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неделя, 17 февруари 2013 г.
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Essay Organization
Organizing an Essay
Some basic guidelines
The best time to think about how to organize your paper is during the pre-writing stage, not the writing or revising stage. A well-thought-out plan can save you from having to do a lot of reorganizing when the first draft is completed. Moreover, it allows you to pay more attention to sentence-level issues when you sit down to write your paper.
When you begin planning, ask the following questions: What type of essay am I going to be writing? Does it belong to a specific genre? In university, you may be asked to write, say, a book review, a lab report, a document study, or a compare-and-contrast essay. Knowing the patterns of reasoning associated with a genre can help you to structure your essay.
For example, book reviews typically begin with a summary of the book you’re reviewing. They then often move on to a critical discussion of the book’s strengths and weaknesses. They may conclude with an overall assessment of the value of the book. These typical features of a book review lead you to consider dividing your outline into three parts: (1) summary; (2) discussion of strengths and weaknesses; (3) overall evaluation. The second and most substantial part will likely break down into two sub-parts. It is up to you to decide the order of the two subparts—whether to analyze strengths or weaknesses first. And of course it will be up to you to come up with actual strengths and weaknesses.
Be aware that genres are not fixed. Different professors will define the features of a genre differently. Read the assignment question carefully for guidance.
Understanding genre can take you only so far. Most university essays are argumentative, and there is no set pattern for the shape of an argumentative essay. The simple three-point essay taught in high school is far too restrictive for the complexities of most university assignments. You must be ready to come up with whatever essay structure helps you to convince your reader of the validity of your position. In other words, you must be flexible, and you must rely on your wits. Each essay presents a fresh problem.
Avoiding a common pitfall
Though there are no easy formulas for generating an outline, you can avoid one of the most common pitfalls in student papers by remembering this simple principle: the structure of an essay should not be determined by the structure of its source material. For example, an essay on an historical period should not necessarily follow the chronology of events from that period. Similarly, a well-constructed essay about a literary work does not usually progress in parallel with the plot. Your obligation is to advance your argument, not to reproduce the plot.
If your essay is not well structured, then its overall weaknesses will show through in the individual paragraphs. Consider the following two paragraphs from two different English essays, both arguing that despite Hamlet’s highly developed moral nature he becomes morally compromised in the course of the play:
(a) In Act 3, Scene 4, Polonius hides behind an arras in Gertrude’s chamber in order to spy on Hamlet at the bidding of the king. Detecting something stirring, Hamlet draws his sword and kills Polonius, thinking he has killed Claudius. Gertrude exclaims, “O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!” (28), and her words mark the turning point in Hamlet’s moral decline. Now Hamlet has blood on his hands, and the blood of the wrong person. But rather than engage in self-criticism, Hamlet immediately turns his mother’s words against her: “A bloody deed — almost as bad, good Mother, as kill a king, and marry with his brother” (29-30). One of Hamlet’s most serious shortcomings is his unfair treatment of women. He often accuses them of sins they could not have committed. It is doubtful that Gertrude even knows Claudius killed her previous husband. Hamlet goes on to ask Gertrude to compare the image of the two kings, old Hamlet and Claudius. In Hamlet’s words, old Hamlet has “Hyperion’s curls,” the front of Jove,” and “an eye like Mars” (57-58). Despite Hamlet’s unfair treatment of women, he is motivated by one of his better qualities: his idealism.
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(b) One of Hamlet’s most serious moral shortcomings is his unfair treatment of women. In Act 3, Scene 1, he denies to Ophelia ever having expressed his love for her, using his feigned madness as cover for his cruelty. Though his rantings may be an act, they cannot hide his obsessive anger at one particular woman: his mother. He counsels Ophelia to “marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them” (139-41), thus blaming her in advance for the sin of adultery. The logic is plain: if Hamlet’s mother made a cuckold out of Hamlet’s father, then all women are capable of doing the same and therefore share the blame. The fact that Gertrude’s hasty remarriage does not actually constitute adultery only underscores Hamlet’s tendency to find in women faults that do not exist. In Act 3, Scene 4, he goes as far as to suggest that Gertrude shared responsibility in the murder of Hamlet’s father (29-30). By condemning women for actions they did not commit, Hamlet is doing just what he accuses Guildenstern of doing to him: he is plucking out the “heart” of their “mystery” (3.2.372-74).
The second of these two paragraphs is much stronger, largely because it is not plot-driven. It makes a well-defined point about Hamlet’s moral nature and sticks to that point throughout the paragraph. Notice that the paragraph jumps from one scene to another as is necessary, but the logic of the argument moves along a steady path. At any given point in your essays, you will want to leave yourself free to go wherever you need to in your source material. Your only obligation is to further your argument. Paragraph (a) sticks closely to the narrative thread of Act 3, Scene 4, and as a result the paragraph makes several different points with no clear focus.
What does an essay outline look like?
Most essay outlines will never be handed in. They are meant to serve you and no one else. Occasionally, your professor will ask you to hand in an outline weeks prior to handing in your paper. Usually, the point is to ensure that you are on the right track. Nevertheless, when you produce your outline, you should follow certain basic principles. Here is an example of an outline for an essay on Hamlet:
thesis: Despite Hamlet’s highly developed moral nature, he becomes morally compromised while delaying his revenge.
I. Introduction: Hamlet’s father asks Hamlet not only to seek vengeance but also to keep his mind untainted.
II. Hamlet has a highly developed moral nature.
A. Hamlet is idealistic.
B. Hamlet is aware of his own faults, whereas others are self-satisfied.
C. Hamlet does not want to take revenge without grounds for acting.
III. Hamlet becomes morally compromised while delaying.
A. The turning point in Hamlet’s moral decline is his killing of Polonius.
B. Hamlet’s moral decline continues when he sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their death.
C. Hamlet already began his moral decline before the turning point in the play, the killing of Polonius.
1. Hamlet treats women badly.
2. Hamlet criticizes others in the play for acting falsely to get ahead, but in adopting the disguise of madness he, too, is presenting a false face to the world.
IV. Though Hamlet becomes more compromised the longer he delays, killing the king would have been a morally questionable act.
V. Conclusion: The play Hamlet questions the adequacy of a system of ethics based on honour and revenge.
This is an example of a sentence outline. Another kind of outline is the topic outline. It consists of fragments rather than full sentences. Topic outlines are more open-ended than sentence outlines: they leave much of the working out of the argument for the writing stage.
When should I begin putting together a plan?
The earlier you begin planning, the better. It is usually a mistake to do all of your research and note-taking before beginning to draw up an outline. Of course, you will have to do some reading and weighing of evidence before you start to plan. But as a potential argument begins to
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take shape in your mind, you may start to formalize your thoughts in the form of a tentative plan. You will be much more efficient in your reading and your research if you have some idea of where your argument is headed. You can then search for evidence for the points in your tentative plan while you are reading and researching. As you gather evidence, those points that still lack evidence should guide you in your research. Remember, though, that your plan may need to be modified as you critically evaluate your evidence.
Some techniques for integrating note-taking and planning
Though convenient, the common method of jotting down your notes consecutively on paper is far from ideal. The problem is that your points remain fixed on paper. Here are three alternatives that provide greater flexibility:
method 1: index cards
When you are researching, write down every idea, fact, quotation, or paraphrase on a separate index card. Small (5” by 3”) cards are easiest to work with. When you’ve collected all your cards, reshuffle them into the best possible order, and you have an outline, though you will undoubtedly want to reduce this outline to the essential points should you transcribe it to paper.
A useful alternative involves using both white and coloured cards. When you come up with a point that you think may be one of the main points in your outline, write it at the top of a coloured card. Put each supporting note on a separate white card, using as much of the card as necessary. When you feel ready, arrange the coloured cards into a workable plan. Some of the points may not fit in. If so, either modify the plan or leave these points out. You may need to fill gaps by creating new cards. You can shuffle your supporting material into the plan by placing each of the white cards behind the point it helps support.
method 2: the computer
A different way of moving your notes around is to use the computer. You can collect your points consecutively, just as you would on paper. You can then sort your ideas when you are ready to start planning. Take advantage of “outline view” in Word, which makes it easy for you to arrange your points hierarchically. This method is fine so long as you don’t mind being tied to your computer from the first stage of the writing process to the last. Some people prefer to keep their planning low-tech.
method 3: the circle method
This method is designed to get your ideas onto a single page, where you can see them all at once. When you have an idea, write it down on paper and draw a circle around it. When you have an idea which supports another idea, do the same, but connect the two circles with a line. Supporting source material can be represented concisely by a page reference inside a circle. The advantage of the circle method is that you can see at a glance how things tie together; the disadvantage is that there is a limit to how much material you can cram onto a page.
Here is part of a circle diagram: H has a highly developed moral nature H is idealisticH is aware of his faults H seeks grounds for acting
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What is a reverse outline?
When you have completed your first draft, and you think your paper can be better organized, consider using a reverse outline. Reverse outlines are simple to create. Just read through your essay, and every time you make a new point, summarize it in the margin. If the essay is reasonably well-organized, you should have one point in the margin for each paragraph, and your points read out in order should form a coherent argument. You might, however, discover that some of your points are repeated at various places in your essay. Other points may be out of place, and still other key points may not appear at all. Think of all these points as the ingredients of an improved outline which you now must create. Use this new outline to cut and paste the sentences into a revised version of your essay, consolidating points that appear in several parts of your essay while eliminating repetition and creating smooth transitions where necessary.
You can improve even the most carefully planned essay by creating a reverse outline after completing your first draft. The process of revision should be as much about organization as it is about style.
How much of my time should I put into planning?
It is self-evident that a well-planned paper is going to be better organized than a paper that was not planned out. Thinking carefully about how you are going to argue your paper and preparing an outline can only add to the quality of your final product. Nevertheless, some people find it more helpful than others to plan. Those who are good at coming up with ideas but find writing difficult often benefit from planning. By contrast, those who have trouble generating ideas but find writing easy may benefit from starting to write early. Putting pen to paper (or typing away at the keyboard) may be just what is needed to get the ideas to flow.
You have to find out for yourself what works best for you, though it is fair to say that at least some planning is always a good idea. Think about whether your current practices are serving you well. You know you’re planning too little if the first draft of your essays is always a disorganized mess, and you have to spend a disproportionate amount of time creating reverse outlines and cutting and pasting material. You know you’re planning too much if you always find yourself writing your paper a day before it’s due after spending weeks doing research and devising elaborate plans.
Be aware of the implications of planning too little or too much.
Planning provides the following advantages:
• helps you to produce a logical and orderly argument that your readers can follow
• helps you to produce an economical paper by allowing you to spot repetition
• helps you to produce a thorough paper by making it easier for you to notice whether you have left anything out
• makes drafting the paper easier by allowing you to concentrate on writing issues such as grammar, word choice, and clarity
Overplanning poses the following risks:
• doesn’t leave you enough time to write and revise
• leads you to produce papers that try to cover too much ground at the expense of analytic depth
• can result in a writing style that lacks spontaneity and ease
• does not provide enough opportunity to discover new ideas in the process of writing
Prepared by Jerry Plotnick, Director of the University College Writing Centre Over 50 other files offering advice about university writing are available at www.writing.utoronto.ca
неделя, 30 декември 2012 г.
John Grisham
John Grisham: By the Book
Published: October 25,
2012
The author, most
recently, of “The Racketeer” wishes President Obama would read “Fifty Shades of
Grey”: “Maybe it would loosen him up a bit.”
John Grisham
What book is on your night stand now?
There are a dozen. I’m halfway through “All
the King’s Men,” by Robert Penn Warren. I haven’t read it since college.
When and where do you like to read?
I usually read at night, in the bed, before
falling asleep. In the summertime, I love to read on the porch in a rocker
under a ceiling fan.
What was the last truly great book you read?
The word “great” gets tossed around too
easily. The last book that kept me completely engrossed while delivering a powerful
story was “Life After Death,” by Damien Echols. He spent 18 years on
death row in Arkansas for crimes he didn’t commit, and was released last year.
Though he’s innocent, the state refuses to exonerate him.
Are you a fiction or a nonfiction person?
What’s your favorite literary genre: Any guilty pleasures? Do you like to read
other legal thrillers?
I read much more nonfiction, usually while
researching the next novel. Books and studies on unlawful convictions, unfair
trials, overcrowded prisons, prosecutorial misconduct, etc. I read most of the
other legal thrillers on the best-seller lists to keep up with the competition.
Who are your favorites among the competition?
When “Presumed Innocent” was published in
1987, I was struggling to finish my first novel. Scott Turow re-energized
the legal suspense genre with that book, and it inspired me to keep plugging
along. Scott is still the best lawyer-novelist.
What book had the greatest impact on you? What
book made you want to write?
“The Grapes of Wrath,” by John Steinbeck. I
read it when I was a senior in high school and was struck by its clarity and
power. I’m not sure if it inspired me to write, but I do recall thinking, “I
wish I could write as clearly as John Steinbeck.”
If you could require the president to read one
book, what would it be?
“Fifty Shades of Grey.” Why should he miss all
the fun? Plus, it might loosen him up a bit.
What are your reading habits? Paper or
electronic? Do you take notes?
My wife gave me a Kindle Fire for Christmas
and I am having great fun with it. I’m not sure I am reading more, but I am
certainly ordering more. But there is always a stack of hardbacks on the night
stand waiting to be read. I’ll start three a week and try to finish one. I’m
too lazy to take notes.
Do you prefer a book that makes you laugh or
makes you cry? One that teaches you something or one that distracts you?
I love humor and for this reason I’ve always
enjoyed Mark Twain. He was without a doubt the funniest writer who ever picked
up a pen. I’m not sure I ever cried while reading a book.
What were your favorite books as a child? Do
you have a favorite character or hero from one of those books? Is there one
book you wish all children would read?
As a small child I loved Dr. Seuss. Later, the
Hardy Boys and Chip Hilton. Then I discovered Mark Twain with Tom Sawyer and
Huck Finn. Tom Sawyer is still my all-time favorite literary hero.
Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What
book did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didn’t? Do you remember
the last book you put down without finishing?
I tried a couple of times to read “The Girl
With the Dragon Tattoo,” but never finished it.
If you could meet any writer, dead or alive,
who would it be? What would you want to know? Have you ever written to an
author?
Mark Twain, but when he was 40, not 70. He was
a pretty nasty old man. I’m not sure what I would ask Mark Twain, but I’m
pretty sure it would not be for investment advice. I wrote him a letter when I
was a kid but never heard back. What an ass.
Which of the books you’ve written is your
favorite? Your favorite character? What’s your favorite movie adaptation of a
book you’ve written?
My first book, “A Time to Kill,” is still my
favorite, and Jake Brigance is still my favorite character. The best adaptation
was “The Rainmaker,” with Francis Ford Coppola.
If you could choose among your novels the next
to be adapted into a movie, which would it be and why?
Who doesn’t love a good movie? For this
reason, I would enjoy seeing all of my books adapted to film. There are
currently three or four “in production” — not sure what that means but I
suspect it means little is happening. Gone are the days when I sold the film
rights for a nice check, then sat back and waited 18 months for the movie. Long
gone.
“Calico Joe” is being developed by Chris
Columbus, who wrote a great script and plans to direct. It appears to be a fast
track and should be fun to watch. My involvement is always limited, as it
should be. I know nothing about making movies and have no desire to learn.
What’s the best book about the law ever
written?
“To Kill a Mockingbird.”
The best book about baseball?
“Bang the Drum Slowly,” by Mark Harris.
What’s the one book you wish someone else
would write?
My next legal thriller. No — make that my next
five.
You’ve traveled all around the country for
your book tours. Do you have a particular favorite place to visit as an author?
A city that’s especially welcoming to writers?
I’ve visited several death rows doing
research, and they are fascinating. Prisons in general give me inspiration for
stories and characters. My next book is about a lawyer in prison, and I went to
visit a couple. Rich stuff.
I don’t understand how anyone can write in a
city. I live in the boondocks where it’s quiet and peaceful and when the words
are slow I go for long walks through the hills. To my recollection, I’ve never
written a single word of a novel in town.
What do you plan to read next?
I have a friend who is an obnoxious Yankee fan
(aren’t they all?) and he’s hounding me to read the latest biographies of Mantle
and Maris: “The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood,”
and “Roger Maris, Baseball’s Reluctant Hero.” I’ll give ’em a shot.
A
version of this article appeared in print on October 28, 2012, on page BR7 of
the Sunday Book Review with the headline: By the Book: John
Grisham.
неделя, 28 октомври 2012 г.
сряда, 3 октомври 2012 г.
Russell Banks
The Angel on the Roof
by Russell Banks
Dancing With My Eyes Closed
When I began writing nearly forty years ago, I wanted to be a poet, but had not the gift and fell in love instead with the short story, the form in prose closest to lyric poetry. Unable to court successfully the queen of the arts, I turned my attention to her lady-in-waiting. This is not a rare form of abandonment (as Faulkner famously observed, "All fiction writers are failed poets"), but in any event, it's clear enough to me why I abandoned poetry early, almost too early to have failed at it, for the short story. Too many of my close friends at college and shortly afterwards obviously had the gifts (of language, wit, personal charm, good looks--whatever it took to woo and win the favors of the queen's main muse), and by unavoidable comparison to poetry-writing friends like William Matthews, James Tate, and Charles Simic, I was tongue-tied, humorless, bad-mannered, and homely. No wonder I turned to prose fiction.
Before leaving, however, I did publish a fair number of those early poems in obscure--but not obscure enough- literary magazines and journals and published two chapbooks of poetry in small--but not small enough--editions. They show up now and then in the hands of collectors at book-signings, and it's all I can do to keep from tearing the book from the collector's hands and starting an auto-da-fe with it right there in the store. I'm not so much ashamed of those poor poems as embarrassed by the vanity of my youthful ambition, by its evident (to me, now) transparency, and am comforted a bit only by calling to mind Nathaniel Howthorne's first book, an absolutely awful bodice- ripper entitled Fanshawe, self-published in an edition of perhaps 500 copies that he spent his life afterwards quietly seeking out, purchasing, and destroying by fire, in the process (since he got all but a handful of copies) making it one of the rarest, most expensive books in American literature.
Unable to cohabit with lyric poetry, I, like my illustrious ancestor, took up temporary residence instead with her nearest neighbor, the short story, and only later moved across town as he did, to settle more or less permanently, I thought, with the novel. In the intervening years, though I've written a dozen or so novels and remain faithful to the form and its power, it's nonetheless the story form that thrills me. It invites me today, still, as it did those many years ago, to behave on the page in a way that is more reckless, more sharply painful, and more stylistically elaborate that is allowed by the steady, slow, bourgeois respectability of the novel, which, like a good marriage, demands long-term commitment, tolerance, and compromise. The novel, in order to exist at all, accrues, accretes, and accumulates itself in small increments, like a coral reef, and through that process invites from its creator leisurely exploration and slow growth. By contrast, stories are like a perfect wave, if one is a surfer; or a love affair, if one is a lover. They forgive one's mercurial nature, reward one's longing for ecstasy, and make of one's short memory a virtue. They keep an old man or woman young, so to speak.
A year ago, last winter, after a decade and a half of writing only novels--four of them, actually, Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter, Rule of the Boneand Cloudsplitter- arduous years uninterrupted by my usual, earlier practice of following a novel with a wild and crazy year or two of short-story writing (as a respite, I suppose, but also merely to release my brain from the sort of obsessional thinking that goes with novel-writing), I finally sat down and over the course of the next six months wrote nine new stories. I felt almost wanton and promiscuous. My delight, however, was tinged mysteriously with guilt. Maybe I'd been having too much fun, or perhaps, as if dancing wildly with my eyes closed, I had inadvertently made a fool of myself in public, revealed too much of my secret, subconscious self. Troubled and intrigued, I decided to examine and evaluate earlier instances of this reckless behavior and went back and, for the first time in many years, re-read my four previously published collections of stories, Searching for Survivors, The New World, Trailerpark, and Success Stories, a group of nearly one hundred stories in all.
Many of them, most of them, were terrible, as bad as my poems, and evoked in me the same embarrassment and shame as had the poems--for the vanity of my youthful (and in many cases not-so-youthful) ambition and its ability to cloud my mind and warp my judgement. Why, I wondered, had I even published them? Why couldn't I have made such terrible mistakes in private? It was a depressing and humbling read. Not that they were technically inept. In general, the stories were skillfully executed, stylish in the several popular modes of the 1960's and 1970's--minimalist after Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie, meta-fictional after Barthelme, Barth, Gass, and Coover, sometimes braiding the two formalist tendencies in a single story, as if the tendencies were not, as their respective adherents claimed, opposed to one another.
No, what depressed and humbled me was what I saw lurking behind the surface of the story--the personality and character of the author himself, the young writer whose all-too-evident rage, pride, and insecurity were sabotaging his attempts to write stories that stood a chance of outliving him. Obviously, I knew a great deal about him already, his difficult childhood, his turbulent adolescence, his failed (as he viewed them) first and second marriages, and so on; but it was the stories themselves that gave him away. So many of them, it seemed, had been written to obscure the degree to which their author had no idea of who he was or what he was doing or whether he was any good at it. Preoccupied with the self, rather than with the world, they were the work of a young man who too often judged his characters, especially the characters who most closely resembled the author himself; and when he did not judge them, he idealized them, hovering like a custodial parent above the same character he'd just condemned, the one resembling the author. His characters were stand-ins for his shifting, unreliable opinions of himself. Thus his reliance on fashion, on the popular story-telling modes of the time.
A few of the stories, once I gave them a second look, did not embarrass me. Quite the opposite. They were the real thing, freed, it seemed to me, from the authorial vanity and literary self-consciousness. And I could see that, with a snip here, and a tuck there, if I sucked in their stomachs and adjusted the lighting a bit, they might, even to me, seem capable of successfully courting the nearest relative of the queen of the arts. These were, for the most part, stories about single mothers, blue-collar working men and women, elderly people, a retired army colonel, a gay bank clerk, and so on-characters who did not much resemble their neurotic young author. The few whose demographic profile did match the author's portrayed him only as a child or adolescent, twenty or more years earlier, beyond judgement, beyond idealization, no longer subject to his rage, pride, or insecurity. Forgiven.
Of the nearly one hundred stories previously published in book form, I selected twenty-two that I wanted to revise and keep into my old age. The rest I decided could and should be consigned to the dustbin of juvenilia, even though some of them had been written when I was in my forties. With those twenty-two revised early stories and the nine new ones now in hand--and ample, mixed bouquet displayed in my publisher's handsome yet unpretentious vase--I might knock at the muse's door and be let in. I might be almost-a-poet yet.
In June when this new book is published, I will have just turned sixty. And while re-reading, rejecting and finally revising the best of them has been a little like visiting with my past and all-but-forgotten selves, re-acquainting myself with the man I was in my twenties, thirties, forties, and so on, it has also revealed to me the man I was not. Not then, anyhow, and maybe not now or ever. Unsurprisingly, the kid in his twenties who wrote "Searching for Survivors," one of the earliest stories included, a somewhat melancholy, dreamy, self-dramatizing fellow with a lyrical impulse running through his every perception, turns out to be not significantly different than the more ironic, bemused, and plain-spoken, late-middle-aged man who at the age of fifty-nine wrote the most recent stories in the collection. I have come to see that most of the stories I left behind, like my earlier selves, were failed experiments which at the time of their composition were necessary for me to have attempted, for I would not have learned my craft if I had not written them. And while I now wish that I had not afterwards submitted them for publication, I nonetheless must admit that had I not published them, first in magazines and later in books, I doubt that I'd be able today to recognize them as failures. If I'd tossed them out while they were still in manuscript form, if I'd strangled my darlings in their beds, as Flannery O'Connor advised young writers to do, I would not have learned from them as much as I have. In cold print, in black and white, wildly dancing eyes-closed in public for all to see, those experiments, like my early poems, like my early selves, taught me what I have no talent for and, in the end, no abiding interest in.
Imprint: HarperCollins; ISBN: 0060173963
by Russell Banks
Dancing With My Eyes Closed
When I began writing nearly forty years ago, I wanted to be a poet, but had not the gift and fell in love instead with the short story, the form in prose closest to lyric poetry. Unable to court successfully the queen of the arts, I turned my attention to her lady-in-waiting. This is not a rare form of abandonment (as Faulkner famously observed, "All fiction writers are failed poets"), but in any event, it's clear enough to me why I abandoned poetry early, almost too early to have failed at it, for the short story. Too many of my close friends at college and shortly afterwards obviously had the gifts (of language, wit, personal charm, good looks--whatever it took to woo and win the favors of the queen's main muse), and by unavoidable comparison to poetry-writing friends like William Matthews, James Tate, and Charles Simic, I was tongue-tied, humorless, bad-mannered, and homely. No wonder I turned to prose fiction.
Before leaving, however, I did publish a fair number of those early poems in obscure--but not obscure enough- literary magazines and journals and published two chapbooks of poetry in small--but not small enough--editions. They show up now and then in the hands of collectors at book-signings, and it's all I can do to keep from tearing the book from the collector's hands and starting an auto-da-fe with it right there in the store. I'm not so much ashamed of those poor poems as embarrassed by the vanity of my youthful ambition, by its evident (to me, now) transparency, and am comforted a bit only by calling to mind Nathaniel Howthorne's first book, an absolutely awful bodice- ripper entitled Fanshawe, self-published in an edition of perhaps 500 copies that he spent his life afterwards quietly seeking out, purchasing, and destroying by fire, in the process (since he got all but a handful of copies) making it one of the rarest, most expensive books in American literature.
Unable to cohabit with lyric poetry, I, like my illustrious ancestor, took up temporary residence instead with her nearest neighbor, the short story, and only later moved across town as he did, to settle more or less permanently, I thought, with the novel. In the intervening years, though I've written a dozen or so novels and remain faithful to the form and its power, it's nonetheless the story form that thrills me. It invites me today, still, as it did those many years ago, to behave on the page in a way that is more reckless, more sharply painful, and more stylistically elaborate that is allowed by the steady, slow, bourgeois respectability of the novel, which, like a good marriage, demands long-term commitment, tolerance, and compromise. The novel, in order to exist at all, accrues, accretes, and accumulates itself in small increments, like a coral reef, and through that process invites from its creator leisurely exploration and slow growth. By contrast, stories are like a perfect wave, if one is a surfer; or a love affair, if one is a lover. They forgive one's mercurial nature, reward one's longing for ecstasy, and make of one's short memory a virtue. They keep an old man or woman young, so to speak.
A year ago, last winter, after a decade and a half of writing only novels--four of them, actually, Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter, Rule of the Boneand Cloudsplitter- arduous years uninterrupted by my usual, earlier practice of following a novel with a wild and crazy year or two of short-story writing (as a respite, I suppose, but also merely to release my brain from the sort of obsessional thinking that goes with novel-writing), I finally sat down and over the course of the next six months wrote nine new stories. I felt almost wanton and promiscuous. My delight, however, was tinged mysteriously with guilt. Maybe I'd been having too much fun, or perhaps, as if dancing wildly with my eyes closed, I had inadvertently made a fool of myself in public, revealed too much of my secret, subconscious self. Troubled and intrigued, I decided to examine and evaluate earlier instances of this reckless behavior and went back and, for the first time in many years, re-read my four previously published collections of stories, Searching for Survivors, The New World, Trailerpark, and Success Stories, a group of nearly one hundred stories in all.
Many of them, most of them, were terrible, as bad as my poems, and evoked in me the same embarrassment and shame as had the poems--for the vanity of my youthful (and in many cases not-so-youthful) ambition and its ability to cloud my mind and warp my judgement. Why, I wondered, had I even published them? Why couldn't I have made such terrible mistakes in private? It was a depressing and humbling read. Not that they were technically inept. In general, the stories were skillfully executed, stylish in the several popular modes of the 1960's and 1970's--minimalist after Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie, meta-fictional after Barthelme, Barth, Gass, and Coover, sometimes braiding the two formalist tendencies in a single story, as if the tendencies were not, as their respective adherents claimed, opposed to one another.
No, what depressed and humbled me was what I saw lurking behind the surface of the story--the personality and character of the author himself, the young writer whose all-too-evident rage, pride, and insecurity were sabotaging his attempts to write stories that stood a chance of outliving him. Obviously, I knew a great deal about him already, his difficult childhood, his turbulent adolescence, his failed (as he viewed them) first and second marriages, and so on; but it was the stories themselves that gave him away. So many of them, it seemed, had been written to obscure the degree to which their author had no idea of who he was or what he was doing or whether he was any good at it. Preoccupied with the self, rather than with the world, they were the work of a young man who too often judged his characters, especially the characters who most closely resembled the author himself; and when he did not judge them, he idealized them, hovering like a custodial parent above the same character he'd just condemned, the one resembling the author. His characters were stand-ins for his shifting, unreliable opinions of himself. Thus his reliance on fashion, on the popular story-telling modes of the time.
A few of the stories, once I gave them a second look, did not embarrass me. Quite the opposite. They were the real thing, freed, it seemed to me, from the authorial vanity and literary self-consciousness. And I could see that, with a snip here, and a tuck there, if I sucked in their stomachs and adjusted the lighting a bit, they might, even to me, seem capable of successfully courting the nearest relative of the queen of the arts. These were, for the most part, stories about single mothers, blue-collar working men and women, elderly people, a retired army colonel, a gay bank clerk, and so on-characters who did not much resemble their neurotic young author. The few whose demographic profile did match the author's portrayed him only as a child or adolescent, twenty or more years earlier, beyond judgement, beyond idealization, no longer subject to his rage, pride, or insecurity. Forgiven.
Of the nearly one hundred stories previously published in book form, I selected twenty-two that I wanted to revise and keep into my old age. The rest I decided could and should be consigned to the dustbin of juvenilia, even though some of them had been written when I was in my forties. With those twenty-two revised early stories and the nine new ones now in hand--and ample, mixed bouquet displayed in my publisher's handsome yet unpretentious vase--I might knock at the muse's door and be let in. I might be almost-a-poet yet.
In June when this new book is published, I will have just turned sixty. And while re-reading, rejecting and finally revising the best of them has been a little like visiting with my past and all-but-forgotten selves, re-acquainting myself with the man I was in my twenties, thirties, forties, and so on, it has also revealed to me the man I was not. Not then, anyhow, and maybe not now or ever. Unsurprisingly, the kid in his twenties who wrote "Searching for Survivors," one of the earliest stories included, a somewhat melancholy, dreamy, self-dramatizing fellow with a lyrical impulse running through his every perception, turns out to be not significantly different than the more ironic, bemused, and plain-spoken, late-middle-aged man who at the age of fifty-nine wrote the most recent stories in the collection. I have come to see that most of the stories I left behind, like my earlier selves, were failed experiments which at the time of their composition were necessary for me to have attempted, for I would not have learned my craft if I had not written them. And while I now wish that I had not afterwards submitted them for publication, I nonetheless must admit that had I not published them, first in magazines and later in books, I doubt that I'd be able today to recognize them as failures. If I'd tossed them out while they were still in manuscript form, if I'd strangled my darlings in their beds, as Flannery O'Connor advised young writers to do, I would not have learned from them as much as I have. In cold print, in black and white, wildly dancing eyes-closed in public for all to see, those experiments, like my early poems, like my early selves, taught me what I have no talent for and, in the end, no abiding interest in.
Imprint: HarperCollins; ISBN: 0060173963
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