(5) One of my favorite moments in the Taylor Swift canon is this observation about Jake Gyllenhaal: "Photo album on the counter. Your cheeks are turning red. You used to be a little kid with glasses in a twin-size bed."
Do you see what she does here? She's like a camera. She records some empirical data: the photo album, the red cheeks. Then the camera zooms inward, and we watch TS making a deduction: "That kid in the glasses is Jake Gyllenhaal, and Current Jake is blushing because his past is getting exhumed." Also, the red cheeks: A good writer finds tension in every corner! So much in so little space. That's called economy.
(4) Jason Mraz is slightly smarter than your average pop writer, and this was especially clear with "I Won't Give Up," a few years ago. What I like about this (admittedly treacly, melodramatic) song is the weird angle it uses. This is not about new love or a big breakup; it's about some pedestrian problems within an adult, or semi-adult, relationship. "I don't want to walk away so easily; I'm here to stay and make the difference that I can make." Not your standard fare.
I can't fully endorse this song, however, because the first line is preposterous. "When I look into your eyes, it's like watching the night sky." Come again? Is the lover in question one of those black-iris zombies from the second season of "True Blood"? An additional clarifying statement does nothing to add or to clarify: "It's like watching the night sky--or a beautiful sunrise." Now you've lost me.
(3) Amy Bloom. Ms. Bloom was my teacher, and I write about her too much, but I just want to point out her personal essays, on her website: amybloom.com.
These essays are short models of what you can accomplish with a personal anecdote. Lorrie Moore says, "Advocacy is a useful muse," and AB takes that to heart: She is gently offering you some advice and some hard-earned wisdom, even as she seems just to be telling a story. I especially like when she breaks down family tension for you, in "Pushing Buttons": "Even when we're forty, we're invested in seeing our siblings as bullies, tyrants, and they are invested in seeing us as helpless infants."
Bloom suggests that, the minute you start to see your childhood tormentors with clear, adult eyes, you also begin taking on the tics of your own parents. There's no escaping. AB recalls "fixing" her child's hair, and enduring her child's glaring, and recalling that she, AB, was in the child's position--not long ago--with her own overbearing mother. (AB's mother is a wonderful character in these essays. At one point, she asks, "Are you wearing your hair that way?" and AB observes that this is really a question for a meta-existential philosopher. AB's mom also pushes around some salesladies at a bridal shop: "What white? I call that natural cotton color.") Anyway, life is painful and awkward, and AB finds fun ways to laugh at that fact. So the essays are worth reading.
(2) "Unoriginal Sin." This is an episode from Season Five of SATC. Carrie's sin is being "unoriginal": Without love in her life, she has lost an ability to generate new columns. This is especially problematic because publishing types want her to assemble a book; they want her to clarify whether she is optimistic or pessimistic, and to provide a dedication. At the same time, Charlotte is dragging Carrie to an awful "law of attraction" self-help guru event. Carrie feels repelled, at first, but then she's moved by Charlotte's optimism. She realizes that she herself is also hopeful and romantic--and, in a surprise twist, she dedicates her first book to Charlotte. Unexpected and stirring. You have to hand it to those writers!
(1) Rankin/Rendell/Lively Weekend. It's (soon) 100 degrees in New Jersey, and my husband will be away all weekend in Montana. My plan is to (a) not leave my couch and (b) spend all my time with prolific writers from the UK. I'm especially interested in Penelope Lively, whose novel--"Family Album"--I will read Saturday or Sunday.
Ms. Lively is around nine hundred years old, and she recently put out her twenty millionth book--"Life in the Garden"--which is a brisk 140 pages about the literary history of gardening. Gardening as a "trope." Is there really an audience for this? Yes. His name is Daniel, and he's a young-ish gay man living in NJ. Uninterested in gardening, uninterested in literary depictions of gardening. But very interested in the spectacle of Lively making shrewd observations -- and interested in Lively's stamina. Thank God for this British icon. And Happy Weekend!
P.S. In SATC's Season Five, I really loved the image of a struggling Carrie in front of her laptop. "Men are like socks." "Some men are plaids, some are argyles." "Love is like a sock drawer." And: DELETE!!!
Do you see what she does here? She's like a camera. She records some empirical data: the photo album, the red cheeks. Then the camera zooms inward, and we watch TS making a deduction: "That kid in the glasses is Jake Gyllenhaal, and Current Jake is blushing because his past is getting exhumed." Also, the red cheeks: A good writer finds tension in every corner! So much in so little space. That's called economy.
(4) Jason Mraz is slightly smarter than your average pop writer, and this was especially clear with "I Won't Give Up," a few years ago. What I like about this (admittedly treacly, melodramatic) song is the weird angle it uses. This is not about new love or a big breakup; it's about some pedestrian problems within an adult, or semi-adult, relationship. "I don't want to walk away so easily; I'm here to stay and make the difference that I can make." Not your standard fare.
I can't fully endorse this song, however, because the first line is preposterous. "When I look into your eyes, it's like watching the night sky." Come again? Is the lover in question one of those black-iris zombies from the second season of "True Blood"? An additional clarifying statement does nothing to add or to clarify: "It's like watching the night sky--or a beautiful sunrise." Now you've lost me.
(3) Amy Bloom. Ms. Bloom was my teacher, and I write about her too much, but I just want to point out her personal essays, on her website: amybloom.com.
These essays are short models of what you can accomplish with a personal anecdote. Lorrie Moore says, "Advocacy is a useful muse," and AB takes that to heart: She is gently offering you some advice and some hard-earned wisdom, even as she seems just to be telling a story. I especially like when she breaks down family tension for you, in "Pushing Buttons": "Even when we're forty, we're invested in seeing our siblings as bullies, tyrants, and they are invested in seeing us as helpless infants."
Bloom suggests that, the minute you start to see your childhood tormentors with clear, adult eyes, you also begin taking on the tics of your own parents. There's no escaping. AB recalls "fixing" her child's hair, and enduring her child's glaring, and recalling that she, AB, was in the child's position--not long ago--with her own overbearing mother. (AB's mother is a wonderful character in these essays. At one point, she asks, "Are you wearing your hair that way?" and AB observes that this is really a question for a meta-existential philosopher. AB's mom also pushes around some salesladies at a bridal shop: "What white? I call that natural cotton color.") Anyway, life is painful and awkward, and AB finds fun ways to laugh at that fact. So the essays are worth reading.
(2) "Unoriginal Sin." This is an episode from Season Five of SATC. Carrie's sin is being "unoriginal": Without love in her life, she has lost an ability to generate new columns. This is especially problematic because publishing types want her to assemble a book; they want her to clarify whether she is optimistic or pessimistic, and to provide a dedication. At the same time, Charlotte is dragging Carrie to an awful "law of attraction" self-help guru event. Carrie feels repelled, at first, but then she's moved by Charlotte's optimism. She realizes that she herself is also hopeful and romantic--and, in a surprise twist, she dedicates her first book to Charlotte. Unexpected and stirring. You have to hand it to those writers!
(1) Rankin/Rendell/Lively Weekend. It's (soon) 100 degrees in New Jersey, and my husband will be away all weekend in Montana. My plan is to (a) not leave my couch and (b) spend all my time with prolific writers from the UK. I'm especially interested in Penelope Lively, whose novel--"Family Album"--I will read Saturday or Sunday.
Ms. Lively is around nine hundred years old, and she recently put out her twenty millionth book--"Life in the Garden"--which is a brisk 140 pages about the literary history of gardening. Gardening as a "trope." Is there really an audience for this? Yes. His name is Daniel, and he's a young-ish gay man living in NJ. Uninterested in gardening, uninterested in literary depictions of gardening. But very interested in the spectacle of Lively making shrewd observations -- and interested in Lively's stamina. Thank God for this British icon. And Happy Weekend!
P.S. In SATC's Season Five, I really loved the image of a struggling Carrie in front of her laptop. "Men are like socks." "Some men are plaids, some are argyles." "Love is like a sock drawer." And: DELETE!!!
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