The Lonesome Writer

Secondly, writing itself is seen as somehow disreputable. I think we have a nineteenth century attitude about work. When a man works you expect to see some tangible result: a plowed field or the frame of a house. What are a bunch of scribbled marks on a piece of paper? “Chicken-scratching” is the usual verdict. I suppose if a man can’t round up enough girls to make a living as a pimp, he can turn to writing.

But the real curse of the writer is that he has no friends. People look on writers as though they had leprosy — and might be contagious. Actually, this attitude is grounded in fact: people know that if they have a friend who’s a writer, sooner or later he (or she) is going to write about them, and it won’t be something they want written.

I worked with a guy who was not a handsome man, but he told me that one time an artist came up to him and asked him if he would be interested in modeling for him. My friend was astounded, because he assumed artists only wanted to draw beautiful people. Actually, artists want models that are true to type and my friend would have made an excellent model for a ditch-digger.

Writers are the same way: they don’t want to write about exemplary people — they want to write about rogues. Think of all the novels you have read: the protagonists were not sterling heroes. Instead, they were average, or frequently a little less than average, with a collection of deliciously-entertaining vices. So, if your writer friend includes you in her column, she is not going to mention your 50-year safe-driving record. She will discuss the one time you ran a red light and got caught.

And it’s worse than that. What the writer says about you might not even be true, or at least not the way you remember it. Laurie Lee wrote an enchanting book about his childhood in Slad, Glouchestershire, England, called Cider With Rosie. The book became an international best-seller and made Lee a rich man. He returned to his childhood home, bought the nicest house in town and settled in. But the locals never accepted him, resenting the notoriety he brought and objecting to the intimate details of their lives that Lee discussed. If they spoke to him at all, it was to ask scornfully about his book: “A pack o’lies, weren’t it?”

Is any writing ever the whole, entire, unvarnished trust? Isn’t it always distorted (“refined,” as the writer might say), in the writer’s brain, embellished and prettied up a bit? Most writers get subtle hints from their friends: “Henry, if you write one more word about me, I’ll sue.” Some of us are slow learners, though, and my wife hasn’t actually gone that far - yet.

Willis Cook is a retired electrical engineer who was born in New Orleans and grew up in the Mississippi Delta. He lives on Varner Road in Franklin County.