Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 109
January 9, 2024
Reaching 'ordinary' readers
“My favorite book is the last oneprinted, which is always better than those that were published earlier.” – Stephen Ambrose
Born on Jan. 8, 1936 Ambrose wassomewhat controversial in his writings of history, choosing to present his workin “popular” style so that it would be attract more readers.
Ambrose focused on ordinary readersand how they’d like to see history – “palatable.” It worked. A longtime professor ofhistory at the University of New Orleans, he authored many best selling volumesof American popular history. At the time of his death (in2002), the New York Times credited him with reaching "animportant lay audience without endorsing its every prejudice orsacrificing the profession's standards of scholarship.”
In addition to his dozens of booksand hundreds of articles, Ambrose championed (and often funded) efforts tocollect oral histories – particularly from veterans of both World War II andthe Korean War. He utilized many ofthose histories in his own writing and also consulted on such major filmefforts as “The World At War,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Band of Brothers,” and“Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery.”
In recognition of his efforts, theRutgers University Living History Society awards the annual Stephen E. AmbroseOral History Award to an author or artist who has made significant use of oralhistory.
“You don’t hate history,” he oncesaid. “What you hate is how it’s been taughtto you.”
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January 8, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'Feeling that it happened to you'
'Feeling that it happened to you'
Kickingoff this week’s blog entries with wise words – wise observances actually – fromErnest Hemingway, who was born in Illinois in 1899. I continue to find thoughtful and thought-provoking gems from Hemingway in the series The Letters of Ernest Hemingway (Volume 6 to be published this year).
“All good books," Hemingway wrote, "are alike in thatthey are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished readingone you will feel that it all happened to you and afterwards it all belongs toyou: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people andthe places and how the weather was. Ifyou can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”
Happywriting, and reading.
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January 6, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'A series of intense moments'
'A series of intense moments'
“Poetry, above all, is a series ofintense moments - its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts,I'm dealing with emotion.” – CarolAnn Duffy
Duffy, born in 1955, is one of Britain's best known and most admired poets. "Duffy . . ." said a critic, "writes of life in all its sadness - life, as what Eliot calls, that‘infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.’”
Her award-winning collections, which address issues of oppression,gender and violence, include Standing Female Nude, winner of the Scottish Arts Council Award, and Rapture, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize.
For Saturday's Poem, here is Duffy's,
TALENT
This is the word tightrope.
Now imagine a man,
inching across it in the space
between our thoughts.
He holds our breath.
There is no word net.
You want him to fall, don't you?
I guessed as much; he teeters butsucceeds.
The word applause is written allover him.
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January 5, 2024
A Writer's Moment: Writing for her 'ideal reader'
Writing for her 'ideal reader'
“I don't think there was aparticular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted towrite.” – Elizabeth Strout
Born on Jan. 6, 1956 Strout won thePulitzer Prize for Fiction for her short story collection Olive Kitteridge – also a great HBO mini-series.
Of course that’s not all this giftedNew Englander has produced since she had her first short story published in1982. Strout grew up in New Hampshireand Maine where her father was a science professor, and her mother – who shesaid was a great inspiration for her writing – taught high school.
I feel an affinity for Strout notonly for the “growing up in a small town” connection, but also her slow andsteady writing style producing 9 novels in 30 years (my pace and number). Her latest is 2022's Lucy By The Sea, the fourth in her "Lucy Barton" series.
Strout has spent most of her writing years in New York City, although she and husband James Tierney split their timebetween there and Maine, where he is the former Attorney General. Her short stories and nonfiction pieces havebeen published in everything from literary magazines to Redbook and Seventeen.
“I'm writing for my ideal reader, for somebody who'swilling to take the time, who's willing to get lost in a new world, who'swilling to do their part,” she said of her award-winning work. “But then I have to do my part and give thema sound and a voice that they believe in enough to keep going.”
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January 4, 2024
'It's what holds Society together'
“Itis art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, and I know of nosubstitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.” – Max Eastman
Born in New York on this date in1883, Eastman was an essayist, poet, memoirist and prominent politicalactivist. His essays primarily focusedon individual rights and causes, something he promoted further in the magazine The Liberator, which he co-founded withhis sister Crystal in 1919. The magazine championed causes like Women’sRights and Suffrage while also publishing up-and-coming young writers like E.E. Cummings, John Dos Passos, and Ernest Hemingway.
A prolific writer, Eastman authored20 nonfiction books on subjects as diverse as the scientific method, humor, andpsychology. He also wrote 5 volumes of poetry and a novel. In 1941, he was hired as a roving editor for Reader'sDigest, a position he held until his death in 1969.
Among his books were memoirs andrecollections of his noted friendships with leading actors, politicos andathletes, including humorists like Charlie Chaplain and Mark Twain, who headmired both for their work and humor.
“Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing thatholds society together,” he wrote. “Asmile is the universal welcome.”
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