6/7/2011 - Mmm. . .

Last year, or maybe it was this year, I can't remember, I set a goal to read one book a month.  Actually, come to think of it, I made the same goal both years.  Bottom line, though, is that I gave up after three or four books last year, and my current outlook is grim seeing as how I just finished my second book of the year last night.

This morning, I got a mass e-mail from a coworker inviting a bunch of people to a coffee shop "reading" she will be giving on Thursday from her novel-in-progress.

I haven't responded, but I know that I will not attend.  I enjoy reading, don't do it enough, but I like it.  On the contrary, I hate readings, events where authors stand at a podium with glasses perched atop their noses, a bottle of water at the ready, and reads aloud.  In grad school, MFA students were expected to attend all readings given by the various visiting authors and poets to the college.  And why wouldn't we want to?  A serious student would relish the opportunity to hear and learn from a master of the craft.  A less-than-serious student would find any reason not to go, and on the rare occasion when I did, I spent most of the time surveying the crowd and watching heads bob in tempo with the author, nodding in approval or understanding or whatever else writers do to show camaraderie.  I never nodded, felt like an imposter if I did.

Worst of all were the poetry readings.  Half the time, I would not know a poem had ended unless I heard a small cascade of "Mmm"s from the audience, sometimes in conjunction with a head nod, as if the final word touched upon a universal truth, an edict passed down from Erato herself to her faithful and open-eared followers, leaving me behind with my prosaic thoughts and doubts, believing that indeed, this is why I will never be a real writer.  Needless to say, I never "Mmm"ed.

So I would usually skip out of these events whenever possible, using convenient excuses like sickness (in the wintertime) or allergies (in spring) or more creative alibis when needed.  Not that it mattered; nobody, faculty included, cared.  I showed up, didn't show up; either way, no one would have wished their lives were any different.

But now, on hindsight, I wonder if I had gone to more of those readings, fraternized with fellow writers more, participated in their community more, and just flat out read more, might I be in a different place in my life and writing career?

Probably not, as no amount of readings can fix what I think is my biggest problem: my attention span has been whittled down to the length of a baby's.  Prime example is this very post; I started writing about how I finished reading Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius last night (finally, after several attempts throughout the years), a manifesto on grief, tangents, and inappropriate reactions to tragedy.  I started writing about how I nervously turned the last few pages, afraid I would reach the end abruptly and not know how to react other than know that someone better than me would have quietly closed the book, smiled sagely to himself, uttered a soft but audible "Mmm" that would have completed the entire experience, filled in every gap and brought profound enlightenment to the passages I (admittedly) skimmed through.

Instead, I flung the back cover closed, looked at the picture of Eggers and thought, "He's the hottest writer I've read in a long time," then held the book by its spine, felt its weight in my hand and admired the girth of all its collective pages and marvelled at the achievement of reading all of them, at enjoying them along the way.  Nothing more, nothing profound, no revelations save the following question: could there possibly be a place for someone like me, with thoughts like mine, in the literary world?