Your tiny eyes...

Talked to a friend of mine today and asked accusingly, "Are you reading my blog?"
"Oh, yes," he said, without any hesitation.
"Really?" I asked, amazed and a little disappointed. I'd been looking forward to a good chewy argument about What Old Friends Are Owed After They Keyboard Their Fingers Skinny.
"Sure am," he went on placidly, "and ______ was in town. I gave him your blogspot address too."
"Wow," I said, unable to think of anything else. It's one thing to imagine people reading your stuff, and another thing altogether when you discover people actually are. Weirder still to meet strangers who have been reading your stuff for a good long while.

In Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger has a long dialog that's supposed to represent the spiritual awakening of Franny, an aspiring actress who's been sacked out at home with a nervous breakdown. Zooey describes her audience as being a dopey old fat lady, collapsed on the porch in the middle of a sticky summer, whose husband has cancer. Franny, as Zooey tells it, is supposed to do it for the fat lady and Zooey suddenly gets it: all art is aimed piggy humanity. She's a pig too. We are all One etc.

Even as a Salinger fan from way back, I found this audience depiction deeply offensive. At the time, I was in high school writing grim short stories about French casinos,step-fathers, fast little cars and the inevitable fatal wreck, all cribbed from Bonjour Tristesse, considered hot stuff back in the day. Weekly, I sent my grubby efforts off to The Paris Review, which zinged them right back. Nonetheless, even then, I knew I was writing for someone and it wasn't for any dim-bulb old lady.

My ideas about my readers haven't changed much since then. Unsurprisingly, I picture them as being a lot like me as a reader, as people with an itch, people who are looking for something and recognize it when they find it...the aha moment when you go, Yessss. That's how it is. Whatever it may be.

So, you out there. Yes, you. Even though this is a blog about the very internal process of being a writer, I'm still aiming this at you: your curiosity, your loneliness, your weirdness. Whatever itch you have, I hope I can scratch it from time to time. I hope I scratch it right.