I’ve just finished a second run-through of Francine Prose’s book Reading Like a Writer.  I read it when it first came out, but this time, I gleaned much more, perhaps because I’ve written a novel in the interim…and know where my weaknesses lie.

Sadly, the book left me feeling inept and incapable, especially as I near the end of writing my second novel.  But she addresses this, too, with a special chapter called “Courage.”  Thank goodness!

People ask me all the time how I went from teaching math and biology to writing a novel, and I’ve always said I read a lot, as if that were a satisfactory answer.  This never sits well with them, though, because they want to know what training I have, and how exactly does one get better at writing?  Everyone wants to write a book in their lifetime.  [Oh, don’t you?  Well, you’re the exception.]  Although there was a time I thought I needed an MFA in Creative Writing, I’ve since realized that hard work and determination are qualities needed much more than the ability to spout off comparisons between Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, Hemingway and Faulkner.

Also, in some MFA programs and writing classes, there’s this horrid thing called workshopping, which in all its viciousness should be banned from writing circles.  For those of you who don’t know what workshopping is, it’s the practice of allowing students to read each other’s work, then rip it to shreds in a group setting.  Here’s why it’s so detrimental.  It would be one thing if it’s a simple exercise in growing thick skin, but it’s not.  Most likely the students are just as clueless as you are (and do you want advice from people who don’t know what they’re talking about?).  Most likely the students have hidden agendas (like hoping that their teacher will like them best or hoping their teacher will recommend their work to her agent).  You start writing your stories toward the group, and that’s a bad thing.  Horrible thing.  They’re not your reading audience.  You need to skedaddle out of there and listen to what your gut is telling you write.  You know. You just think you don’t know.  That’s what my experience has been, anyway.

Prose’s book (and my reading experience) proves that all those rules you learn in those workshops have been devised and touted to be broken.  She uses Chekov as an example.  Chekov was an observer, not a commentator.  In many of his stories, people go about their daily lives, staying true to their inner character, but he doesn’t try to make a point or wrap up the story in any other way than to mirror who they are.  He infers that he wants the reader to fill in those subjective details.  And this is important, because how can you speak through your characters, when you’re not your characters?

Prose quotes Chekov here, and because he is so astute in his observations, I think I’ll include him here, so you’ll know what I’m talking about.

That the world ‘swarms with male and female scum’ is perfectly true.  Human nature is imperfect.  But to think that the task of literature is to gather the pure grain from the muck heap is to reject literature itself.  Artistic literature is called so because it depicts life as it really is.  Its aim is truth–unconditional and honest.  A writer is not a confectioner, not a dealer in cosmetics, not an entertainer; he is a man bound under compulsion, by the realization of his duty and by his conscience.  To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean.  A writer must be as objective as a chemist.

It seems to me that the writer should not try to solve such questions as those of God, pessimism, etc.  His business is but to describe those who have been speaking or thinking about God and pessimism, how and under what circumstances.  The artist should be not the judge of his characters and their conversations, but only an unbiased observer.

You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly.  It is only the second that is obligatory for the artist.

You abuse me for objectivity, calling it indifference to good and evil, lack of ideas and ideals, and so on.  You would have me, when I describe horse thieves, say: “Stealing horses is an evil.”  But that has been known for ages without my saying so.  Let the jury judge them; it’s my job simply to show what sort of people they are.  I write: you are dealing with horse thieves, so let me tell you that they are not beggars but well-fed people, that they are people of a special cult, and that horse stealing is not simply theft but passion.  Of course it would be pleasant to combine art with a sermon, but for me personally it is impossible owing to the conditions of a technique.  You see, to depict horse thieves in 700 lines I must all the time speak and think in their tone and feel in their spirit.  Otherwise, the story will not be as compact as all short stories ought to be.  When I write, I reckon entirely upon the reader to add for himself the subjective elements that are lacking in the story.

On following “the rules.”  It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense.  Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything.  The stupider they are, the wider they conceive their horizons to be.  And if an artist decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees–this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity in the realm of thought, and a great step forward.

And one last thing I found insightful.  Woe to any writer who describes her characters as human beings and not as angels.  This is from Gogol in Dead Souls.

Happy is the writer who omits these dull and repulsive characters that disturb one by being so painfully real….The delicious mist of the incense he burns dims human eyes; the miracle of his flattery masks all the sorrows of life and depicts only the goodness of man….He is called a great universal poet, soaring hight above all other geniuses of the world even as an eagle soars above other high flying creatures.  The mere sound of his name sounds a thrill through ardent young hearts; all eyes greet him with radiance and responsive tears…

But a different lot and another fate awaits the writer who has dared to evoke all such things that are constantly before one’s eyes….the shocking morass of trifles that has tied up our lives, and the essence of cold, crumbling, humdrum characters with whom our earthly way, now bitter, now dull, fairly swarms….Not for him will be the applause, no grateful tears will he see….not to him will a girl of sixteen come flying, her head all awhirl with heroic fervor.  Not for him will be that sweet enchantment when a poet hears nothing but the harmonies he has engendered himself; and finally, he will not escape the judgment of his time, the judgment of hypocritical and unfeeling contemporaries who will accuse the creatures his mind has bred of being base and worthless, will allow a contemptible nook for him in the gallery of those authors who insult mankind, will ascribe to him the morals of his own characters, and will deny him everything, heart, soul, and the divine flame of talent.

So you see, if you are a writer, you have to worry about a great many things.  Reading Prose’s book might put it all into perspective, for those of you who are writers.  I highly recommend it.

[Post image: Calm Reading by Ale_Paiva on stock.xchng]