Essays

Do You Feel Changed By Non-Fiction?

I rarely commit myself to entire books of non-fiction. That sort of discipline requires a certain skill I have yet to gain, and I usually find my mind wandering to thoughts of how much better my time would be spent on fiction. Or with my kids. Or outdoors. Or doing anything else.

I am, however, 100% converted to be pro-non-fiction when it concerns the lives and philosophies of artists and creatives. As an adult, I never really cared to read any of J.R.R. Tolkien’s works. As all good children do, I once thrived on The Hobbit as a child and I watched the old Rankin-Bass animated adaptation nearly daily. I stopped caring much after middle school. Then one day, I was handed a thrift store copy of a book of essays on the man himself. Reading about Tolkien fascinated me. I became suddenly motivated to read all his books (starting with Children Of Hurin, oddly enough), and it was key to my eventual wider interest in all sorts of other fiction. It is often the artist that I am interested in as deeply as the work itself.

Lately I have been making my way through the recently published tome Salinger, by David Shields and Shane Salerno. It’s written in oral biography form, meaning simply that the entire book is a well organized collection of quoted statements from a variety of J.D. Salinger’s friends, family members, and business associates, along with some other scholars. This is my first oral biography, and I find it wonderful and fascinating to read a story as you would watch documentary interview footage.

Anyway, the main point I’m trying to come to is actually a question for you, the reader. It is simply this.

Do you feel that reading non-fiction changes you?

I think it is obvious to me that much of the time we read fiction to be changed. We read genre fiction to be swept up in a certain formula of a world, to get away or put on a certain mindset. We read high literature to test and expand our world-views, to endeavor to understand a wider range of real-world experiences and emotions.

But what about non-fiction? I consider myself a novice, but I assume that non-fiction reading is generally more of an attempt to gain information. Is this true for those who read lots of non-fiction?

As I have been reading Salinger, I’ve witnessed in detail the life of a very odd but relatable man, a highly intelligent and sensitive fellow who holds materialism, war, and first-world society at large in contempt while struggling also with the desire to be accepted and validated by the only world he sees around him. He gets weirder and weirder as his life goes on, troubled by WWII memories and a publicity that grows more as he tries to hide from it. As I pour over the details and see some aspect here or a statement there which I can relate to, I feel something familiar to me which I’ve never really heard discussed.

I walk away from the book in the spirit of the subject.

I am overwhelmed by thoughts that I might have had myself, independently, but never so consistently or overwhelmingly as after reading about a similarly-plagued mind. I tend to feel like I’m understanding him a little too well, like I am perhaps agreeing too much with his understanding of the world.

Does this happen to everyone? Without getting too mystical (that would be a great conversation for another time) or sounding too much like a creeper stalker or obsessive fan, I wonder honestly how our attempts to understand something through non-fiction affect us regardless of whether we intend to agree with the subject or not. We humans have a knack for studying things which are ugly, and I don’t stand opposed to this at all. I very firmly believe that we should be learning to cope with the reality of both the unspeakable beauties and horrors of this world. I do wonder, though, if perhaps we don’t recognize when a healthy understanding of the world fades into an attempt to reconcile or justify something in ourselves. Or something worse.

So what do you think?

What’s up with people who read so much non-fiction?

Why are the serial killer/murderer bio sections so full in our book stores?

When does gaining a healthy perspective bleed into an enjoyment of despair in the onlooker?

An Accidental Book Review

Most artists would agree that part of the struggle involved in consistent creativity is to stay away from standardization.

I thought that I believed that, but I realize now that I don’t.

A few days ago my good friend Arian used her social media resources to recommended a book she had just started, and at first sight I jumped on the library website and reserved a copy. I haven’t been able to put it down for days now. My wife and I both have bookmarks in its pages, and we keep passing one another, back and forth

The book is called Daily Rituals, by Mason Curry. It is based on his previous blog, Daily Routines. Mason has spent the past few years accruing the details of the personal daily rhythms and routines of hundreds of painters, writers, composer, statesmen, and scientists. Needless to say, the book and the blog are an endless source of interesting information about the strategies and quirks of the men and women who have influenced a multitude of cultures in the past 400 years. We’re talking Benjamin Franklin, Simone de Beauvoir, Mahler, Matisse, and Mr. Rogers.

Reading this book has been more than simply diverting for me. Of course it appealed immediately to me because of my slight obsession with biographical details on creative geniuses, but there is a looming crisis in my own life for which I secretly hoped this book would provide solution.

I’m not good at being creative, and my efforts to be diligent usually throw off everything else.

For the majority of my life I have procrastinated from creativity as I have any other pursuit. I’ve always marveled at my prolific friend Chris who is occasionally so smitten by a design in his brain that he cancels everything else because he has to pursue the project to its fulfillment. He can’t commit himself to any other goal until he had gotten some version of that creative spark out.

It’s just that good.

It’s just that savory.

Referring to my tendency to idolize this trait, he recently said to me that  “everyone is different in how they create.” It was a simply, sagely statement plainly expressed, so I ignored it completely.

As I opened Daily Rituals, I was searching for answers. My family life is confused and I’m constantly feeling inadequacy as an artist and as a father and husband. I needed to find someone’s little secret that could suddenly throw open the heavy curtains before the shadowy recesses of my mind. In a way, I found something like that.

The book is especially wide ranged in covering all types in all time periods. The average individual probably produces 2 hours of good work a day. Tea, alcohol, coffee, and tobacco become buzzwords in its pages. Some work best after dark, others swear by starting fresh just before dawn. Winston Churchill promises that he has figured out a rhythm that allow him a day and a half every 24 hours. Some live completely secluded, working the same schedule seven days a week with barely a single outside contact; others work madly for a few weeks here and are off for a month there. Some write when their children nap, some spend hours and hours every day simply walking the countryside or over drinks with friends. Some raise hundreds of exotic snails and sneak them into France under their breasts. Yes, you read that sentence correctly, and it is in there. The only constant theme is that every artist has some unique surprise up his sleeve and everyone swears by his own methods as far as personal effectiveness is concerned.

I was reading about Saul Bellow’s joyful and lighthearted habits in his flower garden as told retrospectively by his wife, when suddenly I realized that there is a theme in this book. An accidental theme, and one of staggering beauty. Despite their many downfalls, their abuses and neglects, every creative was defined by a willingness to search their own soul, to plunge into the still, dark depths of themselves and share some form of it with the world, in hopes that the humanity in it might be a sounding board for an0ther’s soul. To do so, every single one had to spend years, some claimed decades, to build a completely personal rhythm that gave them space to plumb those depths. Many of their own stories became tragedies of dependence, broken relationships, and bizarre, spiraling brokenness.

Yet every single one cries “Recognize the truth and don’t shy from proclaiming it!” and the force of its multitude speaks freedom over me.

For months, years now, I’ve been slowly recognizing that I have not been prepared for the level of commitment being creative takes. I’ve tried to put off the creative spark, then to force inspiration in a timeframe, and all along I’ve really just been confused myself. I’ve watched many friends, some artists, build productive structures in their daily lives and imagined that if I could only have the will to replicate some of those structures, I could pursue this craft more sincerely. But I’ve had it all backwards. As when one pursues any other goal, setting up a rhythm that is completely taylored to the objective is a necessity.

Creativity is about self-exposure and eventually perhaps, a sense of intimacy. Exposure, firstly, of one’s self to one’s self. Then, perhaps, to a wider audience. We choose to be ourselves, and our creativity is a record of that. We create because we desire to know, and we desire to have something in common. We feel our humanity. We build empathy. We realize that something that was at first glance altogether foreign is actually like us. The community that comes from creation comes out of each of our uniqueness, and the hard, bitter task of pursuing those uniquenesses.

I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are at their best, creatively. They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?”

– Toni Morrision