100 Things About a Novel, part 4

66. The novel and God are always being declared dead.

Both are now indifferent to this.

67. For now they pass the time in the kitchen of life, telling jokes, each trying to tell if the other's feelings are hurt.

68. God feels confident he is having a come-back. Also the novel. Each does not want to say this to the other, not directly.

69. God and the novel are frenemies.

70. The novel is being sold in vending machines in airports. God points out there are no vending machines for God.

71. Are you sure, though, the novel says. And then adds, I feel like  you could do something about that.

72. Tell me about it, God says. This being one of the things the novel can do.

73. The novel is also now an app. No app yet for God.

I think this means I'm ahead, the novel says. God says nothing to this.

There is something He intends to do about it. And then, He forgets…

74. Sometimes it is the ship, sinking, and you, you are the captain, running around the deck, having decided not to go down with it, but to save it, to head for land all the same.

75. The ship, moved, returns from its fascination with the deep.

76. It would be easy to forget that sometimes the shipwreck saves the ship or the captain. Sometimes one or the other remembers this at the touch of the rock.

78. Think of Nemo, in his submarine, touring the submerged treasures of all of the failed voyages in all of history. A library of unfinished novels could be like this.

79. Or like the buckle of a belt, worn by an islander who found it in a reef, and seen years later, by the original owner's friend when he comes to land. Where did you get this, the explorer asks, and then asks to be taken to the wreck.

80. It is like the language the explorer must learn to even ask the question.

81. What is it you want from me, the novel asks.

82. What is it you want from me, the novel tells you.

83. Everything in here is about you, the novel says.

84. This feels like a trick to keep you reading it or writing it, a lie that is also true.

And this is what a novel is.

85. In the novel the true things often run around inside tricks, like children playing at being ghosts.

86. They do this because otherwise, we would ignore them, just as we ignore children. Not now, we would tell them, if they arrived without their sheets.

87. What could I possibly tell you, the writer thinks, alone at the desk. And then, This!

88.  Cheever said of the novel that it should have the direct and concise qualities of a letter.  He does not, however, say who the letter is from or who it is to.

89. This strikes me as an interesting question. The kind that could accidentally begin a novel.

90. Novels often beginning accidentally. Writers playing in the traffic of the imagination, hoping to get struck, dragged, taken far away.

91. This is because the novel begun deliberately is often terrible, with the worst qualities of a bad lie, or a political speech given during a campaign.

92. The successful accident leaves something in your hand when you wake.  It is the letter Cheever spoke of.

Beside your bed is the part of you that writes a novel, in disguise, funny hats and all.

93. Do not look too closely at the ridiculous mustache. Listen and write down what is said.

94. The novel a letter from the novel to the reader, dictated to the writer by the writer and in disguise as the novel.

95. But what is it about, you might ask, and the novel recoils, leaving the writer alone.

For a moment, a week, a year.

96. I just need to get a drink, I'll be right back, the novel says. Do you want anything?

97. Days later the novel returns. The writer has sulked the entire time. I wasn't with anyone else, the novel says. There's only you, the novel adds, even as the writer fears it has taken up with others. Pages of itself across the other desks of the neighborhood.

98. There's only you, the novel says again.

99. You are in the street outside the novel's window, you are screaming into the wind. Please, you say finally, finally quiet, uncertain of how to go further.

100. The novel is at the door. Waiting. It is the lover again, impatient again. Wanting again for you to know everything.

 

 

***This is the last of a series. For those just arriving, here are links to Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.