John McPhee, one of my favourite writers, has a lovely piece in The New Yorker this week. In it he writes about a meeting with the novelist Thornton Wilder when he was a young man, at a time when Wilder's reputation was near its height.
McPhee was astounded to learn that Wilder, then 66, was spending his days cataloguing the plays of Lope de Vega who wrote some eighteen hundred full-length plays of which 431 survive. He writes: Callowly, I asked him, “Why would anyone want to do that?”
McPhee's question infuriated Wilder, and their meeting thereafter was not a cordial one. Nevertheless, the young McPhee thought "the question deserved an answer. And I couldn’t imagine what it might be."
But, he continues, "I can now. I am eighty-eight years old at this writing, and I know that those four hundred and thirty-one plays were serving to extend Thornton Wilder’s life. Reading them and cataloguing them was something to do, and do, and do. It beat dying. It was a project meant not to end."
And I understand that now. Keeping busy, being curious, doing those interesting and perhaps necessary things are what keeps some of us going.
But, you may ask, do these two photos have to do with that. The sleek and sensuous one is one by Edward Weston, taken in the fullness of his genius. The other is of two red peppers I baked not long ago in order to have roasted pimento for some dish I intended to cook. Both photos, I think, are quite lovely, but one represents youthful talent and joy and the other, what happens as we age.
No comments:
Post a Comment