I used to think the hardest part of a writing career was getting one started, but now, nearly 60 years into it, I realize the hardest part will be giving it up.
Well, Walter, as your --harumph-- senior by six years, I nonetheless agree with just about every well chosen word here. I don't "do" social media, unless you count Substack, and have reasons to believe that their effects on art, politics, and society in general seem to have been less beneficial than the opposite. (There are, needless to say, countless exceptions: high tech has provided all manner of medical possibilities, e.g.) I'm not about to explore Facebook, say; I don't want Facebook friends but real friends like you and your marvelous spouse. I just keep cranking out the poetry and prose because I've never found anything that substitutes for writing. As an old man with declining physical capacities, I am simply blessed to have something available that I so enjoy doing. As your faithful reader, I'm glad you ar similarly blessed. Let's hear it for the dinosaurs, geezers, fogys...writers.
I can think of an excellent writer in his 80's now and still doing important work: the poet/essayist/novelist Sydney Lea, who has a remarkable new novel out: Look Now. Check out his Substack columns, too.
I’m new to your work (which I hope gives you some modicum of satisfaction, considering this most recent post of yours). I’m currently on page 119 of Vermont River, and before I was even a quarter way through I thought, “This is writing on a level I had no right to expect from a book about fishing!” I immediately looked you up online, half expecting you to have since moved on to the happy upland stream in the sky, half expecting to see a list of books on your Wikipedia page that were about nothing other than fishing. To my delight, there they were: novels, short stories, essays, memoirs- and a Substack page! I’ve already started a list of which titles I’d like to read next, and with that excitement one gets with any new discovery, I’m looking forward to a winter’s worth of reading- a bibliophile greedily filling his larder.
As a writer (poet, mostly), and a writing teacher (NYU), I know and cherish the feeling of trusting great writing, sentence-by-sentence, in the way I already trust and admire your sentences, each one of which is both a surprise and a delight.
I appreciate your post here in a bittersweet way, and while I’ve thus far only been lucky enough to have one book published (in 2008), I’m finishing another with the feeling of whiplash when I see how much the industry has changed in a mere 10-15 years.
All this is, I suppose, to say that I hope you’ll find publishers (or even A publisher) who value the kind of writing you do, and who value the long tradition more than how many “likes” or followers a writer can notch on his online profile. (I’d like to believe there are still a few out there- like those old shops you champion in your chapter, “The Really Good Stuff”). And if that’s not to be, well, I for one will be happy to know that I’ve got a voluminous bibliography of yours to read through- nothing short of a few dozen such books, and now your columns here. No small thing!
So, thank you. May you keep on carving sentences like only you can, for as long as it serves you.
-Ken Hart
Ps. My copy of Vermont River is one of the many “outdoor” books I inherited from my uncle after he passed a couple of years ago. He had a cabin in the Poconos (Dingman’s Ferry) where I half grew up, and where he took me hunting and fishing as a teen. He made an annual spring trip to the White River to fly fish, where I joined him on one occasion. Reading your book now, I’m already planning a return there next spring. By then I suspect I’ll have read it another time or two, and purchased copies for fellow appreciators of exquisite writing.
Can't tell you how much I appreciate your kind words; good to learn I can still blush! And your remark about the happy upland stream in the sky gave my wife and I a badly needed laugh...Yep, a lot of people, reading my novels, are surprised to learn I also write about fishing; a lot of people, reading my books on fishing, are surprised to learn I also write novels; to me, it's not a contradiction at all, just various ways of coming at the world...Since writing the column, I've been racking my brains to think of masterpieces that were written in an author's seventies or eighties, without much luck...Tolstoy's Resurrection and Mann's Doctor Faustus are the only ones I can think of, (70's, both of them. Alice Munro and Phillip Roth both announced they were officially retired when they reached that age, and, famously, Orwell believed a writer only had a good fifteen years of writing life, after which he or she should give it up....Again, my thanks go to you and readers like you!
Good question. I don’t know about “masterpieces,” but off the top of my head I’m thinking of some fantastic books written by authors in or after their 70s: Norman McClean (of course), Roger Angel, Donald Hall, Stanley Kunitz, Louise Erdrich, Cormac McCarthy, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson…
Of all the compelling reasons you describe for "keeping at it," this one resonated with me: "This brings a bird-dog kind of alertness to the eyes and forehead when all your other muscles want to slump." To live life wide-eyed and alert to the fact that inspiration can come at any moment? Who would want to live any other way?
I admire the commitment it takes to walk those stairs every morning and, perhaps selfishly, I hope you continue making the ascent. Thanks for sharing, Walter!
Thank YOU, Adam.....Substack turns out to be ideal for a writer getting up there in years, enabling them (me) to make an end run around the publishing world and connect directly with readers; given commercial censorship, every bit as real in this country as political/religious censorship, it is indeed the modern version of samizdat. ..My proofreading skills, never very sharp to begin with, are definitely aging, and I apologize to all for several typos.....
Now Look Is Lea’s title. My bad!…
Well, Walter, as your --harumph-- senior by six years, I nonetheless agree with just about every well chosen word here. I don't "do" social media, unless you count Substack, and have reasons to believe that their effects on art, politics, and society in general seem to have been less beneficial than the opposite. (There are, needless to say, countless exceptions: high tech has provided all manner of medical possibilities, e.g.) I'm not about to explore Facebook, say; I don't want Facebook friends but real friends like you and your marvelous spouse. I just keep cranking out the poetry and prose because I've never found anything that substitutes for writing. As an old man with declining physical capacities, I am simply blessed to have something available that I so enjoy doing. As your faithful reader, I'm glad you ar similarly blessed. Let's hear it for the dinosaurs, geezers, fogys...writers.
I can think of an excellent writer in his 80's now and still doing important work: the poet/essayist/novelist Sydney Lea, who has a remarkable new novel out: Look Now. Check out his Substack columns, too.
I hadn't yet read your kind words about me when I wrote mine about you. Thanks, Walter.
P.S. My novel is NOW LOOK, not LOOK NOW.
Mr. Wetherell,
I’m new to your work (which I hope gives you some modicum of satisfaction, considering this most recent post of yours). I’m currently on page 119 of Vermont River, and before I was even a quarter way through I thought, “This is writing on a level I had no right to expect from a book about fishing!” I immediately looked you up online, half expecting you to have since moved on to the happy upland stream in the sky, half expecting to see a list of books on your Wikipedia page that were about nothing other than fishing. To my delight, there they were: novels, short stories, essays, memoirs- and a Substack page! I’ve already started a list of which titles I’d like to read next, and with that excitement one gets with any new discovery, I’m looking forward to a winter’s worth of reading- a bibliophile greedily filling his larder.
As a writer (poet, mostly), and a writing teacher (NYU), I know and cherish the feeling of trusting great writing, sentence-by-sentence, in the way I already trust and admire your sentences, each one of which is both a surprise and a delight.
I appreciate your post here in a bittersweet way, and while I’ve thus far only been lucky enough to have one book published (in 2008), I’m finishing another with the feeling of whiplash when I see how much the industry has changed in a mere 10-15 years.
All this is, I suppose, to say that I hope you’ll find publishers (or even A publisher) who value the kind of writing you do, and who value the long tradition more than how many “likes” or followers a writer can notch on his online profile. (I’d like to believe there are still a few out there- like those old shops you champion in your chapter, “The Really Good Stuff”). And if that’s not to be, well, I for one will be happy to know that I’ve got a voluminous bibliography of yours to read through- nothing short of a few dozen such books, and now your columns here. No small thing!
So, thank you. May you keep on carving sentences like only you can, for as long as it serves you.
-Ken Hart
Ps. My copy of Vermont River is one of the many “outdoor” books I inherited from my uncle after he passed a couple of years ago. He had a cabin in the Poconos (Dingman’s Ferry) where I half grew up, and where he took me hunting and fishing as a teen. He made an annual spring trip to the White River to fly fish, where I joined him on one occasion. Reading your book now, I’m already planning a return there next spring. By then I suspect I’ll have read it another time or two, and purchased copies for fellow appreciators of exquisite writing.
Ken--
Can't tell you how much I appreciate your kind words; good to learn I can still blush! And your remark about the happy upland stream in the sky gave my wife and I a badly needed laugh...Yep, a lot of people, reading my novels, are surprised to learn I also write about fishing; a lot of people, reading my books on fishing, are surprised to learn I also write novels; to me, it's not a contradiction at all, just various ways of coming at the world...Since writing the column, I've been racking my brains to think of masterpieces that were written in an author's seventies or eighties, without much luck...Tolstoy's Resurrection and Mann's Doctor Faustus are the only ones I can think of, (70's, both of them. Alice Munro and Phillip Roth both announced they were officially retired when they reached that age, and, famously, Orwell believed a writer only had a good fifteen years of writing life, after which he or she should give it up....Again, my thanks go to you and readers like you!
Good question. I don’t know about “masterpieces,” but off the top of my head I’m thinking of some fantastic books written by authors in or after their 70s: Norman McClean (of course), Roger Angel, Donald Hall, Stanley Kunitz, Louise Erdrich, Cormac McCarthy, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson…
I don't think Erdrich has brecahed 70 yet. She's close, but still in her sixties.
I see that she turned 70 this past summer.
Of all the compelling reasons you describe for "keeping at it," this one resonated with me: "This brings a bird-dog kind of alertness to the eyes and forehead when all your other muscles want to slump." To live life wide-eyed and alert to the fact that inspiration can come at any moment? Who would want to live any other way?
I admire the commitment it takes to walk those stairs every morning and, perhaps selfishly, I hope you continue making the ascent. Thanks for sharing, Walter!
Thank YOU, Adam.....Substack turns out to be ideal for a writer getting up there in years, enabling them (me) to make an end run around the publishing world and connect directly with readers; given commercial censorship, every bit as real in this country as political/religious censorship, it is indeed the modern version of samizdat. ..My proofreading skills, never very sharp to begin with, are definitely aging, and I apologize to all for several typos.....