"The Bare Naked Ladies Sang 'It's all Been Done,' and even that was done a 100 years ago." -a college professor of mine, who probably doesn't remember saying it because he was likely stoned when he said it.
Of course, every writer knows the moment he starts whacking at the keys there is precious little that can be said that hasn't already been said in some way before. The best you can hope for is maybe a new juxtaposition of old ideas, or maybe bringing an old idea up-to-date by putting new clothes on it. Still, I thought in the first short story I ever got published, "American as Berbere," that I'd at least started off with a fairly fresh simile:
When he was twelve, Tesfay came to the conclusion that all Habesha music had a drumbeat that sounded like somebody had chucked two shoes into a Laundromat dryer, and soon thereafter developed a contempt for Ethiopian music—and perhaps Ethiopia in general—that stuck with him.
If you've ever listened to a typical song in Amharic or Tigrinya, you might recognize what I'm talking about. Here's an example, with the drums picking up around the one minute mark:
I was listening to that song back when I was trying to teach myself Tigrinya. It might have been the song I had in mind when I wrote that line, but there are thousands of songs like it. In any event, that idea of a dryer spinning around with a pair of shoes in it really was how the music made me feel. I could imagine some guy at a laundromat at four in the morning, strung out and bleary-eyed, falling into some sort of feverish reverie as the shoes circled around, then hit in two quick thuds over and over. Maybe he'd had to wash them when he stepped in dog shit on his way home from somewhere. I thought the simile fit the sound and the feeling. I was pretty happy with that image.
This week, I started the project of reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which I've put off for a long time. On only the third of the book's 1000+ pages, I read this line:
My chest bumps like a dryer with shoes in it.
Well, shit.
I mean, we used the imagine in different ways. I'm not even sure how a heart can beat like shoes in a dryer, because a heart goes blam-blam-blam when it's beating hard, not bump-bump. There's the "lub-dub" you can hear with a stethoscope, but I don't think Hal felt that inside his own chest as his nerves rose during his college interview. It's a throwaway simile for Foster Wallace, whereas it was important enough to me I led with it. But still, he used it 20 years before I did.
I don't know if it's freeing or crippling to realize you can't do anything new. Maybe it's nice to know you can't really succeed at newness, so that takes the pressure off. On the other hand, I hate the notion that I might be called out on plagiarism charges at any time for something I didn't even know existed.
It's part of growing up!
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ReplyDeleteJust for fun, google "like shoes in the dryer" and "like sneakers in the dryer". You'll feel better about the risk of plagiarism, maybe worse about the freshness of the simile.
ReplyDeleteMe, I've never put sneakers in the dryer, so I wouldn't know. It seems to fit with the music theme, so music people will be nodding and getting it, new or not.
Back in 2008, a writer acquaintance recommended that I read IJ. I was on page 12 when that same friend left me a message about DFW's suicide. I never touched the book again.
What a strange figure DFW is as a public intellectual. He had a moderate output as a fiction writer, and was probably better known for his journalism about tennis. Nowadays, a lot of people who don't know much about contemporary literature are aware of him because of his "This is Water" address and some YouTube videos put together about his attitude about irony or ambition. But it's very hard for me to believe most people have made it all the way through IJ. It's as though Shakespeare were remembered after his death for the excellence of his gloves.
DeleteAs far as the shoes simile...well, at least it was apt, if not fresh.
I loved that first little section with the interview, but a thousand pages of drugs and tennis just didn't scream "Read Me!" I've always been more drawn to his nonfiction. "This is Water" is one of my favorite things ever; I post it for someone somewhere about twice a year.
DeleteA close friend of mine refers to "This is Water" and some other well-known DFWisms in conversation a lot. It's clear he's internalized a lot of those ideas and that they resonate with him. He talked to me once about IJ and how tightly written it was. It was partly the fact that he'd read it that got me to try: 'If he can read it, so can I." I just mentioned to him the other day that I'd started, and he told me that he was only about 15% done with it. I asked him what he meant--did he mean he was re-reading it, and he was only 15$ done with re-reading it? He said no, he was 15% done with reading it for the first time. "But you told me before you'd read it," I said. "That time I read it is still ongoing," he said.
DeleteYeah, I don't blame anyone who read part of it for giving up. As you said, 1000 pages of drugs and tennis isn't for everyone. Although I prefer the tennis and drugs to whatever characters those are who appear to be black, inner-city prostitutes.