High Tide in Tucson_ Essays From Now or Never - Barbara Kingsolver [100]
Writing is no curse. The writing life has incomparable advantages: flexible hours, mental challenge, the wardrobe—you can go to work in bunny slippers if you want to. The money, well, that is sometimes a snag, but if you keep your nose to the grindstone the benefits accrue. You can support yourself. And in time, if you’re truly blessed, you’ll begin to get mail. You’ll bring it home by the carload, tear it open, and find out everything you’ve ever done right in this world, and wrong. The mail will bring you more applause and brickbats and requests and advice and small, perfect bouquets than you can ever answer or even acknowledge. Its presence will cheer you on gloomy days, and guide you through the straits of your own conscience. It will stand as proof that you’re blessed.
I have received, entirely unsolicited: advice on dog racing (“conventional wisdom has it that the outside post positions are bad and—over the long haul—more low numbers come in than high”) and natural pest control (“I have never had success combatting flea beetles with diatomaceous earth”); information on how to order foam clothing; a Christmas card from the Dan Quayle family; and outlines for approximately ten thousand novels based on other people’s relatives’ lives. I’ve received works of art that I adored, many of which are hanging on my walls. After publishing a novel called Pigs in Heaven, I received via U.S. mail more pig-oriented items than you might have imagined to exist. (I’m pretty sure I’m going to call my next novel Mustang Convertible Dreams.)
I’ve received this information on how to live forever: “I suggest a petition to Masauwu, Spirit of Death, Owner of Fire and Master of the Upper World. Sanction may be gained to the sipapuni for shelter during the destruction of the Fourth World and re-emergence to the Fifth. Even if it doesn’t work, it’s worth a shot.”
Also this useful tip: “Dear Barbara Kingsolver, It appears to me that your last name is to be derived from Gundisalv, a name compounded by the Visigoths of Northwestern Spain from the Old Germanic elements gundi, meaning ‘battle,’ and alf, meaning ‘elf.’”
(When I passed this on to my relatives, they started calling me the old Battle-Elf.)
A New York City reader wrote: “Dear Ms. Kingsolver, Your novels have to be the most implausible, coincident ridden, knee jerking exhibits of liberalism and corny sentimentalism that I have ever read. P.S. I like them pretty well.”
And a befuddled fan in California wrote: “…I am very interested in animal consciousness, as well as dreams, and I bought your book Animal Dreams because I believed it to be a book I had heard about on the radio once, called (as I am now aware) Animal Dreaming. When I sat down and saw it was fiction and that I had paid $20 for it, I thought: Mistake!”
I haven’t found a use for this information: “Dear Ms. Kingsolver, I am 23 years old, have 3 tattoos, and 2 college degrees that are doing me no good.”
This one was slightly more upbeat: “I lent my library copy of The Bean Trees to a friend who normally hates everything (seriously, she’s very depressing). She loved it! That is, until it was stolen from her car. We had to pay the $16 replacement cost plus library fine.”
There is a type of letter that comes from remarkable adolescent girls, like this one: “Dear Mrs. Kingsolver, I wrote you before that I was writing a novel and you encouraged me to do so. I finished it. It’s called The Little Cabin in the Woods. Then I wrote The Dark Crystal, followed by Sky Eyes, and Fireball in the Night, The Clue, Blue Dawn, The Princess Bride, and Emily, which is a hypothetical look at what might happen to me if my parents suddenly died.”
There are also ever so many assorted requests from people who would like you to do them some small favor. For example:
Dear Ms. Kingsolver, Enclosed is something I’ve written. I’d appreciate it if