a movie...and a Book by Daniel Wagner

Author:Daniel Wagner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307424457
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2009-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

23.

Evening: Jim and his brother, Andy, stand next to a pickup truck in a dusty parking lot at a train station.

“This thing is slowly starting to grow over my head,” said Jim, throwing a stone through the dust. “I mean, in the beginning it all seemed like a good idea. But are we really allowed to manipulate destiny? Do we really understand life well enough to know what’s right and what’s wrong? I wish we wouldn’t have started with the whole thing.”

“Come on!” said Andy. He was holding on to the open car door.

“Well, sometimes you have to let things be the way they are, even if you think you know how to improve them,” said Jim. He was standing next to the rear wheel, looking over the lower sides of the truck toward the setting sun.

“Look,” said Andy, “as I said before: We have to pull it off now. There is no other way. And besides, if you can improve something, why shouldn’t you? Sometimes you have to help yourself. God helps those who help themselves.”

“What worries me is that this improving business is exactly what brought me to this mess with my writing. That starts to worry me. If this exact same thing can mess up someone’s writing, how can I be sure it can’t mess up someone’s life?” Jim said, and he reflected for a moment.

“Come on—it’s hardly the same.”

“Of course it is,” said Jim, kicking the tire, looking at Andy. “If you really analyze it, it’s exactly the same. I always wanted to improve something that didn’t seem good enough. It’s exactly the same if you really feel like thinking about it.” Jim made a serious face toward the descending sun. “I listened to all these agents—that’s the trouble. Do you know what they tell you? Do you want to know what crazy thing they tell you nowadays? They tell you to learn as much as possible about the best sellers of today. To basically make them one step better. They don’t want you to make your own best thing. Just make something everyone already knows, and likes, a little better. It drives you crazy.” He looked at the setting sun for a moment. “That was my whole trouble. I tried to become this perfect writer that can write best sellers like a machine. It’s crazy but it’s true. And if you don’t follow the trend, and try to do your own thing, they look at you as if you’re crazy.”

He paused again, but this time looked to the ground. He stamped his shoe sole into the dust and looked at the pattern it created. Then, looking up again: “There are millions of beautiful things out there, and I’m such a moron and try to make up my own thing, my improved thing .” Jim looked for a beat to Andy, shaking his head slightly. “For example, just yesterday I saw this child with his mother getting off the bus. The mother had him by the hand and she nearly fell all over the sidewalk.

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