The Weekly Atticus (03/02/2019)

Be Like the Mortals | The Weekly Atticus

March 02, 2019

A recap of the week at Atticus Review, along with some extras.

My son asked me the other day, “What is ambition?” I paused and pondered aloud about having a strong desire to reach a goal, stretching, wanting more from life. I anticipated an intimate parent-child conversation about his future goals and who he wanted to be. “Thanks,” he said, walking away.  But I touched his arm and said, “Wait! Why did you ask?” He held out a worksheet, a character profile for English class that invited him to create his own mythological demigod. One of the blanks to fill in, along with details like name, city of birth, and physical description, was “Ambition:_______.”My son is fortunately nowhere near the age when people start fretting that they haven’t done enough with their lives. He doesn’t want to think about ambition; he just wants to finish his homework and pass his classes so he won’t be grounded from Fortnite. My college honors students have ambition in excess as they strive to maintain a 4.0, win the next scholarship, gain entry to the perfect graduate school. But they don’t have enough life behind them to have experienced the deeper currents of dissatisfaction and disappointment that run through the minds of the middle-aged. When our class read Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, they were mostly bewildered at these characters dwelling on events thirty years in the past or channeling their thwarted ambition into obsessing over the perfect party, the perfect birthday cake. Both books explore the crucial human question of what, in this mortal life, is enough? As a writer, I’m always asking myself this, consciously or unconsciously. Have I written enough today? Have I published enough? Is this essay good enough? And it seems the answer is often no, it’s not enough, it’s never enough. I hear this from writers more successful than I, and even Richard, the poet in The Hours who’s just won a prestigious literary prize, concludes, “I’ve failed.”Sometimes not enough spurs us to do more and better in our art, but often it only distracts us from what is already beautiful and good and perfect right in the moment. Have you already forgotten how it felt to find the right word to end your poem? How the sun through the window warmed your arms as you typed? How you have fingers still dextrous and strong enough to press the keys? The taste of that first, fresh sip of coffee? The surge in your spirit when that one stranger sends an email to tell you how much your words meant? What are you missing while you worry the words aren’t enough?The characters in the novels by Woolf and Cunningham struggle as we all do, sometimes counting the hours in the day as something to get through on the way to a goal (even when that goal is simply to survive another day) and sometimes living those hours as a series of moments that can be full and rich and perfect, if fleeting. To borrow the phrase from Mrs. Dalloway, I want as a writer and a person more of those “exquisite moments” in how I experience my life. While writing this, I followed up with my son, realizing I’d neglected to ask about the school assignment and that demigod he’d created from his imagination. “So your demigod…what was his ambition?” I asked. “Her ambition,” he smugly corrected his feminist mom, “is that she wants to be like the mortals…to fit in with her friends. They’re just normal people enjoying their normal lives. And that’s what she wants too.” I stood there in quiet awe as his words resonated. I couldn’t have made up something that fitting and true. “Thanks,” I said. “You just gave me my perfect moment.” He shook his head, his expression reminding me that he is almost thirteen years old with many moments and hours and years left to imagine that the concerns of middle-aged adults are boring and weird and have nothing to do with him.Cunningham’s Clarissa looks at the fresh flowers her long-time partner has brought her and despite her many anxieties and doubts, concludes: It is enough. At this moment, it is enough. I hope you can too.Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here, in this moment.Chauna CraigNonfiction Editor

ATTICUS NEWS

March 17th is St. Patrick's Day, but it's also the deadline for our Poetry Contest.We hope this will inspire you.SUBMIT THIS WEEKEND!

Our Print Annual, Volume 2 is off to the printer and now available for preorder!Use code PREORDER2 at checkout for 25% discount.GET YOUR COPY!

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FERAL TOWN by Adam Gustavson

BOOK REVIEW: LOVES, LEARNING, AND LOSSA Review of NOT ELEGY, BUT EROS by Nausheen Eusuffrom NYQuarterly and Bengal Lights Review by Maximilian Heinegg"...stands comfortably at these intersections of the living in conversation with the dead, of her loves and her learning, and of shadows in the old discussion of dark and light."READ ON

FICTION: EXIT MUSICby Nicholas Grider"Someone yelled in my direction from the disco night that you could be both terrified you were going to die and claustrophobic at the same time, which was a good point."READ ON

POETRY: TRACE ELEMENTSby Chera Hammons"Here is a person in a cage of bones.Here are bones wrapped in spools of flesh.Here is a life that is made of waterbut is not a part of the sky or the sea."READ ON

CNF: DOMESTIC CONJECTURE #309, #290, #282, #263 and #208by Anne RubinNEW from our "Superunknown: Stories About Songs" series"At dinner tonight, someone will refer to Paul Simon’s 1986 album Graceland as 'colonial trash.' They look right at you, waiting."READ ON

FILM: WOMEN TAKE THE WRITERS' ROOM, AND IT SHOWSA review of Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler, and Leslye Headland’s RUSSIAN DOLLReview by Allyson Larcom "...with the current amount of critical and public acclaim, Netflix would be hard pressed to pass on another season or two of Russian Doll, if the creative team is offering."READ ON

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