I randomly picked the page in the Christmas Present stave, where Scrooge observes how the Cratchit family spend Christmas. It’s the scene that contains Tiny Tim saying “God bless us every one!”
My overall takeaway is that the changes increase emotional intensity, empathy, compassion – and sentimentality.
BTW -- In an excellent recent episode of In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg about A Christmas Carol, the panel of academics had an interesting discussion about sentimentality – rescuing it I think from our usual deprecation of the idea. The link is to the BBC page but you can get it wherever you download podcasts.
He sat beside his father <close?>, <illegible word>. Bob held his withered <strikeout>hand<strikeout> little hand in his, as if he <illegible> wished to keep the child and feared <he> might be taken from him.
“Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before. “I hope <the boy?> will live?”
First published edition version:
--------------------------
He sat very close to his father's side upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.
"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."
----
My comments:
1.
From: He sat beside his father <close?>, <illegible word>...
To: He sat very close to his father's side...
“He sat very close to his father’s side": intensifies loving connection between Tiny Tim and Father.
2. Addition of " upon his little stool."
An introduced object - such a tender diminutive for us to rest our eyes on. Tim needs that stool because he’s lame. I bet no other child in this very poor family has their own stool--or begrudges Tim his. We need the stool to help our tears to flow.
3. Quick intensification of heart rending tenderness
Bob held his withered hand
Bob held his withered little hand
Dickens made this change in-line – swiftly – as he wrote. He knew immediately what to add.
4. Different tone of Scrooge’s question re Tiny Tim’s fate:
“Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before. “I hope <the boy?> will live?”
"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."
What a difference! – first draft he goes for a fearful, tentative question. Scrooge is afraid to ask, afraid of the answer
Second draft – a demand! Scrooge is full of passion – compassion – he can’t bear the thought of Tim dying now.
Bonus material:
And of course the ghost pushes the dagger deep into Scrooge’s heart – skewering him with his former heartless words -- I’ll just put what comes next in the first edition text here to give you the pleasure of it:
------
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future,
the child will die."
"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared."
"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
"My overall takeaway is that the changes increase emotional intensity, empathy, compassion – and sentimentality." What a delightfully pithy and truly useful exposition of how the effort put into close reading and reflection is prone to pay big insight dividends. Thank you for sharing this Jackie.
Two further thoughts.
First being able to pick-up on your post over a week after you first made shows how the threads of conversation, that build up 'naturally' thanks to the way that Story Club has been designed and delivered by George, are creating an invaluable archive of sociably shared thoughts.
Second might the way you mark-up the text - as for example 'He sat beside his father <close?>, <illegible word>. Bob held his withered <strikeout>hand<strikeout> little hand in his, as if he <illegible> wished to keep the child and feared <he> might be taken from him.' - be a route to a quite interesting game? "Here's is what I can make out of the wording of a writer's raw, messily handwritten written working draft: can you suggest how the finalised and published text reads?"
Thank you for your kind words! It means a lot to feel read - and found interesting - in this huge space. Comments I write that "are left hung out to dry" - make me sad, make me aware of ego - which sends me off to meditate on emptiness! Of course just writing them is great and useful in itself and develops thinking and ideas.
I've been looking forward to informal sub-communities growing, partly for the above reason - but I think the platform could support it better -- or else I maybe just don't know the tricks. I've found it find it hard to locate comments I want to reread, especially if they are not much "liked" and fall to the bottom of the bag.
Or maybe I have to just trust the process. I am certainly aware that I'm seeing some names more often and why is that?
Still. I've wanted to see, for example, "all comments by X" and I don't seem to be able to. Or I can't find a comment using a text string, as I used to say in tech writer days. (Text strings - kind of an evocative phrase really. Makes me think of aquatic eggs floating about in gelatinous necklaces. As seen in nature documentaries - second hand life!)
Interesting idea re the game! What new twists of the imagination might we bring to the original text! Worth a shot - plenty of MS on the web. Also brings us closer to the creative process of the writer.
I remember seeing some of Keats's MS in the British Museum. Gosh. What a hit that was! Would be fun to try. But - gosh - I just searched for the Ode to the Nightingale MS - and precious few alterations! Maybe first draft maybe not - I don't know. https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/238722
They say cursive writing itself will become illegible pretty soon - if they drop teaching it in schools, as dead as Latin. My cursive is certainly illegible as-is!
Tried to write a fuller reply twice, thwarted both times by the 'Text Vanishing Gremlin' striking twice. Time to think of tea but I have got a flag on where this conversation started to get me back here when I can . . .
Oh dear Jackie, I've just had third try but just now lost what was shaping up to be a fuller reply that really was {if I may say so myself} set to be a satisfying addition to this thread, for you as reader, me as.writer and who knows who else may pass this way.
"Sorry" I have to say, after screaming "Arghh!" in frustration, because the fault is in the flawed interaction between and sometimes failing intearction between my fingers and the mouse I'm using.
It'll keep what I was endeavouring to communicate but it's getting late and I can only hope that attempt four will - when I get back to trying to type again - be as good as what I had jotted.
Just clicked 'Edit Comment' open so that I can add and capture, on a Word document precisely where to find this place again
Just popped in, again, to say that I will get back to make a better fist of sharing what I want to say Jackie . . . but maybe a little later than the sooner I'd intended.
"I think that a good story is one that say in many different levels we're both human beings we're in this crazy situation called life that we don't really understand and can put our heads together and confer about it a little bit at a very non BS level then all kinds of magic can happen".
Going in the direction of life rather than away from it, maybe.
Though I don't know that there's necessarily anything wrong with endless revising - Walt Whitman revised Leaves of Grass till the end of his life, for example - there is such a thing as overworking. And sometimes we just need to let things go!
I just finished listening to the Barthelme lecture. Holy cow! It will take those of us of a certain age to know just how the postmodernists dominated literature and literary criticism for a good part of the late 20th century. While I love his essential philosophical point, it reminds me of reading him and his contemporaries through my coming of age and just how darn intimating it all was. It was so intimidating, in fact, that I was afraid to write for a quarter century thinking I could never participate in deconstruction or reconstruction or whatever it was being called that month when all I cared about was simple narratives. So, thank you, George, you have given me literary CPR. There is hope that a clean narrative is its own reward. On a side note that isn't a side note, I just read Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain" because it was mentioned in an article in the New Yorker about George's early career. I can only reiterate what someone on Goodreads said about it, "Holy Shit!" In my opinion, it just may be a perfect short story. I wonder how many revisions that went through or if it just came out perfect?
I need to thank everyone in this sub-thread for directing me to "Bullet in the Brain". Living in a little corner of Europe, I had no clue about Tobias Wolff until last year (thanks to some US Embassy cultural activities I've been following) and never set eyes on "Bullet in the Brain". Searching for it because of what I read in this sub-thread, I managed to rectify this "gap"; not only did I read the story, I watched an impressive short film rendition by David Von Ancken made six years ago, and then listened to T. Coraghessan Boyle reading the story for the New Yorker. Well, ok, it's a great story but what made it so special? Hear: I found the answer in this short story to a question I had not yet asked myself. This filled me with such joy, I managed to overturn my monitor (which fell off the desk and broke to pieces). I mean, the moment I read the line, flash! I knew I had the answer and the question instantly took form. I have already started writing about it, writing a story about the whole experience. So, thank you all, course-mates. Thank you George, too, for being the reason I joined in the first place. This was an unexpected bonus!
— “Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”
I have always wondered about this quote - Proust could have glorified the writer, instead of using the word 'merely' , he could have said, the writer came in and saved the reader. He exalts the reader indirectly by undermining the writer with a 'merely'
And in the next breath - he exalts the writer - without this book, the reader would be nothing.
This very sentence from Proust is full of mirrors turning this way and that...
Proust after all was a reader which made him a writer - and he gives the credit to the reader and takes it away the next minute, and places the respect here and takes it away and places it there, shifts the balance between the top and bottom half of the sentence.
Finally he credits the writer.. though he doesn't start off like that..
Extra: I have been thinking about Tobias Wolff, wondering why I have read only some short stories and not yet his memoirs…but then remembered his novel Old School, which I recommend to everyone!
"Bullet in the Brain" is one of the most perfect stories I have read. That voice! And the exteriority of the first half, followed by the interiority of the second. I think I read that it did not start out in the form in which it ended up. And that Tobias Wolff decided to mock himself to some degree in creating Anders. (Which just makes me smile.) I must have read it more than a dozen times now and it keeps getting better, more powerful. And that last paragraph! This reminds me of what George wrote about "The School," how when Donald Barthelme got close to the end, instead of wrapping things up neatly he escalated the escalation. I believe this is in large part what makes "Bullet in the Brain" so impactful, the ante just keeps upping until the beauty of the story and its language propels you into a higher dimension.
"Bullet in the Brain"is short story masterpiece. All of that life lived comes down to lost innocence and the disillusionment with life that lead to Anders self destruction.
Starting a band called “Gust of Maleness.” Who’s in?
Funny you mention Merton—I was thinking of the “apophatic” tradition of Christian spirituality, which approaches God through negation. We might approach writing in the same way, negating “dogmas” (or our limited sense of them) to get at what is real and fresh.
One of my favorite lines in A Christmas Carol (which I've maybe read more than any other book in my life except possibly The Lord of the Rings) is this one, from when the Ghost of Christmas Past draws back his bed curtains: "...and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow." I remember my dad reading it aloud to me, and getting chills, and believing as I still do that Dickens was indeed and has been every time I've read these lines standing by me, a ghostly, benevolent, amused, and reassuring presence.
Here is one change I can make out from the manuscript (I LOVE this exercise): "unearthly visitor" was originally an instance of the word "Spirit" (a word Dickens would find necessary to use many times in this story). "Unearthly visitor" gives it, well, a more unearthly aura--maybe sometimes two words (adjective noun) do actually work better than one noun on its own--and avoids overusing "Spirit." It also looks (though I could be wrong about this) that the part about being as close to him as the author is to me, the reader, was added as a revision--an excellent addition!
Also, I really like Dickens' unusual-to-my-modern-eyes use of capital letters in words like "Ghost," "Spirit," or (on page 28 of Stave II) "Hope" and "Truth", words used by his fiancee as she gently lets him go. Amazing to see these in the manuscript itself, just as you say already there. I'm going to keep exploring this.
George, was Dickens' great Ghost story an inspiration for your tale of Lincoln and Willie? I can't tell you how much I love "Lincoln in the Bardo." Thank you for this book, which has made my life better and more hopeful. Here's my review of it on Goodreads--I always hoped you'd read this review. Lincoln has been special to me since I was 10. I often feel him at my elbow too--I guess there are worse Ghosts to have about you than Charles Dickens and Abraham Lincoln: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1925830713?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
Thanks, David! Are you a LOTR fan too? Not many "literary" people admit it--in college my advisor, who was an otherwise wise and helpful person, admonished me not to waste my time in a Tolkien class--but the older I get the more convinced I am that it is indeed great literature too. The thing I loved about that class was that there were a lot of English majors like me in it....but also a lot of scientists and engineers and it was evenly male and female. Most of my English classes were NOT like that.
Hi Terzah! I know there is controversy about this. Maybe Tolkien is not Shakespeare or James Joyce but, what an imagination, what a world, what characters, what a story, my preciousss.
A professor of Anglo-Saxon can’t be all bad. I first read it at ten, sent to me at Christmas by my grandmother’s sister who was teaching lit at Brown. These books set my brain on fire, and led me to Mervyn Peake and Robert Heinlein, and on from there to Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Joyce, Faulkner and Beckett (sorry about all the dead white males in there). The world seems big and alive enough that one could love Tolkien, Shakespeare, Joyce, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Sontag, Barthelme, Mavis Gallant, et al. Why limit yourself? I’m glad you didn’t. That sounds like a great class!
I haven't read Swim (yet) but Story Club has made me such a far more mindful reader. I read the first three chapters of Franzen's Crossroads before Story Club, and have now reread them after a few weeks of Story Club -- what a difference!
I have a bad habit of reading too fast and missing nuance ... One of the great things I've learnt from George is the benefit of slowing down and taking time to notice each sentence and phrase, and the affect on my feelings/emotions.
"On February 7, 1812, Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England. In 1833, at the tender age of 21, he submitted his first story (originally titled “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” but published as “Mr. Minns and his Cousin”) to a literary journal, and in 1836, he published his first book, Sketches by Boz, a collection of short pieces he’d written for newspapers and other periodicals." ... and it goes on interestingly.
From a Lit Hub email I got - "This Week in Literary History" - Coincidence???
In case you don't have enough to read. I'm shelving all the great reading - taking a break from working on my sixth draft! But checked email - my bad. I need more discipline!
Thank you for that, Jackie. I remember being 22 and camping on a beach in Hawaii and, when not swimming or tripping out on the beauty of the Big Island, reading Dickens. I think I got Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities from the Kealakekua Library. Swept away!
I love that!! I still have the second hand almost complete set ofDickens I bought when I was sixteen. Maybe I’ve mentioned that. You reminded me of a beach reading memory - you were 22 I was maybe 52 -- when my husband made some resource that happened to be so useful to the sales team that he (and I as spouse) were included in a corporate junket. Five days in the Cayman Islands! Gifts left on our beds every morning - binoculars, cameras, nice dressing gowns. We were tech writers --we had no idea this was how the sales team were treated! Or really what they were like - different tribe of people altogether. Different animals -- sharks and wolves! Anyway the relevance of this story is that I'd brought Dante's Inferno and read it there on the beach, between dips in a warm ocean. Fitting really - I bet a lot of those sales guys and gals might find their spot in one of those circles of hell one day. Just joking, I think. Now you're making me want to read it again - and a Dickens novel. Or maybe Sketches by Boz. I think that's the one I never did read actually! Thanks for your memory and for triggering mine. We also got to meet Dick Francis who must have made a pretty penny doing this - signing books at corporate do's. He was pretty old then. I think I just gave that book to the Friends of the Library. Someone will get a nice surprise!
I read Great Expectations on my daily subway ride to work in NYC. The chapters were short enough that I could usually read one on each ride. The mix of being so excited to live in NYC (I was a newcomer at the time) and the great writing made it one of my favorite books of all time. I have no idea if I'd have loved it as much under other circumstances.
I’ve suffered lately from “too much shit to read,” and by shit I mean the good stuff. It seems impossible to choose and so I haven’t. And if I can’t choose from the pile, why try to add to it? But now I’m feeling like I can read one story/book at a time without obsessing about all the ones I’m not. I’ve taken many online writing courses, most good in their own way, but was always thinking about what the assignment would be at the end; about whether I would be able to perform. Never thought a class in deep reading would be so fruitful (ass-kicking?) for my own writing. I’m starting a George inspiration box. A literal box, because I’m old school. Putting in printouts of his links and lessons (maybe other things?) so I don’t lose them and can actually put them to work. I got this idea from Twyla Tharp, who for every new choreography project starts a box into which all kinds of inspiration go. My project is…TBD of course. But also: almost every lesson or link George posts (for example, “The Perfect Gerbil”) seems to apply to one of my stories (for example, a pattern piece). For someone overwhelmed by all the great, big things, it’s awesome to have one small place to start.
Since we're sitting on the porch this Sunday shooting the shit...
Here's one that Harlan Ellison (peace be upon his cranky ass) always harped on and that was Perseverance. This was echoed too by a producer to me when I was hanging out on the set of "Dreamscape" working on a piece for Cinefantastique. It's one of those dumb cliches that's nonetheless true, and that is "Nobody is in this business who quit." Craft is building the boat (mine is "The Ship of Ishtar" courtesy of A. Merritt) but you need perserverance to finish it. Inspiration/intuition tells you where to point it, but perseverance keeps you going through dead waters and rough storms. Good words, bad words, great paragraphs, false starts; writers have to keep writing something if they're going to get to their destination. Like Edison's famous ten thousand failures, even a wrong can give you a clue as to what might be right. Remember that the Writing Gods only notice you if you're actually working, so you have to start a fire if you don't want to stay in the dark with the rest of the wannabes saying "One of these days..."
Harlan Ellison, one of my teenage heroes. 'Start a fire.' I hear Springsteen singing "Dancing in the Dark." So if we keep the fire going maybe we can dance in the light, some of the time.
Yeah, one of mine too. He was one of the reasons I wanted to become a writer. Actually got to spend some time with him back in the day and even got to visit Ellisonwonderland a few times. That place was something, let me tell you. If everyone vanished and I was the only person left, I'd head for his house and spend my days just going through his huge library. Harlan had no problem speaking his mind, but he was always gracious and supportive to new writers. He changed a lot after his heart attack, but he was one of a kind and I miss him.
Yep. My MFA program had a pretty big sci-fi/dystopian/horror contingent and every tim e we hit the brewery with them I'd bring up Ellison and they were like, who? In my head I said, How do you expect to write this s--t if you hav en't read him? Outwardly I was like, check him out one of my favorite horror writers. I have no mouth and I must scream. I mean COME ON. :) He always reminds me of a Vonnegut hero.
Well, Harlan is an instructive cautionary tale about the limits of short stories. Harlan's biggest talent(s) was writing short stories and talking. Harlan knew how to entertain an audience and he could hold your attention like no one else. The only other person I've ever seen who was that home on the stage was Robert Downey Jr. in his ComicCon appearences. (Tom Hiddleston is pretty good too. No hint of fear, no hint of not having anything to say.)
The other drawback is that Harlan, except for one example, was a short story writer. Short stories are wonderful to study, but if you're going to make a living as a writer, you have to write novels. Short stories live in magazines and anthologies, and that's about it. They're little pieces of ice that float around and are hard to notice or find. Novels are icebergs. They're big and have presence. They also draw you into their world for a much longer time than short stories, so you tend to remember them better. I've found that being able to write both well is not mutually exclusive, but writers tend to fall in one camp or the other. Some ideas just couldn't support a feature-lenght treatment, while others need novel-lenght to flesh out and breath. I found I really improved as a writer when I started writing novels. It gave me a chance to really live in my world and get to know my characters and develope their stories. Harlan couldn't do that and its a shame because he's still one of the best short story writers I've ever read, but short stories are always going to be the kids on the sidelines waving their arms and saying "Hey! Look at Us!" while the big boys generally get all the attention.
I write novels too and I love what you said about how immersive it is but the demands of short story as a writer have always fascinated me — how crystalline they have to be and the punch they have to pack. I’m also a big fan of flash for the same reason - I have been happy to see some breakouts among short story writers (even making the Book of the Month club) like Ves’ Afterparties and Bryan Washington’s Lot heck they even had Moshfegh and I live her but the critiques from
the people who usually like alcoholic woman witnesses a murder thrillers were a bit nonplussed (I love Flynn and a couple others like her so I’m not being snobby) maybe the tide is turning?
When I was a high school teacher, I taught a class called Science Fiction as Literature. I got in trouble with the administration for assigning "I have no mouth and I must scream." Can you guess why? It was because one of the characters is described as "hung like a horse." The vice principal told me I was "overestimating the maturity of [my] students" and insisted on vetting every short story before I assigned it! Funny thing was, he censored anything with the merest mention of sex, while he had no trouble with murder and violence.
Thank you for all of that. I discovered his writing at 14 and was so blown out of the water by him, and by the Dangerous Visions series. Got to see him speak in Albuquerque one long-ago July. He spoke to me, too!
About the same for me. I was stuck in Oklahoma just outside Tinker AFB and there was a little bookstore in a shopping center that carried SF. Between the Dillion cover and the title, "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" I picked it up, and started an obsession burning through everything he wrote. Later when I went to the University of Oklahoma, we had an SF club and discovered we were eligible for speaker funds and brought him to OU. He was only supposed to stay a day but we talked him into staying three so got to hang out with him. Later, I went to Clarion at MSU, then moved back to LA, got in touch with him through a friend who was his girlfriend/PA at the time, and reconnected. Have met a lot of authors since then, but never anyone like him. I think he was the one that taught me to be fearless and not back down if I thought I was right. I'm even the proud posessor of a rare Harlan Ellison apology over an argument (I was right, he was wrong), but that's another story for another time. Those were good days. Will never forget them...
In this brief hiatus: I’m aware that the cross-section of the writing world here must cut across a vast, even oceanic, swath. “Genre” writers, whatever that may mean, “Literary fiction” writers, and between them, how they may choose, or choose not, to draw the lines; journalists, essayists, food-and-travel writers, historians, trans-Atlantic translators, writers from far-flung parts of the English-speaking world, and cookbook writers, I don’t doubt. I can see there are accomplished professionals here, of various stripes, novelists, flash fiction, short story writers and poets, retirees, hobbyists. The confident and the unsure, the timid and sometimes the reckless too.
I see, though, few scorners or mockers and not a lot of snark; I imagine they tend to be washed away or sequester themselves thanks to the relentless positivity and curiosity of the ongoing multithreaded dialogue(s) taking place here. This is, really, a great place to be, and the breadth of the umbrella would keep a convoy of elephants from singeing their tails. All to contemplate this story-thing and ways to read them, think about them, possibilities for writing them, if one should so choose.
I don’t know what “story” is or how to write one, that’s part of why I’m here, and I sort of don’t expect to know at any time in the future (some say, including me, that story is as inevitable as a face forcing itself upon you in a configuration of clouds). Story is, to my mind, a part of writing, sometimes a small part and sometimes the most evident, with “the rest” barely peeking out. I would like to know, in order to feel, in order to write, more about story, and the story-aspect of writing. There’s the what and the how, and (someone somewhere-I’m sorry we can’t search the comment section) mentioned apophasis, the definition of (God, but let’s say, any thing) by negation, by what [it | God | story] is not, but I’d like to pipe up for the cataphatic approach too, the definition, or invocation, of a thing by affirmation, inclusion, expansion.
In that light, I’m so pleased G.S. has made reference to Barthelme’s essay, that I have read and re-read for years, and which always challenges me to think beyond my current practice and state, even, of being. And this last re-reading did so again, as it sets down (sorry for this) on the wharf of my consideration such a freighter-load of questions and problems-to-work-out that I’ll be happily turning it over in my mind for weeks. Because my education parallels his background a little, bridging the visual art and literary worlds, his analogies are still accessible, if they now seem more “of their time”, if not dated. But his invention, playfulness, and collaging are as astonishing as ever.
And more to a possible point, which might also be a question, I think of this essay as story as much as a pared-down, spare narrative delivered by Tobias Wolff or Raymond Carver. It is not as plainly visceral, true, and may happen more in the cranium, but there is a kind of shape and patterning to it that is just as exciting. Well, maybe not to everyone, and maybe some may not think this essay has anything (trans-Atlantic “owt”) to do with story, and is unnecessarily confounding, but I guess we all get our kicks in different places.
Someone else mentioned the pleasure of a “clean” narrative. I’ll speak up for dirty narratives, cross-categorical hybrids, and downright messes. “Not-Knowing” has a particular bandwidth that causes me to consider how narrow each of our bandwidths tend to be, if we are not challenged to get out of our accustomed realms often, and cease to encounter what is difficult or puzzling or foreign.
If you like essays that explore life, art, and the mind, you should check out "Essays" by Michel de Montaigne, arguably the father of the form. He set out to ponder and puzzle about Everything- art, religion, politics, domestic life, war, history. He lived in one of the most turbulent and dangerous times in France's history but managed to survive and stay friends with both kings and commoners. You read them and it's like sitting down and listening to a friend talk about life and what they've learned over a nice glass of wine. Love Montaigne...
He was on my bucket list too but figured he'd be dense and stuffy. Was very surprised to discover he was really just musing out loud about life in a conversational tone. Here's an excellent New Yorker article about the Essays.
A formative moment for me was reading Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" in a poetry workshop class. Famously, she wrote seventeen drafts of this poem before she arrived at the final form, and the first draft is...quite rough, and all over the place.
When we read the poem in class, I was profoundly affected, maybe more affected by it than any other poem I'd read in my life up to that point. It seemed like such a perfect crystallization, perfectly putting words to my own experience, like it had emerged fully-formed from the ether. Then, when our professor showed us the first draft, it cut through all those bullshit myths I had in my head about genius. Taught me to let the poems work their own way out, to listen to what they had to say, rather than my "self", as if that would somehow redeem me.
Thanks so much for the link to the blog by Beth from Colorado. Wouldn’t we like to get hold of her books! Where are they? What happened to this wonderful writer?
Thanks Zoe! I followed the link on Sharon's post to Beth's blog post and can't stop thinking about the way she begins it: "Virginia Woolf bases her novel Mrs. Dalloway on the idea that one day in a person’s life summarizes an entire life. In a similar way, one piece of art can summarize an artist’s work. One self-portrait by Van Gogh expresses something about all his paintings. And one poem can sum up something about a poet’s work."
This is paralyzing and terrifying, if I can be dramatic for a minute. How do I sit down to write if I think This Piece Will Summarize My Work? And looking back at published pieces, how do I not think that someone will read one and think, Oh, THAT'S her issue. I know her. But I have lots of issues (haha.) And of those pieces, I can't help thinking, are they important enough? Are they palatable? Are they embarrassing? I do know we all have themes, so it's not really that. But also, themes change over a lifetime. I also know she's talking about artists at the top of their game, so maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges?
I do like the quote, and I think of it in the same way I think of the idea of, well, anything particular standing in for the universal.
Here's a quote from Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach:
"The most specific event can serve as a general example of a class of events.
Everyone knows that specific events have a vividness which imprints them so strongly on the memory that they can later be used as models for other events which are like them in some way. Thus in each specific event, there is the germ of a whole class of similar events. This idea that there is generality in the specific is of far-reaching importance."
This is part of why it's so important to be specific when we write. In every particularity we can see the whole universe. And the more particular, the more tangible, the more real...well, the more intrinsically it becomes connected to everything else. In this way I think it's really an artist's best works that express most fully their unique vision. The process of becoming the writer *you* are, the writer no one else can be, is the process by which you become more universal. So although you might sit down to create a piece that says something about "all your work" - "all your work" will express something far beyond yourself - it will express the universe.
Thanks Zoe for that link and seeing the changes from first draft to last. Because of our conversations on Story Club I began to see the whiny side of a story I recently wrote and rewrote called Sweet Ekphrasis (yes I stole that word from Brandon Taylor). 1st person narrative encourages the self-pity unless you're able to see it and transform it as the brilliant Elizabeth Bishop does. I make no such claims for my humble effort, but the re-writing became therapy that allowed me to see how often I sit on my ego throne.
Wow. Fascinating! And, yes, this really does give us permission to let the words come to the page however they may. I need to be more patient with my shitty first drafts.
He went to church and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, // and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars//, and looked down into the kitchens of houses. (p. 64)
He looked so //irresistibly// pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humoured fellows said “Good morning Sir! a Merry Christmas to you!” (p. 53)
‘”Ah!” Returned the woman, //laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms//. “Bed curtains”. (p. 53)
What they have in common, I think, is that they each add an element of specifically that serves to enhance, rather than draw focus from, the point of the scene, often in quite a subtle way (like a kind of narrative MSG). I really like the insertion on page 64, which strikes me as the least subtle of the three. I can really see Scrooge patting the children on the head in a way that I can’t see him watching the people hurrying or looking down into the kitchens of houses. It’s an action, after all. And it’s an action that communicates Scrooge’s reformed state of mind in a way that it isn’t quite communicated by the original sentence. The other two insertions work similarly, I think, helping us to picture the scene or highlighting an important detail.
I love this! I noticed the insertion at the very end, the penultimate line - "and it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be //truly//said of us, and all of us!" So different: "may that be said of us" vs. "may that be TRULY said of us". Almost the opposite in fact. With the one word, Dickens digs underneath all those who celebrate Christmas showily, and miss the real point of it, which his story just laid out. In fact - how could he have written the sentence without the insertion?
It seems we always come back to the old axiom: just write. And keep writing. Although, I’ve learned through golf that practice, when you engage bad habits or a lack of instruction, can be detrimental rather than additive. So we all need instruction along the way; we all need a good editor; and we certainly all need George. Thank you for another enlightening session.
George, I noticed a trivial but telling typo in your message: “...and this lead me to the following simple "outline"...”
I'm an astronomer by trade, and as a consequence have to do a lot of scientific writing and editing. I find that my colleagues are continually misspelling the past-tense form of the verb "to lead." My theory is that scientific types know that the metallic element that is homophonous with the past tense of that verb is spelled l-e-a-d (the one with the chemical symbol Pb, as you'll recall), so they slip into that spelling when they intend "led". A corollary of this theory is that English-major types, who are blissfully ignorant of the periodic table, would never make this error. If this theory is correct, then it identifies you as being of a scientific, rather than literary, nature (despite the long list of prize-winning literary works). And this gives hope to scientists everywhere who aspire to one day writing something people will actually read. So thanks for that typo and for generously sharing all these thoughts on writing.
Marits Escher was called a “Mathematician,” to which he vehemently denied, replying, “I am an ARTIST!” But his etchings were mathematical, especially his tessellations. The first time I saw his piece Metamorphosis, I was drawn into it, mesmerized by the art, dazzled by my reaction to it, triggered to explore it, it’s construction and it’s meaning. Ah, labels and categories, humans love to apply them to Life!
And because I was a teacher and was given a specific assignment by Prof George, let me add my comment about the Dickens original draft with its revisions. I looked at page 18 where the ghost of Christmas past appears. I had a hard time reading his handwriting, but one thing stands out. Dickens must have really liked his story because he uses most of his revisionist energy to cut, reduce and tailor the original. He’s like a poet who knows that we humans are often wordy and redundant. So he pares it down, often replacing a single word for a four or five word phrase. For example, when describing the spirit’s hands, he replaces “of a handsome length” with “the same” because he had just painted the arms as “long and muscular.” And I bet for most of you writers out there, if you really love your story, if you get it down to its bare bones, you’d have a winner! e.g. Look how spare “The Incident,” “Sticks” and “The School” are!!
“I should like to end this description of the stars with the Pleiades, which I once saw rising up out of the sea. When and where in Holland is the atmosphere ever so free from dust and mist that you can see the stars clearly right down to the horizon? One evening I saw a point of light appearing on the horizon, followed a moment later by another one. I thought they were the lights of a ship sailing by in the distance. But then a third light appeared, and a fourth, and finally there were seven altogether; it was then that I recognised the Pleiades, making for the heavens in full sail, like a ghost ship.”
Of course, there's an endless debate over whether the naked eye can actually discern 7, or only 6, members of the Pleiades, but, hey, he was an artist and amateur astronomer, not a mathematician.
And it's interesting that Prof George's work is like an amalgam of Dickens and Escher, with a little Tom Merton thrown in for monastic measure; one thinks especially of "The Semplica Girl Diaries," a story that still haunts my dreams a decade later.
I was struck by being struck by the phrase, "Our art form." Both your generosity and my own insecurity to be included. Yet the more you talk about writing, the more I feel kinship. I may end up hanging these paintings on my own walls, but I enjoy painting them nonetheless.
Without this club, I'm not sure I would be able to explain why something I wrote worked or didn't. I appreciate all the guidance to enjoy art and understand the underlying mystery. When I write something now, I "check in" with myself to see how did the piece make me feel and what adjustments could I make in technically sound writing to influence the feeling.
I randomly picked the page in the Christmas Present stave, where Scrooge observes how the Cratchit family spend Christmas. It’s the scene that contains Tiny Tim saying “God bless us every one!”
https://www.themorgan.org/collections/works/dickens/ChristmasCarol/42
My overall takeaway is that the changes increase emotional intensity, empathy, compassion – and sentimentality.
BTW -- In an excellent recent episode of In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg about A Christmas Carol, the panel of academics had an interesting discussion about sentimentality – rescuing it I think from our usual deprecation of the idea. The link is to the BBC page but you can get it wherever you download podcasts.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0012fl5
First draft version, complete text I examined:
------------------------
He sat beside his father <close?>, <illegible word>. Bob held his withered <strikeout>hand<strikeout> little hand in his, as if he <illegible> wished to keep the child and feared <he> might be taken from him.
“Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before. “I hope <the boy?> will live?”
First published edition version:
--------------------------
He sat very close to his father's side upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.
"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."
----
My comments:
1.
From: He sat beside his father <close?>, <illegible word>...
To: He sat very close to his father's side...
“He sat very close to his father’s side": intensifies loving connection between Tiny Tim and Father.
2. Addition of " upon his little stool."
An introduced object - such a tender diminutive for us to rest our eyes on. Tim needs that stool because he’s lame. I bet no other child in this very poor family has their own stool--or begrudges Tim his. We need the stool to help our tears to flow.
3. Quick intensification of heart rending tenderness
Bob held his withered hand
Bob held his withered little hand
Dickens made this change in-line – swiftly – as he wrote. He knew immediately what to add.
4. Different tone of Scrooge’s question re Tiny Tim’s fate:
“Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before. “I hope <the boy?> will live?”
"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."
What a difference! – first draft he goes for a fearful, tentative question. Scrooge is afraid to ask, afraid of the answer
Second draft – a demand! Scrooge is full of passion – compassion – he can’t bear the thought of Tim dying now.
Bonus material:
And of course the ghost pushes the dagger deep into Scrooge’s heart – skewering him with his former heartless words -- I’ll just put what comes next in the first edition text here to give you the pleasure of it:
------
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future,
the child will die."
"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared."
"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
Wow, Jackie, wonderful. Thanks for doing this.
"My overall takeaway is that the changes increase emotional intensity, empathy, compassion – and sentimentality." What a delightfully pithy and truly useful exposition of how the effort put into close reading and reflection is prone to pay big insight dividends. Thank you for sharing this Jackie.
Two further thoughts.
First being able to pick-up on your post over a week after you first made shows how the threads of conversation, that build up 'naturally' thanks to the way that Story Club has been designed and delivered by George, are creating an invaluable archive of sociably shared thoughts.
Second might the way you mark-up the text - as for example 'He sat beside his father <close?>, <illegible word>. Bob held his withered <strikeout>hand<strikeout> little hand in his, as if he <illegible> wished to keep the child and feared <he> might be taken from him.' - be a route to a quite interesting game? "Here's is what I can make out of the wording of a writer's raw, messily handwritten written working draft: can you suggest how the finalised and published text reads?"
Thank you for your kind words! It means a lot to feel read - and found interesting - in this huge space. Comments I write that "are left hung out to dry" - make me sad, make me aware of ego - which sends me off to meditate on emptiness! Of course just writing them is great and useful in itself and develops thinking and ideas.
I've been looking forward to informal sub-communities growing, partly for the above reason - but I think the platform could support it better -- or else I maybe just don't know the tricks. I've found it find it hard to locate comments I want to reread, especially if they are not much "liked" and fall to the bottom of the bag.
Or maybe I have to just trust the process. I am certainly aware that I'm seeing some names more often and why is that?
Still. I've wanted to see, for example, "all comments by X" and I don't seem to be able to. Or I can't find a comment using a text string, as I used to say in tech writer days. (Text strings - kind of an evocative phrase really. Makes me think of aquatic eggs floating about in gelatinous necklaces. As seen in nature documentaries - second hand life!)
Interesting idea re the game! What new twists of the imagination might we bring to the original text! Worth a shot - plenty of MS on the web. Also brings us closer to the creative process of the writer.
I remember seeing some of Keats's MS in the British Museum. Gosh. What a hit that was! Would be fun to try. But - gosh - I just searched for the Ode to the Nightingale MS - and precious few alterations! Maybe first draft maybe not - I don't know. https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/238722
They say cursive writing itself will become illegible pretty soon - if they drop teaching it in schools, as dead as Latin. My cursive is certainly illegible as-is!
Tried to write a fuller reply twice, thwarted both times by the 'Text Vanishing Gremlin' striking twice. Time to think of tea but I have got a flag on where this conversation started to get me back here when I can . . .
https://georgesaunders.substack.com/p/method-shmethod/comment/4929669
. . . a bientot Jackie.
Oh dear Jackie, I've just had third try but just now lost what was shaping up to be a fuller reply that really was {if I may say so myself} set to be a satisfying addition to this thread, for you as reader, me as.writer and who knows who else may pass this way.
"Sorry" I have to say, after screaming "Arghh!" in frustration, because the fault is in the flawed interaction between and sometimes failing intearction between my fingers and the mouse I'm using.
It'll keep what I was endeavouring to communicate but it's getting late and I can only hope that attempt four will - when I get back to trying to type again - be as good as what I had jotted.
Just clicked 'Edit Comment' open so that I can add and capture, on a Word document precisely where to find this place again
https://georgesaunders.substack.com/p/method-shmethod/comment/5089388
😭
Just popped in, again, to say that I will get back to make a better fist of sharing what I want to say Jackie . . . but maybe a little later than the sooner I'd intended.
Thank you. I was down the rabbit hole of George Saunders on YouTube. Your analysis reminded me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-1xNNrABw8
"I think that a good story is one that say in many different levels we're both human beings we're in this crazy situation called life that we don't really understand and can put our heads together and confer about it a little bit at a very non BS level then all kinds of magic can happen".
“ I don’t care how old you are. Go do something beautiful!”
Thank you, George.
"I never revise now...but in the interests of a more passionate syntax." (W.B. Yeats)
Interesting! I endlessly revise for everything. Getting a handle and some way to limit my revisions - that’s the trick I want to learn!
Going in the direction of life rather than away from it, maybe.
Though I don't know that there's necessarily anything wrong with endless revising - Walt Whitman revised Leaves of Grass till the end of his life, for example - there is such a thing as overworking. And sometimes we just need to let things go!
I just finished listening to the Barthelme lecture. Holy cow! It will take those of us of a certain age to know just how the postmodernists dominated literature and literary criticism for a good part of the late 20th century. While I love his essential philosophical point, it reminds me of reading him and his contemporaries through my coming of age and just how darn intimating it all was. It was so intimidating, in fact, that I was afraid to write for a quarter century thinking I could never participate in deconstruction or reconstruction or whatever it was being called that month when all I cared about was simple narratives. So, thank you, George, you have given me literary CPR. There is hope that a clean narrative is its own reward. On a side note that isn't a side note, I just read Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain" because it was mentioned in an article in the New Yorker about George's early career. I can only reiterate what someone on Goodreads said about it, "Holy Shit!" In my opinion, it just may be a perfect short story. I wonder how many revisions that went through or if it just came out perfect?
I need to thank everyone in this sub-thread for directing me to "Bullet in the Brain". Living in a little corner of Europe, I had no clue about Tobias Wolff until last year (thanks to some US Embassy cultural activities I've been following) and never set eyes on "Bullet in the Brain". Searching for it because of what I read in this sub-thread, I managed to rectify this "gap"; not only did I read the story, I watched an impressive short film rendition by David Von Ancken made six years ago, and then listened to T. Coraghessan Boyle reading the story for the New Yorker. Well, ok, it's a great story but what made it so special? Hear: I found the answer in this short story to a question I had not yet asked myself. This filled me with such joy, I managed to overturn my monitor (which fell off the desk and broke to pieces). I mean, the moment I read the line, flash! I knew I had the answer and the question instantly took form. I have already started writing about it, writing a story about the whole experience. So, thank you all, course-mates. Thank you George, too, for being the reason I joined in the first place. This was an unexpected bonus!
I think you experienced what Proust mentions
— “Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”
I have always wondered about this quote - Proust could have glorified the writer, instead of using the word 'merely' , he could have said, the writer came in and saved the reader. He exalts the reader indirectly by undermining the writer with a 'merely'
And in the next breath - he exalts the writer - without this book, the reader would be nothing.
This very sentence from Proust is full of mirrors turning this way and that...
Proust after all was a reader which made him a writer - and he gives the credit to the reader and takes it away the next minute, and places the respect here and takes it away and places it there, shifts the balance between the top and bottom half of the sentence.
Finally he credits the writer.. though he doesn't start off like that..
Just musing...
Extra: I have been thinking about Tobias Wolff, wondering why I have read only some short stories and not yet his memoirs…but then remembered his novel Old School, which I recommend to everyone!
I am just about to start reading this story now! Found a pdf to print…
Thank you for this, Konstantinos!
Sorry, spellcheck took over!
"Bullet in the Brain" is one of the most perfect stories I have read. That voice! And the exteriority of the first half, followed by the interiority of the second. I think I read that it did not start out in the form in which it ended up. And that Tobias Wolff decided to mock himself to some degree in creating Anders. (Which just makes me smile.) I must have read it more than a dozen times now and it keeps getting better, more powerful. And that last paragraph! This reminds me of what George wrote about "The School," how when Donald Barthelme got close to the end, instead of wrapping things up neatly he escalated the escalation. I believe this is in large part what makes "Bullet in the Brain" so impactful, the ante just keeps upping until the beauty of the story and its language propels you into a higher dimension.
"Bullet in the Brain"is short story masterpiece. All of that life lived comes down to lost innocence and the disillusionment with life that lead to Anders self destruction.
Yes, I recently read Bullet as well. Incredible story and all the backstory is in the front story, which delights me no end😎
Enjoyed reading your very informative comment. Thank you. Looking forward to hearing Don and reading Bullet.
His short, lovely novel Old School is also worth reading!!
Old School, by Tobias Wolff. For everyone in love with literature, teachers, and words.
Starting a band called “Gust of Maleness.” Who’s in?
Funny you mention Merton—I was thinking of the “apophatic” tradition of Christian spirituality, which approaches God through negation. We might approach writing in the same way, negating “dogmas” (or our limited sense of them) to get at what is real and fresh.
Yes - once we burn through what's partial and false....
If the first single is "Blow Me..."
Bad! Puddy!^^
One of my favorite lines in A Christmas Carol (which I've maybe read more than any other book in my life except possibly The Lord of the Rings) is this one, from when the Ghost of Christmas Past draws back his bed curtains: "...and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow." I remember my dad reading it aloud to me, and getting chills, and believing as I still do that Dickens was indeed and has been every time I've read these lines standing by me, a ghostly, benevolent, amused, and reassuring presence.
Here is one change I can make out from the manuscript (I LOVE this exercise): "unearthly visitor" was originally an instance of the word "Spirit" (a word Dickens would find necessary to use many times in this story). "Unearthly visitor" gives it, well, a more unearthly aura--maybe sometimes two words (adjective noun) do actually work better than one noun on its own--and avoids overusing "Spirit." It also looks (though I could be wrong about this) that the part about being as close to him as the author is to me, the reader, was added as a revision--an excellent addition!
Also, I really like Dickens' unusual-to-my-modern-eyes use of capital letters in words like "Ghost," "Spirit," or (on page 28 of Stave II) "Hope" and "Truth", words used by his fiancee as she gently lets him go. Amazing to see these in the manuscript itself, just as you say already there. I'm going to keep exploring this.
George, was Dickens' great Ghost story an inspiration for your tale of Lincoln and Willie? I can't tell you how much I love "Lincoln in the Bardo." Thank you for this book, which has made my life better and more hopeful. Here's my review of it on Goodreads--I always hoped you'd read this review. Lincoln has been special to me since I was 10. I often feel him at my elbow too--I guess there are worse Ghosts to have about you than Charles Dickens and Abraham Lincoln: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1925830713?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
What a beautifully written review, Terzah.
Thank you, Patti!
What a lovely review, Terzah! And wow, A Christmas Carol, and Lord of the Rings. Jet fueled literary DNA.
Thanks, David! Are you a LOTR fan too? Not many "literary" people admit it--in college my advisor, who was an otherwise wise and helpful person, admonished me not to waste my time in a Tolkien class--but the older I get the more convinced I am that it is indeed great literature too. The thing I loved about that class was that there were a lot of English majors like me in it....but also a lot of scientists and engineers and it was evenly male and female. Most of my English classes were NOT like that.
Hobbithead here. LOL No shame in our Middle Earth game.
Where is precious?^^
amen!
Hi Terzah! I know there is controversy about this. Maybe Tolkien is not Shakespeare or James Joyce but, what an imagination, what a world, what characters, what a story, my preciousss.
A professor of Anglo-Saxon can’t be all bad. I first read it at ten, sent to me at Christmas by my grandmother’s sister who was teaching lit at Brown. These books set my brain on fire, and led me to Mervyn Peake and Robert Heinlein, and on from there to Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Joyce, Faulkner and Beckett (sorry about all the dead white males in there). The world seems big and alive enough that one could love Tolkien, Shakespeare, Joyce, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Sontag, Barthelme, Mavis Gallant, et al. Why limit yourself? I’m glad you didn’t. That sounds like a great class!
Enjoyed reading your comment and your mention of the great authors. Thank you.
Thank you!
No that's your spirit standing by you, telling you all that you should hear^^
I see Lincoln all the time when I flip pennies^^
What I value most in Swim and in these "lessons" is learning to be a better reader. Thanks!
I haven't read Swim (yet) but Story Club has made me such a far more mindful reader. I read the first three chapters of Franzen's Crossroads before Story Club, and have now reread them after a few weeks of Story Club -- what a difference!
Good tip Anton. I have put 'Crossroads' aside because I found it so dull. Now I'll have another go. Maybe there is more going on than I have realised.
I have a bad habit of reading too fast and missing nuance ... One of the great things I've learnt from George is the benefit of slowing down and taking time to notice each sentence and phrase, and the affect on my feelings/emotions.
I agree and I find the story more enjoyable.
It's Dickens's birthday's tomorrow! -
"On February 7, 1812, Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England. In 1833, at the tender age of 21, he submitted his first story (originally titled “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” but published as “Mr. Minns and his Cousin”) to a literary journal, and in 1836, he published his first book, Sketches by Boz, a collection of short pieces he’d written for newspapers and other periodicals." ... and it goes on interestingly.
From a Lit Hub email I got - "This Week in Literary History" - Coincidence???
https://link.lithub.com/view/606480a6c6fcb17c54a2649ffu6f1.3med/1e97ecd1
In case you don't have enough to read. I'm shelving all the great reading - taking a break from working on my sixth draft! But checked email - my bad. I need more discipline!
Found this today: https://dickenscode.org/ Take a look!
Wow how cool! I’d love if a code-crazy kid could crack Dickens’s customized shorthand !
"Charles Dickens's code cracked by amateur sleuths - BBC News" https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-60261545.amp
This just popped up in my news feed! The winner said he "honed his code skills on Reddit groups." Sometimes the internet is a wonderful thing :)
Thanks for sharing this - Wow - so cool! I wonder what new snippets and bits of his writing we'll see come out of this!
No way! That's amazing!
Thank you for that, Jackie. I remember being 22 and camping on a beach in Hawaii and, when not swimming or tripping out on the beauty of the Big Island, reading Dickens. I think I got Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities from the Kealakekua Library. Swept away!
I love that!! I still have the second hand almost complete set ofDickens I bought when I was sixteen. Maybe I’ve mentioned that. You reminded me of a beach reading memory - you were 22 I was maybe 52 -- when my husband made some resource that happened to be so useful to the sales team that he (and I as spouse) were included in a corporate junket. Five days in the Cayman Islands! Gifts left on our beds every morning - binoculars, cameras, nice dressing gowns. We were tech writers --we had no idea this was how the sales team were treated! Or really what they were like - different tribe of people altogether. Different animals -- sharks and wolves! Anyway the relevance of this story is that I'd brought Dante's Inferno and read it there on the beach, between dips in a warm ocean. Fitting really - I bet a lot of those sales guys and gals might find their spot in one of those circles of hell one day. Just joking, I think. Now you're making me want to read it again - and a Dickens novel. Or maybe Sketches by Boz. I think that's the one I never did read actually! Thanks for your memory and for triggering mine. We also got to meet Dick Francis who must have made a pretty penny doing this - signing books at corporate do's. He was pretty old then. I think I just gave that book to the Friends of the Library. Someone will get a nice surprise!
Did you bet on his horse?^^
Wow! Thanks for lighting up my morning!!
I read Great Expectations on my daily subway ride to work in NYC. The chapters were short enough that I could usually read one on each ride. The mix of being so excited to live in NYC (I was a newcomer at the time) and the great writing made it one of my favorite books of all time. I have no idea if I'd have loved it as much under other circumstances.
That time in NYC must have added so much into that story!
I’ve suffered lately from “too much shit to read,” and by shit I mean the good stuff. It seems impossible to choose and so I haven’t. And if I can’t choose from the pile, why try to add to it? But now I’m feeling like I can read one story/book at a time without obsessing about all the ones I’m not. I’ve taken many online writing courses, most good in their own way, but was always thinking about what the assignment would be at the end; about whether I would be able to perform. Never thought a class in deep reading would be so fruitful (ass-kicking?) for my own writing. I’m starting a George inspiration box. A literal box, because I’m old school. Putting in printouts of his links and lessons (maybe other things?) so I don’t lose them and can actually put them to work. I got this idea from Twyla Tharp, who for every new choreography project starts a box into which all kinds of inspiration go. My project is…TBD of course. But also: almost every lesson or link George posts (for example, “The Perfect Gerbil”) seems to apply to one of my stories (for example, a pattern piece). For someone overwhelmed by all the great, big things, it’s awesome to have one small place to start.
Since we're sitting on the porch this Sunday shooting the shit...
Here's one that Harlan Ellison (peace be upon his cranky ass) always harped on and that was Perseverance. This was echoed too by a producer to me when I was hanging out on the set of "Dreamscape" working on a piece for Cinefantastique. It's one of those dumb cliches that's nonetheless true, and that is "Nobody is in this business who quit." Craft is building the boat (mine is "The Ship of Ishtar" courtesy of A. Merritt) but you need perserverance to finish it. Inspiration/intuition tells you where to point it, but perseverance keeps you going through dead waters and rough storms. Good words, bad words, great paragraphs, false starts; writers have to keep writing something if they're going to get to their destination. Like Edison's famous ten thousand failures, even a wrong can give you a clue as to what might be right. Remember that the Writing Gods only notice you if you're actually working, so you have to start a fire if you don't want to stay in the dark with the rest of the wannabes saying "One of these days..."
Harlan Ellison, one of my teenage heroes. 'Start a fire.' I hear Springsteen singing "Dancing in the Dark." So if we keep the fire going maybe we can dance in the light, some of the time.
Yeah, one of mine too. He was one of the reasons I wanted to become a writer. Actually got to spend some time with him back in the day and even got to visit Ellisonwonderland a few times. That place was something, let me tell you. If everyone vanished and I was the only person left, I'd head for his house and spend my days just going through his huge library. Harlan had no problem speaking his mind, but he was always gracious and supportive to new writers. He changed a lot after his heart attack, but he was one of a kind and I miss him.
Yep. My MFA program had a pretty big sci-fi/dystopian/horror contingent and every tim e we hit the brewery with them I'd bring up Ellison and they were like, who? In my head I said, How do you expect to write this s--t if you hav en't read him? Outwardly I was like, check him out one of my favorite horror writers. I have no mouth and I must scream. I mean COME ON. :) He always reminds me of a Vonnegut hero.
Well, Harlan is an instructive cautionary tale about the limits of short stories. Harlan's biggest talent(s) was writing short stories and talking. Harlan knew how to entertain an audience and he could hold your attention like no one else. The only other person I've ever seen who was that home on the stage was Robert Downey Jr. in his ComicCon appearences. (Tom Hiddleston is pretty good too. No hint of fear, no hint of not having anything to say.)
The other drawback is that Harlan, except for one example, was a short story writer. Short stories are wonderful to study, but if you're going to make a living as a writer, you have to write novels. Short stories live in magazines and anthologies, and that's about it. They're little pieces of ice that float around and are hard to notice or find. Novels are icebergs. They're big and have presence. They also draw you into their world for a much longer time than short stories, so you tend to remember them better. I've found that being able to write both well is not mutually exclusive, but writers tend to fall in one camp or the other. Some ideas just couldn't support a feature-lenght treatment, while others need novel-lenght to flesh out and breath. I found I really improved as a writer when I started writing novels. It gave me a chance to really live in my world and get to know my characters and develope their stories. Harlan couldn't do that and its a shame because he's still one of the best short story writers I've ever read, but short stories are always going to be the kids on the sidelines waving their arms and saying "Hey! Look at Us!" while the big boys generally get all the attention.
A collection of short stories by the same writer can be a frozen lake and not little pieces of ice^^
Oooh who said that— a book must be the ax to break the frozen sea inside us— Kafka?
I write novels too and I love what you said about how immersive it is but the demands of short story as a writer have always fascinated me — how crystalline they have to be and the punch they have to pack. I’m also a big fan of flash for the same reason - I have been happy to see some breakouts among short story writers (even making the Book of the Month club) like Ves’ Afterparties and Bryan Washington’s Lot heck they even had Moshfegh and I live her but the critiques from
the people who usually like alcoholic woman witnesses a murder thrillers were a bit nonplussed (I love Flynn and a couple others like her so I’m not being snobby) maybe the tide is turning?
When I was a high school teacher, I taught a class called Science Fiction as Literature. I got in trouble with the administration for assigning "I have no mouth and I must scream." Can you guess why? It was because one of the characters is described as "hung like a horse." The vice principal told me I was "overestimating the maturity of [my] students" and insisted on vetting every short story before I assigned it! Funny thing was, he censored anything with the merest mention of sex, while he had no trouble with murder and violence.
I guess none of them had ever actually been around horses. Wouldn't faze anyone who's actually lived with them.
That’s why he appealed to my seething adolescent id lolol
Thank you for all of that. I discovered his writing at 14 and was so blown out of the water by him, and by the Dangerous Visions series. Got to see him speak in Albuquerque one long-ago July. He spoke to me, too!
About the same for me. I was stuck in Oklahoma just outside Tinker AFB and there was a little bookstore in a shopping center that carried SF. Between the Dillion cover and the title, "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" I picked it up, and started an obsession burning through everything he wrote. Later when I went to the University of Oklahoma, we had an SF club and discovered we were eligible for speaker funds and brought him to OU. He was only supposed to stay a day but we talked him into staying three so got to hang out with him. Later, I went to Clarion at MSU, then moved back to LA, got in touch with him through a friend who was his girlfriend/PA at the time, and reconnected. Have met a lot of authors since then, but never anyone like him. I think he was the one that taught me to be fearless and not back down if I thought I was right. I'm even the proud posessor of a rare Harlan Ellison apology over an argument (I was right, he was wrong), but that's another story for another time. Those were good days. Will never forget them...
Taking pictures is in this wheel house too^^
What sweet, self reflective words. Spoken like a friend...
In this brief hiatus: I’m aware that the cross-section of the writing world here must cut across a vast, even oceanic, swath. “Genre” writers, whatever that may mean, “Literary fiction” writers, and between them, how they may choose, or choose not, to draw the lines; journalists, essayists, food-and-travel writers, historians, trans-Atlantic translators, writers from far-flung parts of the English-speaking world, and cookbook writers, I don’t doubt. I can see there are accomplished professionals here, of various stripes, novelists, flash fiction, short story writers and poets, retirees, hobbyists. The confident and the unsure, the timid and sometimes the reckless too.
I see, though, few scorners or mockers and not a lot of snark; I imagine they tend to be washed away or sequester themselves thanks to the relentless positivity and curiosity of the ongoing multithreaded dialogue(s) taking place here. This is, really, a great place to be, and the breadth of the umbrella would keep a convoy of elephants from singeing their tails. All to contemplate this story-thing and ways to read them, think about them, possibilities for writing them, if one should so choose.
I don’t know what “story” is or how to write one, that’s part of why I’m here, and I sort of don’t expect to know at any time in the future (some say, including me, that story is as inevitable as a face forcing itself upon you in a configuration of clouds). Story is, to my mind, a part of writing, sometimes a small part and sometimes the most evident, with “the rest” barely peeking out. I would like to know, in order to feel, in order to write, more about story, and the story-aspect of writing. There’s the what and the how, and (someone somewhere-I’m sorry we can’t search the comment section) mentioned apophasis, the definition of (God, but let’s say, any thing) by negation, by what [it | God | story] is not, but I’d like to pipe up for the cataphatic approach too, the definition, or invocation, of a thing by affirmation, inclusion, expansion.
In that light, I’m so pleased G.S. has made reference to Barthelme’s essay, that I have read and re-read for years, and which always challenges me to think beyond my current practice and state, even, of being. And this last re-reading did so again, as it sets down (sorry for this) on the wharf of my consideration such a freighter-load of questions and problems-to-work-out that I’ll be happily turning it over in my mind for weeks. Because my education parallels his background a little, bridging the visual art and literary worlds, his analogies are still accessible, if they now seem more “of their time”, if not dated. But his invention, playfulness, and collaging are as astonishing as ever.
And more to a possible point, which might also be a question, I think of this essay as story as much as a pared-down, spare narrative delivered by Tobias Wolff or Raymond Carver. It is not as plainly visceral, true, and may happen more in the cranium, but there is a kind of shape and patterning to it that is just as exciting. Well, maybe not to everyone, and maybe some may not think this essay has anything (trans-Atlantic “owt”) to do with story, and is unnecessarily confounding, but I guess we all get our kicks in different places.
Someone else mentioned the pleasure of a “clean” narrative. I’ll speak up for dirty narratives, cross-categorical hybrids, and downright messes. “Not-Knowing” has a particular bandwidth that causes me to consider how narrow each of our bandwidths tend to be, if we are not challenged to get out of our accustomed realms often, and cease to encounter what is difficult or puzzling or foreign.
If you like essays that explore life, art, and the mind, you should check out "Essays" by Michel de Montaigne, arguably the father of the form. He set out to ponder and puzzle about Everything- art, religion, politics, domestic life, war, history. He lived in one of the most turbulent and dangerous times in France's history but managed to survive and stay friends with both kings and commoners. You read them and it's like sitting down and listening to a friend talk about life and what they've learned over a nice glass of wine. Love Montaigne...
Marcel Proust liked Montaigne's writing....maybe this is what set off Marcel to write, In Search of Lost Time^^
Montaigne has been on my to-read list since before there were to-read lists, and I appreciate the nudge. Maybe now...
He was on my bucket list too but figured he'd be dense and stuffy. Was very surprised to discover he was really just musing out loud about life in a conversational tone. Here's an excellent New Yorker article about the Essays.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/me-myself-and-i
Excellent..now write your stories..You are ready^^
A formative moment for me was reading Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" in a poetry workshop class. Famously, she wrote seventeen drafts of this poem before she arrived at the final form, and the first draft is...quite rough, and all over the place.
When we read the poem in class, I was profoundly affected, maybe more affected by it than any other poem I'd read in my life up to that point. It seemed like such a perfect crystallization, perfectly putting words to my own experience, like it had emerged fully-formed from the ether. Then, when our professor showed us the first draft, it cut through all those bullshit myths I had in my head about genius. Taught me to let the poems work their own way out, to listen to what they had to say, rather than my "self", as if that would somehow redeem me.
Here's a link if anyone wants to compare the drafts: https://sharonbryanpoet.com/2018/10/23/drafts-of-elizabeth-bishops-one-art/
(And then there's Nabokov, who apparently had entire novels in his brain before he started writing...let's not talk about Nabokov...)
Btw George both of your stories you shared today really affected me...I admit I teared up... (thanks for being the "axe for my frozen sea" today)
Lovely, thank you. A real treasure, this.
Thanks so much for the link to the blog by Beth from Colorado. Wouldn’t we like to get hold of her books! Where are they? What happened to this wonderful writer?
Thanks Zoe! I followed the link on Sharon's post to Beth's blog post and can't stop thinking about the way she begins it: "Virginia Woolf bases her novel Mrs. Dalloway on the idea that one day in a person’s life summarizes an entire life. In a similar way, one piece of art can summarize an artist’s work. One self-portrait by Van Gogh expresses something about all his paintings. And one poem can sum up something about a poet’s work."
This is paralyzing and terrifying, if I can be dramatic for a minute. How do I sit down to write if I think This Piece Will Summarize My Work? And looking back at published pieces, how do I not think that someone will read one and think, Oh, THAT'S her issue. I know her. But I have lots of issues (haha.) And of those pieces, I can't help thinking, are they important enough? Are they palatable? Are they embarrassing? I do know we all have themes, so it's not really that. But also, themes change over a lifetime. I also know she's talking about artists at the top of their game, so maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges?
What does anyone think about the quote above?
[Edit: this apparently is not the best place to post poetry - could not preserve the stanzas in this poem]
From the highest window in my house
I am waving a white handkerchief, bidding farewell
To my verses as they set off to meet humanity.
And I am neither happy nor sad.
This is the fate of all verses.
I wrote them and must show them to everyone
Because I cannot do otherwise
Just as a flower cannot conceal its color,
Or a river conceal its current,
Or a tree conceal the fruit that it bears.
They're already far away as if carried off by stagecoach
And quite unwittingly I feel a grief
Like a bodily pain.
Who knows who will read them?
Who knows into whose hands they will fall?
Flower, my fate plucked me for eyes to see.
Tree, my fruits were picked for mouths to eat.
River, the fate of my waters was not to stay within me.
I submit and I feel almost happy,
Almost happy like someone grown weary of being sad.
Go, go from me!
The tree passes and is scattered by Nature.
The flower withers and its dust lasts forever.
The river flows and enters the sea, and its waters are forever its waters.
I pass and I remain, like the Universe.
– Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa)
Thank you, Zoe, that is so lovely.
I do like the quote, and I think of it in the same way I think of the idea of, well, anything particular standing in for the universal.
Here's a quote from Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach:
"The most specific event can serve as a general example of a class of events.
Everyone knows that specific events have a vividness which imprints them so strongly on the memory that they can later be used as models for other events which are like them in some way. Thus in each specific event, there is the germ of a whole class of similar events. This idea that there is generality in the specific is of far-reaching importance."
This is part of why it's so important to be specific when we write. In every particularity we can see the whole universe. And the more particular, the more tangible, the more real...well, the more intrinsically it becomes connected to everything else. In this way I think it's really an artist's best works that express most fully their unique vision. The process of becoming the writer *you* are, the writer no one else can be, is the process by which you become more universal. So although you might sit down to create a piece that says something about "all your work" - "all your work" will express something far beyond yourself - it will express the universe.
Thanks for this! “…the more particular, the more tangible, the more real…” So worth working toward!
Thanks Zoe for that link and seeing the changes from first draft to last. Because of our conversations on Story Club I began to see the whiny side of a story I recently wrote and rewrote called Sweet Ekphrasis (yes I stole that word from Brandon Taylor). 1st person narrative encourages the self-pity unless you're able to see it and transform it as the brilliant Elizabeth Bishop does. I make no such claims for my humble effort, but the re-writing became therapy that allowed me to see how often I sit on my ego throne.
Wow. Fascinating! And, yes, this really does give us permission to let the words come to the page however they may. I need to be more patient with my shitty first drafts.
Thank you for the link, Zoe. Fantastic!
I noted down several insertions, among them:
He went to church and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, // and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars//, and looked down into the kitchens of houses. (p. 64)
He looked so //irresistibly// pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humoured fellows said “Good morning Sir! a Merry Christmas to you!” (p. 53)
‘”Ah!” Returned the woman, //laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms//. “Bed curtains”. (p. 53)
What they have in common, I think, is that they each add an element of specifically that serves to enhance, rather than draw focus from, the point of the scene, often in quite a subtle way (like a kind of narrative MSG). I really like the insertion on page 64, which strikes me as the least subtle of the three. I can really see Scrooge patting the children on the head in a way that I can’t see him watching the people hurrying or looking down into the kitchens of houses. It’s an action, after all. And it’s an action that communicates Scrooge’s reformed state of mind in a way that it isn’t quite communicated by the original sentence. The other two insertions work similarly, I think, helping us to picture the scene or highlighting an important detail.
I love this! I noticed the insertion at the very end, the penultimate line - "and it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be //truly//said of us, and all of us!" So different: "may that be said of us" vs. "may that be TRULY said of us". Almost the opposite in fact. With the one word, Dickens digs underneath all those who celebrate Christmas showily, and miss the real point of it, which his story just laid out. In fact - how could he have written the sentence without the insertion?
Yes, well said! I'd missed that.
It seems we always come back to the old axiom: just write. And keep writing. Although, I’ve learned through golf that practice, when you engage bad habits or a lack of instruction, can be detrimental rather than additive. So we all need instruction along the way; we all need a good editor; and we certainly all need George. Thank you for another enlightening session.
George, I noticed a trivial but telling typo in your message: “...and this lead me to the following simple "outline"...”
I'm an astronomer by trade, and as a consequence have to do a lot of scientific writing and editing. I find that my colleagues are continually misspelling the past-tense form of the verb "to lead." My theory is that scientific types know that the metallic element that is homophonous with the past tense of that verb is spelled l-e-a-d (the one with the chemical symbol Pb, as you'll recall), so they slip into that spelling when they intend "led". A corollary of this theory is that English-major types, who are blissfully ignorant of the periodic table, would never make this error. If this theory is correct, then it identifies you as being of a scientific, rather than literary, nature (despite the long list of prize-winning literary works). And this gives hope to scientists everywhere who aspire to one day writing something people will actually read. So thanks for that typo and for generously sharing all these thoughts on writing.
Hilarious! I make this mistake all the time even with degrees in journalism and theatre. I suppose that means I should pursue engineering instead.
Rats! Another of my theories shot down!
I have a geophysics degree. That might explain it. 😉
No! I think you're on to something. I'm just an unruly outlier.
Marits Escher was called a “Mathematician,” to which he vehemently denied, replying, “I am an ARTIST!” But his etchings were mathematical, especially his tessellations. The first time I saw his piece Metamorphosis, I was drawn into it, mesmerized by the art, dazzled by my reaction to it, triggered to explore it, it’s construction and it’s meaning. Ah, labels and categories, humans love to apply them to Life!
And because I was a teacher and was given a specific assignment by Prof George, let me add my comment about the Dickens original draft with its revisions. I looked at page 18 where the ghost of Christmas past appears. I had a hard time reading his handwriting, but one thing stands out. Dickens must have really liked his story because he uses most of his revisionist energy to cut, reduce and tailor the original. He’s like a poet who knows that we humans are often wordy and redundant. So he pares it down, often replacing a single word for a four or five word phrase. For example, when describing the spirit’s hands, he replaces “of a handsome length” with “the same” because he had just painted the arms as “long and muscular.” And I bet for most of you writers out there, if you really love your story, if you get it down to its bare bones, you’d have a winner! e.g. Look how spare “The Incident,” “Sticks” and “The School” are!!
Thanks, Sue. Escher also once wrote in a letter:
“I should like to end this description of the stars with the Pleiades, which I once saw rising up out of the sea. When and where in Holland is the atmosphere ever so free from dust and mist that you can see the stars clearly right down to the horizon? One evening I saw a point of light appearing on the horizon, followed a moment later by another one. I thought they were the lights of a ship sailing by in the distance. But then a third light appeared, and a fourth, and finally there were seven altogether; it was then that I recognised the Pleiades, making for the heavens in full sail, like a ghost ship.”
Of course, there's an endless debate over whether the naked eye can actually discern 7, or only 6, members of the Pleiades, but, hey, he was an artist and amateur astronomer, not a mathematician.
And it's interesting that Prof George's work is like an amalgam of Dickens and Escher, with a little Tom Merton thrown in for monastic measure; one thinks especially of "The Semplica Girl Diaries," a story that still haunts my dreams a decade later.
Same...Semplica Girl Diaries...an original
I was struck by being struck by the phrase, "Our art form." Both your generosity and my own insecurity to be included. Yet the more you talk about writing, the more I feel kinship. I may end up hanging these paintings on my own walls, but I enjoy painting them nonetheless.
Without this club, I'm not sure I would be able to explain why something I wrote worked or didn't. I appreciate all the guidance to enjoy art and understand the underlying mystery. When I write something now, I "check in" with myself to see how did the piece make me feel and what adjustments could I make in technically sound writing to influence the feeling.