funeral because his story wasn’t finished. If you aren’t telling a good story, nobody thinks you died too soon; they just think you died. But my uncle died too soon.

A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.

I asked Bob what was the key to living such a great story, and Bob seemed uncomfortable with the idea he was anything special. But he wanted to answer my question, so he thought about it and said he didn’t think we should be afraid to embrace whimsy. I asked him what he meant by whimsy, and he struggled to define it. He said it’s that nagging idea that life should be magical; it could be special if we were only willing to take a few risks.

I looked across the deck at Steve and Ben sitting and talking to Jim, and as they laughed and drank their wine, I wondered how much it costs to be rich in friends and how many years and stories and scenes it takes to make a rich life happen. You can’t build an end scene as beautiful as this by sitting on a couch.

Later, when I started learning about how to resolve a story, and when I began thinking about story as a guide for life, I took a lot of comfort in that principle. It wasn’t necessary to win for the story to be great, it was only necessary to sacrifice everything.

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Every now and again, I read a book that I want to throw at everyone I know or at least a certain demographic of people I know. In this case, I want everyone I know who loves (truly loves) reading to read The Polysyllabic Spree. I’ve first heard about this book from my boss. He often sees me eating lunch with a book and we would exchange notes on what we’re reading. In a course of half a year, he’s mentioned “that book by Nick Hornby about reading” and stresses how I must read it as someone who loves to read. I’m familiar with Nick Hornby and know him as the author of About a Boy and High Fidelity. The final nudge to push me to action was an email correspondence with book worm, Vishy, who gave me the title of this collection of essays, The Polysyllabic Spree. What a lovely title!

Hornby wrote a monthly column in The Believer, a British periodical (newspaper? magazine? I don’t know and don’t really care) where he logged his reading experience. Each column started off with a two columned table, one titled “Books Bought,” and the other “Books Read.” He then detailed his experience of reading what he read, not reading what he bought, why he abandoned books mid-reading, why he bought what he bought, and so forth. The Polysyllabic Spree is a collection of these columns. As someone who is always interested in the motivations and neuroses that push us to make the decisions we make, this book satisfied the nosy voyeur in me.

Why I found The Polysyllabic Spree a must-read for readers is that he’s terribly hilarious and relatable. He read and analyzed classics without being pretentious. He was sometimes open and vulnerable, namely in talking about his autistic son. He is a proponent for reading in general and as far as I could tell, wasn’t a reading bigot. Also, you may find some curious reads to add to your to-read list.

Excerpts

I had to stop myself from sharing more excerpts. For such a tiny book, it was packed full with memorable passages.

What happens is that int he process of being raped, the central female character gets her nipple sliced off, and it really upset me. I mean, I know I was supposed to get upset. But I was bothered way beyond function. I was bothered to the extent that I struck up a conversation with the author at periodic intervals thereafter. “Did the nipple really have to go, Pete? Explain to me why. Couldn’t it have just…nearly gone? Or maybe you could have left it alone altogether? I mean come on, man. Her husband has just been brutally murdered. She’s been raped. We get the picture. Leave the nipple alone.

I have complained in this column before about how everyone wants to spoil plots of classics for you. OK, I should have read David Copperfield before, and therefore deserve to be punished. But even the snootiest critic/publisher/whatever must presumably accept that we must all, at some point, read a book for the first time. I know that the only thing brainy people do with their lives is reread great works of fiction, but surely even James Wood and Harold Bloom read before they reread? (Maybe not. Maybe they’ve only ever reread, and that’s what separates them from us. Hats off to them.)

I suddenly had a little epiphany: all the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. My music is me, too, of course- but as I only really like rock and roll and its mutations, huge chunks of me – my rarely examined operatic streak, for example, are unrepresented in my CD collection. And I don’t have the wall space or the money for all the art I would want, and my house is a shabby mess, ruined by children.. But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not. Maybe that’s not wort the thirty-odd quid I blew on those collections of letters, admittedly, but it’s got to be worth something, right?

Books are, let’s face it, better than everything else. If we played cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go fifteen rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time. Go on, try it. The Magic Flute v. Middlemarch? Middlemarch in six. The Last Supper v. Crime and Punishment? Fyodor on points. See? I mean, I don’t know how scientific this is, but it feels like the novels are walking it. You might get the occasional exception….And every now and then you’d get a shock, because that happens in sport, so Back to the Future III might land a lucky punch on Rabbit, Run; but I’m still backing literature twenty-nine times out of thirty.

I’ve been trying to write a short story that entails my knowing something about contemporary theories of time-hence Introducing Time-but every time I pick up any kind of book about science I start to cry. This actually inhibits my reading pretty badly, due to not being able to see. I’m OK with time theorists up until, say, St. Augustine, and then I start to panic, and the panic then gives way to actual weeping. By my estimation, I should be able to understand Newton by the time I’m 850 years old-by which time I’ll probably discover that some smartass has invented a new theory, and he’s out of date anyway. The short story should be done some time shortly after that. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, because it’s killing me.

On reading David Copperfield:

For the first time since I’ve been writing this column, the completion of a book has left me feeling bereft: I miss them all. Let’s face it: usually you’re just happy as hell to have chalked another one up on the board, but this last month I’ve been living in this hyperreal world, full of memorable, brilliantly eccentric people, and laughs (I hope you know how funny Dickens is), and proper bendy stories you want to follow. I suspect that it’ll be difficult to read a pared-down, stripped-back, skin-and-bones novel for a while.

 

 
P.S. Please consider using the book links to purchase books from Amazon. Not only is Amazon usually cheaper but I earn a measly referral fee. ;)

P.P.S. I reviewed another book by Hornby. Click here to read review of A Long Way Down.

Months ago, Brenda recommended that I read Bird by Bird. Recently, I came across the book as I was browsing the library and was all to happy to try it out. A guide to writing, Bird by Bird read a little like a humorous and neurotic (in a charming way) memoir and was such an addictive read.

Ann Lamott provided a very nurturing guide. She coddled the aspiring writer with pretty obvious writing advice. Keep writing. Don’t write to be published, write to write. Get it all out and screw getting it perfect the first few time. She also rallied to not force your plot on your characters. Get to know the characters as they develop through writing, and if the plot doesn’t suit their way of life or personalities, ditch the plot and let the characters lead and navigate the story. I thought this “get to know your characters” approach very liberating and whimsical and it made me want to try writing fiction. In the end, the fact that she made me laugh out loud with her personal anecdotes, appreciate how versatile gardens are as metaphors, (I already turned in the library book or I’d share that excerpt on gardens with you), and made me consider writing fiction just for the sake of writing, has made this book one of my favorite books this year.

I can’t say enough how Bird by Bird was an enjoyable read, even for those who don’t write creatively. There was one piece of advice that spoke to me. I thought it was great general life advice regarding those frenemies who are prone to schadenfreude. Her advice is simply to be rid of them.

I don’t think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won’t be good enough at it, and I don’t think you have time to waste on someone who does not respond to you with kindness and respect. You don’t want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can’t fill up when you’re holding you breath. And writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like water – just as writing is also about dealing with the emptiness. The emptiness destroys enough writers without the help of some friend or spouse.

More Excerpts

“Novels ought to have hope; at least, American novels ought to have hope. French novels don’t need to. We mostly win wars, they lose them. Of course, they did hide more Jews than many other countries, and this is a form of winning.”

“You avoid forcing your characters to march too steadily to the drumbeat of your artistic purpose. You leave some measure of real freedom for your characters to be themselves. And if minor characters show an inclination to become major characters, as they’re apt to do, you at least give them a shot at it, because in the world of fiction it may take many pages before you find out who the major characters really are, just as in the real world it may take you many years to find out that the stranger you talked to once for half an hour in the railroad station may have done more to point you to where your true homeland lies than your priest or your bet friend or even your psychiatrist.”

Recommended Reading:

Two years ago, I read Stephen King’s On Writing and loved it. Also a guide on writing and memoir.