There’s something to be said for the long game. That something might be, “I don’t have one.” This short writer writes short essays. And that’s just fine. Sometimes. Then there are those other times when she cracks open a book, discovers a long essay of what might be perfection, and she says, “Dammit. I can’t do that. I want to do that. I need a long game.” David Rakoff rocks the long game. Though the title is an uncharacteristic but serious turnoff, Rakoff’s essay “What is the Sound of One Hand Shopping?” in Don’t Get Too Comfortable beautifully illustrates how three distinct pieces—essays in their own right—can fuse under a single thesis to form a cohesive essay, serving as an example of how one can boost their long game through grafting shorter essays.
The first section in “One Hand Shopping,” a brilliant bit on the absurdity of the contemporary obsession with refined basics (cotton, salt, oil, water), successfully concludes with its last three sentences, “And what is it that matters most in life? Here’s a hint: it’s a pronoun that can be effectively conveyed without any words at all. Just take your index finger and point at the center of your chest, an inch and a half from your precious, precious heart” (33). This conclusion is so solid that the reader may find herself tricked into thinking that that’s that. Next essay. But she’d be all wrong. That last line—a sardonic and perfect interpretation of the pretentious preoccupation with the finer things in life as an indication of how we indulge and even glorify today’s epidemic of ridiculous narcissism—has the capacity to make one feel quite sated but at the same time acts as a nice lilly pad for what comes next.
While this next section too could stand alone quite solidly as a shorter essay of equal power to the first piece, it is also a mere building block, boosting the reader toward a grander thesis. With the concrete addition of the least fortunate among us, this second “essay” one-ups the first section’s take on society’s ludicrous glorification of the basic. These people, the indigent, deal with true temporal problems—where to find shelter and food—while the demographic of which both Rakoff and I have the biting privilege of being part gluts on faux asceticism, the irony of which is that “in order to maintain a life free of clutter and suitable for a sacred space, you’ll need another room to hide your sh*t” (39). Though this second “essay” doesn’t require help for impact, it’s got more punch when preceded by the first. Number two also ends with a firm exclamation point that leads the reader to think, Aha, and now we’re done. I’m satisfied. But again, the reader is wrong, for this second section is merely part of a whole.
It is in the third and final section—a piece of only two paragraphs that, though a mere 250 words, could merit a title of its own—that the essay lifts its legs for flight. At the close of this little vignette the reader discovers her satisfaction with the first two pieces compounded as she comes upon the essay’s unifying thesis. We reach completion with the final line of this segment, the final line of the essay, the essay’s very Rakoff-esque thesis, “Simplicity, it seems, has always been wasted on those who simply cannot appreciate it” (40). It is only now that the perfection of creating this trio rears its head. Without the third piece, the two before it would be naught more than nice little essays without much oomph.
Frosted Mini-wheats have snacking potential. They have sweetness enough to be compelling and fiber enough to be worth it. Strawberries too, with their tang and high Vitamin C content, don’t need any company to make a worthy snack. But pour the two in a bowl and add some soymilk and—holy smokes!—there’s breakfast! It’s the soymilk that completes the picture, despite the first two elements’ solitary, nutritious delectability. The soymilk in Rakoff’s “What’s the Sound of One Hand Shopping,” that third “essay,” demonstrates how three strong pieces can create a much more powerful essay when served up together.
(Work Cited: Don’t Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count, the Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems)
Showing posts with label CRAFTY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CRAFTY. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
CRAFT ANNOTATION • BIBLICAL LAMENTATIONS
Today my superfriend, Amber, posted her review of Foreskin's Lament, and it reminded me that I hadn't yet posted my craft annotation for this book (I know you were on pins and needles for this one), so heretis:
Throughout his Foreskin’s Lament, Shalom Auslander utilizes biblical allusions to illustrate the biblical illusions that so completely permeated his childhood and still maintain a hold on his decisions. The allegories he employs are effective in indirectly revealing the results of raising a child drenched in Orthodox Judaism and, through his particular sardonic and wounded interpretations, support the assertions he makes regarding God’s mean humor and predictable abuse of his most steadfast disciples.
Auslander opens his book with a wry perversion of Deuteronomy:
This particular yeshiva student was no dummy. He knew his Talmud. He could bless the soup and the bread in the proper order. When Auslander references biblical stories it’s clear that this narrator is one disenchanted but well-schooled. This fluency lends Auslander credibility; he’s not some half-assed Jew no longer into religion ‘cause it’s restricting or not cool. He knows—has known for a while—why he believes what he does.
A major component of this Lament is the character of God as a malicious prankster—it’s in The Book! When young Auslander is committing all 613 sins of Sabbath fracture by taking a cab to the mall, Moses comes to mind. Auslander thinks,
Auslander’s fluency in the religion that raised him is such that it’s natural and reasonable for him to parallel his situation and choices to those of prophets and major players in the religious stories; these faulty titans were significant contributors in his upbringing. While putting his little son to bed one night Auslander sees himself as a Moses character: “My Promised Land, the one I had been stumbling around looking for for these past thirty years, would be one with no God, at least not with the God I knew, and I realized then that, like Moses, I would probably never get there, either. But my son—he might just have a shot” (306). Using the Moses tale as corroborating proof is a successful storytelling method for Auslander because not only do his readers appreciate where he’s coming from, they are better able to stomach his ire, seeing it as born of his thick education.
This wasn’t a published exercise in research—which is patently obvious through the colloquial and irreverent language of which Auslander avails himself when retelling the well-known stories. But his references to biblical tales do add weight to the author’s conclusion: that God’s a spiteful sonofabitch. His evaluations of the Moses, Abraham, and Isaac tales have the power to lead along even the most skeptical of readers to a point of understanding. Auslander used The Good Book against Itself. And it worked.
(Work Cited: Foreskin's Lament)
•••
Throughout his Foreskin’s Lament, Shalom Auslander utilizes biblical allusions to illustrate the biblical illusions that so completely permeated his childhood and still maintain a hold on his decisions. The allegories he employs are effective in indirectly revealing the results of raising a child drenched in Orthodox Judaism and, through his particular sardonic and wounded interpretations, support the assertions he makes regarding God’s mean humor and predictable abuse of his most steadfast disciples.
Auslander opens his book with a wry perversion of Deuteronomy:
4. And the Lord said unto Moses,It’s the “psych” that makes it art. And makes quite clear to the reader what they’re in for—Be ready for mordancy, kids. This ride shall be not saccharine nor gentle. We’re going to get into it with God. Sissies and puritans make a U-turn—this one ain’t for you.
“This is the land I promised you,
But you shall not enter. Psych.”
5. And Moses died.
This particular yeshiva student was no dummy. He knew his Talmud. He could bless the soup and the bread in the proper order. When Auslander references biblical stories it’s clear that this narrator is one disenchanted but well-schooled. This fluency lends Auslander credibility; he’s not some half-assed Jew no longer into religion ‘cause it’s restricting or not cool. He knows—has known for a while—why he believes what he does.
A major component of this Lament is the character of God as a malicious prankster—it’s in The Book! When young Auslander is committing all 613 sins of Sabbath fracture by taking a cab to the mall, Moses comes to mind. Auslander thinks,
I . . . realized what had troubled me about that whole damn story; it wasn’t simply that God had crushed [Moses’s] life dream . . . it was that He knew. God knew. He’d never let Moses into the Promised Land . . . but He still let him wander around the desert like a shcmuck for forty years searching for it. (136)With this biblical evidence in mind, Auslander considers: if God’s enough of an ass to kill Moses just as he glimpses what he’d been journeying toward for 40-some-odd years, what’s to stop him from offing a kid who isn’t observing the Sabbath like he knows he should (136)? When Auslander asserts that God’s got it in for sinners, readers understand where he got the idea; readers are familiar with the stories he references and can’t deny that his interpretation of the tales is viable—watch where you step, God’s a miscreant—the proof’s right there.
Auslander’s fluency in the religion that raised him is such that it’s natural and reasonable for him to parallel his situation and choices to those of prophets and major players in the religious stories; these faulty titans were significant contributors in his upbringing. While putting his little son to bed one night Auslander sees himself as a Moses character: “My Promised Land, the one I had been stumbling around looking for for these past thirty years, would be one with no God, at least not with the God I knew, and I realized then that, like Moses, I would probably never get there, either. But my son—he might just have a shot” (306). Using the Moses tale as corroborating proof is a successful storytelling method for Auslander because not only do his readers appreciate where he’s coming from, they are better able to stomach his ire, seeing it as born of his thick education.
This wasn’t a published exercise in research—which is patently obvious through the colloquial and irreverent language of which Auslander avails himself when retelling the well-known stories. But his references to biblical tales do add weight to the author’s conclusion: that God’s a spiteful sonofabitch. His evaluations of the Moses, Abraham, and Isaac tales have the power to lead along even the most skeptical of readers to a point of understanding. Auslander used The Good Book against Itself. And it worked.
(Work Cited: Foreskin's Lament)
Monday, August 22, 2011
CRAFT ANNOTATION • BRIEF STROKES OF B.S.
My pal from school, Audrey, posts her craft annotations on her blog. Now that my advisor's told me that I have the hang of 'em (calling me a "carnivorous reader"—sure do love that woman), I'm going to copy Audrey's idea and do the same.
It wasn’t brilliant. And then it was. The standout artistry in Nick Flynn’s Another Bullsh*t Night in Suck City is akin to a photographic mosaic—those large images that an up-close look reveals are crafted of carefully placed individual photos. Each one of those photos tells a story of its own and doesn’t need the other images to have an impact, and it may be that when you take a close look and see all those photos smashed together in a way seems random you say, Huh interesting decision there, Artist, but if you give the image a berth of ten, fifteen feet, you discover, well, the big picture. And that is the sneaky brilliance of Another Bullsh*t Night in Suck City—a string of chapters, most of which can stand alone as essays in their own right, that lead the sometimes-disoriented reader to unravel a man’s understanding of what he’s beginning to know in the mirror.
I actually hesitate to call the bits of Flynn’s memoir chapters. Conventionally schooled, I’m trained to see chapters as things that come from a table of contents. But without that table of contents in Another Bullsh*t Night in Suck City I feel the freedom to interpret the pieces as something else—headings? sections? prose poems? For the bulk of the book, I’m most comfortable calling the slices “essays,” things that don’t need friends to hold them up, things that start on a new page, things that boast a title of their own. To deem a piece of writing as robust enough to merit its very own title I believe it needs three things: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Which is to say—it needs to kick itself off with a enough juice to keep you reading, it oughta say something, and, most importantly, I think, it must close in a manner that leaves you sated such that you can put down the book and go downstairs for another soda without feeling oddly hollow. I’m convinced that that brave finish comes from a strong closing line.
Flynn’s “essay” “The Fact Foundation of America” (121-122) illustrates just such a complete experience. Here, the opening line: “The first letter I got from my father was handwritten on prison stationery, but once he is released the letterhead appears, the creamy envelopes” (121). Done. Lovely. Sucks the reader right in. What does the piece go on to say? What’s its reason for being? In no more than 350 words, and without the help of any other “essay” in the book we receive a picture of a father once incarcerated, a son disenchanted, a major news event, delusion, desperation, and reluctant understanding. After we’re fed all that, the closing line stamps out the fire just in time with, “On the bottom of one [letter] my father writes, If you don’t think a letter from Patty Hearst is heavy—you’re gone” (122). Reading this “essay” without the support of the rest of the book or historical context may leave a reader confused about Patty Hearst, but I’m not even sure context is necessary; it’s not the writer’s job to make sure the reader knows exactly what they’re talking about—it’s the writer’s job to make sure the reader wants to know exactly what they’re talking about.
“The Time of Your Life” (54-55) is another of the many Bullsh*t examples of a very short stroke—this particular one about 300 words, only 2 paragraphs—worthy of its own examination as a sturdy piece. This “essay” sketches out the notion of disparity between classes in close proximity and the ridiculousness of it all. We come to understand that the Pine Street Inn, a shelter, is a symbol and survivor of urban decay and just across the street from this “Inn” is a symbol of urban renewal, the Medieval Manor, one of those eat-with-your-hands-and-watch-performers-on-horseback-try-to-skewer-each-other spectacles that’s got its very own brochure. That is the picture the “essay” offers. And it’s served up wryly, closing “Occasionally, when dinner is being served at Pine Street, a well-dressed party of four appears at our front door, obviously having taken a wrong turn. They ask, timidly, if this is the Medieval Manor, and sometimes I say yes, and direct them inside” (55). A city. Two buildings. The homeless. The more privileged. And a camera lens positioned just so. The “essay” may be part of a larger story, but it’s not any less effective when read apart.
He did it. Flynn did what I want to do, and it’s useful—hopeful, even—to see that it can work. Along the way I read a string of essays, satisfying alone and a little frustrating side-by side, but I got to the end, tossed the book onto my bed, and told my dog that I finally got it. I didn’t resent the fact that the adventure was bewildering at times, for that’s certainly what Flynn himself experienced when living it all.
I like bite-sized. I’m developing a fetish for short essays. And if you add up all my disjointed bits there’s a story—there is, right? I mean there has to be one somewhere, doesn’t there?—but I’ve been struggling with understanding how these small bites can make a meal. To figure how how it’s going to work for my work will take some doing, but discovering the success of my aims in Flynn’s Bullsh*t is serving to set me on course.
(Work Cited: Another Bullsh*t Night in Suck City)
•••
It wasn’t brilliant. And then it was. The standout artistry in Nick Flynn’s Another Bullsh*t Night in Suck City is akin to a photographic mosaic—those large images that an up-close look reveals are crafted of carefully placed individual photos. Each one of those photos tells a story of its own and doesn’t need the other images to have an impact, and it may be that when you take a close look and see all those photos smashed together in a way seems random you say, Huh interesting decision there, Artist, but if you give the image a berth of ten, fifteen feet, you discover, well, the big picture. And that is the sneaky brilliance of Another Bullsh*t Night in Suck City—a string of chapters, most of which can stand alone as essays in their own right, that lead the sometimes-disoriented reader to unravel a man’s understanding of what he’s beginning to know in the mirror.
I actually hesitate to call the bits of Flynn’s memoir chapters. Conventionally schooled, I’m trained to see chapters as things that come from a table of contents. But without that table of contents in Another Bullsh*t Night in Suck City I feel the freedom to interpret the pieces as something else—headings? sections? prose poems? For the bulk of the book, I’m most comfortable calling the slices “essays,” things that don’t need friends to hold them up, things that start on a new page, things that boast a title of their own. To deem a piece of writing as robust enough to merit its very own title I believe it needs three things: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Which is to say—it needs to kick itself off with a enough juice to keep you reading, it oughta say something, and, most importantly, I think, it must close in a manner that leaves you sated such that you can put down the book and go downstairs for another soda without feeling oddly hollow. I’m convinced that that brave finish comes from a strong closing line.
Flynn’s “essay” “The Fact Foundation of America” (121-122) illustrates just such a complete experience. Here, the opening line: “The first letter I got from my father was handwritten on prison stationery, but once he is released the letterhead appears, the creamy envelopes” (121). Done. Lovely. Sucks the reader right in. What does the piece go on to say? What’s its reason for being? In no more than 350 words, and without the help of any other “essay” in the book we receive a picture of a father once incarcerated, a son disenchanted, a major news event, delusion, desperation, and reluctant understanding. After we’re fed all that, the closing line stamps out the fire just in time with, “On the bottom of one [letter] my father writes, If you don’t think a letter from Patty Hearst is heavy—you’re gone” (122). Reading this “essay” without the support of the rest of the book or historical context may leave a reader confused about Patty Hearst, but I’m not even sure context is necessary; it’s not the writer’s job to make sure the reader knows exactly what they’re talking about—it’s the writer’s job to make sure the reader wants to know exactly what they’re talking about.
“The Time of Your Life” (54-55) is another of the many Bullsh*t examples of a very short stroke—this particular one about 300 words, only 2 paragraphs—worthy of its own examination as a sturdy piece. This “essay” sketches out the notion of disparity between classes in close proximity and the ridiculousness of it all. We come to understand that the Pine Street Inn, a shelter, is a symbol and survivor of urban decay and just across the street from this “Inn” is a symbol of urban renewal, the Medieval Manor, one of those eat-with-your-hands-and-watch-performers-on-horseback-try-to-skewer-each-other spectacles that’s got its very own brochure. That is the picture the “essay” offers. And it’s served up wryly, closing “Occasionally, when dinner is being served at Pine Street, a well-dressed party of four appears at our front door, obviously having taken a wrong turn. They ask, timidly, if this is the Medieval Manor, and sometimes I say yes, and direct them inside” (55). A city. Two buildings. The homeless. The more privileged. And a camera lens positioned just so. The “essay” may be part of a larger story, but it’s not any less effective when read apart.
He did it. Flynn did what I want to do, and it’s useful—hopeful, even—to see that it can work. Along the way I read a string of essays, satisfying alone and a little frustrating side-by side, but I got to the end, tossed the book onto my bed, and told my dog that I finally got it. I didn’t resent the fact that the adventure was bewildering at times, for that’s certainly what Flynn himself experienced when living it all.
I like bite-sized. I’m developing a fetish for short essays. And if you add up all my disjointed bits there’s a story—there is, right? I mean there has to be one somewhere, doesn’t there?—but I’ve been struggling with understanding how these small bites can make a meal. To figure how how it’s going to work for my work will take some doing, but discovering the success of my aims in Flynn’s Bullsh*t is serving to set me on course.
(Work Cited: Another Bullsh*t Night in Suck City)
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