Writing is in the Smallest of Increments

Learning to write well is learning to think well, to notice well, and then to draw meaning out of what you notice. Learning to write well is learning that a ruler is used to measure inches and also eighths of inches and sixteenths of inches. It is learning to see subtleties and small changes, to find big meaning in the smallest of things, to measure large objects or ideas in small increments.

This is what I find people need to discover. Students come in with generalities, with things measured in inches or even feet, and they need to look closer and closer until they begin to see what only they can see.

Reading Fiction is Good for You

I came across this on Esquire's website today: a list of the seventy-five books that every man should read.

I don't care if other literary folks agree or disagree. I do care that some literary folks decided to sit down and make this list. Seventy-five books is a lot of books in a country where most people read less than one a year. I often wish that I knew more people who actively pursued reading books, fiction in particular. We learn from stories. They grow into us like roots or climbing vines. They stick in the crevices of our brains to be blown free and useful and necessary when the right wind comes up.

Three of my favorite books are on the list: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Moby-Dick, and The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn. Also, there are some books and authors I want to read: The Adventures of Augie March, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, The Brothers Karamazov, American Pastoral, more, more.

I always get big ideas when I see book lists like this. Not just any book list, but books lists chosen by discerning people who are not trying to establish a canon, per se, but simple say here is a collection of books that orbit a particular sun. I've been wondering every now and then over the past few months about the possibility of getting my male friends to read the same fiction at the same time, books like Robinson Crusoe or something by Jack Kerouac, adventure and manliness and all that. I don't know if it will work. Everyone's life is already fullfullfull (what would we give up? what would we be willing to give up to create space for reading fiction?). This list was at least a small piece of evidence that there are other men out there who read fiction.

Judging a Person by the Book Cover on His/Her T-Shirt

I found these literary tees on UrbanOutfitters.com:

1. Catch-22
2. Invisible Man
3. Death of a Salesman