When I tell people that I want to be a writer, people usually give me one of three reactions. Some slowly nod their heads, faces plastered with a saddened grin behind whose taut lips I can see their image of me as a poor, whining sap droning on at some dank coffee house’s open mic night for eternity. “How sweet,” they think. Ouch! Others applaud my decision with overly affectionate gazes, their eyes watery and almost pleading. “Her words will be filled with complicated philosophical thoughts much more profound than my own!” they think. Wrong!
But indeed, the best reaction I’ve ever heard was simply the old maxim that “to be a good writer you have to read!” Possessing a love of writing does not handicap nor does it enhance any of my literary abilities. I think the foundation of any writer are hundreds if not thousands of works by different authors whose style, structure, tone, and voice have extracted, fused, edited, and consumed to make something new. I like to think of it as gorging yourself on the finest foods of the globe without getting fat, but rather developing super-human taste buds.
So that’s lovely and all, right? Well, one day while running up the spiral steps of University Hall that seem to scream “impending death”, I saw a flyer. The words “Chabon” and “Poe” jumped out at me like the piercing blue of Chabon’s eyes. Good portrait choice. I was already late for my political science discussion, so who cared. I read it. Michael Chabon, a young Pulitzer Prize-winning author was coming to Northwestern to talk not about his best-selling books but Edgar Allan Poe. I’ve never read a word of Michael Chabon, but I knew the name and felt like that counted for something. Perhaps not. I suddenly felt like the worst kind of writer, the kind who dwells ignorantly in their own minds, hiding in caverns of creative thought swaddled by ink-stained paper. I would attend the speech.
I discovered quite a bit. Chabon quite obviously listens to the maxims of society — he not only reads but embodies other writers. He fell in love with Edgar Allan Poe’s work at the age of 12, keeping it near “like a fire extinguisher” and “a box of matches”, experiencing the profound sense of satisfaction a writer can get from the simultaneously concrete and incendiary nature of beautiful language. In his lecture in the Coon Forum, Chabon was sarcastic and humble, endearingly casual with a veil of five o’clock shadow, tussled dark hair, and an open gray suit jacket. A pair of delicate glasses rested gently on his nose as he spoke. I imagined him as the mutant child of Zach Braff and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
As Chabon picked apart Poe’s gothic love ballad “Ulalume” like a coroner sorting through the flesh, organ, and bone of a fresh cadaver, I came to a strange realization that since the first written words, all else is derivative. There I was gazing at Chabon and absorbing his words like a sponge, while his very own words were speckled with Poe’s sounds, drama, and power. The smooth notes, sharp twists, and fluid, velvety words propelled Chabon forth through the poem, embodying the voice of Poe. Though, really how can we tell whether or not Poe’s own voice rang with such mellow, deep tones? He could have sounded like a pre-pubescent girl for all I know. The point is that Chabon’s passion for Poe’s work was blindingly clear, finally stating “…let me just summarize it as thus: Poe rocked the American language.”
Each of his weighty words resounded powerfully off of the thick, gray rib-like rafters of the Coon Forum. They floated down to our ears, tickling our wits, often eliciting winded chuckles as Chabon interwove his own words and life story with Poe’s. He brandished Poe’s words as weapons to conquer the seemingly malicious struggle of adolescence for an intelligent, admittedly nerdy child.
I went into his “Poe” lecture ignorant of his impeccable diction, eloquence, and talent for imbuing a heavy dosage of light-hearted self-deprecation into his words. But after an hour and a half of a lecture that more resembled an intellectual conversation than a lesson, Chabon became the snake charmer and I the serpent. Well, alright, that’s a slightly hyperbolic statement that unfortunately compares me to slithering reptile. Of course, Chabon put it best. When people ask whether or not he, as a novelist, writes poetry, Chabon said he wants to respond, “Yes, I do every God damn day…[I] am a poet, I want to say. My enemy is dead language.” As Poe’s words inspired and abetted him, I have a feeling that Chabon’s may do the same for me. Next stop — a book store.