Girl

By Jamaica Kinkaid


More on the lyric Essay.

We continue this week reading some essays from The Next American Essay
series by John D’Agata. Here is a short one by Jimaica Kinkaid, who I
know in a roundabout way is an important writer, whatever that means.
Whatever that means. That may come across as condescending. I guess
what I mean to say is, I know her writing is significant, but I
haven’t read anything about her, and I haven’t yet had the chance to
(over) analyze her work in an academic setting, or on more leisure
terms, maybe including her in a cache of writers to bring up in bars
or cafes or putting on my sleeve when getting to know somebody. In
doing so, and I know I spoke about this similarly with Susan Griffin,
I experience her writing, thus far, in a pure sense; by just reading
it and experiencing it. Just reading it for the joy. Reading as a
blank slate, or something malleable, in which I am at the complete
mercy or joy of the writers intent.

This particular essay is short. Here is a glimpse. To give you some idea:

Don’t pick peoples flowers –you might catch something; don’t throw
stones at black birds because it might not be a blackbird at all; this
is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukana; this is
how to make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a
cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before
it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is how to
throw back a fish you don’t like, and that way something bad wont fall
on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you;
this is how to love a man, and if this doesn’t work there are other
ways and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving up…

The segment above was taken from the latter part of the essay towards
the end. First noticeable things are the semicolon, which in this
poem, is used, well as a junction, or the essay never really takes a
breath, or comes to a complete stop. What is lyrical about this essay?
What about this essay lends credence to the lyric form? Well for one
thing, Kinkaid uses this is or Don’t as a metre in her prose. The
verbs are declerative. She is speaking directly to the reader and
telling her to do something. You get the idea very quickly, that an
older figure, maybe a mother or an older female sibling, is telling a
younger woman, how it is. The do’s and don’ts of life. Knowledge to
pass down. Important stuff. At some points, in contrast to the main
voice in the essay, which is telling us, or the young woman in the
essay how to do stuff, somebody asks a question. In Kinkaids essay,
this separate voice, constantly obscured by the more dominant voice in
the prose, is represented in italics, feeling small and nimble, and a
little defiant, feeling like some adolescent who doesn’t want to be
told what to do, but would rather make her own mistakes:

This is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it’s
fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you mean to
say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who
the baker won’t let near the bread?

Here, in the exchange above, is the first official exchange of
communication between the two people. Is this significant somehow?
Well, another important question comes to mind actually. What
separates this essay above from poetry, or even fiction for that
matter, and what, if anything, even makes it an essay?

No easy answer we’ve learned really. Only more questions. Actually, at
this point, lets continue to throw out any search for easy answers, or
research for the sake of some answer reward. No answers here. Only
more questions. So lets assume it’s an essay. And, as far as we know,
without any formulaic device to stifle the creative achievements of
any of these pieces, the lyric essay has full reign of creative
licence, and isn’t stymied by form. The essay, is hanging out on the
periphery of our creative and intellectual scope and is tryin’ hard to
focus on those obscure shapes that we can barely see just outside of
our line of site. Or the essay is swimming out just a little bit
further, to the danger zone, where there are bad things lurking, away
from that dock of safety where our parents are, where we can, swim
back to safety, should we get cramps and drowned.

Would the essay be as effective, without the use of a semicolon? Yeah
sure. This is an aesthetic grammatical thing. Kurt Vonnegut hated
semicolons. Said they make you seem more esoteric and stuffy, but
Kinkaid has authority here, because it works.

In the spirit of obscurity, in the part of his introductory essay for
Kinkaid’s essay, D’Agata just asks a question, or something like a
question even though it doesn’t end with a question mark, so maybe he
is just making a statement:

Or: Maybe the essay is just a conditional form of literature –less a
genre in it’s own right than an attitude that’s assumed in the midst
of another genre.

Red Shoes

Susan Griffin
Red Shoes
From The Next American Essay

There is always a unique joy when reading a piece of writing, or a
novel, or a project, from someone who you know little about. Or to
explain differently, once you’ve built solid admiration for someone,
you will always read their work with a bit of bias, or preconceived
notions whether these are good or bad. Usually good, if you love
someone’s writing so much.

I’ve read Red Shoes by Susan Griffin knowing nothing about her
personally, other than the fact that I loved her essay. After having
read it, I skimmed briefly some photos of her, and read the first two
sentences on her Wikipedia page. Eco-Feminist. I don’t know what that
means, and when reading her essay, these labels aren’t entirely
important just yet.

This essay struck me as particularly fascinating, first by syntax, the
way that she breaks up her paragraphs. Similarly to what I have done
for the last two quarters, I’m sure these breaks in ideas, reflect a
growing frustration and dissatisfaction with institutionalized writing
form. But also, I feel that breaking up paragraphs helps me to locate
ideas. Not necessarily isolate them on the page, but give them room.
Griffin uses this same approach so deftly, so refreshingly. From what
we can tell, her essay bounces back and forth between a somewhat
linear storytelling of her childhood, and dense reflections on the
color red, rape, torture, and the differences between fiction and
essay writing. And…a whole lot of stuff in between. Her essay is one
that presents such fascinating ideas, one could spend a whole quarter
reflecting and dissecting the elements of this single essay. It really
is pact full of dense ideas, but it is also beautifully written, and
there is no clear objective or thesis or conclusion. Each little
floating paragraph is, in and of itself, a cell of activity. Almost an
altered state. Somehow, she has completely freed herself from the
banalities of convention. It proves hard to pick just one section.

1.) In my mind, as I remember my grandmother, I can feel the shape of
her larger body next mine. Her elbows are wrinkled in a way that
fascinated me. The flesh on her forearms hangs in beautiful white
lobes, not so different than the lobes of her breasts.

2.) Why is it that the novel can enter the private sphere in a way,
for instance, that the essay cannot? One answer presents itself
immediately. The novel is fiction. It is not true. It exists in an
epistemological category unto itself. Yes, it is lifelike, it evokes
or even, as it is said metaphorically, creates realities; still the
reality of fiction is not to be confused with reality.

The two sections above represent her technique of jumping back and
forth between a reflective narrative: memories and interpretations of
her past, and almost this conjuring or deep meditation on language,
sexuality, color, semantics, and just about everything in between. It
is hard to say if her essay arrives at any destination, but the reader
is just overjoyed with how she spins language, and how this spinning
evokes the senses. You can imagine quite clearly, with the aid of your
own memories of course, the flesh of an older woman’s forearms hanging
like white lobes, and how this imagery lends itself to the intimacy of
a women’s breasts, makes you unconformable, as if you haven’t entirely
earned the trust, to invasion such an intimate detail.

The Next American Essay

“Lets call this a collection of Essays, then –a book about human wondering.”

This collection here is the companion to D’Agata’s The Lost Origin of
The Essay. If we were to get an inkling about what exactly an essay
is, based on what D’agata thinks, it’s something that has to do more
with art and less with fact. This belief is echoed in his writings in
The Lost Origins of the Essay. Something having to do with the
separation of art and commerce without quoting him directly. And
somewhere, between both of these books, is non-fiction, a word or
median or form or what have you, that has no distinguishing
characteristics that separate it from the essay. D’agata has a
preoccupation with fact, and he wants us to know that facts are gooey
things prone to abstraction and misrepresentation.

In 2003 an essay by D’Agata was rejected by a magazine that
commissioned it due to “factual inaccuracies.” That same essay laid
the ground work for another collection of his called About A Mountain,
and was eventually picked up by The Believer, but went through arduous
revisionss with The Believers fact checker Jim Fingel. We’re not going
to read that book, because we don’t want John D’Agatas opinion to be
the only authority in this project, although we do respect it.

D’Agata is great about using some direct quotes that are short and
crisp and say everything they need to say in one statement. On Facts,
again, he quotes Emerson. “There are no facts, only art.” Hard to say
if this is true or not, or hard to say if true is even true or not.
Regardless, D’Agata has a way of framing an argument that only offers
up more questions instead of easy answers. Sometimes this can be
incredibly frustrating. Philosophy and existentialism are frustrating.
Sometimes you just want nails and a hammer and the belief or knowledge
or fact or whatever that you can pound nails into a piece of wood in a
certain way and it will build shelter no question asked.

In a note to the reader at the beginning of this anthology: “[Some of
the writers} have something in common beyond North America, besides
the late 20th Century; they have debt, nerve, good hair, nightmares,
cars that smell like McDonalds sometimes…I’m telling you this now out
the start of our journey, because I know you are expecting such facts
from nonfiction.” He Continues, “But henceforth please do not consider
these “nonfictions.” I want you preoccupied with art in this book, not
with facts for the sake of facts.”

So maybe there is a distinction between the essay and nonfiction, or
maybe D’agata is making the argument that nonfiction and the essay
represent a black and white that could not possibly account for the
complexity of human expression and that big word art? Blah-Blah.
Banal. These are literary binaries, apt to change. Everything changes.
So maybe he is write…ds Somewhere in here, Fiction has to exist in
order for there to be non-fiction and fiction, by definition, is
something made up or not real, but we can all agree that it’s
impossible to omit subjective interpretations and experiences from
fiction.

And where does our essay fit into all of this? Do we yet have any
clear representation as to what an essay is? D’Agata wants to make
clear that it’s art, and in this wonderful collection he has writings
from some brilliantly crazy people: One spoke at the 2013 Evergreen
graduation, lambasting the school, and successfully pissing off every
single person in the audience, libertarian grandparents and democrats
alike (thank you Sherman Alexie!). One essay is written by a literary
idol of mine, whom I promised myself I would stop referencing first
thing when I went on dates with people. I think, for the sake of all
the males I’ve referenced, when I read an analyze the essays in this
collection, I’ll try and focus more on the women. Yes, that’s how it
has to be. Not because they’re women, but because I do want a
different perspective from my own, which whether I like it or not will
involve the subconscious pretenses of having a penis and white skin
and a hell of a lot of privilege and unprocessed guilt.

Personal Essay: Brainstorm/first draft segments

*This is the initial brainstorm draft of one of the essays I plan on
turning in about my personal experience and more objective reflection
about This is Not a Step, a fest my band played at Gilman in Berkeley
about a month ago, and what I know about the life  of Sarah Kirsch, a
bay area musician, whom the fest was honoring and dedicated to. Sarah
died of a rare form of Leukemia in December after transitioning from a
man to a woman, whatever you want to call it. Either way, this person,
Sarah, was an invaluable member of her community and how she effected
people was nothing short of amazing, but I’m sure, as she would agree,
nobody is a demigod or figurehead necessarily and everyone is just
human.

**The essay will reflect some of the stuff I’ve taken from Harris’s
rewriting, as I plan on forwarding some stuff from Torches to Rome an
essay-type writing by Sarah. I will also spend a considerable amount
of time on this piece of writing, more so than other analytical
pieces, because I want it to be sharp, and reflect the rigorous
process of peer editing, and multiple drafts. Therefore, I think
posting this intitial stage is important to document the process and
development or an experience, or idea –the DNA of an essay.


BRAINSTORMING

Come to think of it now, I have some pictures of Sarah Kirsch posing
with Ilyia when they played a show at Fusion Café with Mother Country
Mother Fuckers back in 2011. The pictures taken on my iphone are dark
and blurry, Ilyia is crossing his eyes and I think that Sarah is
wearing a bright pink wig, although my memory may be unreliable. I
need to look at the pictures again. This was a casual encounter, that
I may have thought about more given what I would learn in the future,
but that is how things work out I guess.

Other than that we are cramming into a van and driving down the 1-5
like we’ve done so many times before. I don’t place too much
significance towards something that is so normal. Some of us are sick
with nasty head colds. The grapevine is something ridiculous like 110
degrees and the van is dark blue everything and is just begging for
the intense heat and my mucus membranes break here and for the rest of
the trip I am snotty and under head pressure so the ringing in my ears
is really apparent and makes me feel like I’m viewing things through
an

We get to the show at Gilman, and play shortly thereafter, and I am
sweating so profusely with sickness that I fear my sticks will fly
straight out of my hands. This is Friday, the first night of the fest.
We have a lot of good friends here and we’re happy to see and play
with great bands and get out of the van.

This is Not a Step is a fest to celebrate the life of Sarah Kirsch. A
weekends worth of bands playing at Gilman in Berkeley, with proceeds
going to the Pacific Center for Human Growth, the oldest LGBT Center
in the bay area, and to the Fanconi Anemia Research Fund. There is a
wonderful hand screened, two colored poster: The shape of California
state, berkely county and This Is Not a Step emphasized in red against
the black text of the bands that are playing. All sorts of great
stuff.

-What are some key feelings or ideas that you are trying to convey
here? What is your experience? What touched you? Why was this
experience significant?

-Sitting outside Gilman on the quarter and reading that paper with the
picture of sarah that explains what This is Not a Step Means

-I didn’t know Sarah personally, but I am good friends with people who
were close with her: Ilyia and Rosie. It was unavoidable to feel the
effect of how this person effected the lives of others. There are some
moments of this weekend that I remember specifically: Going to the
section of the Redwoods where Sarah had gone. A separate moment when I
asked Rosie where she got her watch, and she told me that it was
Sarah’s and how suddenly I’m thinking that watch has so much
significance now. During the show, Rosie is reading out of book (ask
Rosie what the book was) and someone bursts into tears next to me and
is comforted by a friend, and I am emberassed for myself for being
uncomfortable for such an open display of grief.

-How inspiring the concept behind this is not a step is for me. What
it means to have community and be a musician.

-The strange feeling of having someone be such a presence, when
they’re not actually in the room, and then reading “torches to rome”
in this zine they were handing out, and then suddenly this person has
a direct voice. Is speaking directly to the reader. Is alive in print
even though they are dead.

My new observations of transgender awareness and the use of male and
female pronouns.

Half Empty

Collections of Essays are something special, and you usually can’t get

at the heart of what is special, unless you read yourself through the

whole thing. It is really no different than reading the chapters of a

book of fiction, although you may get more leeway in reading the

chapters (essays) not in any chronological order. I happened upon a

shiny accolade, written by the Elliott Bay Book Company staff, that

sold me on Half Empty, the last collection of essays written by David

Rakoff, who died of cancer last summer. David may be best known as

part of the This American Life troupe with Ira Glass and David

Sedaris. He also acted on the side.

   In my soul-creative-crushing frustration with staying on top of a

wave of academic studies, and not letting that same wave crash on my

life, Half Empty, a book whose subject matter seems bleak, given hints

from the title, and cover artwork filled with blissfully happy

creatures amidst ominous situations looming around the corner (a gun

pointing at a happy rabbit, or a guy waving at the reader from a canoe

that is about to go over a waterfall) brightened up my life. Or

brightened is kind of cliché.

   I read it at work, and I had to hold back tears. My favorite kind of

tears. Not tears of rage or tears of frustration, but the kind that

only great writing can tap into. Okay, okay, so what is great writing?

Books you have to get into. The same can be said for collections of

essays. The title or the art or the literary celebrity cred or what

have you, will only get you so far. You have to get to know the body

of work, and this involves taking a risk. Getting something good out

of what you read takes commitment.

   David Rakoff, for me, unapologetically, is my most favorite, most

relatable, kind of writer: A gay, middle aged Canadian American, who

grew up with a un(healthy) dose of pop culture. Overeducated. Spent

years ambling around in a existential vacuum, and wrote essays about

that same vacuum. The Chekhov-ian dilemma of living with the mundane,

daily grind of consumer laden culture in America. And, just

desperately trying to find meaning in the whole damn thing. Yeah, this

book touched me, because I can relate. Because I just graduated from

college, even though I really didn’t just yet, and sat with a deflated

feeling after the ceremony where Sherman Alexie spoke and everyone was

high off the contagious fear and joy of having big goals either come

true or fail terribly. I sat and watched the school crew take away

chairs, and thought to myself, this is never going to happen again,

And. I wish, if I could go back, I wish I could have just enjoyed it a

bit more, and I don’t want to arrive at death, having expected

something in the end, and saying to myself, I wish I just enjoyed the

journey more. (Rakoff would definitely appreciate this rant.)

   There is an essay within, cryptically called All The Time We Have,

which is a literary technique imposed by Rakoff that I feel is very

playful and effective. Again, no skimming the non-committal surface

here. You have to read the essay to understand what the title implies,

and, just like some burning bush in the desert, there is the meaning

of the title! Tied in brilliantly with the subject matter of the

essay, and the overall theme of the essays when they create a whole.

All the Time We have is about a life long relationship with his

therapist, at first, a relationship, existing within the appropriately

dry perimeters between client and therapist, then, eventually evolving

into a more personal and intimate friendship, Rakoff accompanying said

therapist, as he died of cancer. There was one section in this essay,

that changed the course of my day, and it has more to do with just

finding someone who is relatable, than it does with any literary

finesse or esoteric prestige.

   Rakoff recalls visiting his therapist at Beth Israel Medical Center

in New York, “Del had been my therapist. His efforts in my behalf were

Herculean; he earned every dollar I ever paid him. I had been a chilly

and resistant analysand from the start, although I stayed with him for

ten years…”  In minds eye, at least for those of us anxious or

dispossessed, who spend a weekly allowance on therapy, the closeness

of their relationship is a bit intimidating. As rakoff explains later

in the story, Therapist and client never maintain a relationship

outside of a clinical setting, but the chance encounter is likely to

happen, in which casual words are exchanged, but nothing more. But

what this essay really helped me with was the amount of time. I stayed

with him for ten years. I was finding myself embarrassed for going to

therapy, and I was steadily frustrated with the results, and fearful

that, like many endeavors in my life, this was a process that just

wouldn’t work out. 6 months? Have I been doing this for six months? My

god, when will I ever feel better? Some say the process takes years.

But ten years? It’s really as simple as that. The writing becomes

relatable. Here is a man who went to therapy for ten years. I

seriously went into the thing with a sunnier outlook.

   To reiterate, you really have to sit down and digest a collection of

essays to find a theme, and this theme doesn’t always stick out. It’s

not something that is too literal. You notice it. It shines. Maybe it

makes you smile when you find subtleties in the text that weave all of

the essays together. At the beginning of the collection Rakoff sets up

a thesis, and uses a split narrative of his time spent interviewing a

group of young millennial internent-boom-millionaires (“This was

typical Dawn of the New Millennium denigration of print, which always

seemed to lead to the faulty logic that it was not just the delivery

system that was outmoded but such underlying practices as

authoritative voice and credibility, fact-checking, editing, and

impartiality that need throwing out too.”) to demonstrate a general

piss poor attitude about life, what he refers to as “ann-randish”

selfishness and as he says, a group of young people harboring in the

era of print media that led to a general deluge of shit. It’s a

personal narrative and you’re not entirely sure what he is getting at

unless you read the complete piece. We learn that, around this time he

also interviews a psychologist from Wellesley College named Julie

Norem, who wrote a book called The Positive Power of Negative

Thinking. We learn about something called “defensive pessimism,”

Rakoff explaing that “this mental preperation [that of the defensive

pessimist] is just an alternate means of coping with a world where –in

the pessimist’s view of reality –there is often little difference

between “worse possible outcome,” and “outcome.” A world seen as worse

than it actually is.”

   Its hard at first to understand, but Rakoff is making a case for

pessimism. To boil it down, he’s more or less calling out a culture

that is obsessed with its own pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstrap

optimism and manifest destiny and all that American bull sh** and

saying that some of the less than savory mind sets like anxiety and

depression, when balanced with other state of minds, serve an

important purpose.

   And then there is that direct statement, as if he is looking at you

in the eyes.

“There will be peaks of great joy from which to crow and vales of

tears out of which to climb. When and why they will happen, no one can

say, but they will happen. To all of us. We will all go back and forth

from one to the other countless times during a lifetime. This is not

some call to bipartisanship between inimical sides. The happy and the

sad are the same population.”

   Rejoice! Rejoice for the honesty in that statement! Likewise, you can

read this without having read any of the rest of the book, and it

would be just as mentally soothing and motivating. Sigh, it’s okay if

things are hard and I’m not happy. I guess I’m not alone. And here,

this good literature reminds me that. Thanks for keeping me alive.

   Lastly, as I’m sure we’ll encounter often in the future here. The

element that allows any good writer to talk about the intense subject

matter of lost love or cancer or suicide is a good helping of humor,

and Rakoff does this brilliantly. In the same essay, he tells us about

a friend who waited in line for hours just to get a hug from Amma, an

Indian mystic whose hugs are a “dose of extra-strength sympathy and

benevolence.” Herein is laugh out loud humor. The kind where your

coworkers wonder what you’re not telling them:

“Being touched can be lovely, transcendent even, but a hug is almost

deeper than eye contact, as meaningful as a kiss. A hug that one waits

in line for from a woman who wouldn’t know me if I stood in her soup

would be like reading a piece of direct mail and being warmed by its

repeated use of my name (“and if you act now, DAVID RAKOFF, we’ll send

you…”) I would feel duped and even lonelier than before, like stuffing

the other side of the bed with clothes and making like it’s a

boyfriend.”

Thanks David Rakoff for writing to us, and helping us to feel less

alone in our own  heads.

Can less be more?

Can you find some revealing truth in a single statement?

 "The imprisonment which was at one and the same time understood as the imprisonment of the female mind has a larger boundary,  and that is the shape of thought itself within Western Civilization."

                                        -Susan Griffin

And to essay is finally, to forget everything you ever learned, everything you thought you knew, and surrender yourself to what you don't know.

What is an essay? All bets are off now. An essay can be anything really: a proclamation of love. Death's bed rants. 30 seconds of observation. A transition. A Question. A serious problem.

Notes from ReWriting, Chapter One: Coming to Terms

Assignment: In Harri’s Rewriting are what he calls “projects.” We can
call them assignments. Either way they are exercises that have to do
with the subject matter presented in each chapter of his book. When
doing the Essay a Day… assignment we can apply these projects to the
specific essay that we use. Hurray! I am a genius!

Also, the cumulative work of this book, will be showcased in the
personal essay that I am developing to be included as my final writing
assignment.

Chapter One from Rewriting: Coming to Terms NOTES

1.)    A writer’s project: Harris poses the question: How do you
summarize someone else’s text or body of work without short changing
it? Often times we are given the advice to restate the “main idea” or
“thesis” of a text, but Harris says such advice “imagines a piece of
writing as something fixed or static, as an argument that a writer has
“constructed or a position that she has “defended.”

Harris goes on to say however that many writers don’t argue for a
single claim or position as think through a complex set of texts and
problems. (Harris, pg.15)

-What issues drive this essay?
-What ideas does it explore?
-What lines of inquiry does it develop?
-What is the writing trying to do in this text?
-What is his or her project?

“A writers project is usually something far more complex than a main
idea, since it refers not to a single concept but to a plan of work,
to a set of ideas and questions that a writer “throws forward”…The
idea of a project thus raises the question of intent. A Project is
something that a writer is working on –and a text can only imperfectly
realize.” (15)

Questions to ask when defining the projects of other writers:

Aims: What is the writer trying to achieve? What position does he or
she want to argue? What issues or problems does he or she explore?

Methods: How does a writer relate examples to idea? How does he or she
connect one claim to the next, build a sense of continuity and flow?

Materials: Where does the writer go for examples and evidence? What
texts are cited and discusses? What experiences or events are
described? (19)

On noting keywords and passages: In order to come to terms with a
complex text you need to be able to “ground” how you define the
project of a writer by citing key passages from their text. Quotations
should be short and pointed.

-In deciding when to quote don’t ask, what is the writing of this text
trying to say, but, what aspects of this text stand out for me as a
reader? Harris explains that weak academic essay (again we are
applying his knowledge to a broader range of creative nonfiction) are
often marked by an over reliance on quotation. He says that we don’t
want to quotes to do the work for us. (20) We want the reader to focus
instead on our own writing, to draw a readers attention not to the
texts we’re quoting but to what we’re doing with what we decide to
quote.

Try to paraphrase the work as quickly and accurately as you can. Save
quotation for moments that advance your project, your view of the
text. –Harris

Definition for flashpoint: moments of quotations that give your piece
a special intensity, made to stand for key concepts or issues. Quote
only phrases or passages that you want you want to further elaborate
or bring focus to. Harris uses: counter, revise, echo, or transform
(22).

-Harris explains that quotation serves to purposes: 1.) a break in the
paraphrase 2.) quotation can intensify paraphrase. This opportunity
can intensify certain parts of the language.

Assessing uses and limits

Here is some of that wonderful philosophy that changes academic
writing from static or fixed, these two verbs that are often times
used, to more active or engaging, or open up to insight and argument
and progression. “Academic writing rarely involves a simple taking of
sides, an attack on or defense of set positions, but rather centers on
a weighing of options, a sorting through of possibilities.” (25)
Harris explains that “intellectual writing” rarely works within the
narrow frame point of antithesis (either x or no –x) but with what he
calls “positive opposing terms” or words and values that don’t
contradict each other but exist in “ongoing tension.”

Two kinds of discourse in writing: Stories, which we use in evoking
the felt quality of events, and theories, which we use in analyzing
their meanings. A story is not merely a bad version of a theory or
vice versa.

Harris explains that many academic writers bring multiple texts and
perspectives into the mix of opposition and tension and this makes for
more dynamic and interesting writing. More complex than just taking
sides in a debate since “it involves thinking through the potential
uses of a number of positions rather than arguing for or against a
fixed point of view.” (25).

Some notes on aesthetics:

Block quotes: These are the guys that are indented on the page and
usually smaller or in a different font, depending on requirement and
context. Harris suggests, a block quote emphasizes a piece of work
that we want to come back to and do more work with.

In-text quotes: Mostly used to not an emphasize key terms and
phrasings, to add and to qualify paraphrasing. (26)

Scare Quotes: Harris explains that punctuations create distance (very
interesting) hence the physical of people “quoting” something that is
absurd or outlandish or something that they want to keep some distance
from.

Epigraphs: Setting a quotation at the top of a book or essay. Harris
explains that when epigraphs are done well they can serve as a kind of
“poetic précis of a text, summing up its aim or scope –even if its
full meaning does not always become clear until the piece has been
read through and the epigraph considered a second time.” Not done well
=self importantly literary, too erudite by half. (31)

Allusions: The quote is not directly introduced, but something is
implied. So for example, if you introduce a block quote, or are
analyzing a particular piece of work, and you’re using it a lot in
your writing, the readership will probably understand, or be familiar
with what you’ve been paraphrasing.

“You come to terms with a text by translating its words and ideas into
your own language, making them part of your own prose –not only
re-presenting the work of another writer but also, at times, actually
retyping it as you quote key terms and passages from a text.” –Harris

An Essay A Day: Lucky Girl by Bridget Potter

An Essay A Day…

Bridget Potter
Lucky Girl

A question comes to mind: what is the difference between memoir and
nonfiction? And, what would be the difference between memoir and an
essay? Does it have to strictly do with length? Or…

How do you say more in fewer words?

Bridget Potter’s lucky Girl is written in first person, the story of a
19 year old woman who has an unwanted pregnancy with her boyfriend and
must navigate the cultural terrain surrounding abortion in 1962. She
eventually ends up getting an illegal abortion in San Juan (South
America). At first it seems, the title of the essay attributes her
luck to having successfully got an abortion after many attempts to
find somewhere who would perform the illegal procedure, but the author
concludes the story with a ghastly statistic (about 17 percent of U.S.
women dying during pregnancy and childbirth in San Juan in 1962 is
attributed to illegal abortion) leading the reader to believe
something different about the title Lucky Girl.

According to a 1958 Kinsey study, illegal abortion was the option
chosen by 80 percent of single women with unwanted pregnancies.
Statistics on illegal abortion are notoriously unreliable, but the
Guttmatcher Institute, a respected international organization
dedicated to sexual and reproductive health, estimates that during the
pre- Roe v. Wade years there were up to one million illegal abortions
performed in the United States each year. Illegal and often unsafe. In
1965, they count almost two hundred known deaths from illegal
abortions, but the actual number was, they estimate, much higher,
since the majority went unreported.
   Michael and I checked around for remedies. First we had a lot of
energetic sex, even though we were hardly in the mood. That didn’t
work. One night I sat in an extremely hot bath in my walk up on
Waverly Place while Michael fed me a whole quart of gin, jelly jar
glass by jelly jar glass. In between my gulps, he refreshed the bath
with boiling water from a saucepan on the crusty old gas stove. I got
beet-red and nauseous. We waited. I threw up. Nothing more. Another
night I ran up and down the apartment building’s six flights of
stairs, Michael waiting at the top to urge me to go back down and do
it again.

The two paragraphs above represent a transition between research on
abortion during the time of her story, to a chronological personal
narrative from when she gets pregnant up until her trip home after
getting an abortion in San Juan. Why would the technique of blending
fact with personal narrative be an effective method of storytelling in
essay writing?

There are a couple of great things at work here.

First, consider the audience and why an essay about the dangerous,
potentially life threatening, shaming, cultural terrain surrounding
abortion in the 1960’s is particularly visceral and important in
2011-2013, when women’s right to chose has come a long way, but is
threatened daily by those in places of political and gender influenced
power.

Secondly, although the story is incredibly personal and intimate,
Potter never goes out of her way to preach or stand on a soapbox. In
fact, she never really states her opinion directly on the subject
matter. But does she have to? Doesn’t it seem obvious after her story,
where her feelings must lie? She also offers clean tidy evidence
backed up. All information is objective. She shows and she does not
tell.

Another subtle syntax trick is her use of single sentence statements
after a full paragraph. She explains that in the 60’s doctors injected
a women’s urine into a rabbit and if the rabbit died then for whatever
reason, it was proof that the woman was pregnant.
 
My rabbit died.

For the intensity of the subject matter, and the severity of her
story, throughout her essay, Potter maintains a voice that is calm and
collected and informative. We are asked to arrive at our own judgment
based on the research given in the essay, and how we interpret the
tribulations of a young woman trying to get a medical procedure done
in a time (not too long ago) that was stigmatized.

Considering the last essay Irreconcilable Dissonance by Brian Doyle,
would Doyle’s carefree, conversational approach  to storytelling be
effective in this piece given the intensity of the subject matter?
Sorry to throw you under the bus Brian, but the contrast of the two
essays is useful in demonstrating a point her.

Lost Origins Analytical Essay

*This little analytical essay stuck in the creative/homework birth

canal for a whole two weeks and I couldn’t muster the strength to find

some sort of inspiration to write anything about it, although the

anthology is amazing, and John D’Agata’s introductory “rolling” essay

that accompanies each piece, is equally as informing and

inspirational. I did however read 48 essays worth of life reflections

and historical thinkers from cultures all over the world, so trying to

synthesize a body of work that big is like trying to fit a horse in a

cup of water or whatever.

   Anyway.

   Below, is a draft the I need to put down for awhile and come back to.

I have learned from this leviathan that analyzing the work of smaller

pieces is more fluent and gratifying and yields higher quality

academic papers/observations than trying to “book report” so much

material. For now its on the internet in it’s poor state, but on life

support until I come back to it.

John D’Agata explains, in a note to the reader, that the origin of the

essay may have started nearly six thousand years ago in Mesopotamia.

According to D’agata the Sumerians were the people who invented

civilization. The people who invented agriculture, kilns, alcohol,

wheels, the first cities, the first government, and the first legal

codes. “Their inventions became so numerous,” he says “and their

prosperity so abundant, that the Sumerians actually needed accounting,

too, and so they produced a rudimentary series of small notches in

clay that we recognize today as the first system of writing.” The

earliest written accounts were records of trade and commerce. “Indeed,

it’s estimated that over 90 percent of what the Sumerians wrote down

only served an administrative function…Writing in other words, began

as nonfiction .” He explains that the efficiencies that writing

introduced to the Sumerian Markets helped the Sumerians become the

richest people in the world. The gods suddenly noticed this

prosperity, paying special attention to the huge apartment blocks,

butchers, prostitutes, beggars, and the “ceaseless shapeless

clattering of the who-what-when-where-why,” deciding to lay waste to

the cradle of civilization by flooding the rivers surrounding Sumer.

   “Its embarrassing, of course, to think nonfiction destroyed the

world,” D’agata says. “especially since some readers are still

suspicious of the form: a genre that is merely a dispensary of Data

–not the true expression of one’s dreams, ideas or fears.”

   Here, if there was such a thing as a thesis in his writing, he says

it here, and at this stage in our exploration of the essay, we have no

choice, but to take up arms with him:

Do we read nonfiction in order to receive information, or do we read

it to experience art? It’s not very clear sometimes. So this is a book

that will try to offer the reader a clear objective: I am here in

search of art. I am here to track the origins of an alternative to

commerce.

   The first essay in D’Agata’s anthology (included as the prologue)

leaves off after the flood in Sumer. It is a list written by a

Sumerian named Ziusudra. In it, he will catalogue the problems that he

witnessed in the past by offering some advice about the future. “I

think his list is the beginning of an alternative to nonfiction,”

D’Agata says. “The beginning of a form that’s not propelled by

information, but one compelled instead by individual expression –by

inquiry, by opinion, by wonder, by doubt. Ziusudra’s list is the first

essay in the world. It’s a minds inquisitive ramble through a place

wiped clean of answers. It is trying to make a new shape where there

previously was none.”

   What comes next is an exhaustive romp through nearly five thousand

years of history compressed into 48 essays. In fragments, Heraclitus

of Ephesus explains, “those who wish to know about the world must

learn about it in details.” In 105 B.C.E., Lucias Seneca, Rome’s

revered philosopher writes letters that reveal a man so unsure of

himself that he contemplates suicide: “We are lit and put out,” Seneca

says in his essay called Sick. “We are born to die. We suffer a little

in the intermission, but on either side of life I know there is a deep

tranquility. I know that death doesn’t follow but it proceeds as

well.” More than a thousand years later, in the essay My Journey Up

The Mountain, Francesco Petrarch, recalls his journey up a mountain.

In a rolling essay that accompanies every historical essay

chronologically in the book, D’Agata explains that Petrarch’s writing

as a “great mimetic demonstration of a mind ascending something as the

body does the same,” but asks “what if it is only Petrarch’s mind that

is doing the ascending?” In 1969, Natalia Ginzburg writes about the

mendacities of her relationship, within the cultural confines of

fascist Italy. Somewhere in that five thousand years or so, Montaigne

asks, “what do I know?”

What do we arrive at from reading this body of work?

The question at some point changed from what is an Essay? To why do we essay?

Book Two: Rewriting: How to Do Things With Texts by Joseph Harris

Rewriting is about improving methods of using others work in "critical essays" or academic essays. But I secretly have such faith in the methods in Harris's book, I think they can be applied to any form of creative writing or creative essaying.

*It's important to note here that academic writing has the potential to be entertaining, informative, and inspirational. I personally feel that academic essays can be more than just proof that a student has read and can recite knowledge, and this belief is echoed strongly in the philosophy that Harris offers. In his words he wants to shift our talk of writing away from the static language of thesis and structure and toward a more dynamic vocabulary of action, gesture, and response.

"My aim of this book is to help you make interesting use of the texts you read in the essays you write," Harris says. "The question for an academic writer...is how to come up with something else, to add to what has already been said."

The book is broken into what Harris calls "moves": 1.) Coming to terms, 2.) Forwarding, 3.) Countering, 4.) Taking an approach, and 5.) Revising.

"I have ordered the chapters of this book,  however, to suggest a kind of ethics in academic writing, a sense that intellectual  work both starts and ends in acknowledging the strengths of other perspectives."

The book serves a dual purpose: How to appropriately and skillfully represent the work of others in my analytical essays, and also how to potentially use the work of others in more free form creative non fiction. 

I have shared the frustration with other students who feel overwhelmed when it comes to synthesizing large bodies of work, whether it be a piece of fiction or factual information. Harris asks many useful questions in his text to help out with this dilemma:

 "How do you offer the gist of an ambitious, complex, and perhaps quite long text in the space of a few paragraphs or sentences?"

" How do you select certain phrases or ideas for emphasis?"

"When do you quote and when do you paraphrase?"

Again, this ILC is not about academic writing per se, but still falls under the vein of essay writing, -essay writing being so incredibly verbose, Harris's writing philosophy will be beneficial to any writing form, even if he has 

a specific target in mind.

I fell in love with this book when I was a junior and I am very excited to spend more time with it.

-Gavin

An Essay a Day: July 12, 2013

An Essay a Day…

Brian Doyle
Irreconcilable Dissonance
From Oregon Humanities

*Note: I can’t help but thinking that starting off with a 400+ page
anthology (The Lost Origins of the Essay) of historical essays for
this project, has been the physical equivalent of someone running a
10K marathon after having sat on the couch after work for two weeks.
Luckily, this particular assignment, or goal (an essay a day) gives me
the chance to focus on smaller pieces of work. The dilemma, often
times, of the undergrad student writing academic essays, is figuring
out what to write about, when it comes to writing about an extensive
piece of work. The essay is often times brief: a fleeting thought, a
fragmented idea, a breath of air; Exhalation. This assignment, labeled
as such, aims to answer a body of questions, that will be outlined
below, in order to, not necessarily arrive at any formulaic conclusion
as to what an essay is, but come to a better interpretation, as to how
and why people decide to write essays, and what, if anything,
separates essay writing from other forms of creative nonfiction,
memoir, and even fiction.

Essays are picked at random from a cache of anthologies, online
publications, break room coffee tables, and anywhere else.

This essay is from The Best American Essay Series 2010, which any
normal person doing research would find that the title is a bit self
congratulatory. Oh well, we’ll make the decision here as to what is
the best and what is not. Christopher Hitchens was the editor for this
year (R.I.P.).

What are some of the first things that we notice about this essay
without turning too much of an analytical eye one it? (meaning if we
stare at something too long with this particular eye we may see it as
pieces that come together to make something, and we may lose the joy
of reading something without over intellectualizing it and picking it
apart.)

First, Brian Doyle’s essay is short. Not more than a thousand words,
spoken in plain, conversational language, with refreshing run on
sentences. As if you were talking to someone with whom you feel you
can be unabashedly honest with, without fear of being judged, or maybe
Doyle feels this way about his readers. This is the kind of language
reserved for close friends, lovers, family members. Language that is
lose. The antithesis of resume writing or academic writing.

The Essay is about divorce. Doyle, explains that he has been married
once, “to the woman to whom I am still married, so far, and one thing
I have noticed about being married is that it makes you a lot more
attentive to divorce, which used to seem like something that happened
to other people, but doesn’t anymore, because of course every marriage
is pregnant with divorce, and also now I know a lot of people who are
divorced, or are about to be, or are somewhere in between those poles,
for which shadowy status there should be words like “mivorced” or
“darried” or “sleeperated” or “schleperated” but there aren’t, so
far.”

The sentence above, runs on beautifully, without any breath. It is
unapologetic. Naked and honest and proposes the dilemma that the
writer is struggling with, as to why people get divorced? And why are
the reasons so odd, inane? Not ever what you would expect, as in the
excerpt below, and is the writer, married himself, immune from
divorce:

I read about another woman who divorced her husband because one time
they were walking down the street, the husband on the curb side in
accordance with the ancient courteous male custom of being on that
side so as to receive the splatter from the pristine acreage of his
beloved, and as they approached a fire hydrant he lifted his leg,
puppylike, as a joke, and she marched right to their lawyer’s office
and instituted divorce proceedings. That particular woman refused to
speak to reporters about the reasons for divorce, but you wonder what
the iceberg was under that surface, you know?

The essay is intentionally humorous is it not? But it is the last two
paragraphs, that contain something beautiful and unexplainable -the
reason why I decided to do a whole contract about essay writing-
because I knew that finding these little gems or moments of self
discovery and life inquiry, are the reasons why I love essays.

Doyle uses the expression “marriage is pregnant with divorce” twice in
his short piece.  What feelings does the verb pregnant evoke? Do you
think about problems that are constantly growing and exploding? Or
some unsteady force always threatening to capsize the union of two
people? Is it intentional that he uses the expression twice, or is the
thought just something resonating in his head like an echo or a voice,
mimicked on paper?

Much like the introductory sentence, which feels like a paragraph, the
conclusion is a run on, but done so very poetically. Doyle makes great
use of metaphor and simile and he is good at what he does:

The saddest word I’ve heard wrapped around divorce like a tattered
blanket is “tired,” as in “We were both just tired,” because being
tired seems so utterly normal to me, so much the rug always bunching
in that one spot no matter what you do, the slightly worn dish rack,
the belt with extra holes punched with an ice pick that you borrowed
from your cousin for exactly this purpose, the flashlight in the
pantry that has never had batteries and never will, that the thought
of “tired” being both your daily bread and also grounds for divorce
gives me the willies. The shagginess of things, the way they never
quite work out as planned and break down every Tuesday, necessitating
wine and foul language and duct tape the wrong-size screw quietly
hammered into place with the bottom of the garden gnome, seems to me
the very essence of marriage; so if what makes a marriage work (the
constant shifting of expectations and eternal parade of small
surprises) is also what cause marriage to dissolve, where is it safe
to stand?

What does a bunched rug, or a slightly worn dish rack, or the belt
with extra holes punched with an ice pick say about American life?
What does an ice pick symbolize here? What do these inane objects say
about domesticity or desperation or the pursuit of happiness or the
struggle to maintain equilibrium among the seemingly inconsequential
things that threaten our most valued relationships? And how painfully
mundane they are? The essay evokes these questions. Begs inquiry.
Thought. Investigation. Therefore to me, it is an effective piece of
art. And lastly, with a thread of naked humility, the writer asks a
question, as if he is honestly is seeking the advice of some friends,
who know where he’s been and where he is going, and have cut belt
holes with a knife, if not an ice pick.

Book One: The Lost Origins of the Essay

If we were confused by what exactly an essay is, with the help of John D' Agata we're even more unclear now. And this is O.K. and completely necessary to the exploratory and creative process in essay  writing. The Lost Origins of the essay gives the form an historical context, and elaborates on the core ILC question, which is left purposefully vague right now: What is an essay? Montaigne writes, "what do I know?" But maybe a question focusing  on the "purpose" and "intent" of the essay fails to consider the unwieldy nature of the artistic form and what human discovery comes from outside of static rules and syntactical structure? Instead, D' Agata asks: "Do we read nonfiction to receive information, or do we read it to experience art?" It's safe to say that nonfiction, in the context of his Anthology, means essays.

The material within spans from 1500 B.C.E to 1974. 48 essays in whole: beautiful, insane, abstract, spiritual, drunken, annoying, rambling, most all without a thread of thesis or "point" whatever that means, which just spawns more and more questions.

In the shadow of this first text, the initial question, what is an essay and any initial gripes with the academic type, seem unimportant. Form doesn't seem to matter here. What are we proving? What is the worth in proving anything, other than showing that we have read material and can willingly recite what we know?

Did the writers within this anthology think about five paragraphs or a thesis? What were they trying to explore in their writing? What were they conveying about themselves and the history their writing was filtered through? Their culture? The moment. The lifetime. What does the essay tell us about being human?

Maybe the essay asks a question instead  of providing an answer? Can there even be just one answer?