Marion Dane Bauer's Blog, page 32

Sentiment and Sentimentality

Once I walked into a big box store and saw at the front of the store a little girl, barely more than a toddler, twirling and gazing at the lights overhead. She was clearly ecstatic, transported by their dazzle.

It was an enchanting sight, but even as I paused, captivated, I found myself noting, “If she weren’t so young, we would know she wasn’t quite ‘right.’ No adult—even no child who has been around long enough to have learned the mostly unspoken rules of our society—is permitted to be that...

What Do I Mean?

“You should write a memoir.”

Various folks have said that to me over the years, and always I’ve had the same response: “I couldn’t possibly do that. I’ve made it a firm rule of my writing life never to write about people I know, and how could I write a memoir without invading the privacy of those who have shared my life?”

But then one day for reasons that had nothing to do with memoirs, I wrote a verse entitled “Remembering Peter.” It was about my son, his coming into the world and his leaving...

The Child in the Adult, the Adult in the Child

“Good children’s literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.”

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Last week I jumped with all four feet into the controversy set off by an article stating that adults should be ashamed to be reading young-adult literature. Our community—the community that creates or teaches or otherwise takes its value from such literature—was incensed. Of course.

But the controversy itself is a healthy one and one we should be grateful to have ou...

Are We Better than This?

A controversy has been raging lately in the juvenile book world—or at least a flurry has been flurrying—based on an article written by Ruth Graham and published in Slate. In it she says, “Adults should feel embarrassed about reading literature written for children.” And she follows it by saying, “Fellow grown-ups, at the risk of sounding snobbish and joyless and old, we are better than this.”

(I couldn’t help but wonder how old got categorized with snobbish and joyless. But as someone who does...

Writing beyond the Pale

I knew “beyond the pale” was the phrase I wanted to use, but I had to check to be certain of its literal meaning. Pale, I discovered, means fence or barrier. The idiom is defined at Dictionary.com as “beyond the limits of propriety, courtesy, protection, safety, etc.” All of which fits what I intend to say.

And here is the phrase in context: Nancy Garden, who died suddenly and unexpectedly on June 23rd, is a writer who wrote beyond the pale. Beyond propriety? Depends on how you view her work,...

Is Caring the True Test?

Is it a mark of a good story that your readers care about your main character, that they are deeply concerned about what happens to him?

Certainly it’s not the only test, but usually that kind of liking—call it empathy to make it sound more serious—is what sustains a reader through a story. I know that finding a character whose skin I can inhabit with pleasure is important to me.

Recently, though, I read an essay by Greg Mortimer in Off the Shelf. His title was “Why Likeable Characters are Besi...

Desire . . . Fiction’s Secret Power

Why do we read stories?

It’s an important question for any fiction writer—or any teacher of fiction—to ask.

The Puritans forbad novels. Stories were thought to be immoral, composed of lies. And there was a time, much nearer at hand, when teachers who wanted to read a story to their students had to close their classroom doors lest the principal come by and overhear them “wasting time.” I suppose that may still be true in some schools.

I have thought about this question often over the years, as an...

Vocation

Vocation

“Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” —Frederick Buechner

When I was growing up, that word—vocation—had one meaning and one meaning only. When someone said, “He has found his vocation,” it meant a call to serve the church. Nothing else qualified.

I never thought of other kinds of work as vocation. After all, I grew up with a father who frequently said, “The reason they call it work is because you don’t like to do it. If you liked doing it, no one w...

Here You Are, Alive

Here You Are, Alive

And that is just the point . . . how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”

—Mary Oliver

“Here you are, alive.”

And to that fact, I don’t believe there is any more serious response than pure rejoicing.

I don’t remember doing a whole lot of rejoicing over pure aliveness when I was a child. I did, I supp...

A Head Full of Stories

I seem to have been born with my head full of stories. Manufacturing stories was one of the primary activities of my childhood. I didn’t write them down. What I conceived was too complex for that, far beyond anything I was capable of writing. Until I finally learned to type in high school, I found the physical act of writing painfully tedious. So I didn’t have any interest in putting my stories on paper, but they were my constant companions at home and at school. I remember getting a note on...