My to do list says “blog!” and Mondays are for book reviews because I’m supposed to read one book per week. But I haven’t finished last week’s book, White Noise by Don DeLillo. I’m almost done, could probably finish it today and write my “review,” but I want to get my every-day to do list done NOW! Damn it! I could just fake it. No one reads these damn things anyway.
I’ll just go over to a few other websites, see what they have to say, see if it jibes, say something similar. For example, Wikipedia says:
White Noise explores several themes that emerged during the mid-to-late twentieth century, e.g., rampant consumerism, media saturation, novelty academic intellectualism, underground conspiracies, the disintegration and reintegration of the family, human-made catastrophes, and the potentially regenerative nature of human violence. … The novel’s style is characterized by a heterogeneity that utilizes “montages of tones, styles, and voices that have the effect of yoking together terror and wild humor as the essential tone of contemporary America”
(quoting Frank Lentricchia, editor of New Essays on White Noise, apparently).
Now me, I’m a writer. Those of you who have waded through my self-indulgent pages know this. You know that a writer is someone who is compelled and accomplishes, as a reason for being, stringing together words in sentences in a chronic or at the very least pathological fashion. Nothing to do with being published, having readers, actually finishing anything. As long as I am wont to go blah bah blah, I’m a writer.
So, as a writer, I have to wonder, what’s the deal with themes? Do writers set out to have “themes” in their books? I never do. Not ever. I don’t say “I think I’ll write about the break-neck speed at which we’re forced to live these days, sacrificing sleep for sensation, the irony being that we’re dulled by stimulation, numb to anything except the joy of oblivion.” No, I just think it would be cool to write a story about 4 kids who decide if they can stay awake for 96 hours straight. And style? I can assure you, I don’t ever set out with a fixed style in mind. I just slap the words together in a way that seems to work.
But then, I’m no Don DeLillo. Thank god! If I was, and if I were ever published, I’d have to compete with the other Don DeLillo! Can you imagine, someone walks into a bookstore, says to the guy wearing glasses: “The latest from Don DeLillo, please,” wanting the book a friend of a friend of my mom told them about, only to get the other Don DeLillo’s book instead! Which is why writing should never be about praise. They’d read the book, find it excellent, tell their friend, who tells their friend, who tells my mom, who tells me. “They said they liked the theme of novelty academic intellectualism, and appreciated your montage of styles.”
And me, not knowing that’s what I’d written, I’d be all “Gee, cool!”
Anyway, there’s 500 words. Enough for a blog post. See what I mean about writers being those who just @#$%^&* write, and to hell with the results? I’m a god damned natural.