“Why I Write,” by Stephen Elliott
Stephen Elliott is one of a tiny handful of writers whose work feels like it’s on fire. Like it’s so full of life and pain and beauty that you burst into flames, just reading it. His novel Happy Baby was easily the best book I read of 2004. I read his story “Where I Slept” (originally published in Tin House ) one rainy day in the reading room of the Mid-Manhattan Library, and when it was done I just stared at the dozens of people sitting around me, feeling special and alone, knowing that none of them could possibly have been so shaken and excited and moved by whatever it was they were reading. And he has this fab new online journal called The Rumpus, which is publishing a lot of really fresh stuff and feels poised to reinvigorate this weird slippery messy concept called online journals. And their Daily Rumpus newsletter lets me get a daily email from my hero Stephen.
There’s a great new essay by him at the Rumpus right now, entitled “Why I Write,” and as I was reading it I got the same sense of excitement I get from his fiction. Excitement, and vulnerability. Like I’m reading something I myself don’t have the courage to say. Like he’s saying the things I want to believe, but don’t. Above all - like he’s saying the things I tell myself. About being a writer, and why I do it, and what I get out of the deal compared to what I put in, and how it doesn’t make any sense, and how I can’t stop. Like I said, his work is on fire - it’s so alive, so vibrant, that it takes you out of yourself. Mattilda does that; James Baldwin did that. Nan Goldin’s photography.
Here’s some of it:
“The urge to publish is a hunger. The drive to write and the drive to publish are virtually the same thing, at least for me. They both come from somewhere deep. Like the drive for sex, they can be explained but the explanation is always incomplete.”
And because I think he’s a cool-looking dude, here’s a picture of Stephen Elliott, taken by Lydia Lunch, taken off his website.
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