If you get the Los Angeles Times, then this morning you most likely read the book review and perhaps noticed the review of Maira Kalman's new book, The Principles of Uncertainty. I love Maira Kalman--her voice, her art. I discovered her way before Travis was born when I worked at Rizzoli bookstore at South Coast Plaza and saw Max Makes a Million about a dog who longs to be a poet and ends up getting a million dollar contract. (Uh-huh, right, you say.) The artwork was fabulous--Matisse/Chagall like--and the voice of the writing was singular.
Voice...it's what impresses me, in the end, more than plotting, I must say (but this could be because plotting is not a virtue of mine).
So, for your Sunday entertainment, here's a little video from Kalman's site. It's so Kalman.
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My friend J. wrote to me and said, "Reading the collected
letters of John Steinbeck. He writes to a friend that there are so many
stories he wants to tell but they can't be told in his voice so he won't
write them. He goes on to say that he's trapped in his own voice.Well,
shucks." (printed here with J.'s permission)
Ezra Pound said, "Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree."
Two years ago I sat in a gray building, in a gray room on a gray steel chair waiting for my wife to complete her citizenship test.
There was no decor except for a blow up of the Declaration of Indepencence. I started to read it - I always start to read the Declaration of Indepence but never get very far - never past the first few words - "When in the course of human events". Just that simple and the world was changed forever. Voice.
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