Monthly Archives: December 2013

EXPLORATION

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Primarily a writer of fiction, I read a lot of history. One group (area) (field) of books always interests me: Exploration of the earth beginning with the Portuguese and Spanish and finishing in the Twentieth Century. A lot of usual stuff happens: In a sixteenth a guy got parted from a Spanish expedition in Florida, and he walked west to Spanish settlements in Mexico.

Exploration and writing a story are similar. There’s a starting point. The vessel sail in one medium on blue or if it is snow, white. Paper is usually write for the author. Like the author an explorer sort of knows where he’s headed. Neither writer nor explorer know exactly how to get there. A lot of skill is required. Once the writer and explorer believe the destination is reached, they like to call it quits. Success is not always evident. Remember Columbus sailed for India and ended up in North America. Look at the first draft of any story. How close to finishing is the writer? Getting home, completing the story – that’s the rub.

Recently read is L.H. Neatby, The Quest of the Northwest Passage, chock full of facts, names and places with many maps that don’t give all the names of the places mentioned in the text. When reading a book of exploration or discovery, it is good to know where the expedition is: Glendale, Arizona or Glendale, California. Can anyone tell me where the Great Fish River is? Having read the book, I may know. But I may not.

Next, it is not enough to say that Eskimos in the early days (1600 to 1700s) were murderers and thieves without giving a brief background of their society and culture: Life is hard near the Arctic. Did the explorers act this way, or that? I was unaware until late in the book, that a translator who learned to speak the natives’ language in Labrador was understood by Eskimos near the mouth of the Mackenzie River, at least 2000 miles away.

Neatby’s book is otherwise well-presented. It benefits from shortness, 200 pages, no Index. But brevity diminishes the tales. Trapped in ice like Shakleton at the South Pole 60 years later, Captain Collinson secured his ship in the Arctic flow. Morale of the crew was excellent especially after the men built, next to the ship, a billiards table from ice and available materials and played until the ice broke. The reader needs more than 250 words about Captain Collinson.

The text requires an interest in exploration and Canadian history; it is not geared toward the general reader. But the subject matter is compelling with one caveat: Every explorer is cold, frozen, gets frost bitten or ends up frozen to death. This is a welcome book to read during the hot summer months.

The following are exceptionally readable and authoritative books about exploration, the persons involved and the peoples they met:

Carl Sauer: a) Sixteenth Century North America, b) Seventeenth Century North America, c) The Early Spanish Main

JH Parry: a) Discovery of the Sea, b) The Age of Reconnoissance, c) other books

CR Boxer: Histories of the Dutch and Portuguese Empires.

William Goetzmann: a) Exploration and Empire, b) Army Exploration in the American West

Alan Villiers: a) Captain Cook. There are many biographies of Captain Cook. This one is well written. The author is a sailor and has sailed in a ship like the ones Cook piloted, as well as many smaller ships and boats that Cook sailed. There is some technical sailing lingo in it which is not obnoxious. I’m not a sailor and never will be. I will not master the terms or fully understand, always what was happening or why. Although incomprehensible, these sentences and clauses did not get into my general understanding. Despite that, I can only conclude that I like this book because I like to be teased. 

BAD WRITING

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After writing my manuscript in November 2013 [earlier blog], I looked at books on writing by authors. I pulled them from the public library. None of the books are gospel. Many mention issues to keep in mind to weigh and balance, but are not important while writing the first draft. The issues become important while fooling with drafts 2, 3 and 4.

There are five books:

James Thurber, Collecting Himself, Harper & Row, NY, 1989 Michael Rosen, Ed., The text mostly gives impressions of working, sometimes as a writer. The best article in the book goes back to Thurber’s days in Paris during the Twenties: “How To Tell a Fine Old Wine.” To get good from this book the reader must believe The New Yorker magazine is sophisticated, or at least clever. It may also be helpful to consider David Letterman is funny without the drum punctuating the end of “the funny line” and the once present Paul Schaffer cackle.

John O’Hara, An Artist Is His Own Fault, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbonville, 1977, Ed. Matthews Bruccolli. More than half this book is derived from lectures and speeches, none of which have been adapted to the written word. Having just read the second volume of Mark Twain’s Autobiography, vol 2, UC Press, 2013, these are by comparison poor speeches and mediocre lectures.

In his writing O’Hara displays prominent, fatal faults: “His first draft is usually is last.” He also reads little or not at all. He says the first duty of a novelist is “creation of character.” He complains that women authors are treated more gently by critics than male authors.(101) [Sour grapes.]

Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones, Shombhala, Boston, 1986, Somewhat of a how-to-book which eventually turns to Zen (author is an adherent).

Page 8 is excellent advice for new writers. Generally it should not be ignored:

1.”Keep your hand moving. (Don’t pause to reread the line you have just written)….2. Don’t cross out. (That is editing while you write…)[Perhaps] 3. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don’t…worry about staying within the lines and margins.) 4. Lose control.[This probably means get lost in the story so the words are coming from your imagination.] 5. Don’t think. Don’t get logical. 6. Go for the jugular. (If something comes [into] the writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.)”

Page 35: There is bad advice about metaphors and similes, even if the author can only close the page or turn the book. Page 36-37 more advice “Writing is not a McDonald’s hamburger” That may be true, but I know the following is also true: A writer wants his writing read by everyone who eats McDonald’s hamburgers.

There are good and valuable considerations: Writers should keep physically active; they should be able to hear and listen while writing. Of interest are chapters on writing sex, being a writer, syntax and detail in stories.

Sol Stein, Stein on Writing, St. Martins, NY, 1995, tries to relabel and redefine terms of writing, and suggests the primary way to advance the story is a strong character. Character is a laborious means to write and to tell a story.

From his own books Stein presents an incomplete example: 

In my novel The Resort, the leading characters are an “ordinary middle-aged couple. Henry and Margaret Brown, who                                                             find themselves in horrific circumstances at the end of chapter one…I made the Browns just different enough to interest                         the reader, but it was important that they not seem “special.” Therefore, when calamity hits the Browns, readers from any                      walk of life can identify with their plight, which is crucial for the story. Stephen King usually has quite ordinary-seeming                      characters get involved in extraordinary circumstances.”

What Stein does not want to tell the readers, in order to give his flawed analysis, is his characters [The Browns] at the end of Chapter One are in a new setting – dangerous, uncertain, terrifying.

Character, story, setting, which is most important. It is easy to judge. A writer can easily correct flaws in character and story with details. Flaws are impossible to correct in setting without rewriting extensively or writing anew. AN EXAMPLE.

A. Buy an engagement ring from a jeweler in the suburbs. OR

B. Buy an engagement ring from a store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

Man may not want fiancee with him when he buys in the suburbs, a transaction which might include barter, bargaining or under the counter payments.  Man who buys on Rodeo Drive likely will have fiancee with him.

Add another fact: Man is rich enough to buy on Rodeo Drive but buys in the burbs. Fiancee’s reaction justly asks, “What the hell is this?” “What’s going on?”

It is setting not character nor story that determines what will happen and why. Indeed, part of the story or the whole part may rely on  where the ring was bought.

There are questionable references to excellent books of history: Bertram D. Wolfe did not write “the best book in its field in any language.” Stein’s references and suggestions in non-fiction are not helpful and should be ignored, except those to Garrett Mattingly.  

Stein makes the following audacious assessment: “George Orwell’s non-fiction is far superior to his fiction.” It is likely Stein has not read all of Orwell, who is careful to communicate exactly what he thinks throughout his entire opera. Perhaps Stein considers 1984 and Animal Farm as non-fiction, but he certainly overlooks Orwell’s pre-World War II novels like Keep the Aspidistra Flying, a story with subtle environmental strains: “I don’t mind development so long as it doesn’t look like gravy on a table cloth.”

There are good passages in Stein on Writing. Unlike John O’Hara, above, Stein quotes Ernest Hemingway, “First drafts are shit.” About Thesaurus Stein accurately observes the effect on a writer using one “…surprises me with a word that I would not have thought of on my own and that gets me thinking in a different direction.” From John Gardener: “Detail is the lifeblood of fiction.” Stein gives a reference for love scenes, Helen Fisher’s Anatomy of Love. On page 118 is excellent advice about dialects.

Stephen King, On Writing, Schribner, NY, 2000, is better than I remembered it being. The library is ordering new copies, although it appears to have a sufficient supply. So is there a new edition with improvements?

Without mentioning Stein On Writing, King responds, 

I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even just one) in some sort of predicament and then watch                      them try to work themselves free…The situation comes first. The characters – always flat and unfettered, to begin with –                     come next. Once these things are fixed in my mind, I begin to narrate. I often have an idea of what the outcome may be,                       but I have never demanded of a set of characters that they do things my way. On the contrary, I want them to do things                        their way.(164)

When King says, “The situation comes first,” he refers to the setting, jewelry store or hazardous waste pit. King raises an excellent point. Fixate on character, and the author may insist the character do things his way, not the character’s way. King explains later,

…what happens to characters as a story progresses depends solely on what I discover about them as I go along –                                how they grow…Sometimes they grow a little. If they grow a lot, they begin to influence the course of the story.(190) 

There are many excellent chapters and passages in King’s book: He is wholly correct and should be followed about knowing the fundamentals of writing this language: Use Elements of Style for knowledge and information. He’s entirely correct about symbolism. He mentions Edgar Wallace Plot Wheel with the hope everyone will stay far from it. He recommends potential and all writers read, unlike John O’Hara.

There are clunky things: Unlike King I would not recommend reading Harry Potter. And James Michener did not write many of his later books; he edited them. Hemingway’s defense of alcohol would never reach 70 words; he would not use more words than Faulkner did. King cites an unHemingway defense of alcohol.

 

 

 

 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN, Vol. 2

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Autobiography of Mark Twain, vol. 2, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2013.

Passages in this volume of the Autobiography will be found in no other book. Twain himself doubts whether any human being can be original, but this volume belies his claim. Twain is. Incidents of first impression and first expression exist therein.

While in Europe in 1896, Twain’s first daughter died in Connecticut. By the summer of 1902 his wife was in bad health. Later that year his youngest daughter had a life threatening illness (104 degree temperature; doctor sleeping in next room). The fear in Twain’s household wa wife would learn of daughter’s illness, and she would be carried off. 

Twain had a third daughter, Clara, who primarily took care of the wife. Twain himself riles wife too much; his daily time with her is limited. Clara makes up a wonderful, social, engaging social life for the daughter near death. Wife’s spirits rise. These fabrications are carried on for three months. Twain writes two letters which are included in the text. [There must be more letters.]

Twain details the life of lies to stating the sick daughter’s happy life, and that they are relayed to everyone in the household – anyone who might come within earshot of wife – must know and speak the lies. Presumably wife remembers all the lies, and so must everyone else. There are near misses. There are mistakes, quickly retorted and corrected or excused, including the schedule of a local train.

Twain observed the whole scenario could be viewed as absurd and humorous except it is real, and it involves his family. The reader can infer what Mark Twain, writer, is doing: To protect himself, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, writes a full, complete and honest account of the activities in the house and about the sick daughter’s social life. Once on paper the events are removed, in a medium where Twain is a master. It is his only defense against two more deaths in his immediate family.

More astounding was the visit of William Dean Howells during the summer 1902 prior to the grave illnesses. Howells adumbrates a story about an ill mother and then her daughter gets sick. Both were cared for by two aunts. The aunts don’t want to lie; it is a sin. But they sin every day to keep the mother’s spirits up, even after the daughter has died: The mother believes the daughter is having a wonderful social life for the first time in her life. The mother also dies. Although the aunts regret sinning, they realize it was necessary.

Mark Twain wrote that story, Was it Heaven? Or Hell? It was published by Harper’s Monthly, when Twain’s wife and daughter were gravely ill. Both of them recovered.

The Autobiography has gems about writing. Spelling: “Majestically lawless.” Twain writes about “style,” “a mysterious thing,” including involuntary “indiscretions,” ofttimes an unwanted, “trademark.” And proofreading – the message is sometimes the editor must do everything himself: Twain tells an anecdote of Bret Harte’s trying to correct “chastity” for “charity.”

An observation about human beings came out which pertains to writing. The sort of human being one is will result in the type of writer one becomes. Bret Harte is used as the example, and Twain does not like him. Harte is capable, but is also acerbic, witless, disloyal, unemotional and selfish. Flickers of brilliance come from Harte’s writings, but mostly Harte is pushing the pen. 

The Autobiography does not analyze the heart of writers generally. It raises the issue by example, the personality and the abilities and capabilities of a writer [or any artist]. Those traits and in life, circumstances, realizations, choices and adjustments, bring very individual reflections and come after one consciously mulls, considers, weighs and judges. When those forces and the results arrive unannounced, the writer is in trouble.

“Circumstance” raises another short significant issue. Twain notes, like a diary entry, attending a banquet where Elihu Root, Secretary of State, addressed circumstances as changing the way Americans viewed government and their own freedoms. [This is my summary, not part of the Autobiography.] In many ways the more Americans are brought together as one people in one nation and are supposed to think the same way – whether by innovation, culture, society or law – the more Americans will lose the distinction of being a nation of individuals. 

Twain alights on celebrity, by commenting on an article about Olive Logan. She was a female lecturer in the lyceum days. Olive had nothing to say and couldn’t have said it if she did. She was on the platform “to show off her clothes,” a “living fashion plate.” She manufactured a reputation, writing “innate, affected valueless stuff,” and marrying “a penny-liner,” a man who was paid a penny a line to get small items, true or untrue, in newspapers.

The newspapers would appear, and next came the revelation: Readers who “had not been quite aware of [the celebrity] before,” now knew. There were no explanations, just recounting daily or weekly activities, like a Facebook page or a Twitter feed: “Her name was familiar to everybody…and there wasn’t a human being in the entire United States who could answer if you asked him, ‘What is her fame based on?’ ‘What has she done?’ You would paralyze a person by asking that question.”

[The primary difference between Olive Logan then and “celebrities” today is, today Americans can now say the woman took off her clothes, or did explicit acts, and published them.]

Sadly, the life of Olive Logan wound down like the lives today. She is near deaf. Her current husband, a generation younger than she,  always drank and neglected her. She “could no longer write.” The couple was impoverished.

Twain mentions other fallibilities of the American system. He complains that the United States of America is an Unpolite Nation without remembering or mentioning that he lives in and about New York City. He notes the pace of America, “come step lively,” differs from the pace elsewhere. He mentions American diplomats and counsels, “chuckleheads,” sent “to some part of this planet because [they were] not needed in this country.”

Many passages are devoted to copyright issues and some (purported) Congressional testimony. In Twain’s day the copyright laws were antiquated and woefully inadequate. Readers other than historians, legal historians, Twain devotees and intellectual property fiends will find these parts laborious. But Twain was prominent in the push to change the laws. 

Speaking from the grave, Twain likewise discourses on religion. His views are well presented. His is not an attack on faith itself, but largely on the practice of religion and man’s distortion of faith. That is always the grind. There are distilled, more perceptive presentations of these arguments in Twain’s literature: Huckleberry Finn, The War Prayer, The Mysterious Stranger, and elsewhere.

During the last decade of life Twain did not write much – short stories, essays and articles. He explained that he no longer wanted to pick up a pen and write a novel. The Autobiography was dictated. These is a difference in quality and complete excellence between Twain’s best books and this Autobiography. Many entries are literary, but Twain’s purpose was not literature: He wanted a conversation from himself, a one-way conversation to readers. Readers gets that. The difference between his literary efforts and the Autobiography remain, and have a lesson for today’s writers: Typing at 100 plus words per minute, printing out pages of beautiful words, trying to proofread and write something literary. Unlike Twain, most of today’s word processing entrants have never lectured to audiences, have never delivered humor, do not understand the basic simplicity of a joke, yet they are trying to work at the speed of the spoken word, like they are running their mouths to monopolize conversations with friends. 

One gift this volume of the Autobiography gives to writers is Twain’s impressions and methods of lecturing and speaking, a task he could do on an impromptu basis. This volume has also left me in an uncomfortable state of humiliation: Mark Twain could lecture better than I can write.