Content Tagged ‘Virginia Woolf’

‘The Art of Time in Memoir’

July 26, 2010 | 8 Comments

Sven Birkerts views “double vantage point” as genre’s signature. Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.—Gabriel Garcia Marquez The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again by Sven Birkerts. Graywolf. 194 pages What’s the difference between a novel and a memoir? The question isn’t as dumb as it may appear. A novel can be autobiographical, drawn completely from life remembered; a memoir is of course made of memory …

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Virginia Woolf on journalism

November 23, 2009 | 7 Comments

“To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heart-breaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm’s way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin. And so, if one reads Mr. Lucas, Mr. Lynd, or Mr. …

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Rhythm & flow in works of prose

October 6, 2009 | 3 Comments

Varying length, structure of sentences fosters voice & musicality. Clarity is a high virtue, but so is beauty; and increasingly I see that it is from varying length and sentence structure that writers achieve voice, rhythm, emphasis, and musicality. Variation works because we naturally vary our speaking rhythm when we’re emotionally connected to what we’re saying: “He fouled me! That jerk! Coach! You’re always telling us This is just a scrimmage—we’re still on the same team—don’t get carried away. Didn’t  you …

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