The Gum Thief - Douglas Coupland [84]
Steve turned to Gloria and said, “What if it turned out that you and I weren’t even human—what if it turned out that you and I came from some other planet, far away? What if it turned out that you and I were aliens, different from everyone else on the planet, and that everything we did was thus supernatural and profound—even the smallest of our daily acts would be filled with grace and wonder and hope—wouldn’t that be something!”
“It would,” said Gloria.
“And what if we threw away everything we have now—our house, our books, our stove, our carpets, our dust—and we started again somewhere new, cut ourselves away from the past and headed into the unknown like a space rocket—wouldn’t that be something?”
“I’d like that very much, Steve. That would be something.”
Steve heard only his breathing and Gloria’s. The stars kept their silence. Steve nudged Gloria, “Look, it’s the Big Dipper.”
“It is.”
“And over there—Orion.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You know, Gloria—”
“Hush, Steve.”
“Why, my love?”
“Because sometimes words can kill what it is we have right now.”
“But, Gloria, I don’t think I’ve ever told you this as such, but I think you’re very . . . beautiful.”
Gloria squeezed Steve’s hand, and then Steve remembered something he’d kept in his trouser pocket all day but had forgotten. “Good God, how could I forget something so simple?” He reached into his pocket and removed a small package, and then held an offering up to Gloria. “Gloria, my dear— gum?”
C-
Roger, as your instructor, I have to tell you that the truly good author creates a novel so true that it loses the voice of its individual author. We all strive to write “the universal book,” one so good that it seems unauthored. Your Glove Pond (Roger, what sort of name is that?) has a voice that is too idiosyncratic. You need to lose your ego and create a work that speaks in the voice of the “Platonic everyman,” not only the voice that you, Roger Thorpe, create.
Your characters also seem like real people, which might sound like a compliment, but don’t jump to that conclusion. Characters need to sound as if you made them up, or else people won’t feel as if they’re reading writing: bold, ballsy, masterful writing—and they won’t feel that they’re meeting people who couldn’t otherwise exist were it not for books.
Locationwise, your book takes place in your own day-today world, and that’s wrong. Books must be set in an imaginary places—otherwise, how will a reader know you’ve used your imagination? And I know you worked at Staples, Roger, so it’s really not fair to the other writers in this class who tried to locate their books in different, exotic, imaginary places. Hilary set her fiction assignment in a vampire’s cave—now that’s a location. Dhanni set his collection of free-association verse on another planet; that takes work. Staples? I can go there any time and experience it myself. I don’t need or want art that tells me about my daily life. I want art that tells me about somebody— anybody—else but me.
As a side note, I also think it was inconsiderate of you to mention our class’s exercises in bread buttering. Your classmates tried hard to empathize with the buttered bread slice. After you left last week’s session, some of us stayed behind and had a discussion about your attitude towards your bread. In the name of making better art, I have to tell you that we found your attitude a bit . . . smug. Who says a piece of bread can’t have a soul, a sense of drama or a point of view? Julie’s buttering had me almost in tears thinking about its plight. Andre’s buttering made me yearn for a stronger United Nations. Yours just left us . . . cold.
However, I think there is some hope for you—this book you’ve written can be used as a teaching aid in class. I’d like to distribute chapters of it, and then we will, as a group, analyze them, then go in and remove offending bits and replace them with what we unanimously agree are creative solutions. Only then