Lee raises an interesting point and a dilemma in his first point, and the question becomes: To whom should a person turn as a model for writing well? Elmore Leonard or Marcel Proust? I leave that question unanswered because the answer depends upon the goals of the writer. As for Lee's second point, I would counter with the observation that most good poetry (to me) "sounds" like someone speaking rather than "looks" like someone having written.; for example, there is very little in Wordsworth's and Coleridge's LYRICAL BALLADS that falls into "looking" like that latter but instead "sounds" like the former. Check it out by "listening" to the poetry rather than "looking" at it. Just a thought.
Faulkner: "If it sounds like writing, it's not long and convoluted enough. Make it sound like poetry infused with mescaline, use words like 'catafalque.'"
(Mind you, I say this as someone who adores WF and has read just about everything he ever wrote....)
It depends on what you want to write and the kind of writer you are. I'm in the natural, write-like-you-speak school, which is to say the plain style. Like all good writers, Dutch Leonard (whom I was with last night) knows to avoid doing what he doesn't do well. He told a questioner that there are two reasons he doesn't use similes. One is that he thinks they impede the flow of the narrative. The other is that "I can never think of any." As for poetry, I don't think anybody has ever talked like a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, but plenty of people talk like a Frank O'Hara poem.
Well, I suppose you've got it right about much of Hopkins' poetry, though other poets' use of both rhymed and unrhymed iambic pentameter, for example, is wonderfully melodic and "conversational" in its rhythm and impact. (Of course, that's just the English literature teacher speaking, so consider the source.) Yes, the foregoing sounds perhaps a bit like old-fashioned recitation, but it sounds better than the kind of conversational English that one hears around campus these days. (For example, if we could strike the words "like" and "you know" from vocabularies, too many students will be speechless, which can be a good thing.) Still, notwithstanding your objection, it would be entertaining to hear something like Hopkins' "sprung rhythm" in spoken English as it would certain enliven (and pleasantly complicate) conversations.
Oh, I have no objection whatever to Hopkins or his poetry. He is one of my all-time favorites. I just don't think he was aiming at the conversational. As for the appalling use of "like" and "you know," I cannot agree more. I was walking up Broad Street yesterday, on my way to introduce Elmore Leonard at the Library, and right behind was a young couple - college age - and all I kept hear was "I was, like..." Of course, no simile followed followed because, like Dutch, they couldn't think of one.
What a great word, Susan, catafalque. Got it. Got it. Want it. Got it. (BTW, bet that wuz you I heard cheering Yippee-Yahoo when Annette Gordon-Reed won the History Pulitzer, eh? We's batting a grand: Picked the WS winners from the beginning and fell in love with Sally. Coolness :).) Hope all'swell with you 'n' yours; Frank says you're teaching' and, that, in these harsh econotimes, sounds great.
You met Mr. EL, Frank? OMGulp, I am thrilled for you. What a delightful adventure it must've been. Hope you write about it so we can all share in your encounter. I R impressed (and, jellis-happy).
Lee, I'm with you on this one; and, I couldn't think of a more exemplary writer to whom we could tell it on the mountain than Proust. No slight intended, if that's what my disagreement on this with EL involves.
The question I want to ask? If it doesn't sound "like writing," then how does it sound; or, does he simply mean that writing which draws attention to itself instead of drawing the reader into its realm ought not see the light of day prior to visiting the rewrite sweetheart? Then, I agree with him. If you find yourself outside the reach of a work examining its strings and pulleys, certainly.
During the years I taught or wrote in rez and participated in workshops, I would often begin by asking cohorts to tell a story using only verbs; then, only nouns; and, finally, writing without either over-used simile. Never use 'em in my own work and ain't ever heard anyone positively justify the use of 'em (since both make writing sound, well, you know :)).
The Black Mountaineers really did wrestle with the entire issue surrounding no idea but in things (which Penelope Fitzgerald extended to include no idea but in thinks although, natch, I'm paraphrasing).
Things exist in and of themselves. A good writer captures that essence; but, once a writer begins to compare or contrast "x" with "y," I wanna cry. So, Frank, I do agree with you concerning their use and abuse; but, kids who say it was, y'know, like orgasmic when A-Fraud got outta his hotrod and like, showed off his fab HGH bod, like, I think "like" in that kind of, like speech and writing, that kind of "like" doesn't aim to be a simile without a climax; rather, it's like, more a stop-gap in thought, more an "um" thing than a comparison thing, IMO.
You do write in a quite natural voice, Frank; but, achieving that effect and acing that style requires a great deal of work, IMO. If is sounds conversational and succeeds, it most assuredly does so because the work it undergoes often makes one wonder why one writes at all (or, I'm generalising; but, it's hard to look easy or, mebbe, invoking Dolly Parton, it costs lots to look cheap).
You're a meat-and-potato writerly type; others prefer haute cuisine when it comes to cooking with (out) gaseousness. One style doesn't trump the other; both, if done well and properly, allow the reader to forget the fact they're reading which, IMO, ought to rank right up there, in terms of successful writing, with the idea that one must know all the rules of grammar, stylistics, linguistics, et omnia alia in order to break 'em.
And, like you, Hopkins is, y'know, one of my all-time faves, too; but, he revelled in a high-octane richword gush-gash glowflow that worked for him; a reader does pay attention to the form and the voice; but, it doesn't work against absorbing the poem entire. His words melt in my mind, magnificent feasts that satisfy all the senses. Spontaneous combustiosity never had it so like, grandeuristic.
Frank, my answer to Leonard would be that I want to impede the flow of narrative. It all depends on how - and of course why.
A plain style is nothing like natural speaking: witness how long it takes to master such a style. Reminds me of gorgeously casual, windblown haircuts of some photo models. Try to look that way without a professional stylist in tow (and his bag of tools & tricks).
I'm stuffed full of shit - whoops, I meant similes. My bad.
Actually, Leonard's point is quite simple. Just as an actor, no matter who he is playing, cannot look like he's acting, so a writer can't look like he's writing. The example Leonard gave as an illustration Thursday night was (I think), "Upon entering the room ..." No one talks like that and no one should write like that. Whatever style you choose, it has to go smoothly, seem natural (on its terms). As for impeding the narrative, well that means your aim is different from his. He wants his narrative to have a steady forward thrust. You want yours to hover and glide at times. Literature is large enough to accommodate both.
Permit me to weigh in on the topic from a different angle of attack: Too much contemporary fiction sounds too much like contemporary conversation (complete with endless streams of profanity and crass diction), and--as I noted earlier--that is, like, really, you know, like not cool. You know?
In the LA Times today, "[l]ike his heroes, Leonard doesn't do small-talk. He sits at his table and discusses the origins of 'Road Dogs'" his latest book.
>I'm stuffed full of shit - whoops, I meant similes. My bad.<<
That sounds like shiting — whoops, I meant writing. My good . . .ness!
You're good as goad, Dahlink LLL :) . . . and, for that reason among millions more, you (and all) deserve a fine (if not like, totally, like, OTW non-sequiturn) groaniachal chuckle this drizzle-grey mooday j'espere lifts everyone's spirits (since it's snowing here):
This, sent to me by mon ami, Eric may well be among the funniest and silliest jokes of all time; but, it's one of my new faves, ranking (rally :)) right up there with the peep-squeak penguins and the flying blondie shortie smile-catchers:
MOUSE vs MOUSE (on Why Mickey Wants to Divorce Minnie)
Mickey, our hapless penitential petitionearist, comes before the judge to explain and defend his reason for wanting a divorce from Minnie. (Cue either Perry Mason ThemeToon or Dragnet's moody-broody one; or, oddly even, Take It Away, Eric the Orchestra Leader!*) . . .
JUDGE: I repeat, Mickey, er, Mr. Mouse, I don't believe your reason for divorcing Mrs. Mouse cuts the mustard in legal terms. Sorry. You can't divorce Mrs. Mouse or, as you call her, Minnie, solely because you say she's crazy.
MICKEY: B-b-but, Your Hono(u)r . . . with all due respect, honestly! I didn't say Minnie was crazy! I said she was f---ing Goofy :).
* Name that ref (no G'Ogling) ======== R. T., if you could cite an example that shows the kind of writing you're describing (since, right now, I'm thinking DFW and/or Pynchon; but, IMO, you didn't mean theirs; but, do you mean, like, Jay McInerney or Richard Ford or Joyce C. Oates or . . .)?
Dave, that link sheds bulbs of light upon this discussion. Thanks for it; I've copied and pasted it; so, now, it's in the same file with William Safire's How Not to Write: The Essential Misrules of Grammar (Norton, 2005). EL does mean what I suggested earlier, does believe writing that draws attention to itself rather than allowing the reader express transport away from the mannered (or whatevs) needs rewriting.
So, yes, I'd go, Sweetheart, Get Me a Timmeh :). Too, although I've not gone and parked browser at the LA Times yet, he doesn't do small talk nor weather, as his list proves.
Don't blame him; but, have you ever tried telling someone, in the small-talk weather sitch, FOAD, I'll keep using my Leave It to Beaver umbrella till the cows keel over? It's a good convo-stopper; but, you lose friends and alienate others ipso-quickso.
But, right, Lee. Context does matter in this instance. Sometimes, we do want to draw attention to form (vs content; and, that's part of what great writing accomplishes as well. You absorb the reader; then, shazam! You turn pyro-techniquelling tricks that demand a disconnect. Joyce, of course, the obvious maestro of this; but, a lot of writers deploy it. I'm thinking, like, Vonnegut or, um, Byatt (especially in Possession) which might represent one example of the extreme use of the device.
Still, when you're writing something, do you consciously ensure you don't go there (to "like" and "as"); or, have you so banished their usage that it's simply part of the process and no longer a conscious effort?
The closest I come to answering that rhetorical one? I do allow "not unlike" to stand in my work; but, like, otherwise, no. If you cannot relay that which exists without comparing or contrasting with some other thing, you're simply lazy or need to reconsider your calling.
Bah! Tell that to Proust.
ReplyDelete(And most poetry sounds like writing.)
Lee raises an interesting point and a dilemma in his first point, and the question becomes: To whom should a person turn as a model for writing well? Elmore Leonard or Marcel Proust? I leave that question unanswered because the answer depends upon the goals of the writer. As for Lee's second point, I would counter with the observation that most good poetry (to me) "sounds" like someone speaking rather than "looks" like someone having written.; for example, there is very little in Wordsworth's and Coleridge's LYRICAL BALLADS that falls into "looking" like that latter but instead "sounds" like the former. Check it out by "listening" to the poetry rather than "looking" at it. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteFaulkner: "If it sounds like writing, it's not long and convoluted enough. Make it sound like poetry infused with mescaline, use words like 'catafalque.'"
ReplyDelete(Mind you, I say this as someone who adores WF and has read just about everything he ever wrote....)
It depends on what you want to write and the kind of writer you are. I'm in the natural, write-like-you-speak school, which is to say the plain style. Like all good writers, Dutch Leonard (whom I was with last night) knows to avoid doing what he doesn't do well. He told a questioner that there are two reasons he doesn't use similes. One is that he thinks they impede the flow of the narrative. The other is that "I can never think of any." As for poetry, I don't think anybody has ever talked like a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, but plenty of people talk like a Frank O'Hara poem.
ReplyDeleteWell, I suppose you've got it right about much of Hopkins' poetry, though other poets' use of both rhymed and unrhymed iambic pentameter, for example, is wonderfully melodic and "conversational" in its rhythm and impact. (Of course, that's just the English literature teacher speaking, so consider the source.) Yes, the foregoing sounds perhaps a bit like old-fashioned recitation, but it sounds better than the kind of conversational English that one hears around campus these days. (For example, if we could strike the words "like" and "you know" from vocabularies, too many students will be speechless, which can be a good thing.) Still, notwithstanding your objection, it would be entertaining to hear something like Hopkins' "sprung rhythm" in spoken English as it would certain enliven (and pleasantly complicate) conversations.
ReplyDeleteOh, I have no objection whatever to Hopkins or his poetry. He is one of my all-time favorites. I just don't think he was aiming at the conversational. As for the appalling use of "like" and "you know," I cannot agree more. I was walking up Broad Street yesterday, on my way to introduce Elmore Leonard at the Library, and right behind was a young couple - college age - and all I kept hear was "I was, like..." Of course, no simile followed followed because, like Dutch, they couldn't think of one.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great word, Susan, catafalque. Got it. Got it. Want it. Got it. (BTW, bet that wuz you I heard cheering Yippee-Yahoo when Annette Gordon-Reed won the History Pulitzer, eh? We's batting a grand: Picked the WS winners from the beginning and fell in love with Sally. Coolness :).) Hope all'swell with you 'n' yours; Frank says you're teaching' and, that, in these harsh econotimes, sounds great.
ReplyDeleteYou met Mr. EL, Frank? OMGulp, I am thrilled for you. What a delightful adventure it must've been. Hope you write about it so we can all share in your encounter. I R impressed (and, jellis-happy).
Lee, I'm with you on this one; and, I couldn't think of a more exemplary writer to whom we could tell it on the mountain than Proust. No slight intended, if that's what my disagreement on this with EL involves.
The question I want to ask? If it doesn't sound "like writing," then how does it sound; or, does he simply mean that writing which draws attention to itself instead of drawing the reader into its realm ought not see the light of day prior to visiting the rewrite sweetheart? Then, I agree with him. If you find yourself outside the reach of a work examining its strings and pulleys, certainly.
During the years I taught or wrote in rez and participated in workshops, I would often begin by asking cohorts to tell a story using only verbs; then, only nouns; and, finally, writing without either over-used simile. Never use 'em in my own work and ain't ever heard anyone positively justify the use of 'em (since both make writing sound, well, you know :)).
The Black Mountaineers really did wrestle with the entire issue surrounding no idea but in things (which Penelope Fitzgerald extended to include no idea but in thinks although, natch, I'm paraphrasing).
Things exist in and of themselves. A good writer captures that essence; but, once a writer begins to compare or contrast "x" with "y," I wanna cry. So, Frank, I do agree with you concerning their use and abuse; but, kids who say it was, y'know, like orgasmic when A-Fraud got outta his hotrod and like, showed off his fab HGH bod, like, I think "like" in that kind of, like speech and writing, that kind of "like" doesn't aim to be a simile without a climax; rather, it's like, more a stop-gap in thought, more an "um" thing than a comparison thing, IMO.
You do write in a quite natural voice, Frank; but, achieving that effect and acing that style requires a great deal of work, IMO. If is sounds conversational and succeeds, it most assuredly does so because the work it undergoes often makes one wonder why one writes at all (or, I'm generalising; but, it's hard to look easy or, mebbe, invoking Dolly Parton, it costs lots to look cheap).
You're a meat-and-potato writerly type; others prefer haute cuisine when it comes to cooking with (out) gaseousness. One style doesn't trump the other; both, if done well and properly, allow the reader to forget the fact they're reading which, IMO, ought to rank right up there, in terms of successful writing, with the idea that one must know all the rules of grammar, stylistics, linguistics, et omnia alia in order to break 'em.
And, like you, Hopkins is, y'know, one of my all-time faves, too; but, he revelled in a high-octane richword gush-gash glowflow that worked for him; a reader does pay attention to the form and the voice; but, it doesn't work against absorbing the poem entire. His words melt in my mind, magnificent feasts that satisfy all the senses. Spontaneous combustiosity never had it so like, grandeuristic.
I knew I knew that word in a faith-oriented context. The New Advent Catholic Encyclopaedia reminded me why:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03427a.htm
Talk luscious language, though. Yum.
Frank, my answer to Leonard would be that I want to impede the flow of narrative. It all depends on how - and of course why.
ReplyDeleteA plain style is nothing like natural speaking: witness how long it takes to master such a style. Reminds me of gorgeously casual, windblown haircuts of some photo models. Try to look that way without a professional stylist in tow (and his bag of tools & tricks).
I'm stuffed full of shit - whoops, I meant similes. My bad.
Actually, Leonard's point is quite simple. Just as an actor, no matter who he is playing, cannot look like he's acting, so a writer can't look like he's writing. The example Leonard gave as an illustration Thursday night was (I think), "Upon entering the room ..." No one talks like that and no one should write like that. Whatever style you choose, it has to go smoothly, seem natural (on its terms). As for impeding the narrative, well that means your aim is different from his. He wants his narrative to have a steady forward thrust. You want yours to hover and glide at times. Literature is large enough to accommodate both.
ReplyDeleteElmore Leonard's 10 rules of writing.
ReplyDeletePermit me to weigh in on the topic from a different angle of attack: Too much contemporary fiction sounds too much like contemporary conversation (complete with endless streams of profanity and crass diction), and--as I noted earlier--that is, like, really, you know, like not cool. You know?
ReplyDeleteIn the LA Times today, "[l]ike his heroes, Leonard doesn't do small-talk. He sits at his table and discusses the origins of 'Road Dogs'" his latest book.
ReplyDeleteGoddess Lee declareth:
ReplyDelete>I'm stuffed full of shit - whoops, I meant similes. My bad.<<
That sounds like shiting — whoops, I meant writing. My good . . .ness!
You're good as goad, Dahlink LLL :) . . . and, for that reason among millions more, you (and all) deserve a fine (if not like, totally, like, OTW non-sequiturn) groaniachal chuckle this drizzle-grey mooday j'espere lifts everyone's spirits (since it's snowing here):
This, sent to me by mon ami, Eric may well be among the funniest and silliest jokes of all time; but, it's one of my new faves, ranking (rally :)) right up there with the peep-squeak penguins and the flying blondie shortie smile-catchers:
MOUSE vs MOUSE (on Why Mickey Wants to Divorce Minnie)
Mickey, our hapless penitential petitionearist, comes before the judge to explain and defend his reason for wanting a divorce from Minnie. (Cue either Perry Mason ThemeToon or Dragnet's moody-broody one; or, oddly even, Take It Away, Eric the Orchestra Leader!*) . . .
JUDGE: I repeat, Mickey, er, Mr. Mouse, I don't believe your reason for divorcing Mrs. Mouse cuts the mustard in legal terms. Sorry. You can't divorce Mrs. Mouse or, as you call her, Minnie, solely because you say she's crazy.
MICKEY: B-b-but, Your Hono(u)r . . . with all due respect, honestly! I didn't say Minnie was crazy! I said she was f---ing Goofy :).
* Name that ref (no G'Ogling)
========
R. T., if you could cite an example that shows the kind of writing you're describing (since, right now, I'm thinking DFW and/or Pynchon; but, IMO, you didn't mean theirs; but, do you mean, like, Jay McInerney or Richard Ford or Joyce C. Oates or . . .)?
Dave, that link sheds bulbs of light upon this discussion. Thanks for it; I've copied and pasted it; so, now, it's in the same file with William Safire's How Not to Write: The Essential Misrules of Grammar (Norton, 2005). EL does mean what I suggested earlier, does believe writing that draws attention to itself rather than allowing the reader express transport away from the mannered (or whatevs) needs rewriting.
So, yes, I'd go, Sweetheart, Get Me a Timmeh :). Too, although I've not gone and parked browser at the LA Times yet, he doesn't do small talk nor weather, as his list proves.
Don't blame him; but, have you ever tried telling someone, in the small-talk weather sitch, FOAD, I'll keep using my Leave It to Beaver umbrella till the cows keel over? It's a good convo-stopper; but, you lose friends and alienate others ipso-quickso.
But, right, Lee. Context does matter in this instance. Sometimes, we do want to draw attention to form (vs content; and, that's part of what great writing accomplishes as well. You absorb the reader; then, shazam! You turn pyro-techniquelling tricks that demand a disconnect. Joyce, of course, the obvious maestro of this; but, a lot of writers deploy it. I'm thinking, like, Vonnegut or, um, Byatt (especially in Possession) which might represent one example of the extreme use of the device.
Still, when you're writing something, do you consciously ensure you don't go there (to "like" and "as"); or, have you so banished their usage that it's simply part of the process and no longer a conscious effort?
The closest I come to answering that rhetorical one? I do allow "not unlike" to stand in my work; but, like, otherwise, no. If you cannot relay that which exists without comparing or contrasting with some other thing, you're simply lazy or need to reconsider your calling.