My book group met Sunday night to discuss Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. We noticed that, as in The Goldfinch, the resolution seems to hinge on the narrator becoming a writer and writing a book—the very book we are holding!

Although I loved this in Penumbra, the rest of my writing group did not. Perhaps it makes sense that for me, becoming a writer is a fascinating and repeatable epiphany, since I have that epiphany, remake that commitment, struggle toward that pinnacle, every day.

I was just reading an interview with Junot Diaz in the Rumpus where he talks about Yunior becoming a writer at the end of This is How You Lose Her. I haven’t read that linked collection yet, though I am a fan of Diaz and am studying The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao closely as I build my own next book. So This is How goes on the tower (literal and virtual) on the bedside table.

But the interview made me think about this recurring “becoming a writer” trope. I do not think it’s caused only by the fact that being a writer is crucial to the people authoring these books. I think it’s related to the fact that we are all constantly authoring little bite-sized quips about our own lives, children, politics, travels, astounding views, humorous moments and, rather often it seems, meals and posting these bits for public consumption.

What would be the logical epiphany to this kind of constant but fragmented reporting if not the cohesion of a book? A book becomes the whole, the unification, of all this autobiographical (but clearly also somewhat fictional or at least heavily edited) prose we are shooting out to the world all the time.

What do you think?