February 2013 – Snopes

What Inspires a Writer?

Madeline Thorpe

One of the most interesting concepts in literature is the writer’s inspiration. Whenever I read, I constantly wonder where authors get their ideas for stories and what motivates them to write. Usually I write because I am facing an encroaching deadline. The content of my writing also tends to be dictated by paper prompts and the books listed on my English course syllabi. I decided to investigate authors’ views on writing to gain some insight into their sources of inspiration and to find what really makes a writer tick. Toni Morrison said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Morrison’s statement concerns what the writer believes to be a void in the literary world. The author seeks to fill this void with his or her own writing, a self-motivated way to benefit literature as a whole.

F. Scott Fitzgerald believed that writing develops out of a compulsion to share what one thinks or knows: “You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got to say something.” According to Fitzgerald, writing is not born out of a desire, but a burning need, a mandate to “say something.” I believe writing is people’s way of aiding one another; writers share their life lessons and experiences through their works. A book can be a lifeline from an author to a reader, or even from one author to another. While the writing process can appear complicated and even daunting at times, some writers believe that transcribing thoughts to paper is a natural outpouring of their emotions.

Ernest Hemingway described his thoughts about the writing process: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Personally, I have always been intimidated by writing. Staring at a blank word document when beginning a paper can be scary. Although writing may be hard for me initially, I ultimately agree with Hemingway. The writer’s thoughts should spill from the mind to the page, becoming a reflection of his or her innermost thoughts and the author’s “need” to say something. However, the writing process can often pose difficulties, especially concerning diction. Twain’s statement perfectly describes the need for precise diction: “The difference between the right word and the almost write word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” My first question about authors’ motivations and the root of their inspiration turned out to probe larger questions concerning the writing process and the precision required in creating a literary piece.

Maddie Thorpe has twice served as a Shenandoah intern, once as Poem of the Week Editor and once as Social Networking Editor. She is from Southern California and will take a degree in English from Washington and Lee in spring of 2014.

And the award for “Best Picture” goes to…

Tyler Van Riper

Despite all of my best intentions, I find myself publishing this post a day later than I had originally planned. Was it the week-long Washington Break that kept me from finishing it on time? The unseasonably cold Georgia weather that I was exposed to at home? The pile of assignments that I happened to remember once I returned back to Lexington? No, I am late with this post for one simple reason: the Academy Awards. I couldn’t help myself; the ceremony came on my roommate’s tiny television screen, and I was hooked. While I always resolve (and fail) to see all of the “Best Picture” nominations before the winners are announced, I can nonetheless appreciate the nominees simply due to the reputation of the Academy and its members.

This particular Oscars season, I was struck by the number of acclaimed films that were adapted from literature. I know what you’re thinking: it isn’t exactly news that our movie theaters have recently been inundated with book-turned-films. Just look at the success of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga or J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series on the big screen. However, these hype-surrounded, box office hits differ greatly from the films that were recognized this past weekend. The Academy Awards celebrates the absolute best in the craft of film-making: the most vivid cinematography; the best costume design; the most powerful acting performances; the most well-adapted screenplay. When I see that Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina (1877) has been nominated for an Academy Award, I can rest assured that the director Joe Wright has succeeded in creating his own work of art from Tolstoy’s great piece of literature, which is something that cannot be said for every film that is adapted from literature. With Oscar’s seal of approval, I know that Anna Karenina didn’t miss the mark.

The Academy Award nominations have always represented what our culture considers to be the best examples of film in any given year. However, I have recently realized that these acknowledgments can also speak volumes about our literary culture. From biography to fantasy to classic literature, the films nominated this year were adapted from literature of different genre, time period, and style. I have already spoken of Anna Karenina, but it wouldn’t do to forget Victor Hugo’s original novel Les Misérables (1862), which first inspired the Broadway musical on which this past year’s film is based. Similary, the acclaim surrounding certain fantasy adaptations proves that these types of films aren’t just for kids anymore. Yann Martel’s beautifully written fantasy adventure novel Life of Pi (2001) flourished under the supervision of “Best Director” winner Ang Lee, and the first installment of J.R.R. Tolkein’s beloved story The Hobbit (1937) introduced children and adults to Middle Earth. On a different spectrum, author Matthew Quick treats the more serious topic of mental illness in his novel Silver Linings Playbook (2008), upon which the “Best Picture” nominated film of the same name is based. However, the novel was not the only literary form to be recognized at the Academy Awards ceremony. Also up for the Oscar for “Best Picture,” the critically-acclaimed film Lincoln was based in part by Pulitzer-prize winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005). In fact, four of the nine films nominated in the “Best Picture” category were adapted from literature.

I can only hope that the literary presence in this year’s ceremony will continue to grow in following years, encouraging others to crack open a book as often as they frequent the movie theater. Maybe then I’ll have to be even more ambitious with my Academy Awards goal. Who knows, next year I may have to watch and read each of the nominations. I might actually be able to keep that resolution.

Reflections on The Age of Innocence

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In my Modern American Novels class, we recently read Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. Although I read the piece in high school, the story seems even more symbolic and meaningful than when I first encountered Wharton’s writing, as is the case for modern literature of the sort. In lecture, we learned that the New York of Wharton’s fictional world is not unlike that in which the author grew up. In other words, she wrote what she knew. The details of décor, the subtleties of language and the suggestiveness of minute gesture reveal grand emotions which none of the characters can seem to express through language alone.

Slowly becoming aware of his attraction to Madame Olenska, Newland Archer is visibly moved by an opera and projects his complicated feelings onto the plot of the observed performance. He is moved to tears, and because he is entrapped to society’s rigid expectations, cannot verbalize to anyone, let alone himself, these sentiments. This novel is a coming-of-age tale for an entire society developing in the Age of Innocence. May Welland is the quintessential innocent figure who must undergo transformation to be considered a mature member of her elite society. It is Newland Archer, however, who is the true protagonist and one to whom the term coming-of-age applies. It is a reversal in the standard social development, though. He borrows the perspective of the foreigner Madame Olenska and, after having viewed New York through her eyes, sees the frivolities of a broken society as though they were cracks in the lens.

Throughout the development of the plot, New York society becomes both his ally and enemy. It is a force that both stabilizes and infuriates him. The power of Wharton’s writing derives from the narration’s ability to capture the society’s restraints within the language itself. The narration may not address explicitly the growing love felt by Newland for the Madame Olenska but Wharton’s description of something as subtle as his reddening cheek implies as much.

As the story progresses, Wharton adds layer upon layer of templates through which to examine the rest of the plot. By the second to last chapter, Newland Archer has suffered a series of anxieties beginning with his curious feelings about the Countess Ellen Olenska. After having pictured what New York society must look like through her eyes, he subconsciously adopts Ellen’s perspective and begins to experience an altered reality. Whereas in the beginning of the novel he thinks his bride-to-be May Welland a perfect creature of innocence, light, and beauty, he begins to eventually judge her to be nothing short of a vapid woman, doomed to turn out just as her mother did. Subsequently Newland develops strong feelings for Ellen and wishes desperately to divorce himself from the elitist society and inhabit a world wherein he and Ellen can be together without any social stigmas. He begins to fantasize about such a place and thus every encounter with Ellen is marked by mystical elements. During these particular passages, Wharton pays closer attention to landscapes and sentiments as opposed to accessories and garments of the “clan.” In such a world, he and Ellen exist independently of any others and are therefore free to become romantically involved.

Wharton continuously juxtaposes these imaginary worlds with the restrictions of Newland’s reality. These tensions culminate perfectly in the final moments of the novel and, just like the closing scenes of the opera, Wharton’s writing has left a lasting resonance.

RT Smith’s ‘The Red Wolf: A Dream of Flannery O’Connor’ is Featured on the W&L Blog!

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R.T. Smith’s new book of poetry The Red Wolf is featured on the Washington and Lee University blog! Click here to read the post!

RT Smith is the Editor of Shenandoah and is the Writer-in-Residence at Washington and Lee University. The Red Wolf: A Dream of Flannery O’Connor was published in January 2013 with Louisiana Literature Press. It is Mr. Smith’s twelfth book of poetry.

Do you have a question for RT Smith on The Red Wolf? Post it below!

Concussive

R.T. Smith

Two decades ago, when I was teaching a poetry writing workshop or two every semester, I usually spent a whole class focusing on compression and control, emphasizing how a meticulously designed small poem could, metaphorically, explode once its precise and carefully orchestrated language connects with a reader’s mind. The class might examine Roethke’s “I Knew a Woman” or Plath’s “Ariel” to discover how many nuanced allusions were activated once we considered secondary meanings and the contexts we usually associated with the “loaded” language. It’s an important point: if a poet has any hope of directing his reader’s imagination, she must sift through the available vocabulary and select words that are precise but radiant. The figure of a stone striking a pool is relevant here, the implications rippling out.

I know this suggests meditation and revision and may not be persuasive to poetizers who believe that the spontaneity of feeling in a poem is its most cathartic ingredient, the sincerity of the feeling the essence of poetry, and since “expression that heals” is central to some current aesthetics, my design idea will probably have opposition, but I haven’t changed my mind about the concept.

What I have changed my mind about is the prop I employed to make my point. Into the workshop I would bring a paper bag, from which, at the right moment, I would lift a hand grenade. Unthinkable today, but back when almost no one imagined that mayhem in a classroom was a realistic possibility, no one ever complained, and I was persuaded that, if any student experienced a moment of anxiety, it would be dispelled (and erased) as soon as I explained that disarmed grenades could be purchased at most military surplus stores. I’d stick my pencil into the bottom end of the grenade (think “pomegranate”) to show that the core was hollow, then proceed to pass it around, letting the students see how the metal was divided into measured sections (think “pineapple”) to control the shrapnel pattern (I may have even said “kill zone”) once the pin was pulled, the spoon lifted and the explosive charge set off. Then, back to the poem, which has to be constructed with considerations of impact pattern. Word associations don’t radiate as symmetrically or predictably as the pieces of a hand grenade, but the metaphor seemed persuasive.

Shift from dummy ordnance and lightweight semantic theory to Frost’s “Design” or Bishop’s “First Death in Nova Scotia” and see how carefully the words have been chosen, how assertively the poet presides over syntax and juxtaposition. A good lesson, and years after graduation former students would see me and say they always remembered the grenade day and could still picture my prop (which I eventually painted orange, to diminish its lethal look), always there to remind them that compression and design are essential to the craft of writing.

Today, I wouldn’t even consider bringing a decommissioned grenade or even a plastic one to a class, though I might show students an image of one on a website. That three-dimensional impact that I wanted could, in contemporary context, seem like a threat, an act of terrorism. Who knows how a students would react to even a toy weapon in class? I know I’m no longer eager to see one in that setting, metaphor or not.

In fact, considerations of weaponry still enter the classroom in various ways. Some courses – in law, in history – are appropriate venues for conversations about the legality, morality and sometime necessity of firearms. Many literature classes discuss people with guns – from Pierre and his pistol in War and Peace to the various weapons in McCarthy’s The Road. We discuss their actions and motives as means of exploring their personalities and communities. Furthermore, our vocabulary is permeated with language from the world of guns – lock stock and barrel, trigger, set your sights on, go off half-cocked, on target, shoots that idea down, a rapid-fire discussion, going ballistic, locked and loaded, flash in the pan, keep your powder dry, no silver bullet, a shot across the bow, bite the bullet, open season, loose cannon.

These are not now (if they ever were) benign metaphors, and when I hear or say these words now, I imagine them in boldface italics, their associations having grown exponentially in recent months. But even the network news personnel reporting on gun violence slip right into them, which makes me hope they each do a little double-take in the second afterwards, flinch a little and remember that words have power and should be employed purposefully and not by habit.

Beyond the radius of deadly metal, a hand grenade does damage through concussion (L: concutere, to shake violently; or concussus, action of striking together). The riven air can do as much damage as a diving linebacker’s helmet, and I think many of us not directly hit by the recent murders by guns are reeling a vbit from the shock waves. Just as I no longer can or want to bring my disarmed grenade to class, we all need to rethink our actions and language, to find the wisest and safest ways to go forward in this more dangerous world.

R. T. Smith has edited Shenandoah since 1995 and serves as Writer-in-Residence at Washington & Lee. His forthcoming books are Doves in Flight: 13 Fictions and Summoning Shades: New Poems, both due in 2017.

Thoughts on ‘The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives’

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This term, I am fortunate enough to be in Dean Keen’s Capstone class on ‘Literature in Action’ where, each week, we read a book on the role and power of literature on modern day society. The class is a culmination of the English Major at Washington and Lee University and ends with a 20+ page research paper on a topic of our choice about a book that was published in the United States. In the first week of class, Dean Keen had us explore the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN) and write our own literacy narrative (click here for a link to their website). What is the DALN?

The DALN is a collection of narratives from people of different races, gender, ethnicities, economic backgrounds, life goals etc. (a true melting pot) that is concerned with one thing: the documentation of the experience and importance of books and reading on peoples lives. These narratives serve as a historical documentation of the role of books in every aspect of a person’s life and is available to the public. Each person’s narrative can be in a variety of formats: “music, photos, diaries, blogs, letters, stories, poetry, speeches, sermons, videos, school papers, chat room exchanges, text messages, gaming profiles, zines, sound recordings, ETC!” It represents the culmination of past and present technologies that express the connection of stories to humans and collects them all in one website that serves as a time capsule on the impact of stories on modern human existence.

The book The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottshall tells how the story, the land of “make-believe,” impacts human development and existence. It was a very enlightening read for me to put the narratives in DALN in perspective and see the impact of stories and imagination on humanity. Take the time to go and read a literacy narrative on DALN, click here to get to their website!

I highly recommend that you read the Q&A with a woman named Rhonda to get a feel for the sheer emotion and poignancy of some of these narratives. Rhonda talks about how her dyslexic, high school dropout brother Jeff taught her how to read at a college level by the time she was 10. I put to you the same question that the DALN asked Rhonda: “Just say your name and tell your story… Do you have a story about literacy?”