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Jumping in With Both Feet

Posted Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2004, at 12:03 PM ET

Daniel Menaker is executive editor in chief of the Random House Publishing Group and the author of two short-story collections and a novel.

Yesterday I talked about trying to iron out wrinkles in my plan to work here this week in Columbus, Ohio, to get out the vote and to continue this diary for Slate. The wrinkles remain, however, and so in order to do what I primarily came out here to do, which is to try to live up to my family's legacy of political activism and involvement, of which I grow prouder and prouder as the years go by, misguided though their efforts sometimes were, I won't be writing about my volunteering after all. I'll Nike-ly just do it—for which there is something to be said, reducing, as just doing it generally does, self-consciousness, multiple personalities, irony, and the quinsy of the observer who knows he is going to report the observations he is observing without the observed necessarily being aware of that intention. This is the curse of the writer—who usually, almost reflexively, has one foot in his life and the other standing outside it. If feet had eyes, the outside foot would always be keeping one of them on the inside foot, to see what dance it was doing, who is stepping on it, who is massaging it, and whether, as before marriage, it's beginning to get cold. It's not a wholehearted—that is, two-footed—situation.

In a recent Times Literary Supplement, there's a piece by the British philosopher Galen Strawson about the differences between those who see their lives as a story and those who don't. He says that contrary to the propagandistic and sometimes bullying tactics of the former, who often claim that everyone does or at least should view his or her life as a continuing narrative, many—including himself—don't. The writer generally does, naturally, and we tend to fear experiences that knock us out of our narratives, that require us simply to be and to do. But nearly every time we are required to put both feet in the circle and dance the kazatzky of life, we end up being exhilarated, grateful, and renewed.

(One thing bothers me, though, being of the narrative bent: In saying that his life's story is not a story, Mr. Strawson seems to be telling his life's story after all.)

So tomorrow, to the phone banks for me, an undivided self—to the canvassing, stamping, and labeling. And please, please, do vote. And have a safe and blessed day and week, as the ends of the answering-machine recorded messages in the heartland so often say.

diary
entries
123

Jumping in With Both Feet

Posted Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2004, at 12:03 PM ET
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Daniel Menaker is executive editor in chief of the Random House Publishing Group and the author of two short-story collections and a novel.
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