An Apt Gift

Date November 27, 2004

I received an unexpected gift today– a copy of the Paris Review 25th Anniversary Issue. The person who gave it to me had no idea what they were giving me. To her it was an outstanding copy of a magazine she knows I like to read. And it is. But it is also a small dagger on an unerring path between the ribs to my caged heart. When I first came to college, having no idea about much of anything except that I wanted to be a writer, I spent a lot of time hanging out in the “Serials and Periodicals” section in the bowels of the library.

This issue of the Paris Review was on the shelf, already yellowing, the strange juxtaposition of Hemingway and Faulkner advertised on the front, the Porsche Turbo on the back. It became a kind of talisman for me. Everything was in there that would, in some way, define who I wanted– who I thought I was meant to be. Hemingway and the sound of his shotgun. Carver, who was destined to be the single-most influential author in my life. Ashbery, Benedikt, Levine, Stafford, and Kinnell– glimpses of a world of tradition and dissonance, the intersection of prose and poetics. Creeley, who absolutely floored me.

When she handed it to me it was like a time bomb going off in my head. The Hockney print on the cover that had been etched into my brain when the world seemed limitless. Everything I wanted to be. The things I’ve been. And all the things I haven’t. It’s sitting on the desk next to me right now, like a lost friend I didn’t even realize I’d forgotten until I hear their voice in a dream.

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One Response to “An Apt Gift”

  1. Gene said:

    November 28th, 2004 at 1:12 pm

    Yup.

    Sometimes, I’m certain that the toughest work a writer can do is to stop.

    (And that, at least, allows me to feel sympathy for the Rolling Stones putting out one more crap album…even if it does suck. It is, after all, what they do…and what they’ve always done.)

    If it guides you, follow it. If it guides you to work at it, follow that, too. There’s no pay in that gig above what you put into it in the first place. That can be invaluable, but it doesn’t always pay the rent.

    I, personally, am glad to hear that there are still time bombs going off in your vicinity.

    –G