A Winepress

Good writing seems to come most naturally to a few eccentrics every generation or so. This is likely the case for a multiplicity of reasons. One reason may be that many good writers lived lives just off the beaten trail and lived a few inches off kilter. They did not always tread on paved roads but on thorny and shadowy courses. Their paths contributed to who they would become as writers.

I doubt Fyodor Dostoevsky wished to face a firing squad. I doubt he wished to be sent to Siberia, but Siberia granted him torments that would shape the rest of his career as a writer. Of course, he published a few mediocre books previous to his time in Siberia, but he wrote his greatest and most existentially profound books after his sufferings in Siberia.

Flannery O’Connor suffered from lupus and died when she was only thirty-nine, but her pain seemed to have contributed to what she believed to be her calling, writing. For two hours each morning she sat in front of her typewriter in order to write, but she could not sit there any longer because the pain was too great. She did this in her twenties and thirties. Even on her deathbed she faithfully toiled over “Parker’s Back,” one of her many short stories. She did not choose this suffering or early death, but she persevered and let it shape her and let its intensity bleed into her writing.

These are just a few people who lived rather eccentric lives, lives just off the beaten trail, lives full of various torments, though there are many other torments I have left unmentioned. And it was these torments that shaped them and their writing. It was these torments that contributed to shaping what we now consider treasure, good writing filled to the brim with insight, horror, and wit.

It may be the case that the American Dream, if realized, cultivates poor writers with shallow content. Nobody desires to spend years in Siberia or to be essentially housebound in the prime of life. But such has been the case with some of the greatest writers ever to have lived. The American Dream, on the other hand, seems to quell potential hidden deep within.

Here I say that suffering can be a sort of winepress. This does not mean that all sorts of suffering are in this way a wine press. There are some sorts of suffering that seem absolutely unredeemable, that seem to be consequences of sheer brokenness. But here I note only that not all suffering is undesirable. Some suffering is the road to the highest quality wine. Some suffering is truly a winepress.