Bird by Bird

Several months ago, I wrote a post describing some people who seem to have more interesting lives, even though they are pretty ordinary, just like I am. I remarked that these people are often more observant, more present. They pay attention to detail and relish life's little absurdities.

Now, I'm reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. It's a funny, delightful pallet cleanser after plowing through Auster's 4 3 2 1, at least partly because Auster takes himself so very seriously and Lamott doesn't.  And yet, in her brevity and her self-deprecating humor, Lamott reveals so many of life's truths. But I digress.

In the introduction to Bird by Bird, Lamott identifies the skilled writer's ability to capture in words what others see -- to give it shape and substance and meaning:

I started writing a lot in high school: journals, impassioned antiwar pieces, parodies of the writers I loved. And I began to notice something important. The other kids wanted me to tell them stories of what had happened, even -- or especially -- when they had been there.

I'm sure my father was the person on whom his friends relied to tell their stories... He could take major events or small episodes from daily life and shade or exaggerate things in such a way as to capture their shape and substance, capture what life felt like in the society in which he and his friends lived and worked and bred. People looked to him to put into words what was going on.

A worthy and difficult goal -- to see the world with clarity and describe it in a way that resonates with others.

I especially love Lamott's ability to be simultaneously reverent and irreverent:

.. that kind of attention is the prize. To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass -- seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one.

Bird by Bird is a book about the craft of writing, but it is so much more. It is about the pain and challenge and beauty of being conscious and of looking at the world honestly. It is breathlessly honest and also so damned funny, filled with so many priceless lines, said almost in passing, like this one "I wasn't writing the book with my thumb stuck out, trying to hitchhike into history..." How does she come up with these quips?  Anne Lammot is my hero!