Imagine That

"Some of my characters don't leave me, and I write to find out how their lives have been going since I last saw them."   Judith Guest, author of Ordinary People

A good novel is a miracle of sorts.  Although the characters are figments of the writer's imagination, to the reader they become very real.  When  you're reading a novel I'm sure that you, like I, have had the experience that the characters in the book, at least temporarily, become more real than the people around you. I could write a long list of authors whose characters have affected me that way.  The author who floats up into my consciousness is Barbara Kingsolver.  My introduction to her books was her The Bean Trees trilogy.  I've read the entire trilogy more than once and hope to read it again. But if I had to name one novel, just one, whose characters became as real as the living, breathing people around me, it would be Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. For me it is without a doubt the most beautiful, powerful, touching and riveting work of fiction that I have ever read. For that matter, I could exclude the words "of fiction" and the sentence would still be true.  Her characters mattered to me. Was the book better than Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides? Well, if you put it like that, how can I choose? Do I really have to choose? My wife says of The Prince of  Tides, "There ought to be an 800 number to call when you finish reading this book. You'll need  to talk to somebody."

Now read again the quote by Judith Guest.  Isn't it fascinating beyond belief that these characters that these writers create become real people to them. Although these characters  do not breath oxygen and nitrogen like we do, the writers perform a sort of literary CPR to breathe them to life. If we are to take Guest's word for it, she is as excited to spend time with  these people as we are. And the miracle of reading a good book is that these people become real to you perhaps years after they were made real by her. So where had they been all that time? Hiding in that book?

Pat Conroy, one of the best American writers of all time, was not only the author of brilliant fiction, but he published many non-fiction books as well.  The Water is Wide, My Losing Season, My Reading Life are among his best. My Reading Life, as you may imagine, is about the books that affected him the most. The thing that fascinated me the most about that book is how in the world did he have time to write all the words he wrote if he read all the words he read.  He must have been doing one or the other all day every day of the week, and on weekends and holidays, too. Didn't he have to eat and sleep?

I'm a writer of non-fiction.  I have tried my hand at fiction and it just doesn't work for me.  I have little trouble relating a personal experience--a memory,  a thought, a feeling, a relationship, or some musical piece that matters to me.  But when I try to bring to life a fictional story, it is always dead on arrival.  On the other hand, like a novelist, my writing does take on a life of its own.  Where my stories end is seldom what I had in mind when I started writing. Everything you read of mine started with just a thought, an idea, a feeling or something I read and it went from there.  All of this came from that one sentence of Judith Guest.

You know that I am  fascinated with the human brain. Have you ever thought about how your brain holds the story and characters of a novel in place as you read?  Page by page, chapter by chapter the story cascades and compounds like the movements of a grand symphony.  And yet,  the page you're reading is only so many words. It's not a book. It's just words. Furthermore, you can put the book down, pick it up in a week and your brain reassembles all the characters and their relationships on the fly.

Writer's are fairly insecure people. Writers enjoy feedback on their work.  They like to know that somebody read their words and that their words made a difference.  Because of that, many writer's provide a way to find them.  During my coffee time this morning, I opened Judith Guest's website and quickly found her contact information. I told her my entire  life story in about thirty words and told her the significant impact Ordinary People had on me in 1980.  Judith is eighty one years old and is still writing. Today she wrote to me: "Dear David, what a wonderful message to wake up to! Thanks for your kind words about my work. I am finishing a draft of a novel as we speak and it makes it so much easier to tease out these last problems with these good thoughts in my head. I'm glad you hung on. I'm grateful for your support.  Best, Judith Guest."

"Tease out these last problems."  I need to write about that.







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