Globe and Mail confirms the futility of writing courses

Russel Smith pointed out that there are fewer books of fiction being read than ever before and at the same time there are more people wanting to write them.  Some of this is snobbery.  I've already quoted Atwood on this and it's a good quote, but there's a feeling amongst those who've been published that there is far too much democratization of art.  If they were forced to say it, they'd say that not everyone can be a literary artist.  I'm sure they're right.  In any case, what must be avoided and the good writing books point this out at the same time as they contradict themselves by offering advice is advice to writers that will impose rules. There are no rules in art, both Gardner and Prose agree.  Learn from the great works of literary art, especially those outside of one's genre.  What are you reading?

Little Women

I like Alcott's book a little better now.  There's no Ishmael and no Captain Ahab, but the characters want things.  They are adorable and they make me happy.  No quote of the day.  What are you reading?

Tuesday February 23, 2010

I'm reading Little Women on the subway.  At least it wasn't as bad as reading Flannery O'Connor and having a Black man sit down beside me only to look over at a page of N-words that he managed to misunderstand entirely.  He must have thought that I was actually saying the N-words on that page because he started screaming at me and calling me a racist.  But reading Little Women, especially the illustrated copy, is worse because it's for five year olds.  I mean I can't believe Prose recommended it.  I trust her and so I keep reading it, but it does feel like a book for girls or, at best, for women.  It reminded me of Brenda Ueland's book "If you want to write."  The writing that she quotes is like Louisa May Alcott's.  That's the writing that she praises.  Imagine a list that includes Samuel Beckett and Louisa May Alcott!  So I'm lost to even find anything that I might not know about writing that Alcott knows.  Quote of the day: "After various lesser mishaps, Meg was finished at last, and by the united exertions of the family Jo's hair was got up, and her dress on."  Don't get me wrong, I love children's books.

Gogol's Dead Souls

If there's any doubt that the greatest teachers of writing are dead, read Gogol and see how wrong you are.  Especially remarkable is this passage: "Happy is the writer who omits these dull and repulsive characters that disturb one by being so painfully real...The delicious mist of the incense he burns dims human eyes; the miracle of his flattery masks all the sorrows of life and depicts only the goodness of man...He is called a great universal poet, soaring high above all other geniuses of the world even as an eagle soars above other high flying creatures.  The mere sound of his name sounds a thrill through ardent young hearts; all eyes greet him with radiance and responsive tears...
      But a different lot and another fate awaits the writer who has dared to evoke all such things that are constantly before one's eyes...the shocking morass of trifles that has tied up our lives, and the essence of cold, crumbling, humdrum characters with whom our earthly way, now bitter, now dull, fairly swarms....Not for him will be the applause, no grateful tears will he see...not to him will a girl of sixteen come flying, her head all awhirl with heroic fervor.  Not for him will be that sweet enchantment when a poet hears nothing but the harmonies he has engendered himself; and finally, he will not escape the judgement of his time, the judgement of hypocritical and unfeeling contemporaries who will accuse the creatures his mind has bred of being base and worthless, will allow a contemptible nook for him in the gallery of those authors who insult mankind, will ascribe to him the morals of his own characters, and will deny him everything, heart, soul, and the divine flame of talent."

Collected Stories of Flannery O'Connor

Reading diary pages 496 to 540.  She's very good.  But I've spent so much being politically correct that it's hard to read.  Prose says that art is a house with many rooms.  She hates the habit of colleges that insist on making students critics of the writers themselves and then able to dismiss their work.  In this recommend list, it is the work itself that is important.  She spends almost no time talking about how bad a man was and how that is obvious in his writing.  Von Kleist is on the list, and she does say that he killed his girl friend and then himself, but it didn't keep him off the list.  When we condemned writers because they were racist or sexist, we felt so superior to their art when we were in university.  We had no right.  Quote of the day: "A visionary light settled in her eyes.  She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire.  Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven.  There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs."  

Escapes by Joy Williams

I want to learn from all the books on this list. I had a feeling that I read it as a teenager or maybe only one story. I hate the book, but I remember, still, a year after I've read it, the story about a drunk woman told by her young daughter. Maybe the stories are simply too raw.

Some Hope: A Triology by Edward St. Aubyn

It's hard to say why I loved this book so much. I recommend it highly. It takes the reader right to hell, but I could never turn away. I didn't want to turn away. There's not a false note in it and there are monsters galore. This is where I most appreciated Prose's comments about the pressure that young writers are under (I refer not to St. Aubyn) to write characters who one can identify with from editors. That is the way to sell in writing Hollywood and, as publishing becomes more like Hollywood, the same pressure is put on novelists. What you can't help admitting about the vast majority of these books is that they are filled misfits, syncophants and sociopaths. I am interested in them. As Prose said, that's the only thing that's necessary.