The Empire of Desire
So I'm finally diving headfirst into a Pandora's box that I've been avoiding for a few years. Why have I been avoiding it? Simply because I've been too busy with my own writing to really help out with a project of this magnitude. Now I'm finally taking a hard look at The Empire of Desire, a novel that has been collecting dust on my dad's desk.
Well, not really collecting dust. He does dust it off frequently.
It's 550 pages of baby boomer epic, or at least, it was. Today we got it down to 430 pages, and I think we can shave it down a bit more. Now I'm excited to help him with it, and even to do my best to find an agent to represent him.
When I was in high school, I wanted nothing to do with this novel. I remember sitting in the kitchen, Coltrane or Sibelius playing in the background, the savory smells of my father's cooking filling the room.
"How was your day at school?" he'd ask.
"Oh, it was all right."
And then he'd put the tureen back in the copper pot, suddenly distracted from one of the many timing-related cooking things he did, and said:
"That reminds me of a scene from my novel." He'd take out his boxed manuscript, heavy enough to be a murder weapon, and insist on reading scenes aloud to me.
"Hey, wait a minute Dad, I'm deaf," I'd say, but nobody who knows me falls for that trick.
I understand that heady feeling of giving birth to a literary baby and wanting to show it to everybody, but for a few years everything reminded him of that novel. Then again, though, life had already taken on novelistic turns for both of us. We were living out our epics, building fictional trajectories. Maybe it's in the blood-- born escapists.
I imagine that one of the great writing epiphanies of his life, the kind that writers dream of, was the week he spent in the north woods in a frenzy of writing the finale of that novel, days in which he spent 14 hours writing and the rest of his waking hours cooking feasts for one over an open flame.
And I imagine too that feeling of delirious tangibility he must have had, that all of us writers have when we soar out of our doubts into moments of absolute faith about what we're doing. Yes, this will make it, we tell ourselves, it really will.
I've thought many times how this dream came to crosshairs with his life, with his resulting brain tumor, surgery and aphasia. A bloom of too many words, they were birthed in their season, but now it is the winter of his life. Not that the snow drifts aren't lovely, but they do tend to cover everything, to make our wheels spin out.
Which brings me to the present moment. I hope we can make this happen.
Well, not really collecting dust. He does dust it off frequently.
It's 550 pages of baby boomer epic, or at least, it was. Today we got it down to 430 pages, and I think we can shave it down a bit more. Now I'm excited to help him with it, and even to do my best to find an agent to represent him.
When I was in high school, I wanted nothing to do with this novel. I remember sitting in the kitchen, Coltrane or Sibelius playing in the background, the savory smells of my father's cooking filling the room.
"How was your day at school?" he'd ask.
"Oh, it was all right."
And then he'd put the tureen back in the copper pot, suddenly distracted from one of the many timing-related cooking things he did, and said:
"That reminds me of a scene from my novel." He'd take out his boxed manuscript, heavy enough to be a murder weapon, and insist on reading scenes aloud to me.
"Hey, wait a minute Dad, I'm deaf," I'd say, but nobody who knows me falls for that trick.
I understand that heady feeling of giving birth to a literary baby and wanting to show it to everybody, but for a few years everything reminded him of that novel. Then again, though, life had already taken on novelistic turns for both of us. We were living out our epics, building fictional trajectories. Maybe it's in the blood-- born escapists.
I imagine that one of the great writing epiphanies of his life, the kind that writers dream of, was the week he spent in the north woods in a frenzy of writing the finale of that novel, days in which he spent 14 hours writing and the rest of his waking hours cooking feasts for one over an open flame.
And I imagine too that feeling of delirious tangibility he must have had, that all of us writers have when we soar out of our doubts into moments of absolute faith about what we're doing. Yes, this will make it, we tell ourselves, it really will.
I've thought many times how this dream came to crosshairs with his life, with his resulting brain tumor, surgery and aphasia. A bloom of too many words, they were birthed in their season, but now it is the winter of his life. Not that the snow drifts aren't lovely, but they do tend to cover everything, to make our wheels spin out.
Which brings me to the present moment. I hope we can make this happen.
posted by Franz K at 6:03 PM
2 Comments:
Franz,
This is such a beautiful thing. I have similar feelings with my father and our chosen field. Your writing floors me, especially the last paragraph. As far as I can see your father's novel has already made it...
Love, M.
Franz,
put something new on your blog already so looking at it is not a fat waste of my time. Thanks a million,
J
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