FAST LEARNING WITH PATRICK DEWITT AND BOB COMET

Reading new material for fast learning is the way to go.

Hands on experience? Also good when combined with reading new material.

But something happens when new material comes in the way of reading a novel.

The novel is ‘The Librarianist’ by Patrick deWitt.

The fast learning part? More than a novel, deWitt delivers a class on novel writing, content management, and time travel.

Who doesn’t want some of that.

I do. And even better, it’s a love story, an ‘extraordinary’ love story.

This is the third novel by Patrick deWitt for me, and I’m still waiting to be disappointed.

From Sisters Brothers to French Exit to now, each book feels like a new beginning.

The first time I had the feeling of fast learning from a novel came after reading The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta by Mario Vargas Llosa.

After that I figured I read it over and over, but I haven’t.

Still, it’s a great feeling and Patrick deWitt does the same thing.

During my more formative years I read books by writers like Thomas McGuane.

After finishing one I’d read the blurbs from other writers on the back of the book and work my way through their books, their blurbs, and more books.

I was a big reader on the trail to great writing and kept at it over the years.

Richard Brautigan, Richard Fariña, Ken Kesey, Larry McMurtry; they all left an impression, a good impression.

 

Bob Comet To The Rescue

Few writers have captured aging like Patrick deWitt did with his hero Bob Comet.

If I’d read The Librarianist as a younger man it wouldn’t have hit the same.

Now that I’m closer to his age, pushing seventy, I found it a wonder.

I pictured Bob Comet; he’s Martin Freeman from Love Actually if he’s aged up twenty years.

What is it about a guy, a one woman guy, a one friend guy, who seems satisfied with what he’s got?

Can’t we all relate?

DeWitt cracks him open and shows how such a guy can exist.

 

Am I a fan because Bob Comet is an Eastside Portland guy?

Because he’s a librarian in NW Portland?

I’m familiar with the territory having lived in both neighborhoods.

Am I a fan because deWitt sends young Bob on an adventure to the Oregon coast?

I grew up on the Oregon coast.

I’m a fan because the author did the locations justice.

Some of the Amazon reviews missed this because they don’t have a feel for Oregon and the urban/rural divide.

They didn’t like the flashback from aged to youth. I loved it.

Both of my parents were logging camp kids, which is hardly written about the way it is here.

I don’t know if deWitt was deemed ‘a modern Mark Twain’ before The Librarianist, but young Bob Comet does evoke Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn with his attempt to run away from home.

There’s a sweetness in Bob that doesn’t overflow to saccharine biography, which shows a writer’s skill.

He gets the elderly aspects of life, which I witnessed as a caregiver for my father in-law, and as I slide into my own last chapters.

 

The Celebration of The Librarinist

How many times have you picked up a book, then put it back down after thumbing through page after page of dense prose?

DeWitt counters this by welcoming the reader with dialog within the paragraphs instead of each new voice a paragraph on its own.

He welcomes the reader by ending each chapter with a blank page before the next begins.

It’s a breath of fresh air.

And no clever chapter titles with supporting quotes, no insider hints from famous writers from the past.

It’s a nice exclusion so readers don’t feel like they need a research manual to understand what’s going on, what’s trying to be said, and finding its relevance.

In other words he trusts his writing skills to keep the reader turning pages; he trusts his readers.

I slow-read The Librarianist not because I’m a slow reader but because I wanted to feel the momentum of the story.

Did it have momentum? Not too fast, not too slow, just right.

 

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature, but didn’t show up at the awards ceremony.

Patrick deWitt did the same when he won the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction.

Will I show up after I win the National Blogger Award For Persistence?

Speaking for the three of us, no. We like the work enough to keep at it.

One of my twitter follows, role model T.C. Boyle, might also be a fan of Patrick deWitt, who should be a fan of Boyle.

Boyle gives an account of his day to day life, including his writing schedule and production.

It’s all fast learning if you look closely.