[Article]: The Perfect Reader

A Very Strange Form of Intimacy

By Daniel Hayes, author of the forthcoming novel, Tearjerker

1

Every so often, writers are asked if they have an ideal reader in mind.
(John Updike once spoke of a teenage boy in a library, walking the aisles
and pulling books off the shelves, more or less randomly, looking for
literary adventure.) And if writers don't have an answer to this question,
presumably they're writing for themselves-not solipsistically, necessarily,
but with the pleasure of expressing themselves, regardless of publication or
readership.

When asked this question about audience, I'm always tongue-tied. And yet I'm
very much not writing for myself. The idea that there's an inherent pleasure
in writing rubs me the wrong way. The impulse to write-the nagging
imperative at the center of my life-is fundamentally exhibitionistic. I want
people to see, to take notice. And opening your trench coat to the mirror in
front of you is only wasted effort. Publication, with its implication of
audience, is crucial to my identity as a writer.

But then who is this audience, my preferred readership-if not myself, if not
a teenage boy in the library, if not some sophisticate in a Manhattan café
with my book in tow? Since the question of audience is important to me, why
can't I identify, at least in fantasy, whom I'm writing for? And without
anyone specifically in mind, why isn't it enough to be writing for my own
pleasure and curiosity?


2

In current psychoanalysis, there's an emphasis on the idea of recognition.
The term comes, in part, from Donald Winnicott-a British analyst and
pediatrician who centered his theories on the needs of very young children
for someone to recognize them, to follow them, with eyes or ears or heart. A
simple way of putting it: at a certain age, to be witnessed is to have your
self legitimated (or maybe even created). Winnicott's idea is that a self
can't really exist without at least the ghost of another-someone who cares,
loves, watches over. If all works right, then a child is eventually able to
be alone in the presence of the other. This paradoxical phrase means that
the child begins to incorporate the other (the parent) into him- or herself
to the extent that loneliness is not what being alone is about.

For me, writing is very much a replaying of this drama-an attempt to
reassure my self that someone else is around to listen, to read, and to
consider my thoughts. Writing is, after all, a very lonely activity-usually
performed in a small room, and almost always by one's self. And yet, at the
same time, a tremendous effort is expended toward capturing an audience-a
group of people who will give meaning to the activity and make it
worthwhile. And therein, for me, lies the anxiety central to any mention of
audience: I write out of the worry that there may not be one.

The activity itself-making up stories out of thin air, moving characters
around like tiny green soldiers on a bed of dirt-is childlike if not
childish. (This has become especially apparent to me since having a
daughter, who often dreams up stories, willy-nilly, making fuzzy the line
between fiction and reality.) There is, in this equation, an inherent risk.
If the daydreamer is successful (i.e., published), then such childlike
activity becomes legitimated. Without success, we're left with a troubling
question: What distinguishes the failed writer from the immature person,
stuck on a dream, who lives too much in his head and remains resistant to
reality?

All of this-a form of regression-is somewhat embarrassing. This primitive
quest for love is often obscured by, or hidden behind, the tools of the
trade, the bravado of authorial confidence, and the stark economic realities
of the publishing world. But why not just come right out and say it? As a
writer, what I do is slap words on the page and then say, "Look, look!" I
say, "This is me, and please love me." (And, if things work out, I'll have
readers who'll say, in one way or another, "How could I go on living without
your words?") When I say, "This is me," I'm not referring to any
autobiographical content of my fiction, but to the ways that people can't
help but reveal themselves in stories or fantasies-ways that don't happen at
dinner parties or even in a bedroom. In other words, if you want to know me,
and if I want you to know me, then we should probably start with my
fantasies, my daydreams, the peculiar way that my mind captures bits of
reality and twists them according to its own devices. It's like a door
opened wide on who I am.

3

The oddity, of course, is that readers, the people supposedly interested in
going through the door, are largely anonymous. Writers and readers are
typically strangers. (When you're a child, it's usually mom who comes
knocking.) Writers are people who wish to interact intimately with people
who are far away. And come to think of it, this isn't such a bad description
for readers, either. Supposedly, in an age where reading is a lost art,
cracking open a book is all warm and fuzzy and a sign of good citizenship.
Yet readers, like writers, are folks who like doing it alone. Reading often
qualifies as anti-social behavior; staring at a book makes watching TV seem
like a shared experience.

I am not particularly a loner. I have a spouse, a child, and friends both
new and old. But I also yearn for a different sort of intimacy-the kind that
exists between strangers. These strangers might be two characters in one of
my books, or they could also be the reader and me. I'm assuming a
fundamental voyeurism at the heart of reading-a desire to see inside the
mind of another without paying too large a price of admission. Books offer
access to a mind, and to an interior voice-an intimate connection that could
never happen in movies. There's a feeling, in the best reading experience,
of being eerily close-sometimes too close-to the narrator or author. That
author was alone when he or she wrote the words, and now you are alone, too,
with the book in your hands. And alone in the presence of another isn't a
bad way of characterizing what goes on when a book is opened, the pages
turned.

Daniel Hayes - Is the author of Kissing You and his forthcoming debut novel
Tearjerker Publisher: Graywolf Press; (October 1, 2004) ISBN: 1555974090. He
lives in San Francisco, California.

For more information visit www.hayestearjerker.com or www.writtenvoices.com