Reading Chuck

I’ve been meandering slowly through the essays in Non-Fiction, which, as far as I can tell, has been re-titled and re-issued as “Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories.” It’s a maddening process.

Authors influence me like red dye influences water. I read Chuck, I want to write Chuck.

The problem is that he has a style that is so easily and ironically mistaken for a garish disregard of “the usual.” In actual fact, he’s a lot more complex than that, but that’s easy to forget when you sit down to write in his voice.

Like Douglas Adams’ The Salmon of Doubt, Non-Fiction is a collection of essays that make me feel inadequate. I read them and think to myself that if I spent as much time on each sentence as they obviously have, I might write with some style. Some pizzaz.

I never do.

I also don’t think that I could ever write with Chuck’s humor. Oh, he’s funny, to be sure. But his humor is like finding your grandfather’s vibrator.