I am back to reading Writers on the Air and enjoyed the interview with Diane Ackerman last night. I first read Ackerman several years ago, but I have lost track of her more recent books and was surprised to see how much I've missed. The Alchemy of the Mind sounded particularly fascinating and reading Ackerman's thoughts on the brain and her book made me remember what attracted me to her writing so long ago.
"My muse is very miscellaneous," she writes. "I've never understood why exactly, but I'll start to think about one thing and it will remind me of something else and then there will be other relevant things that will feed into it, then the whole journey, to use a rather new-age word, will go forward while magnetizing things to it. That's pretty much what happens. Most often when people write books, they are encouraged to do things in a more streamlined way - to have for example, a beginning, a middle, and an end in that order even though life isn't always like that."
That's the thought process behind what I enjoyed about her books. She introduces so many different ideas in her books - always in a coherent and fascinating manner. You literally never know where she will take you to convey her main idea but you are certain the ride will be an illuminating one.
As I read the interview, I kept thinking about a young adult biography of Leonardo da Vinci that I recently read for view in Eclectica. (The review will be in the next issue.) Kathleen Krull gives a great picture of da Vinci in a way that is geared towards young readers but is interesting for anyone who wants to learn more about the artist, inventor and all round great thinker. What da Vinci and Ackerman clearly both have is a curiosity - an interest in knowing as much as possible about as many things as possible. This sort of general interest does not seem to be encouraged so much anymore, particularly in school. You have to focus on something as early as possible and then stick with it. It's rare to find a person, particularly a writer (Paul Collins comes to mind) who will follow their curiosity wherever it takes them. I should have been reading Diane Ackerman all along, but I'm happy now to have found her again.
Notes: The nominees for the National Book Award have been announced and I have pretty much heard of none of them. Oops. I am certainly intrigued by Joan Didion's book, and I've heard many many good things about it. (I've also added her title, Slouching Towards Bethlehem to next year's reading list - thanks to the WOTA mention!) I do have a review up of The Penderwicks, one of the YA nominees, over at Eclectica. I have also written a review of Autobiography of my Dead Brother and should have that up at Bookslut in the next month or so. My vote is for Autobiography which I thought was an amazing and also important book. The cool thing about it is that it is also incredibly readable. It's an impressive art object as well as literature thanks to Christopher Myer's drawings and cartoons and all around, a great contribution to the YA canon. If you only read one, this should be it.
Oh yeah, and still, read Kipling's Choice!
