I have taken to re-reading books I remember that I like, but have not read in so long I could scarcely provide a summary from memory. I am starting with Kurt Vonnegut, who I had first read in my late teens. It is astounding how little I remember, but not at all surprising that I liked these books. It is also clear how these books shaped my way of thinking and observing the world, especially then. Even now, they help me look at life in a way somehow more tolerable. I almost said "yet cynical", but it is the cynicism itself that takes some of the sting out of existence. In most of the intervening years between my Vonnegut-influenced youth and decline, between 16 and 60, I was very earnest, very busy, and very self-indulgent. Most of the time I covered the sting of existence with a sense of immediate importance in everything I did, and when that didn't work I was episodically unpleasant, unhappy, or just gratefully drunk.
I had wanted to be an author for the longest time. I wanted to be many things, but I am lazy and stupid, and easily distracted by what I believe others want or need from me. The only thing that comes easily is writing, but now even that has become something I rarely do. After awhile, due to my self-indulgent habit of re-reading myself, I finally realized I have been repeating myself, and that has brought me to an almost complete stop.
Long before noticing that I have been repeating myself, I became painfully aware that I only write about myself, and from my own perspective. Not only do I lack a "mind's eye", I lack the ability to figuratively wear shoes that are not my own. This makes for writing that isn't just boring, but painfully boring.
Regarding the repetition, I know there are many little mildly interesting vignettes of experience which I have spoken of to others, back when I spoke to others, but have never written out. There may even be more than that. The main problem is that I know my memories are eroding. I cannot call up any story at will. I have to wait for something to trigger it, which does happen, but then they don't hold up as stories because I often remember fragments, but not what connects them, and generalities, but insufficient details.
This also does not solve the "I" problem. I am sick to death of of writing sentences that begin with "I", and I am absolutely sure this is not the first time I have written those words.
So I have the "I" problem, and the "story full of holes" problem.
Reading Vonnegut closer to 60 than 16 seems to hint at possible solutions. The first chapter of Slaughterhouse Five is written in the first person, and serves, in part, the function that most authors waste on an "Introduction" or "Preface" that readers routinely skip. From then on, the story isn't about "I", it is about Billy Pilgrim. That solves the "I" problem, and also gives Vonnegut freedom from the burden of trying to maintain the integrity of so-called objective truth. He can fill in the missing details and connective story tissue with convenient or entertaining lies. By making Billy Pilgrim "unstuck in time", Vonnegut even frees himself from strictly linear storytelling, and can distract from the absence of sequences that might otherwise have appeared to be missing. He even distracts from the fact that most of life is truly dull, repetitious, and unworthy of novelization.
These cannot be original observations about Vonnegut or Slaughterhouse five, or even the task of authoring fiction in general. They aren't even entirely new to me, but perhaps for the first time, usefully complete and clearly codified for my own purposes.
Then there is the problem of someone else's oft mentioned "shoes". To me, this is a variation of what I like to call the "Leading Man" problem, or for illustrative purposes, the "Tom Hanks" problem.
Tom Hanks is a "Leading Man" not just because he is famous and first-billed in the majority of thing in which he performs. He is a "Leading Man" because at all times you are aware that you are watching Tom Hanks, not a character actor who disappears into their role. Yet at the same time, this doesn't take you out of the story. The viewer remains in a state of suspended disbelief sufficient to be engaged with the events of the presentation. My theory is that Tom Hanks doesn't play a character, he plays Tom Hanks fully immersed in the situation of the character. This is his solution for his own "I" problem.
Again, certainly not an original observation, nor the first time I have attempted to convey my own thoughts about it. But together with the other solutions Vonnegut implies, I almost have a working theory of how to write something potentially tolerable to myself, and maybe even others.
Unfortunately, I feel like I have only learned how to steal a pale ghost of the genius of others. I am still oppressed by the conviction that it has all been done better, and there is no need for my version. This is the "Boss Battle" with my own sense of self-importance. Egotism and self deprecation are not even a yin and yang, they are functionally identical. There is an aspect to my "I" problem which I have not yet mastered sufficiently to begin tolerable writing.
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