Life, Dammit
January 3rd, 2007 by Marsha Moyer
During the holidays, I watched a lot of movies on DVD. In an effort over the past few months to pare my budget of nonessentials (i.e., canceling my Netflix membership), I’ve turned to borrowing discs from the local library. The selection at my tiny neighborhood branch is limited, to say the least; the latest feature on their shelves is Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (better than I expected, by the way). So for the most part I’ve been watching older films, either past favorites or ones I somehow managed to miss along the way.
In the latter category is Bull Durham. I’d always heard great things about it, both when it was released in 1988 and over the years since, but I’ve avoided it mainly because, well, I don’t like baseball.
Viewing the film, I realized that I’d been guilty of something I’ve often accused others of doing: avoiding or labeling something due to its external aspects. I have a friend, for example, who refuses to read Michael Chabon’s brilliant The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay because she’s not interested in comic books. When I tried to explain that comics are merely a superficial element around which the novel is structured, that it’s really about love and loss and the Holocaust—about life, dammit—she didn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t like comics. Period.
Having now seen Bull Durham and discovered that, of course, it’s about much more than baseball—that it’s about love and loss and life, dammit —I got to thinking about the aspects we look for in the books we read and the movies we watch; how the best ones, from Pulitzer-Prize winning novels to popular films, manage to strike a common chord. No matter who the protagonists are or what their circumstances, we want to recognize a piece of ourselves on the screen or the page.
For me, the line that most resonates in Bull Durham comes when the seasoned ballplayer Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) says to talented but erratic rookie pitcher Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), “You’ve gotta play the game with fear and arrogance.” In that regard (warning: metaphor alert!), writing is a lot like baseball. There’s the trepidation with which we approach our work, frequently wondering if we’ve got the stuff, if we can measure up to our own standards, much less those of a fickle publishing industry; if we’ve got what it takes to, in baseball parlance, “go to the show.” Balance that with the egotism that says, “Yes, this is what I have to say, and you, the reading public, will want to hear it.”
When in doubt—and most writers seem to be afflicted with plenty of that—I try to remind myself that it doesn’t really matter what genre I’m writing in, or how my characters earn their keep. To paraphrase another baseball movie (which also happens to star Kevin Costner), “If you write it, they will come.”
Just as long as it’s about life, dammit.
i love this essay. writing is like ‘letting your freak flag fly.” (The Family Stone) which is an obscure reference to a Crosby Stills Nash & Young song. Only this morning I saw someone use it in reference to letting your ‘geek flag fly’. So, yeah, I’m a writer, a very scared writer who can occasionally, in the privacy of my own bedroom, arrogantly admit that hey, yeah, you want to hear what i’ve gotta say.
Let your freak fly, Thea! You’ve got oodles of talent.
I got a Borders Gift Card for Christmas, and as I was wandering around the store, I grappled with the totally stupid notion that nothing was grabbing me enough to buy it. Too literary, too commercial, too trite, too . . . whatever. I think I’ll try to look beyond my own arbitrary biases (because they fluctuate hourly) and snatch up something I’d never normally try. Maybe Kavalier and Clay. I did love Chabon’s Wonder Boys.
Also thanks for the tip on the pomegranate green tea, Marsha. My brain could use the extra nutrients.
I haven’t seen Crash for the very reasons you named, Marsha; it just doesn’t seem like my kind of movie. But I’m going to see it sometime within the next few months nonetheless.
Monkeewrench, by the writing duo “PJ Tracy,” is one example of a book I chose to read even though it was outside of my comfort zone. I wouldn’t say they managed to convert me to a mystery reader, but they captured my attention and admiration 100%.
So I guess sometimes we have to step outside the box with our own preferences, too…kind of like trying that new vegetable or fruit or tea.