Uncover the Hidden Truths of Creativity and Suffering in Alex Boyd’s Latest Essay Collection
The Writing section of Take This for the Pain includes “Shadows and Footsteps,” an essay about mentorship that distills much of Boyd’s philosophy into a single sentence: “Maybe the only important lesson for younger writers, whether they learn it from their elders or not, is that to write good books you must read good books, and that the humble improve.”
The World section moves furthest from the ars scribendi framework, turning outward toward lived experience rather than the practice of writing itself, but its emotional core is an essay about Boyd in his twenties, taking his first international trip to Ireland. Here we see his writing sensibility in the process of being formed, an approach that animates the other sections of the book. Boyd has signaled from the book’s outset that he believes in “quiet embers lying around to allow something inspired” and in his Ireland essay, we see a young writer learning in search of those embers. From within the remains of Trim Castle, Boyd observes “something curious about standing inside roofless, partial walls that once housed people, a shifting place with one foot in the past and one in the present — looking at the sky, looking down at part of a wall.” It’s a quiet reckoning, but also a lesson in the kind of dual attention that a writing life requires.
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