Placing Our Experiences on the Altar

In ancient times, humans transferred their sins—their misdeeds and dark secrets—to the souls of sacrificial beasts, placing said beasts on altars for all to see, and then slaughtering them then and there.  It could be argued that the act of “casting sins upon sacrificial animals" is still being practiced today by creative nonfiction writers.  Yet our sacrificial beasts are not sheep or oxen, but artifacts and form.

 

Miller used a table of figures to reveal her sexual history and a needlepoint and muslin to sort out her thoughts on pregnancy and miscarriage.  Christman used a sloth to express her grief, Simpson’s bear was a catalyst for addressing marital fidelity, and Jamson used medical acting and case studies to study herself.  This week’s essay by Monson not only used an experimental form (outline essay) but also used the copper mine as an outer, concrete image to lead to the idea of mining the past for experiences.  (The outline form itself has this mining feel to it, as though the reader is digging deeper and deeper, zigzagging left and right, yes, but always chipping away, digging deeper into the material.)

Miller wrote, “I know it can seem a paradox: that writings imbued with qualities of what we recognize as ‘honest’ or ‘brave’ may actually be so strong because they focus away from that material directly. […] Instead of facing your ‘stuff’ head on, you turn away from it, zero in on something that has fluttered up on the side, and see what angle it gives you.”

I’ve been thinking about the final essay I’ll be submitting for this class—the experience I’ll write about and also the form and the artifact I’ll use—the sacrificial beasts of the essay.  It got me wondering how you all go about crafting your essays.  Do you begin with an experience in mind and then mine for an artifact:  a concrete image, entity, or sensory input—a catalyst for some greater purpose?  Or does an artifact strike you first—something interesting, unique or even mundane—and then do you find an experience and/or meaning to pull from that artifact?  Furthermore, are personal experiences always necessary in an essay?  Are artifacts?

And must we write only about provocative topics or harrowing experiences for us to be considered brave or courageous essayists?  Or is our bravery determined by, as Miller asserts, our attention to the words, sentences, and significant details we provide?

Painting Passages

            I talked with a friend today about what we do when we can’t seem to work on any of our stuff. She writes short stories. She called them short stories, but I’ve read some of them and know that they are very short stories, flash fiction. I told her I write pages of freewriting that sometimes comes out as weird little essays. I hadn’t yet done the readings for the week or I might have confessed to writing essaykins. I think of them as nothings, throwaways, practice on the way to bigger, better, more important writing—my real writing. I don’t even reread them most of the time—but sometimes I do and sometimes I’m secretly pleased, but I still think of them as nothings.

            I enjoyed writing the segmented essay I experimented with for class—mostly because it was done in short bursts—I started with a list of thoughts and memories then wrote each one, not worrying about how long it was—of course they were all meant to hang together around specific themes, not stand on their own, but I still enjoyed the permission I felt to write these short vignettes and wonder that I haven’t thought of it as a legitimate form before.

            In “Of Fire and Ice” Moore comments on the appropriateness of short pieces for the “digital domain.” I admit that when scrolling through Facebook I’m much more likely to read something short than a longer essay. The online format crimps my attention span. And short pieces are ideal for blog posts. The field is ripe for flash non-fiction, in fact it is already happening—perhaps it is the lack of a name, the fact that is has not been designated as a clearly defined category that I have not considered these little pieces to be real writing.

            What are your experiences with reading and writing flash non-fiction? 

Christopher M on Didion

I think I read, The Year of Magical Thinking, ages ago and honestly I can’t really remember—it more like a fond notion than memory as the details are completely obscured by time, so I am only left with a familiar scent that reminds me that I liked the way she writes. Reading, “Goodbye to All That”, brought back all the good things I remembered but also allowed me to reflect on her writing with fresh eyes and take note more critically.

What I loved before and still am enamored with is her ability to construct long, descriptive sentences that are essays unto themselves. Lines like the ones below are something I hope to aspire for in my own writing. Everything is there, the details, the reflection, the prose, the literary quality—it is complete.

To an Eastern child, particularly a child who has always has an uncle on Wall Street and who has spent several hundred Saturdays first at F.A.O. Schwarz and being fitted for shoes at Best’s and then waiting under the Biltmore clock and dancing to Lester Lanin, New York is just a city, albeit the city, a plausible place for people to live, But to those of us who came from places where no one had heard of Lester Lanin and Grand Central Station was a Saturday radio program, where Wall Street and Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue were not places at all but abstractions (“Money,” and “High Fashion,” and “The Hucksters”), New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.

I love how these lines are somewhat lyrical and how they compact so much energy and information into a small space. As a writer (and reader) I find myself drawn to long complicated sentences like this, because I feel they evoke a memory response the same as if it were my own and this engages me and holds my attention. I wonder if any of you appreciate this sort of writing and if you do now or have attempted to extend your sentences in a similar fashion? What are your thoughts on the effect it has on the reader? 

What I did find somewhat distracting was Didion’s use of telling phrases that seem to be unnecessary or superfluous to what she is trying to say. Here are a few examples:

                  I remember once,…

                  You see I was in a curious position in New York:…

                  Which is precisely what we were

                  In fact…

                  I suppose…

If were editing my own paper I would most likely cut those lines as fat, hoping to stream line things a bit and give the essay more room to stand on its own. I am sure it is more of a personal aesthetic, but I am wondering what everyone else thinks about these kind of phrases in your own work? Do you find them purposeful or do you cut them? What do these kinds of phrases do to the piece rhetorically, does it situate the information differently? Is this just a case of being verbose or is it a calculated stylistic choice?