Self Consciousness

A couple of weeks ago I received a supply of books via the mail. Most of these were used, hardbound copies of books written by John Updike, including his 1989, and solitary memoir, entitled, Self Consciousness. Having now read the work through once, I was struck by a quote near the end of the work where Updike writes:

So writing is my sole remaining vice. It is an addiction, an illusory release, a presumptuous taming of reality, a way of expressing lightly the unbearable.

Of course, although I feel an affinity to Updike's insistence upon the place of writing in his own life, I could never have written these lines. That is why Updike is Updike (and, oh, how I miss seeing his name in the pages of The New Yorker already!) and why I am just a slack-jawed hack who continues to turn out pages each day that don't go anywhere or say anything of import or weight. I still have my 20+ unpublished novels stacked like chord wood in my closet, mounds of unpublished stories and essays, hundreds of floppy disks loaded with articles, book proposals, manuscripts, sermons, studies and writing ideas. I had never thought about it in Updikian terms before, but I guess I could call this writing an addiction and a vice. But then, I suppose if these are the terms of the game, then most anyone who is devoted to producing a work every day without fail could be deemed an addict.

I suppose I could regard writing as a vice since there have been times I've spent most of my vacation sitting in a hotel room writing while the rest of the family combed the beach, or I've spent hours writing inside a hot car while the rest of the family walked the mall, or why I have, for years now, risen before the birds to begin a day of writing or why I have persisted through the night on cups of coffee, head spinning, while hoping that "the next one" will actually be a hit and sell some copies. Okay, Mr. Updike, I get it. My name is Todd and I'm an addict. No, I've never snorted cocaine or drained a reefer to the smoldering end of the roach, and I drink only sparingly just to take the edge of off reality . . . but I do have to write. I admit it now. I must.

And I thank Mr. Updike for saying it so well . . . a guy who worked for many years in an overhead apartment, chain-smoking as he typed page after page of excruciatingly beautiful prose and gave his books to the world.