Should to Want Express
Should I Stay or Want to Go?
My mom was raised Catholic and my dad is Jewish so I’m entitled to a healthy dose of guilt. It can be useful, though, I’ve found. Guilt can be a catalyst for action. The current cause of my guilt is not replying to Steve Knezovich’s post from June 2, 2010 in which he asked, “I think all of us have writers who inspire us, but how many writers actually ask you to come out and play?” I’ve wanted to reply to Knezovich’s appeal for over a month now and I’m finally getting to it. The delay is not due to procrastination but to lack of information. I spend so much of my time doing what I should that I sometimes forget that I can read and write out of want. Should sure can govern most of our lives if we let it.
I see now that in his posting the following week, “Invitation vs. Inspiration,” several people answered the question Steve posed (now I feel guilty that I didn’t read that post sooner). Some people have writers they turn to for inspiration, writers who seem to invite them to write, who ask them to come out to play. It just took me a while to think of any writers who do these things for me. The reason for this? I think I’ve had a bad attitude. I’ve been so caught in obligation that I can be reading the most exciting, inspiring, inviting thing ever and feeling like I need to find the use in it.
This weekend I enjoyed reading Rare and Endangered Species, by Richard Bausch in which we get to see the inner feelings and mental workings of everyday people. Bausch tells us very little about his characters’ thoughts; most of his storytelling is done through action, description, and dialogue. I love how drawn in I become as I try to figure out the relationships and scenarios.
I got the book at the library because a friend suggested I acquaint myself with Bausch’s work, but I actually read it because I wanted to, because it started like this:
“William Coombs, with two o’s,” Melanie Ballinger told her father over long distance. “Pronounced just like the thing you comb your hair with. Say it.” Ballinger repeated the name.
“Say the whole name.”
“I’ve got it, sweetheart. Why am I saying it?”
“Dad, I’m bringing him home with me. We’re getting married.”
Right away I was intrigued by the daughter’s bossiness and the father’s cooperative spirit. I find the father’s line, “I’ve got it, sweetheart. Why am I saying it?” very funny. Bausch often writes about domestic scenes and relationships, but there is always drama and disarmingly true insight about human behavior and feeling. One of the most moving stories in the book is “The Person I Have Mostly Become,” in which a man who is unemployed finds himself unable to talk to his son, his mother, and a potential employer without infusing his words with bitterness, anger, criticism, and hopelessness. You can imagine how this would plunge him further into a state of bitterness, anger, criticism, and hopelessness, though you’ll have to read it to see how well Bausch gets you to feel what it’s like inside of this life.
The final piece in the book is a novella that shares its title with the book. It is told from many points of view and does so in such a way that once one ends, you are uncomfortably eager to know how the next person views the scene. The first section, though, is the strangest. In places it feels like the point of view is close third that shifts between the husband and wife, though, really, the few times it seems we get information from the husband’s head, it is really from the wife’s. It turns out that the point of view is a sort of distant-close third. We don’t see what the wife is thinking much at all, and when we do find out it is through her actions. Now for my recurring question: When do you get to withhold information from the reader? In this case, the desire to figure out the source of tension between the husband and wife propels the reader through the opening section, and the propelling is utterly enjoyable. It’s just that I fear Bausch would be bullied into revealing more sooner if we got this piece workshopped.
Bausch makes me want to write because he creates tension (delicate suspense) so well. He does this by engaging our curiosity, by getting us involved in trying to piece together the story through the careful details provided. This effect in writing is one that first made me want to write, one I saw in Hemingway’s novels and stories. He doesn’t explain the context; you have to figure it out by what the characters say and don’t say to each other. Hemingway was one of my first loves for the way he handles details. I suppose I find Bausch so inspiring because he succeeds in using an effect I’ve long tried to employ. Reading his work makes me want to keep trying.
Other things that have made me want to write in the recent past: “Another Manhattan” by Donald Antrim because of the way we get to enter the quickly deteriorating point of view of the main character and because Antrim makes us care about the man. I like it when my empathy is stretched and offering this service to readers seems to me like a worthy reason to write. The Office because it makes life’s horrible truths and ridiculousness seem laughable, and if I could make people see that the horrors we live through are funny, I’d feel I’d accomplished something really worthwhile.
I know many of you already wrote in response to Steve’s blog in June about which writers inspire you. Who else? What else? Any maps from Should to Want you can share?
Good stuff, Shira. I don’t have any answers — a lot of my favorite writers actually make me shy away from writing, because I’m intimidated — but i think you raise an interesting point about omitting information and the workshop. I like workshops, but the tendency is for everyone to want answers to everything. It’s kind of an easy critique.
I sometimes found myself sticking in things like what jobs people had when it wasn’t really central to the story, what kind of house they lived in when the action occurs elsewhere, etc., as well as explicitly charting the emotional reason for every single action, because someone at some point in every workshop will not understand what a character does. Some of that is necessary, of course, but a lot of it came back out, eventually, in part because I think I was filling in too many gaps.
The gaps are important. They’re where the reader comes in, but they’re also natural, lifelike. We don’t explain things to each other; our lives are not explained to us in any way. Overexplained fiction feels dead. It’s tough to decide, though, when you’re creating a narrative tension and when you’re leaving out something crucial.
I haven’t read much Bausch, but i’ll check him out.
I like the way you put it–the gaps are important. I wonder what you are reading these days. So much that I read feels only slightly (or completely un) inspired. Aren’t too many of us forcing ourselves to write? The world surely doesn’t need the writing of all of us. Though we definitely need the writing of YOU!
i just read the new Alice Munro collection. great, as i alway think she is. next i’m going to try WG Sebald — though i’ve had an interest in Donald Antrim, too. You like him?
I like that — the world doesn’t need all our writing. I’ve been having that exact thought lately, as I try to tamp down my anxiety about not writing enough, not writing enough…. i’m getting sick of it. i might be starting to hate writing, too.
Greg used to say that a lot of student fiction leaves too much out of the story. That’s totally a paraphrase of something he said like 4 years ago, so take it with a grain of salt. But I do think it can be difficult to find that balance between explaining everything and leaving too much for the reader to figure out on his/her own. Another reason I hate writing.
My obsession with the dangers of witholding comes from a comment Greg made in a workshop about three years ago. I didn’t ask him to elaborate at the time since I was a lowly poet and wanted him to elaborate on everything. But I’ve been trying to figure out what he meant ever since.
Pete, are you writing yet? I’m trying to use my extra summer hours for writing, but it is slow going. I’m somewhat amused by what I’m currently working on, though. What are you reading these days? When are you going to start blogging for Bark?
i second that notion, Pete. Blog!
Killer post, Shira. I want to check out that Richard Bausch book, based on the dialogue exchange alone!
While I’ve been told that I’ve left too much out of the story, I’ve also been told that I’ve exposiated (new EWU word, brought to you by Sabrina Mauritz) too much and made the reader feel stupid. Then again, I’ve also heard profs say that, “Show, don’t tell” is outdated, then I’ve heard them tell students that they can’t see a particular action, that they need to show it. I dunno – writing’s fucking hard, made even harder, as Shawn pointed out, by reading brilliant authors, whose skill is intimidating and can be (for me) corrosive to my own craft. Sometimes, though, it’s nice when one finds cluttered prose or a stupid metaphor in published prose that’s considered good. Makes one feel like one still has a chance.
By the way, Shira, I think we win the contest for coolest supplementary blog pics this week!
Oh, yeah. We supplement quite well. If only Marcus were here to be supplemented by us. Tuesday Crew!