"A plain horse and wagon"
August 6, 2010
If you could live in any book world, which one would it be? The Featured Grownups
question has been tugging at a corner of my brain for a couple of days
now. You see, in a very real sense, I already live in a book world.
As the author of the Cassie O'Malley Mysteries, I have lived in
Cassie's fictional world for nearly a decade now. I've had breakfast
with her at The Eggery, ordering my eggs and potatoes from Greta, the
Eggery's popular waitress with Tourette's. I've spent the night with
Cassie at the Bhait's Motel (we have a very close and entirely platonic
relationship, me and Cassie) and met it's unfailingly polite, but
eerily creepy proprietor, Mr. Beejit Bhait. I've ridden shotgun with
Cassie in her classic Mustang, in the hour before the sun comes up,
hunting for the Jersey Devil and I've sat with her at the Mall of New
Jersey, nursing a flat soda and hunting for a story.
But what I've learned from my experience as an author is that the writer by himself (or herself) does not create the book world. The book world happens as a result of a partnership that develops between an author and his/her readers. You see, for a very long time, I carry that fictional world around inside my head. It is so real to me that I nearly forget, at that stage, that I am the only person who has visited that particular world. And then, through some magical process, I download the mess from my head to my computer. Amazingly, my publisher sends me a check and she arranges for the world to be captured between the book's covers.
And then, the truly magical thing happens, the most amazing thing of all. Other people read the book and suddenly, they're carrying that world around inside their head too. It's only then that the book world can truly be said to exist. When you find it not in the author's head, but in the reader's head. That is the partnership between a writer and a reader. That is the magic of books.
So, I return to the question. If I could live in any book world, which one would it be? I could go On the Road with Jack Kerouac. I could spend Two Years Before the Mast with Charles Dana. Perhaps I could hang out in Horse Badorties' Number One Pad.
"I am all alone in my pad, man, my piled-up-to-the-ceiling-with-junk pad. Piled with sheet music, with piles of garbage bags bursting with rubbish and encrusted frying pans piled on the floor, embedded with unnameable flecks of putrified wretchedness in grease. My pad, man, my own little Lower East Side Horse Badorties pad." (from The Fan Man, by William Kotzwinkle).
Maybe I could check out what's going on at Queenie's apartment, instead.
"Queenie was a blond, and her age stood still,
And she danced twice a day in vaudeville.
Grey eyes.
Lips like coals aglow.
Her face was a tinted mask of snow.
What hips-
What shoulders-
What a back she had!
Her legs were built to drive men mad.
And she did.
She would skid.
But sooner or later they bored her:
Sixteen a year was her order." (from The Wild Party, by Joseph Moncure March)
As tempting as that all sounds, I think if I really had to choose, I'd like to live on Mulberry Street where a writer's genius and a little boy's imagination conspire to turn a "plain horse and wagon" into the most fantastical of parades and, somewhere along that parade route, cement a lifetime love affair with books.
"With a roar of its motor an airplane appears
And dumps out confetti while everyone cheers.
And that makes a story that's really not Bad!
But it still could be better. Suppose that I add...
A Chinese man who eats with sticks...
A big Magician doing tricks...
A ten-foot beard that needs a comb...
No time for more, I'm almost home."
(from And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, by Dr. Seuss)
If I could live in any book world, which one would it be? Mulberry Street.
To read the comments or to add your own comment, please use this link.
But what I've learned from my experience as an author is that the writer by himself (or herself) does not create the book world. The book world happens as a result of a partnership that develops between an author and his/her readers. You see, for a very long time, I carry that fictional world around inside my head. It is so real to me that I nearly forget, at that stage, that I am the only person who has visited that particular world. And then, through some magical process, I download the mess from my head to my computer. Amazingly, my publisher sends me a check and she arranges for the world to be captured between the book's covers.
And then, the truly magical thing happens, the most amazing thing of all. Other people read the book and suddenly, they're carrying that world around inside their head too. It's only then that the book world can truly be said to exist. When you find it not in the author's head, but in the reader's head. That is the partnership between a writer and a reader. That is the magic of books.
So, I return to the question. If I could live in any book world, which one would it be? I could go On the Road with Jack Kerouac. I could spend Two Years Before the Mast with Charles Dana. Perhaps I could hang out in Horse Badorties' Number One Pad.
"I am all alone in my pad, man, my piled-up-to-the-ceiling-with-junk pad. Piled with sheet music, with piles of garbage bags bursting with rubbish and encrusted frying pans piled on the floor, embedded with unnameable flecks of putrified wretchedness in grease. My pad, man, my own little Lower East Side Horse Badorties pad." (from The Fan Man, by William Kotzwinkle).
Maybe I could check out what's going on at Queenie's apartment, instead.
"Queenie was a blond, and her age stood still,
And she danced twice a day in vaudeville.
Grey eyes.
Lips like coals aglow.
Her face was a tinted mask of snow.
What hips-
What shoulders-
What a back she had!
Her legs were built to drive men mad.
And she did.
She would skid.
But sooner or later they bored her:
Sixteen a year was her order." (from The Wild Party, by Joseph Moncure March)
As tempting as that all sounds, I think if I really had to choose, I'd like to live on Mulberry Street where a writer's genius and a little boy's imagination conspire to turn a "plain horse and wagon" into the most fantastical of parades and, somewhere along that parade route, cement a lifetime love affair with books.
"With a roar of its motor an airplane appears
And dumps out confetti while everyone cheers.
And that makes a story that's really not Bad!
But it still could be better. Suppose that I add...
A Chinese man who eats with sticks...
A big Magician doing tricks...
A ten-foot beard that needs a comb...
No time for more, I'm almost home."
(from And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, by Dr. Seuss)
If I could live in any book world, which one would it be? Mulberry Street.
To read the comments or to add your own comment, please use this link.
Posted by Jeff Markowitz
Folks tell me that my blog address is cumbersome, that it's hard to spell and even harder to remember. They may very well be right. Although it's derived from the title of my first mystery, even I can recognize that it's not a user-friendly address. So this page will contain selected entries from that blog. Each entry will include a link back to the original post. Use the link to read comments about the post and to add your own.
