The longer I write, the less I feel I know about writing. That's supposed to be comforting, yet every time I go through this process of doubt, it's always painful. With each new project I work on, I've tried to learn from what I did the time before. I wish it were only that easy. Ionce heard that you have to learn how to write from scratch with every new book. Each project has its own lessons to master, lessons that don't carry over to the next one you'll tackle. So far, that's been my experience.
I was lucky that when I wrote Stalin's Head, I had no idea of what I was doing. I simply wrote stories that meant something to me, and after I had ten good ones, roped them together into a collection, and sent them to an agent. I didn't realize how much heavy lifting would go into revising them until they were ready for publication, but I've always seen myself as the workhouse type of writer, anyway. I like having work to do, my desk full of projects to complete. Work doesn't scare me; it gives me a reassuring sense of purpose.
With my second book, Faith for Beginners, I started out from the premise that since so many of the stories in Stalin's Head were about sexuality, Judaism, and politics, I ought to choose a subject that combined all three of those elements: the gay community of Israel. Conveniently, no one had dealt much with Israeli gays in fiction. So I plunked down money for a plane ticket, arranged to stay with friends, and left. The only problem was that when I got to Israel, the gay community there didn't suggest a story to me. Great, I thought, all this time and money wasted. And anyway, who did I think I was calling myself a writer when (at that time) I hadn't even sold one book yet? I spent my last few days in Israel just being a tourist. It turned out those final few days resulted in the inspiration for my novel.
When I decided to write about Berlin for the novel I'm currently working on, I thought, okay, I'll learn from my past mistakes. I won't try to control the subject of my research so much. I'll just travel to Berlin, try to see and do as much as I possibly can, and wait for a story to emerge. Which is exactly what happened. And in the fall of 2003, while I was waiting for Faith for Beginners to be considered for publication, I began writing out a first draft for my Berlin novel. It's all a matter of putting in the work, I thought. You write, revise, write, revise, show it to people who tell you what's gone wrong, which you fix, show it a few more people who help you tweak the rest, which you do, and then it's reasonably okay and you're done.
The process of writing this book, however, hasn't turned out quite so easy. I was a little naive about how distracting the process of publication can be. First, I had to put the Berlin novel aside to do revisions on Faith for Beginners in the winter of 2003. Then when Stalin's Head came out, I went slightly insane, which is pretty good if you consider that most writers need to undergo a combination of psychiatric drugs and electroshock therapy when they make their debuts. Suddenly, when I typed in my name in Google, I got hundreds of hits, with people I didn't know saying things about me in reviews or on blogs. (And this is for a first collection of literary short fiction. I can only imagine what the process must have been like for higher profile writers.) I also had to do several readings and travel to promote the book (on my own dime), while holding down my regular job, all of which took some valuable time away from Berlin.
It wasn't until the summer after Stalin came out, I finally had some quality time to work on the new novel, but then in the fall, I began teaching creative writing classes at night in addition to my day job, which I enjoyed, but again consumed a good deal of thought and time. My Berlin novel was like a resentful neglected cat mewing at me from the corner of my desk for attention, which I gave when I could, but not as much as it needed.
Finally, this summer I've had a chance to really sit and face down this novel after a crazy two years, in which I've changed personally and professionally. What was in front of me, however, reflected an earlier version of myself. I liked the writing and some of the characters, but the ideas behind them didn't excite me anymore. The purpose of the book felt out of date. The books I've read since that writing that first draft, especially Sholem Asch's Three Cities, Michel Houellebecq's Platform, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, and Graham Greene's novels, have tempted me to seek a larger vision from fiction, something with greater scope and daring, a goal that this current draft couldn't sustain.
Furthermore, the experiences of working on Stalin's Head and Faith as well as of teaching creative writing have challenged what I thought I knew for sure about literature. I don't want to simply repeat what I've done in the past. I have to grow and feel stimulated. Working on this new project, I keep feeling lost, unsure of what I'm writing about. It's become drudgery.
So I'm declaring my independence. I've come to the painful yet liberating conclusion that it's time to put two years of work aside and start over from page one. That doesn't mean the work I've put in is fruitless garbage. I suspect a lot of it will prove useful in the new book about Berlin I plan to write. But I've got to forge ahead unencumbered by the past. I know how difficult it is when you're editing to cut out a scene or even a sentence you've worked hard on. But in writing, hard work doesn't mean you've done your job as a writer. And correcting past mistakes or repeating past successes won't work either. You simply have to face the darkness again and again, and hope that inspiration will come once more.
Monday, July 11, 2005
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
A Bias Worth Having
Whenever a piece of writing gets criticized, an easy way to take comfort is to accuse the reader in question of having such a system, of being "biased." But then aren't all readers biased in some way? Do we really want an unbiased reader? After all, there's no one so objective as a robot, except for a corpse. The question isn't of bias, but whether the bias of a given reader is worth having.
One bias I have as a reader is an overly-sensitive bullshit meter. If a writer goes to great pains to impress with grandiose rhetoric, my internal radar goes off. "Did you think of that phrase yourself or are you just parroting some received wisdom because you think it makes you look smart?" "Are you using those words because you like the sound of them even though you haven't thought about what they mean?" "Did you choose those words because you observed something in life that made you think of them, or because you just couldn't think of anything better?" If forced to decide between prose that's too modest or too overblown and purple, I'll take modesty any day. The decision isn't simply a matter of taste like a preference for chocolate or vanilla. These choices reflect a larger vision of the purpose of writing.
Consider the following two passages by Saul Bellow:
#1 "If they didn't breathe the most difficult air of effort and nobility, then she wished for them the commonplace death in the gas cloud of settled existence, office bondage, quiet, store-festering, unrecognized despair of marriage without hope, or the commonness of resentment that grows unknown boils in one's heart or bulbs of snarling flowers."
#2 "It came into his head that he was like a man in a mine who could smell smoke and feel heat but never see the flames. And then the cramp and the enigmatic opportunity ended together. His legs quivered as he worked his feet back and forth on the carpet. He walked over to the window and he heard the loud crack of the wind. It was pumping the trees in the small wedge of the park six stories below, tearing at the wires on rooftops, fanning the smoke out under the clouds, scattering it like soot on paraffin."#1 is from The Adventures of Augie March, a novel generally held to be superior to the source of #2, a novel called The Victim. Each quote is a good example of why critics prefer #1 to #2 and why I think just the opposite.
Various writers and critics have looked at The Victim and nodded approvingly. They applaud the small, correct word choices that carefully evoke the object being described. They find the quality of the prose solid, yet uninspired, maybe even a bit pinched, passionless.
But when Augie March comes along, these same readers get really excited. Now there we have narrative exuberance, excitement, whirling turns of phrase with surprises like "snarling flowers," grand sociological pronouncements like "the gas cloud of settled existence," the chance to sneer at bourgeois values, adventure, risk-taking. What a lark! What a plunge! Almost as fun as a ride at Coney Island!
I understand this point of view. Maybe it is the correct one to have. But I can't agree with it. Take another look at the language in the quote from Augie March. Notice how vague and inflated it is: "difficult air of effort and nobility" "commonplace death" "settled existence" "unrecognized despair of marriage without hope" "the commonness of resentment." (Notice too the sloppy repetition of "common.") The only tangible objects in this litany are the boils and "snarling flowers," though I'm not sure why a flower would ever snarl or why it should. I suppose it sounds catchy and makes for a cute metaphor about seemingly nice things that are actually mean and angry. But couldn't Bellow have done a bit more homework here and found an actual object in life that has these qualities, like the lovely but poisonous rhododendron, which can be found in so many suburban lawns?
More importantly, what do these vague language choices really refer to? They're meant to satirize the stultifying effects of puritanical American suburban middle-class values, like putting the nose to the grindstone in some nine to five job while neglecting to feed the soul. The problem is that the grandiose rhetoric Bellow uses to malign these values is the same kind of empty discourse that's too often used to glorify them, for example in a politician's stump speech. Bellow's passage could very readily be re-written as follows:
"the commonplace life in the airy cloud of settled existence, the liberation of work, quiet, store-blossoming, unrecognized joy of marriage without disruption, or the commonness of contentment that bubbles up unknown in one's heart or in bulbs of laughing flowers."
The passage from The Victim, however, demands to be read as written because of its wondrous specificity. The concrete language dramatically re-enacts the same kind of despair of modern life that's only described in Augie March. The passage begins with a far more intriguing metaphor than "snarling flowers," because a man in a mine who smells smoke but doesn't see fire makes literal as well as metaphorical sense. It has a meaning that can be worked out and isn't just there to startle us with its sound or vague poetry. As the passage goes on, Bellow makes us feel the physical effects of the narrator's despair. We experience the emotional turbulence directly through the pain in his body and then indirectly, through the raging weather outside his window which almost seems to have been affected by his mood. After we feel the emotion, we gradually realize its significance, unconsciously at first, and then after some thought, consciously. To me, that's a miracle far greater than simply spelling out your point to readers like a priest preaching his Sunday sermon to an amen corner in church.
In a way, my preference for earned effects instead of purple prose makes me a bit homespun, guilty of the same middle class crimes Bellow indicts in Augie March. I want language to do its job instead of meandering aimlessly to Mexico on a road trip. But the alternative strikes me as too easy, and more than a bit fake. It's like watching a blindfolded cowboy wildly swinging a lasso in a rodeo, in hopes of roping a steer. If he's successful, good for him. But I don't feel like waiting around for it to happen. And I certainly wouldn't advocate his method as a model for young cowboys in training to emulate.
One bias I have as a reader is an overly-sensitive bullshit meter. If a writer goes to great pains to impress with grandiose rhetoric, my internal radar goes off. "Did you think of that phrase yourself or are you just parroting some received wisdom because you think it makes you look smart?" "Are you using those words because you like the sound of them even though you haven't thought about what they mean?" "Did you choose those words because you observed something in life that made you think of them, or because you just couldn't think of anything better?" If forced to decide between prose that's too modest or too overblown and purple, I'll take modesty any day. The decision isn't simply a matter of taste like a preference for chocolate or vanilla. These choices reflect a larger vision of the purpose of writing.
Consider the following two passages by Saul Bellow:
#1 "If they didn't breathe the most difficult air of effort and nobility, then she wished for them the commonplace death in the gas cloud of settled existence, office bondage, quiet, store-festering, unrecognized despair of marriage without hope, or the commonness of resentment that grows unknown boils in one's heart or bulbs of snarling flowers."
#2 "It came into his head that he was like a man in a mine who could smell smoke and feel heat but never see the flames. And then the cramp and the enigmatic opportunity ended together. His legs quivered as he worked his feet back and forth on the carpet. He walked over to the window and he heard the loud crack of the wind. It was pumping the trees in the small wedge of the park six stories below, tearing at the wires on rooftops, fanning the smoke out under the clouds, scattering it like soot on paraffin."#1 is from The Adventures of Augie March, a novel generally held to be superior to the source of #2, a novel called The Victim. Each quote is a good example of why critics prefer #1 to #2 and why I think just the opposite.
Various writers and critics have looked at The Victim and nodded approvingly. They applaud the small, correct word choices that carefully evoke the object being described. They find the quality of the prose solid, yet uninspired, maybe even a bit pinched, passionless.
But when Augie March comes along, these same readers get really excited. Now there we have narrative exuberance, excitement, whirling turns of phrase with surprises like "snarling flowers," grand sociological pronouncements like "the gas cloud of settled existence," the chance to sneer at bourgeois values, adventure, risk-taking. What a lark! What a plunge! Almost as fun as a ride at Coney Island!
I understand this point of view. Maybe it is the correct one to have. But I can't agree with it. Take another look at the language in the quote from Augie March. Notice how vague and inflated it is: "difficult air of effort and nobility" "commonplace death" "settled existence" "unrecognized despair of marriage without hope" "the commonness of resentment." (Notice too the sloppy repetition of "common.") The only tangible objects in this litany are the boils and "snarling flowers," though I'm not sure why a flower would ever snarl or why it should. I suppose it sounds catchy and makes for a cute metaphor about seemingly nice things that are actually mean and angry. But couldn't Bellow have done a bit more homework here and found an actual object in life that has these qualities, like the lovely but poisonous rhododendron, which can be found in so many suburban lawns?
More importantly, what do these vague language choices really refer to? They're meant to satirize the stultifying effects of puritanical American suburban middle-class values, like putting the nose to the grindstone in some nine to five job while neglecting to feed the soul. The problem is that the grandiose rhetoric Bellow uses to malign these values is the same kind of empty discourse that's too often used to glorify them, for example in a politician's stump speech. Bellow's passage could very readily be re-written as follows:
"the commonplace life in the airy cloud of settled existence, the liberation of work, quiet, store-blossoming, unrecognized joy of marriage without disruption, or the commonness of contentment that bubbles up unknown in one's heart or in bulbs of laughing flowers."
The passage from The Victim, however, demands to be read as written because of its wondrous specificity. The concrete language dramatically re-enacts the same kind of despair of modern life that's only described in Augie March. The passage begins with a far more intriguing metaphor than "snarling flowers," because a man in a mine who smells smoke but doesn't see fire makes literal as well as metaphorical sense. It has a meaning that can be worked out and isn't just there to startle us with its sound or vague poetry. As the passage goes on, Bellow makes us feel the physical effects of the narrator's despair. We experience the emotional turbulence directly through the pain in his body and then indirectly, through the raging weather outside his window which almost seems to have been affected by his mood. After we feel the emotion, we gradually realize its significance, unconsciously at first, and then after some thought, consciously. To me, that's a miracle far greater than simply spelling out your point to readers like a priest preaching his Sunday sermon to an amen corner in church.
In a way, my preference for earned effects instead of purple prose makes me a bit homespun, guilty of the same middle class crimes Bellow indicts in Augie March. I want language to do its job instead of meandering aimlessly to Mexico on a road trip. But the alternative strikes me as too easy, and more than a bit fake. It's like watching a blindfolded cowboy wildly swinging a lasso in a rodeo, in hopes of roping a steer. If he's successful, good for him. But I don't feel like waiting around for it to happen. And I certainly wouldn't advocate his method as a model for young cowboys in training to emulate.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
A Call to Arms
It's the weekend of B. E. A., the publishing industry's annual grand convention, and lately I've been hearing gloomy forecasts about the state of the business from a number of writers I know. No one's buying fiction any more (Da Vinci Code excepted). Of course, as long as publishing has been around, there have been writers complaining that no one buys books. But recently I was having a conference with a student of mine that made me wonder if maybe this problem really is becoming more acute. The student in question and I were discussing his final grade, and I asked him what writers he liked to read. “I don't like to read,” he replied. “Not that I think there's anything wrong with that if I want to be a writer. Other people will read what I write, but I don't have to read what other people write.”
As outrageous as this statement may sound coming from someone who's studying creative writing, it really isn't that abnormal if you stop to consider the rising popularity of creative writing classes, as contrasted with the falling numbers of book sales. Or think about the staggering volume of submissions to literary magazines contrasted with subscriptions to those same magazines. Or the query letters to agents versus the number of books sold by clients represented by those same agents.
We are all like the student I described earlier. We want to express ourselves, but we're far less interested in hearing other people express ourselves. Imagine a room filled with millions of people screaming past each other. Is that what being a member of the community of letters should look like?
The question is what can we do about falling book sales. We can't force people to buy books because it's good for them. Or even if we could do that, should we? Why do we expect anyone to support our work?
But there is something we as writers, publishers, and book lovers can do, which is to buy more books.
Many of you may be thinking, but I do buy books. Remember, I'm not talking about reading books. I'm talking about buying them. Those of us who are in the publishing world get books for free from publishers or magazines we review for, or friends who work in the business. Or sometimes we just borrow them, or buy them at used bookstores (or buy used copies from Amazon). But how many hardcover books have you bought last year? (At an independent bookstore?) Buying hardcovers may seem like an expensive habit. But if you paid twenty-five bucks for a theater seat, a concert ticket, a nice dinner, a sweater, or anything other than a book, you'd think, great, what a bargain. Most of us don't have any trouble plunking down ten bucks for the latest shlock from Hollywood, but that's half the price of a hardback book right there.
I'm not suggesting skipping Star Wars to buy a book. But every time you do go to the movies or spend fifty bucks on an evening of beer, stop and think, have I bought a book recently?
Some people may think, why bother? It's not going to make any difference if I buy one more book. Sadly, the state of publishing is such that each purchase of fiction does make a difference. And it's about more than dollars and cents. Each time people see you handling a book in a store, or each time that book crosses a cashier's desk, or when you hold it up on the subway or the beach, you're creating a ripple effect that gets that book out into the world in a way that's more powerful than any ad in the New York Times Book Review.
Also, I'm not reminding you to buy books the way doctors exhort us to take our medicine when we're sick. Reading isn't an onerous burden. It's rewarding, enlightening, and yes, it's fun. That's why you're reading blogs like these and taking creative writing classes, and scribbling in your journals in cafes. Yet how easy it is to forget in the age of TV and internet and iPods that reading is a pleasurable activity.
So set yourself a goal. Every month, buy at least one book for its retail price, possibly a hardcover, possibly at an independent bookstore. This will cost you about three hundred bucks a year at most (which is tax deductible if you're a writer). If you can't afford that much, try going without a Starbucks coffee once a week. There's twenty bucks a month right there. Ask for books as birthday presents. Give them as wedding presents along with cookware and linens.
Or give them for absolutely no reason, which is the best reason.
As outrageous as this statement may sound coming from someone who's studying creative writing, it really isn't that abnormal if you stop to consider the rising popularity of creative writing classes, as contrasted with the falling numbers of book sales. Or think about the staggering volume of submissions to literary magazines contrasted with subscriptions to those same magazines. Or the query letters to agents versus the number of books sold by clients represented by those same agents.
We are all like the student I described earlier. We want to express ourselves, but we're far less interested in hearing other people express ourselves. Imagine a room filled with millions of people screaming past each other. Is that what being a member of the community of letters should look like?
The question is what can we do about falling book sales. We can't force people to buy books because it's good for them. Or even if we could do that, should we? Why do we expect anyone to support our work?
But there is something we as writers, publishers, and book lovers can do, which is to buy more books.
Many of you may be thinking, but I do buy books. Remember, I'm not talking about reading books. I'm talking about buying them. Those of us who are in the publishing world get books for free from publishers or magazines we review for, or friends who work in the business. Or sometimes we just borrow them, or buy them at used bookstores (or buy used copies from Amazon). But how many hardcover books have you bought last year? (At an independent bookstore?) Buying hardcovers may seem like an expensive habit. But if you paid twenty-five bucks for a theater seat, a concert ticket, a nice dinner, a sweater, or anything other than a book, you'd think, great, what a bargain. Most of us don't have any trouble plunking down ten bucks for the latest shlock from Hollywood, but that's half the price of a hardback book right there.
I'm not suggesting skipping Star Wars to buy a book. But every time you do go to the movies or spend fifty bucks on an evening of beer, stop and think, have I bought a book recently?
Some people may think, why bother? It's not going to make any difference if I buy one more book. Sadly, the state of publishing is such that each purchase of fiction does make a difference. And it's about more than dollars and cents. Each time people see you handling a book in a store, or each time that book crosses a cashier's desk, or when you hold it up on the subway or the beach, you're creating a ripple effect that gets that book out into the world in a way that's more powerful than any ad in the New York Times Book Review.
Also, I'm not reminding you to buy books the way doctors exhort us to take our medicine when we're sick. Reading isn't an onerous burden. It's rewarding, enlightening, and yes, it's fun. That's why you're reading blogs like these and taking creative writing classes, and scribbling in your journals in cafes. Yet how easy it is to forget in the age of TV and internet and iPods that reading is a pleasurable activity.
So set yourself a goal. Every month, buy at least one book for its retail price, possibly a hardcover, possibly at an independent bookstore. This will cost you about three hundred bucks a year at most (which is tax deductible if you're a writer). If you can't afford that much, try going without a Starbucks coffee once a week. There's twenty bucks a month right there. Ask for books as birthday presents. Give them as wedding presents along with cookware and linens.
Or give them for absolutely no reason, which is the best reason.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Joining the Club
I'm sorry for being a bit later than usual with my latest posting, but I've had an amazing week. I have now been to my first literary conference as well as my first literary award ceremony, so I thought I'd write about both, from the perspective of a first-timer.
I'll start with the conference: the Saints and Sinners Festival in New Orleans (which is now one of my favorite cities). If you're like me, you've probably seen literary conferences advertised in Poets and Writers and wondered what they were like or why someone might go to one. For me, the best part of going to Saints and Sinners, a festival for queer writers and readers, was its sense of community, all-important for our necessarily lonely profession.
All the events took place in the same three gay bars, all on the same corner, so I kept running into other conference-goers coming from or going to the readings, panels, classes, and parties. Though Saints and Sinners is a gay literary festival, the things we talked about most were relevant to all writers: issues of craft, favorite authors, how to make a living, and the book business. (I even attended a class on designing author websites.) The line between the presenters and audience members was, appropriately, porous. On Friday, I attended a very helpful presentation by author Jim Grimsley on how to get through the "murk" in the middle of your novel. On Saturday, I was on a panel about virtually the same subject, how to finish your novel. Immediately after that panel, I attended a poetry reading where fellow writers, MFA students, and self-taught writers who'd been in the audience at my panel now read their work aloud while I listened. The writers I met in New Orleans were a mix of slam poets, academics, performance artists, and authors published by small presses as well as major houses. Some of us had only published in journals or anthologies while others had several books under their belt. But everyone seemed to share the same sense of seriousness about their work and the same love of reading.
A couple of days after I got back from New Orleans, I went to a much more formal gathering at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where I officially received the Rome Prize. I had no idea of the Academy's existence until I was notified that they'd given me a prize (an unexpected honor, for which I am deeply grateful). When I first dreamed of becoming a writer, I imagined the "literary establishment" quite literally as a club with mahogany tables and Greek columns. If such a club actually exists, then yesterday I wandered into it.
My day began by running into the Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Donald Margulies and his wife on the steps of the building. Once inside, I stopped in a room of signed photos of famous Academy members, everyone from Henry James to Eudora Welty to Bernard Malamud, Edward Albee, on and on. Upstairs, I listened to a pleasant bearded man (who turned out to be novelist E. L. Doctorow) tell a story about watching a drunken Robert Penn Warren fall asleep in his seat during an Academy ceremony years ago. I also met John Updike, who examined my nametag and said, "Oh, you've won a prize. How nice for you."
At lunch, my father and I were seated at a table with the poet Mark Strand and novelist Alison Lurie, who made smart and funny observations about the people in the room as if they were characters in one of her novels. Then came the ceremony itself, during which I sat on a stage with one hundred other writers, composers, and artists, including Maya Lin, Cindy Sherman, August Wilson, Edwidge Danticat, Robert Pinsky, Cynthia Ozyck, and Stephen Sondheim. My assigned seat was between Edmund White and the peppery Grace Paley, who gave a rousing cheer when my name was called. I was just hoping I wouldn't trip over Tony Kushner and Edward P. Jones on my way to the podium.
The whole situation was wonderful and more than a little overwhelming, and while I was there I kept wondering what it all meant. Was I truly admitted into that club I'd always hoped to join? Yet now that I've had some time to reflect on that question, I realize I've always been a member without realizing it. The person accepting the award on that stage and the writing student I'd once been, the one who'd never published a word, have a lot in common. The only difference is that hazy term "success." But what is success or failure, really? In five hundred years, none of our work will be read. Or if it is, we'll all be long gone and unable to glory in that fact.
Just as Pulitzer Prize winners still get hungry and get sick and get depressed, they also still have to struggle with sentences, the same work we all do as writers. What matters is the pleasure that struggle gives us now, at this moment. I can take pleasure in award ceremonies and literary conferences, but I also take greater pleasure in arranging words on a page, reading work I love, guiding a student toward progress. The meaning comes from the pleasure, not the other way around. That's not to say that every moment of writing is wonderful, just as not every moment of a party or a literary gathering is wonderful. But the highs you get make the lows bearable, and in life, it really doesn't get much better than that.
I'll start with the conference: the Saints and Sinners Festival in New Orleans (which is now one of my favorite cities). If you're like me, you've probably seen literary conferences advertised in Poets and Writers and wondered what they were like or why someone might go to one. For me, the best part of going to Saints and Sinners, a festival for queer writers and readers, was its sense of community, all-important for our necessarily lonely profession.
All the events took place in the same three gay bars, all on the same corner, so I kept running into other conference-goers coming from or going to the readings, panels, classes, and parties. Though Saints and Sinners is a gay literary festival, the things we talked about most were relevant to all writers: issues of craft, favorite authors, how to make a living, and the book business. (I even attended a class on designing author websites.) The line between the presenters and audience members was, appropriately, porous. On Friday, I attended a very helpful presentation by author Jim Grimsley on how to get through the "murk" in the middle of your novel. On Saturday, I was on a panel about virtually the same subject, how to finish your novel. Immediately after that panel, I attended a poetry reading where fellow writers, MFA students, and self-taught writers who'd been in the audience at my panel now read their work aloud while I listened. The writers I met in New Orleans were a mix of slam poets, academics, performance artists, and authors published by small presses as well as major houses. Some of us had only published in journals or anthologies while others had several books under their belt. But everyone seemed to share the same sense of seriousness about their work and the same love of reading.
A couple of days after I got back from New Orleans, I went to a much more formal gathering at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where I officially received the Rome Prize. I had no idea of the Academy's existence until I was notified that they'd given me a prize (an unexpected honor, for which I am deeply grateful). When I first dreamed of becoming a writer, I imagined the "literary establishment" quite literally as a club with mahogany tables and Greek columns. If such a club actually exists, then yesterday I wandered into it.
My day began by running into the Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Donald Margulies and his wife on the steps of the building. Once inside, I stopped in a room of signed photos of famous Academy members, everyone from Henry James to Eudora Welty to Bernard Malamud, Edward Albee, on and on. Upstairs, I listened to a pleasant bearded man (who turned out to be novelist E. L. Doctorow) tell a story about watching a drunken Robert Penn Warren fall asleep in his seat during an Academy ceremony years ago. I also met John Updike, who examined my nametag and said, "Oh, you've won a prize. How nice for you."
At lunch, my father and I were seated at a table with the poet Mark Strand and novelist Alison Lurie, who made smart and funny observations about the people in the room as if they were characters in one of her novels. Then came the ceremony itself, during which I sat on a stage with one hundred other writers, composers, and artists, including Maya Lin, Cindy Sherman, August Wilson, Edwidge Danticat, Robert Pinsky, Cynthia Ozyck, and Stephen Sondheim. My assigned seat was between Edmund White and the peppery Grace Paley, who gave a rousing cheer when my name was called. I was just hoping I wouldn't trip over Tony Kushner and Edward P. Jones on my way to the podium.
The whole situation was wonderful and more than a little overwhelming, and while I was there I kept wondering what it all meant. Was I truly admitted into that club I'd always hoped to join? Yet now that I've had some time to reflect on that question, I realize I've always been a member without realizing it. The person accepting the award on that stage and the writing student I'd once been, the one who'd never published a word, have a lot in common. The only difference is that hazy term "success." But what is success or failure, really? In five hundred years, none of our work will be read. Or if it is, we'll all be long gone and unable to glory in that fact.
Just as Pulitzer Prize winners still get hungry and get sick and get depressed, they also still have to struggle with sentences, the same work we all do as writers. What matters is the pleasure that struggle gives us now, at this moment. I can take pleasure in award ceremonies and literary conferences, but I also take greater pleasure in arranging words on a page, reading work I love, guiding a student toward progress. The meaning comes from the pleasure, not the other way around. That's not to say that every moment of writing is wonderful, just as not every moment of a party or a literary gathering is wonderful. But the highs you get make the lows bearable, and in life, it really doesn't get much better than that.
Monday, April 25, 2005
What Teaching Has Taught Me
The academic year is winding down, and I'm about to be deluged with student portfolios to grade. This has been my first full year of teaching creative writing to undergraduates, and I'm reminded of J. M. Coetzee's observation from his novel Disgrace:
“He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing.”
I'm not convinced my students have learned nothing, but I have surely learned as much from them as I have taught. Their questions have forced me to clarify my own ideas about writing. Their work reminds me of the infinite variety of forms writing can take. And their progress suggests paths for me to explore in my own work.
One example. At the beginning of this term, some of my students have been having problems with the use of time in their work. Their narratives can skid disconcertingly from present to past to future, sometimes within the same sentence. To study control of time and pacing, we took a look at the first chapter of Anne Tyler's Earthly Possessions and timed the narrative to see how many sentences she used to move her story forward. (You can read an essay I wrote about this here.) One of the things we noticed was that by eschewing flashbacks as much as possible and folding the effects of the past into her present narrative, Tyler was able to build her narrative momentum and keep the reader hooked.
Gradually, I began noticing the salutary effects of this exercise on students' writing. Stories that were once confusing, distanced, dragging summaries suddenly came alive on the page, thrillingly. Characters we'd only heard about now breathed, felt, fought in front of our eyes. The prose seemed to clean itself up, as if of its own accord.
Glad to see my students' progress, I turned to my own work, the novel about Berlin I'm working on right now. I'd shown the first few chapters to a few friends who all agreed that as it went along it became more and more engrossing, despite a bumpy start. I re-read the first two chapters. What was going wrong?
Then I thought of the lesson I'd just taught my students about chronology. The present day action was getting dragged down by relentless flashbacks, flashbacks that I'd thought were necessary for the reader to appreciate the significance of the current story. So what if I did what my students had done and removed those flashbacks?
As an experiment, I opened a new file and removed every flashback I could find and laid them out in order. My new arrangement was a strong, swift Chapter One that introduced the present-day plot with little background, then a chapter two that contained the entire backstory as a separate, linear story, followed by a strong, swift chapter three that picked up where chapter one had left off and zoomed forward. It was an elegant solution to a difficult problem that might have taken me a lot longer to solve, if not for the lesson on chronology that my students and I had worked on together.
The other thing I've gained from teaching is a newfound love and appreciation for literary works outside of my main genre: fiction. As part of my Structure and Style class at Columbia, I was required to introduce students to poetry and playwriting. For my Fiction and Personal Narrative class at Barnard, I had to examine fiction as well as creative non-fiction. I've realized that I've been missing out on a rich variety of literary genres because I've focused my reading diet on fiction. Poetry has taught me about the power of language in distilled form, while playwriting has taught me how to tell a story wholly through dialogue, and non-fiction has helped me appreciate the rigorous art of shaping a narrative from true events.
This fall I'll be taking a year off from teaching, and I know I will miss the dynamic atmosphere of my creative writing classes, where rooms full of students have challenged, enlightened, and stimulated me this past academic year. I'd like to wish them all good luck and especially to say thank you, for all you've taught me.
“He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing.”
I'm not convinced my students have learned nothing, but I have surely learned as much from them as I have taught. Their questions have forced me to clarify my own ideas about writing. Their work reminds me of the infinite variety of forms writing can take. And their progress suggests paths for me to explore in my own work.
One example. At the beginning of this term, some of my students have been having problems with the use of time in their work. Their narratives can skid disconcertingly from present to past to future, sometimes within the same sentence. To study control of time and pacing, we took a look at the first chapter of Anne Tyler's Earthly Possessions and timed the narrative to see how many sentences she used to move her story forward. (You can read an essay I wrote about this here.) One of the things we noticed was that by eschewing flashbacks as much as possible and folding the effects of the past into her present narrative, Tyler was able to build her narrative momentum and keep the reader hooked.
Gradually, I began noticing the salutary effects of this exercise on students' writing. Stories that were once confusing, distanced, dragging summaries suddenly came alive on the page, thrillingly. Characters we'd only heard about now breathed, felt, fought in front of our eyes. The prose seemed to clean itself up, as if of its own accord.
Glad to see my students' progress, I turned to my own work, the novel about Berlin I'm working on right now. I'd shown the first few chapters to a few friends who all agreed that as it went along it became more and more engrossing, despite a bumpy start. I re-read the first two chapters. What was going wrong?
Then I thought of the lesson I'd just taught my students about chronology. The present day action was getting dragged down by relentless flashbacks, flashbacks that I'd thought were necessary for the reader to appreciate the significance of the current story. So what if I did what my students had done and removed those flashbacks?
As an experiment, I opened a new file and removed every flashback I could find and laid them out in order. My new arrangement was a strong, swift Chapter One that introduced the present-day plot with little background, then a chapter two that contained the entire backstory as a separate, linear story, followed by a strong, swift chapter three that picked up where chapter one had left off and zoomed forward. It was an elegant solution to a difficult problem that might have taken me a lot longer to solve, if not for the lesson on chronology that my students and I had worked on together.
The other thing I've gained from teaching is a newfound love and appreciation for literary works outside of my main genre: fiction. As part of my Structure and Style class at Columbia, I was required to introduce students to poetry and playwriting. For my Fiction and Personal Narrative class at Barnard, I had to examine fiction as well as creative non-fiction. I've realized that I've been missing out on a rich variety of literary genres because I've focused my reading diet on fiction. Poetry has taught me about the power of language in distilled form, while playwriting has taught me how to tell a story wholly through dialogue, and non-fiction has helped me appreciate the rigorous art of shaping a narrative from true events.
This fall I'll be taking a year off from teaching, and I know I will miss the dynamic atmosphere of my creative writing classes, where rooms full of students have challenged, enlightened, and stimulated me this past academic year. I'd like to wish them all good luck and especially to say thank you, for all you've taught me.
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Research? What Research?
Research seems like much too official a word for what I do as a writer to find out information I don't know offhand, but I can't think of a better term. Whenever I tell people I'm researching something for a book, I imagine they imagine me pouring over ancient texts in a library or scanning microfilms or strolling with university professors on ivy-strewn campuses.
I remember when I was traveling in Israel to research FAITH FOR BEGINNERS, and I described what I'd been doing to an Israeli I was interviewing, he said to me, "That's not research. That's going on vacation!" But then that's the beauty of researching as a fiction writer. It's the intellectual equivalent of taking a vacation.
Each writer addresses this issue in his or her own way. Some can spend years in libraries or archives or museums, but that's not what I do. Here's how my process works:
After I come up with an idea to write something set in a specific place, I'll make plans to go there. Before going, I might do some reading on the history of the city, country, or the particular community I'm going to be seeing. Usually it's a subject I'm already interested in and have been reading about anyway. While I'm in a bookstore, I might casually drift by the section devoted to the history of this place or the religion or bit of sociology I plan to tackle, leaf through a few books, maybe buy one. I might do a google-search, or I might not. I'll probably send emails to everyone I know asking if they know people who live there or know something about what I'm interested in.
Next, I'll visit the place I'm writing about. (Hopefully I'll have earned enough frequent flyer miles on my credit card to score a free flight.) While I'm there I will walk, eat, sightsee, participate in local functions, meet up with friends of friends. The only organizing principle is that whatever I'm doing has to interest in me. I'll keep a journal and keep track of everything I'm doing, every fleeting impression that comes to mind. I collect bits of scrap paper, advertising, free magazines, leaflets, newspapers, packaging, anything that could later give me some sense of the place. I'll take pictures too, not usually of tourist attractions so much as of local streets, city views, a restaurant, a park, an interesting block or public square. Local graffiti and bumper stickers are often very helpful. The most important thing I do is talk to people. The conversations I've had (or listened in on) have given me much more than anything I've gleaned from a book or an article.
So far, in my limited experience as a writer, I've found that this kind of traveling will lead to some encounter or question that suggests a story. And when I come home, usually several months after my return, I'll scribble down a first draft of that story as quickly as I can. In the case of FAITH, it took me a month or so before I was able to start writing. With the novel I'm working on now, set in Berlin, I waited half a year after coming home from Germany to begin.
When that first draft is done, I'll read over what I have and then and only then do I know what I have to find out. For example, with my current project, after writing my first draft, I realized I'd have to learn about physics, childbirth, missing persons cases and the Berlin police department, the German language and German classes for foreigners, immigration rules for Germany, Russian immigrants to Germany, American communists, Disneyworld, a city called Magdeburg, Albert Einstein, and the British royal family, Prince William in particular. (I think I've left a few things out.) A lot of people ask me which comes first, the writing or the research? I find that generally speaking, the two processes are mostly interdependent. In the case of the Berlin book, I traveled to Berlin, wrote a draft, then went back to find out the information I needed, came back and wrote some more, and may probably go back again one more time. Yet the most serious in-depth research could begin only when I had a working draft of my novel.
Although the amount of topics you have to familiarize yourself with can seem daunting, what's wonderful about being a fiction writer as opposed to a journalist or a non-fiction writer, is that the depth of knowledge required can actually be pretty shallow. This will depend heavily on your plot or the angle of your story, or if you're writing historical or science fiction (which James Wood argues are pretty much the same thing and I agree with him). Still, I don't like to over-research as if my Ph.D. depends on it because I'm writing novels, not operating manuals. So I read. I talk to more people, I keep my eyes open for articles related to what I'm doing. I check out things on-line. I tell my friends what I'm doing and nine times out of ten, someone will say, "Oh, I have a friend you should talk to!" or "I know the perfect book you should read." And I hunt down their leads. But I don't become obsessive. Reading too many books, scanning the Internet, and rummaging through libraries can turn up useful information, but more often than not it can lead to dead ends or down avenues that aren't relevant to what I'm working on. Then I end up wasting time researching that I could have spent writing or focusing on the works of fiction writers I'm looking toward for stylistic guidance. Also, sometimes the research can be so fascinating that I feel daunted coming up with my own fresh details. Tidbits from real life often seem so much better than anything I could make up and I feel stuck. These are the times when I'd prefer not to know everything, but rather just enough to get the shadings right. Then I can close my eyes and imagine myself as my character going through an experience and I find the details I need that way.
In other words, I usually research until I get bored. Then I go back to telling a story. After all, in the end, isn't that the job I'm really supposed to be doing?
I remember when I was traveling in Israel to research FAITH FOR BEGINNERS, and I described what I'd been doing to an Israeli I was interviewing, he said to me, "That's not research. That's going on vacation!" But then that's the beauty of researching as a fiction writer. It's the intellectual equivalent of taking a vacation.
Each writer addresses this issue in his or her own way. Some can spend years in libraries or archives or museums, but that's not what I do. Here's how my process works:
After I come up with an idea to write something set in a specific place, I'll make plans to go there. Before going, I might do some reading on the history of the city, country, or the particular community I'm going to be seeing. Usually it's a subject I'm already interested in and have been reading about anyway. While I'm in a bookstore, I might casually drift by the section devoted to the history of this place or the religion or bit of sociology I plan to tackle, leaf through a few books, maybe buy one. I might do a google-search, or I might not. I'll probably send emails to everyone I know asking if they know people who live there or know something about what I'm interested in.
Next, I'll visit the place I'm writing about. (Hopefully I'll have earned enough frequent flyer miles on my credit card to score a free flight.) While I'm there I will walk, eat, sightsee, participate in local functions, meet up with friends of friends. The only organizing principle is that whatever I'm doing has to interest in me. I'll keep a journal and keep track of everything I'm doing, every fleeting impression that comes to mind. I collect bits of scrap paper, advertising, free magazines, leaflets, newspapers, packaging, anything that could later give me some sense of the place. I'll take pictures too, not usually of tourist attractions so much as of local streets, city views, a restaurant, a park, an interesting block or public square. Local graffiti and bumper stickers are often very helpful. The most important thing I do is talk to people. The conversations I've had (or listened in on) have given me much more than anything I've gleaned from a book or an article.
So far, in my limited experience as a writer, I've found that this kind of traveling will lead to some encounter or question that suggests a story. And when I come home, usually several months after my return, I'll scribble down a first draft of that story as quickly as I can. In the case of FAITH, it took me a month or so before I was able to start writing. With the novel I'm working on now, set in Berlin, I waited half a year after coming home from Germany to begin.
When that first draft is done, I'll read over what I have and then and only then do I know what I have to find out. For example, with my current project, after writing my first draft, I realized I'd have to learn about physics, childbirth, missing persons cases and the Berlin police department, the German language and German classes for foreigners, immigration rules for Germany, Russian immigrants to Germany, American communists, Disneyworld, a city called Magdeburg, Albert Einstein, and the British royal family, Prince William in particular. (I think I've left a few things out.) A lot of people ask me which comes first, the writing or the research? I find that generally speaking, the two processes are mostly interdependent. In the case of the Berlin book, I traveled to Berlin, wrote a draft, then went back to find out the information I needed, came back and wrote some more, and may probably go back again one more time. Yet the most serious in-depth research could begin only when I had a working draft of my novel.
Although the amount of topics you have to familiarize yourself with can seem daunting, what's wonderful about being a fiction writer as opposed to a journalist or a non-fiction writer, is that the depth of knowledge required can actually be pretty shallow. This will depend heavily on your plot or the angle of your story, or if you're writing historical or science fiction (which James Wood argues are pretty much the same thing and I agree with him). Still, I don't like to over-research as if my Ph.D. depends on it because I'm writing novels, not operating manuals. So I read. I talk to more people, I keep my eyes open for articles related to what I'm doing. I check out things on-line. I tell my friends what I'm doing and nine times out of ten, someone will say, "Oh, I have a friend you should talk to!" or "I know the perfect book you should read." And I hunt down their leads. But I don't become obsessive. Reading too many books, scanning the Internet, and rummaging through libraries can turn up useful information, but more often than not it can lead to dead ends or down avenues that aren't relevant to what I'm working on. Then I end up wasting time researching that I could have spent writing or focusing on the works of fiction writers I'm looking toward for stylistic guidance. Also, sometimes the research can be so fascinating that I feel daunted coming up with my own fresh details. Tidbits from real life often seem so much better than anything I could make up and I feel stuck. These are the times when I'd prefer not to know everything, but rather just enough to get the shadings right. Then I can close my eyes and imagine myself as my character going through an experience and I find the details I need that way.
In other words, I usually research until I get bored. Then I go back to telling a story. After all, in the end, isn't that the job I'm really supposed to be doing?
Sunday, March 27, 2005
War of the Words
At first glance, you might easily mistake Jonathan Safran Foer's new novel for a human interest magazine. Between its covers, you can find pictures of the World Trade Center, tennis player Lleyton Hewitt, and Laurence Olivier as Hamlet. Foer isn't alone in including non-typographical embellishments in his work. Ever since Dave Eggers's celebrated memoir came illustrated with various charts and graphs, young literary writers of fiction and non-fiction have rushed to furnish their texts with all manner of pictorial elements to liven up the tedium of all that black ink. Add to that the critical acclaim accorded to the prose of the late W. G. Sebald, and the practice of mixing image with text now comes stamped with a highbrow pedigree. If a European middle-aged man (who met an early and tragic demise) writing about the Holocaust can illustrate his prose with pictures, surely nice young middle class American boys and girls can do it too.
This generation isn't the first to use extra-textual decoration in their work, as anyone who's read Jon Dos Passos or Donald Barthelme knows. However, Dos Passos and Barthelme were writing in a time when there was no Tivo or HBO on Demand, when people filled their home libraries with books instead of DVD sets, when the written word wasn't constantly being debased in favor of visual excitement.
Now more than ever, we as writers need to cling firmly to our belief in words. We need to venerate the magic transaction that occurs when black ink marks on a page paint pictures, when black ink marks make us feel more in one sentence than reams of celebrity photos or hours of our favorite Sex in the City episodes.
This is not to argue against experimental writing, but rather to argue for authors to conduct their experiments with language. Have we really exhausted the possibilities of language so thoroughly that we have to resort to telling stories with pictures? If that's so, then how do you explain the glorious surprises achieved by David Foster Wallace's footnotes, Lorrie Moore's self-help stories, Rick Moody's italicized snarls, and yes, Safran Foer's enchanting play with English as a second language in his first novel, Everything is Illuminated? And what about writers like Michel Houellebecq whose work leaps off the page without the help of Lleyton Hewitt or footnotes or any other stylistic fireworks, but simply because of the powerful clarity of his voice and his vision?
If you feel that no word or combination of words can express your vision as powerfully as an image, then the question must be asked, what business do you have working with words? Why not be bold and honest enough to go all the way and declare yourself a visual artist? It's much easier to compete as a writer among artists than with other writers. And these days you don't even need to take your own photographs or paint your own pictures to be taken seriously as a young artist. Simply select a nice image, add your text above or below, choose a sleek black frame, and you've arrived.
To be fair, I haven't read Foer's book, so I can't comment on whether his particular experiment has failed or succeeded. Perhaps he has succeeded brilliantly and his book is a worthy heir to writers like W. G. Sebald and Donald Barthelme and others who effectively use elements other than texts in their books. Still, as much as I admire them, I want these writers to remain glorious exceptions, not models for the future. Also, writers like Sebald and Barthelme are prose magicians, who use pictures to amplify their already finely-wrought sentences, not as substitutes for places in their writing where they're stuck and don't want to bother searching for just the right word any longer. Can the young practitioners of scrapbooks as literature honestly say the same thing about their own work?
This generation isn't the first to use extra-textual decoration in their work, as anyone who's read Jon Dos Passos or Donald Barthelme knows. However, Dos Passos and Barthelme were writing in a time when there was no Tivo or HBO on Demand, when people filled their home libraries with books instead of DVD sets, when the written word wasn't constantly being debased in favor of visual excitement.
Now more than ever, we as writers need to cling firmly to our belief in words. We need to venerate the magic transaction that occurs when black ink marks on a page paint pictures, when black ink marks make us feel more in one sentence than reams of celebrity photos or hours of our favorite Sex in the City episodes.
This is not to argue against experimental writing, but rather to argue for authors to conduct their experiments with language. Have we really exhausted the possibilities of language so thoroughly that we have to resort to telling stories with pictures? If that's so, then how do you explain the glorious surprises achieved by David Foster Wallace's footnotes, Lorrie Moore's self-help stories, Rick Moody's italicized snarls, and yes, Safran Foer's enchanting play with English as a second language in his first novel, Everything is Illuminated? And what about writers like Michel Houellebecq whose work leaps off the page without the help of Lleyton Hewitt or footnotes or any other stylistic fireworks, but simply because of the powerful clarity of his voice and his vision?
If you feel that no word or combination of words can express your vision as powerfully as an image, then the question must be asked, what business do you have working with words? Why not be bold and honest enough to go all the way and declare yourself a visual artist? It's much easier to compete as a writer among artists than with other writers. And these days you don't even need to take your own photographs or paint your own pictures to be taken seriously as a young artist. Simply select a nice image, add your text above or below, choose a sleek black frame, and you've arrived.
To be fair, I haven't read Foer's book, so I can't comment on whether his particular experiment has failed or succeeded. Perhaps he has succeeded brilliantly and his book is a worthy heir to writers like W. G. Sebald and Donald Barthelme and others who effectively use elements other than texts in their books. Still, as much as I admire them, I want these writers to remain glorious exceptions, not models for the future. Also, writers like Sebald and Barthelme are prose magicians, who use pictures to amplify their already finely-wrought sentences, not as substitutes for places in their writing where they're stuck and don't want to bother searching for just the right word any longer. Can the young practitioners of scrapbooks as literature honestly say the same thing about their own work?
Thursday, March 03, 2005
In Praise of Dribs and Drabs
People often ask me, "How do you find the time to write a novel?" To tell the truth, I wish I could produce more work that I have so far. But for what it's worth, here's my secret.
Last week I was off from work and decided to catch up on some well-needed rest. This semester I'm teaching seven classes in addition to working on my writing, so sleep is one of the several activities that have gotten short shrift recently, meaning I usually manage about five, six hours a night during the week, sometimes as much as six and a half.
So last week I slept as long as I wanted, enjoyed nine to ten hours of sleep a night, and during the day I was a zombie, drifting around Manhattan like poor shell-shocked Septimus Smith from Mrs. Dalloway wandering around Hyde Park. By contrast, now that I'm back to my regular sleep-deprived schedule, I'm buzzing from class to class, tearing through a staggeringly accomplished lost classic novel called Three Cities by Sholem Asch, churning out revisions on my new novel, a couple of essays, and this blog that's in front of you right now.
In the same way, I've often found that when I've had plenty of free time to write, long empty stretches of hours with nothing to do but focus on my work, it can take me forever to get anything done. But when my schedule is full and I'm forced to carve out half an hour on the subway, an hour when I get home, plus another hour after dinner and then maybe sneak in another fifteen minutes before bed, I'm much more productive.
You'd think that working in these dribs and drabs would result in a pile of scraps with little relation to each other. In fact, my new novel Faith for Beginners was almost entirely completed this way, and I'm knee-deep in the middle of another novel whose first draft was composed drib by drab on the subway ride home from Brooklyn.
How many times have you heard the complaint, "I wish I could write more, but I just don't have the time"? Or "I'd write if I didn't have to work, but I can't afford to quit my job to be a writer."
The reality is that few writers, even ones who've been published, have the luxury of quitting their jobs to pursue their life's calling. Luckily, there are always little wasted bits of time every day that can be recaptured and used for valuable work time. I recently read that the effects of exercise are cumulative, and four fifteen-minute blocks of exercise scattered throughout the day are equal to a continuous one-hour workout. It's my firm belief that the writing process works in much the same way.
Many writers I know invest an almost mystical belief in the necessity of deep concentration to get their pens moving. Maybe that's why there seems to be a general belief out there that if you can't work for three hours at a time, there's no use in trying to get anything done in two hours, one hour, or even half an hour. For me, the trick has been to break down the process into smaller tasks that can be completed in thirty minutes to an hour and a half. These tasks might include re-reading the previous day's work and making light revisions, re-writing a stubborn paragraph that hasn't been working, or jotting down notes for a scene that hasn't been written yet. Sometimes I'll just work on one or two pages that seem to form some kind of thematic unit in themselves, then take a break to tackle some chore I need to get done, and then pick up my book where I left off.
I'll confess that at some point in whatever project I've worked on, I've needed stretches of uninterrupted time when I could focus for longer than an hour or so. In the past, I've used holidays or vacations to block out that kind of prime writing time. However, those precious stretches of free time would have been worthless if I hadn't generated raw material during my usual hectic workweeks. So if you have a life outside of writing, as most of us are required to do, and you want to generate enough material for a collection of stories, a novel, or a book of poems, you may find the drib-and-drab method could work for you.
Last week I was off from work and decided to catch up on some well-needed rest. This semester I'm teaching seven classes in addition to working on my writing, so sleep is one of the several activities that have gotten short shrift recently, meaning I usually manage about five, six hours a night during the week, sometimes as much as six and a half.
So last week I slept as long as I wanted, enjoyed nine to ten hours of sleep a night, and during the day I was a zombie, drifting around Manhattan like poor shell-shocked Septimus Smith from Mrs. Dalloway wandering around Hyde Park. By contrast, now that I'm back to my regular sleep-deprived schedule, I'm buzzing from class to class, tearing through a staggeringly accomplished lost classic novel called Three Cities by Sholem Asch, churning out revisions on my new novel, a couple of essays, and this blog that's in front of you right now.
In the same way, I've often found that when I've had plenty of free time to write, long empty stretches of hours with nothing to do but focus on my work, it can take me forever to get anything done. But when my schedule is full and I'm forced to carve out half an hour on the subway, an hour when I get home, plus another hour after dinner and then maybe sneak in another fifteen minutes before bed, I'm much more productive.
You'd think that working in these dribs and drabs would result in a pile of scraps with little relation to each other. In fact, my new novel Faith for Beginners was almost entirely completed this way, and I'm knee-deep in the middle of another novel whose first draft was composed drib by drab on the subway ride home from Brooklyn.
How many times have you heard the complaint, "I wish I could write more, but I just don't have the time"? Or "I'd write if I didn't have to work, but I can't afford to quit my job to be a writer."
The reality is that few writers, even ones who've been published, have the luxury of quitting their jobs to pursue their life's calling. Luckily, there are always little wasted bits of time every day that can be recaptured and used for valuable work time. I recently read that the effects of exercise are cumulative, and four fifteen-minute blocks of exercise scattered throughout the day are equal to a continuous one-hour workout. It's my firm belief that the writing process works in much the same way.
Many writers I know invest an almost mystical belief in the necessity of deep concentration to get their pens moving. Maybe that's why there seems to be a general belief out there that if you can't work for three hours at a time, there's no use in trying to get anything done in two hours, one hour, or even half an hour. For me, the trick has been to break down the process into smaller tasks that can be completed in thirty minutes to an hour and a half. These tasks might include re-reading the previous day's work and making light revisions, re-writing a stubborn paragraph that hasn't been working, or jotting down notes for a scene that hasn't been written yet. Sometimes I'll just work on one or two pages that seem to form some kind of thematic unit in themselves, then take a break to tackle some chore I need to get done, and then pick up my book where I left off.
I'll confess that at some point in whatever project I've worked on, I've needed stretches of uninterrupted time when I could focus for longer than an hour or so. In the past, I've used holidays or vacations to block out that kind of prime writing time. However, those precious stretches of free time would have been worthless if I hadn't generated raw material during my usual hectic workweeks. So if you have a life outside of writing, as most of us are required to do, and you want to generate enough material for a collection of stories, a novel, or a book of poems, you may find the drib-and-drab method could work for you.
Friday, February 11, 2005
I recently finished a book called Literary Feuds by Anthony Arthur, which detailed the history of some famous author versus author squabbles, like Ernest Hemingway against Gertrude Stein, Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal, and recently Tom Wolfe and John Updike. Part of our interest in these feuds has more to do with gossip than serious literary study, yet interestingly, the disagreements between these writers was almost always related to their conflicting visions of what makes for good literature.
The other week in the New York Times Book Review, essayist Wendy Shalit laid down the gauntlet for a new literary feud in her opinion piece attacking Jewish fiction writers like Nathan Englander and Tova Mirvis, whom she labels as "insider outsiders." Her complaint was that these writers make their living by portraying themselves as dissidents who were once in the fold of Orthodox Judaism, but have now broken away and are explosing the dirty laundry of extremist religious freaks. Shalit argues that Mirvis and Englander not only fail to paint a full and true portrait of observant Jews but also have no right to claim any special knowledge of that world because they themselves are not part of the community.
To read Shalit's essay, click here.
Writing in the Forward, Mirvis composed a rather brilliant response to Shalit's critique. First, she points out that a writer need not share the lives of the characters she's writing about to understand them. "Since when must one be a murderer to write Crime and Punishment, a pedophile to write Lolita, a hermaphrodite to write Middlesex, a boy on a boat with a tiger to write Life of Pi? Yes, it seems, Shalit has outed the whole tawdry lot of us. She's revealed to the public the terrible truth: Fiction writers make up things."
Second, Mirvis says that experience and opinion are unique to the individual. Since writing fiction is an individual act, it necessitates an individualized point of view that should not be judged by its verisimilitude. Novels should not be confused with documentary films. "People like Shalit attack a story by saying, "But not everyone is like this." Of course not. But the fiction writer is saying, "Let's imagine one person who is.""
To read Mirvis's response, click here.
Frankly, Shalit's take on what a book ought to be is simplistic and dangerous. [Full disclosure: I know both Mirvis and Englander and admire their work.] However, there's an undercurrent in Shalit's essay that's worth exploring. It's her argument that works that attack religious people are celebrated by the literary community while works that celebrate religious people are attacked, or even more devastatingly, overlooked. Why? Because of the prejudices of the literary intelligentsia, who are more likely to be secular than religious, liberal rather than conservative, blue state rather than red state.
These days, I myself would probably be categorized as "secular," though I have a deeply spiritual outlook on the world that's informed by my religious upbringing. I am also a dyed-in-the-wool blue state liberal who's never voted for a Republican, though I don't rule out doing so. I admire several Republican politicians as well as despise many thoughtless Big-Government Democrats who believe the free market is the root of all evil (just as simpletons like our president believe the free market is the cure for all evil).
Do I believe an author must share my political opinions to write a great work? Definitely not. Knut Hamsun was a Nazi sympathizer, yet I loved his novel Pan. I do not share Toni Morrison's views on race in literature (as expressed in her book Playing in the Dark), yet I would gladly trade a limb to have written Beloved. And I can't count the number of times I've read books where writers make wink-wink, nod-nod anti-Semitic or homophobic asides that briefly jolt my reading experience. It's as if by continuing to read their works, I'm buying into their views of simpering gays and greedy Jews, though of course that's not true.
The books above focus more on story than political agendas. However, there are books that are intentionally political, that are meant to jolt us with their views. Can we enjoy them even if we don't agree with their politics? And can a book be ruined by its moral or political failings? Could I enjoy a book that featured a Bush-loving general who recounted his exploits in building democracy in Iraq? (That would have to be science fiction, since an election in which the majority of voters shows up to the polls to support an Iran-style theocracy because they've been told by their religious leaders they'll go to hell if they don't is not an example of Jeffersonian democracy.) Or how about a book about a religious leader who succeeds in converting gay people into straights? A book by a racist? A book about how ignorant and dirty poor people are? About how immigrants ought to be vaporized, and women put back in their place?
My answer is an emphatic yes. If you go to the recommended books section of this site, you'll find one book I'm recommending is by the French writer Michel Houellebecq, whose politics I often find repugnant. His fiction, however, is brilliant. I wouldn't want to be stranded on a desert island with this man. I also wouldn't want to live in a world in which he couldn't continue to write his vital and brilliant screeds that bristle with resentment against p.c. pieties and puritanical dishonesty about gender roles. When I read, I want to taste life, and life includes Eminem as well as Pollyanna, George Bush as well as John Kerry, Pope John Paul II as well as Sinead O'Connor. I don't mind reading a "biased" or political work of fiction. The test for me is whether I believe the book is honest (not to reality, but to the writer's own voice and vision), urgent, and above all, magical (which unfortunately is not a quantifiable quality). I don't want "fair and balanced" portraits all the time. Sometimes I want a slant. Yes, the world is complex, but why does fiction always need to recreate that complexity? It doesn't. Not if you're a curious reader.
The other week in the New York Times Book Review, essayist Wendy Shalit laid down the gauntlet for a new literary feud in her opinion piece attacking Jewish fiction writers like Nathan Englander and Tova Mirvis, whom she labels as "insider outsiders." Her complaint was that these writers make their living by portraying themselves as dissidents who were once in the fold of Orthodox Judaism, but have now broken away and are explosing the dirty laundry of extremist religious freaks. Shalit argues that Mirvis and Englander not only fail to paint a full and true portrait of observant Jews but also have no right to claim any special knowledge of that world because they themselves are not part of the community.
To read Shalit's essay, click here.
Writing in the Forward, Mirvis composed a rather brilliant response to Shalit's critique. First, she points out that a writer need not share the lives of the characters she's writing about to understand them. "Since when must one be a murderer to write Crime and Punishment, a pedophile to write Lolita, a hermaphrodite to write Middlesex, a boy on a boat with a tiger to write Life of Pi? Yes, it seems, Shalit has outed the whole tawdry lot of us. She's revealed to the public the terrible truth: Fiction writers make up things."
Second, Mirvis says that experience and opinion are unique to the individual. Since writing fiction is an individual act, it necessitates an individualized point of view that should not be judged by its verisimilitude. Novels should not be confused with documentary films. "People like Shalit attack a story by saying, "But not everyone is like this." Of course not. But the fiction writer is saying, "Let's imagine one person who is.""
To read Mirvis's response, click here.
Frankly, Shalit's take on what a book ought to be is simplistic and dangerous. [Full disclosure: I know both Mirvis and Englander and admire their work.] However, there's an undercurrent in Shalit's essay that's worth exploring. It's her argument that works that attack religious people are celebrated by the literary community while works that celebrate religious people are attacked, or even more devastatingly, overlooked. Why? Because of the prejudices of the literary intelligentsia, who are more likely to be secular than religious, liberal rather than conservative, blue state rather than red state.
These days, I myself would probably be categorized as "secular," though I have a deeply spiritual outlook on the world that's informed by my religious upbringing. I am also a dyed-in-the-wool blue state liberal who's never voted for a Republican, though I don't rule out doing so. I admire several Republican politicians as well as despise many thoughtless Big-Government Democrats who believe the free market is the root of all evil (just as simpletons like our president believe the free market is the cure for all evil).
Do I believe an author must share my political opinions to write a great work? Definitely not. Knut Hamsun was a Nazi sympathizer, yet I loved his novel Pan. I do not share Toni Morrison's views on race in literature (as expressed in her book Playing in the Dark), yet I would gladly trade a limb to have written Beloved. And I can't count the number of times I've read books where writers make wink-wink, nod-nod anti-Semitic or homophobic asides that briefly jolt my reading experience. It's as if by continuing to read their works, I'm buying into their views of simpering gays and greedy Jews, though of course that's not true.
The books above focus more on story than political agendas. However, there are books that are intentionally political, that are meant to jolt us with their views. Can we enjoy them even if we don't agree with their politics? And can a book be ruined by its moral or political failings? Could I enjoy a book that featured a Bush-loving general who recounted his exploits in building democracy in Iraq? (That would have to be science fiction, since an election in which the majority of voters shows up to the polls to support an Iran-style theocracy because they've been told by their religious leaders they'll go to hell if they don't is not an example of Jeffersonian democracy.) Or how about a book about a religious leader who succeeds in converting gay people into straights? A book by a racist? A book about how ignorant and dirty poor people are? About how immigrants ought to be vaporized, and women put back in their place?
My answer is an emphatic yes. If you go to the recommended books section of this site, you'll find one book I'm recommending is by the French writer Michel Houellebecq, whose politics I often find repugnant. His fiction, however, is brilliant. I wouldn't want to be stranded on a desert island with this man. I also wouldn't want to live in a world in which he couldn't continue to write his vital and brilliant screeds that bristle with resentment against p.c. pieties and puritanical dishonesty about gender roles. When I read, I want to taste life, and life includes Eminem as well as Pollyanna, George Bush as well as John Kerry, Pope John Paul II as well as Sinead O'Connor. I don't mind reading a "biased" or political work of fiction. The test for me is whether I believe the book is honest (not to reality, but to the writer's own voice and vision), urgent, and above all, magical (which unfortunately is not a quantifiable quality). I don't want "fair and balanced" portraits all the time. Sometimes I want a slant. Yes, the world is complex, but why does fiction always need to recreate that complexity? It doesn't. Not if you're a curious reader.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Looking for Inspiration
The high volume of books on writing available in stores suggests we writers are an insecure, skittish lot, in constant need of reassurance. (I plead guilty.) It makes a lot of sense for us to feel lonely and insecure since writing is probably the most private of the major art forms as well as the one with the smallest earning potential. No wonder these guides tend to sell. Writers need all the help we can get.
Another reason for these books' ubiquity is that they seem fairly easy to write. Just jot down your random musings on what you do every day, with a brief nod to young, developing writers, and voila–you've fulfilled a book contract. I've noticed that the more famous the writer is, the thinner her book on writing tends to be, both in terms of length and content. Joyce Carol Oates's guide, for example, is a slim collection of essays already published elsewhere and doesn't get that much more specific than "Write your heart out." On the other side of the spectrum, John DuFresne's The Lie that Tells a Truth is chock full of concrete, eminently practical advice on everything from character development to finding your voice to step-by-step writing exercises to get your budding career started.
Recently, to get ready for some creative writing classes I'm teaching this semester, I looked over a few of these guides, starting with one of the classics of the genre, Annie Dillard's The Writing Life. Dillard's book takes the Oates approach, which depending on your point of view can be described as spare and poetic or cynically empty. Much of the book is devoted to describing Dillard's sojourns in quiet, tucked-away places like friends' vacation cabins, where she finishes her books. (Anyone out there have a cabin they'd like to lend me?) There are also several evocative anecdotes that lead up to cryptic maxims like, when chopping wood, aim for the chopping block and not the wood. That's definitely richly suggestive of something, though I'm not sure what. Dillard herself seems to be aware of a tendency toward obscurity in her work, which she highlights in a chapter where she confesses that the only people who seem to understand her writing are a few critics. So then why write? Stymied, she indulges in a bowl of popcorn with a few neighborhood kids, and then discovers to her surprise that one of them has read and enjoyed her work. I smiled in recognition when I read that story. You really can never predict who'll be affected by what you write.
I was browsing in Three Lives Bookstore in Manhattan when I picked up If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence, and Spirit by Brenda Ueland, whom I'd never heard of. The book was originally published in 1938 and was brought out again in paperback by Graywolf Press. Judging from her bio page, Ueland was quite a woman. She lived the bohemian life in Greenwich Village, then set a world swimming record for women over 80 years old, and was knighted by the king of Norway. Her book is a delightfully cranky exhortation to enjoy the art-making process, regardless of its ultimate product or material success. She cites the familiar Van Gogh example of the artist who labored seemingly in vain all his life to show that the work itself ought to be more than ample reward for its own sake: "By painting the sky, Van Gogh was really able to see it and adore it better than if he had just looked at it," she writes. That may be cold comfort to aspiring unpublished writers (or writers who have published but have found the experience less than life-fulfilling), but it's the best, noblest reason to slog away at this business. I also enjoyed when Ueland compared her writing students' work to published stories and essays and concluded that her students' work was more imaginative, passionately-observed, and wise. I was glad to learn Ueland's thoughts on how the imagination works (slowly and quietly) as well as the importance of long, solitary, and quiet walks. (Turn off your cell phones if you have them—I still haven't got one.) Most importantly, Ueland advises writers to write first and plan what they're going to write afterwards. I agree. I've found the surest way to kill a potential story is to think it all through beforehand and leave no room for improvisation while writing.
My favorite of these writing guides, though, continues to be Anne Lamott's oft-prescribed Bird by Bird. The first time I read it, I thought Lamott's insights and humor were a bit facile and coy. But the longer I've worked at writing, the more I recognize how wise this book is. What I like most about Bird by Bird is that it's a mix of the practical and spiritual, with chapters on jealousy alternating with advice on plot development. When I started out as a writer, I took solace from her thoughts on the necessity of writing shitty first drafts, a concept I'll forever emphasize to my students. When my first book came out, I studied her notes on the process of getting published, and laughed out loud at her description of how a bad review made her feel like streaks of feces on the underpants of life. Lamott makes you feel like you're not alone in this lonely craft, which I suppose is the true reason these books on writing are out there and do so well.
All in all, I've found each of these books on writing helpful in its own way. Someday I'd even like to write one, though at the rate new ones keep coming out, by the time I get around to doing it, I'm not sure how much there'll be left to say.
Another reason for these books' ubiquity is that they seem fairly easy to write. Just jot down your random musings on what you do every day, with a brief nod to young, developing writers, and voila–you've fulfilled a book contract. I've noticed that the more famous the writer is, the thinner her book on writing tends to be, both in terms of length and content. Joyce Carol Oates's guide, for example, is a slim collection of essays already published elsewhere and doesn't get that much more specific than "Write your heart out." On the other side of the spectrum, John DuFresne's The Lie that Tells a Truth is chock full of concrete, eminently practical advice on everything from character development to finding your voice to step-by-step writing exercises to get your budding career started.
Recently, to get ready for some creative writing classes I'm teaching this semester, I looked over a few of these guides, starting with one of the classics of the genre, Annie Dillard's The Writing Life. Dillard's book takes the Oates approach, which depending on your point of view can be described as spare and poetic or cynically empty. Much of the book is devoted to describing Dillard's sojourns in quiet, tucked-away places like friends' vacation cabins, where she finishes her books. (Anyone out there have a cabin they'd like to lend me?) There are also several evocative anecdotes that lead up to cryptic maxims like, when chopping wood, aim for the chopping block and not the wood. That's definitely richly suggestive of something, though I'm not sure what. Dillard herself seems to be aware of a tendency toward obscurity in her work, which she highlights in a chapter where she confesses that the only people who seem to understand her writing are a few critics. So then why write? Stymied, she indulges in a bowl of popcorn with a few neighborhood kids, and then discovers to her surprise that one of them has read and enjoyed her work. I smiled in recognition when I read that story. You really can never predict who'll be affected by what you write.
I was browsing in Three Lives Bookstore in Manhattan when I picked up If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence, and Spirit by Brenda Ueland, whom I'd never heard of. The book was originally published in 1938 and was brought out again in paperback by Graywolf Press. Judging from her bio page, Ueland was quite a woman. She lived the bohemian life in Greenwich Village, then set a world swimming record for women over 80 years old, and was knighted by the king of Norway. Her book is a delightfully cranky exhortation to enjoy the art-making process, regardless of its ultimate product or material success. She cites the familiar Van Gogh example of the artist who labored seemingly in vain all his life to show that the work itself ought to be more than ample reward for its own sake: "By painting the sky, Van Gogh was really able to see it and adore it better than if he had just looked at it," she writes. That may be cold comfort to aspiring unpublished writers (or writers who have published but have found the experience less than life-fulfilling), but it's the best, noblest reason to slog away at this business. I also enjoyed when Ueland compared her writing students' work to published stories and essays and concluded that her students' work was more imaginative, passionately-observed, and wise. I was glad to learn Ueland's thoughts on how the imagination works (slowly and quietly) as well as the importance of long, solitary, and quiet walks. (Turn off your cell phones if you have them—I still haven't got one.) Most importantly, Ueland advises writers to write first and plan what they're going to write afterwards. I agree. I've found the surest way to kill a potential story is to think it all through beforehand and leave no room for improvisation while writing.
My favorite of these writing guides, though, continues to be Anne Lamott's oft-prescribed Bird by Bird. The first time I read it, I thought Lamott's insights and humor were a bit facile and coy. But the longer I've worked at writing, the more I recognize how wise this book is. What I like most about Bird by Bird is that it's a mix of the practical and spiritual, with chapters on jealousy alternating with advice on plot development. When I started out as a writer, I took solace from her thoughts on the necessity of writing shitty first drafts, a concept I'll forever emphasize to my students. When my first book came out, I studied her notes on the process of getting published, and laughed out loud at her description of how a bad review made her feel like streaks of feces on the underpants of life. Lamott makes you feel like you're not alone in this lonely craft, which I suppose is the true reason these books on writing are out there and do so well.
All in all, I've found each of these books on writing helpful in its own way. Someday I'd even like to write one, though at the rate new ones keep coming out, by the time I get around to doing it, I'm not sure how much there'll be left to say.
Saturday, January 08, 2005
The Romance of Solitude
I remember the thrilling sense of relief I felt when I first learned the difference between "lonely" and "alone." While growing up, I enjoyed spending much of my time on my own and I was beginning to wonder if there wasn't something wrong with me. I loved to read, think, and retreat into my imagination to make up stories. The world seemed to me a complex and confusing place, with so much to think over and try to understand. Being around other people could sometimes be a welcome respite from my own thoughts, but they also brought up new problems to consider.
Somehow I thought I'd lose my taste for being alone when I got older, but now as an adult, I find that I continue to gravitate toward doing things on my own. I eat out, shop, go to the movies, the theater, even go on trips by myself. Many people I know would never dream of doing these things without a partner or five, maybe because they're afraid other people will see them by themselves and think they're lonely, as if there's no difference between not being in the mood to see other people and not having other people to see.
Solitude is becoming increasingly freakish in a culture where singers appear onstage backed by a line of dancers in cute outfits, politicians front a backdrop of carefully-picked everyday people, live audiences clamber up to talk show stages to throw chairs at each other, win cars, or (if they're on Ellen Degeneres's show) dance, and news anchors come in pairs, triples, and quartets. The concept of the entourage has become so de rigeur that there's even a TV show by that title. When was the last time you saw anyone alone on TV or in a movie? (Answer: Tom Hanks in Cast Away, in which his alone-ness was considered something of a special effect in itself.)
What I love about being alone is that things get very still, even if I'm in a crowded restaurant, or walking down the street. I'm lifted out of the place where I happen to be physically into my mind's remove, where I can be in several different places at once. There's no one to negotiate with, to see your dumb mistakes, to hear your passing thoughts. There's nothing you need to buy (which may be why being alone seems so discouraged in America) or do or say or be. Time slows down and often seems to stop.
Is solitude a necessary state for a writer? It can be helpful for a writer to play the observer, to gain some distance from others to understand the world better, to note useful details about people and places to use in a story or essay. And certainly it's crucial for a writer to have space and time alone to produce her work. Sometimes when I answer the phone after I've been writing, people will say to me, "Did I wake you up?" As a matter of fact, they have woken me up from a meditative state, a dream I've willed myself into to access the hidden places in my head where my characters live, breathe, and speak.
However, solitude has its degrees, and each writer confronts solitude in his own way. Some writers are like coal miners who punch the clock, go down the chute, and come back up when they've finished their job. Others, like me, show up early, leave late, and come back to the mines at odd hours, not necessarily to do extra work, but because we like the condition of being underground. We're attracted to writing because it gives form to those odd hours we spend cut off from the world.
When I read certain writers' books (or look at their jacket photos), I sometimes imagine I can tell what kind of relationship to solitude they have. For example, I've often that that Bernard Malamud's work has a much lonelier quality than Philip Roth's (though from what I understand, Roth lives alone in rural Connecticut, spends hours in isolation working on his books, and shuns publicity). When I think of Dickens, Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison, as well as the slew of young writers like Dave Eggers, Safran Foer, and Shteyngart, I imagine them in a brightly-lit room filled with people holding drinks. On the other hand, Woolf, Joyce, Hemingway, W. G. Sebald, and frankly most European writers always strike me as detached souls shut up in drafty garrets and thinking deep thoughts. Jane Austen was famous for craving solitude and never getting any, while Proust retreated into it. Janet Frame, who grew up in a raucous rabble of a household, became something of a high priestess of solitude. Jonathan Franzen wrote a book with the title How to Be Alone, (which, embarrassingly, I have yet to read).
I was telling a friend my feelings about this subject, and he said to me, "But, Aaron, you know everyone!" I'm not sure that's true, but there are many times when I've been in group situations and felt like I was standing in the eye of a hurricane. I watched the noise and energy swirl around me, while I remained at the center in the calm and the quiet, where not a breath of wind or drop of rain could reach me. It's a scary, dizzying perch, not without its dangers, though if you can stand them, there are sometimes rewards.
Somehow I thought I'd lose my taste for being alone when I got older, but now as an adult, I find that I continue to gravitate toward doing things on my own. I eat out, shop, go to the movies, the theater, even go on trips by myself. Many people I know would never dream of doing these things without a partner or five, maybe because they're afraid other people will see them by themselves and think they're lonely, as if there's no difference between not being in the mood to see other people and not having other people to see.
Solitude is becoming increasingly freakish in a culture where singers appear onstage backed by a line of dancers in cute outfits, politicians front a backdrop of carefully-picked everyday people, live audiences clamber up to talk show stages to throw chairs at each other, win cars, or (if they're on Ellen Degeneres's show) dance, and news anchors come in pairs, triples, and quartets. The concept of the entourage has become so de rigeur that there's even a TV show by that title. When was the last time you saw anyone alone on TV or in a movie? (Answer: Tom Hanks in Cast Away, in which his alone-ness was considered something of a special effect in itself.)
What I love about being alone is that things get very still, even if I'm in a crowded restaurant, or walking down the street. I'm lifted out of the place where I happen to be physically into my mind's remove, where I can be in several different places at once. There's no one to negotiate with, to see your dumb mistakes, to hear your passing thoughts. There's nothing you need to buy (which may be why being alone seems so discouraged in America) or do or say or be. Time slows down and often seems to stop.
Is solitude a necessary state for a writer? It can be helpful for a writer to play the observer, to gain some distance from others to understand the world better, to note useful details about people and places to use in a story or essay. And certainly it's crucial for a writer to have space and time alone to produce her work. Sometimes when I answer the phone after I've been writing, people will say to me, "Did I wake you up?" As a matter of fact, they have woken me up from a meditative state, a dream I've willed myself into to access the hidden places in my head where my characters live, breathe, and speak.
However, solitude has its degrees, and each writer confronts solitude in his own way. Some writers are like coal miners who punch the clock, go down the chute, and come back up when they've finished their job. Others, like me, show up early, leave late, and come back to the mines at odd hours, not necessarily to do extra work, but because we like the condition of being underground. We're attracted to writing because it gives form to those odd hours we spend cut off from the world.
When I read certain writers' books (or look at their jacket photos), I sometimes imagine I can tell what kind of relationship to solitude they have. For example, I've often that that Bernard Malamud's work has a much lonelier quality than Philip Roth's (though from what I understand, Roth lives alone in rural Connecticut, spends hours in isolation working on his books, and shuns publicity). When I think of Dickens, Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison, as well as the slew of young writers like Dave Eggers, Safran Foer, and Shteyngart, I imagine them in a brightly-lit room filled with people holding drinks. On the other hand, Woolf, Joyce, Hemingway, W. G. Sebald, and frankly most European writers always strike me as detached souls shut up in drafty garrets and thinking deep thoughts. Jane Austen was famous for craving solitude and never getting any, while Proust retreated into it. Janet Frame, who grew up in a raucous rabble of a household, became something of a high priestess of solitude. Jonathan Franzen wrote a book with the title How to Be Alone, (which, embarrassingly, I have yet to read).
I was telling a friend my feelings about this subject, and he said to me, "But, Aaron, you know everyone!" I'm not sure that's true, but there are many times when I've been in group situations and felt like I was standing in the eye of a hurricane. I watched the noise and energy swirl around me, while I remained at the center in the calm and the quiet, where not a breath of wind or drop of rain could reach me. It's a scary, dizzying perch, not without its dangers, though if you can stand them, there are sometimes rewards.
Sunday, December 12, 2004
It's that time when critics in magazines and newspapers declare their picks for the ten best books of the year. As a writer, I certainly have my opinions on that subject, but since so many books come out each year and I've only sampled a relatively small proportion of them, I'd rather keep out of that debate and instead focus on what made 2004 so important for me: The Top Ten Lessons I've Learned about Getting Published.
1. Getting published doesn't change how you see yourself, but it does change how other people see you, though only for five seconds.
I still scribble my first drafts in the same spiral notebooks I used as a teenager in high school. I still sit in cafes and stare off into space while trying to focus on my work as I did in college. And I still worry about what I'm going to do when I grow up. However, now that I've been published, when other people ask me what I do, I can say that I'm a writer and have an answer ready when I they ask the inevitable next question, "Have you been published?" Yes, I have been published. Generally, the response is, "Oh, wow! That's great!" That's how long you are guaranteed that getting published will change how other people see you, because then they'll have heard of your book or they won't have heard of your book, which leads to all sorts of complications.
2. Memorize how to answer, "So what's your book about?" in 25 seconds or less.
Because books get so little attention in the media, it's more than likely that people you meet will not have heard of your book and then they will feel bad for you. To be polite, they may ask what your book is about. You should tell them, but spare your audience the university lecture. Give them a quick hook and then make an end of it, or else you'll experience eyes glazing over. It's like a little test. If you can't sum up the book in less than 25 seconds, then your book must be a meandering mess. No one will say that, of course, but that's what your friend is thinking.
3. There's no use in asking a writer, "So how's your book doing!!??"
If the question needs to be asked, then it has no real answer. Does anyone ask Toni Morrison or Philip Roth, "So how's your book doing?" (How would they respond, I wonder. "Well, the Nobel was nice, but I'm waiting for another Pulitzer." Or "Only fifteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list this time.")
When people ask this question, they're wondering about two specific kinds of success: sales and critical reaction. But these two areas are not only the least important for a writer in the long run, but also the two areas least under his or her control. Success is about finishing your book and putting it out in the world, crafting sentences and characters you're proud of, realizing your vision, expressing ideas, seeing your book in a store, reading to an audience who gets your jokes, and so much more.
Sales are important because they increase your chances of being able to continue to write with fewer obstacles, and that's it. (This may be a hard lesson to remember.) If sales were the ultimate goal, then Dan Brown and Hillary Clinton deserve the Pulitzer Prize for the next three years.
Critical acclaim is nice too, but as an occasional critic myself, I know there are times when I get a book that simply isn't to my taste, or when I'm grumpy that I have to read something and comment on it in a witty insightful way even though my mind would rather drift elsewhere, like the fight I had with a friend or a problem at work. I've gotten wonderful reviews and reviews that complained I chose the wrong subjects for my book, or that I wasn't as good as Hemingway or Nabokov. Who's right?
If you're a writer, and people ask you how your book is doing, tell them, "Great! I'm so happy with the way things have gone." Throw in an anecdote of something nice that's happened to you because the book has been published. Or not. Either way, you'll feel better and increase the positive vibrations in the ether about your work.
4. The two appropriate things to say to a writer who's just published a book are: A) "I'm going to go right out and buy a copy!" or "I read your book and I loved it." (Also acceptable is, "I've just bought your book and I can't wait to read it.")
If none of these three statements are true for you, then do your writer friends a favor: lie to them. I've had people say to me, "I think I saw your book somewhere." (As if the book were a long-lost orphan who'd been sighted on a milk carton in Idaho.) I've also gotten, "I'm waiting to find your book in a used bookstore." "I'm waiting to get your book at the library." "My friend bought it and as soon as she's done, she's going to loan it to me." "One of these days I'm going to get your book, if I happen to see a copy of it for sale somewhere."
What these statements sound like to a writer is, "You're a nice person, but not nice enough for me to waste my time supporting your career by going to a bookstore and picking up a copy of your book, or even to spend 2 minutes and $24.95 or $12.95 to order your book on-line." Maybe that is genuinely how you feel, and there is nothing wrong with that. But what good does it do to tell this to the writer?
Similarly, if you did read the book and didn't enjoy it, why let the writer know except to punish him or her for torturing you for a few hours out of your life? As the author Frederic Tuten once told me, there are enough people out there who will tell writers what is wrong with their work. I can say from personal experience that I am indeed fully aware of every conceivable objection The View from Stalin's Head could have earned and I expect when Faith from Beginners comes out I'll hear about that too. Unless you're a close friend (and even then, you might want to consider your words closely), just lie. Or say something about an aspect of the book you did like. "The setting was great." "I loved the character of the mother." "Great word choice on page 73." Saying nothing is somewhat less preferable because writers are needy sensitive creatures who will interpret silences as damning.
The worst thing to say, by the way, is the maddeningly non-committal, "I read your book." Or "I have a friend who read your book." How is the writer supposed to respond? Imagine if you invited a friend to your home for dinner, and at the end of the meal she said, "I've eaten your food."
Just lie.
5. Start working on something else
It takes a long time, sometimes years, to publish and edit a book. By the time it's out, you get a three-month window in which you're not expected to have done anything else because you can be described as "just having been published." After that, you're left with nothing.
As soon as that final manuscript is delivered and accepted, celebrate for a day or two and then get to work on your next project. It's also a good way to stay somewhat dispassionate if something unfortunate happens with the publication of your book.
6. Try to set the bar higher with each new book.
Why do the same thing twice? You've proven you can tackle third person? Try first person. You've written an autobiographical memoir? Go for a book about something that isn't so close to you. Take chances. Stay fresh.
7. Have a life.
This is almost impossible for writers, but try to develop and maintain other interests besides writing and books, and then talk about them with your family and friends. Save the neurotic yammering about the state of literature for your diary or your therapist.
8. If you're asked for a favor, do it if you possibly can.
We have enough assholes in the world. Success breeds success. Kindness breeds kindness. Don't worry that someone might get a leg up on you if you help him up the ladder. You may need help from that person yourself someday.
9. Read and buy books
Support your friends and your community by buying their work, even if you don't read it. This is an important business we're in, and we need to keep it going. Replace the time you waste watching that rerun of "The Golden Girls" for the eightieth time by reading for half an hour. You'll like yourself for it.
10. Be proud of what you've achieved!
As Anne Lamott and so many others have pointed out, getting published won't take care of all your problems, but is an extremely nice thing to have happen to you. I feel tremendously blessed for the publication of The View from Stalin's Head, the way it was put out, the way it was received, and the way it's changed my life. I could have had more, but I could have had less. It's like that for every writer. Even my idol E. M. Forster lamented that he hadn't accomplished enough. Writers are gifted at being miserable. Take some time to be happy for what you have. You deserve it.
1. Getting published doesn't change how you see yourself, but it does change how other people see you, though only for five seconds.
I still scribble my first drafts in the same spiral notebooks I used as a teenager in high school. I still sit in cafes and stare off into space while trying to focus on my work as I did in college. And I still worry about what I'm going to do when I grow up. However, now that I've been published, when other people ask me what I do, I can say that I'm a writer and have an answer ready when I they ask the inevitable next question, "Have you been published?" Yes, I have been published. Generally, the response is, "Oh, wow! That's great!" That's how long you are guaranteed that getting published will change how other people see you, because then they'll have heard of your book or they won't have heard of your book, which leads to all sorts of complications.
2. Memorize how to answer, "So what's your book about?" in 25 seconds or less.
Because books get so little attention in the media, it's more than likely that people you meet will not have heard of your book and then they will feel bad for you. To be polite, they may ask what your book is about. You should tell them, but spare your audience the university lecture. Give them a quick hook and then make an end of it, or else you'll experience eyes glazing over. It's like a little test. If you can't sum up the book in less than 25 seconds, then your book must be a meandering mess. No one will say that, of course, but that's what your friend is thinking.
3. There's no use in asking a writer, "So how's your book doing!!??"
If the question needs to be asked, then it has no real answer. Does anyone ask Toni Morrison or Philip Roth, "So how's your book doing?" (How would they respond, I wonder. "Well, the Nobel was nice, but I'm waiting for another Pulitzer." Or "Only fifteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list this time.")
When people ask this question, they're wondering about two specific kinds of success: sales and critical reaction. But these two areas are not only the least important for a writer in the long run, but also the two areas least under his or her control. Success is about finishing your book and putting it out in the world, crafting sentences and characters you're proud of, realizing your vision, expressing ideas, seeing your book in a store, reading to an audience who gets your jokes, and so much more.
Sales are important because they increase your chances of being able to continue to write with fewer obstacles, and that's it. (This may be a hard lesson to remember.) If sales were the ultimate goal, then Dan Brown and Hillary Clinton deserve the Pulitzer Prize for the next three years.
Critical acclaim is nice too, but as an occasional critic myself, I know there are times when I get a book that simply isn't to my taste, or when I'm grumpy that I have to read something and comment on it in a witty insightful way even though my mind would rather drift elsewhere, like the fight I had with a friend or a problem at work. I've gotten wonderful reviews and reviews that complained I chose the wrong subjects for my book, or that I wasn't as good as Hemingway or Nabokov. Who's right?
If you're a writer, and people ask you how your book is doing, tell them, "Great! I'm so happy with the way things have gone." Throw in an anecdote of something nice that's happened to you because the book has been published. Or not. Either way, you'll feel better and increase the positive vibrations in the ether about your work.
4. The two appropriate things to say to a writer who's just published a book are: A) "I'm going to go right out and buy a copy!" or "I read your book and I loved it." (Also acceptable is, "I've just bought your book and I can't wait to read it.")
If none of these three statements are true for you, then do your writer friends a favor: lie to them. I've had people say to me, "I think I saw your book somewhere." (As if the book were a long-lost orphan who'd been sighted on a milk carton in Idaho.) I've also gotten, "I'm waiting to find your book in a used bookstore." "I'm waiting to get your book at the library." "My friend bought it and as soon as she's done, she's going to loan it to me." "One of these days I'm going to get your book, if I happen to see a copy of it for sale somewhere."
What these statements sound like to a writer is, "You're a nice person, but not nice enough for me to waste my time supporting your career by going to a bookstore and picking up a copy of your book, or even to spend 2 minutes and $24.95 or $12.95 to order your book on-line." Maybe that is genuinely how you feel, and there is nothing wrong with that. But what good does it do to tell this to the writer?
Similarly, if you did read the book and didn't enjoy it, why let the writer know except to punish him or her for torturing you for a few hours out of your life? As the author Frederic Tuten once told me, there are enough people out there who will tell writers what is wrong with their work. I can say from personal experience that I am indeed fully aware of every conceivable objection The View from Stalin's Head could have earned and I expect when Faith from Beginners comes out I'll hear about that too. Unless you're a close friend (and even then, you might want to consider your words closely), just lie. Or say something about an aspect of the book you did like. "The setting was great." "I loved the character of the mother." "Great word choice on page 73." Saying nothing is somewhat less preferable because writers are needy sensitive creatures who will interpret silences as damning.
The worst thing to say, by the way, is the maddeningly non-committal, "I read your book." Or "I have a friend who read your book." How is the writer supposed to respond? Imagine if you invited a friend to your home for dinner, and at the end of the meal she said, "I've eaten your food."
Just lie.
5. Start working on something else
It takes a long time, sometimes years, to publish and edit a book. By the time it's out, you get a three-month window in which you're not expected to have done anything else because you can be described as "just having been published." After that, you're left with nothing.
As soon as that final manuscript is delivered and accepted, celebrate for a day or two and then get to work on your next project. It's also a good way to stay somewhat dispassionate if something unfortunate happens with the publication of your book.
6. Try to set the bar higher with each new book.
Why do the same thing twice? You've proven you can tackle third person? Try first person. You've written an autobiographical memoir? Go for a book about something that isn't so close to you. Take chances. Stay fresh.
7. Have a life.
This is almost impossible for writers, but try to develop and maintain other interests besides writing and books, and then talk about them with your family and friends. Save the neurotic yammering about the state of literature for your diary or your therapist.
8. If you're asked for a favor, do it if you possibly can.
We have enough assholes in the world. Success breeds success. Kindness breeds kindness. Don't worry that someone might get a leg up on you if you help him up the ladder. You may need help from that person yourself someday.
9. Read and buy books
Support your friends and your community by buying their work, even if you don't read it. This is an important business we're in, and we need to keep it going. Replace the time you waste watching that rerun of "The Golden Girls" for the eightieth time by reading for half an hour. You'll like yourself for it.
10. Be proud of what you've achieved!
As Anne Lamott and so many others have pointed out, getting published won't take care of all your problems, but is an extremely nice thing to have happen to you. I feel tremendously blessed for the publication of The View from Stalin's Head, the way it was put out, the way it was received, and the way it's changed my life. I could have had more, but I could have had less. It's like that for every writer. Even my idol E. M. Forster lamented that he hadn't accomplished enough. Writers are gifted at being miserable. Take some time to be happy for what you have. You deserve it.
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Please Don't Bother to Entertain Me
Ever since I was aware of literature, I've wanted to read Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, mostly because the title sounded so, you know, like, cool. First of all, I had never met anyone with the mysterious name of Jude, a name that sounded to me as if it were Jewish, even though I knew it was Christian. Then there was the "the Obscure" part. How could someone with such a lofty, regal-sounding name and title be "obscure"?
Even though I'd read some of Hardy's other work and enjoyed it, I stayed far away from Jude. I'd been warned off by English teachers, professors, even my sister-in-law, that the novel was dark, depressing, twisted, heavy, dense. A good read if you enjoyed uttering Satanic chants or tearing wings off butterflies in your spare time, or a chore to complete for school. Definitely not something to read for fun.
Recently I was in a bookstore and happened to see the intriguing title once again looming in front of me. I felt old enough, brave enough, experienced enough to handle the tortures within its covers, so I picked it up and began reading.
After finishing the first few chapters, I noticed the experience I was having was much different from the one to which I'd become accustomed when reading fiction, watching movies, looking at art, even riding in the subway. At first I couldn't put my finger on what was so strange about the book. Then it hit me. I wasn't being entertained.
Today, it seems as if not being entertained has become impossible. Life is now the ultimate spectator sport, underscored by constant commentary and scores from other games around the world. The news is now accompanied by flashing lights, music, subtitles, and a constant crawl of headlines to keep your eye moving. Picking out groceries is now a performative-theatrical experience. It's no longer enough for a food to be strawberry-flavored, for example. It must be strawberry-kiwi-boisenberry flavored, with silver packaging and a free toy inside, or a diet plan, or an easy, quick, delicious low-fat recipe. Also, it must be bite-sized and come in bright colors like hot pink and sky blue. Waiting for a movie to begin is now a chance to be entertained by songs designed by corporate executives who've learned which chords and melodies appeal to the largest common denominator, or by snippets from TV shows about waiting in line for soup, or on-the-set "exclusive peeks" from made for TV movies featuring B-movie actors. Everything we see lights up and flickers, comes with extra features we've never asked for but accept, because, A) they're free, and B) most importantly, they're new. As soon as we wake up in the morning, we're being entertained by something. And if something doesn't entertain us, like a friend's over-long illness, the genocide in Sudan, or modern dance, then we dismiss it with the ultimate of damnations: boring.
Indeed, a new crop of writers, perhaps feeling the heat from their multimedia cousins on the internet and in film, have declared their aim to thrill, to entertain, to join in the Roman circuses instead of offer a refuge from them. Their stories are chock-a-block with cliffhangers and climaxes, thrills and spills, more fun than a day at Six Flags.
Of course entertaining audiences isn't new to literature. Just check out Ben-Hur or the novels of Charles Dickens, who wasn't above writing a scene of spontaneous combustion or two.
What's new is that we live in a time when we don't need literature as an escape from our boring, drab, gray lives. If anything, life offers too many vehicles for "excitement" these days. What we need from literature now, more than ever, is a jolt us back to reality and out of our constant state of caffeine-rush alertness to the latest over-the-top news headline on our computer, the latest Hollywood exclusive (available to millions of viewers in the English-speaking world), the latest internet porn fantasy.
Unfortunately, many of the writers who aren't trying to thrill us are putting us to sleep. I'm taking about authors of literary fiction whose characters putter around the house and in the yard waiting to be struck by an epiphany that their lives have been a waste, though it's too late to change and it's all so pointless anyway. These "slice-of-life" stories are in their own way as much removed from reality as the chills-and-spills approach.
Jude the Obscure is not so much a slice of life as it is a slice out of life. Its mix of Biblical references and antiquated rustic slang can sometimes be impenetrable; the characters' hemming and hawing can be infuriating; the bleakness of their world is overpowering. As readers, we don't know quite what to make of Hardy's vision. We become angry, uncomfortable, and best of all, confused. In other words, we feel alive.
And what's wrong with that? In this age of you're on my side or you're against me, what's wrong with a little uncertainty? Are we so insecure in our selves that we can't handle being provoked, unsettled, and even upstaged by a work of art?
We have artists today who make deliberately confusing work. That's easy. What's hard, and what's so admirable about Hardy, is that he writes novels that seem almost understandable, which is what makes them so lifelike. He veers back and forth between naturalism and surrealism, riveting action and obscure, repetitive scenes in which nothing seems to happen. We as readers feel we ought to understand it all, but when we finish his work, we come away scratching our heads, angry with ourselves for not knowing what to think. We become more skilled at living with uncertainty, a skill we're in desperate need of more and more.
So who else is teaching us this lesson now? Who is our Thomas Hardy today? I'm open to suggestions, if you have any.
Even though I'd read some of Hardy's other work and enjoyed it, I stayed far away from Jude. I'd been warned off by English teachers, professors, even my sister-in-law, that the novel was dark, depressing, twisted, heavy, dense. A good read if you enjoyed uttering Satanic chants or tearing wings off butterflies in your spare time, or a chore to complete for school. Definitely not something to read for fun.
Recently I was in a bookstore and happened to see the intriguing title once again looming in front of me. I felt old enough, brave enough, experienced enough to handle the tortures within its covers, so I picked it up and began reading.
After finishing the first few chapters, I noticed the experience I was having was much different from the one to which I'd become accustomed when reading fiction, watching movies, looking at art, even riding in the subway. At first I couldn't put my finger on what was so strange about the book. Then it hit me. I wasn't being entertained.
Today, it seems as if not being entertained has become impossible. Life is now the ultimate spectator sport, underscored by constant commentary and scores from other games around the world. The news is now accompanied by flashing lights, music, subtitles, and a constant crawl of headlines to keep your eye moving. Picking out groceries is now a performative-theatrical experience. It's no longer enough for a food to be strawberry-flavored, for example. It must be strawberry-kiwi-boisenberry flavored, with silver packaging and a free toy inside, or a diet plan, or an easy, quick, delicious low-fat recipe. Also, it must be bite-sized and come in bright colors like hot pink and sky blue. Waiting for a movie to begin is now a chance to be entertained by songs designed by corporate executives who've learned which chords and melodies appeal to the largest common denominator, or by snippets from TV shows about waiting in line for soup, or on-the-set "exclusive peeks" from made for TV movies featuring B-movie actors. Everything we see lights up and flickers, comes with extra features we've never asked for but accept, because, A) they're free, and B) most importantly, they're new. As soon as we wake up in the morning, we're being entertained by something. And if something doesn't entertain us, like a friend's over-long illness, the genocide in Sudan, or modern dance, then we dismiss it with the ultimate of damnations: boring.
Indeed, a new crop of writers, perhaps feeling the heat from their multimedia cousins on the internet and in film, have declared their aim to thrill, to entertain, to join in the Roman circuses instead of offer a refuge from them. Their stories are chock-a-block with cliffhangers and climaxes, thrills and spills, more fun than a day at Six Flags.
Of course entertaining audiences isn't new to literature. Just check out Ben-Hur or the novels of Charles Dickens, who wasn't above writing a scene of spontaneous combustion or two.
What's new is that we live in a time when we don't need literature as an escape from our boring, drab, gray lives. If anything, life offers too many vehicles for "excitement" these days. What we need from literature now, more than ever, is a jolt us back to reality and out of our constant state of caffeine-rush alertness to the latest over-the-top news headline on our computer, the latest Hollywood exclusive (available to millions of viewers in the English-speaking world), the latest internet porn fantasy.
Unfortunately, many of the writers who aren't trying to thrill us are putting us to sleep. I'm taking about authors of literary fiction whose characters putter around the house and in the yard waiting to be struck by an epiphany that their lives have been a waste, though it's too late to change and it's all so pointless anyway. These "slice-of-life" stories are in their own way as much removed from reality as the chills-and-spills approach.
Jude the Obscure is not so much a slice of life as it is a slice out of life. Its mix of Biblical references and antiquated rustic slang can sometimes be impenetrable; the characters' hemming and hawing can be infuriating; the bleakness of their world is overpowering. As readers, we don't know quite what to make of Hardy's vision. We become angry, uncomfortable, and best of all, confused. In other words, we feel alive.
And what's wrong with that? In this age of you're on my side or you're against me, what's wrong with a little uncertainty? Are we so insecure in our selves that we can't handle being provoked, unsettled, and even upstaged by a work of art?
We have artists today who make deliberately confusing work. That's easy. What's hard, and what's so admirable about Hardy, is that he writes novels that seem almost understandable, which is what makes them so lifelike. He veers back and forth between naturalism and surrealism, riveting action and obscure, repetitive scenes in which nothing seems to happen. We as readers feel we ought to understand it all, but when we finish his work, we come away scratching our heads, angry with ourselves for not knowing what to think. We become more skilled at living with uncertainty, a skill we're in desperate need of more and more.
So who else is teaching us this lesson now? Who is our Thomas Hardy today? I'm open to suggestions, if you have any.
Saturday, November 13, 2004
The Literary Meaning of the Election of 2004
In my writing classes, my students often like to deflect criticism of vagueness in their work with the mantra, "But it sounds good." In response, I tell them it isn't good enough for words to sound good. They have to mean something as well.
Unfortunately, the relationship between word and meaning is becoming a radical concept, an outmoded value. We live in a country and a time when musicians lip sync and call it "singing," when museums exhibit bicycles and Armani dresses and call it "art, when performers preen for the camera and call it "acting." Evangelical preachers support the death penalty to promote a culture of life; bacon, raw fish, and candy bars are marketed as health food; people appear on reality TV shows as "characters."
At last this country has found a president to match our predilection for falseness and inversion, our ongoing project of divorcing word from meaning. In 2004, we re-elected a president who goes to war to keep peace, who imposes democracy on other countries so their inhabitants can express their free will (under the watchful eyes of our troops), who builds a case for war on the grounds of "weapons of mass destruction," and when that evidence is disproven, takes no responsibility for the falseness of those words, but instead changes the grounds for the war. Now we are fighting to spread democracy. The words about WMD, peddled for months by the president and his cohorts, don't matter because they are only words. They sounded good at the time, but their meaning is fundamentally unimportant.
It will probably strike future generations as more than a little odd that a president with such a penchant for falseness is so beloved for his honesty. But then, we as Americans on both sides of the red/blue state divide have lost our ability to judge and interpret language. Many of Bush's supporters like him because they think he sounds honest, not because they have spent five minutes parsing his words to see if he really is honest. Many of Bush's detractors compare him to Hitler, and especially to the terrorists themselves, but these comparisons are unfortunate exaggerations that obscure the real danger of Bush's presidency.
The problem is not that Bush is a terrorist. A terrorist is an individual or a member of an organization who cannot be held accountable for his actions by the citizens of a state. The problem is that in his careless disregard for words and their meaning, Bush uses language in the manner of a terrorist because terrorists revel in doublespeak. They fight holy wars by the unholy method of slaughtering women and children. They fail to distinguish between civilians and soldiers because distinctions are useless when you want to paint your message in broad swaths of blood. Unfortunately, our president has as little use for truth in language as our old vanquished foes, the Communist dictators of Eastern Europe.
Sadly, this is the level to which we as Americans have sunk long before "Black Wednesday," lulled by our Ipods that play music only we can hear and video games in which we score points for committing vile crimes that don't matter and "healthy" chocolate covered energy bars that satisfy our cravings for sugar our body doesn't need. In such an atmosphere, can anyone be surprised that we've re-elected President Bush? (I say "we" to include myself in the decision because we are all responsible for the outcome of the election, however we voted.)
In 2004, we said to our enemies: we in the free world think just as you do in the land of shackled. The ideals of our Constitution, of our two hundred year old democracy, those are mere words, easily sacrificed in the name of "security" on the streets of Baghdad, in Abu Ghreib, in Guantanamo Bay, and in the halls of our own Congress when the Patriot Act was rushed into law. Might makes right. We do what we do not because we should but because we can. And in sacrificing our ideals, we believe, we have made America safe. We have also lost a little of what "America" used to mean.
And so in November 2004, we sent our message loud and clear to the terrorists, the jihadists, the religious extremists and petty dictators who wish us ill. We should not be surprised when we hear their response.
Unfortunately, the relationship between word and meaning is becoming a radical concept, an outmoded value. We live in a country and a time when musicians lip sync and call it "singing," when museums exhibit bicycles and Armani dresses and call it "art, when performers preen for the camera and call it "acting." Evangelical preachers support the death penalty to promote a culture of life; bacon, raw fish, and candy bars are marketed as health food; people appear on reality TV shows as "characters."
At last this country has found a president to match our predilection for falseness and inversion, our ongoing project of divorcing word from meaning. In 2004, we re-elected a president who goes to war to keep peace, who imposes democracy on other countries so their inhabitants can express their free will (under the watchful eyes of our troops), who builds a case for war on the grounds of "weapons of mass destruction," and when that evidence is disproven, takes no responsibility for the falseness of those words, but instead changes the grounds for the war. Now we are fighting to spread democracy. The words about WMD, peddled for months by the president and his cohorts, don't matter because they are only words. They sounded good at the time, but their meaning is fundamentally unimportant.
It will probably strike future generations as more than a little odd that a president with such a penchant for falseness is so beloved for his honesty. But then, we as Americans on both sides of the red/blue state divide have lost our ability to judge and interpret language. Many of Bush's supporters like him because they think he sounds honest, not because they have spent five minutes parsing his words to see if he really is honest. Many of Bush's detractors compare him to Hitler, and especially to the terrorists themselves, but these comparisons are unfortunate exaggerations that obscure the real danger of Bush's presidency.
The problem is not that Bush is a terrorist. A terrorist is an individual or a member of an organization who cannot be held accountable for his actions by the citizens of a state. The problem is that in his careless disregard for words and their meaning, Bush uses language in the manner of a terrorist because terrorists revel in doublespeak. They fight holy wars by the unholy method of slaughtering women and children. They fail to distinguish between civilians and soldiers because distinctions are useless when you want to paint your message in broad swaths of blood. Unfortunately, our president has as little use for truth in language as our old vanquished foes, the Communist dictators of Eastern Europe.
Sadly, this is the level to which we as Americans have sunk long before "Black Wednesday," lulled by our Ipods that play music only we can hear and video games in which we score points for committing vile crimes that don't matter and "healthy" chocolate covered energy bars that satisfy our cravings for sugar our body doesn't need. In such an atmosphere, can anyone be surprised that we've re-elected President Bush? (I say "we" to include myself in the decision because we are all responsible for the outcome of the election, however we voted.)
In 2004, we said to our enemies: we in the free world think just as you do in the land of shackled. The ideals of our Constitution, of our two hundred year old democracy, those are mere words, easily sacrificed in the name of "security" on the streets of Baghdad, in Abu Ghreib, in Guantanamo Bay, and in the halls of our own Congress when the Patriot Act was rushed into law. Might makes right. We do what we do not because we should but because we can. And in sacrificing our ideals, we believe, we have made America safe. We have also lost a little of what "America" used to mean.
And so in November 2004, we sent our message loud and clear to the terrorists, the jihadists, the religious extremists and petty dictators who wish us ill. We should not be surprised when we hear their response.
Friday, October 22, 2004
THE LIFE OF AN "ESTABLISHED WRITER"
Shortly after The View from Stalin's Head came out, I received a kind email from an appreciative reader who asked me to write her back because she thought it would be good for her to hear from an "established writer." My first instinct was to look around the room to see if there were any established writers nearby who could send her a reply.
If publication makes you an established writer, then I suppose I am one. Still, I can't help feeling like an imposter, that somehow I have pulled the wool over the eyes of my editor and my agent, as well as the editors of every magazine and anthology where I've been published, every contest judge who's given me a prize, every teacher and critic who's said something nice about my work. I doubt I'm the only writer who ever felt this way. Flannery O'Connor once compared the experience of reading your own work to chewing on the carpet.
I suspect that part of the reason I don't feel established is that my day to day life looks nothing like I'd imagined it would after achieving the magical goal of publication. For starters, I'd always thought an established writer would spend each day of the week laboring industriously and faithfully on his laptop, only breaking off typing long enough to take a phone call from the editors of The New Yorker, troubling him for a column or story for their very next issue. Or perhaps the call comes from his agent, to tell him which literary prize he's been nominated for this week, which bestseller list he's hit, or which foreign publisher or Hollywood producer is begging for a sneak peak at his newest work. The phone rings again, this time from the New York Times. They're interested in another feature for the Arts section. (That makes three this month!)
Once a week, the established writer hails a taxi and rides up to the local University to teach a graduate workshop in fiction, not because he needs the money, but simply because it amuses him. Also, it gives him a chance to shape the future of fiction, as if his widely-read novels haven't already done so. On weekends, the established writer attends literary gatherings in swank cocktail lounges or in some important person's living room, where he sips champagne and munches on crackers spread with goat cheese and arugula.
There may actually be some writers who live this way, but I do not. First of all, though I try to write every day, it's never in any kind of continuous time frame. My work tends to come out in a series of disconnected spurts. A half hour on the subway home from work. Fifteen minutes between giving in to the constant temptation to check my email so I can delete the latest span from 1-800-Flowers.com. Okay, I'm ready to focus, get back to work. Except that it might be a good idea to make a cup of tea first so I don't fall asleep while typing because I've been up since 6:30 am. While I'm at it, I'll grab a quick granola bar just to keep up my strength, and then a glass of water because I'm dehydrated from the tea. I'm typing again, but oops, now I have to go to the bathroom because I've had the water and the tea. While I'm up, I'd better check the news.
Somehow I manage to produce work this way, and occasionally people give me money for it. Fifty dollars here. One hundred there. Sometimes more, but not often. And then there are the book advances (minus agent's fee, minus taxes), which I'm very glad and thankful for, though they have yet to reach quit-my-day-job proportions.
I teach, because I love to, but also because I need the money to live. And, though I'm eager and happy to serve my students, when I'm done for the day, I'm sometimes so exhausted from performing for a crowd (because teaching really is a constant performance), I don't want to turn on my computer or open my notebook. I just want to close my eyes and hear absolute quiet.
I do socialize with other writers, but we tend to avoid swanky lounges because they're expensive and none of us have that much spare money. We teach English to immigrants or composition for state schools, coach girls' field hockey, work as personal trainers, tutor children from wealthy families, work for magazines and publishers and caterers and on and on. Never once has Ethan Hawke, Bono, or Salman Rushdie appeared at any of our gatherings.
And yet, though my life as an established writer has not turned out as I'd expected, I still consider myself extraordinarily blessed. My days are interesting and varied. I get to learn about subjects I never would have otherwise gotten interested in. (For my current novel, set in Berlin, I'm studying physics, pregnancy, the German language, as well as Colette's Claudine novels and Anne Tyler's Earthly Possessions.) I spend a part of each day doing something I love. And my work is out in the world. People read and even enjoy it. Occasionally their lives are touched by it, like the woman who came to hear me read in Detroit because she'd been moved by an essay I'd written about the late Janet Frame, or another woman here in New York who came to a reading just to tell me how much she'd loved my stories. Those moments are wonderful.
Then there are moments that aren't wonderful, like when you get a bad review, or when someone says to you he's been trying to get through your book, really he has, but he simply has better things to do with his time, like staring at his toenails. As an occasional critic myself, I know how easy it is to lapse into tearing apart someone's work. If you want to write, you have to accept that such criticism is part of the price you pay to be in the game.
There will always be times you go unnoticed, unrecognized, rejected. Or when you'll wait centuries to be paid and feel embarrassed to send that politely nudging email that basically says, "Um, I lived up to my part of the bargain and did the work. Can you pay me that hundred dollars you owe me?" And worst of all is writers' block, when you're staring at a notebook page and the only thought that comes to mind is that you've managed to fake out the world this long, but no longer. You really are an imposter and a cheat and guilty of every writing sin your worst critics have accused you of. You ought to get out your checkbook and issue refunds to anyone who's ever wasted a tin nickel to read something you've written.
Becoming a writer in reality (as opposed to my fantasy) has taught me that a writer's life means giving up control, which is no different than anyone else's life, except that I can say that I chose my fate, that I had a dream and I followed it where it led me. The only thing I can control is my attitude. For example, now I'm thankful for some of the rejections and criticism I've gotten. I wouldn't want some of those stories published today, and the criticism, even when I didn't agree with it, made me stronger, made me fight harder, made me more certain that this was the right thing to do with my life because I didn't allow those critics to convince me to quit.
You can cry and rail against the editors of the magazines and publishing houses and the whole literary world, but if you're really indignant about where you've ended up as a writer, the best thing to do is write a novel or story collection to prove to the world how wrong it is for not recognizing your talent all this time. But be careful, because even if you do manage to create a work of genius, the world may not be ready or even in the mood to pay attention. There might be a war or a terrorist attack, an election, or even the debut of a new TV reality show hosted by Alan Thicke overshadowing your accomplishment. No time for art.
So the life of an established writer has turned out to be pretty much the same as the life of an unestablished writer, just with a few new wrinkles. And a few perks, like seeing your book in a store occasionally. Also, now people don't ask me what I'm going to do when I grow up. Instead they want to know if they can buy my book in a real store or if I can give them a free copy.
In this blog, I plan to document what it's really like to be a working, perhaps "established" writer. I hope that my example demystifies the writer mystique for general readers. I also hope that it's something for writers of all stripes, including those who feel that they aren't established but long to be, to identify with as well as take heart from.
If publication makes you an established writer, then I suppose I am one. Still, I can't help feeling like an imposter, that somehow I have pulled the wool over the eyes of my editor and my agent, as well as the editors of every magazine and anthology where I've been published, every contest judge who's given me a prize, every teacher and critic who's said something nice about my work. I doubt I'm the only writer who ever felt this way. Flannery O'Connor once compared the experience of reading your own work to chewing on the carpet.
I suspect that part of the reason I don't feel established is that my day to day life looks nothing like I'd imagined it would after achieving the magical goal of publication. For starters, I'd always thought an established writer would spend each day of the week laboring industriously and faithfully on his laptop, only breaking off typing long enough to take a phone call from the editors of The New Yorker, troubling him for a column or story for their very next issue. Or perhaps the call comes from his agent, to tell him which literary prize he's been nominated for this week, which bestseller list he's hit, or which foreign publisher or Hollywood producer is begging for a sneak peak at his newest work. The phone rings again, this time from the New York Times. They're interested in another feature for the Arts section. (That makes three this month!)
Once a week, the established writer hails a taxi and rides up to the local University to teach a graduate workshop in fiction, not because he needs the money, but simply because it amuses him. Also, it gives him a chance to shape the future of fiction, as if his widely-read novels haven't already done so. On weekends, the established writer attends literary gatherings in swank cocktail lounges or in some important person's living room, where he sips champagne and munches on crackers spread with goat cheese and arugula.
There may actually be some writers who live this way, but I do not. First of all, though I try to write every day, it's never in any kind of continuous time frame. My work tends to come out in a series of disconnected spurts. A half hour on the subway home from work. Fifteen minutes between giving in to the constant temptation to check my email so I can delete the latest span from 1-800-Flowers.com. Okay, I'm ready to focus, get back to work. Except that it might be a good idea to make a cup of tea first so I don't fall asleep while typing because I've been up since 6:30 am. While I'm at it, I'll grab a quick granola bar just to keep up my strength, and then a glass of water because I'm dehydrated from the tea. I'm typing again, but oops, now I have to go to the bathroom because I've had the water and the tea. While I'm up, I'd better check the news.
Somehow I manage to produce work this way, and occasionally people give me money for it. Fifty dollars here. One hundred there. Sometimes more, but not often. And then there are the book advances (minus agent's fee, minus taxes), which I'm very glad and thankful for, though they have yet to reach quit-my-day-job proportions.
I teach, because I love to, but also because I need the money to live. And, though I'm eager and happy to serve my students, when I'm done for the day, I'm sometimes so exhausted from performing for a crowd (because teaching really is a constant performance), I don't want to turn on my computer or open my notebook. I just want to close my eyes and hear absolute quiet.
I do socialize with other writers, but we tend to avoid swanky lounges because they're expensive and none of us have that much spare money. We teach English to immigrants or composition for state schools, coach girls' field hockey, work as personal trainers, tutor children from wealthy families, work for magazines and publishers and caterers and on and on. Never once has Ethan Hawke, Bono, or Salman Rushdie appeared at any of our gatherings.
And yet, though my life as an established writer has not turned out as I'd expected, I still consider myself extraordinarily blessed. My days are interesting and varied. I get to learn about subjects I never would have otherwise gotten interested in. (For my current novel, set in Berlin, I'm studying physics, pregnancy, the German language, as well as Colette's Claudine novels and Anne Tyler's Earthly Possessions.) I spend a part of each day doing something I love. And my work is out in the world. People read and even enjoy it. Occasionally their lives are touched by it, like the woman who came to hear me read in Detroit because she'd been moved by an essay I'd written about the late Janet Frame, or another woman here in New York who came to a reading just to tell me how much she'd loved my stories. Those moments are wonderful.
Then there are moments that aren't wonderful, like when you get a bad review, or when someone says to you he's been trying to get through your book, really he has, but he simply has better things to do with his time, like staring at his toenails. As an occasional critic myself, I know how easy it is to lapse into tearing apart someone's work. If you want to write, you have to accept that such criticism is part of the price you pay to be in the game.
There will always be times you go unnoticed, unrecognized, rejected. Or when you'll wait centuries to be paid and feel embarrassed to send that politely nudging email that basically says, "Um, I lived up to my part of the bargain and did the work. Can you pay me that hundred dollars you owe me?" And worst of all is writers' block, when you're staring at a notebook page and the only thought that comes to mind is that you've managed to fake out the world this long, but no longer. You really are an imposter and a cheat and guilty of every writing sin your worst critics have accused you of. You ought to get out your checkbook and issue refunds to anyone who's ever wasted a tin nickel to read something you've written.
Becoming a writer in reality (as opposed to my fantasy) has taught me that a writer's life means giving up control, which is no different than anyone else's life, except that I can say that I chose my fate, that I had a dream and I followed it where it led me. The only thing I can control is my attitude. For example, now I'm thankful for some of the rejections and criticism I've gotten. I wouldn't want some of those stories published today, and the criticism, even when I didn't agree with it, made me stronger, made me fight harder, made me more certain that this was the right thing to do with my life because I didn't allow those critics to convince me to quit.
You can cry and rail against the editors of the magazines and publishing houses and the whole literary world, but if you're really indignant about where you've ended up as a writer, the best thing to do is write a novel or story collection to prove to the world how wrong it is for not recognizing your talent all this time. But be careful, because even if you do manage to create a work of genius, the world may not be ready or even in the mood to pay attention. There might be a war or a terrorist attack, an election, or even the debut of a new TV reality show hosted by Alan Thicke overshadowing your accomplishment. No time for art.
So the life of an established writer has turned out to be pretty much the same as the life of an unestablished writer, just with a few new wrinkles. And a few perks, like seeing your book in a store occasionally. Also, now people don't ask me what I'm going to do when I grow up. Instead they want to know if they can buy my book in a real store or if I can give them a free copy.
In this blog, I plan to document what it's really like to be a working, perhaps "established" writer. I hope that my example demystifies the writer mystique for general readers. I also hope that it's something for writers of all stripes, including those who feel that they aren't established but long to be, to identify with as well as take heart from.
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