One nice thing about The New Yorker is its ability to endure a couple of weeks on the bedside table, in your bag, or next to the toilet without becoming outdated. When I finally got around to the "Summer Fiction Issue," (from three weeks back) I was greeted with "Blocked," Joan Acocella's brilliant article on writer's block. I rarely read fiction, and I'm not what you'd call "well versed" in literature, but I've always been fascinated by the idea of writing a book. Can you have writer's block if you've never written anything? I guess that's just a self-deluded way of saying you're not a writer in the first place. If you've never tried to cook, you don't just have an early case of chef's block. Anyway, the article was inspiring because it mentioned a number of great writers who just sat down and wrote... just pushed out whatever all the time and then cleaned it up/compiled it/threw it away later. They considered it an exercise, much like getting up and jogging in the morning. ("I'm not a fat, lazy piece of shit. I just have jogger's block.")
It's funny that, at least in years past, people actually tried to write the Great American Novel—the sprawling, transcendent, definitive literary touchstone of a generation. Now it seems writers are more concerned with writing the sardonic, self-indulgent, snidely outrageous memoir of that month. I want a piece of that action. Of course it would consist mostly of exaggeration and outright fabrication, as my life is nothing if not dull, but that doesn't strike me as a problem. Come to think of it... Isn't that what I'm doing now? Blogging is exercise. From now on, *bitter defeat* will contain only the deepest of thoughts and the wittiest of remarks about my exciting fake life.
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