Writers are generalists. They look at life, and its problems, not as the professional specifically dealing with a set of human issues, health, law, money, religion, shelter, etc., in an encompassing fashion, often based on their own experiences.

A writer may even create problems, problems related to the basic issues of existence, for himself in order to sound them out in a way that satisfies him and his 'what ifs.' So we see Tolstoy address this issue here, another one here, and then finally other ones here, in the meantime living life. Maybe a writer can be happier being poor in order to understand some facets of life from a more broad and general way. The mechanism is an unconscious one for him, an instinct to touch a base. He stands a chance of going through some fairly scary, unsettling and uncertain times in order to meet his obligation to himself and his craft. Just as Abraham goes through, heroically enough.

We come this way in order to illuminate life for our fellow beings. This is what the writer does.


This is the glory of early Hemingway stories and the pithy reflections of his continued works, the learning-how-to-live, the what to cook, who to trust, what to watch, all of them interesting choices that seem to happen of their own accord, or at least, one way or another. Kerouac too, Melville, and on back to the poets who teach us how to think.

At the end of a book, Kerouac says, 'a new life for me.' And indeed, with a new book comes a new life.

We find the same thing in Irish music, a willing to teach about life that is key to its formula. And of course, the form can be abused, as can happen in pop music, teaching a lower common denominator, an aggression, a crassness. It's the same as what separates good wine from bad wine: are the grapes ripe, are the tannins within (representing the completion of a growing season) ripe, or have the grapes been mishandled, combined with other batches, unripe ones, overripe ones thrown in haphazardly to the mix. It can be fine music, or salsa, or it can be otherwise. It's all in the picking and the care with the fruit of life. (Maybe such a thing could be considered when creating an educational system, high and low, that the mind must gravitate to some basic common wisdom about living, often rendered in plain folk terms. Or do we not acknowledge that art and letters and music are the central attempt to figure out some way or meaning in life when we pick up a book or a poem?)

Hemingway has it in the In Our Time collection. He, Nick, we presume, turns to Rinaldi, who is also wounded, presumably in some form of battle of the First World War, to remark to him that the two of them 'have found a separate peace.' Rinaldi, apparently, is a 'disappointing audience.' Doesn't that say it all, and not without optimism and hope. Maturity, we might call it.



Hemingway went off to follow the Spanish Civil War, looking for a new set of problems and troubles to exert his creativity over. Lincoln did the same, finding a big troublesome issue to match his creativity within.