…and then do it on purpose, in the words of the indelible Dolly Parton. I started writing ages ago, it seems, but was a little wayward in figuring out what I am good at doing, largely because the people doing it already remained just outside of my line of sight, often obscured by the (in my mind) overly vaunted Very Important Novelist and other towering figures of literature. I write because it’s inherent to me, I think, but giving it a name, even belatedly, is a useful thing.
I write, sometimes for my stage act as a combination stand-up autobiographer and house band, sometimes entirely for myself, and sometimes for an imaginary newspaper that would print my occasional columns like a rambling and often profane aspirant to the space Armistead Maupin occupied back in the day, but I’ve been reading E.B. White as a sort of post-election therapy and I’m struck by how much of White’s take on the task of the essayist truly nails my own assortment of flaws and strengths:
The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who take bird walks enjoy theirs. Each new excursion of the essayist, each new “attempt,” differs from the last and takes him into new country. This delights him. Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.
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