It’s much too late to sort things out.

Alright, I’ve been cogitating a lot on this decision, and now I’m putting out in the open.  I’m going to write my first novel.  Yes, a novel.  And I’m not going for an easy genre with the initial effort, either.  I have always been inspired by the visions of Steinbeck, Fitzgerald and Hemingway.  It’s time to find a new definition for America in the spirit of those three, but particularly Steinbeck.  There’s something about the way that man captured Americans that I feel needs revival.  So, here’s the plan.

1) Find Steinbeck’s America in 2013 whatever year I get around to this.  It’s there, I just need to find the right…lens…to see it all through.  There are people out there who still think for themselves.

2) Do so while avoiding “caricatures” of Americans.  I don’t want to deal in stereotypes or easy definitions.  How do I find the salt-of-the-earth types who haven’t been raped by Fox News?  How do I find the classic liberals who haven’t bought into the easy path?  This is my challenge.

3) Figure out if people really think beyond what they’re told to think.  This is going to be harder than it sounds, because I’m going to have to peel back the layers of epistemology that we deal with.  I have to get to the root of American constructivism; the media, religion, education – they all have to be cast out in the search for truth.  You might disagree that such a thing exists, but it exists in me, so I think that it has to be found somewhere else.  I want to base characters off these people, because a bunch of expies of me would be boring as shit to read.

4) Travel, or at least get people from various places to send me their thoughts.  This is the hard part; if I execute this plan as part of my senior thesis, I can probably secure some funding to do it.  But should I attempt to pursue this on my own, I’m going to have to figure out an effective way to poll the mass of humanity that make up America.  I’m not trying to sell myself to undecided voters; I don’t think the heartbeat of America is on Main Street over Wall Street; rather, it exists everywhere.  My job is to find it.

5) Convert the real world into characters and make up a narrative.  This might be the harder part; unlike Travels with Charlie, I don’t want this to read like a series of travel vignettes – no offense to one of the greatest slices of Americana.  I want to find a way to really make it a story, not a travelogue.  I don’t believe America is a fragmented place – that’s the convenient projection of a thousand voices with their own purposes, but in reality I think we’re more unified than anyone wants to give us credit for.  I want to weave together a picture of America that people might not believe exists, and that’s gonna be REALLY difficult.  It’s so hard to succumb to cynicism about our Union these days – with good reason – but I really believe there’s still something so essential about our nation that only shows itself every great once in awhile.  It’s my job to find that.

6) Make a philosophical statement about Americans.  Herein lies the crux and the crucible of the project.  Americans are fucking HARD to pin down; we are a vast nation that is built on diversity; how do I assign a characteristic to the American people without resorting to stupid cliches?  I don’t know, and this might be the objective that the failure/success of this little idea hinges on.  I hate, hate, HATE making categorical judgments about anything – it’s one of my major deviations with Kant, in fact.  But I think I’d like to find something that fits American comfortably, like an old shoe.  That’s what I want to do that’ll make this different, that’s why I admire the three aforementioned writers.  They captured a certain innocence in America that might not have existed for more than the second they wrote about it, but I want to find that scrap.  You have to but whisper its name and it’ll become smoke and ashes, but…that’s the beauty, right?  I don’t shit about shit, and less about art, but I think you aim to find that one glimpse of reality that meshes with the one in your head, and you work the hell out of that angle.  That’s where I’m going, folks.  If you’re reading this, expect to be a character.