A Veritable ICB Treasure Trove

A newspaper in Kansas, the Lawrence Journal-World, did an ICB retrospective three years ago. Be forewarned: spoilers abound. It's not so much plot points that get spoiled. It's more...I don't know, it's just that the fourth wall gets broken. But it's fascinating to see other perspectives on the events and to find out what happened to some of the important players. Also there are a tone of interesting pictures. Finish the book then surf around this really useful site. We'll talk about all of it when we finish the book next Tuesday (Oct 7).

Essay #2 Options

The In Cold Blood Option: Seek out and/or research an event or experience (as Truman Capote did with the Clutter murders, David Foster Wallace did with the Maine Lobster Festival, and John D'Agata did with the tour of Hoover Dam) and then write about it. It should go without saying -- but I'll say it anyway -- that the experience you seek should not put you or others in harm's way. A good barometer: If your parents wouldn't want you doing it, then don't do it. Use the above texts as models, especially when it comes to their methods of engaging in said experience. Here are just a few non-binding suggestions for seeking out area "experiences":

Sidewalk
Activeculture.info
Jones Valley Urban Farm
ASFA Open House

But you should choose something that's interesting to you. Or -- actually -- maybe not. It can be argued in at least the latter two cases (Wallace and D'Agata) that the actual event/experience kind of bored the writer...but he still found something to write about.

At any rate, in all three cases, the writers used the event/experience as a springboard to write about larger cultural issues that they cared about. You are more than welcome -- in fact, encouraged -- to do the same.

_____

The Running in the Family Option: Use your family history as the source material for an essay. Pick an aspect of your family's history that you don't know a lot about. Dig into it. In this essay, you're writing as much about yourself -- and your discovery of your place as an individual in the context of your family -- as you are about the particular events you choose. A word of caution: don't feel like you have to write your family's entire history. Pick something specific. Perhaps you want to delve into the circumstances that led to your family coming to Alabama. Or maybe you want to write about your parents' courtship. Whatever it is, pick something that gives you a plethora of source material: pictures, interviews, places to visit, books to pore over.

_____

The Last American Man Option: Profile an interesting person who has a unique story. This may be someone you know well, or it may be a friend or relative of a friend (as was the case with Eustace Conway and Elizabeth Gilbert). The key here is in how you define "interesting" and "unique." For instance, all ASFA students would (IMHO) fit the bill simply because they attend a unique school in an interesting context. In that example, you might end up writing as much about ASFA and Birmingham and Alabama as you write about your interesting person -- as Gilbert ends up writing as much about American history and ideology and the idea of manliness as she does about Eustace Conway.

_____

As always, these are broad guidelines. If you're really excited about an idea for an essay that doesn't fit this mold, run it by me. I'm almost surely going to say yes, and I might have some suggestions and advice on how to proceed.

The other possibility is that you combine features of the different options into one essay project -- it strikes me that the above options are not at all mutually exclusive.

Aim for between 2000 - 3000 words. Probably not less, perhaps a little more.

Keep all three toolbelts in mind.

Please note your conference draft due date under "Second Quarter Conference Draft Due Dates" in the right hand column. Oct 17 is the first due date...not too far away.

*

FYI: This Is a Cornell Box

Brenda Miller makes the connection between lyric essays and Cornell boxes, so here's an example of one. And here's his biography, with links to some other examples of his work, on the Guggenheim Museum site. Remember: "It's art, so stop calling it nonfiction."

Or is it (and should we really)?

*

DFW: Commencement High Notes

Okay, I've re-read the DFW Kenyon commencement, and now I really think you all need to read it. Not only does it speak to the art of being human, it is the road map to being a writer. In an effort to entice you to read the thing in its entirety, here are just a few highlights:

___

On Being Just a Little Less Arrogant:

"The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too."

___

On Not Being Totally Hosed:

"As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed."

___

There Are Other Options:

"If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down."

___

On Real Freedom:

"This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.…The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day….That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."

___

On Staying Conscious and Alive in the Adult World Day In and Day Out:

"It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck."

___

That last part goes double for being a writer because trying to stay "conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out" is exactly what it means to be a writer.

If you're at all interested in Wallace, check out this article he wrote for the NY Times. It's germane to nonfiction because it's, well, nonfiction. It's about Roger Federer, but that's not the point. The point is, Wallace is using all the toolbelts and applying them to something for which he has a visceral, intense love: tennis. And, of course, he's doing so in a love-it-or-hate-it Voice that is uniquely his own.

So, yeah. I think there's a lot to learn from David Foster Wallace, both exemplary and cautionary.

*

Some Thoughts About The So-Called Writing Life

From the Department of "Yes, Yes...What He Said" -- not to mention the Department of "Do As He Says, Not As He Does/Did" -- here is a commencement speech that David Foster Wallace gave to the newly minted graduates of Kenyon College a couple of years ago. Wallace is on my mind for obvious and sad reasons. His wisdom holds up regardless of recent events. Also this little Note-to-Self-and-Others-Who-Care-to-Listen (which he effectively states in the speech): being a famous-genius-writer-guy/gal is not the key to the City of Health & Happiness.

*

Who the Heck Does John D'Agata Think He Is?!

Here's a little write up on "Round Trip" and John D'Agata, apologist numero uno for Ye Olde Lyric Essay in contemporary American belles lettres. Here's something on what he thinks a lyric essay is. (Money quote: "It's art, so stop calling it nonfiction.")

By the by: Tell me he doesn't look at least a little like he might be Vincent D'Onofrio's long-lost younger brother (and they both do that little D' thing with their last names, so I think that means they must be related or something. D' = Italian for "long-lost brother")...

*

Life Interrupts

A programming note. I'm going to miss class on Monday afternoon; I have to go to a funeral. This will push things back a bit, but I think we can adjust. I'll conference with Abby and Ella on Tuesday afternoon. If there's time that day, we'll talk about D'Agata, Miller, and Lyric Essays afterwards. If not, we'll fit it in on Wednesday and/or Thursday after critiquing place essays by Allison and Anna.

*

ICB Epigraph

Freres humains qui après nous vivez,
N'ayez les cuers contre nous endurcis,
Car, se pitié de nous povres avez,
Dieu en aura plus tost de vous mercis.

This translates into English as:

Brothers, men who live after us,
Let not your hearts be hardened against us,
Because, if you have pity for us poor men,
God will have more mercy toward you.

It's from a Francois Villon poem called (spoiler alert!!) "Ballade des pendus."

How does that color your idea of Capote's intentions?

*

Some Shared Vocab

Seems that some folks aren't quite sure how to talk about creative nonfiction in a critique setting. Is it "speaker" or "narrator" or "character"? Do we pretend this never happened? Can we talk about the people in the essay as if they don't exist? Do we call this an essay or a story or...what?

Dicey questions, all.

First, a few quick executive decisions:

1. These are essays, not stories or anything else. That's what we'll call them.

2. No, we don't have to pretend this is fiction. In fact, let's not.

3. How to talk about the voice of the essay? By doing just that--talking about the voice. If we need to address the writer as a presence in the action of the essay, let's just do that directly. Using the generic title of "speaker" and "narrator" feels odd to me.

4. Tone is always important, but it's crucial in this particular workshop. ALWAYS err on the side of empathy and diplomacy.

5. On the flipside, as writers you need to remember that everything you submit for critique must be fit for public consumption. If you cringe at the idea of sitting through thirty minutes of discussion about the issues in the essay, you need to submit something else for critique.

6. In responding to your peers' essays, don't worry about whether they fulfill the "assignment." I'm more interested in whether an essay fulfills its intentions.

Next, I want to re-re-direct you to the elements of narrative writing. Not all will apply in every case, but they still provide the most general tools for both writing and talking about creative nonfiction. Some highlights:

We are still and always interested in Beginnings and Endings, a.k.a. how things start and finish. The former needs to propel a reader into the work and the latter needs to provide a combined sense of closure and resonance.

Sensory details matter. Sensory details = Nouns and Verbs.

All writing has some structure, some organization. Narrative writing is plotted. Is this plotted? Are there scenes? If not, how can we describe the architecture here -- the way things are structured?

Characters, real or made-up, can still be rendered as round or flat. We can still talk about those renderings, how the serve the essay as is, and how they could serve it better. We can also still talk about conflict between and within the principal players in the essay even if they're real.

And, again, we will always be dancing with the issue of voice because I think it's the essential element of creative nonfiction. Voice, as I define it, exists on the level of the language (word choices, sentence constructions, tone, pace) and on the level of the ideas (how does this writer observe the world and what are his/her peculiar obsessions).

Finally, at the risk of beating a dead horse, I think a reconsideration of our toolbelt metaphor is appropriate and useful.

*

A Few Words about Intention

In reviewing our first week of critiquing nonfiction, I have some observations and suggestions:

Seems to me the difference between reading like a reader and reading like a writer has everything to do with the extent to which we take the writer's intentions into account. A reader isn't too worried about what the writer intended, whereas a writer begins her reading experience with just that question in mind -- What's the writer up to here?

Of course, it's interesting and sometimes even helpful to get a reader's perspective.

The trouble is reading is an inherently subjective experience. Tastes vary. Widely. A reader is always reading on his own terms. From his own perspective. With his own blind-spots and personal experiences close to the surface. The fundamental question for a reader is this: Do I like this or do I not like it?

We'd all like to be liked. To be recognized as the geniuses we are. Unfortunately, with something as subjective as "art," 100% approval (or anything like it) is impossible.

So -- in a critique setting -- whether you, as a reader, "approved" is incidental. We can agree that all the things we read will be up some people's alley and not others'. Some people will "get it" (and here I don't mean "get it" as synonymous with "understand" -- I mean it as something akin to "striking a chord") and some won't.

That's why I want us to read, primarily, as writers. I want to focus on four very specific questions:

1. What intentions (preoccupations, concerns, obsessions) does the essay convey?

2. Where, specifically, does the essay convey those intentions most successfully?

3. Where, specifically, could it convey those intentions more successfully?

And finally the real kicker:

4. I think writerly intentions are often overrated. What you think your essay (story, poem...) is about and what it really is about (or should be about) are not always the same thing. So the $64,000 question is this:

Are there potential intentions -- perhaps unintended intentions -- lurking at or near the surface of the essay, and could/should they be exploited more than they are right now?

That's all I'm worried about. And that's the order I want to go in every single time we talk about an essay draft in critique.

*

Why 'Why' Is Important

Again we get to subjectivity -- which is very much a larger conceptual concern of this class.

Above I make a distinction between reading as a reader and reading as a writer. Much of our critiquing should come from the latter place.

Here's the caveat: a readerly response can be helpful if -- and only if -- there's justification attached to it. "Love it!" or "AWK" or "This part annoys me" don't engage the writer with empathy. To say nothing of tone, they emphasize the divide between reader and writer.

The best critiques are those that have engaged the work on its own terms, and the best critiquers adopt those terms as their own. The above statements reflect a reader who is reading on his own terms.

Does that mean you won't have those sorts of reactions if you read an essay on its own terms? Of course not. You will. But if your goal is empathy and engagement in this writer's process -- and, I'm here to tell you, that's the only worthwhile goal in a critique setting -- you will provide not just what you felt but why you felt it. What about the essay made you feel that way?

Ultimately that reflects a genuine -- and appropriately humble -- understanding that yours is but one subjective reading. You articulate it, justify it, and leave it up to the writer to decide if it helps her better understand the essay and the process of making it.

In a nutshell, there's one keyword to remember: because.

Use it early and often in your critique responses.

*

Truman Capote

Here's a little bit on Truman Capote. The money quote regarding IN COLD BLOOD:

"This book was an important event for me. While writing it, I realized I just might have found a solution to what had always been my greatest creative quandary. I wanted to produce a journalistic novel, something on a large scale that would have the credibility of fact, the immediacy of film, the depth and freedom of prose, and the precision of poetry."

We can talk about whether, at first blush, you think he's achieved that. (And need I point out that he's got four toolbelts, not just three?!) Have the first section read by next Tuesday -- but, again, just keep on slogging through. We'll talk about a pretty big chunk (sections II and III) two weeks later, on Sep 23.

PS...Please do keep in mind: this is Dill we're talking about here.

*