Draft No. 4

An ancient lesson in structure

September 15, 2011 | 11 Comments

A version of this post first ran October 3, 2008 The King James Bible’s stories and ancient words and lovely turns of phrase have influenced legions of writers. I’m charmed by its liberal use of sobering colons: like so. And by the nonsensical italics. And then there’s Jesus: talk about someone who works on multiple levels. He’s always getting thronged and spied upon—What’s he gonna do now?—and he delights in flummoxing. He speaks in riddles to the dumbfounded masses, though …

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Welty on what’s ‘greater than scene’

September 6, 2011 | 5 Comments

A version of this post first appeared on August 31, 2008. Eudora Welty’s essay “The Little Store” takes us with her, as a child, to a neighborhood grocery, what we’d call a convenience store today. It’s a story about the lost world of childhood and it captures turn-of-the-century Jackson, Mississippi. All she conveys is suffused with meaning for her, but Welty avoids sentimentality by showing  instead of telling readers what to feel. The store’s realm is one of children on …

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Scenes that work—for writer and reader

September 1, 2011 | 7 Comments

This post appeared originally in 2010 as “Keys to Conveying Experience” Writing theorist Peter Elbow believes a key to effective writing is getting readers to breathe “experience” into the words. To accomplish this effect, the writer must first have the experience herself. “Narrative,” he observes, “is a way to get your reader’s attention, but it is a rudimentary kind of attention, mere curiosity about what happens next. It doesn’t make her actually build an experience in her head. Narrative is …

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Gail Caldwell 3: more to admire

August 22, 2011 | 8 Comments

I. The way, as I said, that Gail Caldwell employs metaphor in Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship is remarkable. Almost every page includes one. “No, you’re not,” said Caroline, her face as deadpan as a coach’s in a losing season. “No, you’re not. Keep your hands together. Stay still—don’t look at the water, look at your hands. Now look at me.” The voice consoled and instructed long enough for me to straighten into position, and …

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Mary Gordon’s master class in the soul

August 16, 2011 | 3 Comments

Guest post by Olga Khotiashova Why do people write memoirs: to share their most exciting experiences with readers or to get rid of haunting ghosts? The truth probably lies somewhere in between these two poles. The magic of a memoir is that any experience, when articulated, loses its privacy, becomes distinct from the author, so the moments of sheer joy, although not so dazzling as before, rest peacefully in a safe place together with unspeakably painful experiences which, on the …

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More metaphors & Gail Caldwell

August 11, 2011 | 5 Comments

Still thinking about Gail Caldwell’s deft metaphors in Let’s Take the Long Way Home, I was struck by these remarkable lines by John Steinbeck from The Grapes of Wrath:  Can you live without the willow tree? Well, no, you can’t. The willow tree is you. The pain on the mattress there—that dreadful pain—that’s you. I sure didn’t remember that passage, and it makes me want to reread the novel, which also has—I do remember this—an amazing scene of several pages …

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Gail Caldwell’s memoir & metaphors

August 6, 2011 | 9 Comments

The use of running metaphors in a piece—all related in some way to indigestion or water or loneliness or roller skates, or with a surrealistic or violent cast—will guide the reader in a particular direction as surely as stock can be herded.—Annie Proulx I’ve been skimming John Irving’s newest novel, Last Night in Twisted River. I started out reading, but it asked more of me than I can give right now. With classes looming, immersed in my own rewriting struggle, …

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