Windows onto a Wider World
The real subject of autobiography is not one’s experience but one’s consciousness. Memoirists use the self as a tool. –Patricia Hampl Perhaps because I’m entering my twenty-third year of teaching writing, I’m getting curmudgeonly about memoir. I still revere fine examples in the genre, but the vast majority of memoir seems myopic and disengaged. Published works irritate me the most; I read a memoir like Sheryl Strayed’s Wild and run screaming back to the classics to recover. Memoirs-in-process at least contain the possibility of improving. The amateur writers I work with fear that memoir is selfish, but this isn’t my gripe. “You may keep the self-centered material—that’s all we writers have to work with!” writes Carol Bly. The self is a wonderfully worthy subject. Perhaps what grates on me is a distinctly American understanding of the self, obsessed with personal pain and disturbingly isolated. I am interested in the self…
Write–Or Be Written.
This past weekend my sister married the man she loves in a sunny meadow. Because this was her second marriage, she had resisted it mightily—“marriage” is a story the culture imposes on couples, and it doesn’t necessarily work. You have to understand—Marcy is a woman who, on her own, adopted two boys from Guatemala; she started a community farm and has midwifed countless babies into the world. Her performance artist sweetie moved in two years ago; the boys already call him Dad. Why bother with marriage? Eventually Marcy conceded that a wedding would give them a communal and sacred blessing. The couple created a “family union” ceremony with their Lakotan spiritual leader that involved the guests hiking across a canyon, drumming, washing in a stream, and making vows to one another and the boys. The guests cried and danced. What made my sister’s wedding powerful? It was faithful to tradition…
Dismissing, Then Welcoming the Audience
You must sympathize with the reader’s plight (most readers are in trouble about half the time) but never seek to know the reader’s wants. Your whole duty as a writer is to please and satisfy yourself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one. When I came upon these words in Strunk and White’s classic writing handbook, Elements of Style, I felt pleased as punch. For years I’ve tried to convince writing students to surround themselves with a safe, protective bubble as they draft projects and begin revising. We all know how concern for our audience can loom over our shoulders, pestering us with questions like “What will your mother think?” and “Who will give a rat’s ass about that?” and judging our language or ideas as inadequate. As soon as we allow that dreaded entity, “the reader,” into our writing room, we begin censoring and performing. …
Language that Shows
When tweaking language during the final stages of revision, strive for clarity first. Language is meant to communicate. Sound, rhythm, pacing, word choice, sentence structure, punctuation, paragraphing—all stylistic choices—should convey the content rather than call attention to themselves. Take Strunk and White’s advice: “The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is an expression of self, and should turn resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style—all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.” But within the scope of clear language are many choices, and fine writers opt for words that show as well as tell. Let’s look at a passage from Patricia Hampl’s I Could Tell You Stories: When I am the reader, not the writer, I too fall into the lovely illusion that the words before me which read so inevitably, must also have been…