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Critique of a Salesman

By amy ross | Filed in authors, books, writing

I once had a creative-writing teacher who would tactfully condemn a line of student verse by saying, in the long-suffering yet indulgent tone with which a wife might scold her husband for once again forgetting to put the cat out, “It sounds like poetry.”

The New Yorker’s new lit blog opens by talking about Death of a Salesman, and whether we should now come to the conclusion, after all these years, that it sucks. And I have to admit, he makes a compelling argument.

But I also think it’s significant that he opens the essay by quoting a teacher of creative writing. This is an issue that comes up frequently among the MFA set, and I think among all serious writers: to what extend does writing poison our appreciation for texts?

Because no matter that Harvey might not life Salesman, or that he can find specific faults with it — on some level, clearly it works. I don’t just mean in the cynical sense of, “Gee, it’s made a lot of money over the years, so it must be doing something right!” I mean, many many people have been moved, provoked — have generally found great worth in this play. So can we really come along now and declare it broken? Or maybe it is broken, and maybe that doesn’t matter all that much.

In writing courses and clubs, you can’t help but pick up a handful of writing “truisms”: “Never use adverbs.” “Use dialogue tags when only absolutely necessary.” “Never have a character look in a mirror.” And then, inevitably, writers go off into the world with their new found knowledge and declare, “I can’t read Nabokov — there are adverbs everywhere!” “I had to throw Anna Karenina away when she looked in a mirror.”

Being an editor is even worse. When I was fiction editor for Fugue, I developed countless pet peeves that usually resulted in insta-rejects. Second person narration was one, stories about bad relationships was another. Do I really think the world has exhausted the topic of the bad relationship? That there is no more to say about such a scenario? Of course not. It’s just that it’s (naturally enough) a common topic, and after the 500th one, they start to develop a certain sameness. I got sick of it. But a reader who only reads 5-10 short stories a year is probably not so sick of hearing about bad relationships.

Recently some writer friends of mine were discussing their desire to “turn off” this hypercritical side of themselves, to be able to enjoy things once again as “regular” people do. I have mixed feelings, I guess. It’s nice to have the tools to explain why a certain piece of art — even a very famous and admired piece — leaves us cold. But it can be dangerous to extrapolate “rules” for an endeavor which is, at its best, inherently lawless.

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Are there good and bad writers?

By amy ross | Filed in authors, writing

Let me say and I probably mean this in the most manifesto-ing way that genres don’t exist. They don’t exist at all. They serve the needs of marketing, of academic specialization, even as modes of work, but in terms of meaning or content or associative formations they are like traffic lights—not so interesting and most adamantly not what we are doing today. Genres for me are just a way in which we are controlled, protected I suppose but I’m not a writer to be protected at all. I love science fiction, have all my life and it’s where I met Kafka. Angela Carter is swimming around in there too. Science fiction propelled me into poetry and writing in general and if I think of the children’s books I was exposed to I can’t see the difference between sci fi, poetry, Kafka or Angela Carter. Yet they all know each other very well. That’s all I’m saying. Are there good and bad writers? I’m not sure about that either.

Eileen Myles in the New Inquiry.

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The Evolving Archaeology of the Novel

By amy ross | Filed in authors, writing

So this morning I followed a series of links around the internet about John Updike’s archive, and what may or may not be gleaned from it.

That question aside, a lot of people are pointing out that this whole concept of a writer’s archive of materials is becoming obsolete in the digital age. Says Adam Begley in the nytimes, “Updike’s archive may be the last great paper trail… Anyone interested in how a great writer works will find here as full an explanation as we’re likely to get.”

Ruth Franklin further comments in The New Republic that “the computer discourages the keeping of archives, at least in their traditional form. If Updike had been working in Word, he might have left no trace of the numerous emendations to the opening airport scene of Rabbit at Rest.”

Mark Athitakis then follows up by suggesting that in the future, writer’s archive’s might consist of their twitter posts and facebook “likes”.

This seems like an excessively grim prediction. The idea that technology has obscured the “trace” of the working writer is baffling to me. Why should the fact of working in Word mean that writers don’t save their drafts, false starts, and excisions?

I can only speak of my own process, but for this most recent book alone, I have accumulated:

  • Two notebooks (yes, real paper) worth of outlining, character sketches, problem-solving, etc.
  • A folder full of photos I took to help me visualize the clothing and living spaces of my characters
  • A file of links to articles and images from around the web that spurred bits and pieces of my story.  And perhaps most strikingly,
  • 123 individual files, including drafts at all stages, notes, dead-ended experiments, lists of words, ideas, concepts, places, and chunks of history I wanted to incorporate into the text, comments from critique partners, drafts of query letters, ever line I ever cut from the book but thought I might want to re-use later (I revive dead snippets all the time), paragraphs from other books I want to refer to for inspiration, lists of songs I found relevant while writing, excel sheets tracking character and theme development, and God only knows what other detritus.

And this is to say nothing of the vast number of emails, forum posts, and online journal entries I have racked up in the name of this enterprise. Egotist that I am, even I can’t imagine that any biographer would ever be compelled to sort through it all. And this is all for only one book!

I know not all writers work this way. I have some (very successful) friends who simply open up a fresh document, start writing, and from then on all their work is done in that one file, so there is indeed no record of their process. But even before computers, there were writers who burned their early drafts, or trashed all their notes the minute the book was sold.  Has so much really changed?  I’d say that the biggest change is that at least an electronic archive can be searched for relevant details as easily as hitting Ctrl+F.

How about you? When you’re famous and dead, will you have left anything behind for students of your work to sift through?

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Fan Mail

By amy ross | Filed in authors, writing

A couple of years ago, I made a resolution to start writing fan mail to my favorite authors and artists.

Though it may sound selfish, I imagined it as paying into some karmic appreciation fund — some day, I hope to have readers who are sufficiently moved and inspired by my words that they will seek me out and tell me as much. By the same token, don’t I have an obligation to let the people who have inspired me (those who are still living, anyway) know how I have been affected by their work? Wouldn’t any writer be thrilled to hear such a thing? Of course it’s all very well and fulfilling, I’m sure, to hear that you’ve “moved a lot of product” in the past fiscal quarter. But ultimately, I imagine that most writers would value a note of heartfelt appreciation at least as much as a royalty statement.

A nice resolution, and not too difficult — these days, with email addresses posted so prominently on most authors’ websites, nothing could be easier than dashing off a quick little message of thanks.

But then the months came and went, and I think I sent a total of two. Or wait, maybe one? The other might be languishing in my drafts folder. Why was I having so much trouble with what seemed like a simple task?

I don’t know, maybe I overthought it. My first instinct had just been to send notes saying, essentially, “I love your work.” But that seemed so bland and insincere. If I received a note like that, it might bring a smile to my face, but would probably be forgotten by lunchtime. No, I wanted to go deeper — I wanted to tell these authors how fully I understood them and felt understood by them… how deeply I engaged with the project of their writing.

That’s where I ran into trouble. Because… what if I got it wrong? Or rather, not wrong exactly, but what if my understanding of the book was in fact totally different from what the author intended? As legitimate as my interpretation might be, it ran the risk of pissing off the author more than pleasing him. Which was pretty much the opposite of my intention.

So I was torn — send out vapid platitudes in hopes of remaining inoffensive? Or engage with the text in all its problematic glory, and run the risk of incurring the author’s wrath? Or maybe just avoid the trouble by keeping my big mouth shut?

So I went with the third option. But I wonder sometimes what the authors would say. Do authors have stories of “fan mail” which left them more annoyed than flattered? For what it’s worth, if I’m ever in their position, I’d rather hear something than nothing, and I would actually love to hear every odd or idiosyncratic interpretation of my work. But I lack confidence that others feel the same way.

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