Nutritional Reading

This week, I’ve started eating better. I’m off the pretzels, I’m eating a ton of raw vegetables, and though it’s a pain in the butt to spend extra time chopping stuff, and it’s not immediately satisfying as burying my face in a bowl of Ben & Jerrys, the payoff is ultimately worth it. This is where I introduce my food-to-literature analogy: I’m also on a healthy-reading diet.

I’m expanding here on a point raised during last week’s discussion. It was off the original topic, but I’ve been chewing on it and want to pull it out for further discussion. The question raised was, “Why emulate the literary masters when the today’s industry frowns on that type of writing?”

While it's true that certain specific trends of previous decades and centuries (omniscient third, long narrative passages) aren't trendy now, there's still plenty to learn from the masters that will help the modern writer. Personally, I find this tactic more helpful than reading how-tos. It's less confusing and more inspiring. It's also just more fun. Reading a novel is more fun than reading a manual. Not that it has to be either-or, thankfully.

Another point is that “literary master” doesn’t necessarily mean “dead guy.” Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Alice Walker, and Dorothy Allison are a few contemporary — and alive — authors generally considered "masters." ("Mistresses" sounds like a different job altogether.) They sell pretty well, too.

To some degree, it makes sense to read in the same genre you're writing: if you want to be the next Dan Brown, then study Dan Brown. Even writers of thrillers and romances, though, could benefit from immersing themselves in some Flannery O'Connor or Harper Lee. (An aside: I wish Dan Brown had studied Updike or Steinbeck: selfishly because then I could tolerate his work, and for his own sake so he’d be read beyond his own life.) O’Connor has been my darling of late: her physical descriptions — of people and places — are extraordinary. I’m so enamored that I’m not content with merely reading her: I copy out passage after passage. It’s the best way for me to microfocus on her word choice. And description is just one aspect of her talent: I could also look to her for ideas on how to build suspense, how to work in symbolism, how to pretend like you’re fairly representing a worldview when actually you are mocking it. I get more out of an hour spent with Miss Flannery than I do from any how-to book.


Not that the how-tos don’t have their place. I have shelves full of books on writing. See the photo? That’s one of my shelves; I have more. I do find inspiration and instruction from these books, but they are theory. As we’ve discussed, too much theory — especially when it conflicts — is confusing and disheartening. To make sense of this mess of ideas, I have to look to fiction, and it seems only logical to me to study the very best. Just as an aspiring painter will study the masters of that art, so an aspiring writer should. Dickens is still selling, so is Hardy, so are the Bronte sisters. When I’m writing historical fiction, it’s especially helpful for me to look to these nineteenth-century writers. I know not to emulate their head-hopping and meandering chapter-long descriptions, but Dickens had a wicked sense of humor, and some of his character descriptions are cruelly hilarious: Here are two examples from Hard Times: “Mrs. Gradgrind, a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always taking physic without any effect, and who, whenever she showed a symptom of coming to life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling on her.” And, “Lady Scadgers (an immensely fat old woman, with an inordinate appetite for butcher's meat, and a mysterious leg which had now refused to get out of bed for fourteen years) contrived the marriage, at a period when Sparsit was just of age, and chiefly noticeable for a slender body, weakly supported on two long slim props, and surmounted by no head worth mentioning.”

When I’m writing modern fiction, I turn to modern writers like Joy Williams and Margaret Atwood. From my file of Helpful Snippets I’ve summoned this little bit of Atwood that caught my breath: “I feel like cotton candy: sugar and air. Squeeze me and I'd turn into a small sickly damp wad of weeping pinky-red.” From Williams: “The garage was empty. The rabbit hutch was empty save for a withered string bean. The rabbit was probably hopping around somewhere nearby, terrified. Or it might be hunched up somewhere in a narcosis of incomprehension at being hutchless.”

Contemporary masters have just as much to offer as their dead counterparts. Not every masterful writer is to everyone’s taste, as I’ve mentioned, but luckily there are plenty to choose from. If Marilynne Robinson bores you to tears (she does me), then try Barbara Kingsolver, or Jane Smiley, or Annie Proulx. Even when I’m not seeking a Brilliant Novelist to inspire me, those writers hook me right in an entertain me to the last page. They’ve all won Pulitzer Prizes, too, which is one “master of the craft” measurement.


To borrow from sister Mary Mary, just as we are what we eat, we write what we read. Reading bad fiction is likely to sustain our writing approximately as well as Snickers and Doritos will sustain our body. I’m not swearing off salty snacks forever, and I like my Janet Evanovich from time to time, but too much of that stuff will start to affect me in bad ways. I have found that reading nutritious fiction is essential to my well-being; it feeds not only my writing, but my soul.

Pink covers.

‘When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.’
--Enrique Jardiel Poncela, Spanish playwright and novelist, 1901-1952

There is a difference between being able to adequately assess whether or not the writing behind a project is good, and dismissing an entire sub-genre out of hand. Why is it that those projects which avail themselves of the rich trove of archetypal characterizations and plotlines and those which garner critical acclaim often congregate at opposite ends of the continuum?

To put it another way, why are the pocketbooks of the masses open for the presumably inferior devices of ‘commercial’ writing while the more refined eye of the intellectual elite appears to delight— if in a muted, ironic fashion— only in stories which regularly eschew the time-honored hero’s journey altogether?

Put yet another way, why is it that the Katherine Heigl vehicles and the Nancy Meyers projects consistently rake in the bucks while the depressing— arguably demoralizing— films and genres of literature mostly concerned with meeting Waterloo are often leagues ahead in racking up the ‘serious art’ brownie points? Why is there a disconnect between what the average heart races to consume— again and again— and what the above-average intelligence scrambles to approve of? And— perhaps most importantly— can we, as writers, heal the breach?

Is it tone? Is it execution? Or is it subject matter? Is it the difference between tying up all the loose bits at the end with a tidy bow and leaving the characters flailing in a vat of angst and lack of resolution that determines the credibility conferred upon a work? Is it all of these things? Is it any of them?

Perhaps it’s compression, the sense that if the writing is swiftly and methodically touching all of the mile markers— the call, the reluctance to answer, the introduction of allies, obstacles, heightened stakes, the turning point, the moment of grace with— on celluloid— the gratuitous close-up, the dark moment which more often than not smacks of contrivance at the end of act two chased by the scene with a manufactured sense of urgency as it barrels toward resolution— that leaves certain readers/viewers cold with the awareness that attempts at emotional manipulation are underway. Well, naturally, all experience of art is an exercise in emotional manipulation. The question then becomes is the manipulation seamless or do the seams show? And my question to you— as the writers responsible for many of these journeys— is why do the seams show more consistently in the stuff that sells?

I recently watched a Katherine Heigl film with the express purpose of dismantling the experience in order to study it. There was a row of women behind me in the theatre who laughed a lot. They peppered my viewing experience with exclamations of, ‘Oh, snap!’ and— in the moment that the boy does in fact return to the girl at the end of act three— ‘I knew it!’ When the lights went up, they cheered.

In other words, these women were moved enough by unapologetically formulaic premise, plot and execution to grow noisy and applaud— though it must be said that, personally, I gave Heigl herself a fair amount of the credit. In any event, the consumers got what they paid for. And as I sat there in my movie bucket seat next to a fellow scribe along for the experimental ride, a jumble of thoughts rushed through both mind and heart— the most salient of which were, for whom am I writing? And why?

Is my writing trying to be an artful interpretation of human experience? A commentary that is ethical in nature? Moralistic? Subversive? Sublime? Is it trying to emerge as something which pulls a more visceral punch or something that—perhaps, finally, by unabashed design— simply goes down easy? I know I want my readers to feel, but how do I want them to feel? Do I want them to laugh? Cry? Both— often? Or do I want them to think? Do I want to rout expectation or do I want to take them where they’re paying me to lead— straight through the reliable climb of escalating emotion and down a safe descent into surprising inevitability? Can I even decide— with authority— and, if so, do I have the chops to carry out any intentions with excellence?

Though a novelist, the bulk of my night stand material— say, 85%?— is non-fiction. When it comes to story, you might call me immoderately particular. I like a smart read, but not one that is too heavy. I’m partial to sharp banter between expertly-drawn voices but not too many graphic scenarios (or any, really.) I like to read characters stripped of their complacency but not of their dignity and— if at all possible— with a light touch. I favor subtlety but not authorial conceit. I like to laugh but not at the expense of substance and I like to grow but not at the (total) expense of levity. But perhaps most of all, I like to be left on an auspicious— but not hackneyed— note.

Which leads me to wonder, is it possible to write a book that can translate to a two-hour capsule— easily consumed with a side of popcorn and Junior Mints— which at the same time does not inspire the roll of a more discriminating eye? Because to imagine that a description like ‘bubble-gum pink’ covers the scope of the contemporary female living— largely through accident of birth— in an industrialized society as she grapples with vocation, love and progeny is both an indignation and a challenge.

So— in the end— does the onus of responsibility land on us as writers to execute these reputedly bromidic arcs in such a way that the dismissal of the erudite is not a foregone conclusion? Forgive me, as I seem to be all questions, today— and with precious little in the way of answers— but I’m stumped, and have been so for a rather annoyingly long time.

Perhaps you can shine some light along the way?

Until next time, dear reader.

Your,
-Aurora