I haven't written anything good in a month.
It bothers me to write nothing I like.
It sucks to suck.
If I can't write anything good I can still be of use if I can point to writers who can.
Nabokov, Bellow, Helprin, O'Connor, Frost, I know you've heard those names.
Here are some I've been drawn to that aren't as widely appreciated:
1st, a few of the writers I read to learn how to write sentences:
Lee K. Abbott.
Texas. Football. Girls. Hubris. Divorce. Disappointment.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Speeches and writings. Oh my. Visuals. Writing meant to be spoken. Spoken words that live in the air. You want to write commercials on the TV you've got to write sentences people can see. Not even poets do it as well as he did.
Shalom Auslander. This is a book of short stories. He also just wrote a memoir. They read the same. God, profanity, self-disgust. It's like looking in a mirror.
Lynda Barry. Cartoonist & writer.
I'm not much of a woman.
So when Ms. Barry is writing about the interior struggles of a young woman I should probably feel as if I don't get it.
I do, though.
The comic strip format can train your mind not only for sentences but for film sentences.
The word balloons and having to know what's being seen while somone is talking is crazy good for you.
Go look in the basement for your old ones. Read the Sunday paper.
Let this in as far as you can. Maybe you'll be lucky and it will unman you enough you'll pick up Emily Dickinson again.
Wendell Berry. Farmer. You can tell.
Heck, this could go on for pages, boring you into losing your interest in sitting down with just one writer and letting his or her cadences sound in your head.
But I can't say sentences without naming a few more.
Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, P.G. Wodehouse.
Wislawa Szymborska, Lucille Clifton, Mary Oliver.
I have to stop.
Arrgh.
p.s. If you start with a Jeeves book by P.G. Wodehouse you'll be happy you did.
It sucks to suck.
If I can't write anything good I can still be of use if I can point to writers who can.
Nabokov, Bellow, Helprin, O'Connor, Frost, I know you've heard those names.
Here are some I've been drawn to that aren't as widely appreciated:
1st, a few of the writers I read to learn how to write sentences:
Lee K. Abbott.
Texas. Football. Girls. Hubris. Divorce. Disappointment.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Speeches and writings. Oh my. Visuals. Writing meant to be spoken. Spoken words that live in the air. You want to write commercials on the TV you've got to write sentences people can see. Not even poets do it as well as he did.
Shalom Auslander. This is a book of short stories. He also just wrote a memoir. They read the same. God, profanity, self-disgust. It's like looking in a mirror.
Lynda Barry. Cartoonist & writer.
I'm not much of a woman.So when Ms. Barry is writing about the interior struggles of a young woman I should probably feel as if I don't get it.
I do, though.
The comic strip format can train your mind not only for sentences but for film sentences.
The word balloons and having to know what's being seen while somone is talking is crazy good for you.
Go look in the basement for your old ones. Read the Sunday paper.
Let this in as far as you can. Maybe you'll be lucky and it will unman you enough you'll pick up Emily Dickinson again.Wendell Berry. Farmer. You can tell.
Heck, this could go on for pages, boring you into losing your interest in sitting down with just one writer and letting his or her cadences sound in your head.
But I can't say sentences without naming a few more.
Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, P.G. Wodehouse.
Wislawa Szymborska, Lucille Clifton, Mary Oliver.
I have to stop.
Arrgh.
p.s. If you start with a Jeeves book by P.G. Wodehouse you'll be happy you did.
posted by Fenske at Friday, November 30, 2007
28 Comments:
Speaking of good sentences, I'd like to add...Fenske.
Thanks for your sentences this year. I look forward to many more in the year to come.
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year.
Dear anonymous, I'd love to be in that company of sentence makers. But no.
Merry Christmas.
Annie Proulx taught me to rethink syntax. Cormac McCarthy taught me to rethink (really listen to) dialogue. Pat Conroy taught me to take emitrex when the nausea from realizing I might never be able to write that well really set in.
Try Rick Moody and Amy Hempel, two contemporary authors who create exquisite sentences. One can always find inspiration, too, in the work of Don DeLillo, a man whose work reads as if he’s a jazz musician exploring new frontiers. And then there's the joy of re-reading (or reading) "Moby-Dick,” "Ulysses," “Herzog” and any number of other books from the canon. They’re often daunting, but you’ll get something out of them.
Capote. Perhaps "In Cold Blood" with its long, long, run-on sentences, or "A Christmas Memory" to cure the profanity and self-disgust – which is really just self-indulgence in an ugly form.
David Sedaris wrote a masterfully hilarious piece for Esquire a while back called, "Six to Eight Black Men." It explores the Christmas traditions of other countries and is quite funny.
But I love the visuals that Allen Ginsberg paints in "Howl." It's gritty and you can almost feel the sweat and muck as you turn the page. I washed my hands when I finished reading it the first time.
Raymond Carver. Frederick Douglass. James Joyce, especially "The Dead". Larry Brown. Denis Johnson. Michael Ondaatje, especially "The Collected Works of Billy the Kid". Sylvia Plath. John Berryman. Elizabeth Bishop. William Carlos Williams. Alice Munro. Larry Levis. Frank O'Hara. Virginia Woolf. Toni Morrison.
Ah, Faulkner.
Everyone's list will have variations. The trick is to read them exactly when you need them.
(Except Bishop's 'One Art' -- that one I read every day.)
Hopelessly Anonymous and O'Rielly, I invite you to read the long but excellent essay: A Reader's Manifesto.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107/myers
It is by a professor, not a professional critic, who lays waste to the sentences constructed by Proulx, McCarthy and especially DeLillo. It is excellent reading.
In advertising, we write overarching think-pieces for soft drinks and beer and call them manifestos. But are they really? This is a manifesto. In it, Myers sees the growing pretentiousness in current day literature. He calls bluff on several writers, and he also points out the techniques they use to make their writing sound better than it really is. My personal favorite is the "andelope," "a breathless string of simple declarative statements linked by the conjunction ‘and’". Now I notice unnecessary andelopes all the time. Several appear in Jonathan Lethem's new story in the New Yorker, "The King of Sentences."
When I am asked to write a manifesto, I think back to Myer's piece. How impassioned it is. How he talks more on what he is against than what he is for.
Myers has taught me more about writing than some English classes I took in college.
Mark:
I like the post. I know how it feels to lose your writing focus.
Do you REALLY like Emily Dickinson? Tell me you also love Jane Austen.
James Joyce is the world's best poet...hidden behind storylines.
Hope all is well. I'll take you up on that phone call soon enough... once I'm not too ashamed to fill you in on my progress.
Thanks for everything.
Matt
MJBradley86@gmail.com
Marco. Excellent essay (which I've only just finished... there isn't enough time in my life for the important things). The professor makes a lot of sense. I stand by my comments, though. I've only read one Proulx novel (I am not as well-read as I wish I were!). For all I know, Annie writes that way all of the time, but I perceived the stuttering syntax of The Shipping News l as a reflection of the stuttering inability of its protagonist to effectively navigate his own life. I could be way off-base. As for McCarthy, every father should read The Road. This dialogue between a dad and son traveling a post-apocalyptic landscape is truly remarkable. All of that being said, it's refreshing to see one guy out there, reading modern fiction, and pointing out that sometimes the emperor is not wearing any clothes.
Mark:
I did not realize you enjoy Wendell Berry. Have you read all of his essays? If not, I have one for you. I hope you are enjoying the season.
Wow.
!
A blog worth reading.
I was losing hope.
Thanks, Mark.
How I will continue tapping out meagerness after reading Abbott's "All Things, All At Once" escapes me. Thanks, Fenske. Thanks a lot.
"I haven't written anything good in a month."
TWO MONTHS NOW.
As much as I admire Mark Helprin the novelist, I despise Mark Helprin the political analyst. I wonder if he wakes up at night in damp sheets wondering if writing for The Note somehow lessens his other work.
Perhaps you need just a bit of inspiration. Or perhaps the time calls for you to do something else for a while. Something outside of writing. Whatever happens, thanks for sharing with us your list of good writers. Most of your recommendations are new to me and I would enjoy searching them out in bookstores whenever I can.
Shalom Auslander's new book "Foreskin's Lament" is kick-ass. I think he's accepted imminent hellfire and is now in "fuck it" gear. His writing is reckless. And awesome.
Where art thou?
Mark, I now own a painting. Actually, two. My first real art purchases ever. Two acrylics of a terribly plain highway overpass... a twenty first century take on ecstatic realism - which I first read about here.
Ok, we all want more Fenske. Cough it up.
Mark, we miss your blog. Yes, I know, we get to interact with you once a week in class... but, the blog is 24 hour access.
How bought those Neville Brothers?
I've come to this post many times since it's birth on November 30th. Sadly, I go straight to the comments to see if anyone has left a new comment on this post. Like it's a separate blog in itself. On a side note, I no longer like winter.
I came for a visit. I stayed for a while. I enjoyed myself. The books you read - I will read. Following in your footsteps, or at least trying to make my own.
re: "I haven't written anything good in a month."
maybe because you haven't written anything in 4.
at least not here anyway.
mark has written some mass emails, though. It's a start. And maybe a blog post isn't far behind?
Hey Mark.
Any chance you can add an RSS feed to your site?
td
Dude? Where'd you go?
Anyhow, since we're still on this post, I'll add this from the Richard Powers' description of crane's landing in flocks by the dozen in the opening paragraph of The Echo Maker:
The blood-red head bows and the wings sweep together, a cloaked priest giving benediction.
Mmm hm.
I adore Wodehouse too. And I look forward to your posts. Why aren't you writing anymore?
Please do start blogging again. Your posts are fantastic to read.
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