anything can happen

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen.
-------------------- [from the story: Red Wind. From collection: Trouble Is My Business. Written by Raymond Chandler. Copyright, 1939, the Curtis Publishing Company. First Vintage Books (Random House, New York) Edition, July 1988.

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In Episode #146 of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary becomes enthusiastically involved in writing a story about her grandfather. She shares the idea with her boss, Lou Grant, and receives an unexpected response. She sort of wants, from this authority figure, encouragement to match her enthusiasm.

But he's not into it. (Can't remember if he reads her story & doesn't think it's good, or if he refuses to read it in the first place because he thinks he knows it isn't going to be good, and doesn't want to tell her that, and let her down.) Something like that -- she gets disappointed and hurt -- he gives her this intense talking-to: something like, "Everybody thinks they can write, but they can't, and if you were going to be a writer you would have done it already...you want me to read this and like it, and I'm not going to like it, because I am a conoisseur of good writing, and I know how this is gonna end...and I don't want to go there..."

He's like, Your story isn't going to be good, and I don't want to lie to you and say it's good, and I don't want to hurt-and-disappoint you by telling you the truth.

Something like that...

And then he takes a book out of his desk drawer, and reads aloud,

"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen."

He looks up from the book and says to Mary, "Now that's writing."

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I remember when I saw that episode for the first time, I felt a couple of different things: I thought Mr. Grant was being a little mean, and discouraging. Also -- how does he know Mary can't be a writer? He doesn't know. After all, like Raymond Chandler himself says, "Anything can happen." Plus I also thought Mary went to the wrong person for encouragement and inspiration. (A lot of writing books advise writers to not tell people they're writing, or to be careful who you tell, because some folks like to be discouraging about things like that, for whatever reason, and the writing-advice-people usually say, Hey no point in wasting your time on 'em, much less allow them to succeed in discouraging you...Just do it!...or whatever.)

And I also felt, while watching that episode, that Mary's story about her sweet old grandfather probably was corny, and of interest only to members of her own family, if that. ...
(But then, how did I know that? Now see, I was being terrible. ...Is there a competitive tendency in human beings to disparage the effort of another, to make one's own efforts somehow more noteworthy?) Also there's the reflexive pessimistic negative thinking: if I look down my block, how many of my neighbors are writing symphonies to uplift the human soul? How many people who try stuff are going to succeed? yada yada yada...Screenwriter William Goldman says, "Nobody knows anything." Referring to Hollywood where business guys try to figure out what type of movie will Make Money, and so end up basically doing same stuff over and over, copying something which Made Money. Goldman wrote that self-appointed "experts" say, This is what sells! Here it is! I can tell you!

But, said Goldman, no one really knows. They're just selling themselves, to make money.

"Nobody knows anything."

And that was true of the Mr Grant character. He didn't know anything. He didn't really know if Mary could be a writer. He just knew that he had not yet seen her, or known her, to be working at writing -- it kind of came out of the blue -- and so he was -- unconvinced of her seriousness of purpose, maybe. And rebelling at being asked for kind encouragement when he wasn't in the mood. Which he would not often have been. Mr. Grant was a gruff and often grumpy character.

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Someone "Mr.-Grant-ed" me once -- I don't think I made the connection then, in the conversation, that it was similar to the MTM Show episode, but I make the connection now! It was just as funny -- it was weird -- I was on the phone with a state senator. We had talked about something -- cannot remember the main topic, but we had finished that, and somehow the topic of writing came up, and I shared with him the fact that I was doing some, and he launched into a whole lecture, beginning-middle-and-end, all points-made-loud-and-clear, to tell me why I could not be a writer. Basically advising me not to even try.

I thought it was strange. He had never read anything I've written. He had no evidence to show that I could not be a writer, or that anything I wrote would not be any good, he was just like -- in Lou Grant mode -- "these people think they can write, everybody thinks they can write, and they can't. It takes a very special talent that's very rare..." something like that...

the thing that had seemed to really set him off was that I might be imagining that I could "do it." That I could write a good story. And he didn't want me thinkin' that...! (?!)

If I had listened to his monologue before the age of 30, it might have really seriously demolished my determination and ambition but I was older than that at the time -- and I try to meet speeches like that with a firm attitude of Emotional Maturity. So I listened to him, sitting on the top basement step, at the edge of the kitchen, & thought about how it was as if I'd put money in a vending machine and pressed the wrong button and stuff was coming out that I didn't want and hadn't ordered.

It must have been more about him than me.

Maybe he's right. Maybe I can't be a successful writer.
(Shrug.)
He may be right.
He may be wrong.
Makes me no never-mind.
He may be right.
He may be wrong.
Is it going to rain?
Are there any bananas left?

like -- whatever, dude.

-30-