Category Archives: literature

Dialogue is almost too easy

25 June 2012

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The novelist James Jones on his fear of evading problems in his stories:

Dialogue is almost too easy. For me. So much so that it makes me suspicious of it, so I have to be careful with it. I could find myself evading problems of true expression because dialogue’s so easy for me to do. There are many important issues and points of subtlety about people, about human behavior, that I want to make in writing, and it’s easy to evade these—or do them superficially, do them halfway—by simply writing good dialogue. And it becomes increasingly easy as I get to know the people better. But good dialogue just isn’t enough to explain the subtler ramifications of the characters and incidents that I’m trying to work out now. Not realistic dialogue, anyway. Perhaps if you used some kind of surrealistic dialogue, but then it would read like a dream episode. It wouldn’t be real talk. For instance, it’s obvious enough that in almost any conversation things are happening to the people in the conversation that they do not and cannot express. In a play it is possible for a good actor to imply that he is thinking something other than what he is saying. But it’s pretty slipshod and half-assed, because he cannot convey what he’s thinking explicitly. In prose, and especially in the novel form, this can be done. If the man is using a subterfuge, it can be explained explicitly, and why. Actually, in life, conversation is more often likely to be an attempt at deliberate evasion, deliberate confusion, rather than communication. We’re all cheats and liars, really. And the novelist can show just how and why we are.

(via The Paris Review.)

How to Keep Up With All the Conversations

8 June 2012

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I can’t keep up with all the conversations. The New York Times has this one series about fiction, then there’s the Good Letter’s Blog, my Book Forum updates with multitudes of interesting stuff to wade through. And that’s all on top of the reading of my friends’ recommendations, and the pieces my friends are writing (like this), and the conversations on their blogs, and Twitter, and Facebook. So I don’t know how to keep up. I can’t. There’s just too much.

Whatever you’re creating, whether it’s a story, or a blog, or art, or a song, once it’s finished you have to push it out into your world. To your friends or family or community. There’s no other way to be seen. Don’t just put something up on your blog and expect readers to come by. There’s too much other stuff to see and read and be entertained by. If you don’t care then don’t try, but if you care about your ideas or your conversation then share it. Or else I’ll go find something else and so will the readers and engagers.

No one is going to steal it and if they do then go get paid to create stuff. But as soon as you send it out go create something better. Continue this.

Don’t do it for affirmation because you probably won’t get any and what you get won’t satisfy you. People aren’t going to affirm you. You’re affirmed over time by your actions.

All this to say, I want to know what you got. Send me something you’re working on. I’ll drop everything else on my list because you matter to me and I care about this ragtag community of creatives. rossgale4 at gmail dot com

As soon as you hit send, begin the next thing.

Beauty Will Save the World

7 June 2012

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This kind of beauty won’t be saving anything but women from marriage.

The one year anniversary of Gregory Wolfe’s Beauty Will Save the World is almost one week away. If you are a writer or an artist wrestling with the significance of faith and art then you need to read this book.

Wolfe lays out history showing us from where we came in order to guide the direction we move toward, but equally as important his book is “about making connections that draw us together,” rather than “restoring a past order.”

Wolfe examines the Catholic voice in literature and art while stitching together the polemics between left and right, liberal and conservative. He doesn’t hide the chasm, but proposes a unifying vision of hope of beauty that he draws from literature and art.

In any case, public discourse has increasingly come to be dominated by warring academic elites; there are fewer and fewer men and women of “letters”—non-academic artists and writers who balance a passion for truth and goodness with the concreteness that beauty demands—involved in the conversation…

I’ve been drawn to the ways that prophetic culture can be placed in tension with the imaginative cultures, precisely because they need each other so much. What happens when prophecy meets art, heaven meets earth—when divine imperatives meet the tangled human condition? When two cultures meet, they challenge one another, preventing them from the excesses particular to their own natures. Faith asks art to be about something more than formal virtuosity and to consider that meaning itself is already inherently metaphysical, even religious. Art asks faith to become incarnate in the human condition without compromise—or evasion—and remain compelling.

My younger fellow novelists are greatly preoccupied with technique. They seem to think a good novel ought to follow certain rules imposed from outside.

16 May 2012

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I want to lace together snippets of François Mauriac’s 1953 interview in the Paris Review, specifically where he’s talking about the novel. I lived unaware of Mauriac until I read Gregory Wolfe’s Beauty Will Save the World. His best books I can’t even buy at Powell’s. He was highly influential for many of America’s esteemed writers.

My opinion hasn’t changed. I believe that my younger fellow novelists are greatly preoccupied with technique. They seem to think a good novel ought to follow certain rules imposed from outside. In fact, however, this preoccupation hampers them and embarrasses them in their creation. The great novelist doesn’t depend on anyone but himself. Proust resembled none of his predecessors and he did not have, he could not have, any successors. The great novelist breaks his mold; he alone can use it. Balzac created the “Balzacian” novel; its style was suitable only for Balzac.

There is a close tie between a novelist’s originality in general and the personal quality of his style. A borrowed style is a bad style. American novelists from Faulkner to Hemingway invented a style to express what they wanted to say—and it is a style that can’t be passed on to their followers…

I believe that the crisis of the novel, if it exists, is right there, essentially, in the domain of technique. The novel has lost its purpose. That is the most serious difficulty, and it is from there that we must begin. The younger generation believes, after Joyce and Proust, that it has discovered the “purpose” of the old novel to have been prefabricated and unrelated to reality…

The crisis of the novel, then, is metaphysical. The generation that preceded ours was no longer Christian, but it believed in the individual, which comes to the same thing as believing in the soul. What each of us understands by the word soul is different; but in any case it is the fixed point around which the individual is constructed.

Faith in God was lost for many, but not the values this faith postulates. The good was not bad, and the bad was not good. The collapse of the novel is due to the destruction of this fundamental concept: the awareness of good and evil. The language itself has been devalued and emptied of its meaning by this attack on conscience.

Observe that for the novelist who has remained Christian, like myself, man is someone creating himself or destroying himself. He is not an immobile being, fixed, cast in a mold once and for all. This is what makes the traditional psychological novel so different from what I did or thought I was doing. The human being as I conceive him in the novel is a being caught up in the drama of salvation, even if he doesn’t know it.

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Operating in the Zone a Drill Called Perfection; a Review of Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine: How Creativity Works

14 May 2012

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This is a guest post by Kristen Dalton. She’s a Journalist for Greater Media Newspapers covering the Greater Red Bank Area in New Jersey. She won the 2011 Williams Prize for Poetry and graduated from Lehigh University where she played basketball for the Mountain Hawks in the Patriot League (DI), helping them win two PL tournament championships while earning two NCAA Tournament berths and a WNIT bid.

We started off every basketball practice the same way: with a drill called Perfection.

It was a simple drill, really. Full court right hand lay ups. Full court left hand lay ups. Two-player passing into right hand layups. Two-player passing into left hand lay ups. Three-man weave. Michigan (another full-court layup drill). And finally, three-man shooting. That was the order, and only when everyone completed each section could the team move on to the next.

Everything was full-court, down and back, and they were all elementary drills to be doing at the Division I collegiate level. Yet everyone hated it. Everyone hated the drill because it had to be done perfectly. Any missed shot, any dropped pass, any untouched line meant your group had to sprint to the end of the line and do it again. Until everything was perfect.

The entire team had 8 minutes (or less) to complete all the components of the drill. If it was 8:01, everyone had to do Perfection all over again. On the bad days, we could waste a half hour of practice doing a drill that had did not remotely emulate playing a game in real-time.

Now, I understand the philosophy behind the drill: practice makes perfect. But my issue was even more straightforward: the game is not perfect. It requires you to be creative and rely on your instincts. So I had a hard time coming to grips with doing a drill that was counter-intuitive to the way I played the game. You’d be surprised how hard it became to make lay ups when you knew you’d have to do it all over again, and worse, sometimes be the only one. It was embarrassing, humiliating to fail so often at the easiest shot in the world. A shot that until then, you had never given a second thought to.

This drill unraveled those basketball instincts as mental doubts disrupted years of engraved muscle memory. This is also known as “choking,” “wearing a size two collar,” “caving under pressure,” and “the Boston Red Sox.”

Or as Jonah Lehrer says in his book, Imagine: How Creativity Works,

We are so worried about playing the wrong note or saying the wrong thing that we end up with nothing at all, the silence of scared imagination.

Creativity is about letting go. Say goodbye to the inhibitions that stifle our internal rhythms and prevent our innovative ways from surfacing. Lehrer spoke with composer Yo-Yo Ma about breaking through the barriers to true performance.

When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them that the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner,” Ma says. “In order to become a professional, you need to go through years of training. You get criticized by all your teachers, and you worry about all the critics. You are constantly being judged. But if you get out onstage and all you think about is what the critics are going to say, if all you are doing is worrying, then you will play terribly. You will be tight and it will be a bad concert. Instead, one needs to constantly remind oneself to play with the abandon of a child who is just learning the cello. Because why is that kid playing? He is playing for pleasure. He is playing because making this sound, expressing this melody, makes him happy. That is still the only good reason to play.

This is why I turned to creative writing in the midst of my collegiate basketball career. I needed a creative space that countered the cookie-cutter operation of my school’s athletic program. There was a cognitive dissonance that unsettled me for years. It became clear fairly quickly that I didn’t fit the mold and would instead be modified to a much smaller role that sacrificed the creative, adaptive, run-and-gun style of play for a more slow and deliberate robotic scheme. And we were successful, won championships, went to the NCAA tournament twice. But in an effort to become perfectly efficient, there came the disappointing realization that we still hadn’t reached our truest potential. It also made it harder to come to terms with the individual sacrifices we all made.

For the first time, I realized success and potential could be mutually exclusive. The occurrence of one did not influence or result in the other.

Perfection was wrong about making mistakes. They are not failures, nor should they be punishable or embarrassing. If striving for perfection were going to turn me into a soulless basketball player then I’d rather pick up the pen and try to make myself a whole human being. So that’s what I did.

“There is something scary about letting ourselves go. It means that we will screw up, that we will relinquish the possibility of perfection. It means that we will say things we didn’t mean to say and express feelings that we can’t explain. It means that we will be onstage and not have complete control, that we won’t know what we’re going to play until we begin, until the bow is drawn across the string. While this spontaneous method might be frightening, it’s also an extremely valuable source of creativity” (Lehrer).

Most creative people understand this. They’re actively pursuing that moment of insight when neurons connect in unexpected places and open neural pathways that carry messages in new ways. They are the metaphors of our minds, bridging the gap between life as we know it and the life as we wish it to be. This requires an imagination, and our cells do this every day at the most basic level. It’s like making a pass that threads the needle: you can’t practice for it and no one can see it until it happens. You just have to be ready to make it happen. You have to be willing to look for new ways to say something, to create something, to fire a rope and rescue an unspoken emotion. A two-point lay up.

It is impossible to practice for these moments. They usually happen in the wake of mistakes.

So don’t suppress the quiet tug of your instincts for the sake of attaining perfection. You’ll never be successful fulfill your potential.

Instead, welcome the first mistake.

That’s what Yo-Yo Ma does.

Because then I can shrug it off and keep smiling. Then I can get on with the performance and turn off that part of the mind that judges everything. I’m not thinking or worrying anymore. And it’s when I’m least conscious of what I’m doing, when I’m just lost in the emotion of the music, that I’m performing my best.

Creativity is not the performance though. It’s the magic that makes you disappear. And even though everyone can see you, they’ll all be wondering where you went.

Kristen’s writing is featured in The Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania) and in 2009 had her article “Global Branding: Li Ning vs. Nike” published in the Lehigh Review. She is the creative writer and founder of Inspired Scribble, which is offering its first creative writing scholarship in June to a student enrolled in the AP Humanities class at Monmouth Regional High School.

She fell in love with a Cuban General, had his baby, and then moved home to San Francisco because Cuba was no place to raise a child

11 May 2012

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I had a fascinating American Literature professor. Her favorite student was a psychology major and she allowed him to speak, but often cutoff anyone else who wanted to talk about meaningless things like symbols which don’t speak to anything at all in a story, so she said. (The image above is an example of a smug psychology student. Just judging everyone.)

She told us about how she fell in love with a Cuban General, having his baby, and then moving home because Cuba was no place to raise a child. She never did say Cuba. I guess it could have been Panama or something similar. But I met her son randomly at a friends house. I didn’t ask him about his biological father. He’d been discussing a trip he took with his adopted father, a doctor, where they volunteered at a clinic in Port au Prince.

But this fascinating professor talked longingly about teaching at a well respected university where she could have longstanding conversations about literature with her adept and well-attuned students. Instead of us–except for the psychology student–Portland students. She was Jewish, an atheist, and adopted two girls from China.

From her I learned about structures and tropes and that Gertrude Stein’s sentences are like branches upon branches.

Of my work she said, “I like your voice, but you need to say more.”

Which was nice because I want my writing voice to be liked and also because I have a little bit of pride for my holding back. And this might be a silly pride because I don’t often write beyond what I think needs to be said. Which isn’t much. I could stop here. I’m fighting myself not to stop here.

I’m an introvert. Whatever that means. But it doesn’t mean I don’t have things to say. It’s just that in order for me to form my thoughts I must write them out first. So writing is often more than just saying what I want to say, it’s also wading through my subconscious to figure out what I feel and believe. I am hidden from myself.

Again, I’m fighting. I feel like I’m through. I don’t have an opinion any more.

Last thought then: writing for me is hard because it often involves a super-concentrated form of thinking mixed with an unknown and hyperactive agent called feeling. I can write when I don’t feel, but it’s often dull and lifeless. But it’s close to impossible for me to write when I don’t concentrate.

So when I’m stuck, when I’m tired and I don’t want to think, I imagine my American Lit professor, turning away from the class and facing that smug psychology student and asking his opinion. And then I start writing. I start saying more. Because I hate smug psychology students who know so much about literature that they don’t major in it. And I also hate when professors condescend.

Another thought, now that I imagine myself in the class again: I wasn’t prepared for American Literature. I needed milk, but I was fed beef. I hadn’t prepared myself, that’s for sure, but I didn’t know how to prepare. I wonder if literature would thrive with more priming. I took every literature and writing class in high school. High-brow literature needs the equivalent of a gateway drug. Maybe that’s what they call Young Adult lit. Or maybe I’ve become smug.

Where are the writers who seek artistic authenticity in poverty?

9 May 2012

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Fiction must be aware of the income level of its characters because wealthy characters can buy and do more stuff, like fly helicopters, travel the world, wear expensive clothing, and jump into pools full of Jell-O. Fiction loves wealth because it gives the reader a rare glimpse into an unseen world.

Robert McCrum asks where are the writers “who seek artistic authenticity in poverty?”

Prices are collapsing, and the winds of austerity whistle around the world. But writers show no sign of exploring deprivation or exigency.

It used not to be this way. I’ve been reading a new book about Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Frederick Turner’s Renegade identifies the obsessive way in which Miller, like several writers of his generation, sought artistic authenticity in deprivation, poverty and insufficiency…

Where are the nomads now? Today, if a writer gets his or her shoes dirty, it’s as likely to be crossing a muddy field at the Hay festival, or getting caught in a tropical downpour in Galle or Jaipur. Whatever happened to the avant garde?

British references aside, I like his question. I don’t have an answer, but if someone does, I’d like to know. Or maybe an argument against his claim.

Poverty, at a surface level, seems to constrain and constrict the plot. You have to get close to dirt because all poverty is dirty. And you can’t drink the tap water and you have to take public transportation or ride a bike if your character is street smart enough to steal one and not get caught. And you always smell. And even though you don’t have much money drugs are easy to come by. And everyone is selling their bodies. And there is lots of stinky sweaty sex scenes. Because poor people don’t shower but hump like rabbits and can’t afford birth control so there’s always kids popping out.

Blimey, as the British say.

Conversations With My Novel In The Middle Of The Night

8 May 2012

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Do you have conversations with your book? Jim Behrle does,

Over my bed, or the thing I call my bed which used to be a couch but is kinda now more of a cot, suddenly bathed in an unnatural moonlight, is a seven-foot book with arms and legs. It’s a hardcover with a shiny commercial trade book cover. The title is set in a silvery font that jags and blurs out a little, like frost. It reads: THE COLDEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR. This was the title of a play the Drama Guild of my high school wrote and performed about homeless people for a one-act play competition. We didn’t win, but I always liked that title. I always wanted to use it for a kind of hard-boiled thriller thing. So here it is, looking down at me in the middle of the night as I lie awake worrying about writing it. Except this book is bigger than me and has huge, unblinking “Simpsons”-character eyes. And a vague look of frustrated disgust across its mouth. It even has an arched eyebrow. It lifts a lit cigar to its teeth and squints.

—So how am I coming along?

It even speaks without scare quotes, like one of those soulless characters in a Cormac McCarthy novel. The kind that kill people with like a special silver spork they’ve had made out of the cavity fillings of all their victims.

I’ll never look at my black moleskine notebook the same. And I’ll never turn my back to it  either. Or look it straight in the eye. It’s always judging me.

What’s your book saying?

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“In The Beginning” Blog Series on Creativity

7 May 2012

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“Bereshit bara…” thus the book of Genesis opens. “In the beginning…”

I’ve asked 13 incredibly talented Creatives to share with us what gives them the courage to create. They are writers, authors, teachers, professors, doctors, waitresses, pastors, painters, musicians, editors, mothers, fathers, wives, husbands. I just like to call them Creatives.

Creating is a daunting task. But it’s also full of joy and meaning and mystery.

How do Creatives make the first move, write the first word, fling the first brush stroke, peel back the first layer of clay?

What inspires them, what moves them, what drives them?

These are questions I wrestle with every day. Beginning anew with a blank page or a fresh idea, battling fatigue and weariness and distractions and discouragement and lack of motivation.

I want to know how other Creatives create and about the forces that drive them.

The series will begin in June and continue through August. It’s intended to be a conversation, a meditation, and an inspiration.

But this is only the beginning of the conversation

I need YOU to take part. I need you to write a blog post that wrestles with these questions. THEN SEND ME THE LINK (rossgale4 at gmail dot com) so I can share it here with our community and we can extend the conversation beyond just blogs and comments and shares and likes. I want it to move the conversation beyond our computers to our family, friends, and communities. I hope the image sparks some more thought. Let me know if you’ll be participating.

The 13 Creatives

Tyler Braun, manofdepravity.com
David Clark, davidclarkart.com
Dyana Herron, dyanaherron.com
Diana Huey
Chris Hunter
Elizabeth Myhr, elizabethmyhr.wordpress.com
David Jacobsen, jacobsenwriting.com
Adele Konyndyk, adelekonyndyk.wordpress.com
Shannon Huffman Polson, aborderlife.com
Britt Tinsdale Staton, alivestudios.net
Chad Thomas Johnston, chadthomasjohnston.com
Derek Smith, magicalteaching.com
Alissa Wilkinson, alissawilkinson.com

My life as a writer began with motherhood

7 May 2012

2 Comments

Still, and yet, my life as a writer began with motherhood.

Motherhood isn’t trivial; its activities may be trivial, but they put you in touch, deeply and immediately and daily, with the great issues of Life: heavy duty things like Love and Loss, Growth and Tolerance and Dignity, Control and Conflict and Power—which are the issues, incidentally, that make serious novels. I might have become a writer eventually without first having become a mother, but it’s hard for me to imagine it.

–Molly Gloss author of “The Hearts of Horses“