I was explaining something to him from a documentary that Sonia had shown Raf and me. It was years ago when we saw it, so I was a bit unclear.
But it was about failure, and how almost inevitable it is biologically.
An example?
Well, today I walked under a palm tree, and saw the ground beneath it completely obscured with pea-sized seeds.
How many of them will become a palm?
(Could make the same analogy of semen, but this is not that sort of blog….)
Well, I remembered all that last night, after I had called my doctor—a terrific woman—to ask her to review Iguanas. She’s bright, funny, an excellent practitioner. Only one problem!
Her specialty is geriatrics….
Stop that sniggering!
Well, well—she said sure, as I thought she would, and then I returned to the problem. For a book is at least potentially a seed. How to get it to grow? How to ensure that it won’t be, like the seeds this morning, one more book among the millions of others that people walk by, unheeding?
Well, I’m ruminative these days, and continued thinking of the old. And also of the documentary. And then, of course, it hit me.
She was in the documentary all those years ago, and I was fascinated by her story. She was born on 22 April 1909 into a prominent Jewish family. Had a wonderful childhood and then, in her teens, defied her father: she went to med school. World War II erupted, and she fled to Belgium. She returned to Turin, and lived in hiding.
Didn’t stop working, though! She somehow got hold of eggs and continued her investigation of “limb extirpation of chick embryos.” (Don’t ask, I don’t know….) Then the war ended, and an Italian colleague living in St. Louis invited her for a semester to work at Washington University.
Stayed thirty years!
Then picked up, and went back home to Italy. Then, in the 80’s she won the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology.
She had discovered, or helped discover, nerve growth hormone.
Well, that’s an achievement! That puts Iguanas to shame! And that’s not all—she’s a senator for life in the Italian Senate.
Great story, hunh? And she is now, by the way, still going strong. Maybe because she puts drops of nerve growth hormone each morning into her eyes. Take a look at her—what a charmer!
Well, well—back to thinking of the old. And then I began to wonder about Imogen Cunningham, and her book After Ninety.
Cunningham was a photographer—one of the greats. And she got around—photographing Martha Graham, Darius Milhaud, a whole cluster of greats. Then she got into photographing old people. And that’s where I saw the face that prepared me. Here it is.
She was a
distinguished radiologist who asked me to photograph her. I wasn’t taking on commissions anymore,
but I did it because she didn’t care if she looked old, and she didn’t hate her
face.
That’s what
the caption says. But no…
She wasn’t
a distinguished radiologist. At least not to me. She was the face I knew one
day I would see.
Maybe it
was just being the youngest that explained the bond between my mother and me.
But I think it was more. I sat often and stared at the photo and wondered when I would see the reality.
Well, I
lost the book but not the image. Then I lived the reality and created another one—a book I called Life, Death and Iguanas.
And now I
have the image again—peering at me, challenging me, accompanying me as I go
into my own third age….
I've often felt that writing is often like throwing spagetti at the wall. Every now and then, something will stick.
ReplyDeleteIt's a complete risk, whether the writer is new, or established. Frank Sinatra admitted to failures in love (hard to believe), so it must be assumed even someone like Steven King will write a book and say "perhaps not my best."
Yet what the public wants is rarely what we expect them to want. Hence, the massive clearance section in your average bookstore.
Prose always finds an audience. Whether it's our intended audience, or whether the size of the audience is what we expected, these are the unknowns.
IMHO, it's better to share your deepest thoughts with the world and hope the words will find kindred spirits than to have never reached out at all. Best of all, the pen, time and time again, has proven the only true form of immortality. Age may take us all, but our words and the message behind them, live on forever.
El Perro Sato
That, my good Quique, is just what worries me. Remember Bulwer-Lytton, and his famous "dark and stormy night?" There are day I fear the same fate....
ReplyDeleteActually, I've decided I have first book syndrome, or maybe unknown author syndrome. The book will be published on Saturday. If it gets read--even by a handful of people--then I'll get a sense of what I did. But if it doesn't? I'll wonder forever...
Anyway, I love it that YOU are reading and especially commenting. Thanks--I really appreciate it...
I think the important thing about writing is to write what you need to write and assume it will never be read. Then you can write what is true and honest and often unpalatable. Writing well about things that matter is really counter-cultural: Almost the only writers who are widely read are hacks churning out thrillers and chick-lit. That's not you. If you need to write for money, use a pseudonym!
ReplyDeleteMadame Montalcini is elegant in her bearing and in her appearance: What a classy difference from the 'cheesy floozy' current fashions.
about writing, I think you're right. Anything I've ever done well is stuff I didn't take too seriously. If I start to think about the audience I blow it on the cello. And I was completely convinced I was a fake as a teacher. Got away with it though!
ReplyDeleteYeah, is Madame Monalcini great! I suppose I could try for something like that, but now I channel Franny every day in the morning. Take a shower, comb the hair, and then say, "Well, doing the best we can, under the circumstances!"....