Th e Other Shore Essays on Writers and Writing Michael Jackson university of california press Berkeley Los Angeles London Th e Other Shore This page intentionally left blank Th e Other Shore Essays on Writers and Writing Michael Jackson university of california press Berkeley Los Angeles London University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2013 by Th e Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jackson, Michael, 1940- Th e other shore : essays on writers and writing / Michael Jackson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-520-27524-9 (cloth : acid-free paper) ISBN 978-0-520-27526-3 (pbk. : acid-free paper) 1. American fi ction—20th century—History and criticism. 2. English literature—History and criticism. 3. English language—Writing. 4. Authorship. I. Title. PS379.J23 2012 813’.509–dc23 2012030150 Manufactured in the United States of America 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on 50-pound Enterprise, a 30% post-consumer-waste, recycled, deinked fi ber that is processed chlorine-free. It is acid-free and meets all ANSI/NISO (Z 39.48) requirements. Man is that which is incomplete, although he may be complete in his very incompletion; and therefore he makes poems, images in which he realizes and completes himself without ever com- pleting himself completely. Octavio Paz Th e Bow and the Lyre To be alive and to be a “writer” is enough. Katherine Mansfield Journal Even in a personal sense, aft er all, art is an intensifi ed life. Thomas Mann Death in Venice All that we do Is touched with ocean, yet we remain On the shore of what we know. Richard Wilbur “For Dudley” This page intentionally left blank contents Preface ix 1 Th e Other Shore 1 • 2 Th e Red Road 5 • 3 Kindred Spirits 12 • 4 Writing under the Infl uence 16 • 5 A Typewriter Collecting Dust 20 • 6 Writing in Limbo 26 • 7 Th e Magical Power of Words 35 • 8 Flights of Fancy 43 • 9 Writing Fellowship 50 • 10 Th ere Go I 58 • 11 Love Letters 65 • 12 Writing for Bare Life 72 • 13 Writing So As Not to Die 76 • 14 Chinese Boxes 80 • 15 Th e Writing on the Wall 85 • 16 Writing out of the Blue 93 • 17 A Storyteller’s Story 98 • 18 Writing in the Dark 104 • 19 Writing in the Zone 113 • 20 Writing, Naturally 121 • 21 Writing Workshop 128 • 22 Th e Books in My Life 137 • 23 Writing Utopia 142 • 24 Writing in Search of Lost Time 150 • 25 Writing about Writers 155 • 26 Writing in Ruins 162 • 27 Writing as a Way of Life 170 • Notes 185 Acknowledgments 205 viii • contents Preface I considered myself a writer long before I completed a volume of poetry, wrote a novel, or published an anthropological monograph. Writing, for me, was a way of life. As for the origins of this calling, I suspect that it was a longing to connect with places, people, and periods of history that lay beyond the provincial town in which I came of age. Fascinated by exotic worlds, I saw writing as my means of transport and escape. Writing, I came to realize, was a techné,1 like prayer or ritual, for bridging the gulf that lay between myself and others. In this sense, writing resembles religion, which also works at the limits of what can be said, known, or borne, entering penumbral fi elds of experience where the absent is made present, the distant becomes near, the inanimate appears animate, and the singular subsumes the plural.2 In the half century since my fi rst book appeared,3 I have witnessed—and adjusted to—mind-boggling transformations in communication technolo- gies. I have switched from fountain pen to typewriter to word processor. In the early ’60s I worked as a letterpress machinist before the off set press made me redundant. Nowadays, books are published online and read on electronic tablets.4 But while many claim that these new technologies are “disruptive,” undermining and transforming the way we work and live, I see them as “sustaining” what we have always sought to do5—bearing witness to what we learn of life, struggling to express it adequately, and comparing our fi ndings with the fi ndings of others. Yet ours is, undeniably, an information society. We move about with our heads in clouds of data. E-mail, Skype, Facebook, and LinkedIn keep us in touch with scattered friends, family, colleagues, and collaborators. We cross streets with cell phones pressed to our ears, or stand on the sidewalk using earphones and microphone to talk unselfconsciously to an invisible other, ix