Tom's comments (member since Aug 09, 2008)

Tom's comments from the Literary journalism / creative nonfiction group.

Joy, I'd recommend Joseph Mitchell's collection of his famous NYer profiles, Up in the Old Hotel. He was doing 'creative nonfiction' long before the term got invented. Think of John McPhee with a mordant sense of humor, tinged by Irish melancholy. It's a tossup as to who should get most credit for immortalizing McSorley's Saloon, in NYC -- Mitchell for "The Old Place at Home" or John Sloan's paintings of the place. In particular, look up Sloan's "McSorley's Back Room," which echoes last 2 lines in Mitchell's piece (as well as Hemingway's story "A Clean Well-Lighted Place.")

Thomas, actually it was Simon, above, who touted Bill Bryson. I'm afraid I've never read him, but I'm glad you found the this thread informative nonetheless.

Though I've never read "Hell's Angels," I have vivid memories of the book itself. My father "caught" my brother reading a library copy when we were kids and had a fit. He confiscated it and returned it to the library. One of a number of parental censorings when I was a kid.

For a country that loves to tout its free press, we sure seem to spend a lot of time spying on, maligning, blaming, even on occasion jailing members of the press. Back in the summer, shortly after Republican convention, there was a really disturbing video showing reporters being assaulted and arrested for simply trying to cover a protest that turned ugly. A friend said it reminded him of Putin's Russia. At least no reporters here have been poisoned or ambushed and shot ... yet.

On the other hand, I was shocked to learn a while back that Peter Matthiessen, founder of Paris Review, author of Snow Leopard, among many other books, worked for the CIA during his early years in Paris, in the 50s. Apparently, he wasn't a full-fledged agent, but they recruited him to report on some potentially "subversive" leftist artists in Europe at the time. This seems so at odds with such a free-spirit like PM, a practicing Buddhist and dedicated conservationist.

As long as we have governments, we'll need intrepid truth-seekers like Halberstam and I.F. Stone, who once said, "All governments lie."

Blinded by their brightness .... "blinded by the light, wrapped up in a deuce, another roamer in the night ... " shades of Manfred Mann and later Bruce Sprinsteen (I never could figure out the words to that song, but perhaps a fitting punishment for McNamara would be to force him to listen to that song at 78 speed -- warp speed for old vinyls -- that's as good a segue as I can make on that one.)

Was Coldest War H's last book before he was killed in car accident? I seem to recall he was working on something else at time of death (when wasn't he working on something?) Nevertheless, he was good on baseball, as well (and not as pedantic as George Will's baseball books; what is it about political writers that makes them swoon over sports, especially baseball?). I read one of his baseball books, based on the season of DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak, I think -- '46, '47, sometime around then. It was good, as I recall. He also wrote on on '62 season, I believe. He will be missed.

"TQA" is a must read! Movie version, with Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser, is pretty good, too.

Ah, right you are, Karen. I should've remembered because it's precisely the kind of historical irony Rich loves to cite in his columns. Thanks for the reminder and link (I never tire of rereading FR's columns!).

Speaking of rereading books, I need to reread "B&B," as it's been many years since I did so the first time, and it is a painfully marvelous book; the nonfiction equivalent of Graham Greene's novel "The Quiet American," or perhaps more accurately, a fitting frame to Greene's novel, which eerily prophesizes the doom behind the earnest savior mentality of Pyle, the American agent in the novel, while Halberstam gives us the post mortem of such blind earnestness. (An insightful visual complement to "B&B" would be "The Fog of War," documentary about Robert McNamara, Sec'y Defense under JFK and LBJ -- one of the brightest and blindest of the allegedly bright guys.)

It was either David Brooks or Tom Friedman, both of NYT, who recently commented that while Halberstam used the appellation "best and brightest" ironically to criticize all the Ivy League smart guys who brought us the Vietnam debacle, the term was now being used in laudatory manner to describe Obama's cabinet choices.
Beware of irony masquerading as literal truth!

Hmm, yes, it seems we have not quite come to terms yet with the memoir. Perhaps a good starting point would be to consider how it differs from the "personal essay." My first reaction is that there's more overlap than difference between the two. For example, when I look through Phillip Lopate's excellent anthology, The Art of the Personal Essay, I see numerous examples of essays that have a strong, even central, element of memoir to them -- going all the way back to Seneca, many of whose essays were actually letters to friends. Orwell, EB White, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, Richard Selzer, Scott Russell Sanders, Richard Rodriguez, to name a handful, all build their "essays" around very personal stories, and despite my earlier argument for essays developing a more specific idea than memoirs, I see plenty of examples of personal essays that don't fit that criterion. They could be said to have "themes," I suppose, but that terms makes me cringe somewhat, for it reminds me of what Flannery O'Connor sound about teaching theme in short stories: "They think that it you can pick out the theme, the way you pick out the right thread in a chicken-seed sack, you can rip the story open and feed the chickens." Relevant admonishment for reading essays, as well, I think. My point being that a personal essay like White's "The Ring of Time" seems to operate more through the tone of his voice -- simultaneously melancholic and celebratory -- than any central idea that could be summarized inot a "thesis," an act of abstraction that would suck the life out of such a moving piece. I would argue that such use of voice is what makes good memoirs so effective, not just "factual" narrative. I believe it was Montaigne who said, What matters is not the events of my life, but the shape I give to them. (I'm paraphrasing.)

Where is all this leading me? I believe I'm making a case for not snubbing the memoir, but inviting it to sit on the sectional sofa of "creative nonfiction." Of course, like any genre, there are plenty of bad examples of memoir that have given it a poor rep -- James Frey, the woman who made up story about running with LA ganges (can't remember her name), and a host of confessional memoirs that appear to rely more on manipulative catharsis which seems equal parts self-flagellation and self-promotion.

What separates Nabokov from Frey? Intelligence. Power of language.

I agree, Debra. I pretty much take the view that whatever works is allowed, as long as I know going in how to adjust my meter of suspension of disbelief.

Not to worry, Nicole. As far as I know, this group has no mandatory probation period for new members. Glad to have you weigh in.

When you refer to "fictionalized bios," to what extent do you mean fictionalized? As in made-up or use of fictional techniques. I'm thinking of the guy who did the huge bio of Ronald Reagan who said RR was so opaque and difficult to penetrate that he ended up resorting to some highly imaginative scene-making to get at a "larger truth" not necessarily rooted in fact. Edmund Morris, I believe, was the author? As I recall, he caused a bit of a stink among historians for such loose "experimenting."

The music analogy is a good one, Peggy. Whenever I read interviews with musicians, I'm struck by how many of them cite influences seemingly completely different from their own style or genre -- the hip-hop musician likes a certain classic rock group; the country western singer likes reggae, etc. Think of all those 19th c. classical composers who "borrowed" elements of gypsy music. Can't remember the name of the song, but at the end of the Spike Lee movie "He Got Game," the soundtrack includes a hip-hop version of that famous Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song with the line, 'hey chidren, what's that sound, everybody look what's going down ... there's a man with a gun over there, tellin' me I got to beware." And the hip-hop version is brilliant! Fits the movie perfectly.

When I'm writing my own stuff, I tend to think more about craft and technique, nuts n bolts stuff, than strict divisions of genre. Take Orwell, again, as an example. When I first read Down and Out, I was struck by how he makes strong shifts from narrative to commentary. Which leads me to think, 'hmm, that's an interesting move, didn't know you could "do" that.' So I tuck that away, and then in some future writing project, I think, 'hey, this might be a good spot to do something like Orwell does in Down and Out, make an 'Orwell move' in the essay.

One thing that attracts me to the essay as a form is that it's so flexible and baggy as to accomodate all sorts of styles and "tricks," if you will.

Hmm, it seems to me that the term "creative nonfiction" has become an umbrella label for a range of nonfiction genres, including literary journalism, memoir and essay. At its most basic level,in my opinion, creative nonfiction denotes a stylistic approach -- the "creative" techniques of fiction. In that sense, then, the term seems an accurate one for the 3 sub genres I mentioned. Each of these 3 forms, though, to my mind, connotes something subtly but distinctly different: Lit. journalism takes into a account a public audience in ways the other two don't with its purpose or "advocating" a point of view about a public condition / problem. The essay seems to emphasize more an over-arching idea than does memoir, and therefore, adopts a public point of view in ways more explicit than memoir. Certainly a good memoir must be well-crafted (Tobias Wolff's "This Boy's Life" is a good example), but at root, it strikes me as more of a private inner conversation the writer lets audience listen in on.

Take Orwell, for example. I would classify Down and Out in Paris and London as "Lit. journalism" and "Shooting an Elephant" as an essay. And though the latter relies primarily on the "creative" technique of narrative, with scene, metaphor, dramtic conflict -- to save face and thereby preserve his authority, O. feels compelled to do something he wants desperately t avoid, ie, shoot the elephant -- its real power derives from the larger idea of how imperialism controls those in control more than the local populace.

Now, as soon as I make these admittedly big generalizations, I'm sure we all could think of numerous exceptions, enough even perhaps to render such distinctions irrelevant. The real question for me would be how, or whether, to make conscious use of such distinctions when actually writing? I dont' have an answer for this question. Though I find the larger question of genre a fascinating one, at the same time, I worry that making the very distinctions I offer above for the sake of defining something immediately starts to limit the work.

I feel myself starting to think in circles, so I'll stop here. Great topic!