Gotta read

The way it was, shapes of letters in the alphabet were like suggestions of different parts of insects. That was in the beginning when I first became aware of them, how different they were—the construction of letters—from the unrestricted freehandedness of drawing. (I don’t know how we become aware of the visual restrictions of letters, possibly when we’re told to curb that freehandedness and are encouraged to colour within the lines.)

So it was like that: one day the parts weren’t anything, not even insects, the next they were: legs, slivers of wings, antennas, crosses, dots, Os, Vs, Ws, Ls. Once I had a whole set of them, they became whole—they became words—and shortly after that sentences, paragraphs, stories. First story I read was about a horse, a Polish story, and I read it in its entirety; after that I read everything else. (There was a two-year period of me reading to my blissfully illiterate classmates in kindergarten because our teachers were fucking lazy and I was obviously a genius and a showoff.)

In Canada, I didn’t take English past Grade 11 and so I didn’t read a lot of classics. I read Lolita. Whoo-hoo. Always, I am intimidated by my lack of literary knowledge, and often, I am the idiot nodding knowledgeably like an idiot when you tell me about The Idiot (Fyodor Dostoyevsky). I pretend to know it. But the truth is (my big hung-up): I don’t know it.

I intend to one day read the classics. ALL of them.

Joking.

Despite my gaps in education, I’ve been reading non-stop since the insect phase. This is actually my point after that long lead-up about insects and ignorance. READ. You gotta read. If you want to write, you gotta read. You gotta read all the time, obsessively, and not Facebook. Read real books (made out of paper), and download books onto your phone, too, and read on the bus instead of Make Hexa (Or Solitaire—I figure I’ve lost the equivalent amount of time could’ve spent reading The Idiot to the amount of hours I’ve spent playing Solitaire.)

How do I find things to read? Sometimes a well-read friend will recommend something. That almost always works (see the Flying Books bit in the next paragraph.) Sometimes I’ll get morbidly insecure about what the hipsters are reading and raving about (on the Internet, in think pieces) and will try to read from that pool of Infinite jests ( I have tried to avocado-sandwich myself through all kinds of books that way).

But here it is how it really is: Every few months I Google “Best books of two-thousand-whatever” and pick randoms from The Guardian or The New York Times' lists. I read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (not terrible) and I read Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh (terribly good). And recently, I’ve been using the Flying Books recos and that’s how I ended up reading the other The Idiot by Elif Batuman and Little Sister by Barbara Gowdy and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Sauders. Also, I read short stories in The New Yorker. I just read A Love Story by Samantha Hunt. That was a weird, funny and unique little story. That one gave me some ideas as to how to structure rewrites of a novel I’m working on. Besides the pleasure of reading, that’s why I read. To get ideas. To see how the masters do it, to see how it’s done well. To see why it works and to see how it doesn’t work (not naming names) and what I can learn from it (named some names).

I’ve never taken a creative-writing course (but I was told once by a renowned editor I should) (he was probably right) so the point is: my education only comes from reading. Wherever you’re getting your reading from, I say, it doesn’t matter, whatever you’re reading (besides) Facebook, it doesn’t matter. Just read (I'm repeating myself, shut up). And then write. Imitate, reject, steal subtly, learn and unlearn. Above all: just keep reading.

P.S. Cool story bros: I read Jonathan Franzer’s Freedom and Purity and I liked it.