On Writing and Bookclubs

So I've joined a local book club. Last month we read Jonathan Safran Foer's second novel, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close". And that was the reason I joined it. I liked Safran Foer. I wanted to read his second book.

So I joined this book club. Nervous and anxious about this as I was I made bad jokes about bringing my shawl. I pointed out my lack of manhood when it became clear that a dinner party we were invited to the same night as book club wasn't going to happen because one of the invitees had a hockey game to play in. Yeah. Well. I had book club. But I had book club. I went to book club. I liked book club. So I'm going back this week.

"Cry, The Beloved Country" is the book for this month. It's about South Africa. I didn't know that. Having been there, anything about South Africa stirs up intense nationalism in me. I watched Invictus. It sucked from being a bad film. From not quite understanding the country completely. But I knew that story so well. It was one of the first stories I heard in South Africa. The only story I heard repeated over and over everywhere we went.

I watched the World Cup this year with that same nationalism ricocheting in my breast. They had just received news that they were getting the World Cup when I was there in 2000. They were ecstatic. Exultant. Prideful. I played soccer everywhere I went. A little cricket and saw a rugby match, but I played soccer everywhere I went.

Three years ago I wrote a creative non-fiction piece about that summer mission trip to South Africa. I read it this morning, after reading "Cry, The Beloved Country". So far I have been rejected from two schools of my seven for graduate school for an MFA in fiction. But I read my piece on South Africa. It's not perfect, but it is good. Now I can see the flaws, the places where the narrative suffers. But I can see the heart of what I was writing about. I can feel it. And though I wrote the ending, I was utterly moved by the ending. Is that vain? To think I'm a good writer? Or even a better writer now? I've been silently rejected by two schools (neither my top choice). My confidence is waning -- writers are a sensitive bunch. But I read something I wrote and I really liked it. Even if it was hard to read because it was all about how I failed that summer.

So I'm in this book club and we're reading this book. So I've been in this country where the book takes place. So I've written a story about being in this country where the book I'm reading takes place. And I'm thinking I've always been a part of some story. And maybe I'm only in the middle of one right now, not at the end.

I've got five more schools still to hear from.