Staying in the Moment

My favorite kind of writing to do is to stay in a moment, an iridescent, intensely imagistic moment, kind of like the ones Sari Fordham puts together (see my last post).

I haven't been writing much of my own stuff lately, and partly its because I'm busy at work, but I'm wondering if it's also because I haven't been experiencing many iridescent imagistic moments. I'm in New York, its hustly and exciting and hard to pause in; I'm racing around wearing out shoes and then shopping for replacements; there are so many friends to spend time with.

But I also deal with depression, and it's been pervasive lately, not enough to fell me or keep me from working at my job, but enough to put a thin film over everything. It takes away the intensity and momentousness of life, which, of course, affects the intensity of my moments.

If you're not sure what I mean, let's talk Twilight---the book series about teenagers and vampires. Twilight is so popular because brings back memories of those heady teenage days when hormones and looming adulthood and the newness of things made life tremendously intense; that time when if that boy would only touch my hand in the dark movie theater EVERYTHING WOULD BE PERFECT, and if he doesn't I'LL DIE, when everything mattered SO MUCH and NOTHING WOULD EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN.

I don't think I could handle feeling like that again(!), but I would like to inch towards it and feel some really good moments. And then I would like to capture them on paper. So here's to that happening very soon.

Beautiful Writing is Rare

I was in a bookstore today (Three Lives & Company in the West Village) looking for something to read. I grabbed a bunch of books at random and flipped through them, and what it reminded me is that even though there are millions of competent, even graceful, writers out there, there are very few knock-your-socks off stellar ones. That's one reason why classics are nice---they have been winnowed out by time.

I think that's an interesting thing to think about. 1) If you are a literary writer, your competition is not as great as you thought, because it is REALLY HARD to write consistently beautiful prose without being melodramatic or obnoxiously in love with your own words. 2) Because it is REALLY HARD to write this well, you (meaning me really) are probably not doing it.

I want to be a brilliant sentence-level writer, and occasionally I am, but usually I'm not. That's something I am working on.

A few randomly selected people who are really masters of it in fiction and nonfiction are:

Writing today:
Kazuo Ishiguro
Annie Proulx
Andrew Aciman (his essay Lavender is my all-time favorite.)
Patricia Hampl (full-disclosure--she was my prof)
John McPhee (Also my prof! I have been lucky.)

Past writers:
Vladimir Nabokov (possibly the best sentence-level writer ever)
George Eliot
Lewis Carroll
Whoever wrote Song of Solomon in the Bible

Example

One author whose writing I think is exceptionally beautiful is C.S. Lewis. Here's an excerpt from the Chronicles of Narnia where the character Puddleglum has just stomped out a magical fire that was putting him and his comrades in a trance. I want to point out the quick rhythm that matches the intensity of the situation, the mix of colloquial and sophisticated language, the fact that it uses pretty basic and accessible language, and just how generally nice it sounds. Try reading it aloud to yourself.

. . .the pain itself made Puddleglum's head for a moment perfectly clear and he knew exactly what he really thought. . . "One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a playworld which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

BTW at the bookstore I ended up choosing, sort of at random, "A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living" which looks cute but not the Best Writing Ever, and a book of F. Scott Fitzgerald stories for the beautiful writing.

Essay without reflection that doesn't work

I just posted about a Lives column that doesn't have a lot of essayistic reflection, but that I think works. Now I want to tell you about a Lives column that doesn't have a lot of reflection that doesn't work.

What do I mean by "works"? It's when the writing is transformed from an anecdote into a experience, into something that you tell your friends about later, that makes you think about things that you haven't thought of before, or maybe just in a long time.

Another way of thinking about this might be: it mattered that THIS writer told this story. Many others could competently---even elegantly---narrate this series of events, but this writer added her special take or insight, and that made it unique.

In Night of 130 Teenagers I don't think this happens. Michael Kirikorian tells about a party he chaperoned for his girlfriend's teenage son, which predictably swelled in size due to uninvited guests and included a desperately drunk 15-year-old girl, and maybe unpredictably turned out to be pretty tame and harmless. But at the end I found myself saying, "so what?"

There are several ideas that are mentioned but then dropped. For example, at the beginning the writer says:

He said there were going to be about 70 kids attending, almost all of them from his private high school, where the tuition runs more than $20,000 a year. Not exactly my alma mater, Gardena High, if you read me.

and also mentions his history of being convicted for assault when younger and says he's not a typical chaperone. But he never follows up on that theme. He mentions that when he saw kids with beer and told them to take it back to their cars, they politely did so, which is an interesting detail, but he never makes any comment on that, explicitly or otherwise. The drunk 15-year-old girl gets home fine (she slept it off!) but there's no commentary on that either.

It's a story without any light shed on it, and I'm not sure why Kirikorian chose to write about it. The guy chaperoned a party, and it went OK. So what?

Essay without reflection that works

I talk often about the New York Times Lives/Modern Love columns because they are a good place to read new, often quite literary, essays. Lives is pretty short, and sometimes that means that there is a bit of "so what" in them, because the writer didn't really get around to saying much. In a recent one, Strangers on a Train by Marcia DeSanctis, the shortness works quite well.

It starts like this:

When I travel alone, my preference is to keep it that way. I’m not really one for chatting people up in hotel bars or for reeling out my anecdotes or listening to theirs. Which is why my heart sank, a few weeks ago, when a man entered my chamber just as the overnight train from Moscow to St. Petersburg departed the station.

She goes on to tell the story of awkwardly sharing a tiny sleeping car with Igor, a perfectly nice Russian man. She tells it well, but nothing terribly dramatic happens. Then, either by design or because of the short word count, there really isnt a lot of reflection or chatter, or talking directly to the reader about the ideas or feelings that this experience prompted in the writer. However, for me this essay works because the writer was skillful enough to imply those prompted thoughts and feelings between the lines.

For example:

Our dinner came. He ordered water, not beer, to drink. I was relieved and, I confess, surprised.

She didn't have to say "It was extremely awkward to be so physically close and isolated with a man, who could become amorous or belligerent." The detail of the beer says it for her.

The ending is the one part where I'm not really sure what she is trying to say, and I think many readers might have a "so what?" moment here.

In St. Petersburg, Igor held me as I negotiated the chasm between the train and the platform. I greeted a driver from my hotel and handed over my bags. I turned with my arms half open, to say goodbye to Igor. But he was already gone, disappeared into the crowd.

I think she is commenting on the oddness of being simultaneously so intimate and so distant/unconnected with a person. But I'm not sure. It doesn't matter to me though because for me her kind of wondering-but-still-analytical style and choice of detail make this essay resonate.

Final note:

Even though we talked about an essentially plotless moment here, stories---with plot and movement---always make for good reading, (as long as they fit into the larger narrative or idea.) So learn to write good stories!

Lost (the TV show) and Resonance

SPOILER ALERT. If you are a Lost fan and haven't seen the last season stop reading. Also stop if you havent read Wuthering Heights. And then go read Wuthering Heights right now.

I was a very dedicated Lost fan for its whole 5-year run until the last season, when it did exactly what we were all terrified it would---ended with no reasonable explanation for any of the last 5 seasons apart from the deus ex machina of all deus ex machinas of this stupid cave full of light that was somehow the source of good and evil in the world. Or something.

Arghghg.

So why am I writing about this here? Because the real reason I am angry at the story tellers behind Lost connects back to what E.M. Forester is famous for saying: ' "The king died and then the queen died" is a story. "The king died and then the queen died of grief" is a plot.'

This means that a plot has to have cause and effect. Hamlet acts crazy and gets everyone killed because he suspects his uncle of murdering his father. Jesus suffers a horrible death because he is the son of God. Jake Ryan notices Sam because she writes a note about him. There is a chain of events, not some collection of unrelated incidents that happen by chance.

Lost told a story, and it was beautiful and nuanced and layered. And then in the end game we're told that none of it was for any reason (other than magic) and not a lot of it (Walt? Aaron? Mr. Friendly?) had any effects either. Why were these people brought to this island at *this moment in time*, rather than, say, a year earlier or a year later? Totally unclear. Were there tons of groups of people brought to the island, and we followed this group because they turned out to be successful "candidates"? Totally unclear. Did all the strange events and people and behavior LEAD to anything or CAUSE anything? Um, maybe? Maybe it lead to the status quo?

Basically the reader wants to know why you are saying what you are saying---that's what turns an anecdote into a story. If I tell you about my crazy abusive neighbor whose ex girlfriend died in childbirth, and isnt it weird that their kids are now in love, that's an anecdote. If I tell you about two lovers torn apart by inner turmoil, fate, and whim, and whose fiery and destructive passion trickles down through two generations of people only to dissipate in the gentle love of a third generation, in a redemption caused by an intense and unsinkable humanity---that is a story.

The same thing applies to essays. The reader will ask, why are you telling us this? You don't have to spell it out or get all Aesop Fable on us, but there needs to be resonance. A sense that the sum is more than the parts. On this note my next post will compare two recent New York Times essays---one that I think really told a story, and the other one that left me thinking, ok that was mildly interesting, but so what?