A Story
About the Work
—
Binh Do
IN THE YEAR THAT L PASSED, everything in my life began to change, but it wasn’t because she passed that everything in my life changed. I didn’t know her.
Back then, I was a student Working in the creative writing department of our college, in the north of California, where she had been a professor for much longer than I had been alive. At the age of eighty-seven, L was highly celebrated—fellowships from Lannan and the Rosenbergs, Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards, even whispers that she might win the Nobel Prize in Literature—and considered one of the finest writers Working in poetry in the twenty-first century. I knew none of this upon meeting her, however. I didn’t know anything. Instead, I asked her if she was some kind of professor or something. She nodded, with a smile, and let out a breath from her nose before disappearing into her tiny office. Something like that.
In lecture halls and seminar rooms, she taught many of the greats—T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats—to graduate students while I, in my tiny office, filed away the papers, sharpened and stocked the pencils, ran the letter opener under the narrow slits of envelopes. In the rare occasion when she would be in her tiny office, right beside mine, I could hear, through the crevices of our doors slightly ajar, the sounds of her writing something in pencil, erasing that something just as often. Sometimes, she would ask something of me. Get me this and that book out of the library stacks. How about you go send this to a good friend of mine through the mail. A glass of water, please.
For the year that I worked in the creative writing department, we both went about our days in that subtle, continuous rhythm of the Work. In whatever time I could steal in between answering emails on the computer or preparing rooms for readings, I wrote my short stories that no one would ever see and no magazine in America would ever care to publish—even tried my hand at poetry—stole the massive volume of L’s collected Work from the bookshelf in our office and riffled through the poems slowly, but surely, only to realize that there was no chance at all that I could ever be a poet—turned some fiction in, instead, anyhow, to The Threepenny Review and The Paris Review, to no avail, of course—and wondered when I would ever, if at any time at all, arrive at my dream of becoming a writer of some sort. I would wonder, too, what L was up to in what would end up being her last days.
Early in my knowing her—taking knowing very lightly, almost meaninglessly—she asked me something. What are you doing with your life. I shook my head and smiled halfway, not knowing what to say to her. I suppose I want to be a writer. What do you write. I write short stories. Ah, difficult. Yes. There’s a very complicated architecture about those things. Yes, very. Good luck to you in that endeavor. Thank you. Mhm. Well, do you have any advice for that? What, writing a short story. Well, just being a writer in general. Oh—no. Ah, I see. Sorry. She then disappeared into her tiny office again, and I, too, to mine, to write—and write—and write.
L passed at the turn of the fall when just about everything got a little cooler but not quite cold—California. It was sudden, on a Tuesday, hardly in the morning. Those close to her said that she had gone quietly, and in her sleep. She had not been Working on anything.
Normally, the days of mine went from then on. I graduated from college. I published in a magazines that people really, actually read. I went to writing conferences in the American South and scored residencies in New England. I sold a book, and then many more, every few years. I did readings, won prizes, gave talks, taught as a visiting faculty at several graduate programs, judged contests with thirty-dollar fees. I did the Work—and did the Work—and did the Work. Was that really all there was to it, the Work? Was I doing it? Was that what it meant to be a writer? Was I actually one? Was that the road upon which L had taken her whole life, until her death? Many, many times, I wished I could do so little as just ask her a question. •
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Binh Do is a writer of both Northern and Southern Vietnamese descent.
Back then, I was a student Working in the creative writing department of our college, in the north of California, where she had been a professor for much longer than I had been alive. At the age of eighty-seven, L was highly celebrated—fellowships from Lannan and the Rosenbergs, Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards, even whispers that she might win the Nobel Prize in Literature—and considered one of the finest writers Working in poetry in the twenty-first century. I knew none of this upon meeting her, however. I didn’t know anything. Instead, I asked her if she was some kind of professor or something. She nodded, with a smile, and let out a breath from her nose before disappearing into her tiny office. Something like that.
In lecture halls and seminar rooms, she taught many of the greats—T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats—to graduate students while I, in my tiny office, filed away the papers, sharpened and stocked the pencils, ran the letter opener under the narrow slits of envelopes. In the rare occasion when she would be in her tiny office, right beside mine, I could hear, through the crevices of our doors slightly ajar, the sounds of her writing something in pencil, erasing that something just as often. Sometimes, she would ask something of me. Get me this and that book out of the library stacks. How about you go send this to a good friend of mine through the mail. A glass of water, please.
For the year that I worked in the creative writing department, we both went about our days in that subtle, continuous rhythm of the Work. In whatever time I could steal in between answering emails on the computer or preparing rooms for readings, I wrote my short stories that no one would ever see and no magazine in America would ever care to publish—even tried my hand at poetry—stole the massive volume of L’s collected Work from the bookshelf in our office and riffled through the poems slowly, but surely, only to realize that there was no chance at all that I could ever be a poet—turned some fiction in, instead, anyhow, to The Threepenny Review and The Paris Review, to no avail, of course—and wondered when I would ever, if at any time at all, arrive at my dream of becoming a writer of some sort. I would wonder, too, what L was up to in what would end up being her last days.
Early in my knowing her—taking knowing very lightly, almost meaninglessly—she asked me something. What are you doing with your life. I shook my head and smiled halfway, not knowing what to say to her. I suppose I want to be a writer. What do you write. I write short stories. Ah, difficult. Yes. There’s a very complicated architecture about those things. Yes, very. Good luck to you in that endeavor. Thank you. Mhm. Well, do you have any advice for that? What, writing a short story. Well, just being a writer in general. Oh—no. Ah, I see. Sorry. She then disappeared into her tiny office again, and I, too, to mine, to write—and write—and write.
L passed at the turn of the fall when just about everything got a little cooler but not quite cold—California. It was sudden, on a Tuesday, hardly in the morning. Those close to her said that she had gone quietly, and in her sleep. She had not been Working on anything.
Normally, the days of mine went from then on. I graduated from college. I published in a magazines that people really, actually read. I went to writing conferences in the American South and scored residencies in New England. I sold a book, and then many more, every few years. I did readings, won prizes, gave talks, taught as a visiting faculty at several graduate programs, judged contests with thirty-dollar fees. I did the Work—and did the Work—and did the Work. Was that really all there was to it, the Work? Was I doing it? Was that what it meant to be a writer? Was I actually one? Was that the road upon which L had taken her whole life, until her death? Many, many times, I wished I could do so little as just ask her a question. •
Binh Do is a writer of both Northern and Southern Vietnamese descent.