Finding Your Style

Back to the future

Baskin had found his voice, and it wasn’t good. Snarky, negative, bellicose. It wasn’t anything anyone wanted to hear.

He often thought of himself as misunderstood. And often he was right. What he had to do was find a new voice. He was a writer. He could do that. How about Hemingway?” That flawless technician. Those wooden, iconic characters. Victory or death.

Maybe not. Hawthorne? Poe? (You could tell Baskin went to college.) Write like 19th Century Americans? Really? They were the most conflicted stylists in the language. Everything positive was negative, and everything negative was… more negative.

How about Jack London? He liked Jack London. America’s first writer as mega-celebrity, London wrote the book on modern publishing. His commercial style is still used today. Baskin might copy London’s subtly desperate presentation of the world, indifferent to our puny dreams.

Or maybe not. London hadn’t come to such a good end. And he’s been forgotten.

Dreiser? Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Wolfe, Wright? Mere recorders. Not really. But they were so self conscious they couldn’t break through.

James Jones? He broke through with a machine gun. A good way to break through, but Baskin was afraid of guns.

Kerouac broke through. Boy did he ever. He wrote in a wilder, more free verse-er, more world-hugging-er style than anyone. Kerouac loved the world, staggering through life drunk, disheveled, arms held wide. For exuberance, he can’t be matched.

Baskin rubbed his temples. It gave him a hangover just thinking about it.

Vonnegut? Kosinski? They were snarkier than he was.

Cormac McCarthy? What a splendid style. That highfalutin voice. The trouble is, once someone claims a spot, you have to wait a hundred years to try it again.

How about modern writers? He thought of today’s biggies, Elizabeth Strout, Zadie Smith. George Saunders, Ann Patchett. But they all sounded the same. Any page by one could be written by the other, a sort of bland journalese.

No style is not a style. Baskin decided to stay with himself. His style was a man pursued by wolves. Whether you root for the wolves or not, and a lot of people rooted for the wolves, you gotta find out what happens next.