Just read this in the back of a car to the airport and will be back (maybe) with cohesive thoughts but needed to say I loved reading this so much. So much wisdom from both of you! Thank you.
This was really good. There are a bunch of issues but the one I want to isolate is the question of writing about certain life events that are common, on the one hand, but utterly unique on the other--because they're happening to us, and though there's commonality, each event in the history of the universe is a one-off. I used to tell my writing students: Everyone's mother dies. I put it that way so it would get their attention . . . I wanted them to think about the need to create an artifact that moves people, that transforms the experience, via art, from the solely personal to the more-than-solely-personal. I used to point to the writing about AIDS: when AIDS was new and little known, it was enough to describe it; but later it seemed that this was no longer enough--yawn, another AIDS memoir/story . . . I continue to believe than any story, if told with clarity and depth and passion and energy, can move us, no matter how familiar the category it falls under [because things only happen once]. That said, it was interesting to see how writers began to transform the AIDS story by way of art. The first story I read that did this was Susan Sontag's "The Way We Live Now" [at the time I didn't even know that this was a consciously chosen Trollope title]. Forgive me if you know this piece, but, quickly: She presents what was becoming a common experience in a formally inventive way . . . I have to admit I didn't pick up on this myself when I first read it; the story is about a community of friends, one of whom is sick; the sick one isn't named [he's the hub, the friends are the spokes], the 26 friends are each named for a letter of the alphabet . . . it's a long string of observations. rumors, etc.--as in [I'm making this up since I don't have a copy at hand]: Gus says he saw him last week and he hopeful, but Terry said he heard that he couldn't climb stairs very well, which Lee confirmed . . . And so on. It's like there's "a disturbance in the force." The other story I loved that had this sense of transforming the material is "In the Gloaming" by Alice Elliott Dark--a young man comes home to die; his mother takes care of him; at the very end the father asks the mother what their son was like . . . it's a heart-rending little move that pounded me.
Sorry to go on so long here, but I think writing about cancer is a crucial example of this particular problem in art-making.
Thanks David -- and yes, it's the eternal conundrum. What to do with such utterly universal yet individual stories? I don't know the Sontag piece but I will look it up.
Just read this in the back of a car to the airport and will be back (maybe) with cohesive thoughts but needed to say I loved reading this so much. So much wisdom from both of you! Thank you.
Thank you!
This was really good. There are a bunch of issues but the one I want to isolate is the question of writing about certain life events that are common, on the one hand, but utterly unique on the other--because they're happening to us, and though there's commonality, each event in the history of the universe is a one-off. I used to tell my writing students: Everyone's mother dies. I put it that way so it would get their attention . . . I wanted them to think about the need to create an artifact that moves people, that transforms the experience, via art, from the solely personal to the more-than-solely-personal. I used to point to the writing about AIDS: when AIDS was new and little known, it was enough to describe it; but later it seemed that this was no longer enough--yawn, another AIDS memoir/story . . . I continue to believe than any story, if told with clarity and depth and passion and energy, can move us, no matter how familiar the category it falls under [because things only happen once]. That said, it was interesting to see how writers began to transform the AIDS story by way of art. The first story I read that did this was Susan Sontag's "The Way We Live Now" [at the time I didn't even know that this was a consciously chosen Trollope title]. Forgive me if you know this piece, but, quickly: She presents what was becoming a common experience in a formally inventive way . . . I have to admit I didn't pick up on this myself when I first read it; the story is about a community of friends, one of whom is sick; the sick one isn't named [he's the hub, the friends are the spokes], the 26 friends are each named for a letter of the alphabet . . . it's a long string of observations. rumors, etc.--as in [I'm making this up since I don't have a copy at hand]: Gus says he saw him last week and he hopeful, but Terry said he heard that he couldn't climb stairs very well, which Lee confirmed . . . And so on. It's like there's "a disturbance in the force." The other story I loved that had this sense of transforming the material is "In the Gloaming" by Alice Elliott Dark--a young man comes home to die; his mother takes care of him; at the very end the father asks the mother what their son was like . . . it's a heart-rending little move that pounded me.
Sorry to go on so long here, but I think writing about cancer is a crucial example of this particular problem in art-making.
And again, thanks for this interview/dialog.
Thanks David -- and yes, it's the eternal conundrum. What to do with such utterly universal yet individual stories? I don't know the Sontag piece but I will look it up.