How art concepts apply to writing

Anne Wilson, Topographies, from Mouth to Mouth Mag

I remember piling into my intro art and design classes with other sleepy-eyed freshmen to learn how to draw, paint, and critique. We were taught how to see and to talk about a piece objectively, not just what we liked or disliked. We talked about craft and attention to detail. When it came to subjectivity, we were taught to point out what was or was not working, and why.

Laura Miller at Salon.com this week tells us Why we love bad writing, and one of her reasons is about flow:

Novels are praised for being a "fast read" and above all for having writing that "flows." "Flow" is an especially fascinating term because it's one that literary critics have never used, and it perfectly captures the way that clichéd prose can be gobbled up in chunks at a breakneck pace.

I'm interested in her attention to "flow" because it does get used in visual arts and design. It's how your eye moves, or how the line work or composition flows. To me, books that flow do not always equate cliche. As M. D. (Dom) Benoit asks, "Plot vs. quality. What a concept. Why not both?"

How does an art concept like flow apply to writing? There is something seamless and tight about prose that flows. It means something is working below the surface to grab a reader or viewer's attention and hold them tight.

So, what do you think, why not both? 

Shaped by what we don't remember

It's that time of year again, for longing for distant things, the crunch of leaves under my feet, for waking up a little chilly in the morning and hoping for rain.

Torino, Italy

It's that time of year to be quiet and studious and read good books. In the last two weeks I've read The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest and Writing Great Books for Young Adults, and I started The Dive from Clausen's Pier today. Staring now at my bookshelf and thinking over the books in my Kindle, I'm surprised that I can't remember what I read before that. The time before and after I read a Stieg Larsson is always changed and different, like I'm on an adrenaline rush, and now it looks like with the third book in the series finished, I'm done.

Inability to remember some of my even my favorite books and movies reminds me of this essay in The New York Times: The Plot Escapes Me. In it, James Collins consoles me through Professor Maryanne Wolf's assertion that we are the "sum" of what we've read, even if we can't remember everything (or anything) about it.

I wonder if it's some trick of the memory that we can devour a book and then forget the contents. A kind of amnesia with a unknown purpose? All that time spent a writer spends writing. Hours, maybe days and weeks spent reading, and then you might not even remember the name of the protagonist.

What do you think - do we store that information somewhere? Are we still shaped by what we don't remember?

Summer stories

In the maroon recliner in our living room with the overhead fan whirling, I read A Tree Grows In Brooklyn And Maggie-Now every summer until we moved from Wisconsin to Minnesota. My reading grew to include contraband paperbacks I hid behind bookshelves and the now defunct Sassy magazine.  My first summer in Turkey I read everything by Jane Austen. I measured periods of time by the books I read and the beverages I drank while processing the melodic, confusing sounds of Turkish. 

This summer I have my own story to offer - The Mercy Troupers, set in the desert and trailer parks to the tune of evangelical roadies. I scratched out the first draft when I was 21 and sitting on a park bench next to Lake Mendota. Now ten years later it's the first story I've published.

Another summer tale, shot on our Canon Powershot SX10IS and edited in iMovie, is a casting video for House Hunters International. The video peeks into our home and neighborhood in Izmit. It's a love story. And a story about leaving home.

What story, book or otherwise, is captivating you right now?

While she sleeps

Is there anything wrong about eating potato chips, a fried egg, and plain rice for breakfast? Blame in on my flu, but in combination together, it just tasted wonderful. I was able to tolerate a cup of medium strength coffee (yesterday was weak, and may have accounted for my headache later), and feel much more optimistic about the state of my health now that I know I can go take a shower while Lina sleeps. It's funny to me that essential things, things like showering, get pushed aside when one's children are small. Or maybe I've just gotten lazy and used to it, but it is not uncommon for three days to pass before a blinking light goes off that I can't remember my last shower. This is horrible, for more than one reason, but doesn't seem to bother anyone in my family because I stopped pleading for shower breaks a few months ago and no one noticed.
Something else of consequence has happened in our household (blame it on the full moon a few nights ago) because of a certain argument about money, again. Growing up in my family, we didn't really openly discuss money unless it was to sit down and make a list for a pro/con-type-decision-making situation. In my husband's family, every other word out of their mouth has a dollar figure in it (or should I say lira?). If someone goes to the grocery store, they ask about how much the groceries were. They ask about credit card bills. They talk about bus money and minus accounts and mortgages and school bills and how much clothing costs and how expensive vegetables at the bazaar costs and how much of a rip-off restaurants are because they are too expensive. Everything is either too expensive or not discussed at all. Whenever I point out the value of something pricey (buying this home appliance/pair of shoes/suit IS expensive, but outweighs buying a cheaper one that will breakdown or fall apart), they just shake their heads with disapproval. This is not to say that I care too much about it at this point. I have been indoctrinated into the family enough to care less about what they say about my purchases. The point is that my husband's way of talking about money (openly, freely, with love), is the opposite of mine (closed, panicky, defensively) and once in a while we have fun, drawn-out arguments that last days.
Case in point two nights ago. Which gave me a lot to think about because for the first time it got through to me that my strategy wasn't working. Though I have not been asked, I am going to do something I think nearly impossible: give full disclosure about spending to my hubby through the form of a little notebook with figures in it. I have to do it my way, of course. Spreadsheets are SO not my thing. And this little notebook is a token of my love because I agree that I am nasty when talking about money. I retreat into my little hole and don't come out until I think the coast is clear. I am the only one responsible for this, and I've used up my free tokens for the argument that "Americans just think differently about money!" because clearly, it is more important to me that all things regarding finance happen more smoothly in our household than they have been.
Thus, a cute little notebook that I spent $3.99 on from Cartolina Cards via GreetQ. My first entry in the notebook is $13.46 for an eReader download this morning, thinking I would take a chance on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because it seems everyone in Europe has been wild about it. But first I have to finish my compulsive reading of Julie & Julia, with which I have fallen in love, despite my misgivings. I will say that I am glad that I didn't read it when it first came out in 2005, even though I've had it on my to-read list for that long. Because I had just married, because I abhorred cooking my first year in Turkey, and because reading the first few pages about a woman in the subway who was destructively mad totally turned me off, I thought I'd save it for later. I'm glad I saved it for now even though everyone else is reading it and watching the movie. I'm not opposed to mainstream fixations. Lately, I am delighted by mine.
Hopefully this tangent won't get in the way of me taking my shower, the very first thing I had on my mind once Lina fell asleep. My apologies for the extra-long posts these days. For some reason, taking six weeks off from blogging has made me come back enthralled.
Happy weekend, everyone.

The Corrections

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I want to give it a 3 star, but I can't because it is much better than that, and the book knows it. But I can't give it 5, either, because it annoyed me so much the whole time I read it. Sort of like when I nearly failed my driver's test at age 16 and my instructor said, "I don't want to pass you, but I will." You have to admit the book is clever, well written, and extremely self-possessing (if you like that in a book), but there were a number of times I wanted to hit myself over the head with it from sheer exhaustion. In one book, every intellectual anecdote, clever turn of a phrase, and insightful analysis of nearly everything one might encounter in 21st century Western society was held together with impressible force. It is good. Really good. But I didn't like it. I laughed, but didn't think it was funny. As one other reviewer commented, You must read it. You'll just be irritated with it the entire time.






View all my reviews.

Emily Dickinson

The Emily Dickinson silk scarf? Want it now ($35). Perhaps better in concept than reality, though - the design feels a little clunky and tries too hard to be readable. But still, I want to be swathed in the words of Emily this fall, from Poets.org.