Only inadequate ways of looking

I just blogged about Michael Cunningham's well-written, much-praised, and innovative and creative novel, Specimen Days.

Such a great book...so much effort... such talent...and Powell.com site says: "List Price $25.00 Your Price: $8.95." Amazon.com has it for $11.20 and through amazon marketplace, you can buy it for prices starting at $0.01 plus S&H. Sad, isn't it? Now see what I meant when I wrote this, disillusioned about writing after seeing the fate of good books in a book store.

Though, as Cunningham himself says in an interview with Charlie Rose, one writes for the joy of writing; not because one hopes to be published in the New Yorker (which Michael apparently did after many many rejections from them) or win the Pulitzer Prize.

And here is inspiration for writers from something else he says in the Rose interview about Mrs. Dalloway, shortly after comparing Virginia Woolf's art to Jim Hendrix riffing on his guitar:

"There are no uninteresting or ordinary lives; there are only inadequate ways of looking at them. If looked at with sufficient penetration and artistry, every single person alive is potentially a great figure of literature."