Reading Part 3

Reading is life. And a life of reading is a full and rich life. How about the life of a writer? Simply said, I do not know how anyone can be or can become a writer without first being a reader.

I know for me, when I started to write it was nothing more than cheaper versions of all things I had been reading. I was a big fan of John Steinbeck and although my earliest efforts as a writer were nothing like the words he wrote, I certainly tried. I was also read a great deal of Ray Bradbury although my writing never came close to his either. They were early influences though, and I am grateful for that.

As I continued to read, things that I read would influence me in varying degrees. A number of very notable reads influenced me very heavily. I read Wright Morris's Love Among the Cannibals pretty late in my evolution as a writer. Despite this book being nearly fifty years old at the time that I read it, it made a very big impact on me. If I'm honest, every novel I wrote was nothing more than an imitation of this particular novel. I mean, sure, there are a great many mid-century novels that influenced me: The Movie Goer, That Sheltering Sky and Dandelion Wine to name a few. But it was Love Among the Cannibals that really did it for me. I think it was the relationships in the story, mostly between the two main characters and then the element of the road that really turned me on. I do not claim to be of the same ilk as Wright Morris, but the impact of the book was profound. I have never read anything else by Wright Morris. I have seen much of his photography, and he was an impressive photographer as well.

The other influence is one that I don't know any other writer would claim and that's Richard Brautigan. Unlike Wright Morris, I read everything I could get my hands on that Richard Brautigan wrote. There was just something about his novels, the one book of short stories and the massive amount of poetry he wrote that just turned me on. I would never claim him to be great writer or a particularly inspired addition to American Letters. Outside of his first book, Trout Fishing in America, he was not widely read in his day and he is all but forgotten now.

I think what I found so intriguing about Richard Brautigan was that it was fun to read. It was fun to read and I had never read anything even remotely like it before. It was light reading, absurd to some degree, and completely carefree. Whether or not the author wanted it to be that way, I do not know. His books were introduced to me at a time in my life where I was lost, having a great deal of fun, but I wasn't very happy. Richard Brautigan, in a way, saved me. Reading these books reinvigorated me to read and in turn got me to write again.

I believe that any great reader can, and should, become a writer. But there is no such thing as a great writer who doesn't read. And ultimately, where I am concerned, it is the work of the writer that I think we should all aspire to be. I think the whole of the human race should write a book, or may be two. If we all wrote two books, we're have a collection of humanity in an excess of 15 billion books. We just don't have enough trees for all of that, but wouldn't it be wonderful to try?

In the meantime, there are plenty of books out there for us to read. And there is no greater respect you can give a writer than to purchase his book and read it. Even if you hate the book, and say as much, you've still shown the writer great respect.

I have read a few of those how to manuals. Those books written either by teachers of writing or by writers. I enjoyed Annie Dillard's book, The Writing Life. If it wasn't the humor in her words, than it was the honesty of her life as a writer, the people she knew and the things she did. I have always been a fan of John Gardner's The Art of Fiction. I still refer to his words now, even though I feel like his examples are dated.

But reading all the writer's manuals in print will not make a writer. I feel like these books all have merit. Some of them are fun to read. But they cannot be the only sources of reading material for a writer, a would be writer.

There is no greater writer's education than the reading of novels. Reading those books you most want to write is a good place to start. Then there are the books you don't want to write. I have always been a fan of the noir, whether it is a crime novel, a P.I. novel or something closer to porn than erotica, but I have never endeavored to write one of these. Reading old pulp fiction novels you really get a sense of a world where street slang is the most elevated of speech and the dirtiest rascal you'll ever meet become angelic. There is something to learn from anything you read. And reading is all it takes to understand how the written word works.

My advice to anyone who wants to be a writer, begin reading. Begin reading. Do not write a single word until you have read 100 books. And my advice to writers suffering from writer's block, is not any different. Don't write a single word, but read as much as you can, read early in the day, late into the night and do it often. Eventually, the reading will creep into your thoughts. And when your thoughts drift to the act of writing, you can do it as if possessed. I cannot guarantee that this would happen to anyone, but I bet it will. I think if a person reads 100 books with intention, the 101^st book he reads will be his own.