Talking writing

 If you’re talking writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg might come up. Several short sentences about writing has a following.

I don’t know how to describe it, so I’ll give an example:

 

Most aspiring writers write too soon.

They think writing is a transitive act instead of an

intransitive one.

Everything they know about writers writing — all those images

of writers writing —

Hastens them to the desk,

Where they sit perched over the keyboard or pen in

hand,

Caught in the anticipatory gesture,

Eyes intent on the possibilities of the screen,

Poised on the brink of thought, but not actually

thinking,

As though by leaning forward a sentence will tip out

of their heads

And onto the page.

 

The example shows what I can’t explain: the odd form of his items (not aphorism and not anecdote) and the odd lines (not prose and not poetry).

This example is meaningful to me. When a news writer is struggling, it’s usually an indication that she hasn’t done enough reporting.

In trying to write short stories, I’ve discovered that if I’m struggling, it’s a symptom that I haven’t done enough thinking about the emotional freight of the situation that I find so interesting. I know the facts of the situation and can report them. I’m interested in the situation but haven’t figured out why.

I made a living writing. But I’m still an aspiring writer: I write too soon.

 • Source: Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several short sentences about writing; New York: Vintage Books, 2012, p. 47.

Anecdotes, a second thought

 Yesterday’s note offered a working definition of an anecdote as a little story that limits what it tries to show: it illustrates a quirk of personality, rather than some universal quality of humanity.

The problem with that suggestion is an anecdote like this:

 

The eighty-year-old Cato surprised his friends by setting himself the task of studying Greek. Asked how he could contemplate such a lengthy course of study at his advanced age, he replied it was the youngest age he had left.

 

That trait — that devotion to learning — is a deeply human quality, rather than an individual quirk. Not everyone has that trait or quality, but my friend Melvin, who was teaching medical students at 90 while taking courses in literature at the community college, did.

People tell anecdotes for different reasons, just as they tell anecdotes for different reasons.

Definitions are tricky, as Wittgenstein pointed out in seeking a definition of “games.” You can see the same problem with defining a “story” by looking at The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis.

• Sources and notes: The Brown, Little Book of Anecdotes, edited by Clifton Fadiman; Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985, p. 108. The anecdote refers to Cato the Censor, 234-149 BCE.

What’s an anecdote?

 An anecdote is a kind of story, limited in a peculiar way. Instead of trying to show the universal humanity of the subject, the anecdote tries to illustrate a quirk of personality. The anecdote is interested in the individuality of the individual, rather than in what the individual can tell us about humanity.

That’s a stab at a working definition. It’s highly provisional. I’m already dubious and will stab again tomorrow.

What’s going on here?

My friend Christopher Cook, hearing I was trying to write a short story, took me on a tour of short fiction. He recalled the short features in Reader’s Digest, such as “Humor in Uniform” and “Life in These United States.” He asked whether such short pieces were really stories.

 

Would they be better called anecdotes, sketches, reminiscences, briefs, impressions, incidents, or the like? In short, what constitutes a story? 

 

It’s a complex question. Since I love anecdotes, I thought I’d peel that topic off and start there. 

My stab at a working definition owes much to Clifton Fadiman, who asked whether the story of van Gogh’s ear could be considered an anecdote. Fadiman said it was “too complex, in a sense too important, to qualify as an anecdote.” 
I’m trying to suggest why that story is too important to qualify. A person’s individual quirks, as interesting as they are, don’t tell us much about a person’s struggle to be human.

• Sources and notes: The Brown, Little Book of Anecdotes, edited by Clifton Fadiman; Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985, p. xv.

Christopher Cook is known for his novel Robbers; New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000. I have three collections of his stories on my shelf: Screen Door Jesus & Other Stories, The Salvage Yard and Tongues of Fire.

Between winter storms

 The Wise Woman, saying I’d been too focused on chores, got us out of the house and into the woods on a chilly day. We walked from Alexander Lake to the South River and back — 3 miles. It was 41 degrees, with a stout north wind.

We were between winter storms. The few blooms we saw were dandelions and henbit.

The prettiest sight was a border, the ragged edge of prairie and forest just north of the river. The tall grasses, as shaggy as old brooms in late winter, are deep brown. Mixed in with them are young pines, which are a lighter green now than you’d imagine. The contrast of colors was gorgeous, but the beauty masks a quarrel: whether that strip of land will be prairie or forest.

Sunday mourning

 I heard a thump on my second-story window and saw a cloud of sparrow down. I found the tiny body below and dug a tiny grave.

In just a few lines

 Brevity is one of the recurring topics in this online collection of notes. Seeing Michael Longley’s obituary reminded me of his experiments with short poems.

I like short poems that capture a strong image. William Carlos Williams, Charles Reznikoff and Lorine Niedecker were masters. How does Longley fit in with this gang? Trying to explain a two- or four-line poem is hopeless, so here’s an example, the whole of “Old Poets”:

 

Old poets regurgitate
Pellets of chewed-up paper
Packed with shrew tails, frog bones,
Beetle wings, wisdom.

 

A suitable epitaph, I think.

• Source: “Old Poets” is on the website Brief Poems, which has a fine collection of Longley’s work: 

https://briefpoems.wordpress.com/2015/11/12/snowfall-brief-poems-by-michael-longley/

Michael Longley, 1939-2025

 Michael Longley was a poet of Ireland. His friend Seamus Heaney described him as a “custodian of griefs and wonders.”

I admire Longley’s poem “Wounds,” which mourns senseless violence. It was written during The Troubles of Northern Ireland.

The poet begins with two pictures of his father. One is of an officer who went over the top at the Somme during World War I. The second is of his father following a chaplain covering corpses.

Later, the poet buries others beside him:

 

            Three teenage soldiers, bellies full of

            Bullets and Irish beer, their flies undone.

 

These three are the “soldiers” of a civil war — a polite term for organized murder. They are buried with the pack of cigarettes and matches that traditionally go into the graves of war dead. But what little ceremonies are appropriate for the dead man in the uniform of a bus conductor, killed beside his carpet-slippers, shot in the head by a shivering boy?

• Source: “Wounds” is available at the Poetry by Heart website:

https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/wounds