Story and Message Update

I just wanted to post a quick update to this post with this link to an interesting post on genre writers and the lack of respect they get. I'm particularly struck by the idea that once a work of science fiction becomes "literature," it is no longer considered science fiction...

Story and message

A long time has passed since this post in response to some of my statements about my bookshelves. And since then, my opinion has changed.

When I wrote the original post, I still thought of myself primarily as a critic - someone who studies books. And the study of books, at least the academic study, is based on secondary characteristics. We ignore the story in order to study what it means and what's going on behind it. So philosophy seems more important than fantasy: fantasy books are based on story, and if there's a message or theme, it's secondary.

And now I will say: this is as it should be in fiction. The story should be most important, and anything else that we see in the book comes through the story.

So what's changed? In the past three months I've started writing stories of my own. I've stopped thinking of myself as a critic and started thinking of myself as a writer. I've tried to learn what makes a good story. And good stories are not driven by theme. Good stories are driven by real, confusing, inconsistent characters, who don't always make the right choices and don't always understand the choices they make. It's not a writer's job to make their characters' choices clear so that they express the 'right' philosophy. Characters take on a life of their own, and express a philosophy as they learn it through their experiences - sort of like we all do, every day.

So: mea culpa, and long live the story!

Forgetting Who

Yesterday I was reading a short story – a work in progress by a friend. The passages that impressed me most absolutely blew me out of the water. They were so good that I forgot all about the author; I forgot my friend had written them.

This observation raises two related points about the editing process that I'd like to think about further: The first is that I read a work in progress much differently from how I read a finished or published work – and it's not the material itself, but my readerly attitude. Reading as an editor means that I can hope to influence the work, to shape it somewhat to my own desires. And so I read quite aggressively; and I keep on reworking the thing in my mind as I go. I try to get ahead of the story. I think especially hard about what every line implies, and I catch myself rereading half a sentence that appears not to make sense when if I would just read the sentence's second half, I'd see how clear it really is. How rude of me!

The second thing I'd like to think about is whether losing track of the author really is a measure of quality in the writing of fiction. Is it analogous to the quality of a performance by a famous actor during which the audience forgets who the actor really is? Yes! – say I. But also no. An author's distinctive voice can be an asset. A storyteller needn't disappear in order to tell a story well. A narratorial voice doesn't convey the guts of a story or novel in anything like the way an actor conveys the world in which she plays. It's also problematic to suggest to my writing friends that their work would be better if they didn't appear to be narrating as themselves. I can't think of a good reason this should be the case.

Ultimately (I've hardly begun this sentence, and I already know I'm getting into trouble) a reader wants to forget herself, not the author; her own reality rather than the fact of the story's being written. ("Oh, that sounds pretty good," I say.) And yet the books that have influenced me the most are those that speak to me just as I appear to myself and make me see my own world as though it is deeply tied to the one I'm reading about; a contradiction abides.

Poets vs. Critics

When Stephanie asked me to join the conversation on this blog, I was nervous to be writing with two “real writers.” I don’t consider myself a writer, in the creative sense. Through my education, I have focused on analytical writing and criticism. Instead of being a poet, I became a critic.

Let me explain the distinction that I draw between “poets” and “critics,” which I think applies outside of the realm of literature as well. A poet is someone who creates. Writing poetry is an inherently creative process. The poet makes something from nothing. (After all, the words “poet,” “poetry,” and “poem” come from the word for “to make.”)

The critic, on the other hand, describes the work written by the poets. The critic’s job is to categorize: to find similarities between the work of different artists and determine a “school,” or to understand the underlying processes that make the poet’s work “work.” As a critic, I am interested in understanding poetry as a whole, not just the expression of an individual poem. Of course, poetry consists of poems, so in order to generalize about poetry one must carefully study the individual works.

The poet creates; the critic categorizes and explains. I don’t think this distinction is only applicable to the criticism of poetry. Criticism seems like more of a science; poetry, more of an art. Consider the work of mathematicians, however. While the study of math in classes is focused on generalizing, and you understand new mathematical concepts by analogy with concepts you already know (working in a “scientific” manner, like a critic), the practice of research in math is a creative process. The research mathematician chooses a particular area to focus on, and studies that area, trying to understand/invent interesting properties it has. (There is often discussion among mathematicians of whether math research is a process of discovering things that already exist, or of creating them. While I tend to sit on the "discovery" side of the fence, there is no question that the act of discovery can feel a lot like the act of creation, as inspiration often has to strike essentially out of the blue.)

The distinction is not complete: poets benefit from understanding general principles of the form in which they work (by doing critical work), while critics can write poetry (although my poetry, at least, is often more informed by my understanding of poetic form than any essential inspiration). In many studies, however, it seems that the work can be divided up between the creative and the critical. What would it mean to bridge that divide? Is such a synthesis something that would improve our understanding and production of art, or is it better for artists and critics to specialize?

Another Kind of Day by Day

I'm in one of those small streaks of writing that makes me a writer. I mean simply that I actually am writing: for each of the past several days I've worked on the script that is my main project, a play called "Ghost." I'm once again thinking about time scales. There's the question of how many minutes of theatre I've so far orchestrated; the question of how much time has passed in the world of the play; there are the days of my composition ("several"), but there are also the minutes and hours I've spent sitting in front of my computer, adding word after word to the document; then, too, there is the time I've devoted to thinking about the play and its characters when I'm not actually writing.

Is there an insight here? Is there something to say about the time scales that fold over themselves as we live? Do writers grapple with these multiple scales more than other artists? more than non-artists? And is sensitivity to time something one should – or can – value?

I suspect I'd rather have a clear sense of timing than a clear sense of time, or of time's complexities. In chess, which I've been playing a lot of in between my bouts with words, the clock often matters, but one can improve one's game much more by thinking clearly through the order of moves in one's plan of attack than by trying, somehow, to think faster. "Think fast," says someone who teases you and then either does or does not throw you something. But the person who says "Think fast" usually tests your reflexes or catches you thinking too much. An alternative imperative, "Think hard!" does not invoke time so explicitly, but if one says it seriously, one usually means, "Slow down; take stock; consider before you act." I find it a little bit frustrating that neither of these injunctions applies to my writing, to my being a writer. To think fast, I'd have to rely on something like a writing reflex – and wouldn't it be nice if I had one; and to think hard I'd have to postpone the work itself. "Write!" I tell myself, "Think!" – compact imperatives that leave the time scales up in the air.

One Day at a Time

It occurred to me only in reading the post of 8.13.09 that "journalism," etymologically, is a daily practice. Stephanie writes, "I wonder whether it is possible to practice journalism that is not so much about hunting down stories as about knowing a place and community and cultural reality deeply, so that one can speak intelligently and even wisely about it even if nothing ‘news-worthy’ is happening there." I am inclined to reply, "Yes! Journalism can be precisely itself by knowing and noting the daily life of a people or a place. Journalism isn’t the same as news, and it can go on productively (fruitfully? more on that another time) when there is no news at all.”

But this reply is too simple, or maybe just wrong. It seems to me that “journalism,” used colloquially, includes all of the following: the news, what we call features, human interest, exposé, and opinion. There are probably other subgenres I’m not thinking of. If this is right, then my idea that journalism can be “precisely itself” looks misleading and absurd. At the same time, I think I’ve stumbled on one of the valuable features of the journal, which of course has the same etymology.

For all the difficulty I have defining journalism, it still seems opposed to the journal in one clear way. While the news elements of journalism can operate on the very limited time scale of the day, as in “day after day” – while they should consist primarily of reportage – the other kinds of journalism I’ve mentioned all strive to build coherent and compelling narratives from events that follow one after another without, in fact, being part of a story. It is the news that resembles the journal, while the other forms of journalism represent the powerful human impulse to impose a story pattern (beginning, middle, and end, say) on unpatterned, unauthored occurences. Journals can be compelling because when we reread them, they force us out of the narratives we’ve constructed. They drop us back into what I’ll call the diurnal mode. They call our attention to the facts of a day, and simultaneously they remind us of the fact that we’ve incorporated those facts, fictionally, into a story of a life.

To return to Stephanie's question: we can practice journalism both by hunting down stories that other people have already shaped or rough-hewn, or we can rely on our own immersion in a place, community, or cultural-reality – and write stories that are therefore more totally our own. They may be wiser, but they also may be no more true.

Standing in the Kitchen

I work at Maxie’s Supper Club, one of Ithaca, NY’s, fine eating establishments, and I love what I do there. Every step of the way I can see what I’m accomplishing in a way that rivals – and sometimes surpasses – the pleasure of seeing word follow word onto a page. The words need work, are never done. But when we “sell” a crab cake platter (put it up for the servers to deliver to the customer), my part is done, and in a few minutes it’ll be eaten, finished, gone.

I’m new at Maxie’s, and I’m training. At some point during every shift one of my managers will say, “Ezra, you hungry?” By now they’ve heard me say a few times, “Don’t ask me that. I’m always hungry!” But my manager is telling me it’s a good time to take a break and order dinner from the kitchen.

Every time I face the decision of what to eat, I freeze up for a moment unless I’ve planned an order in advance; but I love the menu, and I love the feeling of plenty that comes from standing in the well stocked walk-in cooler, dipping into a five-gallon tub of flour or cornmeal, or watching plate after plate come off the line. Today for the first time I actually fried some of my own dinner, a horseradish potato cake. It sat under a rare tuna steak in a slightly sweet glaze, and the whole thing was delicious.

Late tonight, a couple of hours after I’d helped close and clean the line at Maxie’s, I stood in my own kitchen, thinking about a snack. How could I apply what I’ve learned about cooking at the restaurant to my own space? What could I fix for myself? In a flash I envisioned the whole Maxie's setup that is already becoming familiar to me and will soon be second nature (and second home). “Man, I should fry up some green tomatoes,” I almost thought. But it would require a shopping run. It would take an hour. It would be, let's face it, a project.

My freezer is full and my pantry is overflowing; I have a range of spices, and I have a good stove, a nice pan, pots, and so on. But the feelings of plenty and simplicity that the Maxie’s kitchen now offers elude me at home, because the simplicity and totality of the Maxie’s stock presupposes constant and massive turnover; in a word, volume. (Of course, the simplicity at Maxie's is an illusion that hangs on complex provisions management, but I’m still fairly removed from the stock lists, prep lists, and organizational aspects.) As I stood alone in my kitchen at one in the morning, trying to find a snack I both wanted and could extract from my own ingredients, I felt a gulf open between what I’m learning to do and what it would take to do it on my own.

In this way cooking is like writing. It’s one thing to cook for others in a fully stocked and professionally equipped space, to serve up surprising and tasty hot food, carefully done, in a few minutes. This is like editing, or teaching writing, or even just writing for others: “You want a paper on the symbolism of the green tomato? I’ll have it for you in the morning.” But writing for oneself is like looking in one’s own full, familiar pantry and wondering whether anything there will be good.

Berlin Wall

Berlin Revisited: Photographs by Brian Harris

Berlin, 1989 to 2009

The Economist has a sister magazine called Intelligent Life. In their web publication, I just found this brief photo essay. Seeing pieces like this makes me want to be a journalist: to have been there in 1989, photographing, and to be back in 2009, following up, with an eyewitness sense of what has happened on the ground under my feet. It also makes me realize, though, that while there's luck involved in being in the right place at the right time, good journalism is a serious commitment involving just being there for a long time, in lots of different theres or in one, patiently, with one's eyes open and often very little payoff. In fact, I wonder whether it is possible to practice journalism that is not so much about hunting down stories as about knowing a place and community and cultural reality deeply, so that one can speak intelligently and even wisely about it even if nothing "news-worthy" is happening there.

Which would make journalism much like writing in general: inspiration can't often be scheduled, but "showing up" (whether at a writing desk or camera, or in front of a book, or just by being present to your surroundings with your eyes and brain and pores open) is like maintaining an address where inspiration will know how to reach you. (This is my re-statement of an observation given by so many writers in so many versions that I don't know whom to cite. Somerset Maugham's: "I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.")

Salem, 1989

I am in the middle of the small living room. It has pale blue carpet and the walls are cluttered with pictures and shelves. In the corner there is a small TV, and the adults are clustered around it. The TV’s colors are like the colors of the room: bland, slightly bluish. It is a crowd: blurred crowd noise, blurred crowd colors. There are so many faces I can’t even make out separate heads and shoulders in the glimpses I get of the TV between the heads of my parents and my aunt and uncle. Something, I know, is happening, a category of thing that has not happened before in my memory. They are riveted, but they are not cheering. They are talking in low voices. My parents watch sports, but not with this kind of attention, and not this quietly. And there is no little yellow ball on this screen; nothing, in fact, seems to be happening.

“And to imagine this is happening now, the first time in years we’ve been out of the country for more than two months…” my dad’s voice is wry, half laughing, but also half embarrassed at the thought. And his tone is abstracted, as though he’s not actually present with the words, as though they are drawn out of him while he’s not paying attention—as though his mind needs his voice to make a foundation of sound, to give it something to stand on.

Knowing What's Coming

We are familiar with the sensation that an unmentioned event or idea is hanging over a conversation, a movie, or a piece of writing. Perhaps we often feel that omitting the real topic is counterproductive, coy, or simple easy; but I’ve just finished William Styron’s fantastic story, “Rat Beach” (The New Yorker, July 20, 2009), which perfectly uses this tactic of omission.

Set in the Pacific in the late days of WWII, “Rat Beach” explicitly addresses its narrator’s fear, having by luck escaped the carnage of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, of having to lead his men in an amphibious attack on Japan. Styron brings this fear to life and carries us along as the anonymous second lieutenant finds ways of easing his fear temporarily, but finally has recourse to the comfort of planning his own suicide before he would have to face the test of battle.

From the moment that Styron identifies the event that his narrator fears, however, we see that the fear will never come to pass. “But President Truman approved the atomic strikes,” we remind ourselves. “Japan surrendered unconditionally without the amphibious assault that fills this second lieutenant with such dread.” And this is essential to the functioning of “Rat Beach” for two reasons: First, our knowing the resolution to the larger conflict prevents our feeling abandoned when the story ends with the officer’s private resolution, rather than with his finally confronting (or fatally eluding) his fear. Second, that knowledge gives the story a wholly different depth by letting us read it as an account of a life saved by the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I don’t mean that the story would be shallow without this content. Rather than calling this a new layer of depth, I suggest the analogy of a second ocean of meaning that “Rat Beach” borders.

The device of relying upon an unmentioned fact, though, also suggests a direction for experimentation (I mean in my own writing and thinking). In a story of a different genre and with different aims—a kind of science fiction, perhaps—Styron might have surprised us by bringing this character, apparently safe from his named fears, into contact with them after all. Perhaps this is part of the work that Philip Roth does in a book like The Plot Against America, but I am envisioning a more tightly honed piece that operates by the realization of an historically averted event, or the narrative deletion of an event that the reader will understand to be on its way.