“We live in all we seek”: Celebrating Taurus Writers

Posted by Jenny Yang on April 20, 2022

Is the life of a writer so different from that of a bull? Grazing in the abundant green of the mind and of the field, mapping a favorite spot in the shade, fiercely guarding some unknown future? Or perhaps only the lives of Taurus authors feel this way. After all, did Søren Kierkegaard not get his best ideas during his daily walk, often returning home in such a rush that he would write standing at his desk, still adorned with hat and coat and walking stick?

This same spirit can be seen in the young Vladimir Nabokov, writing while chain smoking from bed, and in the earthly Annie Dillard, stalking muskrats in the suburbs. It is alive in the eight-hour dinners of Charles Johnson and August Wilson, the historical revelries of Mikhail Bulgakov, and the honest visions of Jiddu Krishnamurti.

These are the writers who live in their books like they do in their houses, curating words as lush as thick carpet and squirreling away memories like preservatives. As deliberate as Lorraine Hansberry or as extravagant as Alice B. Toklas, they are pulled by the pleasures of distraction and the slowness of stability. They are spun of the same silk as Venus - second in brightness only to the moon.