Do I need to further note that the books I intended to write about are Old Style by Dmitry Samarov, The Pueblos by Bill Hillmann, Sub Urbane by Jason fisk, Meiselman: The Lean Years by Avner Landes and Blow Your House Down by Gina Frangello? Or that the subtitle of this piece is: "A Rumination About a Piece I Intended to Write About the 2021 Chicago books Old Style, The Pueblos, Sub Urbane, Meiselman: The Lean Years and Blow Your House Down that Became Something About Intent, Myth, the New Year, the Writing Life and yes, ultimately the 2021 Chicago books Old Style, The Pueblos, Sub Urbane, Meiselman: The Lean Years and Blow Your House Down?" Maybe I should just tell you that you can read the piece TT and there is some excerpt below. Cool? Excellent. Enjoy. And do read these books, they're the goodness.
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"This was supposed to be a piece on writing, which is to say why do we write at all?
"It is a piece about intent and myth.
"It is not about Always Crashing in the Same Car by Matthew Specktor or Desert Notebooks by Ben Ehrenreich, though both of these wildly engaging books play a role in the creation of this piece.
"My intent was to write something about a series of other books: Old Style by Dmitry Samarov, The Pueblos by Bill Hillmann, Sub Urbane by Jason Fisk, Meiselman: The Lean Years by Avner Landes and Blow Your House Down by Gina Frangello.
"But I didn’t
"Though I will, well, I think I will.
"Because I also intended for Always Crashing in the Same Car and Desert Notebooks the final two books I read in 2021, that was the plan, and in doing so, I found a way to frame this piece, that I didn’t write, and couldn’t for some reason.
"Let me back-up.
"I had this whole idea.
"I was going to write something on all of these books that fell in my lap by Chicago authors and I was going to do so by the end of the year and craft some kind of statement about what they mean to me, but also what Chicago means to me, and writing itself, what that means to me, and my life, writ both large and granular. But I failed to do accomplish this. I couldn’t get to the piece. Had I gone too big and wanted it too much? Was I forcing something, I actually didn’t want to do work on despite my affection for these books, authors, Chicago and writing? Or is all of this have something to do with how much work this year has been, pushing, reading, hustling, trying to stay healthy, and how tiring that is to think about, much less write about?
"Aren’t we all sick of that and ourselves?
"Yet, while it’s probably not a failure to fall short on goals and plans such as these, I’m still haunted by it.
"I wanted this.
"I had ideas.
"I read the books."