Have the Greatest Stories All Been Told?
New Year’s Eve 2021, a night almost like any other. I open a bottle of smooth red wine, perfect for the meatball-and-spaghetti dinner in the works, my husband’s favorite meal.
I pump up the volume, the “West Side Story” soundtrack, instant gratification made possible by Apple Music. Doesn’t matter that I haven’t yet seen the Spielberg remake. I know the words to every song.
I sing along, the movie’s underlying motif as timely as it is timeless.
I think about New Years’ past (a galaxy not too long ago or far away), lining up to see the latest holiday movie.
I think about Christmas Days past and present, a mix of new movies on big theatre screens and old ones on a 40” TV screen from the vantage point of a cozy bed.
“Meet John Doe,” an all-time favorite, strikes an eerie, resonant chord in these times, on the anniversary of the Capitol riot to boot.
A newspaper columnist (Barbara Stanwyck) pens a fake letter by a ‘John Doe’ so disheartened by corruption and injustice that he plans to commit suicide on Christmas Eve. The letter captures the hearts of America’s heartland. Enter Gary Cooper, former baseball pitcher turned hobo, lured into becoming the fictitious John Doe and, ultimately, the voice of everyday Americans tired of politicians and their pointless promises. Newspaper sales soar. John Doe’s popularity becomes the seed for a greedy corporate mogul with political aspirations.
Why I Write
A few weeks ago, the provocative title of a Medium essay by Peter Shanosky, “Writers Are Killing Medium,” caught my eye. His underlying premise — that there are too many writers writing about writing — struck a chord. It happens everywhere on social media, once #writing becomes part of your feed. So much advice about how to write and how to publish and how to attract readers. It’s a point well taken, except for the contention that meatier articles on Medium are becoming rarer and rarer. My daily feed is about so much more — a mix of seasoned and fledgling writers alike putting in their two cents on the big issues of the day, sparking conversation with personal, sometimes moving, stories.
All of which has me thinking: does so much time focused on the hows of writing take away from the bigger question of what moves us to write? Have the greatest stories, drawn from universal themes — love and war, power and greed, life and death — all been told? And what does it really take for writers to recast them in a light fresh enough to make readers pay attention?
Call me old school in terms of what drives the impulse to write and keeps me at it. I don’t use apps to help me edit and I’m confounded by the market for distraction-free apps aimed at keeping you focused.
Not that I don’t appreciate and do my share of commiseration within the communities of writers made possible by online platforms. But ultimately, isn’t it that quiet, sometimes lonely, place we go to where the magic happens? Maybe writing — fiction, journalism, essays, poetry — is indeed a calling but at the very least it encompasses curiosity and a desire to make sense of things. Start with a love of the written word, add cultivation of craft, top it with finely honed instinct, and what may emerge is that thing we think of as a distinct voice, authentic as it gets.
Joan Didion has written: “There’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space.” The words are from an essay, “Why I Write,” that appeared in The Writer on Her Work, Vol. 1, a collection edited by Janet Sternburg. It’s an essay I’ve gone back to many times over the years. It’s a quote that has gained in popularity since her death.
Toni Morrison would wake before dawn to write. A habit that began out of necessity when her children were young became a choice as her career evolved. Something to be said for the mind’s receptivity at the edge of night and day.
Stephen King, in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, says: “You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.” He also makes this point: “What I want most of all is resonance, something that will linger for a little while in Constant Reader’s mind (and heart) after he or she has closed the book and put it up on the shelf.”
There is no resonance without voice, possibly the quality that draws me most to any writer I admire. It’s an elusive quality — that stringing together of words into sentences and paragraphs and pages in a notably distinct way.
Another movie, another resonant thought re: the whys and wherefores of writing.
There’s a particularly hilarious scene toward the end of “Here Today,” Billy Crystal’s 2021 movie about a successful comedy writer coping with encroaching dementia. A senior writer on a live comedy sketch show, he becomes increasingly angry with a cast member who consistently ruins jokes by emphasizing the wrong words in his lines. During the taping of a show, he jumps onstage, critiques the actor, and has everyone — studio audience and staff alike — laughing and clearly loving what is misconstrued as off-the-cuff improvisation. The scene goes viral.
The takeaway? Maybe there’s something to be said for a brilliant comedian reminding us that the best writing encompasses nuance in language — not to mention pitch-perfect cadence.
