This excerpt from Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones reads very smoothly, and I like that. It doesn't attempt to tower above the reader by using insufferable language or haughty linguistic theories, nor does it make the reader feel subordinate to the author in terms of knowledge and experience; it invites us in to a warm environment where we feel that the author is learning along with us. While I don't really care much about her studies in Zen (Katagiri Roshi is a popular guy in her world, it seems) or much of her personal interjections, I can appreciate the simplistic and enrapturing approach she takes in her writing-- it flowed by much more quickly than some of the other materials we've covered so far in class, that's for sure.
There are some choice pieces of advice to be found, of course, amongst the casual approach Goldberg has taken. While the relevant points could be honed down to their essence in about two paragraphs out of this entire selection, they are quite insightful and could prove to be the introspective kick writers in our class could get good use out of. I found the line towards the opening to be particularly interesting, for I'd never considered it this way, but the fact that "loneliness" isn't really loneliness if we can connect with other people, even about being lonely, is pretty interesting. It really gives us a perspective that we might glaze over while writing, in that what we consider to be lonely, or sad, or anything of the sort could just be mundanity to a reader: we need to define this given emotion, and make sure it stands out.
Necessitating a way to slip out of our writer's rut, to subliminally give us a new perspective, is a common theme in Goldberg's writing. Her carrying a cigarette around is a clever way of doing so, especially due to her habit of not actually smoking at all; it's the same mindset that method actors use, to really get into a character other than their preset, boring selves. I can see how something as little as an appearance change can make one think completely differently, especially if they were out in public (which Goldberg certainly is banking on, now that I think about it). This mentality is echoed elsewhere in the piece, particularly in the "group work" section; for example, drawing a random topic out of a hat and running with it seems to be counter-intuitive to creativity, but as she states, we'd be surprised at how much we can squeeze out of a random start like that.
The idea of a writing marathon is also intriguing, in that it would help lambast ourselves in a way that I quite enjoy. She talks about avoiding criticism and letting your work sit to "decompose" in a compost pile of literary occlusion, but I think that writing a whole lot in a short period of time, and in repetition, could really help a writer realize what's working for them and what isn't. By going back and reading works after we've let them sit for a while, as she suggests, we can find some sort of bastion amongst all of the terrible writing we squeezed out. A good writer would be able to take this, and work from there, honing their materials so there's more scalding hot lines than tepid, soulless ones.
I think my biggest criticism for this reading lies along the content Goldberg is implying her advice is best applied to. While we can graze from her writing and derive helpful information, it's clear that her writing students and herself are focused on themselves and writing about personal experiences, their lives, and so forth. It's not impossible to be creative while writing about these topics, as she proves throughout, but it's also easy to fall into what she warns against in the beginning: being boring for other readers. Creative writing doesn't need to be wacky, nigh unintelligible jumble to be appreciated, but people who focus on themselves, especially new writers, tend to drive more people away than they draw in.
Oh, and Goldberg likes to stick herself into just about every situation she possibly can throughout this small section. It's her book, so she can do as she pleases, but it was obvious that she needed to shoehorn her own experiences in at least twice a page in order for us to better get an understanding of her topic (as if that makes any sense). Even when she's referencing other people or their stories, she finds a way to make it about herself, which is funny in a sorry sort of way. As I critiqued above, this has the potential to get (and does get) pretty boring pretty quickly-- whether that's because of the material itself or the self-absorbed narrative is up to each of us to decide, but I'll call it as a little bit of both. And that, in a round-about sort of way, is why I mentioned I appreciate the warm, inviting flow of this excerpt; it would be much more intolerable had she written it in a more scholarly sort of way.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Fiction Packet #3
Fiction Packet #3 is the latest entry in our series of fiction readings, and I believe our class will be pleased with its contents after a curious lack of enthusiasm for Juice. For the most part, the stories here are self-contained and generally absent from any cryptic, metaphorical nonsense which tripped most everyone up in Juice, and just having a concrete narrative that can be followed from beginning to end feels almost like a breath of fresh air.
The one exception to this would be the exerpts from "The Sing Fish," a curious tale of boys and girls and moons and mud and, of course, fish. I'm going to shy away from explaining that one. That isn't to say that all the other stories are simplicity defined; there are plenty of eccentric aspects to them, of mystery and ambiguity, which really highlight their creativity-- they just aren't meandering, seemingly disparate sentences strung together, yet they don't just hand a story to the reader and leave them with nothing gained.
"The Falling Girl" gives us a head-scratching look into a scenario where, at the top of a skyscraper, people are jumping towards the ground to reach a party of magnificent proportions. We're experiencing this through the eyes of an inquisitive girl, who seems to be dreamily observing everything. We learn that, on the lower floors, inhabitants of the skyscraper only see older folks falling, and suddenly the context of the conversations in the beginning of the story seem less dream-like and more metaphorical, clearing up the intent of the story very nicely. What began as a somewhat droll, daydream-inspired short story evolved into a clever perspective on the progression of life, hinging on just a few key lines to change the entire feel of the text. I like that the author uses some wonderful imagery juxtaposed with plain, ordinary dialog, giving us a sense of wonder while presenting it in a deadpan sort of way.
"The Fifth Story" is a collection of five stories, all of which are centered around the exact same day, the exact same action. A man, innocently enough, wants to kill the plague of roaches infesting his home; fair enough. He learns of a recipe from a woman that will dry them from the insides out, and we have our story. This same story is then recapped over the next several tales, until we get a maddening amount of detail of the mental process behind the decision that is, at first, as simple as just exterminating some pests. Our narrator compares himself to a killer, questions the morality behind ruining these creature's lives, ponders if he should do it every night, for they'll keep coming back up the pipes, and launches a rather brilliant ranting metaphor on the similarities of the dried-up shells of the cockroaches to the horrors befallen the island of Pompeii. The implication, I think, would have him in the place of the personified murderous volcano, slaughtering all without discrimination or forethought.
On a side note, both of these stories are written in a foreign language and translated, which leaves me to wonder how much of the integral word choice, the meaning and feeling behind each word was lost in translation. There are many foreign phrases and words that hold no simple meaning in the English language, and I wonder if these authors crafted even better works in their native language, only hindered of their true potential for us by a language barrier.
The one exception to this would be the exerpts from "The Sing Fish," a curious tale of boys and girls and moons and mud and, of course, fish. I'm going to shy away from explaining that one. That isn't to say that all the other stories are simplicity defined; there are plenty of eccentric aspects to them, of mystery and ambiguity, which really highlight their creativity-- they just aren't meandering, seemingly disparate sentences strung together, yet they don't just hand a story to the reader and leave them with nothing gained.
"The Falling Girl" gives us a head-scratching look into a scenario where, at the top of a skyscraper, people are jumping towards the ground to reach a party of magnificent proportions. We're experiencing this through the eyes of an inquisitive girl, who seems to be dreamily observing everything. We learn that, on the lower floors, inhabitants of the skyscraper only see older folks falling, and suddenly the context of the conversations in the beginning of the story seem less dream-like and more metaphorical, clearing up the intent of the story very nicely. What began as a somewhat droll, daydream-inspired short story evolved into a clever perspective on the progression of life, hinging on just a few key lines to change the entire feel of the text. I like that the author uses some wonderful imagery juxtaposed with plain, ordinary dialog, giving us a sense of wonder while presenting it in a deadpan sort of way.
"The Fifth Story" is a collection of five stories, all of which are centered around the exact same day, the exact same action. A man, innocently enough, wants to kill the plague of roaches infesting his home; fair enough. He learns of a recipe from a woman that will dry them from the insides out, and we have our story. This same story is then recapped over the next several tales, until we get a maddening amount of detail of the mental process behind the decision that is, at first, as simple as just exterminating some pests. Our narrator compares himself to a killer, questions the morality behind ruining these creature's lives, ponders if he should do it every night, for they'll keep coming back up the pipes, and launches a rather brilliant ranting metaphor on the similarities of the dried-up shells of the cockroaches to the horrors befallen the island of Pompeii. The implication, I think, would have him in the place of the personified murderous volcano, slaughtering all without discrimination or forethought.
On a side note, both of these stories are written in a foreign language and translated, which leaves me to wonder how much of the integral word choice, the meaning and feeling behind each word was lost in translation. There are many foreign phrases and words that hold no simple meaning in the English language, and I wonder if these authors crafted even better works in their native language, only hindered of their true potential for us by a language barrier.
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