On reviewing and breaking backs

One advantage of being the L.A. Times deputy book editor was this: I rarely reviewed a book I didn't like. Every week, I sorted through piles and piles of new books for only those things that resonated with me -- if something didn't, I wouldn't write about it.

But what happened if I was a hundred pages into a book before I realized it was a dog?

What would I do then ... drop it?

Are you crazy?  I couldn't do that -- I'd already committed too much time to it!  I had to review it!  So, there were a few options open to me:

• Damn it with faint praise

• Forget faint praise and be ruthless -- break its back just like Bane

• Give most of the review space to the subject, not the actual book ... and then finish off the piece with a sentence about how the book was"helpful" or "serviceable" (which I guess sounds like the first option). It sounds like praise, but it isn't. Calling a book "helpful" puts it in the same category as a shovel. Or a Boy Scout.

I was reminded of this reviewing strategy as I was leafing through a recent TLS issue and came across this sentence at the top of a review of a biography of Edward VII:

In his enjoyably evenhanded potted life of Edward VII, Richard Davenport-Hines balances terseness with orotundity....

Let's get a few things straight: The only thing that can ever be nicely described as "potted" is a fern or a gardenia bush.

And that word "evenhanded" is as bad as "helpful" and "serviceable."  It sounds as if the biographer is getting applause for not being hysterical.  And that word near the end, "orotundity" ...  good God, does anyone really use a word like that today?

I felt sorry for the biographer, and I was reminded of that old cliche that says all publicity, even bad publicity, is better than nothing at all.  When I finished reading this snide review, I couldn't help thinking nothing at all might be better.

A pale view of Hill

For I will consider my cat Jeoffry…

We lost a major figure in the world of poetry at the end of June, Geoffrey Hill, and as I’ve scrolled through the posts of Call of the Siren, I realize I haven’t written very much lately … but when I have, some of it seems to have been about Hill.

Maybe that’s because no one – aside from talking to W.S. Merwin a few years ago and listening to him describe visiting Ezra Pound – has given me a greater sense of poetry’s living tradition than when I sat at a table and listened to Hill talk about Eliot, Hopkins, Thomas Wyatt, Dryden, Auden, Lowell, Southwell, and so many others.

I studied with him in the graduate program at Boston University in the 1990s.   When I enrolled, I had no idea the maker of Mercian Hymns was on the faculty, and when I learned that he was, I rushed over to his office to sign up for his class on poetry and religion. I was gushing with excitement as I reached the top floor and entered his office.

“I’m so happy to have found you!” I said as I set my Add slip on the desk in front of him.

“Found me?” he said, looking up. “I didn’t know I was hidden. I’ve been here three years.”

He gave me that trademark look you find in the Guardian photo accompanying this post. I think this photo was taken around the time he lived in Brookline and taught at BU. That’s the way he looked when I made my gushing declaration on that autumn day in his office.

But forget that sour expression or what some people have said about his crankiness -- I want you to know that Hill was a warm, generous teacher. There were six of us, including him, gathered around a conference table.

He played recordings of John Dowland for us that were hypnotic; the notes of the lute floated down the hall. He described the torture of recusant priests in Protestant England and then recited Southwell’s “The Burning Babe” as if he were composing it in his head. The way he read poems was a revelation to me. He was gruff and good-natured, and he was always patient with our ignorance of the subjects he knew so well.

“Mr. Owchar, and how is your Bunyan today?” he asked me once, smiling, as we studied Grace Abounding in the Chief of Sinners.

“Fair to middling, sir,” I said.

“Well then,” he said, “give us some of the fair.”

Everyone laughed, and then I did my best to explain some passage in Bunyan, and when I was done, Hill improved on my thoughts the way a jeweler polishes a dull stone.

As I've been reading obituaries and tributes about him, I've learned how prolific he was in the past decade. My reading of him stopped with the Peguy poem and the Enemy Country essays … and the occasional item I found in the TLS.

That’s because I like the earlier phase of his career – the later works are too compact, too elusive for me. But the balance between contemporary England and its legendary past that you find in Mercian Hymns, for instance, to me is, well, perfect. It is magic.

There’s a line in one TLS tribute that talks about Hill’s discouragement over his royalties checks even in his laureled, later years. He was discouraged not because of the money but because it suggested to him that he didn't have a readership.  Poetry has never really been a big seller (unless you're Seamus Heaney or Ted Hughes), but I hope Hill is enjoying some kind of adulatory compensation in the afterlife that he never found in those royalties.

And hopefully he can add my middling post to that compensation, too.  Rest in peace, Professor.

Treat your fiction like an iceberg

Maybe it's because I spent too long in journalism -- I have a tendency to explain things too much.

Every proper noun (and even the improper ones) gets a descriptive clause … even when I'm talking.  Take this example from the other night at home:

My spouse: Hey, what do you want for dinner?

Me: I'm not in the mood for Italian, which we've already had this week.  It would be great to get some kebabs from that little restaurant, the one near the village over by the liquor store.

All I needed to say was "kebabs," right?

In the process of writing my novel, a big part of the revision process has entailed going over every sentence, in every chapter, and asking the same question: Am I explaining too much?

Let readers work for it, let their imaginations fill in what they can't see …. if the narration's in the first person, then the narrator's comments should be a bit fragmentary and gnomic sometimes (like real people's are).

Here's an example from Thomas Harris'Hannibal -- yes, I'm talking about the sequel to Silence of the Lambs -- that I read over the summer as a guilty pleasure.  Harris has some seriously good chops (and besides, anyone who can weave a lecture on Dante into a cat-and-mouse story involving a cannibal deserves some applause):

The screaming was awful to hear, but a fitting overture for the faces that came out of the woods, drawn to the screams announcing dinner.

That line's as chilling to me as any in M.R. James.  He's talking about a herd of hungry swine, and the incompleteness of his description of the animals -- "the faces that came out of the woods" -- leaves so much half-submerged.  Too much description, too much precision, and the horror effect would've been lost.

Which gets me to the headline for this post, about icebergs.  What  I've found is that writing's more effective when ...

…ah, my Beloved Friends, I'll leave that for you to finish.

Styron's four words to me

When I was working for the newspaper, I remember calling William Styron to ask him to write something for us.  Even before I picked up the phone, I knew he wouldn't do it.  I couldn't imagine a literary master agreeing to spend time writing a humble little review for us.

If there's such a thing as a Hail Mary pass in the book review world, I was Boston College's Doug Flutie the day I made that call.

But I wanted to do it anyways.  I just wanted to have a chance to tell him what his work meant to me.  In my teens and twenties I had read many of his books -- Sophie's Choice, Lie Down in Darkness, The Long March, Set This House On Fire -- and I wanted him to know that his work had really affected me.  Whenever I felt alone in those days, I just thought of Stingo or poor Peyton Loftis or Cass Kinsolving and didn't feel lonely anymore.

And I felt dazed by his sentences … by the nuance, the delicacy and fullness.

So I made the call, he answered, and I quickly introduced myself and why I was calling.  Then, I launched into my declaration of his work's influence on my life.  There was silence on the other end of the line until I paused, and then he said his four words to me:

Wait, here's my wife.

You probably think I was devastated by being completely shutdown.  But, I'm being honest here,  I was more perplexed than anything else.  I couldn't believe it.  I just couldn't connect the gruff, impatient voice I heard with all those characters I'd come to love so much.

But I realized later — as I think we all did -- what was happening to Styron in those years.  He describes his battle with depression and madness in Darkness Visible.  He was also working hard to produce another novel after the enormous success of Sophie's Choice.

The publication of The Suicide Run, which contains unpublished stories and fragments, shows us how hard he was trying.  He also spent a lot of time writing nonfiction (not for my paper, of course), which Phillip Lopate discusses in his insightful, recent TLSreview of a collection of Styron's nonfiction.

The great tragedy of  Styron is that he never published another novel after Sophie's Choice.  He died in 2009.  He published Sophie's Choice in 1979.  That gave him 30 years of writing with no finished result.  Can you imagine how painful it must've been?

I've thought a lot about Styron's four words as I've written a novel of my own (for my friends who are interested, it's done, finally done).

I had plenty of days and weeks under dark clouds over the past few years … stretches of time when I was unable to go on, convinced of my idiocy. Paralyzed.  The last thing I wanted was for anyone to ask me about my writing at those times.

Now, hang on: I wouldn't dare to equate my few years of struggle with Styron's 30.  That's ridiculous.  But I just understand better why — as I finished reading Lopate's very nice piece-- why Styron  ditched that phone rather than talk to me.  Who wants to be reminded of past glory when they're struggling in the present?

I'd have passed off that phone to my wife … though I hope I never find myself in such a desperate place with my writing.

Keep going, my friends.

A touchy subject: How writers make their livings

Ten years. That's how long I think Susanna Clarke spent on writing her alternative history of English magic, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.  I used to think, " 'Swounds, ten years? How is that possible?!"  Yes, it's a very big book, easy to mistake for an old phone book, but ten years?

Now, as the days creep by and I see myself on Year Seven (or eight, I've lost track) on my own book, I'm really not so surprised anymore.

Every writer's growth and evolution is different. For some, it happens quickly; others, like myself, procrastinate on other things before finally deciding to stop wasting time. In my case, I spent too many days -- and too many good brain cells-- chasing after other people's books as a part of my job.

My waking-up moment happened when I was still at The Times, digging through a pile of Da Vinci Code clones for a piece on how easy it was to have a religio-conspiracy thriller published thanks to Dan Brown. I thought, "I can do this!"  And then, "I must do this!"

In the years since I've watched my book grow away from that impulse and change, just as I have … there have been months of good work, of planning and creating. Then a family emergency or deadline of some kind will intervene. All the work stops for months until the healing's done and you're ready  to pick up the skein again. Time passes.

As I near the finish of another revision, I just read Ann Bauer'sSalon piece "Sponsored" by my husband: Why it's a problem that writers never talk about where their money comes from." If this is a topic that you're interested in, the article is worth reading and is definitely for you.

I like the article -- Bauer's insightful, and I appreciate her honesty about the whole situation -- but I also hope it's the last one that any media outlet ever gives attention to.  Why?  I think we finally have to stop torturing ourselves and asking questions about every successful writer's personal circumstances. That's an easy question to ask, especially when you're young.  You're starting out and you don't know anything.  It's natural to ask for someone else's advice and personal circumstances, especially when they're at the top of the pyramid.

But it's all beside the point.  It leads to a bunch of fuming, upset working writers -- like the ones in the thread of that Salon item -- who are thinking a little too much of the "how" instead of the "why." (Ok, cue up New Agey, mystical music now)   The most important question you should answer is "why do I write?" That's where your energy should be located.  Envy is a bad thing, especially for a writer. It sucks away all the passion that's better spent on the page.

For myself, I've realized that my dear novel, my precious "litel bok," and its journey through three revisions -- and plenty of rejections -- has been a friend to me over the past 7 (or 8) years.

I'm totally blessed -- blessed with the best family and friends -- but my novel, A Walker in the Evening, has been a special blessing --- a companion at those times after, let's say, a funeral when I was tired of talking and tired of thanking everyone for their consolation.  Then, I'd go off and  find a pocket of time when the family was in bed, and walk around with my narrator in his little village on the edges of Eastern Europe. There was nothing else so healing. I've felt immensely lucky.

I wonder what would've helped me if some publisher had bought the earlier version of the manuscript years ago and it quickly disappeared into thrift stores and secondhand bookshops. It's something I don't like to think about too much.

The same is also true of the end of this work, which is coming. I feel it this time. Feel it in my bones. And, to be perfectly honest, my best beloveds,  I don't like it. It's an amazing reversal from my attitude years ago. This may seem effing crazy, but I think I'm actually going to feel sad when it's all over.

Ten years? Ten years is nothing.