What She Said

One of my favorite authors has always been Anna Quindlen. When I was young, I would eagerly await our family’s subscription to Newsweek and flip to the last page, to her column. It never failed to delight me and to provoke me to ponder. When I was in my twenties, I read her novel Black and Blue, which is one of the first books to really show the terror of stalking and the deadly reality of domestic violence. Another of one of her books, One True Thing, which was made into a movie with Meryl Streep and Renee Zewelleger, is one of those book/movies that has stuck in my memory for years. I think Anna Quindlen is a master with the pen. So, when I was at the library the other day, I checked out another one of her books called Being Perfect. It is a small, short, tome that reads more like an essay. I believe that I may have read it before, but somehow the Universe knew that I needed to read it again.

The premise of the book is that a lot of us start out in life, trying to live and to be, a formula of perfection. She claims that we morph ourselves into various forms of that formula, depending on what stage of life we are in – our early school days, our college years, being a parent, in our marriages, our various careers, etc. She claims that by being in what she calls a “lockstep” of trying to be perfect, we are cheating ourselves, and all of those who are having experiences with us, out of a true, authentic, in-depth experience that can only be unique to us. Computers are perfect. We are so much more imperfectly, deliciously complex.

When you first start taking your writing seriously, I think all writers fall into that “it’s all, already been said” mentality. I recently read about an author who was dying of cancer and claimed that she didn’t want to be that “cliche of another writer, writing about dying.” I love Anna Quindlen’s take on that in Being Perfect. This is what she said:

“Sometimes I meet young writers, and I like to share with them the overwhelming feeling I have about our work, the feeling that every story has already been told. Once you’ve read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time ever has. That is her own personality, her own voice. If she is doing Fitzgerald imitations, she can stay home. If she is giving readers what she thinks they want instead of what she is, she should stop trying.

But if her books reflects her character, the authentic shape of her life and her mind, then she may well be giving readers a new and wonderful gift. Giving it to herself, too. And that is true of music and art and teaching and medicine.”

She also applies this philosophy to parenting. This is what she says:

“You will convince yourself that you will be a better parent that your parents and their parents have been. But being a good parent is not generational, it is deeply personal, and it all comes down to this: If you can bring your children the self that you truly are, as opposed to some amalgam of manners and mannerisms, expectations and fears that you have acquired as a carapace along the way, you will be able to teach them by example not to be terrorized by the narrow and parsimonious expectations of the world, a world that often likes to color within the lines when a spray of paint, or a scribble of crayon, would be much more satisfying.”

My daughter, a budding artist, brought home a paper mache project the other day, in which she had decorated with words and ideas that inspired her. One quote on the project was from Salvador Dali. It said:

“Have no fear of perfection. You’ll never reach it.”

I asked her why that particular quote struck her. She said, “Well, if a great artist like Salvador Dali knew that he wouldn’t reach perfection, why should I worry about it? It makes me feel freer.”

I think that I can only end this day’s post with a smile.