What Do I Want.

Jan 1, 2011
3 min read

“I don’t wish to touch hearts, I don’t even want to affect minds very much. What I really want to produce is that little sob in the spine of the artist-reader.”

~Vladimir Nabokov

Much like this quote, what more is there to say?

I purposely placed a period after my title rather than a question mark because it isn’t, in fact, a question. I suppose I could have written “What I Want”, but the “do” is there because I want to engage you, my readers, in the question, however rhetorical it may be.

With art, there is a process to appreciation; a process and degrees. I’ll use a painting by Jackson Pollock as an example.

First, I assess if I like it or not based on the color and how it makes me feel when I look at it. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a positive feeling, either–as long as I have a visceral, gut reaction. I note how the colors are used, the texture. I find layers and composition within the layers, and finally, I assess whether or not it touches me…if it creates “a little sob in the spine.”

Some people look at the above painting and say “Meh, my three year old could do better.” Some say, “The colors don’t match my decor.” Some might say, “I like pictures that are actual pictures of things or people.” These people don’t “get” abstract art and they may never get it–and that’s okay. The degree and ability they have to see what goes into the creation of such a work is different than, say, another painter’s ability to see.

Alas, Pollock doesn’t create a stirring emotion for me, but many artists do. Since I work with words, authors are the creators of this “sob in the spine.”

The latest and greatest of all would be Philip Roth.

How do I wax poetic about words that do themselves more justice than I could do them? Like with various passages by Robert Olen Butler, Henry Miller, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and many others, Roth has the ability to write words that, after reading them, feel like a hand has been thrust into my chest; I have to stagger backward to gain my equilibrium.

The difference between Roth and all of the others is that he does it consistently. There isn’t a book that hasn’t knocked me on my ear, whether in the first scene, the last scene or the many scenes in-between. I started his second novel, Letting Go, last night. He wrote it at the age of 29. I read the first three pages, noting he was breaking every rule in the book, and when I was done I had chills covering my body. He was 29.

My first inclination is to toss every word I’ve ever written into the cyber-trash. How can I ever compare? My next inclination is to sit at my computer and work.

See, Roth has it down. Something in his writing comes to him, forms in him, and flows out of him the way we see it. Yes, he edits. Any writer worth his or her salt does. The way he crafts a story, a moment, a scene in his head is what compels us to read the second we gulp his words down our throats. His instinct for tension and hooking us with ever sentence is innate, natural–instinctive. I can say this because I am reading his second book. Ever. And he had me at the first sentence. That can come with practice; with him? I’m betting it’s a part of him.

What do I want.

That ability. His ability. Not to write like him, but to be able to hook, yank, pull, nudge and lead my reader, breathless and eager, toward my story’s every twist and turn. I don’t write for everyone. I don’t write for the crowd who seeks something familiar. I write for the “artist-reader” who inherently knows how difficult it is to pull off such literary feats as Philip Roth. I want to pull off such feats. Not the cheap-chills of over-sentimentality, but the genuine chills of understated provocation.

What do I want.

I want to move you. I want to make someone breathless. I want to have them stop reading a passage, put down the book and shake their heads until the overwhelming feeling in their chest passes.

Do I have what it takes?

I don’t know. But I won’t stop until I do, at least for someone, somewhere–preferably someone who sees all the layers, colors, textures and can say, with certainty, that I created a “little sob in the spine.”