Winnowing the libraries

Nineteenth century artistic rendering of the Library of Alexandria
by the German artist O. Von Corven
Public domain, Wikipedia

Time is and always has been the great judge of the merit of books. Lost or long-forgotten books like the works of Edward Taylor and Emily Dickinson (left in manuscript) or John Donne (out of fashion for centuries) or Moby Dick (by heroic Melville, bravely writing on despite being wholly forgotten before his death) may be tossed into sight again. Whole fields of books are winnowed by the scythe of time and fall out of memory. Some books become unreadable or simply of no interest. Is this a perfect process? Probably not. Many minor but lovely works are read by fewer and fewer as time passes.

In our day, a librarian proposes that she is the one to judge, to do the winnowing: that she knows better than time, and that something more drastic than the library-sale practice of the culling of unread, inessential books is needed. Many applaud. But time winnows all things, and some day it will winnow us, including the librarian and the applauders and the current writers of books. Including me and including you. To usurp the work of time. It sounds fearsome, doesn't it? In fact, it is the work of hubris, a thing many classical works have warned us to avoid. But in striving to make libraries more open to a good cause--more writers of color, say--it appears that welcoming, open library borders swiftly turn into the desire to banish others.

Who needs to read these old white men, long dead? Who in the West needs the heritage passed down for centuries--who needs Ovid or Homer or the KJB or Chaucer or Shakespeare or Milton? All those outdated foundational ideals (not always met, but yet our ideals), like the idea that every single human wandering the face of the earth was made in the likeness of God and so is valuable, no matter the sex or color and however much he or she mars that image... Why, we can send our children to be English majors at fine, much-heralded institutions where they can duck hearing those voices, these days. So who needs them?

I do. Young writers do. And that means young writers of any sex, any color. Do not deprive young writers of the legacy of the past because whether they like or dislike writers like Dickinson and Melville and Shakespeare, they need to climb up on their shoulders. They need to read with freedom, with no holds barred. And that reading should include not just people of color and people from fascinating and far-off countries but also those pesky dead white Western males like Donne and Herbert.

What results from the ability to put words together with high power and beauty is the rightful inheritance of us all, writers and readers alike. Despite the unchosen elements of race and sex that come with birth, writers are joined as one in the love of putting words together in the most stellar order, in striving to make something meaningful and marvelous where nothing was before. That is the work of the creator, to bring truth and beauty out of the welter that surrounds us.

Letter to a young artist

Interior collage vignette by Clive Hicks-Jenkins for Thaliad

I've been thinking about you and your aspirations as you drift into the world, slipping into a job, finding the time to make your art without someone at your shoulder. You ask for advice, yet always I fear being polonial,* and so needing a good stabbing as I stand behind the arras. And though you must discover your own path and make your own quest, I feel the impulse to warn you against certain beasts along the way. In our age, the barriers to mastery in the arts have become especially powerful and strange. They can lead you in directions that mean the destruction of art--that can cripple your future work at the very start.

I say this in part because you passed through the liberal arts college of the day, and sometimes you have been taught by academics to take angry little hatchets and chop away at the pillars that hold up Western civilization and tradition. (My stance? To teach is a high calling, often fulfilled with grace. But a professor who mocks and throws away the great works of the past is a mere chipmunk digging a hole under the foot of a giant.) Oh, it is good to look with clear eyes at the world and time. But it is wrong to dismantle and trash the glories of a civilization. The truest, strongest art is crafted in the sex-abolishing, race-abolishing spirit, using the tools of the trade.

Take the great works of the past. Make them your own. Know why some matter to you, while others do not, and you will know yourself and your aims better. Know the tradition from which you spring and so be a giant by standing on the shoulders of men and the few women who managed to speak well in spite of the expectations and constraints of their times and culture. Rejoice in the art, rather than dwelling on social critique and conditions as a measure of that art. Conditions and cultural beliefs are not the measure of an art, but part of a complicated soil of time and place from which a work grows and flowers.

Also, sift out and forget any nonsense you were served up in studio or workshop classes--to make art only based on "what you know," "to find your voice," etc. My education taught me that certain words were off limits, that literature was divided into genres and only one was worthwhile, and that I didn't need the ancient tools of my trade inherited from the masters of the past. One of the things I found useful about my education was that it awakened the desire to strive against or test what I had been taught. Question your received ideas, and toss them if they do not serve your art.

Let the art teach you. Know your tools. Remember that the way forward has long been through the tradition and the past. Each time you start a work, you will be starting over. But just make your art. In love. In truth. In grace. You will be making yourself, as well. Each time you begin again, you will be different--bigger on the inside, more emboldened and ready to leap into the unknown with a shout.

Love to you, luck to you--
Marly

* Yes, I made that one up. But it's a made-up word I've used for a long time, as Polonius and his advice always come to mind when I am asked for advice. Perhaps in such situations, we are all Polonius, or we are all the grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find," who would have been a good woman--would have spoken only what is true and what matters--if only there had been someone there to shoot her every minute of her life.

Video by Paul Digby.

Advice to would-be writers (for R. T.)

Another 2013 book tour picture--
in Cullowhee, NC with Paul and Lynn Digby--
Lynn behind the camera on this one...

 I've been trying to visit and support A Commonplace from Eastrod, the infant blog of R. T., but what a lot of events there are in Advent and before the school Christmas break! Tonight was the high school concert, where I immediately noticed that my youngest wasn't wearing his jeans under the school choir robes and that he had on some spectacular tie-dyed socks. Whee! It's hot under the lights and those big old choir robes...

R. T. aka Tim asks about advice for writers in his latest post, and that is a thing that changes each time one answers, so I thought that maybe it is time I answer that question once again; it's a question one often receives. So I'm going to muse on the e-page and find out what I think at the moment. I hope not to sound like a book-mad Mrs. Polonius. (Feel free to argue, add your own advice in the comments, etc.)

And here I am with painter Lynn Digby,
Paul behind the camera

Come back next year and I'll probably think something different. 

• Be a crazy, obsessed, wild reader at some time in your life, whether childhood or adulthood.
• If you have a tragedy in childhood or a difficult family, you don't have to be happy about it, but you have grit that may become a pearl. The world may not be your oyster, but you might be your own oyster, sooner or later.
• Don't worry about it if you are a woman and have children and can't meet the omnipresent "write every day" demand. 
• Your challenge is to make a thing that holds life in a net of words. This is almost impossible. There is no dishonor in failing, and even a failure may be transformative.
• Just be quiet and do the work. 
• Better yet, don't be a writer! (If you must, you'll do it anyway. And if you don't have to be one, this advice might save the world a lot of pedestrian books and some pernicious bestsellers.)
• And remember that worldly success is not the same thing as making something full of grace and truth. 
• If you believe in your innocence that worldly success must come, you may be destroyed by this belief. I have seen it happen to people, and such bitter change is tragic.
• Do not abuse the dead (particularly historical figures) in the creation of characters.
• The world owes you nothing. Do not expect something. But if it comes, say thank you.
• Listen to your teachers but later on show them that you can do the thing with flair that they said not (no, never!) to do.
• If what you want is worldly success and money, do something else entirely. It's a lot quicker and more sure.
• Read your novel/poem/story/thing-you-made aloud when you think you're done, particularly if you have what is known as a tin ear. Of course, nobody will tell you if you have a tin ear, so do it anyway.
• Grow bigger on the inside as you go along.
• And make your poems/narratives bigger on the inside as you go along.
• Don't apologize for your work.
• Forget about "finding yourself" or finding any other hard-to-pin-down quality. Just make the thing. You'll be making yourself, too.
• If you are a woman and a writer, do not think that you simply must be a superwoman. With hard work, it will be possible for you to do two large things well. (For me, that was first teaching and writing and later on raising three children and writing with a few events now and then on the side.) Be sure you choose the right things. This choice may be costly in a worldly way. Be clear on what you are about when you choose because regret in such situations can be strong.
• If you are a woman and choose to do more than two large things well, know that at least one of your pursuits will suffer. Make sure it is not your children, or you may be raising another generation of poets and writers. (That may happen anyway, but why tempt fate?)
• Do things you suspect you might not be able to do. 
• Push off the edge of the known world.

Getting a few things off the writer's chest--

On Martel and on being a judge

Why are journalists and others complaining that Martel should not have gotten the Booker because a. she has one already and b. somebody else could have used the promotion? If she should not have gotten it--a thing I do not know, not having read the books that are finalists--that judgment should have been made on other grounds entirely.

As somebody who (with four others) carefully read 316 books this year in order to choose finalists, I just want to say that a judge's job ought to be solely and simply to choose the best books. It must have nothing to do with the personal histories of the authors. It must have nothing to do with book promotion and sales. It must have nothing to do with the trendiness of the subject. Its purposes should be clear and hard and a little cold.

On writing about writing

What silly things are said about writing! There's no reason to believe anything a writer says about his own work. (Yes, including this...) And journalists who whip up exciting little features can be miles off the mark.

The so-called sadness of writers who vanish

Yesterday I read one of those (rather frequent) articles invoking for our knowing amusement the names of now-forgotten writers, as though it is terribly sad that the poor deluded creatures wasted so much life on art. I just want to say that I think this is utterly ridiculous. Such a journalist believes that only the writer who takes home the gold ring has a life worth bothering with--never mind that the world doesn't even know who takes home the ring, according to our descendants, and that all most of us really know for certain in our age is who gets the most book promotion from publishers.

But that sort of opinion, appearing with surprising frequency, asserts a thing that is strange: that art comes before life. Patently wrong! There is no art without life. Think about it. Maybe art isn't the biggest thing in life. Maybe it is not first--maybe it should not be first.

I am engaged in a kind of life struggle to create a soul that is, despite all, beautiful and worthy. I do this only in part by building edifices of words. Somehow this increases me, readies me, steadies me. My intense joy in playing with words and telling stories is one of the things that makes me bigger on the inside.

So these forgotten writers: do we pity them? I do not. They dog-paddled or swam in the great ocean of words and art. Without them, the ocean would have been a smaller place, perhaps too small to hold great whales. Without the reaching after story and art, their lives would have been dwindled things.

Grumpy and possibly unfair, an insomniac's questions at 2:00 a.m.--

Have we as a country of at least potential readers given up on precision of word choice, a little variety of sentence structure, the ability to sound echoes from past works, etc.? Don't people read Conrad and Hawthorne or at least Poe in high school any more? Remember back to the Victorians and before when the development of taste was considered part of an educated personal's equipment for life?

On gratefulness

I had a lovely week of letters and comments from people in the arts and readers about A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage. As I still feel that the book is nigh-invisible, this cheerfulness was unexpected. I'm very grateful to those of you who complete my book (that one or others) by reading it. The tale is nothing at all without you.

Tiny explanation of my word-madness, somewhat like a manifesto--

I was given a gift. I did nothing to deserve it. All deserving comes simply from the degree to which I can increase the gift through fresh creation without falling under the sway of the fashionable lures and Babel-babble of my time.

This is, quite simply, a moral demand.

A call on my life is to not bury my talent in the ground but wield it, sometimes like a sword, sometimes like a song--like a thousand changing things. All this and more I strive to do in, as an editor friend wrote me this evening, my "hard-earned freedom."

"Because a fire was in my head"

THE HIVE
If one is to judge by the buzz of thanksgiving that burdens the acknowledgment pages of new books, a hive mind seems to have seized the little nation of writers. But the beautiful idea or image that burns in the head is not meant to lead toward committee work.

THE HOBBLE
Whether they are accurate or not, comments can point to where something is amiss. That's fine. Nevertheless, a writer needs to make free choices, unhindered. To do otherwise is to welcome the safety of a hobble. The words in a book need to be set in proper order by one sensibility, and the writer must possess a portion of self-reliance for that to happen.

THE NEEDFUL PERILS
Sometimes a book is a steppingstone or a wrong direction rather than the perfection (the golden apples of the sun and silver apples of the moon) dreamed and glimpsed. Yet a steppingstone or wrong path may be precisely the thing that was needed, not by the canny peddler's need for "product" but by the uncanny demands of art.

Emptying

Photograph:  Jar with birds-of-paradise at Siem Reap, Cambodia, 2009

One thing I find very funny about online life is that if you post something personal and musing, people are not nearly as interested as if you say something ridiculous. After I posted the somewhat serious bit below, I rambled over to facebook and left the somewhat ridiculous status line, Had a music lesson today. I am as ignorant as a potato.  Immediately one has several dozen wonderfully funny and equally ridiculous comments from all sorts of people, artists and writers and my one businessman (who is also a writer) and others! Puns. Faux proverbs from either side of the Atlantic. Claims for the intellect of the potato. Tales of potato art (my contribution.) The intersection of music and potatoes (thank you, Gary and youtube.) And links. And "likes."

My distant cousin William Wallace Tabbot, who found me when I posted something about one of my ancestors (Sally Jo Hance, perhaps?), "likes" everything. He is giving my first cousins a run for their facebook money. I am almost as fond of him as of my cousin who writes me letters and tells me what's going on down South without me.

Must say that I don't really mind... I mean, I like being silly.  I like silly things. For example, I like chickens. I haven't had a post about chickens in a long time. Maybe I'll talk about chickens tomorrow.  Or maybe I won't.

* * *

While I was drinking tea this morning—meditative drink, tea is—I realized that the arc of my life as I approached my mid-thirties slowly turned away from everything valued by the world I grew up in.  It’s as if I had to undo everything that I had done and was “supposed” to do in order to be what I am.  Even though I began thinking of myself as a writer when I was still a child, I was distracted and absorbed by many things.

When I received tenure, I quit teaching. (I do sometimes do short-term events lasting up to a few weeks, so I still have an occasional toe in the reflecting pool near the ivory tower.)  Since I won my tenure two years early, I did not teach all that long.  My feeling was that teaching, while exciting and rewarding, was not the right place for me as a writer; I know others rely on it, and so I say nothing about whether it is good for writers in general—each must decide. But I gave up my promotion and a regular and increasing income.  I gave up a place in the world and the amount of power that goes with it.  I “wasted” my education. In the end, I emptied myself of a great deal in order to be filled up with something else.

(I suppose having three children is a somewhat analogous choice. One gives up a great deal in order to have that increase in life, an increase that has to be fed and clothed and educated. And one does, indeed, have more life—and many other things besides, some exhausting and some wonderful and renewing.)

It’s akin to a spiritual act, though not the same:  an emptying in order to be filled.

Looking back, I could be full of regret at what I gave up.  I could think that I had wasted life and substance, and certainly I would now be more solvent if I had clung to my job.  Luckily, I don’t feel that way.

 

Sometimes what you do seems to people like the worst possible thing you could do, and yet it turns out to be the best.  And that sounds to me like a religious idea as well. Yet I was simply groping about in darkness, not sure how to live my life differently and choosing in some degree of blindness.

Advice to an aspiring writer

Hi my name is L---. I'm 39 years old and I love to write in my spare time. I'm wondering if you have any advice as to what kind of education is necessary to become a successful author?

The only ‘education’ that is essential is a great deal of reading and a mastery of the mechanics of the language. It is quite possible to gain these things without ever crossing the threshold of a “school.” Schools give a structure, a reading list, companions, teachers, and deadlines. If these things would help you, then go for it.

I would love to publish my book someday, but I know I need to strengthen and sharpen my skills to complete it.

I have inquired about college, writing schools like Winghill, online classes (writer's digest)...not sure which is the best way to go.

Well, I looked up Winghill’s web site; I know nothing about it, and would want to see what sort of person is involved. I’m always dubious until I see the roster of instructors. Then sometimes I’m even more dubious, so tread with care and try to talk to somebody who has gone through their program. (Maybe the whole world knows about Winghill, and I’m a dunce! But make sure.)

If you would like critiques, there are online writer’s groups like “Critters,” or you can try to join a local writer’s group. In-person groups can be useful or can be harmful, so don’t feel that you can’t quit and look for another. I sometimes share pieces-in-progress with other writers via email.

Are you interested in a certain 'kind' of fiction? There are intensive writing programs in the summer that could be useful and give you a circle of friends who write—and who might like to continue a relationship afterward. I’ve never done anything like this, though I’ve taught week-long classes, but I’ve noticed that some summer workshops are extraordinarily useful. The very competitive ones seem best. People who go to Clarion, for example, are followed by that achievement for years, and have an advantage when they submit stories to markets in speculative fiction. The graduates keep up with the people who were in “their year” and support them; in addition, one works closely with six different writers and editors in the field. I’ve thought about this way of going about a writing life quite a bit, because I have a child who wants to be a writer/illustrator of fantasy and science fiction. The path from working on fiction and reading to going to Clarion to being a 'known' figure in speculative fiction circles seems to be a common one. I have no doubt that there are counterparts to this sort of workshop in many genres. I haven’t really paid attention to this subject otherwise, but I know there are long-established literary workshops in Squaw Valley and Saratoga and many other places.

Please let me know what you did to become a sucessful writer.

L--- H---
New Jersey

I don’t think that much helped me except my obsessive nature and my passion for reading and writing, plus--in discouraged moments--the knowledge that certain people I respect in the field thought that my writing was very good. My education had little to do with it, though I did read many things in school that I might have skipped otherwise.

The question of ‘success’ is an interesting one, and I’m not really sure what is meant by it.

In some ways I am a very ‘successful’ writer; in other ways, not. I’ve written books and stories and poems, and I’ve haven’t stopped striving toward what’s beautiful and alive and true. Yes, I’ve won some awards for short and long fiction, gotten plenty of pleasing reviews, and I'm grateful to the writers and publishers and editors in the field who have volunteered wonderful things about my writing. Most of my books have been published with what is, arguably, the premier major publishing house. I have a wonderful new agent. Best of all, I still take deep pleasure in the act of writing.

If that is “success,” I have it.

But perhaps that is not what the world means by success. I have a novelist friend who always calls me the Artist of the Beautiful; he means that I hew to my own course and have an instinct for the beautiful. Yet in Hawthorne's story of the same name, while the artist is utterly fulfilled and transformed by his magical artistry, he is wholly a failure in the world's eyes. Meanwhile, there is absolutely no doubt that in Hawthorne's eyes, the artist has triumphed. What could be more ambiguous--or more accurate about the artist's plight in our own time?

If success is having a large readership (something I would, naturally, like) or making filthy mounds of money (not bad, especially for paying back the sort of student loans you may be contemplating!) or being a ‘name’ (meaningless to me, but a corollary to having readers), then I do not have it.

Why not?

Like most in the vanishing 'mid-list,' I have never had a ‘push’ from a publisher. I’ve done many things that are ‘wrong’ for success. I don’t like to do the same book twice. In fact, my books often leap to a very different audience. I am fatally ‘nice’ and undemanding. In addition, the world has changed greatly since I began publishing, and writers have a new challenge in trying to find a niche in a frenetic electronic landscape. But I don’t regret not being pushy. I don’t regret not writing variations on the same book, over and over, as many writers do.

And I often feel an intense joy when the words are streaming onto the page. I guess that means that I’m going to go on doing what I want to do in the way I like to do it, and that I accept all of the consequences.

I don't know if any of this is a help. You may feel differently about many of these issues. However it is with you, I wish you much pleasure in making stories.

*****
I spent the afternoon grubbing in my garden, so the picture above is in honor of my little Eden. It's from Laurelines--lavender with oyster shells, at www.laurelines.typepad.com/. Okay, I see that Blogger says "no." Imagine it! Or go find it.