two umbrellas

I spend a lot of time reading. I love to read. In fact, when I was thinking about a career for myself, I would think, “What job could I have that would allow me to read all of the time?” Often, some sort of night-watchman would always seem dangerously appealing for a little, bookish lady. So, I thought again, and decided a high-school English teacher could work. And did – for a few years, at least. Then, I went into publishing, where, sadly, I had little time for actual reading – though, in its defense, I was working with words. When I became a full-time mama, I had some free time to read and thought, “There must be something I could do with that.” So I decided that I would review books. Fortunately, someone was willing to let me.

It was a nice (albeit non-paying) gig. I could review any new or recent fiction or non-fiction that I wanted. What a great idea! I could read whatever I wanted, write about it, someone would publish it, and possibly someone would read it. Amazing. I started scouring my wonderful S Philly branch of the FLP. I tried keeping up with blogs and new titles. I even received a free review copy. I had made it! I was a reviewer. But something just didn’t feel right about it. (Not receiving the free book – that was great and I loved the book and tried to write as glowing of a review as possible for it because everyone should read What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going by Damion Searls.)

First, I started reading books differently. I started reading them analytically. I began to seek out specifics in the books: reasons for people to like or dislike it, good quotes, etc. rather than letting myself experience the book as a whole. My reading experience was getting so lost in my concerns for the article that I was starting to resent reading. Even though I could have read just about anything I wanted to, I felt paradoxically constrained by the obligation to review. Since my reading time has been limited with the Parasol running around, that time has become more and more valuable. Somehow, now, I felt pressure to read certain books and felt I couldn’t read what I wanted. Though I could. I know – a bit neurotic.

Second, I found writing reviews to be hard. That sounds like an excuse – and maybe it is – but it was challenging. I would think about the reviews I liked to read and found that that was part of the problem. When I do read book reviews, I often read the ones for books that I probably won’t read. Often, if I read reviews for books that I actually want to read then I learn too much about the book (usually there’s too much plot synopsis), so much so that it takes something away from my reading experience. That experience, for me, is something personal, a discovery, of sorts, of how I react to the words on the page. If I know too much beforehand that sense of discovery is tainted. For example, I just picked up Colum McCann’s new novel, Let The Great World Spin, from the library. NYTBR had a review, which I started to read. The first paragraph was okay: a little plot summary that I already knew. And then out of nowhere the author writes (and I’m paraphrasing) that this was one of the best books he’d read. Great! Thanks a lot! I stopped reading. I don’t remember who the reviewer was so I don’t remember if I trusted him or not. But I knew that the review would be biased and tell me way too much, considering there was a whole page left. I already had high expectations for the book since I like Colum McCann; but, I didn’t want a one page version of the novel or a one page sales pitch. Let me decide.

So if I didn’t want too much plot or too much opinion from a book review, what, then, was I supposed to give my audience? I don’t know. I still don’t know. How is it different writing this blog than writing for a publication? The main reason is voice. On twoumbrellas, I don’t have to develop a voice – I already have one. I write this blog for me. It started because I have a terrible memory. I write about books so I can remember them: remember how I felt, remember what they were about, and use it as a guide – for myself – of the narrative of my reading (and sometimes writing) life. I post about other things, too, but mostly what I read and what I think about it. Why then couldn’t I transfer it to this other publication? Most likely a personal hang-up of my own but I think that has to do with the editorial slant of the magazine. I just didn’t fit in. I thought I could fake it but I couldn’t keep that up. It just wasn’t me. It didn’t feel right.

So I stopped writing reviews (officially). I still write them here because this is my little space to do it and I still have a terrible memory, in fact, it’s getting worse.

But as I write this, I am trying to figure out why I read book reviews? What do I want to get out of them: recommendations? book choice affirmation? Probably a little of both. Often, I read reviews after I’ve read a book to get a different perspective. I think I read them just because I like to hear/read/discuss about books. Not sure. But, I will continue to read them but more often than not I won’t finish them.

My review of Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun at When Falls the Coliseum is up. Here’s a bit:

There are so many things that could be potentially cliche about Nami Mun’s Miles from Nowhere: the title, the cover, the characters, the plot — just about everything. The main character, Joon, runs away from home when she is twelve. Her father has left the family, which drives her mother to insanity. After leaving her mother, Joon goes down the inevitable path of drugs and prostitution as she copes on the streets of New York City. But there is something keeping this novel from falling into the trap: Nami Mun’s writing.

My ‘New Lit’ column will appear the first Wednesday of each month. Check it out…

Over at the Guardian AL Kennedy is blogging about “why it’s pointless telling anyone that writing isn’t worth it”.

I set off on my wonky career path during the Thatcher years when unemployment was so massive that a non-proper job didn’t seem any more foolish than, say, working in a bank. Now that so many of us dream of bitch-slapping bankers up and down the high street and there are, once again, no safe havens, new writers may feel they have nothing to lose by taking the plunge into typing. I’m a creature of extremes, I’ll admit, but surely it is generally better to live a life that tries to find its own edges and push them a bit, rather than simply settling for habitual numbness.

And more good stuff to come: apparently she will be posting every two weeks.

So I have skipped an update of Week 2 for no particular reason. Here is a post I started to write about a week ago:

A little bit of burn out. I wrote thousands of words over the weekend. I’m trying – quite unsuccessfully – to keep up that pace tonight. Maybe not thousands, but maybe a thousand would be nice. But I am tired. I am tired of speech and action…

But now I am worse off. I am stuck. I am bored with my story. I haven’t written since Friday. I am not even close to the word count’s halfway point. Here is about where I’m at right now:

By now you’re probably ready to give up. You’re past that first fine furious rapture when every character and idea is new and entertaining. You’re not yet at the momentous downhill slide to the end, when words and images tumble out of your head sometimes faster than you can get them down on paper. You’re in the middle, a little past the half-way point. The glamour has faded, the magic has gone, your back hurts from all the typing, your family, friends and random email acquaintances have gone from being encouraging or at least accepting to now complaining that they never see you any more—and that even when they do you’re preoccupied and no fun. You don’t know why you started your novel, you no longer remember why you imagined that anyone would want to read it, and you’re pretty sure that even if you finish it it won’t have been worth the time or energy and every time you stop long enough to compare it to the thing that you had in your head when you began—a glittering, brilliant, wonderful novel, in which every word spits fire and burns, a book as good or better than the best book you ever read—it falls so painfully short that you’re pretty sure that it would be a mercy simply to delete the whole thing.
(from a NaNoWriMo Newsletter written by Neil Gaiman)

And so Week 3 begins…

This is my very first try at a novel and it’s as if I forgotten how a novel works. I try to think of all of the novels I have ever read and it’s as though they have vanished from my memory.

I’m still plugging away but the word count is very low. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I’m not quite sure why I’m writing this post – could it be procrastination?

I’m not quite sure how I’m going to pull this off; but only five days until the race against myself begins…

The American Scholar has an essay titled “Wonder Bread” against some Brooklyn writers. I can’t help but agree that there is some arrested development in seemingly talented writers.

Here are a few excerpts:

…certain writers produce Brooklyn Books of Wonder. Take mawkish self-indulgence, add a heavy dollop of creamy nostalgia, season with magic realism, stir in a complacency of faith, and you’ve got wondrousness.

…

According to Jeffrey Sharlet, a journalist/provocateur who helped inspire this essay, and Andi Mudd, a spectacularly unwondrous college student who assisted in researching it, The Lovely Bones and its ilk “deserve a public shaming.” That’s because BBoWs are escape novels, albeit garnished with intellectual flourishes. They’re kitsch, which Milan Kundera defined as “the translation of the stupidity of received ideas into the language of beauty and feeling [that] moves us to tears of compassion for ourselves, for the banality of what we think and feel.”

…

The nakedness of Kunkel’s desire to change the world and of Eggers’s angst has an appeal, but it’s simultaneously simple and disingenuous. Both are Salingers of our time. That’s because they embody critic Lionel Trilling’s famous dichotomy; they mistake sincerity for authenticity.

…

Not that everything that touches the splendid borough is piffle. Besides BBoWs, Brooklyn has given birth to books ranging from Hubert Selby’s morbid noir Last Exit to Brooklyn to Neil Gordon’s garrotte-tight thriller The Gunrunner’s Daughter. Jonathan Lethem provides a case in point because his imagination is deeply anchored in Brooklyn and he writes of adolescence, especially orphaned adolescence in Motherless Brooklyn, and his narratives are peppered with references to popular culture. However, all of this makes for a mimetic re-creation of genuine experience that he knew as a child on Dean Street rather than as a childish adult on Dean Street. Moreover, Lethem doesn’t pull punches. On the second page of The Fortress of Solitude, a kitten is accidentally killed while the protagonist’s mother smokes cigarettes. Unless it’s Mr. Harvey in The Lovely Bones, no one smokes in BBoWs. They’d as soon smoke as fail to recycle. Also, a daring flight at the end crashes. Perhaps Lethem is striving for wonder, but he’s too smart to let it carry him away. He has, however, been carried away by his imitators. The BBoW authors have adopted Lethem as a surrogate father, and he ought to disinherit them.

…

Coddled and cosseted, they’re the first generation of novelists who grew up reading the young-adult pap that they’ve now regurgitated with a deconstructive gloss learned in college. Of course, such aspirations require equivalently high subject matter. Hence the BBoWs’s mock encounter with enormity. Still, they have no teeth. They’re sheep in wolves’ clothing who manage to write about bad things and make you feel good.

(via Arts & Letters Daily)

Over at TEV there is a somewhat interesting discussion of the value of MFA programs. I did not attend an MFA program – only a mere MA program – so I can’t and won’t target specifics. But maybe a conversation about writing programs in general. Some background about my program: I have an MA in Writing Studies. The question I usually get is what does that mean? Well, two years and tens of thousands of dollars later, I’m not so sure I can answer that question either. The program focused on writing, of course, but the individual student could focus his or her studies in many areas: poetry, non-fiction, fiction, and even business-type writing (grants/marketing/etc.). Having so many options for all students had its pros and cons. It gave students many options to explore (a thesis was necessary, so at some point you would have to focus your studies). However, having the program be so open gave many students the impression that it was more of a liberal arts curriculum so many of the students weren’t very serious about their writing or studies.

So maybe I don’t have any room to say anything about MFA programs. But, I focused my degree (on fiction). I had workshop after workshop and tried my best to turn my MA experience into a pseudo-MFA. The workshops were the only place where I learned anything. What I learned, I realized I could have learned anywhere. I learned that discipline and creating a community of talented writers whom you could trust are some of the most important things that you can have as a writer. I had two good professors – one really good professor – and I still work on writing with one of my classmates. Being around creative people, talking to them about writing and reading, reading their work, letting them read mine, was the best creative environment. I wrote more in those two years than I have ever written and now a year out of the program I am still not as prolific. Better? I can only hope so. Yet, having that community of writers was so important. Do we have to go to graduate school in order to maintain that community? Probably not; but all of the hard work is done for us. The program facilitates gathering together intelligent people with the same interests. All we have to do is show up.

I believe some of the backlash on MFA programs stems from the state of publishing. Major publishing houses need to be able to bank (excuse that terrible expression) on the success of a title. They are more apt to publish writers or styles that have been published before and will seek out those types of writers. There are criticisms that MFA programs teach the “craft” of writing as if it were like making bricks, that they churn out writers, and that it has become a profession. I can understand this heated criticism. If major publishers only publish those that come from the well known MFA institutions – the writers must be good if they can graduate from Iowa and they were mentored by (insert big time author’s name here) – then everyone is going to want to go to these institutions so that they too can get published and have a blurb on the cover from their mentor. It’s like an internship to the big time (for some). Hence the criticism that many of these authors all sound the same.*

What I find most interesting about the MFA discussion is whether or not these programs help writers become better writers or even if they can teach people to become writers. I am no expert but I am going to say yes and no. They can help good writers become better writers because they are constantly writing and talking about writing. I don’t think you can really teach anyone to write creatively, only show them techniques and open the doors for new ideas and force people to write, write, write, and then write some more.

*I think this discussion could really digress into the state of media vs. art, so I’ll leave it as is for now.

I am always amazed at convergence. I was thinking about a story that I have been working on for at least two years (a bit too long, I suppose – though I was quite comforted in reading this interview with Charles D’Ambrosio that many of his stories took years to write, “The High Divide” took twelve years to complete – I think it’ll take me a lot longer than ten years to attempt to catch up to his writing) and how, at this point, the plot of my story is somewhat episodic but it is traditionally structured. It’s not working out so well, as one might guess. As I was working on another revision this morning, I thought about changing the structure and create vignettes or mini chapters. It could certainly work within the context of my story. So in my procrastination (disguised as research) I found this story at Hobart’s online journal. I really liked it. It works. There is an interesting dichotomy between the disorientation moving among the episodes and how they are all connected, like, of course, memories.

Reading this story raised an interesting question for me as I was thinking about my own writing – a simple one that I probably should be more attuned to as I write: What about structure? For me there are two sides to structure: visual and aural, however obvious that might be. The story mentioned above is a visual story. I wouldn’t get the same experience hearing that story read aloud. Therefore, I must think about how a story’s structure will effect its sound. What, then, is the goal of structuring a story in a particular way? Can’t it be both, visual and aural, at the same time? I recently read two books by Jon McGregor who seems to approach style with structure in mind. In his first book, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, much of the book is written like a prose poem – listings of sentences that dictate how the words should be read. It is visually fast paced, although he does a very good job of regulating the flow of his sentences by making them rich and lyrical. His second book, So Many Ways to Begin, is written very differently as paragraphs flow traditionally from page to page. Seeing the words on the page does not effect my understanding or connection with them as much as his first book. In short, it does not make me question what I see – only what I hear.

Although structure seems like a very technical aspect of writing – as I learned over and over again in grad school about how writing is a craft – it is dangerous to overlook, especially as a writer, in deciding how you want to tell your story. Isn’t that what writing is all about – storytelling? When it works, I find the visual structure very appealing. It makes literature work on many different levels, like going to an art gallery with a friend who knows and tells you much more about the art than you thought you could ever know. You come away from the experience a little bit more enlightened – for better or worse. Yet, I can’t help but also be a little bit skeptical about overemphasizing the visual in literature. What happens when structure overpowers the words? Will literature soon mimic other forms of media? It would be disappointing to see literature structured like a heavily edited television program. At its best (like those mentioned above), it looks more like poetry which is always a very good thing.

As a struggling writer of short stories, I am always open to some worthy advice. The most relevant for me was number one (not a good start indeed):

Never approach short stories one at a time. If one approaches short stories one at a time, one can quite honestly be writing the same short story until the day one dies.

(via syntax of things.)