Assignment 8:
After a somewhat difficult "selection process", I have decided to write about the very first piece of reading that I was assigned--Betsy Lerner's "Food and Loathing" piece. I feel that it is a very graceful piece, and my personal favorite, all told. It may not have been elegant by Williams' standards, though. He frequently uses examples by Lincoln or Churchill, which don't exactly jibe with the everyday sort of grace that I find in Lerner's piece. For a moment, I considered doing the Gay Talese piece again (I was not able to find the White or Didion pieces at my local library, but will try to find them soon)--and then I thought, "Nah. I've done this one enough." Besides, the Talese piece was more "journalistic" and less concerned with style (I feel) than the Lerner one. Although I must admit that Talese has a more bombastic, take-charge sort of literary style that states its pretty language clearly, the quiet style of a smaller (and perhaps less "lauded") piece might be more "elegant" in the long run. Damn the writers who write about famous people (like Castro and Ali), they are always going to last longer than the ones who write about food.
It's too bad that I didn't have a more old-style piece to work on for this assignment. Halfway through the chapter on Style, Williams notes that "You just don't see that kind of [elaborate, elegant] sentence anymore." Which is true--and interesting. Presidents sure don't speak like Lincoln anymore! Speeches and presidential addresses are more short and to the point. And rather than blame Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway and whoever else was involved in this rather quick 20th century shift, I'd like to simply look at a good example of short sentencing, because when it is done well it is really nice.
First, however, I would like to say that I thought Williams begins to tread on frail ground with this chapter--it is impossible to define elegance, and the few examples he gives are (it seemed) exactly the kind of musty, 19th century excerpts that he was trying to get writers to avoid in the first part of the book. And then he just lists several examples of metaphor! I felt that this chapter was a very poor one, overall, and that while I learned about complexity of sentencing I did not really learn about elegance or grace. However, I am not sure that I totally picked up on all of the lessons that Williams was trying to impart. Maybe this book was a bit too "far" for me. I am the kind of reader who has to go back to the glossary to remember what exactly prepositions and nominal clauses are (and if you asked me now, I'd still blank out). Sometimes I feel like I am just missing the point, and I'm not smart enough to get all of this. But maybe not.
In the end, there are a few areas of Lerner's essay that struck me as incorporating elegance, yet in a way maybe I am just trying to push her into a box when really she breaks the rules (and gets away with it?).
First, Williams talks about balance and symmetry (". . . for the administrATION and for the opposITION", p. 155). On page 2 there is some of this: the echoing balance of "her cheeks are always either firing up or fading out", or the more subtle symmetry of "she protectS me from the Same fate".
Actually, now that I am writing all of this, I realize that there really is no "stylistics" in this piece, and that I am going to be hard pressed to find some. SO never mind. I will instead focus upon the LACK of style in this piece! Her sentences are NOT complex! And I like them! And I'm blanking out on what else to write about. Mostly, I like writing that feels delicious. Talese's writing doesn't feel delicious. I don't really care about how deep or interesting the subject is. I just care about whether I can jump into the writing and feel at home.
So now I'd like to discuss what the semester has taught me about what creative nonfiction is.
I have far more respect for the "genre" now than I did before. Earlier, I thought that nonfiction was reaching a crescendo of popularity just because people had given up on being able to write fiction, and nonfiction was just going through a popularity phase, etc. etc. but really, nonfiction has only recently been "genre"-lized. I'm not sure why, in this day and age we feel the need to categorize styles of writing (even as, in history and lit crit, we are finding everything more and more "ambiguous" and "ambivalent") when we could just enjoy them, but never mind that.
Now I see that it is not "nonfiction" that has become popular, it is more like a rising tide of interest in it. Nonfiction books have always sold well, but it was with Truman Capote's SAYING that he was writing a nonfiction novel that things got started, at least in the contemporary age, I would say. There really is no such thing as a nonfiction novel. It's just a fancy label to sell books. And no one really uses the term now. It's as if Capote had a one time monopoly on the phrase.
But back to the class. I noticed in one of the earlier replies to my posts that you mentioned EMPATHY as a big factor in nonfiction--life is messy, art isn't, and while art can appeal to more universal reader-souls, nonfiction is like telling a story of something that happened to you, to someone. It's like a conversation. It has to work, or you're just another bore.
It has really challenged me to be truthful in my writing. It was the most difficult thing in the world--to not make up details simply because I forgot them, or wanted to. And I'm not wholly sure that I succeeded. But I tried. And nonfiction has ultimately defined for me that I am a fiction writer.
After a somewhat difficult "selection process", I have decided to write about the very first piece of reading that I was assigned--Betsy Lerner's "Food and Loathing" piece. I feel that it is a very graceful piece, and my personal favorite, all told. It may not have been elegant by Williams' standards, though. He frequently uses examples by Lincoln or Churchill, which don't exactly jibe with the everyday sort of grace that I find in Lerner's piece. For a moment, I considered doing the Gay Talese piece again (I was not able to find the White or Didion pieces at my local library, but will try to find them soon)--and then I thought, "Nah. I've done this one enough." Besides, the Talese piece was more "journalistic" and less concerned with style (I feel) than the Lerner one. Although I must admit that Talese has a more bombastic, take-charge sort of literary style that states its pretty language clearly, the quiet style of a smaller (and perhaps less "lauded") piece might be more "elegant" in the long run. Damn the writers who write about famous people (like Castro and Ali), they are always going to last longer than the ones who write about food.
It's too bad that I didn't have a more old-style piece to work on for this assignment. Halfway through the chapter on Style, Williams notes that "You just don't see that kind of [elaborate, elegant] sentence anymore." Which is true--and interesting. Presidents sure don't speak like Lincoln anymore! Speeches and presidential addresses are more short and to the point. And rather than blame Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway and whoever else was involved in this rather quick 20th century shift, I'd like to simply look at a good example of short sentencing, because when it is done well it is really nice.
First, however, I would like to say that I thought Williams begins to tread on frail ground with this chapter--it is impossible to define elegance, and the few examples he gives are (it seemed) exactly the kind of musty, 19th century excerpts that he was trying to get writers to avoid in the first part of the book. And then he just lists several examples of metaphor! I felt that this chapter was a very poor one, overall, and that while I learned about complexity of sentencing I did not really learn about elegance or grace. However, I am not sure that I totally picked up on all of the lessons that Williams was trying to impart. Maybe this book was a bit too "far" for me. I am the kind of reader who has to go back to the glossary to remember what exactly prepositions and nominal clauses are (and if you asked me now, I'd still blank out). Sometimes I feel like I am just missing the point, and I'm not smart enough to get all of this. But maybe not.
In the end, there are a few areas of Lerner's essay that struck me as incorporating elegance, yet in a way maybe I am just trying to push her into a box when really she breaks the rules (and gets away with it?).
First, Williams talks about balance and symmetry (". . . for the administrATION and for the opposITION", p. 155). On page 2 there is some of this: the echoing balance of "her cheeks are always either firing up or fading out", or the more subtle symmetry of "she protectS me from the Same fate".
Actually, now that I am writing all of this, I realize that there really is no "stylistics" in this piece, and that I am going to be hard pressed to find some. SO never mind. I will instead focus upon the LACK of style in this piece! Her sentences are NOT complex! And I like them! And I'm blanking out on what else to write about. Mostly, I like writing that feels delicious. Talese's writing doesn't feel delicious. I don't really care about how deep or interesting the subject is. I just care about whether I can jump into the writing and feel at home.
So now I'd like to discuss what the semester has taught me about what creative nonfiction is.
I have far more respect for the "genre" now than I did before. Earlier, I thought that nonfiction was reaching a crescendo of popularity just because people had given up on being able to write fiction, and nonfiction was just going through a popularity phase, etc. etc. but really, nonfiction has only recently been "genre"-lized. I'm not sure why, in this day and age we feel the need to categorize styles of writing (even as, in history and lit crit, we are finding everything more and more "ambiguous" and "ambivalent") when we could just enjoy them, but never mind that.
Now I see that it is not "nonfiction" that has become popular, it is more like a rising tide of interest in it. Nonfiction books have always sold well, but it was with Truman Capote's SAYING that he was writing a nonfiction novel that things got started, at least in the contemporary age, I would say. There really is no such thing as a nonfiction novel. It's just a fancy label to sell books. And no one really uses the term now. It's as if Capote had a one time monopoly on the phrase.
But back to the class. I noticed in one of the earlier replies to my posts that you mentioned EMPATHY as a big factor in nonfiction--life is messy, art isn't, and while art can appeal to more universal reader-souls, nonfiction is like telling a story of something that happened to you, to someone. It's like a conversation. It has to work, or you're just another bore.
It has really challenged me to be truthful in my writing. It was the most difficult thing in the world--to not make up details simply because I forgot them, or wanted to. And I'm not wholly sure that I succeeded. But I tried. And nonfiction has ultimately defined for me that I am a fiction writer.
posted by jameskandy at 12:39 PM
2 Comments:
Joan Didion's "Goodbye to all That":
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~zkurmus/html/didion.html
E.B. White's "Once More to the Lake":
http://staff.bcc.edu/jalexand/White--Once_More_to_the_Lake.htm
Hi Yasmin,
Great job (again) with your last comments on style. Elegance *is* so hard to define. Perhaps we do tie it in too much with old-style language, and perhaps that is why I dug up some "older" essays (older than the last decade, anyway) that might help you define what elegant language is. Perhaps elegance is the difference between writing, and writing "prose" -- or an elevated, poetic language. Elegance, much with most style techniques, can usually be defined only by the writer.
Elegance, in contemporary writing, probably could be considered simple. To use bad imagery, "old-style" elegant language might be full of ruffles and baubles; our elegant language might be more about the black turtleneck and silver hoop earrings. Simple, but it works and relates to most modern-day readers. If we overstylize, we draw too much attention to the language, and not what is being said. I just finished a novel that was overstylized; and while I loved the language for the first 100 pages, I have to admit that by the end, I was reading more for the style than the story. In that regard, I feel the novel failed.
So I agree with you: Lerner does use elegance, but simply, and it doesn't get in the way of what she wants her work to say. She has some words that have strong assonance or alliteration, but it's not overdone. She switches sentence structures and lengths a bit. It works.
I chose the Didion piece not because of its elegance -- I am not actually a great fan of the piece -- but I think it does have some of these strong elements, especially in its pacing, which is reminiscent of the fast pace of New York life. I gave you the link -- hope you get a chance to read it. E.B. White's work is much different, and perhaps more "elegant" in that it has a more natural feel, created through its imagery and again, pacing, but also it has its poetic moments, which I feel lends to its nostalgia.
Moving on to the genre of non-fiction itself: You say you've decided that you are ultimately, a fiction writer. And that's all well and good -- I've never been shy about saying that's my favorite genre too -- but I hope, that as you continue to write and refine your craft, you won't define yourself by just one genre. Writing communities aren't even sure how to define "non-fiction" -- is it memoir? essays? a higher form of journalism? a combination of these? -- and while I led you through several different forms and techniques, there is no one way to approach it, and it can be weaved into any type of expression.
See you on the e-mail this Friday! Again, you've done an outstanding job, and I'm proud of you. I hope you don't dismiss this genre too quickly. Many an aspiring fiction writer has made his (or her) living doing some form of non-fiction writing (journalism, marketing, PR, etc.) while honing the writing craft. It's a lot of fun -- and it beats accounting!
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