What makes good writing good

[Rumple Foreskin]

Just passing along for your consideration this excerpt from a review of High Lonesome: Stories 1966-2006, by Joyce Carrol Oates, taken from the April issue of The Atlantic Monthly

Rumple Foreskin

==

What makes good writing good
by Christina Schwarz
The Atlantic Monthly, April 2006


"Here was a man to be trusted. Here was a man with a handshake. A man who parted his graying dark hair razor-sharp on the left side of his scalp. For certain of his public appearances he wore makeup including inky-black mascara lightly brushed against his eyelashes. For their trips to Chester, Pennsylvania, to South Philly and Camden, New Jersey, he wore tinted glasses in stylish metal frames. He whistled, he was in good spirits. He rarely spoke of his week at the state capitol except to tell Philip that things were going very well. He did not inquire after Philip's mother or sister. He would have shaved just before picking Philip up at the Pennington Academy, Friday afternoon at 3:20 p.m. He smelled of after-shave and something sweet like vanilla."

—from High Lonesome: Stories 1966-2006, by Joyce Carol Oates

--

Oates is superb at suggesting the sinister. From the first bold, bald sentence here, the man is suspect. As anyone who’s taken a freshman English class knows, when a writer unambiguously declares a character good, she generally means the opposite.

Oates underscores her point with the sentence that follows, the near-identical structure with “handshake” in the place previously occupied by “trusted” signaling that the substance of this trustworthiness may consist merely of a symbol. Oates’s details, while never overtly negative, further reveal the man’s dubious nature. There is obvious vanity in his meticulous attention to his appearance, vanity and deception in his use of makeup and tinted glasses, and downright creepiness in his application of mascara, which Oates emphasizes by lingering over its description. After all of this, his sweet scent seems designed to mask something rotten.

The minuteness of these observations, along with the precision surrounding the pickup (a reminder that the story is from the point of view of the man’s son, Philip)—the name of the school, the exact minute, the redundancy of “afternoon” and “p.m.—emphasize the man’s contrasting vagueness concerning his work and his family. What interests this creep is something worth shaving for. What is he doing with his son in Chester, South Philly, and Camden?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Joyce Carol Oates is a great writer, but the best career move she could make now is to either switch to porn or die, because she puts out books like cows give milk Seriously, she must have like 200 titles out by now and these are all serious books, not mere formula romances or detective stories. She's just exhausting.

But yes, she is a true mistress of detail and observation, so good sometimes that it's painful to read her and recognize ourselves. And you know they're observationss and not made up, because her details are often too bnizarre and dead on to be made up.

I remember a story of hers about a divorced father having his weekend time with his 10 year-old daughter, who was autistic. In his attempts to communicate with her and entertain her, you saw every thing that had gone wrong with his marriage (she writes a lot about the things that come between people) and you saw the tragedy of his being able to reach either her or his wife. But the thing I remember - and I read this maybe 20 years ago - was the daughter's obsession of munching on raw spaghetti which he had to carry for her. If you've ever known a real autistic, you understand this kind of thing, and it's just too perfect and too real for her to have made it up.

There's something else you notice about her description here: She's obviously describing a public figure, probably a politician, so what does she do? She describes his public face - his handshake, his hair, his glasses (and mascara), and we wonder about this guy. We know something's going on beneath that haircut, and we want to be in on his secret. A lesser writer might have started out telling how he was worried about this or that, how hard he worked, how successful he was. his (obviously) troubled relationship with his son. She gives us all this information in terms of objective visuals. That sucks us into the story.

My own theory of fiction is that we read stories and impute the emotions from the character's actions. That's why stories have actions and aren't just descriptions of emotions. We're not told what the characters feel; we're shown their actions and we figure it out for ourself. That's one of the powerul charms of fiction - the private understanding and insight we get from figuring out what a acharacter's actions mean and what emotions they express.

I think a lot of new authors find this idea baffling. They read a story and don't get it - no one got murdered, no one got married. What's the point? But fiction deals with a lot more than that, and there are emotions a lot more subtle that horror and joy. I'll never forget that father's fury when he finally pulled the raw spaghetti out of his little girl's hand to try and make her listen to him, and his realization that he would never get throught to her, and probably never get through to anyone. It wasn't a super-dramatic moment, but it was terribly moving.

I think Oates' example is good too because of the way it shows us how to use description. We don't know what color hair this guy has, or how tall he is, or how old, but I'll be we all can see him. That's because we're really concerned as much with a person's looks as we are with what those looks tell us about who or she is inside. Look at how his relationship with his son and fammily are also subtly injected into his desription. They're more important to our understanding of him then his weight or eye color. Only in the crudest porn is physical appearance really important, when you want to picture bimbos and himbos getting it on.

And look at her opening. Nothing slam bang or in your face. No grabber line. Dull as dirt till we get to the 4th line - the mascara. Then we sit up and take notice. Graveful, subtle, and very effective.

Good example Rumple, by one of the best writers of our time.

--Zoot

 

[FallingToFly]

I have no idea what makes good writing good. I know what will turn me instantly and completely off, and I know when I get that little electric whisper up my fingers that says "Okay, this is oing to be good stuff."

I've never gotten that feeling from the classics. Moby Dick put me to sleep, I detest Charles Dickens, Shakespeare gives me a headache after about Act 3, and asking me to read Hemingway, Tolstoy or Hugo is just asking for a boot up your arse.

Poetry, now, well, I have a love affair with poetry. My favorite line ever: "She left lonely forever/The kings of the sea." I Have "The Highwayman" memorized and can recite it in waltz time while dancing my babies to sleep. I love Richard Lovelace, Walt Whitman, Tennyson, Poe, Frost, Stevenson... give me a good thick book of poetry adn I vanish into lyrical bliss.

So, if I hate the classics and adore poetry, what is good writng for me? Poe's stories I will tolerate, here and there. I read anything I can get my hands on by Oscar Wilde. His satirical view of the world, and his irreverent, moody look at reality, makes me smile. I'm a big fan of Newberry Award books for younger readers. Jane Yolen and R.A. Salvatore, the first for her lush fantasy worlds, the latter for his delicate pincer-probing into the stratas of individual lives and trials, and how they come together in a group to fight a common cause. I like tragedies, and satires, and horror, and erotica on the darker side. Pure smut doesn't interest me much. Poppy Z Brite, after her first two books stayed firmly on my reading/owning list, turned everything up a notch and captured me completely with Exquisite Corpse and The Lazarus Heart. I don't own either book anymore, but I can still see the words running across my eyelids when I go to sleep some nights.

For light reading there are a dozen authors I'll pick up a book from, Louis L'Amour, Dick Francis, Diane Mott Davidson, Laurell K Hamilton. Maguerite Henry, C.S.Lewis, Tolkien. I read the Dragonlance series, and it was the three books about Caramon and Raistlin that made me come back over and over. I adored the Rose of The Prophet series by the creators of Dragonlance.

The only thing I can tell about any of those aforementioned books is that there's something in them that speaks to me. Something about those stories draws at my heart and mind and makes me -want- to know what happend to these people. *shrugs* I've had poorly written high school stories do the same though. The emotion behind it is what counts, and how much of that emotion you pour into the story itself. That's what brings the readers in and gives them something to hold on to.

 

[Ada Stuart]

A good book?

I think good writing depends on the mood : Sometimes you just want something simple and suited for the holiday mood. You know the book will never win any rewards, but it's still a nice read and it gives you a happy and comfortable feeling of "the good wins again and Harry Potter survived this book as well".

Other times you want the author to treat you with respect or at least your intellect. You don't want to be told exactly what you should feel about the main character. Because sometimes the best way to fall in love with the book is the struggle you have to overcome in order to understand it - that is exactly what I feel about Shakespeare. The sentencing is so strange I have to concentrate to understand but I love his books.

 

[SesameStreet]

The best writing for me are the books that combine a tangled, detailed story line along with excellent characterizations of the main characters. I like to be able to "see" these people in my head. Not just their physical appearances but also the more subtle nuances of their personalities. I like a story that draws me in so deep that I am often wondering exactly how I would react in that same given situation. The dialogue needs to be fresh and snappy too. I don't want to have the feeling that I have read this same dialogue before. That is a problem with many prolific writers who churn out books at an amazing rate. After awhile their dialogue especially begins to sound repetitive.

 

[rgraham666]

Nice to know I'm not the only one who finds the classics dull.

I can handle Shakespeare on stage or in a good movie, but reading just make my eyes glaze over.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Nice to know I'm not the only one who finds the classics dull.

I can handle Shakespeare on stage or in a good movie, but reading just make my eyes glaze over.

Rob, the classics are like modern fiction--some are dull, others aren't bad reads. I wouldn't suggest War and Peace, with it's tedious, off-topic discourses on history, to anyone but Anna Karania was a surprisingly good read. Like many others, I'd rather watch Wheel-of-Fortuen re-runs than read Dickens. However, and to my surprise, A Tale of Two Cities proved to be an exception. Crane's Red Badge of Courage is short and intense, while Moby Dick is neither.

Zoot, sometimes when reading a gifted writer such as Oates, I'm tempted to give up writing in favor of something that won't punish me for my lack of imagination and shortcomings in use of symbolism and metaphor, such as collecting bottle caps.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[rgraham666]

I can think of two 'classics' I really like.

Grapes of Wrath and To Kill A Mockingbird.

Why do I like them? They make the real, real.

You can read all kinds of studies and newspaper articles about The Depression. But Grapes of Wrath takes you there, makes you feel the pain and despair.

The same for racial prejudice and segregation. Until I read To Kill A Mockingbird it wasn't a real thing to me.

It's what I like in a book, and what I try to write. Something that makes the real, real.

 

[musicankane]

I find myself geared toward author's like laurell K hamiltion, because of the basis of the story over the writing. While she is a great author I think it's the involvement of a truely unique setting with her Anita Blake novels that get me going.

Whereas I cannot read a Stephen King to save my life. I know he must be a good writer but I can't stand read three pages about the way a particualar stair always creaks, because frankly I don't fucking care. Seriously, make the weird shit happen. kill whomever is going to die and let the survivors blow the bad guy to pieces.

Which brings me back to LKH. If anyone here has read her stuff. Anita meets bad guy, Anita has sex (in later volumes) then she kills the bad guy. It's like reading A Buffy episode if they made it cooler.