I visited My Shelf tonight. It's a sort of sacred shrine for my writer's soul. On this trip My Shelf was the second one from the bottom, on the back wall to the left, near the corner of Joseph-Beth. Tonight My Spot was right between Franklin and Fennely, and Franzen. I needed to gaze at the spot. Not just gaze though. I needed to stared deep into that space between the two books, to bore a hole into it. I visualized the spine-- the color, the script, the height and breadth-- of the object that belongs there, snug up against The Tilting World and The Corrections. Some days it is easy to see it there, and it isn't difficult to get it to slide right in, as if the other two scoot aside for it. Other days,while trying to mentally wedge it in, I wonder if there is such a thing as a creative shoe horn out there.For the same reason I visited My Shelf, I sought inspiration several shelves away. I'm trying to get my creative juices flowing, and often certain writers help. Pulling down one of their books is like hooking up the literary jumper cables. No copies of L'Engle. For shame! My heart sank again at the realization that her pen has run out of ink. No copies of Mockingbird? Really? Heresy! Oh, the horrific irony of that! The famed Mockingjay owes so much to the Mockingbird! Without Harper Lee what is Suzanne Collins? Perhaps Scout and Katniss are sisters from different authors. Whatcha gonna do with that, Jasper Fforde?
If not Lee, then perhaps W.P. Kinsella might inspire me anew. I'd heard that he had published a more recent book I had not read yet. The fact that it had been fifteen years since the last time he waxed whimsical about baseball encourages me. Not that he or I need to drag things out. We both have great tales to tell with beautiful language, so we need to start churning out more words on the page. And I've been greatly stuck, somewhat like my favorite silly ol' Bear. "A Wedged Bear In A Great Tightness." The problem is that I am the writer and do not have the privilege of being read to as Pooh Bear did. But, oh, to have written that book! A.A. Milne, I have not appreciated YOU enough. Certainly, I have loved your Edward Bear, but not you enough. I will now remember to consider you the writer you were.(Can I have any more literary tangents in this post? But I must pause to comment: How interesting it is that I can greatly admire and love a creation but forget the creator of it. Shame on me! I must remember the creators of greatness, and beware of not forgetting The Creator. I shall not put Him on a shelf, like a shell dis-inhabited, which brings me to Thomas Browne and back to L'Engle. If you can follow my literary references, kudos to you!)
So why W. P Kinsella? I love baseball. There is something so mythic, pure, and American about it, even when it isn't. Baseball fans know what I mean. Even when baseball reality is full of scandal, tragedy, disillusionment, and dishonesty there is still that core that is mythic, pure and American between the foul lines that go on into infinity. Even if it is played in Japan or Latin America, which is why I am excited to read Kinsella's new book. Unlike his previous baseball yarns, it does not take place in Iowa. (Iowa happens to be the land of my birth-- another reason I love his writing.) Kinsella captures the mythic quality of baseball and life. He writes fluidly with hope and passion, always tying my heart onto the string of his words.
I visited that new book, A Butterfly Winter, a bit tonight. I was so very tempted to buy it, but I am delaying my purchase of it. My purpose in visiting those shelves was not to buy more of someone else's books. It was to be inspired to finish writing my own so that it can take it's rightful place between The Tilting World and The Corrections.
