Every now and then I will ask a question that I should have had the sense to leave alone. Or, at least, I should the sense to leave these items in the gray, indistinct realm where they usually exist, like a collection of impulses to kiss someone that were stifled just in time. In fact, I asked one of these questions this morning.

But before getting to the meat of this question, a little background is in order. I have published eleven novels over the last thirty years, although, to be what is known as brutally frank, I should say, too, that perhaps I have actually written a couple more than these eleven, and that the, ah, extra ones are residing in the depths of a trunk. Or the modern version of a trunk, which is a diskette in a small plastic container that is slowly gathering dust. I have to say, too, that to have published eleven novels by my age, you have to start when you are very young. I signed my first book contract when I was 25.

So, you can see that this is what I have done with my life. The question I asked, as I sat down this morning to start my twelfth book, was this. “Just what the hell are you doing? What, in god’s name are you trying to accomplish? Can you please explain what is so necessary about sitting in this room for two years, raking yourself over the coals, for another novel? And when you answer, by god, you better have some pretty good answers.”

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The first thing that happens when asking one of these questions, that is, after I realize that my palms have started to sweat, is that I try to come up with a comparison (a metaphor, I guess, in novelist-speak) for the effect of this inquiry. For instance, this morning I thought that asking this question was like being a mountain climber who, in the middle of an ascent up a sheer cliff, reaches for a piton, but he finds that he is plumb out of them. The terror of his predicament is that he can’t go down (the pitons in the face below have come loose, etc.) and he can’t go up. So he sits there, after having said, “Uh-O.” Then he says, “And why did I climb up here anyway?”

So, now that I have asked the question, I realize that I am in for a little white-knuckling, as a friend of mine calls it. And, the first thing I do, to try to make sense out of just what the hell I trying to accomplish, is list all the reasons why I shouldn’t be engaged in this activity. These include, but aren’t limited to, the fact that if novels were once written to describe experiences that were too inflammatory to admit to having had, why then this reason has long since disappeared in the shameless aspect of the modern age. You would have to be living on Zork (which, when you get down to cases, isn’t so different from Putney, VT, which is where I live) not to know that there isn’t anything, and I mean anything, that you can’t put into print as a straight memoir. Have you had an affair with your father or mother? Fine. Have you taken drugs, murdered friends, or, better, have you killed someone famous? Sign here, on the dotted line. Remember, it’s a fifty fifty split on the syndication and translation rights.

No, that can’t justify it. These days, there isn’t anything to hide. But then, there’s the entertainment factor, as they say on the left coast. That is, don’t you want to give someone the thrill of being distracted, to while away the hours with something you have written. Well, I’m not so sure about this either, and while I am absolutely committed to making the books I write fun to read and entertaining, too, this can’t be the fundamental reason to write one. Surely, being a jester of some variety isn’t sufficient.

Well, how about money. Don’t you want money? Well, sure, and in fact, this is one of the places where writers are exceedingly vulnerable, since they go without money for long periods, and, worse, since they have no objective way of seeing whether or not what they do is any good, they can always look to see how much they get paid. As a sort of dollar scented reassurance. This explains why after a certain point, writers aren’t interested in writing a book so much as they are in making the deal. It almost feels like being loved when you realize that the squeaking sound you hear is actually the noise made by the enormous ledger the publisher opens to “cut a check.” But, surely, this isn’t it either. If I was in it for the money, I should have become an investment banker. The hours are better, the worry is less, and, let us admit it, the money is better. Far better.

Now I’m really in for it. I realize that I will have to come at this from a more proactive point of view, as they would say from a public relations point of view. This means not why I shouldn’t, but why I have to.

Of course, I could just say that I have an obsession, and let it go at that, but psycho-pathology seems a poor reason to write a book, although, to be honest, it hasn’t stopped a lot of people. No, I think what is necessary is to look to the “lower layer,” as Melville once said. And this lower layer, this depth, is precisely what is missing in the modern age.

Almost everything we see and hear that has to do with being human these days is a kind of poem to the superficial. We are surrounded with images, in advertising, the movies, on line, that suggest the existence of a perfection that we will never be able to live up to, just as this onslaught of the Surface Way of Knowledge never addresses the keen sense of isolation that each human being has to live with. Even the words with which we use to speak of our troubles (“dysfunctional,” etc.) are distinguished by their silliness and imprecision.

So, all of this is a problem. But what does it have to do with a novel? Well, I think that a novelist tells a story, often inspired by something lived through or seen, but the fictional version doesn’t try to establish the facts so much as what should have happened. This “should,” is of a particular kind, in that it is filtered through one’s beliefs, fears, concerns about fate, sense of beauty, justice, and, of course, one’s sense of humor. And, underneath these items, there is another quality, which is to invoke, to show, to reveal all of the pleasures, miseries, and obligations of being human. Surely, in the modern age, when we are almost always condemned to the surfaces of things, this is a worthwhile, if not necessary pursuit.

Whew. Sure glad I packed those extra pitons. Have to remember that I keep them right here.

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