Assignment 5:
SHADOWBOXING:
It is ironic about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas being the selection, because the person whose character sketch I am doing used to love Hunter S. Thompson and actually was like the narrator in a way. And while I find the piece brilliant in ways--the language and the drugs and the humor is so original--there is also a scary desperation to it that makes me want to shy away from oh, say, psychedelics. It reminds me of the character I wrote about because, like the sketch, this story doesn't seem to be about more than simply itself. It is ridiculously outrageous and even today this seems like way too many drugs to be taking--but honestly when I try to figure out what the kid stands for, and the lawyer and everything I start to think that it's just there for shock's sake and maybe I'm wrong but I don't see much there. I don't like this kind of writing because it thinks it's so outrageous but really it's not, and while I love the first sentence and the writing is great (the dialogue is fantastically visceral), I just keep thinking, "So what?"
The change between the "levels" of the personal essay to literary journalism is intriguing because of the requirements demanded of the writer. In a personal essay, I gather that the important thing is to tap into something personally important, while a literary piece would be something more relevant to everyone else. Kind of like the difference between a poem you write for a lover, and a poem you write that you want to get published?
The amount of research involved in literary journalism is both interesting and scary. How much is enough? I've read those New Yorker articles, and the people who write them seem so into their topics. And yet, my topic is tentatively about how people perceive Indians (Native Americans) and then delving into my own journey and seeing how going to a reservation has changed or not changed that. Most of the writing will be a story of how I came to be interested in writing about Indians, what that says about me, and of course going beyond the basic answer (which I already know) which is not to objectify people and treat them differently. I'm still sort of sketching things out on this one. It just fascinates me how people perceive others to be sooo different and yet the same, and then I get lost and don't know what I think about anything.
I read a New Yorker article once about a vanishing native language in Alaska. It seemed to me a perfect example of what literary journalism is about--the writer researched vanishing languages, linguistics, and then traveled to talk to the last remaining speaker of Eyak (the language), all the while making larger connections about how we treat natives and whether a vanishing language is a good or bad thing--should something be done to stop the disappearance, or is that the way that life flows?
Anyway. I meant to describe that to show what Shadowboxing was talking about--a piece that appeals to a great many readers and connects to an important issue while the writer's journey into the research and their own reaction to it is catalogued. But perhaps I might not want to appear as much in my writing. I don't know.
What I got most from this reading was the idea of letting the reader know where you stand--dropping hints about how real you are being, when you are saying things like "I imagine that Joe thinks . . . ". Also, the issue of audiences seems very important here. One enters into a sort of contract with the reader that says the writer will point out what he or she thinks is important (in a sense, it is very political writing, but then didn't some famous writer say that all art is political? Some Marxist writer probably)--and then showing why it is important. Rather than simply telling a story and pointing out the importance of the instance to the writer, the writer acknowledges the audience in a way that includes the audience and yet takes them on a special ride they may not have any clue about. Which leads into . . .
STYLE and Gay Talese's "Ali in Havana":
It's quite difficult to focus on style and clarity and cohesion when I am writing this, a gonzo journalist, on a laptop that belongs to my mom's housemate. My mother is working as a midwife on an Indian reservation because it pays well, and we have come to visit her. Outside my window are mountian lions, apparently--some kid got mauled by one the other day. There are greyish yellow rolling hills and lots of cattle and sparsely spaced out little houses. Most of the Indian kids hang out on their trucks, and there was a little girl yesterday who came up to me and asked why my pants had holes in the knees.
"Because they're old," I told her.
"Why?" was the answer I should have guessed was coming.
I feel like the holes in my pants right now. I can't explain why I'm so worn out, but I am. I honestly have not had time to sit down and consciously think for about a week. So. While it may seem that my writing does not follow the rules of cohesion and coherence, I found this chapter to be the most exciting so far. It helped me to realize that my writing is not cohesive nor coherent much of the time. It was an exciting revelation. And since I mix the passive and active forms of sentences so much it was wonderful to see that I don't need to stay active or "character-action"-oriented the whole way. Sometimes passive sentences are good because they help the flow. My boyfriend, who is less "active" than I am, told me the other day that quiet people are good because they smooth everyone else's edges down a bit. Now I get it. Before, it was as though I was thinking: so, I'll become more and more direct until my writing explodes?
Also in this chapter was the idea of starting out with something familiar to the reader-- in the Talese piece, we start out with a breezy Havana evening, rather than simply jumping into a description of Muhammad Ali. I also liked the part in STYLE about not needing all of the "thus"'s and "therefore"'s that I consistently employ in my own writing (more in essays, but anyway) because I am actually NOT making connections!!
The Talese piece is interesting because it transforms everyday actions--a meeting with a president-like figure--into something completely unique and fascinating. However, I wonder if some of the fascination comes from the fact that the two main players are Ali and Fidel Castro. It was the same when I read parts of Norman Mailer's Marilyn (when I was a kid of course and had no idea about what he was talking about) and thought "Wow, interesting, but if she wasn't so hot, would I care?" Yet what I like about this piece is that it turns Ali and the others into characters--especially I liked the detail about the twinkle in Ali's eye on page 265. I've seen footage of Ali, and he does have that twinkle sometimes when he smiles.
But it's harder to read this piece, and the Thompson piece as literary works with themes and stuff. Mostly because, if all of that stuff happened, then it can't all be relevant, I think. And then I realize that the writer is being selective about details--still, there are so many. Most obvious, I think, is the cigar/smoking motif. What does it mean that everywhere in Havana there are cigarettes and ashtrays, while Castro himself does not smoke? What does it mean to the story? Why is Cigar Aficionado the only magazine that "connects" the USA to Cuba? Does this mean that we can only connect via the "bad" measures we take to carry out our parallel countries? Does this mean that we have more in common than we think? Does Castro's lack of smoking mean that he refuses to be defined by his country and by outsiders? Or do all of these things simply mean that they are there, and that the writer is not planning anything but is hoping we will find something interesting in all of the details.
Of which there are an attic-full! Talese's explicit detailing of how everyone looks and acts seems to have been drawn from a video (unless he was there, or heard about it from one of the others) and he intersperses it with information about the characters' pasts. Some of the details feel true, like the twinkle, and others feel false: for example, on 276 Castro strokes his beard "as if trying to revive the vitality of its fibre." This refers I'm sure to Castro's age and possibly some sort of decline in morale of his regime, which he hopes will be revitalized, but I don't think it's fair to make Castro look like that from stroking his beard. This is why, even though I read the New Yorker, in many ways I hate it.
The only other thing that bothered me about this was how boring it was. I guess Talese is trying to bring down some idols, but he is not Truman Capote. He makes Ali seem like a sleeping, childish boor and Castro like a delicate moron. It's kind of distasteful. Why is he focusing on the boring speech about the flights at the end? I was mystified, but maybe I'm just being reductive.
Which leads me back to Fear and Loathing--I had serious Fear and Loathing about this assignment because I was so worried, ha--and the similarities/differences between the two pieces. Both pieces list details in a way that is not exactly exciting to me. But the details build up so that I definitely have a "feel" about each piece. Fear and Loathing feels hot, dry windy, with that sickening sort of feeling one gets when one has drunk too much (I won't comment on the drugs, but suffice it to say that I could never do that many at once!). The Talese piece feels hot, as well, and stifled, and awkward and tense.
SHADOWBOXING:
It is ironic about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas being the selection, because the person whose character sketch I am doing used to love Hunter S. Thompson and actually was like the narrator in a way. And while I find the piece brilliant in ways--the language and the drugs and the humor is so original--there is also a scary desperation to it that makes me want to shy away from oh, say, psychedelics. It reminds me of the character I wrote about because, like the sketch, this story doesn't seem to be about more than simply itself. It is ridiculously outrageous and even today this seems like way too many drugs to be taking--but honestly when I try to figure out what the kid stands for, and the lawyer and everything I start to think that it's just there for shock's sake and maybe I'm wrong but I don't see much there. I don't like this kind of writing because it thinks it's so outrageous but really it's not, and while I love the first sentence and the writing is great (the dialogue is fantastically visceral), I just keep thinking, "So what?"
The change between the "levels" of the personal essay to literary journalism is intriguing because of the requirements demanded of the writer. In a personal essay, I gather that the important thing is to tap into something personally important, while a literary piece would be something more relevant to everyone else. Kind of like the difference between a poem you write for a lover, and a poem you write that you want to get published?
The amount of research involved in literary journalism is both interesting and scary. How much is enough? I've read those New Yorker articles, and the people who write them seem so into their topics. And yet, my topic is tentatively about how people perceive Indians (Native Americans) and then delving into my own journey and seeing how going to a reservation has changed or not changed that. Most of the writing will be a story of how I came to be interested in writing about Indians, what that says about me, and of course going beyond the basic answer (which I already know) which is not to objectify people and treat them differently. I'm still sort of sketching things out on this one. It just fascinates me how people perceive others to be sooo different and yet the same, and then I get lost and don't know what I think about anything.
I read a New Yorker article once about a vanishing native language in Alaska. It seemed to me a perfect example of what literary journalism is about--the writer researched vanishing languages, linguistics, and then traveled to talk to the last remaining speaker of Eyak (the language), all the while making larger connections about how we treat natives and whether a vanishing language is a good or bad thing--should something be done to stop the disappearance, or is that the way that life flows?
Anyway. I meant to describe that to show what Shadowboxing was talking about--a piece that appeals to a great many readers and connects to an important issue while the writer's journey into the research and their own reaction to it is catalogued. But perhaps I might not want to appear as much in my writing. I don't know.
What I got most from this reading was the idea of letting the reader know where you stand--dropping hints about how real you are being, when you are saying things like "I imagine that Joe thinks . . . ". Also, the issue of audiences seems very important here. One enters into a sort of contract with the reader that says the writer will point out what he or she thinks is important (in a sense, it is very political writing, but then didn't some famous writer say that all art is political? Some Marxist writer probably)--and then showing why it is important. Rather than simply telling a story and pointing out the importance of the instance to the writer, the writer acknowledges the audience in a way that includes the audience and yet takes them on a special ride they may not have any clue about. Which leads into . . .
STYLE and Gay Talese's "Ali in Havana":
It's quite difficult to focus on style and clarity and cohesion when I am writing this, a gonzo journalist, on a laptop that belongs to my mom's housemate. My mother is working as a midwife on an Indian reservation because it pays well, and we have come to visit her. Outside my window are mountian lions, apparently--some kid got mauled by one the other day. There are greyish yellow rolling hills and lots of cattle and sparsely spaced out little houses. Most of the Indian kids hang out on their trucks, and there was a little girl yesterday who came up to me and asked why my pants had holes in the knees.
"Because they're old," I told her.
"Why?" was the answer I should have guessed was coming.
I feel like the holes in my pants right now. I can't explain why I'm so worn out, but I am. I honestly have not had time to sit down and consciously think for about a week. So. While it may seem that my writing does not follow the rules of cohesion and coherence, I found this chapter to be the most exciting so far. It helped me to realize that my writing is not cohesive nor coherent much of the time. It was an exciting revelation. And since I mix the passive and active forms of sentences so much it was wonderful to see that I don't need to stay active or "character-action"-oriented the whole way. Sometimes passive sentences are good because they help the flow. My boyfriend, who is less "active" than I am, told me the other day that quiet people are good because they smooth everyone else's edges down a bit. Now I get it. Before, it was as though I was thinking: so, I'll become more and more direct until my writing explodes?
Also in this chapter was the idea of starting out with something familiar to the reader-- in the Talese piece, we start out with a breezy Havana evening, rather than simply jumping into a description of Muhammad Ali. I also liked the part in STYLE about not needing all of the "thus"'s and "therefore"'s that I consistently employ in my own writing (more in essays, but anyway) because I am actually NOT making connections!!
The Talese piece is interesting because it transforms everyday actions--a meeting with a president-like figure--into something completely unique and fascinating. However, I wonder if some of the fascination comes from the fact that the two main players are Ali and Fidel Castro. It was the same when I read parts of Norman Mailer's Marilyn (when I was a kid of course and had no idea about what he was talking about) and thought "Wow, interesting, but if she wasn't so hot, would I care?" Yet what I like about this piece is that it turns Ali and the others into characters--especially I liked the detail about the twinkle in Ali's eye on page 265. I've seen footage of Ali, and he does have that twinkle sometimes when he smiles.
But it's harder to read this piece, and the Thompson piece as literary works with themes and stuff. Mostly because, if all of that stuff happened, then it can't all be relevant, I think. And then I realize that the writer is being selective about details--still, there are so many. Most obvious, I think, is the cigar/smoking motif. What does it mean that everywhere in Havana there are cigarettes and ashtrays, while Castro himself does not smoke? What does it mean to the story? Why is Cigar Aficionado the only magazine that "connects" the USA to Cuba? Does this mean that we can only connect via the "bad" measures we take to carry out our parallel countries? Does this mean that we have more in common than we think? Does Castro's lack of smoking mean that he refuses to be defined by his country and by outsiders? Or do all of these things simply mean that they are there, and that the writer is not planning anything but is hoping we will find something interesting in all of the details.
Of which there are an attic-full! Talese's explicit detailing of how everyone looks and acts seems to have been drawn from a video (unless he was there, or heard about it from one of the others) and he intersperses it with information about the characters' pasts. Some of the details feel true, like the twinkle, and others feel false: for example, on 276 Castro strokes his beard "as if trying to revive the vitality of its fibre." This refers I'm sure to Castro's age and possibly some sort of decline in morale of his regime, which he hopes will be revitalized, but I don't think it's fair to make Castro look like that from stroking his beard. This is why, even though I read the New Yorker, in many ways I hate it.
The only other thing that bothered me about this was how boring it was. I guess Talese is trying to bring down some idols, but he is not Truman Capote. He makes Ali seem like a sleeping, childish boor and Castro like a delicate moron. It's kind of distasteful. Why is he focusing on the boring speech about the flights at the end? I was mystified, but maybe I'm just being reductive.
Which leads me back to Fear and Loathing--I had serious Fear and Loathing about this assignment because I was so worried, ha--and the similarities/differences between the two pieces. Both pieces list details in a way that is not exactly exciting to me. But the details build up so that I definitely have a "feel" about each piece. Fear and Loathing feels hot, dry windy, with that sickening sort of feeling one gets when one has drunk too much (I won't comment on the drugs, but suffice it to say that I could never do that many at once!). The Talese piece feels hot, as well, and stifled, and awkward and tense.
posted by jameskandy at 8:07 PM
1 Comments:
Hi Yasmin,
Thanks for being patient with me while I traveled home.
You certainly have a good feel for what literary journalism is. It is very much a journey that the author takes us on -- often the author is a "strange person in a strange land" -- and their discovery becomes ours, as the details show to us what the author learns as their subject -- a place, a character, etc. -- becomes known to the writer.
I gave you two very different pieces to consider because both are great examples of literary journalism, but they couldn't be more different from each other. Hunter S. Thompson's piece is very much about HIM -- he is first and foremost in his piece. Lucky for us, he's interesting and kooky and bizarre, so it's interesting to "try on" his personality through the piece.
Talese's focus, however, is on ALI -- and we don't see much of him in the piece. He chooses to focus on his subject, which is more traditional journalism. However, it's still a journey piece, as we see Ali not how we are used to depicting him -- as the former fighter -- but as an ailing diplomat who doesn't quite know how to function in his new land. The setting becomes most important -- which is probably why Talese chose to lead his piece with it -- but also so do the "supporting characters." Talese shows us who Ali chooses to surround himself with, and each one of those people show Ali in a new way. So this piece is as much of a character sketch as it is literary journalism.
You said what you didn't like about Thompson's piece was the "so what?" factor -- you didn't feel you learned anything at the end. To be fair, what you read of Thompson's piece was an excerpt, so you didn't get the whole thing, but you raise an interesting point. No one wants to get to the end of a piece and think, "What the hell was that about?" So your journey in writing should not only entertain, but also educate us.
You mention research, and there might well be some in your piece. Know that I define research as being three elements:
1. Observation: This is where your personal experience comes in, filling in the details and allowing the journey to unfold through your eyes.
2. Interviews: How can other people's observations and comments fill in the picture for us?
3. "Traditional" research: That's book, internet, whatever research. The trick is to slip the information in -- and it's not necessary to use MLA style, although you'll want to use a phrase like, "According to ..." or something like that to show you're using information that is not your own.
Your New Yorker piece, for instance, might be most useful here -- just be sure your traditional research complements your writing, and that you're not building your writing around your research. I can tell when you're trying to "shovel" some traditional research in; it feels stiff and out of place.
Your work would also have a "feel" to it, often chosen based on how YOU feel on your journey. If you're feeling haunted, what images might depict that? What images, alternately, might show content? These are the ones you want to use to create an atmosphere for your work.
You're doing a great job, and I'll comment on your character sketch via e-mail. I also posted your homework through your e-mail last week; let me know if you have any questions.
Danita
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