January 15, 2002
Higher Grounds Café, San Francisco
Andrew,
I had a terribly depressing thought last night. I thought, ‘What if I’m not ready for this book?’, ‘What if I am over-reaching?’. I was watching Ken Burns’ wonderful documentary about Mark Twain. And it always makes me feel so feeble to hear of the lives and exploits of the great writers. I am worried that I say too much, show too much, describe too much and yet reveal so little. I look at my long-hand work, and I see that is falls so far short of doing the job – it is so sparse, these first drafts in long-hand require much tweaking. I spent much time working them and re-working them, as the potter throws clay and destroys…throws clay and destroys. There is a great story in the bible about this. I am trying to remember it now. God tells one of the prophets to go to a house of a potter, to watch this process of building and rebuilding, the pot is an allegory for Israel and the story is meant to show the reader that this Sisyphusian process never ends. I will look up this passage and share it with you.
The whole thing is very mysterious. Yet I resist the urge to attempt an explanation. I am not writing something from a plan. I did not even want to write this book. I wanted to write a collection of short stories instead. Mark Twain kept Huckleberry Finn on the back shelf for years. He needed to go back to the Mississippi, to travel down and then back up it once more in order to prepare. But this is not my Huckleberry Finn, this is not my world, nor do I draw from any childhood experiences or characters from my own life. I am proud of myself because this is pure imagination, pure fiction, pure dream. If I can pull this off Andrew, I can do anything, write anything. I will never ever give up. I have the faith of Job.
Now to work. The sun is out strong, the air is quite cold for this city and there are cowboy songs playing in my head.
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