I recently finished reading Collected Stories, by Saul Bellow, the Nobel Prize–winning author who died in 2005. It's a long, dense book that reminded me of what 20th-century critics considered great literature. The stories—most of them are novellas—are filled with aging Jews and celebrated intellectuals. Some of these tales I enjoyed. Others bored the hell out of me. But it wasn't until I got to the last page of the Afterword that I came across something I'd like to share.
This is what Bellow said:
"Now what of writers? They materialize, somehow, and they ask the public (more accurately, a public) for its attention. Perhaps the writer has no actual public in mind. Often his only assumption is that he participates in a state of psychic unity with others not distinctly known to him. The mental condition of these others is understood by him, for it is his condition also. One way or another he understands, or intuits, what the effort, often a secret and hidden effort to put the distracted consciousness in order, is costing. These unidentified or partially identified others are his readers. They have been waiting for him. He must assure them immediately that reading him will be worth their while. They have many times been cheated by writers who promised good value but delivered nothing. Their attention has been abused. Nevertheless, they long to give it."
He goes on to say that a "reader will open his heart and mind" to a writer who troubles "no one with his own vanities, will make no unnecessary gestures, indulge himself in no mannerisms, waste no reader's time. He will write as short as he can."
In other words a writer should make every word count.
And that's exactly what I try to do, every day, for the gift of your attention. I hope that on occasion I have succeeded in holding it, at least for a little while.
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