Private Geography
Coming home from my ESL class at Brainerd Baptist tonight I listened to the podcast of This American Life. The opening segment was about an Australian writer who won the Melbourne prize for literature but didn't want to take part of the prize money, because it was designated for the winner to travel outside of Australia and the writer (his name escapes me) did not want to leave his island continent. He didn't believe he needed to, that everything he needed was there and there was no reason to leave.
One can take this as being really xenophobic, or . . . .
Being "stuck" in Australia doesn't seem to have hurt his writing; perhaps he would be more well known if he traveled, but he is described as an introvert, so traveling might be too psychically painful. I found it refreshing in a way, and confirmation of my theory that wide experience and wide travel does not necessarily make a great or even good writer. The people I know who have traveled a lot haven't written a word (other than Facebook posts), which is fine.
Emily Dickinson wrote insightful, laserlike poetry but only traveled once in her life, to Washingston, D.C. Faulkner kept all his novels focused in rural Mississippi. (He did, however, spend time in Hollywood writing or doctoring screenplays, for which he was skewered in the Cohen Brothers' strange film Barton Fink). Although I have never read it and perhaps never will, Proust wrote, I am told, his great work lying in bed. The author Laura Hillenbrand wrote two wildly successful books from her bedroom because she suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome.
Great writing is about great thinking, deep perception, wide empathy, and expansive understanding of other humans, not great experience or travel, although I suppose the latter won't hurt--it just won't guarantee anything The model for "author as traveler" is of course Hemingway.
Either way, I think "Private Geography" is a great title for a book or memoir, and I plan to use it one day.
One can take this as being really xenophobic, or . . . .
Being "stuck" in Australia doesn't seem to have hurt his writing; perhaps he would be more well known if he traveled, but he is described as an introvert, so traveling might be too psychically painful. I found it refreshing in a way, and confirmation of my theory that wide experience and wide travel does not necessarily make a great or even good writer. The people I know who have traveled a lot haven't written a word (other than Facebook posts), which is fine.
Emily Dickinson wrote insightful, laserlike poetry but only traveled once in her life, to Washingston, D.C. Faulkner kept all his novels focused in rural Mississippi. (He did, however, spend time in Hollywood writing or doctoring screenplays, for which he was skewered in the Cohen Brothers' strange film Barton Fink). Although I have never read it and perhaps never will, Proust wrote, I am told, his great work lying in bed. The author Laura Hillenbrand wrote two wildly successful books from her bedroom because she suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome.
Great writing is about great thinking, deep perception, wide empathy, and expansive understanding of other humans, not great experience or travel, although I suppose the latter won't hurt--it just won't guarantee anything The model for "author as traveler" is of course Hemingway.
Either way, I think "Private Geography" is a great title for a book or memoir, and I plan to use it one day.
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