One of the Greats by Alysia Lewis

As a literate woman in possession of good taste and a library card, I fucking hate reading. 

I’m currently in the throes of Jamaica Kincaid’s most recent anthology of work. I was on the train, feel oh so proud of myself for reading a book instead of of being on my phone like the rest of the rabble, when I came across this passage from the essay, “On Seeing England for the First Time,”:

“If now as I speak of all this I give the impression of someone on the outside looking in, nose pressed up against a glass window, that is wrong. My nose was pressed up against a glass window all right, but there was an iron vise at the back of my neck forcing my head to stay in place,”

The words struck me so physically that I felt silly. I felt like if I told anyone about the way it made me feel they’d either think I was a lunatic or a stuck up cunt. But that passage was so textured that I couldn’t do anything but feel. I want to show it to my mother and father and hear the texture of their past growing up when Guyana was British Guiana and see if they like the feeling of Mrs. Kincaid’s work too. 

I wanted to go back home and throw my laptop out the window and never write again. 

That is the unfortunate result of having abundant access to writers who are miles above me in both talent and skill. I’ll always feel less than. Every once in a while I can comfort myself by saying that some of these incredible people didn’t hit their stride writing until they were well into the middle age. It takes them degrees and marriages and divorces and death and rebirth to become the sort of writer that made me want to cut my hands off and go live in a cave. That worked a lot when I was a kid. But I’m far closer to middle age than I’ve ever been and I’m beginning to fear it may just not happen for me. I want to say that I’m okay with the way that I write. I write like I’m talking to a friend–I write like I’m trying to make people laugh. It’s casual. However, I wonder, is that my default writing style because it comes natural to me or do I write like this because I can’t do better?

Is this my magnum opus? 

This sarcastic, caustic, desperate to be witty babble? With all of its run on sentences, wishy-washy modifiers, and miserable self-searching? Is that the best I can do?

In theory, I could eliminate this feeling by shifting gears and only reading crap. I could sign up for TikTok, wander onto BookTok, and request everything from the library. I could turn my brain into soup on stories that are all pussy and a crumb of plot, or force myself through reskinned fan fiction that never did the work to become anything else. Unfortunately, being dead sounds better than that. 

I love reading. So much of that love is experiencing incredible writing that is nothing like my own. Writers who are funnier than me or smarter than me or have lived longer/faster/harder lives than me. Fantasy that makes my mouth drop wide open, horror that makes my spine shake, romance that makes me mourn the fact that sometimes love really isn’t enough. I don’t want to stop reading good work because it hurts my feelings to think that I’ll never be able to do good work. 

Because the fact is, I may never get published. I may write until there aren’t any words left in my head or strength left in my hands, and no one will ever read any of it but me. If my consolation prize is being able to read until my very last blink, I think I’ll end up all right.