John Edgar Wideman Quotes
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The primary thing writing and basketball share is the sense that each time you go out, each time you play or begin a piece, it's a new day. You can score 40 points one game, but the next game, those points don't count. You can win the Nobel Literature Prize, but that doesn't make the next sentence of the next book appear.
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What I wanted to do in talking about basketball in 'Hoop Roots' was retrieve the game as something to participate in, not to watch.
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My aunt Geraldine was the unofficial historian and storyteller. She had all the information about family members and the gossip that came out of the church because we were very much part of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. At family gatherings, the older folk had the floor, had pride of place, and it was their stories I remember.
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That's what writing is: it's imagining that you can make a world. That's what basketball is, too: it's imagining the game as a world.
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A lot of people think the best work I've done was nonfiction - the 'Brothers and Keepers' book. But I think of myself as a fiction writer. And I think, if my work is put in perspective, all the books would be a continual questioning of what's true and what's not true, what's documented and what's not documented.
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Writing 'Hoop Roots' was a substitute or a surrogate activity. I can't play anymore - my body won't cooperate - so in the writing of the book, I was looking to tell a good story about my life and about basketball, but I was also looking to entertain myself the way that I entertain myself when I play.
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Writers transform: they throw a hand grenade into the notion of reality that people carry around in their heads. That's very dangerous, very destructive, but not to do it means you are satisfied with the status quo - and that's a kind of danger as well, because a kind of violence is already being perpetuated.
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Home wasn't so much a house as people, family.
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Real change is always violent, but it may hurt a lot less than what's in place before the violence occurs.
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My father was a veteran. He fought in World War II. He was a patriot. On the other hand, he had no illusions whatsoever about how Uncle Sam had mistreated him and other black soldiers.
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All my life, I've been very aware of my body. I have always used it as a gauge of things. When I look at a person, and I see their body, that's the beginning of knowledge about them. Furthermore, I respect the body.
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For African-American people, I am in the business of inventing a reality that gives a different perspective - on history, on crime, on art, on love.
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What basketball expresses is what jazz expresses. Certain cultural predispositions to make art. All African-American art has a substratum, or baseline, of improvisation and spontaneity. You find that in both basketball and jazz.
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I try to cope by doing what I do, what I find purpose and joy in. For me, that has been writing and playing ball. It doesn't make the pain go away, but what else can I do?
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I feel compelled not to pass on a vision of bleakness, destruction or cynicism. I want to tell the truth as I see it, but I also have to believe that individuals - my kids, your kids, whoever - can do something about it, and I want to show the ways in which they can do something about it.
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I write what I want to write, and then, when it's finished, I use my judgment to see whether or not I think it's intrusive. If it is problematic, then I ask those involved. I won't necessarily do what they say. But I do consult. I haven't had too many problems. Nobody's really gotten angry at me. Nobody, as far as I know, has felt betrayed.
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My father was intelligent and closed-mouthed. He knew a lot more than what he was ever going to tell you.
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My mother was a reader; my father was a reader. Not anything particularly sophisticated. My mother read fat historical or romantic novels; my father liked to read Westerns, Zane Grey, that kind of stuff. Whatever they brought in, I read.
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I call people by their initials when they're good buddies, and that's a kinda street thing, too - 'Here comes JF,' or, 'Here comes KC.' It's fun; it's intimate.
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Stories are told over time, and so they naturally accrue meanings.
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I wish I had time to listen to music more.
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I have written about the women around me. My ancestors, my relatives, lovers. It was a way of trying to make it all make sense.
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Books were my Internet, my TV, my movies all rolled into one.
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I often want things to make definite statements. If I order onions sliced thinly on my hamburger, I don't want them to come out sort of medium. But that doesn't mean it's a reasonable desire, in all things.