Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Atlantic article on writerly writing

This is topic Atlantic article on writerly writing in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/writers/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=000513

Posted by reid (Member # 1425) on :

Here is the Myers article that OSC refers to in his current essay. It's worth reading.

Brian

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/07/myers.htm

Posted by Marianne (Member # 1546) on :

I read the article. It made me glad to be a'genre' writer. Now I will go look for OSC's comments

Posted by Tanglier (Member # 1313) on :

I don't know. I think this guy may be crying wolf. I read last year's pulitzer prize winner The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and I thought it was quickly paced and exquisitely told. In every moment I knew why it won the award.

But maybe that's the anamoly.

Posted by Harold Godwinson (Member # 1560) on :

God help me if ever I write anything like that.

Just reading some of the examples made me want to pick up OSC, or Steven King and read them just to get that awful imagry out of my head.

The sad part, those passages were so earnest that I couldn't even laugh at them.

Posted by Kolona (Member # 1438) on :

Kind of reminded me of some of the "talent" on American Idol.

Posted by Tanglier (Member # 1313) on :

Yep, I think I'm the freak because I thoroughly enjoyed just about every Oprah book I've read, and I get bored reading Stephen King.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

He is being unfair to some of the material. For instance:

quote:
In the long unfurling of his life, from tight-wound kid hustler in a wool suit riding the train out of Cheyenne to geriatric limper in this spooled-out year, Mero had kicked down thoughts of the place where he began, a so-called ranch on strange ground at the south hinge of the Big Horns.

This sentance/passage really does work, despite criticism. A "tight-wound" kid unfurls during his life till we get to the "spooled-out" year. It makes sense and is rather evocative.

But the larger criticism is probably valid. Our contemporary critical community is rather facist (in the whole national socialist "writer's union" sense of the word).

Posted by Marianne (Member # 1546) on :

How does one go about 'kicking' down thoughts? Evocative prose is one thing, and then there is the absurd use of words. I rarely read novels of this sort because I get so bogged down in the evocative prose that I lose the story.

I may not be on the fast track to writing award winning novels but I have read and loved literature all my life. I just don't see much being offered today that compares with the writer's of a generation ago. I have been racking my brain trying to think of a writer or a book that I read recently that would be a good example of what I think is literature(not counting SF/F) I have been on an Iris Murdoch and P.D. Wodehouse binge this last year so I can't think of many. The only one I can think of is The Living, by Annie Dillard.

Posted by Tanglier (Member # 1313) on :

Checkout Adventures of Kavalier & Clay or The Poisonwood Bible. If I ever wrote anything as good as those two works, I'd put down my pen and dedicate my life to helping the poor and needy, not writing another single sentence.

[This message has been edited by Tanglier (edited January 24, 2003).]

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

How does one "shrug off" an insult (assuming that the insult has not been written on an object and placed on your shoulder, that is)?

I didn't say that his complaint is without merit, only that in this particular instance it was he, rather than the passage, being deliberately obtuse. Frankly, I have a bit of a problem with "so-called ranch" and not much else (just in this passage, I mean). And I don't really go for current "literary" work (do I even need to say that?). I mean, the passage makes sense, but it really isn't brilliant or anything. It just says that this guy, Mero, has had a long life and changed a lot, but has always avoided thinking about his point of origin. Hardly an earthshaking insight. Nothing like...what's the current OSC quote? Here we go, "It is the downfall of evil, that it never sees far enough ahead." Okay, not extraordinarily profound. My favorite is, "the power to destroy is the only power that matters...because if you cannot kill then you will always be at the mercy of those that can, and nothing and no one will ever save you."

Writing can never be more "brilliant" than what it actually says. The problem with "literary" literature isn't that it doesn't make any sense (though too often it doesn't) but that it doesn't say anything that isn't either trivial or false.