Sophie Beck lives in Denver, Colorado. Her work has appeared in the Point, Missouri Review, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her essay “Never Punk” can be found here. It appears in the May/June 2021 issue of the Kenyon Review.
What was your original impetus for writing “Never Punk”?
I had a sudden and unexplained desire to dress punk, just as I described in the essay. I didn’t just stumble across plaid pants at Forever 21; I hunted down plaid pants at Forever 21. They looked spectacularly awful but the real takeaway was a question about my motivation to find them. Why punk? And furthermore, why punk now? I’m pretty pragmatic about clothes—I like sneakers—so this was a flirtation with a fairly big external identity shift. But what struck me was that the shift was actually only external. Punk didn’t feel foreign to me as a way of thinking . . . so I had to do the work to break down that realization, and what I saw was that one of the most defining aspects of my life—reading—was equally pugilistic and full of existential ire.
I’m not afraid to make fun of myself and this Forever 21 reckoning was at once humorous and curious to me, so it felt like a little scrap of good writing material. Meanwhile, I had already started writing down some thoughts about my reading life, in part because I recognize that my reading life is a little unusual. I don’t know very many people who are dedicating themselves to reading from the canon. So, then I had two scraps of very tenuously connected good material—plaid pants and the canon. When I placed them together, they seemed to support one another in an interesting way so I was off and running.
Considering that this essay is so heavily dedicated to reflecting upon the importance of reading and literary analysis, as it has fortified your identity over time–how would you say your relationship to writing fits into this? Do you find that your role as a creator offers just as much depth of experiential significance as your role as a consumer?
Like many other people I know of who write, writing is how I think. I often write notes to myself about what I’m reading and many of those notes find their way into my writing work. So, consuming and creating are woven together much of the time for me. I’m also a shameless scavenger. If I admire the structure of a piece I’ve read, I am wondering how I might imitate it. If I feel arrested by a line or concept, I take notes partly in the hope of folding it into my own work in some way. I have notes in my phone, notes in my notebooks, notes on index cards, notes on index cards about the index cards, notes on Post-its attached to the index cards about the index cards. I dog-ear pages and underline passages. If I am digesting something I have read, I am likely also considering how it fits with something else that I read somewhere else and the best way I know of to unite them is by writing about them together. I am delighted by those moments when seemingly unconnected topics crash into one another in a meaningful way.
My kids often experience me as a booster for my beloved experiences. If they were spoofing me, the dialogue line would be, “Hey guys! Isn’t it super awesome that we’re throwing a Frisbee in this park on this beautiful day?” So, if the lampoon was of my relationship to reading and writing, it would probably run like this, “Hey, guys! I was reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich and that made me go read this critical essay by Isaiah Berlin and that gave me an idea that I’m trying to wedge into an essay I’m writing, which I thought was going to be about one thing but is actually about something else. Anyway, isn’t thinking swell?”
I’m not endorsing this slightly manic-sounding approach to reading or writing, but it is definitely what happens at my desk.
I was really taken by your commentary on the “enormous conversation across the ages” and “current of deeper connection” accomplished through engaging with the offerings of literature–as, even though it is a uniquely solitary and introspective act, reading can ultimately work to make us feel less alone. With this in mind, how did you intend for this personal narrative to speak to larger audiences or engage with more collective consciousness? Is provoking conversation with readers something you specifically strive for in your work, or is it a strictly-reflective project?
That enormous conversation has a tremendous pull, I think. I find real intellectual satisfaction in catching the references artists embed into their work as commentary, homage, criticism, or simply another layer of depth. This is not limited to writers, of course. It’s in music, fine art, street art—well, all art. Filmmakers are the most wonderful concept scavengers in part because the storytelling is thoroughly multivalent—every other art form goes in, plus the kitchen sink of popular culture. The satisfaction goes beyond the intellectual, though, because it is also fundamentally relational—the art is built of responses, and responses to responses. Then as consumers of any art, we are responding as well.
When you ask if I strive to provoke conversation with readers, I’m aware that the question is messy for me. I’m somewhat reserved and contained in person and definitely mortified if I offend or wound anyone. So, the idea of provoking anyone in any way gives me figurative hives. But I do think of the essays I write as a contract with a reader. I owe the reader the most interesting ideas I can muster in the most artful and precise arrangement I can muster. I owe something worth responding to and taking forward. That may indeed be provocation, but I think of it as a respectful connection.
Which non-writing-related aspect of your life most influences your writing?
In terms of content, parenthood heavily influences my writing. In terms of structure, music does.
Sometimes my kids’ experiences find their way into an essay, as when my oldest daughter sewed through her finger with the sewing machine. Sometimes motherhood does, with all of its responsibility and wonder. And sometimes my kids powerfully remind me of my own worldview at their ages, triggering a time warp. I am not usually interested in writing “about” motherhood or kids, but they are important influences on my perspective.
I wish I had a music background because I am intrigued by the structures of the form, particularly in hip-hop. Musically, hip-hop so often includes clever layering and use of samples. It can pit two or more very distinct melodic lines against one another, or use an abrupt transition between melodies wherein the opening gives way to an unexpected core structure for the majority of the song. Meanwhile, hip-hop lyrics often integrate quick humor, wry social commentary, creative blustering hyperbole, and clever slant rhyme schemes. In capable hands, it is a highly literary branch of music.
I find many forms of music inspiring but I particularly strive to emulate hip-hop’s achievements—sampling and referencing, successful hard transitions, moments of humor, echoes between passages. If I pull off any of these things in an essay, I feel as if something worked.
What project(s) are you working on now, or next?
I have thought of myself as an essayist for a long time and my entire writing focus was on the research and drafting of short nonfiction. A couple of years ago, I had three different essays extensively drafted and not one of them would gel. They each had a problem. I could see the problem but I could not see the solution. I toggled between them, raged at them, edited and reordered and fussed over them. No solutions. I completely stopped enjoying the work. So, I stopped writing essays. I started writing something I had no business writing—a young adult novel. I’m not adept at fiction, I don’t know nearly enough about the YA genre, and I’ve never successfully written something book-length. I had absolutely no expectation of success; I simply had a fun concept in mind and I like teenagers. The YA novel renewed my relationship to writing in no small part because I could accept that I didn’t know what I was doing. Sometimes I have to remember to loosen my grip. And in the very Zen tradition of “release the goal to achieve the goal,” once I stopped pummeling my essays day in and day out, I started to see the glimmer of solutions for them.