Uncover the Hidden Truths of Creativity and Suffering in Alex Boyd’s Latest Essay Collection
The deeper moment comes later, in a cathedral. Boyd drops a coin in a box, lights a candle for his mother, and finds himself “picturing my thoughts leaping up, solid as rope to whatever intangible machinery our faith hopefully feels.” The image is striking precisely because it doesn’t resolve. It postulates faith as mechanism, prayer as something nearly physical, hope built into the grammar of the sentence. This connection is not incidental. Later, a local girl happens upon Boyd scribbling in his journal, one that will later be stolen (an early loss that reads, in retrospect, like an initiation, not unlike Hemingway’s lost manuscripts) and she asks if he’s writing a book. It’s the kind of moment made for ars scribendi, that instance where someone else sees the writer in you before you’re certain you are one. Writing becomes an art made of faith in words, faith in self.
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