{"id":4996,"date":"2013-12-04T00:41:35","date_gmt":"2013-12-04T05:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=4996"},"modified":"2014-12-18T23:28:50","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T04:28:50","slug":"seasons-readings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=4996","title":{"rendered":"Season’s Readings"},"content":{"rendered":"

December 4, 2013<\/strong>
\nWednesday<\/strong><\/p>\n

The very phrase “Christmas story” has unpleasant associations for me, evoking dreadful outpourings of hypocritical mush and treacle.<\/em>
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d Paul Auster, b. 1947
\nAmerican fiction writer and film director
\nfrom “Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story”<\/p>\n

\"holi13badge-snowflake\"<\/a>I met a manuscript deadline last week, completing some reshaping of a piece I worked on last summer. I sent it off on Friday, and then took the weekend off, both from reading and from writing.<\/p>\n

I have for a long time arranged my work according to the academic calendar. When I return from the summer Gallivants, I rest for a few days, and then, the day after Labor Day, begin anew. My Fall Term lasts until Thanksgiving, and then I take a “holiday break,” which has typically lasted until the Feast of Stephen (December 26).<\/p>\n

I can’t stop right now. I have another fellowship deadline coming up on December 15, and a nonfiction deadline the same day. (These are, of course, self-imposed deadlines. Nobody is requiring me to apply for these opportunities.) I reached the last page of the notebook I was using on November 30. On December 1, with the new liturgical year, I began a new notebook, and a new year of reading and writing seriously.<\/p>\n

Near this day in 2009, I found myself between stories as a reader.<\/a> I’d finished one book, and lacked both the concentration and the will to begin another novel. Instead I turned to\u00c2\u00a0 A Literary Christmas<\/em>, an anthology of late twentieth century takes on the season of seasons. The collection endeavors to be something of an antidote to the “hypocritical mush and treacle” Paul Auster refers to.<\/p>\n

As it happens, I didn’t read all of the selections in the anthology back in 2009. With the ones I have left, plus some from Maeve Binchy’s This Year It Will Be Different<\/em>, I have enough holiday-themed short pieces to give me something to read every day without struggling in this busy season to commit to any one long narrative.<\/p>\n

On Monday I read “Bless Me, Father, For I Have Sinned,” a Ray Bradbury story about an old priest hearing a midnight confession that turns out to be from a phantom penitent. Yesterday it was “A Typical Irish Christmas . . . ” from the Binchy book. That was a bit on the healing-relationships-at-Christmas treacly side.<\/p>\n

“Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story” is a story about writing a story. The conceit is that the author accepts an assignment to write a Christmas story, with the implication that it should be something that can become as iconic as the “Yes, Virginia” piece now in its 116th season of circulation. It is something of an anti-Christmas story, since it has, according to NPR, “no Santa Claus, no Christmas tree, and no brightly wrapped packages. And yet there’s plenty of giving.” You can hear Paul Auster himself read it here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Auggie Wren is a shopkeeper who takes a picture of the same Brooklyn intersection every day for fifteen years with a stolen camera. I’d like to do that, with my own camera, of course, and I’ve thought of it, except that I spend so many days Gallivanting that the series would have several breaks. My alternative will be to post a quotation from the day’s reading every day to Facebook, and maybe here. Like this: As long as there’s one person to believe it, there’s no story that can’t be true.<\/em><\/p>\n


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