Storytellersunplugged

Frank T. Wydra

The Gonquin seems off-kilter, as if Archimedes has found his fulcrum and has levered the place a degree or two off-center. Blinking, I try to right the floor and square the walls. Al, owner of the Gonquin Bar, stands next to me, and I say, “Is there a tilt to the place, today?”

He gives me a frowned look, saying, “Is this your first stop of the day?”

“It is,” I say. “Things don’t look slanted to you?”

He makes a show of exploring the place, then, “No.” Eyes narrow. “It’s just your imagination.”

Imagination, indeed. I close my eyes, shake my head, and reopen my eyes. All seems normal. Something must have rocked my equilibrium, one of Vonnegut’s timequakes. “I guess,” I say to Al, giving a high sign to the assembled regulars around the table, “my mind is playing tricks.”

Vic Hugo and Hank Miller are salted in between Edgar and Papa. I quietly shake hands and take my seat. Bram is in the middle of a antidote, saying.”…and he asks, ‘where do you get your ideas?’” We all chuckle, for it is a question endlessly repeated by those outside the circle.

“But,” Mary says, the question though redundant, is pertinent. Ideas are the soul of writing. Call it by another name, if you will: creativity, imagination, invention, but ideas, it must be humbly admitted, do not consist in creating matter out of a void, but out of chaos.”

Vic, smile creasing his bearded face says, “No one knows like a woman how to say things which are at once gentle and deep.”

It is a compliment, but we who have sat at this table long, wait to see how it will be taken.

“Creativity,” says Mary, “has little to do with gender and everything to do with perseverance.”

Papa looks askance. “Perseverance? I would have put my dollar on intellect, rather than steadfast plodding.”

Hank says, “It is neither. Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur. If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods, then they will surely become worms.”

Edgar who has been lolling in his chair raises an instructive eyebrow and says, “You are all correct, that is what makes the question of where ideas come from so difficult to answer.” He leans in, pointing a finger at Papa, “But I must agree with Mary that perseverance is at the core of creativity.”

Papa who detests fingers pointed at him, is chewing on his Meerschaum. But before he can let loose, Vic says, “When one thinks of perseverance, sweating brutes come to mind. But, one is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation.”

Bram trundles on Vic’s speech. “Most people think a book is one grand idea, but that is not the case. Truly, the plot is an idea, but so are the characters, and the moods, the setting and the very words used to paint them. Every moment spent crafting a story is a moment of creativity, a moment of imagination, of ideas.”

Papa, hard-fingers drumming a tattoo on the table, eyeing Edgar, is clearly irritated at his inability to edge words into the fray. He says, “A dullard with the diligence of those proverbial thousand monkeys slamming typewriter keys could not, despite the prognosticators, construct the simplest Nick Adams story. No, my friend,” now pistoling his pipe at Edgar, “perseverance helps, but without intelligence, creativity is an idea whose time has not yet arrived.”

Hank, with the disinterested mien of one who has suffered through Papa’s rants before, says, “Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything. In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest. Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring, through obeying the blind urge.”

Vic, paunch pushing the table, says, “There is much to what Papa says. I am an intelligent river which has reflected successively all the banks before which it has flowed by meditating only on the images offered by those changing shores. I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself. Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.”

Al, who has been oiling the conversation with strong drink, leans over my shoulder. “Sounds deep. What’s it mean?”

Vic does not wait for my interpretation. “Dear man, develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music–the world is so rich, simply throbbing with treasures, beautiful souls, and interesting people. Forget yourself. Observe. Memory will serve you with fodder for the pen. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”

Mary says, “Bram’s point is the most intriguing. A book is not a single grand idea. It is a hundred thousand small bursts of creativity, fireflies illuminating the page, making it interesting and informative. Each contributing to the whole so that in the end the work is the red-hot blaze on a perfect sunset. It is the cliché avoided first by recognizing it as such and then by persevering to find freshness. It is the arrangement of plot that does not telegraph its message. It is placing memorable words in the mouths of magnificent characters. Such writing does not drip from the pen, but instead is hammered and chiseled from the marble of the writer’s experience and imagination.”

Hank who has been listening intently, says, “But imagination is prime.” He wags a finger. “Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood. Chaos is the score upon which reality is written. All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience. One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.”

Vic says, “The learned man knows that he is ignorant. To contemplate is to look at shadows. To think of shadows is a serious thing. There is nothing like a dream to create the future.”

Mary smiles. “My dreams are all my own; I account for them to nobody; they are my refuge when annoyed –my dearest pleasure when free. Yet I know that what terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the specter which had haunted my midnight pillow to panic others. That, I suppose is the source of my creativity.”

Edgar says, “Some say ideas are cheap. And I suppose they are. Everybody has them in such abundance that they have no reluctance of lending me theirs. But it takes so many of them to fashion a story, that it is their very weight that makes the tale more precious than a loving child.”

Al, who is the everyman, whose role is to do no more cater to the taste of the intelligentsia gathered at this table says, “Perhaps. But when I read The Old Man And The Sea I marveled at the idea that pride can defeat a man, even a man who has his faith eaten away. When I read Frankenstein, it was the idea that there are things to fear from the pursuit of unbridled science that riveted me. So, when people ask, ‘where do you get your ideas,’ are they not asking what kind of person is it who can conjure these thoughts? I don’t know, but that’s how it seems to me.”

I, for one, wondered whether we should pull another chair to the table.

Note: Most of Miller’s and Hugo’s observations are quotes from things they have said or written, and, as usual, seasoned to the taste of this writer.”

frank.writestuff@gmail.com
Thursday, September 13, 2007