David Wolman: Carroll, Clinton, Clemens… Lefties All

I didn’t have to read too far into A Left-Hand Turn Around the World before I thought it might be a good idea to invite David Wolman to tell Beatrice readers about his favorite lefty writers. It was just so much fun to skip around and read about Wolman’s exploits hanging out with Portland Satanists and Japanese golfers, all in order to understand the mysteries of left-handedness. I’m not always a big fan of the “travelogue in support of quirky cultural theses” genre, but Wolman knnows how to be entertaining without constantly making the people he writes about the butt of his jokes. So I asked, he agreed to take some time out of his book tour, and, well, here he is…

Ah, to write with the left. It was Oscar Wilde (we presume) who coined that by-now-clichéd-among-southpaws line: “If the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handed people are in their right minds.” Wilde, it appears, was not left-handed, but Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Bill Clinton, and other famous names to put pen to page did so from the port side.

To a certain degree, any recap of favorite left-handed authors—including the shorty I plan to serve up three paragraphs from now—is fatally flawed from the get-go. For starters, a natural preference for the left hand has been perceived with such negative freight for so much of human history and across cultures, that scores of writers, famous and anonymous alike, may have been, in the neurological sense, left-handed. But as children these writers-to-be, thanks to the wisdom and vision of the adult population, were swiftly and comprehensively forced to switch to right-handed writing, eating, and violin-playing. How is anyone to know, then, with absolute certainty, that Shakespeare was not a southpaw?

By that same token, though, shortlists of famous lefties, usually found online or on the tear-away pages of cheesy desktop calendars, list people as left-handed when in fact some of them may have been or still are mixed-handed, meaning that hand preference isn’t solidly to the left or right, but mixed, depending on the task at hand. Einstein is probably a good candidate for mixed-handedness, as is golf pro “Lefty” Phil Mickelson.

The lefty or righty nature of particular individuals has also been fumbled on occasion because of the accidental reversals of old photographs. The most distinguished, or perhaps I should say infamous example of this, is Billy the Kid, whose legend as a lefty sharpshooter is based on a famous photograph that, after later scrutiny, revealed that it was reversed, making Billy right-handed. (It’s doubtful, however, anyone will bother to retroactively change the title of the old Paul Newman film, The Left-Handed Gun.)

Disclaimers aside, Mark Twain is said to have been left-handed and if that’s true, he would be my favorite left-handed writer. James Baldwin, Marshall McLuhan, and H.G Wells are three more renowned southpaw scribes, at least according to this website, for the accuracy or inaccuracy of which, despite its GGR (Great Google Ranking), I take no responsibility.

Lewis Carroll is another favorite, due much in part to the theme of altered perspective that is so integral to his writing. It would not be outrageous to suggest that being left-handed even influenced his thinking now and again, providing the inspiration, or at least the seed of inspiration for the world beyond the looking glass. (Master of altered perception, M.C Escher, and that titan of creative genius, Leonardo da Vinci, were also left-handed, but I should really keep this discussion focused on authors.)

Horror novelist Bet Bowen, Peter Benchley, Richard Condon, Jean Genet, Helen Hooven Santmyer, and Viktoria Stefanov are all noted southpaw writers as well, but I haven’t read any of their stuff. Personally, Bill Clinton is another top-ranking left-handed writer, although less so for the book (I only skimmed it) and more so because of the utterly fascinating life the guy has lived.

All of which leaves space for one more member of the Southpaw authors all-star team. So as not to be flagrantly self-promotional, I will bypass nominating myself and, nearly as shamelessly, cast my vote for the wonderful, magnificent, delightful, and certainly creative-because-she’s-left-handed, Oprah Winfrey! Oprah: Are you out there? Can you hear me? Did the occasional backward feeling that comes from being left-handed inspire the whole Harpo thing? If no, do you think you could just pretend like it did when I appear on your show to discuss my book? Hello, Oprah?

14 November 2005 | guest authors |