Your Top Five

Hello and welcome to Sitting in Silence, your guide to writing, craft, worry, and joy.

As always, thank you to the premium subscribers who make this newsletter possible.

If you haven’t heard the 20th Year Celebration Interview of ZZ Packer on the Ursa Podcast, I highly recommend you listen. Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is one of the most influential short story collections of modern times. Dawnie, Deesha, and ZZ’s conversation is a delight.

And now for the newsletter…

Back when I was writing but didn’t consider myself a writer let alone an author, I felt rudderless. I could put together a paragraph here or there that made me smile. Occasionally, I even wrote a story that felt like a story and not just pages and pages of words that sort of made sense.

The writing life is full of epiphanies, some of which come unbidden in the middle of the night while you stare at the ceiling. But many epiphanies come from interacting with other writers. I had wonderful professors at the University of New Orleans where I went to grad school. On Monday nights, us students and faculty would meet on the patio of a bar in Mid-City. Sitting on the bench of the picnic table, sometimes past midnight, as the city buses rumbled past beneath the chiaroscuro of our purple-black sky, I often found myself sticking pins into moments as if they were insect specimens I wanted to preserve. I’m glad I did. Those butterflies and ladybugs are dear to me now.

One night, I found myself seated next to one my favorite writers and professors, Amanda Boyden, who was always inspirational and insightful in her comments to me. Now that I think of it, a lot of how I interact with students today comes from what she taught me.

I was struggling with a novel that I’d just started writing. I couldn’t describe what I wanted to do. Didn’t know what direction to move in. All was obscured. At that point, I had one or three novels I had started and given up on. I was on the verge of tossing this latest one overboard, but Amanda asked me whose writing did I feel most connected to. Through discussion, we wound our way through the idea of a literary posse as in: which classic writers would you want to hang out with? And that evolved into a metaphor I made that night and have held dear ever since—

imagine that there are five books that flow into the book you’re writing. Each of the five books are tributaries that fill up your reservoir. Each of the five books contain a major element that relates to your book. Now, switching metaphors, imagine those books form the tips of a star-shaped constellation. At the center of that star pattern is your book. Becoming, it waits in the center of that space, moving into view.

Simply stated, what five books were driving me to write the book I wanted—no, needed—to write? Without overthinking it, I chose five on the spot, some that I had just read that semester and others that were formative. If there was a single key that unlocked the problem of creating that first published book, this was it for me.

In a normal essay, this is the point where the writer would go into an extended and perhaps hackneyed discussion of ancient mariners on the bows of ships navigating rough seas by starlight. I could write that. I have written in that mode in this very newsletter. Today, I’ll just say that we all need a bit of guidance.

Oh! You’re wondering what the five books I chose were. Of course, this is where I tell you, dear reader. Time for a nice list, no? Yes.

·        Confederacy of Dunces – this storied 1980 Pulitzer Prize winner by John Kennedy Toole is probably the least widely read of my original five. I’m not sure why but I suspect that a satirical book about a modern-day Don Quixote set in 1960s New Orleans is not everyone’s cup of tea, but that’s the point. Your five is your five because it resonates with you in a personal way. C0D is somehow the most New Orleans book ever published even for all of its limitations. My first book isn’t officially a satire, but C0D helped me reconcile the vibe I was going for.

·        Moby Dick (1851)– I am as surprised as you are. I didn’t read this in high school or college. It was assigned to me in grad school. I surreptitiously read it tucked into my desk drawer at the law firm where I worked. Sorry, not sorry, Messrs. Wilcox, Frumpkin, and Tuttle.* This book literally has no women in it (which I suspect is why all the men are losing their minds) and it can be a bit, um, off topic at times. There’s a chapter on proper techniques for rendering whale blubber. But Melville is a god of chaos. The whale hunting scenes feel like something Michael Bay would film and Melville juxtaposes this macho madness with super long passages of my man, Ishmael, sitting in a crow’s nest and philosophizing on the nature of the human condition. If you doubt this book is important to me, just compare its opening line to the opening line of my We Cast a Shadow. It’s not a coincidence. I did it on purpose. Without going into full professor mode (I teach creative writing at LSU and Randolph), there are many reasons why this book was included in the initial canon of American books around 100 years ago.

·        The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao – I think people forget that there was a moment about 15 years ago when this Pulitzer-winning book was all anyone in the literary world talked about. I read most of it on a plane for a trip to a law conference in San Diego. Immediately, I wanted to give up writing. To me, it felt like Diaz was doing everything I wanted to do. The book has a narrator who looks like me, who’s obsessed with comics, history, fashion, and ladies. But Diaz’s writing skills seemed a billion years ahead of mine. But eventually I realized there’s always space for another voice. There’s always space for your voice.

·        Lolita – the least read book that everyone has a strong opinion on. I read it three times. The first time as a not very bright young man, I was obsessed with the beauty of the language. The second time I finally saw Humbert as the monster he was. The third time I read it as an author. I knew I could use Nabokov’s 1950s materials to say something interesting about race in modern America. By the way, the paragraph before this list where I say, “dear reader”? That’s a playful Victorian era convention used by Melville. But I learned it from Diaz and Nabokov, first.

·        Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison is such a beautiful writer. I found this book early in life, and it really proved for me the power of relating an experience of the world in a way that is honest and ignores the politics of the masses. I read somewhere that this book is the most assigned in college courses across the country. I think this is well deserved. In many ways, my We Cast narrator is a descendant of Ellison’s narrator.

Your five will be different from my five, that much I can guarantee.

*Not the name of a firm I ever actually worked at. Duh. Lol

Announcements: I’m teaching an introduction to fiction writing class online. I’ve taught this class to rising writers in the past and really enjoy it. Join me on Saturday, April 29 at 3pm EST, if you’re interested in improving your writing.

And here’s a class I’m excited to teach in scenic Rockport, Maine.