I was in the library today, reading poetry . . .
—————-. . . when I was supposed to be writing prose.
I found a poem called “Berryman,” by W.S. Merwin.
Here’s the last seven lines . . .
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t
–
you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write
I have to share this brilliant piece from The New York Times Sunday Review, March 18, 2012, written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Jhumpa Lahiri. I powerfully identified with it.
In it, she expresses her love of sentences. Everything about this piece confirms, echoes, and expands upon my own feelings as a writer and a reader. Though we’re told that Lahiri’s piece is part of a series about “the art and craft of writing,” it is just as much about reading. Perhaps more so. Teachers, librarians, editors, readers, please check out it.
Art by Jeffrey Fisher.
Here’s the opening . . .
In college, I used to underline sentences that struck me, that made me look up from the page. They were not necessarily the same sentences the professors pointed out, which would turn up for further explication on an exam. I noted them for their clarity, their rhythm, their beauty and their enchantment. For surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a place, a person, a situation, in all its specificity and dimensions. To affect us and alter us, as profoundly as real people and things do.
I remember reading a sentence by Joyce, in the short story “Araby.” It appears toward the beginning. “The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed.” I have never forgotten it. This seems to me as perfect as a sentence can be.
As I’ve said before on this blog, that’s how I read — pen in hand, underlining sentences, making marks, asterisks and exclamation points, my beloved marginalia. But the thought that really had me nodding in agreement was how the best sentences made me stop reading. I looked up from the page, thinking, feeling, dreaming. It’s counter-intuitive. We want readers to keep turning the pages, right? To devour the book, consume it. Well, maybe not. Maybe we want them to slow down, or stop altogether.
From my copy of Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann.
That’s why, I think, that I’m so often uncomfortable when I encounter the counters and the tickers, the well-meaning folks who inform us how they read exactly 214 books this year and so on. I don’t mean to insult anyone, but I’m so tired of the idea of quantity.
Pause and reflection, that’s reading too.
Of course, there are different kinds of reading. Librarians, for example, tend to read with an ultimate user in mind. So he burns through a Percy Jackson book (doesn’t that kill you when folks use that language, burning through a book), wanting to be familiar with it, but mostly thinking, “I can’t wait to give this book to about twelve boys I know.” That’s an altogether different reading experience — and probably a topic for another day.
Speaking of sentences, here’s a sturdy one:
The best sentences orient us, like stars in the sky, like landmarks on a trail.
And in the next paragraph:
They remain the test, whether or not to read something. The most compelling narrative, expressed in sentences with which I have no chemical reaction, or an adverse one, leaves me cold.
This is exactly why I could not continue reading Twilight, for example. For me, there was no spark in the sentences, no electric connection between writer and reader. I couldn’t even get past them to story.
Sentences are the bricks as well as the mortar, the motor as well as the fuel. They are the cells, the individual stitches. Their nature is at once solitary and social. Sentences establish tone, and set the pace. One in front of the other marks the way.
Another sentence to underline:
My work accrues sentence by sentence.
So true, could it be any other way? Bird by bird, sentence by sentence, brick by brick.
I hear sentences as I’m staring out the window, or chopping vegetables, or waiting on a subway platform alone. They are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, handed to me in no particular order, with no discernible logic. I only sense that they are part of the thing.
I talk to students about this in a different way, more about ideas than sentences. Those times when you are thinking that you are not thinking. That’s often when the ideas come, when the sentences, unbidden, line up inside your skull. I know a book is going well when sentences come to me in the shower.
Last thought — and please, go to the original piece, read it in full — I also connected with Ms. Lahiri’s concept of revision:
All the revision I do — and this process begins immediately, accompanying the gestation — occurs on a sentence level. It is by fussing with sentences that a character becomes clear to me, that a plot unfolds. To work on them so compulsively, perhaps prematurely, is to see the trees before the forest. And yet I am incapable of conceiving the forest any other way.
Students are taught the writing process in school, the five steps, brainstorming and so on, that it’s easy to imagine each as isolated, distinct from the other. In fact, many experts advise writers to “just write” in the beginning, get the words on the page, don’t worry about mistakes. And while I understand that point of view, that’s never been how I do it. Revision begins instantaneously, inextricably linked to the writing impulse. In this age of trumpeting daily word counts on status updates — “1,687 words today!” — it’s nice to read that maybe I haven’t been doing it completely wrong after all.
When something is in proofs I sit in solitary confinement with them. Each is confronted, inspected, turned inside out. Each is sentenced, literally, to be part of the text, or not. Such close scrutiny can lead to blindness. At times — and these times terrify — they cease to make sense. When a book is finally out of my hands I feel bereft. It is the absence of all those sentences that had circulated through me for a period of my life. A complex root system, extracted.
I have just been through this with my upcoming book, Before You Go (Macmillan, July 2012).
And though all my favorite writers are great sentence-makers, with this novel I came closest to that ideal. This book has my best sentences. Each confronted, inspected, turned inside out. Yes, the sentences are vehicles for ideas, feelings; they carry story on their shoulders. But story itself consists solely of sentences, sounds, rhythms, meanings. And now that my book is at the printer — hey, before you go! — too late, too late! — I too feel a bit bereft.
The only way out of that hole is to write a new story. Sentence by sentence.
Go here to learn more about Jhumpa Lahiri.
Conversational and accessible, Frank O’Hara’s poems read as if he jotted them down on a scrap of paper during lunch break, or told you them as you walked down the hall. Don’t let the surface casualness fool you, the man could write and he did it with care. This is one of my favorites, and one of the best poems ever written about the creative process and its attendant mysteries.
Why I Am Not a Painter
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters, “It was too much,” Mike says.But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.
Here’s Michael Goldberg’s expressionist painting, “Sardines.”
Lastly, below, Frank O’Hara reading “My Heart,” because it is always a thrill to hear the poet’s actual voice, his pauses and cadences, the sound his own work makes.
Don’t you think?
I just read Joan Didion’s new book, Blue Nights.
She’s just an amazing writer, so precise. I’d follow her mind anywhere. And this book is particularly remarkable, not only for the content, but for the style — the texture of the thought as much as the thoughts themselves, if the two can separated. Brief and fractured, at times clear and direct and yet elusive, slippery, the book takes on the qualities of a prose poem.
It struck me that Didion in this book writes as an elderly woman in her late 70’s, from that specific place, the way her thoughts (and sentences) keep circling back, almost forgetful, picking up dropped threads, weaving them into loose patterns, drifting back again, and plunging forward as if reluctantly, yet determined to arrive . . . at something. There’s a frailty here, the uncertainty of any old brittle-boned body, picking a cautious path down the sidewalk, fearful of losing her balance, falling. Reading it, I thought of my own mother, age 85 or 6, who knows anymore, and the new palpable fear she experiences stepping off a curb, walking to the mailbox, wondering when gravity will be her undoing. And yet out into this perilous world she bravely steps.
Two things:
First, look at this photograph, the peculiar pose, that thin right arm, hand rested on her right shoulder, and that clear-eyed gaze. What an intimate photograph by Anthony Dunne.
Second, let us now marvel, and reread over and again as we gape with admiration and open-jawed awe at the punctuation, pace, and mastery of writer Joan Didion (pp. 140-141, Blue Nights):
—–And yet:
—–And still:
—–Despite all evidence:
—–Despite recognizing that my skin and my hair and even my cognition are all reliant on the estrogen I no longer have:
—–Despite recognizing that I will not again wear the red suede sandals with the four-inch heels and despite recognizing that the gold hoop earrings and the black cashmere leggings and the enameled beads no longer exactly apply:
—–Despite recognizing that for a woman my age even to note such details of appearance will be contrued by many as a manifestation of misplaced vanity:
—–Despite all that:
—–Nonetheless:
—–That being seventy-five could present as a significantly altered situation, an altogether different “it,” did not until recently occur to me.
Here’s an earlier photo, similarly shielded, creating an interesting echo. Which brings me to the third thing: I’d love to have lunch with this woman, just sit at the same table, talk. Hey, a guy can dream.
As an author, mine was not the story of the wide-eyed boy who loved weekly trips to the library, the happy ritual of laden arms lugging home precious treasures. No, we didn’t do that stuff in my family. For starters, my mother didn’t drive. Besides I was a do-er, not a sit-around-and-read-er. So I came late to children’s books. The first time I read Where the Wild Things Are or Harold and the Purple Crayon, for example, was as a 24-year-old junior copywriter, living in Brooklyn in a railroad apartment, and working on the Scholastic Book Clubs. That’s when I first appreciated children’s literature, if you’ll pardon the expression.
I realized that there was more here than met the eye, that a children’s book, in the hands of a true artist, could be as psychologically deep and powerful as any other work of art. It changed my whole way of thinking about children’s books — and about what they (and I) could aspire to become.
I was reminded of that dawning while I read Carmen Deedy’s new book, co-authored with Randall Wright, The Cheshire Cheese Cat — a clever romp, certainly, a delightful fast-paced read, yes, a charming tweak on historical fiction, surely, but also . . . more. This is simply a lovely, near-perfectly rendered work, with surprising depth at its core, marvelously illustrated by the great Barry Moser. After reading it, I asked my friend Carmen if she wouldn’t mind answering a few questions. And look, here she comes now.
I take it the Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub is an actual place on Fleet Street, in London, and you’ve been there. Was that for research, or did the idea for the book originate from that visit?
The blame lies squarely on the shoulders of the organizers of a lovely Welsh event, the Beyond the Border Storytelling Festival. In 2002, I was invited to tell stories on the grounds of a 13th Century castle. No lie. As if that were not fanciful enough, on our first night in London we stumbled (by purest happenstance) upon this gem:
My three daughters were with me that night and everyone began to talk at once. Rebuilt in 1667? Hadn’t the Great Fire of London taken place in 1666? That meant this inn had been rebuilt a mere sixty-three years after the death of Queen Elizabeth! Once inside, we discovered a place as enchanting, anachronistic, and mysterious, as we could have wished for. As we stood in the small entryway and looked around, one of the girls leaned toward me and whispered, “Best Harry Potter set, EVER . . .“
I’ll say. A more thorough investigation of the premises turned up this:
(Think of it as the British equivalent of “George Washington Slept Here.”)
The idea for the story came from a game of “What If?” What if . . . every mouse in London with means had come to the inn, in search of the best cheese in the realm? And what if . . . the cats were there for mice? But, what if . . . ONE of those cats hated eating mice. Rather, he secretly loved, um, cheese?
It struck me that here is a book that delights in language. You were inspired, in part, by words themselves. And you didn’t hold back.
We second-guessed ourselves more than once. Still, my fellow writer (Randall Wright) and I had decided from the onset that we wanted to tell the story in language that was reminiscent of books we had loved as children. If those stories engaged us, we would faithfully slog through unfamiliar words and odd phrases. And if we had prevailed, we reasoned, why shouldn’t today’s children be able to do the same? We decided to trust our young readers.
Oh, that’s interesting. I was just expressing a similar thought to my editor, Liz Szabla, about my upcoming young adult novel, Before You Go. It’s a story that takes some time to introduce characters, explore setting, set wheels in motion. It’s not plot, plot, plot every step of the way. On bad days, I worry about that: Does the book start too slow? Are those first 50 pages not dramatic enough? And ultimately I came to the same conclusion as you did, that I have to trust in my readers. That is, that they actually like to read.
I can’t wait to read Before You Go! Sounds wonderfully beguiling. When do I get that Advanced Reader’s Copy? Nudge, nudge.
Hold that thought. The book’s not out until July, and the ARC seems far away. I can’t wait for it, I’m super proud of it, but . . . we’re not here to discuss me. I’m sorry I brought the whole thing up. You were saying?
Once we decided to use words we loved, we dove into the text with semantic abandon. It was so liberating that, frankly, we went a little nuts. Before the Great Vocabulary Purging we had over six hundred higher level words—words that were not anywhere near the suggested lexile for middle grade readers. Worse yet, they had begun to interfere with the story. That was the deal breaker. We ultimately replaced, removed, or contextually defined over 500 words. Nonetheless, with a nod from our brilliant and long-suffering editor, we still managed to subtly retain many words of which we were particularly fond –– roughly seventy. We then added a glossary as part of the back matter . . . and decided, once again, to trust the young whippersnappers.
That’s the writing process, isn’t it? Get it all down on paper. You can always pull back in later revisions.
Absolutely. My first drafts are pitiful in the extreme. It takes me four or five rewrites to stop cringing as I edit. And I swear, every few years I seem to end up sharing a table with an author who will drolly insist, “I just sit down and write without much revision at all.” Where do these people come from? I think they grow them under florescent lights in some green house in Nova Scotia.
In a crucial moment, the feline protagonist, Skilley, is advised by Maldwyn the Raven, “You want the truth, Master Skilley? Then find out just what manner of cat you really are . . . and brazenly, unabashedly, boldly, be that cat.” Of course, that’s the toughest task of all, isn’t it? Be yourself. Especially for a middle grader, looking at everybody else for social cues, who to talk to, what to listen to, what movies to like, how to dress, who to sit with, and so forth. Tough on cats, too.
Tough on Skilley, that’s for certain. But the careful reader may find that Skilley’s greatest challenge is not, in fact, protecting the mice, neither is it out-witting Pinch, or even returning Maldwyn to the Tower –– but rather becoming, well . . . Skilley.
“Outing” himself as a lover of cheese, as it were.
Here I am, world, my true self. Emerson had some thoughts on this topic . . .
Because the storyline is meant to appeal to a “chapter book” crowd, we tried to tackle difficult subjects by couching them in language that softened their gravity; friendlessness, abuse, betrayal, death . . . okay, and we spared Too.
I have to admit this here. Too was not meant to live. I mean, the mouse was DEAD until the near final draft. Great pressure was brought to bear, however; the Save Too lobbyists were small, but thunderous in their disapproval of her death. We caved. Since the book was released, I’ve had a couple of elementary readers tell me it was a good thing Too didn’t die or they would’ve been reeeeeeeeally mad. Phew.
I’m a pretty tough-minded person when it comes to stories. I want them to be true, not phony, and certainly not convenient. But that has to be balanced with an awareness of your reading audience. Their expectations don’t have to be met, exactly, but they do need to be considered. For that age group, I felt that Too’s survival was appropriate.
I confess that I was happy to pull a Lazarus for little Too.
Because I’ve heard you speak a couple of times over the years, I guessed that there might have been a bit of your father in the character Maldwyn. That no-nonsense, tough-minded advice the Raven gives about apologies:
“It is not enough to say you are sorry. You must utterly own the terrible thing you have done. You must cast no blame on the one you’ve injured. Rather, accept every molecule of the responsibility, even if reason and self-preservation scream against it. Then, and only then, will the words ‘I am sorry’ have meaning.”
My father is 87 years old and the finest storyteller I know; his stories are very real, and if they do teach you something, they don’t bludgeon you with truth. And he is funny. Funny is something Maldwyn doesn’t “do.” He’s a bit too self-important. And yet, I do adore Maldwyn. The old thing is petulant and snappish. And it would be easy, and understandable, to misread him. But I suspect that beneath Maldwyn’s curmudgeonish exterior there is a wealth of sadness and conflict. He has betrayed his Queen and his country (at least under the very strict code of honor he holds himself to), and yet somehow he knows, I think, that to forbid a bird his right to flight is a harsh sacrifice for Queen and country to exact.
You co-wrote the book with Randall Wright. What was your process for that –- and what led you to make the choice of collaborating. Pure laziness?
Nope –– paralyzing fear, more like; the fear of uncorking what might be an unending flow of words. I like perimeters; rubrics comfort me. I mean, once you tell picture book writers to disregard the word count, they are often undone for days. It’s . . . dizzying. Lucky for me, I met Randall Wright. Randall and I were working at a children’s conference. We were seated next to one another at a dinner table and quickly engaged in the requisite “So what are you working on?” author swap. I’d been recently toying with Pip and Skilley, so I told him the story.
Randall had published several YA novels with Henry Holt. He kept saying things such as, “It’s just like a picture book, Deedy. You just keep writing until you don’t have anything left to say .” Then he’d start laughing. I’ll admit I toyed with the idea of poking him in the eye with my salad fork — but I didn’t. As Pip would say, we weren’t close enough friends for that yet. By the time the meal was over, we had agreed to collaborate.
You guys seem really inspired by the literary tradition, particularly the multi-scene, fast-paced ending –- the mouse, Pip, melting away in the cooking pot, the ferocious battle between Pinch and Maldwyn, and Queen Victoria’s startling arrival. As writers, you must have felt like circus entertainers, all those plates spinning at once.
I’m afraid we made our own heads spin a bit. But we enjoyed building up to those final scenes. Admittedly, toward the end of the book we felt as though we were in the midst of a game of literary high-stakes Jenga. Can we add just one more element? Will the whole thing topple?
The rewrites, research, and fact checking, were endless, as well. And I loved it to bits. Truly. Research is my favorite part of writing. Since I’ve mentioned research, if your readers want to know more about ravens, Dickens, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, etc., please check out the new website: www.cheshirecheesecat.com
Oh, dear. This is awkward. I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding. I don’t actually have, um, what one might call actual readers, per say. I’ve had folks stop by, but usually it’s by mistake, a search gone terribly wrong. You didn’t think that this conversation would actually help your career in any way? That there would be . . . readers?
Sorry, kid. I’ve been to the blog and I’m on to you. You don’t have readers, you have FOLLOWERS.
Followers? I kind of doubt it. Besides, I prefer to think of them as my zombie hordes. And I mean that in the nicest way possible, people. Nothing a good dermatologist couldn’t fix. They are doing incredible things with embalming fluid and Botox these days.
I know you are deep into Dickens. Without thinking too hard, can you name one thing you admire about his work?
Hmmm. Names. He was brilliant at creating names for his characters. Here’s a sample: Magwich. Sweedlepipe. Drood. Pecksniff. Havisham. Pumblechook. Sykes. Bumble. According to Greenfield’s Dictionary of Literary Characters, Dickens created 989 named characters in his career!
Charles Dickens himself becomes a minor but crucial character in the story. In fact, you even write in the voice of Dickens in his journal. No shortage of guts, have you? I would have found that terrifying.
Randall wrote most of the first drafts for Dickens’ journal. Our system –– one that quickly emerged on that first writing weekend –– was for each of us to take on a chapter, which would then be edited or even rewritten by the other person. After the edit or rewrite, back to the original author it would go. We would continue to pass a chapter back and forth fifteen or twenty times before we signed off on it and moved on. I don’t know if this would serve as a model for other writing teams, but we found it to be a great system for us.
As to writing in dear Boz’s voice? I know, I know. Leave that sort of cheek to Americans. But we did so with fear and trepidation, truly . . . gulp. Next question, please? Would you like to know how old I am?
That sounds like a trick question. A trap! So I’ll sidestep that, thank you very much, in favor of another one. Barry Moser’s illustrations strike me as exactly right. How lucky are you to be so well published. Tell us about when you first saw his illustrations.
Barry is brilliant. Period. I first discovered him twenty years ago and have been his shameless acolyte to this day. As you can imagine, I was over the moon when he agreed to illustrate the book. Randall and I love every character that Barry’s keen mind and graphite pencil have rendered –– although I will admit the battle scenes are among my favorites. Huzzah, Mr. B!
Good luck with this book, Carmen. I’m so proud of you. It’s already received starred reviews from School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus — you must be thrilled. Look, I don’t read enough contemporary children’s literature to make an informed opinion on what should or shouldn’t win a Newbery Medal. However, I did accurately predict both The Graveyard Book (though I didn’t think it deserved the actual Medal) and When You Reach Me. Like most folks, I didn’t know about last year’s winner, Moon Over Manifest. (And by the way, that was very nice — to be surprised at a time when the so-called “kidlitosphere” has made it almost too easy to quickly and decisively form the illusion of consensus, even if, in reality, it represents only .001 percent of readers; to me, the Moon Over Manifest selection was as if the traditional establishment reasserted itself and said, “Not so fast, bloggers! We decide.”)
Anyway, about the Newbery . . . um, Carmen, are you all right? You look pale. Why have you got your eyes and ears plugged? Don’t you want to talk about the Newbery?
Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalala.
Okay, well, I can see that we’re out of time. I’ve just received word that there’s no more space on the internet. Please accept this hefty log of Kraft Velveeta Cheese as a token of our appreciation. And good luck with the book!
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