Richie Valens died at 17. Buddy Holly at 22. James Dean at 24. John Keats at 25. Otis Redding at 26. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin at 28. And Percy Bysshe Kelley at 29. With my own 29th birthday fast approaching, I find myself--a little lighter of pate, a little heavier of paunch--in a brooding mood.No, I haven't a death wish. It's just that I had planned to do a lot in my 20's. To be specific, I had planned to write a great novel and liberate myself from the workaday life, but yet I languish in writer's lethargy, only occasionally considering my scraps of a first chapter, which I have been revisiting for years now. Chapter Two of this book, a sin-soaked, South-Asian-American bildungsroman about a school-teacher in New York, exactly the kind of work that wins you Michiko Kakutani's favor, is as far off as ever. And now comes the following disheartening news: Uzodinma Iweala (pictured), whose mom worked in the same place my dad worked (but in a higher position), who went to the same tiny high school I did (but then went to a better college), who is four years my junior, and who published his debut novel in 2005, has just been named one of Granta's best young American novelists. I've never met the guy, and the only thing of his I've read was in the New Yorker a little while back, but still I seethe with the most malignant form of jealousy
Yet, sadly, jealousy, that lazy bitch, doesn't spur me to action.
So, with my 29th birthday--my 30th year on Earth--descending upon me, ton-of-bricks style, I promise you this, singular reader: a great work of fiction...sometime in my 30's.
4 comments:
i knew an asian girl in college who used to dress straight out of contempo casual, except sluttier. my friends and i named her "hoochie-ko kakutani." one of my favorite nicknames ever, aside from gunner for god.
yo, mozart died when he was like 35. you still have 6 years.
and don't forget kaavya viswanathan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaavya_Viswanathan
that is a mortifying wikipedia entry. it does not always pay to be a wunderkind.
Seethe on young bard. The focus of your jealousy had to metastasize for five years before it surprised you. Read, write three pages, wait, talk to someone, write fifty pages, wait, talk to someone, write a thesis and then write a novel. Have you completed any of these steps? Look in your files, you likely have.
xod---what?
Yeah skillz, get to writing
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