Okay, who's had this experience--you read a book, fall in love with it and wait eagerly for the author's next one. For Marilynne Robinson we waited, what, about 20 years? And Gilead could not be more different from Housekeeping. Equally brilliant, no doubt, but the emotional tone was worlds and worlds apart.
Then there's Ann Patchett. It's hard to believe that the writer of The Magician's Assistant followed up with Bel Canto and Run. And don't even get me started on Anne Tyler and Joyce Carol Oates.
I must reluctantly conclude that the authors I love write the books they are moved to write with no regard for the fact that I'm out here waiting for an encore. As a writer I intend to do the same thing but there's still this lingering sense of disappointment. Whatever happened to Ruth and Sabine? Just saying...
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I strongly agree with this point about Marilynne Robinson, one of the great American novelists of our time (it doesn't get much better than "Housekeeping"). The same could also be said of Ralph Ellison, who made the world wait decades for another novel following the publication of his "Invisible Man." This underscores the point that the best literary authors finally don't write for approval, money, or to "communicate" with an audience, but because they have to--just as they have to breathe; it is for them an elemental urge....
ReplyDeleteYou are absolutely right. At a writers' conference I once attended one of the participants asked a visiting editor, "How do you know if you should keep writing." The editor replied, "If you can stop, by all means do!" Some of us just can't.
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