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Wandering Scribe?
In a posting on 15 July, I talked a bit about homeless bloggers who had used blogging as a means to re-connect with the world.
One of the bloggers I discussed was "Wandering Scribe," an Englishwoman whose account of her life on the street has led to the sort of success story that an American loves. I found her blog particularly painful to read poignant reading because of its gentility, restraint, and quiet despair. You know: stiff upper lip, "hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way," and so forth. But the real appeal of the blog to me was the writing. "Wandering Scribe," whoever she is, is clearly an educated person with a gift for encapsulating an immense span of experience in a few words.
So my first response, when I read this entry in "Grumpy Old Bookman", was to be embarrassed by my American naivety. Grumpy Old Bookman is a literary blog that I have only recently begun reading. Listed by The Guardian as one of England's top ten literary blogs, the blog is authored by publisher Michael Allen. I was interested in the site because Nick has written a novel that has been well received in certain circles and I wanted to know more about the publishing industry in Great Britain; but I continued reading the blog because, frankly, it's good reading even for a non-writer and non-publisher like me.
I hadn't actually taken any note of the entry concerning "Wandering Scribe" because it was posted on June 27, and I haven't started working my way backward yet. I actually found the posting when I was looking at the results of someone else's google search for 'Wandering Scribe." In it, and in an earlier posting, Michael Allen speculates that WS might, just possibly, be a ploy by an aspiring writer looking for a hook with which to reel in a prestigious publisher.
I suppose that the story is something that should make you go "hmmm," if not "huh." So when I read the two postings (not to mention the comments) at Grumpy Old Bookman, I most definitely felt the blush of the gullible mantling my cheek. Maybe it's an American thing. I have noticed that the Brits I know don't share my willingness to believe in miraculous escapes or fairy tale endings.
Case in point: Rumcove. Rumcove ought to have been a writer. Back in the days when I thought I could talk people into doing things for their own good, I used to try to persuade Rumcove to write. He's an amazingly funny writer, I think; and he has a good friend who has achieved literary success in GB by being exactly the same level of funny, mordant, trenchant, and the rest of the things that Brits do so well.
But Rumcove couldn't bring himself to believe that success as a professional writer was possible to him, or at least not sufficiently to make the pain of actually going through the loathsome task of writing and marketing a work. "But why won't you just try?" I used to moan. It took me a long time to realize that he and I were coming at the whole issue of "achieving success" from completely different angles.
While---being the opposite of "sucessful" as the word is defined here---I tend to turn up my nose at what I choose to believe is the American concept of success, I clearly still harbor a vague belief that success is within everyone's grasp, provided the person has some talent, sufficient perseverance/stubbornness, and the will to achieve it.
Rumcove was coming at it from an entirely different angle. He definitely doesn't have the 'everyone can do anything' mind-set; to him, success is an arbitrary and capricious entity that has little to do with qualities such as perseverance and even less with talent. He has a sort of chaos theory of success, involving complicated vectors between various unchartable events and criteria that can't be controlled or predicted. For him, it's not something you can decide to be or work at being. His idea of success resembles the 'happiness' that according to a stupid poster from back in the seventies eludes you if you chase it down, but that 'lights like a butterfly on your shoulder' if you ignore it (and don't inadvertently squash it on arrival, thinking it's a mosquito.)
I don't think he'd be particularly surprised by the Wandering Scribe story, but it occurs to me that he'd probably react very much like the author of The Grumpy Old Bookman: with skepticism. His first thought might well be that it's probably a ruse.
The English, eh? Wonderkillers, every one.
My own reaction was different. It was an American reaction. My first thought when I came across a note at Blogger Buzz about homeless blogger was, "Okay, that'll end up on the Oprah booklist." There is nothing an American likes better than a rags-to-riches struggle against great odds. I didn't so much think, "Hey, good ploy" as "somebody is going to want to exploit this story." So the idea of an authentically homeless writer ending up with a book deal with a major British publisher doesn't really strain my American credulity.
Furthermore, as is the case for many Americans, I feel personally threatened and anxious when I consider the general issue of homelessness. I'm not kidding myself; if I or Nick ever get really sick, the costs of health care could sink us. I don't own my house. I have family, but I'd rather die (I think) than ask them for help. If I can't work, I could end up out on the streets myself. To keep a roof over my head and to maintain even my present fairly modest standard of living, I pretty much need to work right up till I die. To cover health care for my spouse and me, I have to keep working till we're old enough to qualify for health care benefits.
I really believe that a lot of people are in the same position as I am---i.e., the feckless types who went into jobs such as teaching or running small community foundations that do critical work but aren't as well remunerated as others. There are a lot of risks involved in choosing a vocation rather than a profession, and one of them is that you won't ever accumulate enough back-up resources to allow you to stop working. I think a lot of people my age and younger are in the same boat: one that they can keep afloat just fine as long as they are able to keep paddling.
The idea of someone talented, even very talented, ending up sleeping in her car just doesn't strike me as particularly far-fetched. One of my friends is very involved in working with the local homeless (and Florida has a LOT of them; people come here during the winter because of the milder climate). He and some other people operate a van which drives out to little colonies of them that are set up out in the woods.
While a lot of them are deranged or alcoholic or otherwise impaired, a few of them are just like you and me, except for being homeless. As Michael Brown's blog View from the Sidewalk shows, many people who are doing all right can end up out on the street if they get fired or laid off. And a LOT of people have insufficient connections in their community to shore them up if they go down. I have talked to a lot of people in that position.
I just sent $200 to a young friend of mine who is $200 away from getting evicted from her apartment with her two children. She has money due to her, but unfortunately she's involved in a dispute with the other party, and if she gets evicted in the meantime, she'll lose a sizable chunk of the money she put down on her rental house. And it's very hard to find work or a place to live if you're homeless; it's hard to find a place to live if your credit isn't good.
I don't know if it's different in GB. I know that the social welfare net is knitted a good bit tighter there; for example, people don't get bills for $25,000 (after insurance) for their spouse's week in the Intensive Care Unit the way one woman I encountered during my volunteer work did. There seem to be provisions for finding housing for people who lose their jobs and for making sure they have access to resources to see them through.
Maybe it's just very unlikely that someone there would end up having to live in her car and take showers and iron her clothes at hospitals (wouldn't work here) and so forth. It could definitely happen here.
So I don't know: I suppose it could be a ploy. I guess there is a part of me that needs to believe that someone who can tell the story can not only find the way out, but discover the keys to the kingdom, as it were. I want to believe that talent and perseverance can help someone climb back out of Hell; perhaps I just need to tell myself that one should never abandon hope no matter how low the fall.
So I'll be attentively watching Wandering Scribe's progress. In the meantime, I am choosing to believe that she is the genuine article. I have certainly chosen to believe much more improbable things.
In some ways, Michael Brown's story as presented in View from the Sidewalk gives a clearer picture of the slow grind that results when a professional loses his or her livelihood. As I commented in my earlier note, Brown is an engaging writer with solid skills and a feel for the telling anecdote, but his prose doesn't have the poetry of Wandering Scribe's; he's all about the day to day reality of trying to get a foothold back in the world.
Brown is both more fortunate than Wandering Scribe and less fortunate. When the rug got yanked out from under his feet, he had his family and his friends in the community to help him fall all the way through, but he hasn't (yet) received the sort of attention that WS has received.
I suppose I want to believe in the sudden transformation from homeless poet to published writer. Brown's tale is less desperate, but his struggle is ongoing, mundane, painful, a matter of making do, doing without, keeping on. It's the real thing, the raw American story, but that's not the one we want to believe. Even---or especially---in these times, we go on hoping for the rags-to-riches exception to the 'this-is-your-lot-mate-now-live-with-it' sort of story that most of us are living out.
So, Wandering Scribe, wherever you are, and to Michael Brown in Greensboro, here's to you both!
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Homeless Bloggers: What It’s Like.
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