The book started off strong with excellent evidence and analysis. Indeed, I will populate my "To Read" shelf with some of Prose's suggestions. Another standout is the penultimate chapter, "Learning from Chekhov." The book, however, dragged in the middle with longer excerpts and summaries rather than explanations of how the excerpts engage a reader or help a writer.
Some good quotes:
- It's satisfying to see that sentence shring, snap into place, and ultimately emerge in a more polished form: clear, economical, sharp.
- A good teacher can show you how to edit your work. The right class can form the basis of a community that will help and sustain you.
- [Why you should slow down and read every word:] [L]anguage is the medium we use in much the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint...[I]t's surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.
- Mastering the logic of grammar contributes, in a mysterious way that again evokes some process of osmosis, to the logic of thought.
- A novelist friend compares the rules of grammar, punctuation, and usage to a sort of old-fashioned etiquette. He says that writing is a bit like inviting someone to your house. The writer is the host, the reader the guest, and you, the writer, follow the etiquette because you want your readers to be more comfortable, especially if you're planning ot serve them something they might not be expecting.
- [M]anuals of style are a little like writing workshops, and have the same disadvantage - a pedagogy that involves warnings about what might be broken and directions on how to fix it - as opposed to learning from literature, which teaches by positive model.
- In an era in which air travelers compare notes on how best to prevent their seatmates from making casual conversation...it seems far less likely that one passenger would tell another... a long, tormented account of how sexual jealousy ruined his marriage and his life. Perversely, it's more likely that someone might "share" this confession with a national TV audience.
- ...[Henry] Green was less attuned to how people sound when they speak - the actual words and expression they employ - than to what they mean. This notion of dialogue as a pure expression of character that (like character itself) transcends the specifics of time and place may be partly why the conversations in the works of writers such as Austen and Bronte often sound fresh and astonishingly contemporary...
- [What she should have said to her writing class:] Forget observation, consciousness, clear-sightedness. Forget about life. Read Chekhov, read the stories straight through. Admit that you understand nothing of life, nothing of what you see. Then go out and look at the world.
- [When asked to rewrite characters for greater likability, remember the following:] ...masterpieces survive in which all that's expected of us is that we be interested in the characters, engaged by their fates, intrigued by their complexities, curious about what will happen to them next.
Dates: 22 Sept-4 Oct 2012
*****
The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller
A lyrical retelling of The Iliad, from the point of view of Achilles's lover, Patroclus. What does it mean to be the mortal lover of a demigod? I like how Miller fleshes out Patroclus's character, having him tend the wounded (he cannot fight) and serve as Achilles's conscience (he is the reason behind Achilles's "love" of Briseis). One passage that really stood out for me is Patroclus's comparison of arrows that miss him to a lover's caress.
There are a number of themes in this book that I look forward to discussing in bookclub: the importance of giving peace to the dead (As Priam tells Achilles, "there is no peace for those who live after."); how fame changes over time (Odysseus joking tells Achilles's son, Pyrrhus, that Odysseus may be more famous); and what it means to be a "man" (Thetis tells Achilles that Pyrrhus is more of a man, but he is more like a monster). As you can tell by the dates, the book was hard to put down.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Dates: 6-8 Oct 2012
*****
Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos
I never owned a Polaroid camera; in grad school, I associated the Polaroid building with food trucks. But I loved this book. Bonanos's account of the rise and fall of the Polaroid corporation - and its genius founder, Edwin Land - weaves together art, science, and business. I wasn't surprised to learn how Land excelled as a communicator, but I was struck by integral art was in the company's growth: some of Land's landmark inventions were actually projects spearheaded by women from Smith's art history department (he had them take chemistry classes); artists like Ansel Adams were hired as consultants to help further the technology. Although I never particularly cared for the photos, I was amazed to learn of the cool things artists did with the film such as "image lifts" - transferring the photographic emulsion to another medium like glass.
The writing is very accessible and effectively punctuated with photos. And Bonano truly has a story made: although Polaroid declared bankruptcy in 2008, the film has come back to market, and the company recently developed a zero-ink printer (the paper has microcrystals whose color is activated by heat - so cool!). I look forward to seeing how Polaroid continues to grow in the post-Land era.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Dates: 20-24 Oct 2012
*****
The Twenty-one Balloons by William Pene du Bois
I had never heard of this book before (despite it winning a Newbery award), but recently bought it as a birthday present for Nikita's friend. I'm glad I picked it up at the library: I loved reading about a math teacher who builds a balloon to escape society, and ends up crashing on an island that has a small society of inventors, scientists, artists - people who wouldn't get bored on an island - financed by a secret diamond mine.
The writing is humorous and fantastical, and the story is more inventive than that of The Mysterious Benedict Society. Perhaps one flaw is the lack of closure at the end. Still, this is the third delightful book I have read in a row, convincing me to stop wasting time on writing that doesn't grab me.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Dates: 25-30 Oct 2012
