The Fire That Never Says, 'Enough'

…what is it we are all doing, what is it we are about, pray tell? And why are we gathered here?

—Raymond Carver, “All My Relations”

I’m on my way

with dust in my shoes,

free of mythology:

Send books back to their shelves,

I’m going down into the streets.

I learned about life

from life itself,

love I learned in a single kiss

and could teach no one anything

except that I have lived

with something in common among men….

–Pablo Neruda, “Ode to the Book“

I frittered away a ridiculous amount of time over the last week or so trying to finish an essay that was supposed to address the decline of reading in America, and, specifically, the question of what this decline means, and whether stories matter.

Your eyes, I’m sure, immediately rolled back in your head when you read that paragraph, so I’m going to presume you’ll understand what I was up against. Too many words have already been wasted on this subject, which essentially boils down to this: Are too many words being wasted on this and other subjects? Are words wasted? Are there too many words? Or: What the hell is wrong with words that they don’t seem capable of stirring the American imagination as they purportedly once did? Have words suddenly –or slowly– lost their ability to make sense of what we are going through, both individually and collectively? Are we, in fact, going through anything collectively anymore, or at least anything that words might make sense of? And if we are not, then might not that be one primary reason why books fail to speak to so many of us?

Or: What the hell is wrong with Americans that so many of them are now apparently incapable of (or entirely indifferent to) being stirred by a language that is still capable of giving voice to all manner of incredibly stirring and dazzling stories?

Or: What?

Never mind, of course, that this is all hogwash. If there’s one thing I’ve proved in my long and distinguished career, it’s my ability and unhappy willingness to wallow in all manner of hogwash in exchange for the most paltry of compensation. Time and again I’ve proved (right here, in fact) that I’ll wallow in all manner of hogwash for free.

And never mind that these people who wring their hands over the alleged decline of words and stories obviously haven’t been listening to much music –hip hop, specifically– or spent much time lately hanging out in decent barber shops. Just for starters.

I made the mistake of engaging my doppelganger in this discussion, which only confused matters. The doppelganger fiercely and mercilessly blocked every one of my entry points into this exercise in futility, challenging each of my arguments with withering rebuttals that increasingly felt like taunting, and, eventually, mockery. It was plenty clear that the doppelganger had no patience, no patience at all, for this foolishness, and was merely humoring me. At one point I somehow found myself defending even my hairline –which needs no defending– and the orthodontic irregularities of my smile.

By this time words truly did not matter. They had ceased to matter.

The problem was, though, that I had a looming deadline. And I had already managed to waste almost two thousand words on this subject, words that, if published, would expose me as merely one more cloistered blowhard braying from the tower into the thick clouds of smoke billowing from the funeral pyres far below. I have already published far too many words that have exposed me in a similarly humiliating fashion.

I scrolled down to the tail end of those nearly two thousand words and hit the backspace key. Eventually I was left with only the most modest and forlorn little neighborhood of words, huddled together at the top of an otherwise empty screen, all that remained after the rest of the towering city of my indignation had been burned to the ground by the furious onslaught of my doppelganger. Eventually I was left with just these two sentences that I couldn’t bear to part with, and I suppose they’ll have to do:

At precisely the moment that man began to try to write down the story of God, at precisely that moment God turned His back in disgust. He knew what was coming: Lies.