James Preller's Blog

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In an era of great book covers, this one strikes me as pretty bad. But just wait till you get inside!

I’m reading Susan Orlean’s extraordinary memoir, Joyride. She is, quite obviously, one of our greatest living writers. The book is largely about her writing life, which one gathers is not at all distinct from her life in general. I find it vastly inspiring. She makes me want to be a better writer. A truer writer. Highly recommended to anyone who cares about writing or admires Orlean’s work. Which of course you do, because how can you not?

But I keep putting this book down after a page or two. Over and over again. Long ago I determined that was a very positive sign. The poem that has me staring out the window. The book that elicits memories, new ideas, inspirations, eureka moments. I think of these as source books. Deep wells from which the imagination drinks its full. I suspect it will take me forever to finish it. I also suspect that I’m going to need to own this one, scribbling in the margins. Returning the book to the library just won’t suffice.

Oh, right, my dad. Orlean was writing about her mother and a memory of my father leaped into my head. He passed in 2006, long ago, and I suppose days go by when I don’t think of him. I also suppose that such streaks rarely happen. He’s always there, as anyone with a deceased parent understands. 

My father was an insurance man. A practical man. A man of his time. Smart about things, like money and the stock market and when to rotate the tires. He loved mucking about on his boat. In fact, as I think of it now, “puttering around” was his prime activity. Pruning a tree limb, slathering it with tar. Setting down an imperfect line of Belgian blocks along the driveway. Playing bridge and doing jigsaw puzzles and pouring a scotch. He had a minor but persistent artistic streak, a flag that he never truly unfurled. It came out in different projects, a late-period adult education painting class, that sort of thing. He never took me to a museum or read novels or did anything that I recall to cultivate an artistic sensibility in his children, which includes me, his youngest. 

So I think when I became a writer it sort of baffled and intrigued him. He might have even admired it a little, I’m not sure. He wasn’t supportive or not supportive. It was just sort of like, okay, whatever. So long as you can put food on the table. I think he felt that way about all his children. Go live your life; I’m here if you need anything.

The memory is this: He would sometimes come across an article in the newspaper. Something that tangentially tied into what he thought I did for a living. Maybe he just came across a news item that made him think of me. I imagine him at the kitchen table, an unfiltered Camel burning in the ashtray. He’d grab the scissors, clip it out, fold it neatly into an envelope, and send it my way. If there was a note attached by a paper clip, it would be brief, “I found this interesting.” That sort of thing.

We don’t live in that world anymore. When folks stuffed newspaper clippings in envelopes. It used to happen, I’m sure some readers remember, but not anymore. That time has largely vanished from the earth, living only in memory. How the mailman would arrive and lo, here was a letter from my father, unbidden and unexpected, containing some odd miscellany he felt I’d enjoy. 

This was a man, a veteran of World War II, who didn’t express a lot of emotion. Or, like, any? I’m searching my memory and nothing shows up. Oh, well, no bother. But those clippings in the mail, delivered days later, were his attempts at connection. Saying, I am thinking of you. Saying, I now understand, I love you. 

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Thank you, Susan Orlean, for somehow mysteriously summoning up that memory for me. You wrote another great book.