A Good War is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America by David Griffith. Soft Skull Press. 189 pages. When Pilate said unto them, Why, what evil hath he done? And they cried out all the more exceedingly, Crucify him.—Mark 15:14 What America learned from World War II, after a billion people died and half the Earth was scorched, was to outlaw war on civilians (which works but at bestial cost) and to ban torture (because it’s ineffective, …
From an interview with nonfiction guru Gutkind conducted by Eric Parker for Fresno Famous— “[I]mmersions are so wonderful in that you walk into an immersion having an idea, idea A, but by the time you’ve spent three months or six months, you have a new idea, or a different formulation of your idea. Then, if you spend another year or two, your idea sophisticates and focuses even more. So, it’s a constant balancing challenge to make sure that you are …
The writer, and editor of the journal of concise nonfiction, Brevity, was interviewed by Mary Richert as part of her nonfictionist series on her blog No Titles: I think certain experiments, with language, point-of-view, structure, work better in the short form. Very brief essays are like a petri dish for innovation. . . . [T]he lyric, almost ethereal essay as opposed to the highly journalistic ‘article’ – are both nonfiction, and nonfiction that allows creative choices on the part of …
On thing teaching writing does for you is that you see the same issues over and over in students’ work. “Rule of Thumb: Anyone worth mentioning needs a short physical description,” I hear myself saying, “even though the person readers picture in their minds will look nothing like your Aunt Sally.” Or, “It’s strange how rewarded readers are by understanding something because of information you’ve given them previously.” Or you see again in a workshop, along with a rapt circle …
from “Visions and Revisions: Writing On Writing Well and keeping it up-to-date for 35 years,” in The American Scholar, Spring 2009 “It now occurs to me that I didn’t really find my style until I wrote On Writing Well, at the late age of 52. Until then my style more probably reflected who I wanted to be perceived as—the urbane columnist and humorist and critic. Only when I started writing as a teacher and had no agenda except to be …
Space breaks: powerful emphasis points & a guilty pleasure. The space break, an extra return after a paragraph that adds white space to a text, has practical and dramatic uses I was slow to understand. I was proud of my verbal transitions, and physical ones seemed like cheating. It took me a while to transcend my guilt, undoubtedly forged in newspapers where column-inches are precious. But verbal transitions can be lame—they are artificial devices themselves and often clunky—and space breaks do more than indicate …