49 Writers: Jonathan Bower: What Would Montaigne Do?

An adjunct professor in creative writing at?UAA, Jonathan Bower has?most recently?published short essays for?The Anchorage Press and also recently released?his first CD of new songs after a ten-year hiatus from music. Beginning Nov. 3, he?ll teach the?49 Writers workshop ?Writing Wrongs,? in which participants will deconstruct the notion that scandal and confession constitute "truth telling" and will write about their shadow sides through the subtle, delicate art of self-implication, using the timeless tools of restraint and a mature trust in the reader.

One morning a few months ago, I stood at my kitchen counter putting together my eight-year-old son?s lunch for school. While I silently?worried over the day?s lunch detail, Sam quietly dug his way through a bowl of Cheerios.

I don't know how long we went without speaking, but at some point, Sam broke the silence, though I couldn't right away?make out what he'd said. Without turning, I craned my head and?neck and blurted an aged sounding, "Eh?" It was the kind of noise you don?t imagine could come out of your mouth until you?re well into your eighties. My punctuated inquiry didn't jar him in the least. Rather, he kept speaking at the same soft volume and in a rhythmic murmur. I stopped assembling his lunch and turned around, still under the impression he was explaining something to me. But his attention wasn't directed towards?me at all. As he shoveled spoonfuls of Cheerios into his mouth, Sam?held in his other hand a Montaigne essay I'd left on the table late the previous evening. It was titled Of the Affection of?Fathers for Their Children,?and Sam was reading it aloud, at low volume, to himself. I stood tickled there, Sam?s back to me, his spine curling away from his chair as he?hunched over?the table, mop of blonde hair still shooting a?thousand directions from waking up not many minutes?earlier. There are worse ways to begin the morning, of course. He might have been reading the headlines, for instance. And then, fast on the heels of my otherwise innocent amusement and pleasure,?while Sam remained thoroughly unaware of my bird's eye view on him, my neural pathways seemed suddenly hijacked by an unconscious attempt to cleverly summarize what I was witnessing in the kitchen, and to then?mold it into a snazzy riff worthy of a Facebook 'Status Update.' Perhaps: "I thought Sam was talking to?me just now,?and turned around to see he was seated at the table shoveling Cheerios into his face and reading?aloud from a?Montaigne essay I left on the table last night. Yes! Montaigne!" However, I tend to shy away from exclamation points, so perhaps a more subdued testimony was in order: ?Just found Sam reading Montaigne at the breakfast table. Next stop, Nobel Prize.? No matter which way you sliced it, my take on this scene proved more or less the same: ?Note my brilliant, adorable, mop-haired?eight-year-old?reading Montaigne! The boy?s eight! Can you believe it?? Meanwhile, the truth of the matter, of course, was not nearly as exciting as I thought to craft it for immediate upload on the social network: My oldest boy, a third grader, Sam, is eight. He?reads now. Like many kids his age, he started that process in kindergarten or first grade. That morning, there happened to rest on the table an essay by Montaigne. While?I was busy with the morning's duties, as he ate breakfast, he occupied his time?with the paper. Truthfully, Sam couldn't tell Montaigne from?Rilke or?Chekov. More and more I?m puzzling over this strange impulse to punctuate as exceptional the ?ordinary,? ?stuff of life? details of my day-to-day, and to then consign these moments to the realm of the status update. Those closest to me well know by now of my ongoing, though perhaps ultimately pointless quarrel with social networking. For one thing, the desire to skillfully appropriate it for any useful purpose as an artist and writer has proven mostly an exercise in futility as I too frequently cave to the distractions the network provides. Also, as a writer, to use the network for little more than the ?flash nonfiction? of status updates when I could instead be adding a sentence or two to the novel or essays I?m presently not writing seems not only counter-productive, but also counter-intuitive. And yet, at an arts conference this year, I heard from numerous instructors and students that to be considered a serious, working writer nowadays, it?s essential that you immediately cozy up and embrace social networking. More than a presence on Facebook, in fact, it was advised that writers open twitter accounts and start tweeting, pronto. At this particular conference, the participants? reactions to this advice seemed pretty evenly split: Some felt it was outside the realm of reason, as well as insulting, to expect an artist to adopt an online persona in the hopes of luring fans or readers based on one?s ability to offer banal or witty candor via tweets. Others shrugged and found in it the possibility to creatively explore territory they had never before associated with building one?s readership. Last week, I spoke with a friend whose roommate falls in the former category. A hard working and talented writer, she remains unpublished, and in her desire to make a living at her craft she?s bought the argument that she must warm up to social networking and begin status-updating and tweeting immediately, creating the online persona that followers or ?friends? may deem likeable enough to warrant reading. While she relayed her roommate?s situation, I found myself empathizing with her. I considered the many ways I?ve floundered in my efforts to both ?sell? myself as a likeable artist and as a real, flesh and blood human being who is also in some extra-ordinary way on top of his game creatively. This, in the hopes I will come off as the kind of guy you?d want to read, as if I?m otherwise lacking in that department and that an online presence can compensate for that. My friend, however, seemed thoroughly nonplussed with the predicament that both her roommate and I share. ?Well, maybe these ways of conducting business and hawking your wares aren?t for everyone,? she responded, ?But it?s the way things are now and it?s not going to change anytime soon, so if you can?t take the heat you pretty much just have to evacuate the kitchen.? Hearing my friend state it so definitively, with a working professional?s ?no two ways about it? authoritative seal, stunned me speechless. In some ways, I have been playing. Enough so that my neural networks default setting presently seems inclined to hurl into the ?Status? realm the otherwise ?ordinary? act of my son reading Montaigne at breakfast. But still, I wonder: Is my concern solely one man?s griping about the heat? Should I chalk things up to ?the way it is now? and join the party or remove myself from the hot kitchen? And, besides, can the way we fumble or learn to use the various social networking tools truly make a difference in our success or efforts as writers?

I wish I knew for sure. In that late afternoon conversation, I struggled to think up an intelligent response to my friend?s directive. Nothing came. And later, by the time I returned to my hotel room, I still remained stumped, so that I couldn?t even fashion a snarky status update addressing the matter.?

Source: http://49writers.blogspot.com/2012/10/jonathan-bower-what-would-montaigne-do.html

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