WRITING AWARDS GIVEN FOR WORDS WRITTEN: VOTE BIDEN

The third grade writing awards from the fire department set me on my way. The framed paper hangs on my Wall of Fame as a reminder to do better.

Do better in third grade? That’s when I learned the power of words. I copied a lymerick from a Johnny Hartford fire prevention magazine and printed it in the middle of a poster with my drawing of a big match on one side and a pile of ashes across the bottom.

Since then have I always given credit, attribution, notations, footnotes? Not always, but I am this time.

I asked twitter pal T.C. Boyle for permission to refer to his blog. Being the good guy he presents himself as, he said yes.

Here’s why I asked: I’m a fan of predicting Nobel Lit prizes.

This year’s winner, Louise Gluck, is apparently famous for this quote: “We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.”

I say famous because it’s under her name on Goodreads.

If that doesn’t hit you right in the warm and fuzzies, then you are too cold. If your memory feels a little worn, consider this: childhood is a state of mind.

Based on twitter, Mr. Boyle is someone who holds onto that state of mind. It’s in his tweets, in his pictures of the same curved road in ‘Plague Time.” It’s in his glass of wine set before different backgrounds on his property.

For some reason I find his twitter stuff hilarious in a subdued, living lives of quiet desperation, way. It speaks to a memory of childhood isolation and wonder without actually saying it.

And then?

From tcboyle.com

We lose the magic of childhood far too quickly as we come to understand that it is not fantasy and joy that rule the world but the inescapable reality of competition and the relentless playing out of our mortal lives. 

Louis Gluck would probably agree, but for everyone with an older sibling who felt crowded being ten months apart, the magic of childhood ended at the hospital door. It was tough being a kid, let me tell ya, and Mr. Boyle gets it. It’s still tough.

This is a guy tough enough to risk his audiences’ attention by writing about the last election, and the one coming. He calls out the clear and present danger with:

We’ve lived the waking nightmare for four long years now and the prospect of another four is far more frightening than all the revenants, vampires and ghouls of all the ages combined.  Trick or treat indeed.  It’s as stark and simple as this: vote blue for democracy or red for the stake through its heart.

Do I enjoy the online company of Mr. Boyle because of his politics, his books, or his ability to welcome others into his world?

Yes, And Here’s Why

Amazon bio:

T.C. Boyle is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the late 1970s, he has published sixteen novels, most recently The Terranauts and The Harder They Come, and ten collections of short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988 for his novel World’s End, and the Prix Médicis étranger for The Tortilla Curtain in 1995; his 2003 novel Drop City was a finalist for the National Book Award. His honors include the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, the Henry David Thoreau Prize for excellence in nature writing, and the Rea Award for the Short Story.  He is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California and lives in Santa Barbara.

What pushes someone to be so productive they can’t be ignored? What fire burns so bright? Those are the questions asked from the couch in the dark, and panels for writing awards.

The next brain-locked question asked when faced with reality? “Oh, so you think you’re better than me?”

Instead of finding joy in any improvement anywhere for anyone, they fall back on their base, their roots, their fundamental insecurities. And that couch in the dark.

Look for people who know the couch, know the dark, but still stand up and turn on the light for others like T.C. Boyle.

From noteablebiographies.com

He sometimes says that finding his voice through fiction helped him move past his self-destructive tendencies. “Art bailed me out,” he told Louisa Ermelino in an interview that appeared in Publishers Weekly . “It sounds corny but there’s a power in it that I would never give up. There’s a light that fills you when you’re writing; there’s a magic. I don’t know what it is. It’s a miracle and it’s a rush and immediately on finishing, you want to do it again.”

Will T.C. Boyle win more writing awards? My Nobel predictions may be off, but he’s on the short list.