I grew up with the — probably wrong — idea that you can tell how good a writer is by how unfathomable his writing is and how complicated the story is.
The fact is—sometimes the little things that catch you the most are those ones which not lie on the surface, but those which quickly grin at you from the depth, and then escape. Those are usually simple hints, allusions, word collocations, mental pictures.
The writing is clear, almost pure—there's only you and the story you receive. Probably those are the books you read raising a smile, it's as if the writer hadn't chosen to show anything but the fact — and thus, himself. It creates a strong legacy between the two of you, and it may seem like I'm writing bullshit, but the point is not "hey, I want you to believe in the purity of writing and kill every form of experimentation" — not at all. I am just pleasantly surprised when an author I know can be/do pretty much everything.
I ended up thinking that, despite the surface, the pure, discreet writing that doesn't make you feel its presence is probably harder to obtain. I mean, I am so purely fascinated by Ulysses's mental trips, I adore the genius behind those witty thirteen-lines sentences in Infinite Jest but yes, you can create whatever you want out of the blue, but when you want to remember the heart of the writing you tend to pick those little, unveiling bits of truth that pose in front of you. And when a writer can't do that — he is a bad writer. It is so hard to be clear. Words fail us. Feelings escape. The sensation of that moment is not to be replied, but if you can reach an effect, a climax — you're there. You made it. This is why there are few people who can write purity.
I missed the coach, the other day. I was in the city centre already, not much else to do. Grey skies. I walked into Waterstone's and spent there one hour wander, then bumped into this short stories collection, How we are hungry by Dave Eggers. I've know him for a few years. I had a coffee, I read. I almost cried; those little incidents can cause a motion from the inside, they do, they do. There is not much to say — he says that. The rest is just the bond that stands between man — or living creature — and the nature, the environment. The bond melts, there is barely a slight difference or maybe there isn't. Every story craves for being read, and the odd thing is that you finish. You look at some point in the distance. You think. And so on.
What surprised me was that I expected Eggers to be part of the "hard side". You expect it more from short stories, they're tangled and obscure. But here there is some purity that almost makes you fear he's trying to break in your head. Big deal.
This simplicity/simpleness remined me of that other big author, the same who wrote the cited Infinite Jest—David Foster Wallace. Both of them are among the most talented of these times, and both showed their true self with short stories. I still remember how painful it was to read The planet Trillaphon as it stands in relation to the Bad Thing [here in case you want], in which he openly spoke about the disease that eventually killed him; that is what he wrote in 1984—that is what he wouldn't do again, better, and I'd dare saying that nobody has ever spoken about depression in those terms, with such a nerve. No interviews. No advertisements.
When you can work with the experimental and still keep your feet still, you're on the earth. You make things exist. You run.
«I thought we were all the same but as I was inside my dead body and looking into the murky river bottom I knew that some are wanting to run and some are afraid to run and maybe they are broken and are angry for it.»
