Greetings, QRW readers! Behind on NaNoWriMo, like me? Looking for some inspiration, ideas, and ideals? I got your fix, right here.

The idea behind this (semi) weekly series is to highlight those masochists that followed their novel (or screenplay, or poetry, or nonfiction) writing dreams, despite years of toil and precious little reward. I highlight folks that give us righteous reads, whose names may sound familiar but aren’t yet favorites, or who might be (by now) officially famous. But all of them are quirky. Rule breakers. Risk takers.

And isn’t that what we’re doing, after all? All of us who write or create for profit or passion? We’re choosing a path for which people try their damndest to make and protect rules, but a path in which the carcasses of those rules are scattered behind a creator’s success. An individual, highly personal and independent path that might one day earn us a spot alongside such masters as these folks listed here. A path that may cause us pain and pleasure at the same time, especially in November.

So let’s look at some mighty Writers Who Matter, delve into what makes them tick, examine some of their best work, and give ourselves a little juice for the NaNoWriMo road:

• Octavia Butler
• Cormac McCarthy
• Joss Whedon
• Philip Pullman
• Tim O’Brien
• Elie Wiesel
• Mikhail Bulgakov

Now it’s your turn. Who are your Writers Who Matter? Who would you like to see profiled here in future posts?

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I have lots of books. It’s a sickness, really, one my partner shares, one that became apparent during my recent move, as our combined books totaled some 50 boxes and our movers thought we were going to kill them. He has art, architecture, and rock and roll books; I have lots of fiction and historical non-fiction. So cutting back on book purchases, as I’ve recently done, isn’t necessarily the punishment it first sounded like. Instead, I’m rereading favorites and rediscovering lost goodies. One author that stands up to these repeated readings is today’s Writer Who Matters.

Tim O’Brien went to Vietnam. He saw some bad shit, and participated in some even worse shit. But instead of bottling that up when he came home, letting it eat away or turn him into someone harsh and unfamiliar, he wrote. And in the process he created some of our country’s best, most moving, most undeniable accounts of what it meant to be in that war, to be a man in that era, to be a human in our times.

“Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.” - Tim O’Brien

O’Brien wrote straight, creating novels that told dirty, funny, real tales of guys in the midst of a ridiculous war. He also wrote artfully, creating stories that included himself, or a version of himself, and told his and his friends’ individual tales. He wrote books that had nothing at all to do with the war, except that they were in today’s society, a direct result of all the FUBAR crap that went down back then.

Why does O’Brien matter? Two words: cowardice and stories. O’Brien writes about being a coward, and what that means. Sure, his characters go to war. They face peril and pain like their fellow citizens back at home cannot imagine. But cowardice informs their every move, whether it’s running away from the war in body and mind, or failing to save someone that potentially could have been saved. Cowardice is key long before the war as well, when a man is given the chance to escape the draft and opts not to, out of fear and embarrassment of what his family will think.

O’Brien also writes about stories. Using stories, he shows the power of stories, how they help, hurt, confuse, trick, speak plainly, and survive. How they serve to exorcise demons, and to summon them. He shows by his life’s work how stories can affect readers, can change people’s perceptions and increase understanding. But within those works he also questions the ability of stories to do all of this.

Reading O’Brien is an exercise in pure entertainment and enrapture, and immersion into a world where all the solids are fluid, where up is down and left is right. Through his skills in creating fantastical and familiar stories, and through his ability to question our givens, O’Brien is a writer who matters.

A few choice examples from O’Brien:

• Going After Cacciato. One normal day in Vietnam, a soldier disappears from the ranks and his team is left to determine what happened, and what will happen if they join him. What follows is a ludicrous journey across the world, one that O’Brien refuses to offer finality on. Written a few years after O’Brien’s own tour ended, it’s an exploration of the absurdities of the war, and the inner dreams and fears of every man and woman in it.
• The Things They Carried. Following a platoon that just happens to have a character named Tim O’Brien, these stories blur the line between what “really” happened and what is true. A maddening, saddening, beautiful book, one that seems painfully relevant to today’s war.

“They carried USO stationary and pencils and pens. They carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal fares, spools of wire, razor blades, chewing tobacco…Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak. They carried infections…They carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They carried the land itself…They carried their own lives. The pressures were enormous…they carried it on their backs and shoulders – and for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.” - The Things They Carried

For More on O’Brien:
Book Reporter Author Profile
PLAUSIBILITY OF DENIAL: Tim O’Brien, My Lai, and America
New York Times Books: Reviews and Interviews with Tim O’Brien

Got an O’Brien favorite? Tell us about it in the comments!

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So the economy sucks, did you know? As part of my cutting back, I’m bypassing buying new books for awhile and diving into my ridiculously large existing collection, rereading favorites and rediscovering lost goodies. I reread a beautiful and haunting book by an author that specialized in lyrical loveliness and deeply penetrating meaning. And while I’ve profiled this author before, it’s time to revisit her and show why she’s a Writer Who Matters.

[I’m] comfortably asocial—a hermit in the middle of Seattle—a pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive. - Octavia Butler

I rarely go to book readings or literary events. I learned early on that I’m a very visual person: listening to a person speak or read from a book, no matter if I normally find the topic fascinating or the book compelling, is enough to make my eyes cross and my mind go blank. But in 2004 I was presenting at a literary conference that featured Octavia Butler as a guest speaker. I went. And I was wowed.

Butler was a tall woman. By society’s accepted and fucked up standards of beauty, she was an unattractive woman. She spoke plainly and politely. She discussed her path to a successful, genre-bending, pioneering career with humor. She mentioned her new project, a lark of a book on vampires. I went home after that speech and read a slew of her novels, voraciously consuming some of the most poignant and thought-provoking sci-fi I’ve ever read. And then, in 2006, she died suddenly. I’m not a crier, but felt like crying that day.

Why does Butler matter? She grew up in the 1950s as a poor black girl on the west coast who dreamed big. At the age of 10 or thereabouts she saw her first televised sci-fi schlock, believed she could do better, and immediately got to work writing her own. Over the next decades, she wrote constantly, putting herself through school through menial work, surviving on next to nothing, but rousing herself every morning at 2 am to write and write and write. She wrote fantastical stories, persevered through years of rejection slips from sci-fi magazines and publishers, and finally published her first book in 1974. Butler wrote several more successful series of sci-fi books, and in the 1990s created a Nebula-award-winning series.

Here’s the thing. The best sci-fi and fantasy takes a picture of our world and twists it. It offers up an example of what is and what could be. It’s a lens through which we can view our society, seeing with abject clarity how desperately we fuck things up and also with piercing intensity how we are capable of greatness. That’s what Octavia Butler did with wit, style and humanity.

Octavia Butler matters because she was the model of persistence paying off in publishing. She matters because she broke all the sci-fi rules, carving out a new spot as an African-American woman writer. She matters because she offered up a vision of strong females of color facing catastrophic circumstances, and who persevered because they were women, not in spite of it. She matters because she created the best of sci-fi, shining lights into the shadows of our society and reminding us of the power for good and evil we all have. She matters because she was a gracious, beautiful, fascinating woman who seemed genuinely surprised and excited when fans clapped and cheered at her speech in Louisville, and moved at the notion that her work moved us. She was a great example of what we can aspire to.

A few choice examples from Octavia:

• Kindred. A woman of color in 1970s California somehow mysteriously transports back to the antebellum South. Over various trips she meets her slave and slavemaster ancestors and becomes trapped in the vicious cycle of being owned. It’s a biting, painful indictment of the past, but also the present. Butler funneled her own dissatisfaction with society and its outspoken and subtle racism, and created a haunting story that still sticks with me years after my first read.
• The Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Talents. Dystopian masterpieces. In the near future an African-American woman and her family face a complete breakdown of social and government function, and join the legions of people taking over the highways moving ever north. Along the way she creates a religion called Earthseed. The power of these books is again in their social commentary and vision, viewing a world gone mad but one that still relies on extremism, hate and subjugation to survive. It’s devastating and remarkable.
• Fledgling. Octavia takes on vampires, and just as with every other existing idea and way of doing things, turns the lore completely in and around and on top of itself. It was intended to be a new series, but ended up being her last book.

Got a Butler favorite? Tell us about it in the comments!

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Children’s and young adult lit gets a bad rap. Granted, there is a bunch of poorly written crap out there that does nothing but titillate the senses of hormonal tweens (I read my share). But there is some challenging, deeply interesting, and amazing work geared towards the younger audience, that inspires equal devotion from the adult set.

Philip Pullman is supposedly a writer of children’s books. But he upends all the rules about what can and can’t be in a book for young minds, and creates ageless, timeless masterpieces. He’s a writer that matters.

Pullman is best known for the His Dark Materials trilogy, a fantastical series that combines alternative dimensions, the perils of theocracy, and extended allegory with two very likeable and conflicted kids from different worlds, Lyra and Will. Here’s the thing: the book is outside of religion, but deeply enmeshed within a society where religion has gone wrong. There are witches, pirates, and daemons, and they’re the good guys. It’s a topsy turvy world where it’s hard to get your bearings, but once you do you realize – holy shit, kids actually get this??

Pullman expects a lot of his readers. He demands that they follow along in a whirlwind tale, that they open their minds to the analogies he’s making, and that they think about the role of rebellion. In fact, he encourages readers to root for the greatest rebellion of all, against the mythical but very real AUTHORITY that rules our lives. Is it any surprise that Pullman and his books have been shrouded in controversy?

To demonstrate the ire and dedication that Pullman simultaneously inspires, and his rebellious nature, a quote from a Q&A:

Q: You have run into criticism from certain religious groups who regard you as subversive, with the Catholic Herald describing your work as ‘worthy of the bonfire.’ Do such emotional responses concern or upset you or does it please you to generate strong reactions?
PP: I’m delighted to have brought such excitement into what must be very dull lives.

In Pullman’s worlds, there is good and evil, but they are often hard to spot. What should be scary and dangerous (killer polar bears, witch covens) is the most safe and sane; what should be comforting and good for you (parents, beauty, religious devotion) is a threat to individual existence and the greater good. That’s the power of writing, and Pullman does it with wit and delight.

And for those writers seeking inspiration from the talents of the masters? Pullman engages in his craft with a healthy dose of realism:

Q: What do you do about writer’s block?
PP: I don’t believe in it. All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?

Want to read more? Dive into the Trilogy. Play around in his extensive home page. And check out these phenomenal interviews/articles:

• Powells Interview on the His Dark Materials Trilogy
• “Far From Narnia: Philip Pullman’s secular fantasy” for children from the New Yorker
• “Philip Pullman — the extended e-mail interview” from Filmchat

Got a Pullman favorite? Seen the movie? (I deliberately abstained) Tell us about it in the comments!

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There are the snobs that refuse to acknowledge the power of writing outside the written, bound and canonized form. TV and film are not worthy of our attention or our appreciation. Graphic novels are merely excuses for artists to create fantastical and unrealistic worlds, none of which deserve our approval and admiration.

But this is inherently full of shite. Consider the remarkable and revolutionary Joss Whedon, a writer who matters.

Over TV masterpieces like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly, graphic novel continuations of Buffy and X-Men episodes, and even Internet serials-phenomena like Dr. Horrible, Whedon puts on a hell of an entertaining show. But there’s more to it. He breaks all the rules by creating entire mythologies that are separate from our own reality, yet are infused with our faults and greatest gifts. He imbues women with extraordinary power to tell stories that transcend gender, genre and more. He makes the flighty worthwhile, powerful and unforgettable.

That’s his quiet rebellion. The flash is in creating a world where vampires and demons run amok, or a future society in the stars, or a blog where an evil villain spills his secrets and turns hilarity into fear. More importantly, he picks mundane human details and makes them important. In Buffy, he makes the very normal and typically forgettable aspects of adolescence critical not just to his characters, but to the entire fate of the world. His villains are pretty terrifying, but are merely manifestations and reflections of very human faults and emotions. The worst attacks in this fantastical realm are betrayals by friends and lovers.

A Whedon creation is a dizzying, hilarious, violent, erotic and horrifying experience. Just like the “real” world can be.

A few choice examples from the Whedon realm:

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A teenage girl kills vampires. Um…yeah. But here’s the thing. Buffy is the powerful puppet of an f’ed up system, run by men and won by the attrition of young nubile females. She just wants to be a normal girl, but falls in love with the world’s (two) biggest badass vampire(s), dies twice, and otherwise saves an oblivious and unthankful world. With the addition of Willow, Xander, Anya, Oz, Spike and Giles, the laughs are morbid and many, and the drama is unbearably dark and tense.
• Angel. Buffy’s love spins off as a vampire PI. What could have been a one-note procedural with a twist turned into an operatic, rich, and hugely addictive quest to find and keep humanity in a world that denies it.
• Firefly. A western in space! Sounds like another wacked-out winner! But it works in a typically ludicrous and compelling way. Captain Mal and his crew scour the galaxy for work while a totalitarian government seeks to recapture and manipulate his stowaway. Legalized prostitution! Randy engineers! Class warfare! Hot pants! In addition to Joss’ writing prowess, he also has the uncanny ability to find the best people to breathe life into his characters, and does so with aplomb in this cancelled-too-soon delight.
• Buffy, Season 8. The story of the completed show continues in Whedon’s graphic novel serialization. So far Buffy has run up against a skinless Warren, hordes of zombies, her nemesis Faith, and more. The novels bring the same mix of hilarity, weirdness and high drama, but with a much more expansive budget than TV would allow.
• Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Barney/Doogie as an inept evil villain? Who sings? Holy schnikes, this is glorious. Shown free for one week, the three-part series broke the interwebs with record downloads, and plans are to release a fully-jacked DVD that features extravagant goodies. The best part – Whedon brought full-on gravitas to a silly little caper with a surprising, abrupt and damn dark end. Just like we’ve come to expect.
• Dollhouse. And speaking of expectations, they’re running high for Joss’ new series set to premiere in early 2009. I’ll simply let the preview speak for itself.

Got a Joss favorite? Tell us about it in the comments!

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