Friday June 16, 2023; 9:46 AM EDT
- Stray thought, via Norman Mailer's book on writing, which he called The Spooky Art. He says on page 129: "It's very hard to think of an interesting protagonist who is not always moving between choices," and I found myself thinking, hey, those broken-down little towns I sometimes pass through in maybe a minute on the way to St. Louis, what choices do the people there see before them? What choices do they move between? And those neighborhoods in this little city that are industrial detritus as surely as the brick shells of factories a few blocks away from them, for the sidewalks between them formed the workers' commute, what choices do the residents of those houses have, those houses that are still inhabitable between those that are not and those that are now weedy, sapling-shaded, dumping ground edged lots? So, Mailer suggests, an interesting life in the pages of a novel is one where the protagonist moves between choices. And out in the world, where we are each the hero, the protagonist, of our own story, an interesting life is one where there are choices of significance that we can ponder and arm ourselves for and adventure on, if the terrain around us hasn't been stripped of resources and openings and rendered some modern hybrid of poisoned and sterile.#