Skip to main content

On Rooting Oneself

During my years in graduate school and afterward, friends who knew I aspired to become a writer had advised me to seek out a big city on one of the coasts--New York, say, or San Francisco, Chicago or New Orleans, Seattle or Miami--some place that readers had heard about, some place where influential critics might tout my books, where I was likely to meet filmmakers at cocktail parties, where a cab ride could deliver me to television studios.  And they also urged me to pull up stakes and move whenever I saw a chance for more prestige or more publicity.
 My friends were probably right, if my ruling ambition were to make a name for myself.  But my chief ambition, I discovered during our early years in Bloomington, was not to make a good career, but a good life.  And such a life, as I came to understand it, meant being a husband and father first, and an employee second; it meant belonging to a place rather than to a profession; it meant being a citizen as well as an artist.          --Scott Russell Sanders, "Hometown"
                                                                              
Labels:

Comments

Gin A. Ando said…
Scot (or is it Scott? It's spelled in two ways on the page...) I just found your blog randomly going through some of the pages.

But I am going through the same thing. I'm graduating college next year. The thing is, I don't have a wife or kids. So, I suppose I'd like to ask then, if you were in my shoes, is it worth going somewhere to get those opportunities you talk about? Or would you say finding a fulfilling life takes precedence?

Thanks.

Gin
February 19, 2011 at 2:24 PM
Scot said…
Gin,
Thanks for reading (it's Scot, by the way--I'm not sure where you're seeing it with two Ts). There isn't a clear and easy answer here. I'd take fulfillment over glory any day. Deep roots sustain plants and people during real and metaphorical droughts. There is some merit to adventuring before one makes roots, but that can easily lead to the modern, drifting lifestyle if indulged too long.
I think you're getting the extra T from the Scott I quoted. I didn't write this piece, though I can say I've met him. Success and blessings to your journey, Gin.
February 19, 2011 at 3:03 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Worth Quoting

There are but three social arrangements which can replace Capitalism: Slavery, Socialism, and Property.                                                                                                 --Hilaire Belloc                                                                                                The Servile State
8 comments
Read more

Good reads of 2009

I haven't made a list like this in a while, and I believe I discussed most of these on the blog as I finished them, but I thought I'd make a handy short-hand list for you and me. These are only in the order I read them and do not indicate any preference. The Open Door * Frederica Mathewes-Green The Children of Hurin * J.R.R. Tolkien The Omnivore's Dilemma * Michael Pollan Agrarianism and the Good Society: Land, Culture, Conflict, and Hope * Eric T. Freyfogle Wonderful Fool * Shusaku Endo Up the Rouge: Paddling Detroit's Hidden River * Joel Thurtell and Patricia Beck Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation * Rodney Clapp (I started the following in December, but I haven't finished them--so far they are excellent: Love and Hate in Jamestown * David A. Price and The Picture of Dorian Gray * Oscar Wilde) Try one of these--let me know.
6 comments
Read more

Independent Women?

      During breakfast today I was reading an excerpt from a play in The New York Times Magazine (I know, I was a day behind and read Saturday's edition yesterday) entitled Rust .  The play, written by a professor at Grand Valley State University, here in Michigan, is a nonfiction drama about the closing of a GM plant in Wyoming, MI.  The play itself sounds interesting and I enjoyed the excerpt, but what caught my eye was something a character said.  The character is "Academic" and plays a historian and guide to the playwright, also a character.  He is explaining the rise of the automobile factories and the effect of the car on American culture.  He says, "Women became independent, they go from producers of food and clothing to consumers of food and clothing."  This was meant as an earnest, praiseworthy point.     I would counter with "How far we've fallen."  To say that a woman (or a man) is independent because she has moved from producer to cons
6 comments
Read more