Novel fodder

A few weeks ago I was in my mom's boyfriend David Ontjes's house down in North Carolina, looking around. Like so many of our parent's houses, it's palpably waiting for kids to come home. It doesn't make sense to take care of that much house for one person, but it's so hard to let go of the past when it's so much of you. Pictures of people (Jason, Ethan, Sarah) I knew from high school, but not that well. Interesting to project backwards from present. And it's the same deal wherever I go, looking at houses of now grandparents, from Pittsburgh to Westchester to the Piedmont. If mom and David marry, they will likely kick loose of more of this retrospective orientation. Perhaps this is a benefit, if not an advantage, of recoupling in advanced years, rather than staying married.

And it made me realize not just that I want to write a novel eventually, but that the novel should be classical in form, organized around weddings, births, deaths, characters. Continue in the tradition of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy (if you haven't read it, read it!).

So I'm going to try to concentrate on characters and dialog here on the blog, which have always been my favorite posts. Of course, that means I have to get away from my desk and all my fancy pants Ivy League colleagues.