Writers: Advice! Flannery O'Connor! DeLillo! Murakami! Nabokov! Sentences!

  I find that knowing something of the writer's background is helpful for me in understanding their work. I should have been a historian, I tend towards categorizing writers not by personality but historical epoch. One thing wholly lacking in prison is information. The federal Bureau of Prisons is quite terrified of the internet, so no Google. This lack of information aids in infantilizing prisoners. This is part of a series of writers that I did look up when I got internet access. Some will be about the writer, and others may feature the writer. I went to YouTube for my main source, but others will also include some other material relating to the book or author discussed. One thing I did not have when younger was access to information about how writers wrote. I think that kept me from understanding the actual work, which, in turn, led me away from writing.

Let me begin by saying Ian, the presenter of the Write Conscious videos, might need less caffeine in his life. I also think he makes good points; just you may need to backtrack the video to get those points. On the other hand, it is hard to fault anyone with this enthusiasm for writers and their work.

Flannery O'Connor on How to Write a Transformative Novel

I know O'Connor wrote only one novel; like Alice Munro she is a writer of short stories. Not that takes away from the video's themes. She is also known as a Catholic writer. That religious background does not lead to bad art; just the opposite. Take the idea of redemption - a religious idea rooted deep in Christianity. There is also the inherent drama of humanity - our blending of good and bad - is a religious idea. No, I have not read nearly enough of O'Connor, but what I have read leaves the feeling of a tart intellect behind her work.

For a short video tour of Flannery O'Connor's work to give you a taste of her work:

I did not read Cormac McCarthy until I wound up in prison, then Joel C gave me Blood Meridian to read. As I have said repeatedly, this novel zapped my brain - it was so many things that I never thought could be mixed told in ways I did not think could be done - and I went on to read as much of McCarthy as Fort Dix's leisure library had in stock. There was only one of his Southern novels mentioned in the video below, so I did not connect him with Southern Gothic. Now that it is pointed out to me, it seems rather obvious. However, I would say Blood Meridian is a Southern Gothic transplanted to the West; that there remains a streak of grotesque in the Western stories. In the end, there are connections between writers - inspiration to follow or inspiration to contest - that, as the presenter says, leads us to the next level.

Haruki Murakami On How Much You Should Write Per Day

Haruki Murakami was only a name before I went to prison. There I found 1Q94 (see my Books: Murakami;s 1Q84, and after that I had to read everything I could. Generally, I discount much when reading a translation - like style, for starters - and focus more on the plot and idea and characters. Murakami brought in fantasy or the supernatural into his literary fiction. Strangeness. All this added to the world's reality. Nothing like I had seen American fiction. Much criticism of Murakami centers on the plainness of his prose. Sorry, if you write a novel about an alternate earth, then plain prose lets one process the story. My other posts having something to do with Murakami are here.

In the post reference above, there is a link to an essay, Reading 1Q84: The Case for Fiction in a Busy Life (The Millions), that I could not open at the time. Now, I can. Go figure that out.

But I did read the book, that night and every night after for a month, and I found that as I read 1Q84 and got deeper into Tengo’s and Aomame’s stories, I stopped questioning the purpose of fiction and instead began to see reading 1Q84 as one of the few necessary things I did all day. The reasons for the change of heart had to do with wonder, with love, and with the way literature provides for the best parts of who we are.

1Q84 is long (nearly 1,000 pages) and wildly imaginative, but at heart it’s a simple love story. Tengo and Aomame, both 30 years old, shared a singular, intense moment as children, disappeared from each other’s lives, and have been trying to recapture that kind of intimacy ever since. As 1Q84 opens they fall into an alternate world which is sinister and illogical, but which gives them the chance to find each other again.

***

Later, after I’d left Jay’s room, I realized that while being a parent is tiring and sometimes boring, it also means that all I have to do is walk upstairs to experience a feeling that, like Aomame said, is akin to salvation. I also thought about all the hours I’d spent reading 1Q84, and suddenly it seemed clear why it had been a worthwhile way to spend my time: When life wears us down, great fiction gives us back our human shape.

Murakami is known as a workhorse and a runner. These seem to be interconnected, according to the following videos (the first does it lightly and in 8 minutes; the other goes into a deep dive of Murakmi's writing methods, which I paid close attention to - application, steady going):

I also read two of Anthony Trollope's novels in prison. I enjoyed reading him; not as much as Thomas Hardy, but more than Dickens (sorry, but I have an aversion to Dickens, for all I also respect him). Well, one of the knocks on Trollope is that he wrote 1000 words a day; he plugged away with a Protestant work ethic. This sounds like Murakami in the video directly above. 

Also calculated to displease was Trollope’s attitude toward the whole notion of artistic “inspiration,” which he regarded with undisguised scorn. “To me,” he wrote, “it would not be more absurd if the shoemaker were to wait for inspiration.” What mattered to Trollope was application. His discipline was legendary. According to the famous story recounted in the Autobiography, he paid his groom £5 a year extra to wake him at 5:00 A.M. so that he could be at his desk by 5:30. “I do not know that I ought not to feel that I owe more to him than to any one else for the success I have had,” Trollope reflected. “By beginning at that hour, I could complete my literary labor before I dressed for breakfast.”

A novelist who hunted the fox: Anthony Trollope today (The New Criterion)

I seem to recall something like this criticism applied to Murakami, but not to the point that it has destroyed his career.g

How Vladimir Nabokov Wrote Novels (Detailed Guide)

Nabokov was certainly a name during my lifetime. I never thought of reading him until I got to prison. Surprisingly, there were some of his novels in the prison leisure library (I should say that library was supplied by the inmate donations; the prison did not supply us with books.) I still have not decided how I feel about Nabokov; other posts on Nabokov here. He is a grand writer, but one whose style and intellectual depth are beyond me. I read Pnin as well as Lolita, and the writing is grand and beautiful.

Vladimir Nabokov on The Art of Deception in Writing:

I have had a little of this in my own stuff. No, this character is not you. Yes, you did these things, but not for these reasons. Or she looks like you, but you never did this. There is trying to use experiences to get a rootedness in a fictional word. That is one way I see the deceptiveness in writing fiction; the other is the sleight-of-hand of exchanging reality for fiction.

From a different source, Vladimir Nabokov discusses "Lolita" part 2 of 2:

Listen to how he talks about his creative process.

Don DeLillo on Why ANYONE Can Write a Great Novel

I do try to write good sentences, so I agree with the video's emphasis on sentences. A good sentence is an invitation to read onto the next and then onto the next and so on until the end. However, I think my sentences are clunky; that I seem to do paragraphs better than sentences.

I found this video helpful for writing a sentence, albeit some items I learned long ago and hopefully have followed! (Reminders are needed by all of us.)

Style as morality... I am not sure what is moral about prose. It is not Hemingwayesque terseness and far from Faulknerian grandness. Maybe a little Thomas Wolfe still seeps in when I get rolling emotionally; maybe a little Proust at those moments when everything comes crashing together. I remain too much a Midwestern for grandiosity. Which can also lead me to fear I suffer from a Theodore Dreiser-style ponderous plainness. Such are the thoughts raised by this last, and shortest video.

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