It all starts, like so many other things, with a spark.
And then before you know it, whole hillsides are ablaze, and the news reports start belching from the wire as regularly as ash-covered cars from the roads that lead up the canyon, or plumes of smoke from its upper reaches.
The headlines read, with minor adjustments for specificity of locale, MANSIONS BURN AS THOUSANDS FLEE; the sub-heads run something along the lines of “Exclusive Neighborhood Explodes Into Nightmare Inferno.”
From a strictly narrative standpoint, I can appreciate the “tension” created by the luxury car cortege, each vehicle stuffed to its Teutonic gills with art and jewelry boxes and hastily-packed luggage, as it inches its way down the winding road. The comparisons to Pompeii and Herculaneum are inevitable but no less satisfying for it, as is the reminder that golden lads and girls all must / like chimneysweepers, come to dust.
(Incidentally, the means of destruction in question ensures that everyone in the surrounding area will have something in common with chimneysweepers in short order.)
The article, after noting the fire’s acreage (large, or at least "growing rapidly"), volatility (“extreme”), differences from historical fires in the area (“several,” but they’re “important”) and potential to burn right up to the coast -- thereby scaring the shit out of everyone who lives between the coast and the mountains, i.e. the entire city -- will include several interviews. (Interspersed with these interviews will be vignettes, most of which will involve one or more of the following in various combinations:
The first interview will be with a woman with an improbably geographical first name and a non-coincidentally corporate last name (usually a drug or chemical conglomerate), who has probably lost her ranch: “Cadaques [or India / Siena / Alexandria / Mykonos] Merck [or Dow / Union-Carbide / DuPont / Bayer / Glaxo-Smith-Kline], reached via telephone at the home of a friend, said that her Rancho Mi Reposo, in the upper reaches of the canyon, has likely burned. ‘You know, it’s a calculated risk, living up there – but I’m insured and we got all the animals out, so we’re just incredibly thankful for what we still have.”
The next interviewee will be a crusty oldster, who likely shares a last name with a prominent building or road in town, named for his grandfather. His last name will be his mother’s maiden name.
Ms. Merck, 43, is optimistic, and plans to rebuild as soon as the fire subsides. “Every time the ranch burns – and it’s burned seven times in the last fifteen years – is such an incredible opportunity for me to examine my priorities. For example, last year, I took all the Picasso sketches from the guesthouse with me when I evacuated – but this year, I just threw the Gauguin and my stock certificates in the car and went.” “McAdoo Cityhall was one of the few who stayed behind on Via Las Palmas de Oro. Standing at the edge of his property on the canyon rim and dousing hot spots and flare-ups on the slope below with a garden hose, he recalled his experiences with wildfires in the area.
While they’re up there on the ridgeline, a woman who declines to be identified will be “struggling to wrangle a horse into a trailer” with the assistance of one or more “ash-covered ranch hand(s).” The horse trailer will be hitched to a “sleek Mercedes convertible,” and it's likely that some idyllic tree (jacarandas are popular here, but if pressed, it's permissible to resort to one of the more expensive sorts of palm) is whipping in the "gale-force winds" which send ash and smoke "eddying down the canyon." (Incidentally, one always bemoans the lack of initiative shown by the reporter here: to witness a horse person in crisis is to gain access to the remarkably creative language of the stables, which consists entirely of horrifically explicit swear words in unusual and evocative combinations.)
“This house has been in the Cityhall family since before this town was incorporated,” he notes, “and we’ve never evacuated yet. All the really big ones – ’64, ’78, ’83, ’97, this one – I’ve been here with the garden hose and my dog Chester. The years go by – and the dog may change – but I’ll still be here, leveraging water pressure and years of inbred WASP entitlement against this natural phenomenon.’
Cityhall’s wife, Katherine (called KooKoo), was prepared to evacuate, but noted that she had never needed to before. ‘I just put all my jewelry – my circle pins and Mummy’s pearls – into a canvas tote by the door and maybe have a few drinks. The house is adobe brick, which Mac [Mr. Cityhall] tells me doesn’t burn. I know the succulents on the property are dreadful to look at – Mummy used to cover our eyes when we walked by the cacti at the Botanical Gardens – but they don’t burn either, Mac says. Can I get you a drink? If you’re still around for dinner, I think I’m having Rosita do her yummy dressed crab thing…’
A glassy, faraway look came over Mrs. Cityhall’s face. 'I hope you won’t mind tinned crab. So much more practical, up here in the hills…and anyway, Mummy always said you just can’t get good crab out West…'”
Next, they will interview someone who has definitely lost her home, and is very sad: “Jocelyn Plummer, 51, wiped away tears as she described the loss of her home, with its decades-old dry brush collection.
Next up: a by-proxy interview with some celebz.
‘Every day during the summer, I would bring back a piece of dry wood from one of my hikes, and add it to one of the piles against the exterior walls or under the eaves of my cedar-shake home. We’re talking a good ten, fifteen years of hikes, years of memories in those branches. I used to just love living up there, among all the gifts of nature. But I guess all it takes is one completely random, unforeseen event, which arises out of the blue and without warning, precedent, or logical process, to completely demolish everything.’
‘So I turned on the news the second we got to my sister-in-law’s house, and the first thing they showed was a helicopter shot of our house, going up like a Roman candle. All the Italian cypresses along the driveway, my husband’s grove of specimen Eucalyptus trees – all up in smoke. It just doesn’t make sense.’
When asked if she would rebuild, husband Harold Plummer chimed in: ‘Of course we will. This is a once-in-a-millennium event. Nope, as soon as they lift these evac orders, we’ll be right back up there on the mountain, planting resinous trees and picking up the pieces. And arranging them into a campfire-kindling shape.’” “The area is also a favorite of Hollywood celebrities. Stars, such as The Guy From That Action Franchise, That Connery-Era Bond Girl You’re Surprised Is Still Alive, That Comedian Who Played Off Jewish Stereotypes In The 60s And Then Invested Well, and A Country Singer You May Have Heard Of, flock to the region for its lush landscapes and panoramic views.
The story will end with a noble, ash-besmirched firefighter gazing skyward, making some remark about having to “wait and see” what the weather will do, and possibly noting the presence of a “wild card” (the wind, the geography, the potential for one of the firefighters to actually be a secret double-agent who is setting the fires instead of extinguishing them, and YES that story’s already been optioned by a studio so don’t even think about it).
A publicist for That Guy From A Few 80s Movies (Who, You Must Admit, You’re Surprised Can Afford To Live Here) confirmed that the actor and his wife had been evacuated.
‘Mr. and Mrs. Guy-From are staying with friends down south until the situation is under control,’ said the publicist, ‘but their hearts and prayers are with all their neighbors and community members during this difficult time.’
A representative for Actress Famous For Playing Cute Even After She Aged Rather Badly confirmed that Ms. Actress maintained a home in the area, but hadn’t been there for God-knows-how-long.
‘Remember, she’s married to a supermarket-chain billionaire,’ said the rep. ‘She probably doesn’t even remember that she has that house. Between the Valium and the Chardonnay, she’s basically dead to the world these days. But I’m sure her thoughts, both of them, have strayed to fire or neighbors or houses at some point in the last few days.’
The status of the Guy-From and Actress homes were unavailable as of press time.”
And that’s how we do it in Santa Barbara. Life’s easier when you play predictably.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Things We Wrote About The Fire, or, Because I Do Not Hope To Burn
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Anything Drew Can Drew
In my Eternal "Friendly" Competition with Roommate Drew, I have jotted down some responses to the "idle conversation" he apparently had with himself in re. Top Chef spinoffs and their appropriate alternatives to "Please pack your knives and go."
Top Social Climber: "Please pack your strives and go."
Top Narcissist/Compulsive Teller of Solipsistic Self-Involved Stories: "Please pack your "I've's..." and go."
Top Old-School Ballroom Dancer: "Please pack your jives and go."
Top Filibuster: "Please pack your diatribes and go."
Top Anthropologist: "Please pack your uncontacted tribes and go."
Top Impersonator and Mispronouncer of Elderly French Socialites: "Please pack your Jacqueline de Ribes and go."
Top Stress-Infection-Prone Person: "Please pack your styes and go."
Top Factory Worker: "Please pack your dies and go."
Top Santa Barbara Youth: "Please pack your knives and go. No, really."
(WHAT DO YOU MEAN, GRASPING, WEIRD, AND POORLY THOUGHT-OUT?!)
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Not Those Kinds of Tracks
In one of my five (5-cinco-cinq-V) literature-oriented classes this quarter (exposition and excuse for hiatus, you see), we just finished reading Louise Erdrich's Tracks. Much as The Awakening and Paradise Lost tend to follow me throughout my own English major trajectory, so does Tracks tend to follow my friends.
I, personally, had never even heard of it. But from what I know of Erdrich as an author, she's got some very admirable traits, including the stick-to-it-iveness to become the best-known and most prolific author in a very specific genre.
However.
In our class discussion of Tracks, I was repeatedly struck by two points:
- The character Nanapush has a name that would make an excellent title for a rap single, especially one of the ones which includes instructions for a signature dance.
Put your hands down on your hips
Arch your back and lick your lips
Spread those knees and show that [redacted]
Girl, lemme see your na-na-push.
You see? Catchy, no? I'm envisioning the kind of video that parents' associations would strive to have banned from the airwaves.
- The book also includes characters named "Margaret" and "Pauline." This led to me trying desperately to recall the lyrics of the Neko Case song and attempting to drop them them into my analysis of the characters. Unfortunately, very little is so easy for Pauline (unless you consider "being bat-shit crazy" or "rejecting her indigenous heritage in favor of assimilation with settler culture"), and there were, as far as I could tell, no sweaters or trios of fingers left on trains or at canneries during the plot of the novel.
But that would be an awesome idea if one were scoring a video about character dynamics within the novel. You'd need a song that involved Fleur, though. And as for Nanapush -- well, that's been taken care of already, or will be, as soon as I can reserve a recording studio.
[Ladies, you been doing it since the days of Kush;
Drop down, show me how your na-na-push.]
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The Past Preakness
I recieved an email from my mother -- 't'will be posted in time, no worries -- which put me in mind of recalling another email of hers, this one sent at a very different time.
May of 2004, to be exact. The message recounts 2004's iteration of the annual Preakness Stakes viewing party held by out family friends the [Parrishes] -- [Rob] and [Janie]. (Veritable names have, for obvious reasons, been redacted.) The [Parrishes] were good-time friends: they did and said outrageous things, rented clubs for parties, and generally shook things up in my parents' generally staid group of friends.
Now, [Rob] has had his driver's license repealed after repeated DUIs and been to jail (not necessarily related, though no one has the whole story because everyone my parents talk to has, perhaps wisely, dropped them) and [Janie] has been in and out of various rehabilitation centers. Their daughters are in grandparental custody, the house in [Gated Community] has long been repossessed, and the entire situation in general could be viewed as analogous to the country's recent progression.
If one chose to be that cynical.
So, without further ado, my mother's missive from 16 May 2004:
[Redacted Embarrassing Nickname From Childhood]: First time we've attended the Parrish's Preakness Party...I'm still laughing. Southern California is a good place to be...
Upon arrival to the [Gated Community] gate, there were red checkered tablecloths and umbrellas as far as the eye could see. A blow-up castle and a extra long Slip and Slide for the children and a mechanical bull too. Poolside had the catered Western “Bar-B-Que”, and on the far side was the open bar, the stage for dancing, a full size casino pit with craps and blackjack -- manned by casino workers and a Pit Boss -- and a flat screen TV, because, of course, we were there to watch the Preakness. In front of table were three people on cell phones, speaking to bookies, and a pile of cash literally a foot high. As [Rob Parrish] yelled to Dad and kissed me Hello, he was waving around six inches of cash in his hand announcing, "We're taking all the action today, even yours you asshole [[family friend Adam] Chaseman]. Quit fu--ing with my stereo!" It appears his lucky song is Britney Spears, "Oops I did it again", and of course [Adam] had a different idea.
That song really kicked the dancing up a notch I never imagined there were so many Britney Spears look-alikes that could dance in tandem with each other. But what is it with the little pleated skirts that are hemmed by a pair of manicure scissors […]? Those little skirts were swinging to the beat, with bright blonde hair tossing around.....talk about five generations of [Janie Parrish]. Their little daughter turned 7 the other day, and was one of the dancers, with her cell phone, her birthday present, strapped to her wrist.
The open bar was manned by two Swedish foreign exchange students, both friends of the Swedish au pair that takes care of the [Parrish] children. They were giving hot tips of a different nature to all the women at the open martini bar, rating the top three salons in the area for breast and lip augmentation. I was skeptical until I tasted my Lemon Drop. After that I shut my mouth and opened my ears because they knew that of which they spoke.
As the time for the race approached, the pile of money got bigger, and one girl asked her date if it was real. The guy looked at her and said, "Honey, this is a [Parrish] Party. The only fakes around here are the (French tip) fingernails and the tits." I guess that sums it all up.
One more thing, [Rob] wanted [Adam] to get on the mechanical bull while he tested the controls. When [Adam] refused, and was mouthing behind [Mrs. Adam]'s head, "Fuck you, you Asshole", [Mrs. Adam] noticed something. She said, that the girls must be better at the bull riding because the guys got flipped off immediately, but the girls got to ride a long time. Your Dad, [Rob] and [Adam] had to run to the bar in response to that comment. By this time, the exchange students were pouring triples with the specialty of the house, Johnnie Walker…looks like the [Parrishes] are Still Going Strong…
Love, [Mom]
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
This about sums it up. Sincerest possible apologies to Ogden Nash.
Here lies '08
Good-bye I have kissed it;
Thank you, my friends
I wouldn't have missed it.
...there.
Well, perhaps it deserves a glossing slightly less flip, slightly more astringent. Joanie Didion, take us away -- ironically, this is from The Last Thing He Wanted, why is that ironic, discuss:
Some real things have happened lately. For a while we felt rich and then we didn’t. For a while we thought time was money, find the time and the money comes with it. Make money for example by flying the Concorde. Moving fast.
...
Plug into the news cycle, get the wires raw, nod out on the noise. ... Somewhere in the nod we were dropping cargo. Somewhere in the nod we were losing infrastructure, losing redundant systems, losing specific gravity. Weightlessness seemed at the time the safer mode. Weightlessness seemed at the time the mode in which we could beat both the clock and affect itself, but I see now that we were experiencing not weightlessness but what is interestingly described on page 1513 of the Merck Manual (15th Edition) as a sustained reactive depression, a bereavement reaction to the leaving of familiar environments. I see now that the environment we were leaving was that of feeling rich. I see now that there will be no Resolution Trust to do the workout on this particular default, but I did not see it then.
Not that I shouldn’t have.
There were hints all along, clues we should have registered, processed, sifted for their application to the general condition. Try the day we noticed that the banks had called in the paper on all the malls, try the day we noticed that somebody had called in the paper on all the banks.
…[these hints] should have alerted us, should have been processed, but we were moving fast. We were traveling light. We were younger.
...well, that doesn't quite take, does it? I mean, it helps a little, but we're not quite there, are we? There's a dialogue, an atmosphere, but nothing's really gelled. Okay, fine, something personal.
(ahem)
After this year of unprecedented personal and material and public loss, this year which has underlined the fact that we're inheriting a world in which cycles move faster and promises mean less (empirically) and more (personally) than previously. Relatives, jobs, fully a third of my trust's value -- poof, gone, the voids they leave proof of their ephemeral nature.
Perhaps it's a result of my continual process of maturity and the knowledge that 2009 will be the year in which, more so than any previous, I make the choices that end up affecting not only myself but everyone around me in a very direct and major way.
Talking points for working out the writedown we (royal-we and we-are-the-world-we) took in 2008:
- Luxury hotels in developing countries offer visibility rather than security.
- Random violence has been a pervasive theme in film this year (cf. The Dark Knight and Quantum of Solace with their immediate predecessors, the chilling "Because you were home" motive for the horrors in The Strangers, others).
- The American Dream is in need of a vast and thorough editorial revision (cf. the mortgage crisis, Mad Men, Revolutionary Road, Wall-E, other works in the recent cultural canon which seem to indicate fairly extreme fissures in the foundation of our national socioeconomic ambitions -- I'm not saying it's time to reread McTeague, but I am saying it's time to do our goddamned due diligence and look at the long view).
All other points aside, I'm done with this year. It's done with me. I'm glad it's over. And methinks I'll be taking the wheel in '09 -- but thanks for offering, fate.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
don't actually do these things
1.) Be a woman in proximity to power. No need to be super-pretty, just appealing, and near a man who a.) finds you attractive and b.) is in a position to wield something large and impressive, e.g. money, power, social stature, et. al.
2.) Begin a sexual relationship with the aforementioned man. It should be kept a secret, because he is married or (to reiterate) intensely powerful or, ideally, both. But it should kind of be an open secret to the members of his inner circle.
3.) Be privvy to revelations that a bunch of people would give a great deal to keep quiet. Good examples include: big corporate crime, political secrets, sexual habits/pasts of other important people (ideally, you should discover these last via personal experience with them).
4.) Keep great records! A scrapbook would be tacky, but nothing amiss with maybe accidentally Dictaphoning a few calls, a few diary entries, maybe some photos. Ideally, you'll be doing this for the simple pleasure of recording a good time, but a few of your historical precedents have been doing it as "security," that is, material for blackmail or worse. This is obvious and clicheed and should therefore be avoided.
5.) Acquire a small drinking problem. Nurture it and let it grow. Start talking when you drink. Talk a lot. Say things like "And that sonofabitch hadn't got any idea what he's got coming..." Be sure that you do this to other powerful people. And hey, hasn't someone been moving stuff around your house? Maybe your mind is playing tricks on you -- after all, you have been drinking a lot.
6.) Live somewhere isolated. If you can't do that, then at the very least live alone. Somewhere charming, like a converted carriage house with a roof made of glass, or maybe a little cottage with rattling, antique lockplates and thick walls. Fine, fine, if you must, have some sort of household help. But make sure they're flighty, or have criminal records, or are oddly loyal but dim.
7.) This should probably be 6 sub a, but it's as, if not more, important: be solo a lot. Don't really maintain a group of friends. Hang out alone. Take long walks and drives -- get out of the house. No, seriously, get out of the house, because otherwise --
8.) Fuck. Well, it happened again. You didn't get out of the house, or you came back too soon and "surprised a burglar," or something similar. So you got beaten to death (or stabbed or shot or maybe the burglar just fed you a bunch of pills...somehow). Better luck next time -- and here's hoping that they catch that burglar! Weird how he didn't really take anything of obvious value...
Monday, December 8, 2008
Fragments Shored
So, today, in a fit of verve and pique, I decided to clean out a many-drawer'd credenza in my room. In one of these drawers. every photo that I've taken, had given to me, printed, et cetera reposes alongside various and sundry notes, letters, cards, and so on.
With a view towards streamlining my life. I tore up about a ten-inch-high pile of them, and then burned them in the fireplace.
I kept the ones that mattered. Those that went were primarily old flings, former friends, duplicate photos, bad shots of people that I either didn't want to remember with a lazy eye or even remember at all, notes that expressed sentiments I'd prefer not to re-read, and letters that represented either undesired defeats or undeserved victories.
The flames were high and roaring and hungry and I fed them until I had nothing more to feed.
I know it's bad to burn coated paper, and I tried to buy a carbon offset, but what price burned bridges?
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Thought
...because I apparently can't write about ANYTHING but literature.
Fact: I've been compared, at one point or another, and with varying degrees of accuracy, to every character in The Great Gatsby. Except for Myrtle and Meyer Wolfsheim (though someone did say that Meyer Wolfsheim was "my destiny," which...ew).
And yes, the accidie with which I'm writing reflects my outlook at the moment. Things aren't great. But they'll get better...tomorrow, or something. At least that's what I'm told.
Pop Quiz
How would you describe the commonalities of this list?
Sebastian Flyte (Brideshead Revisted): alcoholic attached to Moroccan monastery.
Celia Coplestone (The Cocktail Party): martyr crucified on an ant hill in Africa.
Tony Last (A Handful of Dust): unwilling "companion" and reader in Brazilian rainforest.
Comus Bassington (The Unbearable Bassington): victim of fever in East Africa.
Extra Credit
Confer Elena McMahon (shot on the beach, unnamed Caribbean island), Charlotte Douglas (shot in the back, Estado Nacional, Boca Grande), Inez Christian (refugee camp, Kuala Lumpur).
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Writing Final (or, Finally Writing)
Well hello there.
Yes, it has been a while.
Oh, not much. How about you?
That's great to hear. I'm not sure why I blogged. Now, understand that I'm certainly not discussing moving in -- and I wouldn't dream of trying to change your life. But I've been thinking about blogging a lot recently -- thinking a lot about blogging, that is -- and just now, I was like, why don't I just post pieces I've written for various classes that may be of possible interest to my teensy audience?
(And I do mean teensy. Aside from people who get here googling "and I stepped on the ping pong ball," there are really probably three of you.)
Below, please find my final essay for a class I took in creative nonfiction. The prompt, if memory serves, was basically to set out what one had learned (or had not learned) in the class.
I've removed most of the citations, because I'm the only person I know in possession of the course reader to which they refer. I've also added graf breaks where there previously were none.
Also, because of COURSE I become the neediest person ever to breathe during finals, I had to do the whole thing from my house rather than in the class, thanks to a very accommodating prof.
I recall being very satisfied with it immediately after finishing it, and, looking back now, there's not too much I'd do differently. Well, I called something "inassailable" on the first page. But I changed that. Anyway, here it is, both for your enjoyment and to disappoint dozens of people trying to Google various persons mentioned therein!
The Process of Progress, Writing 105CN, Winter Quarter 2008
Perhaps the primary lesson I have taken from this class over the course of the quarter is that there are as many constructed definitions of the genre of creative nonfiction as there are works within it. I’ve revised my own definition, too – a definition that I didn’t even know that I possessed until I began my dialectical responses to the class readings.
I entered this class with a basis of knowledge more or less limited to Joan Didion. My father had foisted some of E.B. White’s essays on me, and I had read Adam Gopnik (Paris to the Moon, Through The Children’s Gate) with enthusiasm; I possessed an aversion to Annie Dillard due to a badly received book report on An American Childhood in ninth grade. (To be fair, I think I missed the point.)
However, by far the most process-focused of the writers in my creative nonfiction canon was Didion. I had not realized how strongly her tenets influenced my beliefs until I found myself enthusiastically agreeing (or disagreeing) with some of the assigned readings this quarter: it’s always a surprise (not necessarily a pleasant one) to discover that one holds fairly structured beliefs on a heretofore unconsidered topic.
Didion seems to have exerted an influence on the authors represented in the reader, as well: Mimi Schwartz notes the “wonderful permission”, which she “use[s]…often” from Didion’s “On Keeping A Notebook”: the veracity of a story, for Schwartz, lies not in the truth of actual events, but rather in “how it felt to me” and “what it was to be me.” (“Me” being the author, of course.) This idea of the unassailable personal truth tends to be a through-line in Didion, even in her fiction: in Democracy, she repeats consistently that “incorrect information is itself correct information about the informer,” thereby stating that every story is effectively an accurate representation, but not necessarily of the events recounted.
I have learned that the process and product of winnowing one’s views to reflect one's (feelings)? is as indicative of the editor as it is of the material. Some authors seem to call the editorial sensibility “revisionist” – and I believe there’s a certain amount of overlap. The way I see it, people do it every day, provided they get dressed in the morning: this sweater rather than that sweater. The unchosen sweater has not been annihilated; it merely awaits another day in the bottom of the drawer.
I can tell the story of a delightful dinner (richly detailed, including what I wore, topics of conversation, and the décor of the restaurant) which I had with my parents in New York, but I can and will omit the fact that it was September 10th, 2001, because I don’t necessarily want to frame my narrative in the context of a fiddling Nero with a twin-towers backdrop. The importance of suiting one’s audience and one’s venue may be dubbed “repressive” by some, but as far as I can see, restraint and freedom are nothing less than essential to societal organization, and, just as we daily choose our clothes, we choose the manner in which we present ourselves.
I think its lack of self-consciousness in presentation was the reason for my violent antipathy for the [May] Sarton piece in the reader: knowing nothing about Sarton, I could not bring myself to care by the piece’s end whether she lived or died, which is why I had such a caustic reaction to the concluding note (“The alternative is suicide and I’m not about to indulge in that fantasy of revenge”, which followed a paragraph in which the author seemed to give us her take on Rodney Dangerfield’s “I don’t get no respect” riff). Admittedly, we all think these things, we’re creatures of ego, but why can’t an egotistical person also be a self-conscious one? I believe the two often go hand in hand, and to attribute a review’s negativity to a reviewer who lacks “sympathetic understanding” seems the worst kind of self-blindness. And to publish such thoughts…well.
Granted, I may well have taken up arms for Ms. Sarton if I had any kind of context, any kind of background, and I did indeed agree with other portions of her piece. But I’ve always felt, again perhaps cf. Didion, that concrete evidence is necessary. Relics, specifics, brand names, marques, houses, ticket stubs. What does that say about them? Simone Poirier-Bures, in her “Afterword” to “That Shining Place”, examined source material that she herself had written – her letters to those at home during her time abroad.
Written without the writerly abstractions of Didion’s notebook, they revealed the correct narrative voice to use in order to best recapture the author’s exploits. Didion recalls that “we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not”; she continues to note that past selves would be able to communicate perceptions and information “of some interest.” (Slouching Towards Bethlehem, “On Keeping A Notebook")
The interpretation of artifacts – whether those of memory or those of actual source material – is key to telling a story, not only because it gives the work an automatic narrative frame but because one can learn as much about oneself in the interpretation and recollection of events.
Valid evidence is also useful in the defense of one’s work, if such a thing is necessary. As Bronwyn Williams speaks of the “victims” of creative nonfiction – those who are portrayed as largely unsympathetic or somehow slighted or wronged – Didion notes that “writers are always selling somebody out” and that the presence of any writer runs “counter to [the subject’s] best interests.” (Didion, STB, Prologue.)
If we are to regard creative nonfiction as being based on “what it was to be me”, and faithful to “accuracy in the largest sense” – by which I presume Christopher Buckley meant the emotional sense – then the “victims” exist only theoretically, on the pages of the manuscript. In practice, however, this is often not the case.
History has been distinctly unfair to multitudes, because, I am told, it is written by the victors. And though we live in a society in which Sean Wilsey can write and publish a vicious memoir (Oh The Glory of It All), and his mother, who feels that he was unfair, can publish a retaliatory memoir (Oh The Hell of It All), the actual story likely lies somewhere in the synthesis of the two. The actual story requires reading between the lines. The actual story requires an editorial eye.
The truest pieces of creative nonfiction are those that come to us when we focus on either the forest or the trees, depending on whom we believe. Both [Annie] Dillard and [Ray] Bradbury cite the example of muscae volitantes – well, Dillard cites it, Bradbury refers to it, which is both indicative of and appropriate for their respective pieces.
Dillard posits that the muse is in the details, the ability to close-focus and interpret and sense on a plane that would drive most people insane with overstimulation; Bradbury holds that the best way to maintain a storytelling ability is to look at the larger picture and furtively cultivate a narrative line.
Dillard’s bent over a microscope, Bradbury’s giving you an opaque thousand-yard stare. Both are strong advocates of feeding one’s pieces, stuffing them like geese destined for foie gras, with as broad a base of research and experience as possible.
The enthusiasm for life, for living, for weasels (Dillard), and science fiction (Bradbury) – the specifics don’t matter, so long as you take your time building a structure of narrative philosophy and selectively pluck relevant details in order to set down the strongest, most personally accurate representation of what it was to be you.
To write that, from start to end with one read-through and two or three line edits, took me one hour, ten minutes. Were I in class, I would probably use the extra five minutes to revise still further, but I feel that this is representative of my process/progress this quarter.
Regards,
Spencer A-----
WC: 1370.
