Dirty work
I like you most when you're not likeable
Putting our imperfections on the page, professional jealousy, who gets to tell the story, and a bunch of other stuff too
Craft: Excavation
This time last year, I was in New York and happened upon the painting you see below in this poorly cropped snapshot.
The piece stopped me in my tracks. It is dark, and yet light. Imposing and compelling. Daunting and delightful. And when I saw it was called Guano (Menhir), I loved it even more. (Guano is the Spanish word for the bat and bird shit that accumulates over time in a single space.) The work is by French artist Judit Reigl, and was created between 1959 and 1964. Reigl was working in a new studio then, and in an effort to protect the floor, she covered it with rejected canvasses. Over the following years, the canvasses became saturated with paint and other material as Reigl worked and walked on top of them. As detailed in the gallery description next to the painting, Reigl noticed that, as she puts it “these excremental rags slowly became stratified layers, like the guano (bird dung) that comes from the isles of Latin America.” She took the rags, and used a homemade tool to scrape through the layers to “excavate” the “painting” that now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
It is, I think, a memoirist’s perfect metaphor.
The memoirists whose work I love the most are the imperfect ones, the ones who excavate their way through their own crap—and crappy behaviour—to find some beauty, some meaning in it all. My shelf is filled with people I admire for their fallibility, irritability and imperfections: Vivian Gornick, Abigail Thomas, Heidi Julavits, Deborah Levy, Maggie Nelson, Lidia Yuknavitch, Sallie Tisdale, Kiese Laymon, Dani Shapiro, Aleksandar Hemon, Leslie Jamison, Meghan Daum, Lindy West. I like them most when they admit that they may not be all that likeable—and I prefer it when they call themselves on their own shit, grab a homemade tool, and try to make something better of it. (It’s worth noting that guano is renowned for its value as fertilizer.)
And even then, it doesn’t have to result in perfection: “You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.” That quote from Emma Coats, a former story artist at Pixar Studios, was shared with the King’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction classes in January by script analyst Jamie Gaetz in a lecture she gave on what nonfiction writers can learn from screenwriting. The picture you create with your guano doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful.
Exercises
Diary of a fourth-grade jerk: Hmm, is she going to suggest we tackle our crappiest moments, our most imperfect imperfections? Well, you can if you want to. But, if you’d like to try something a little less daunting, do this instead: Cast your mind back to nine-year-old (ish) you. What was the worst thing nine-year-old you did? Put yourself back there. What happened? What happened after it happened? How did you feel when it happened? And afterwards? How do you feel about it now? Did any of it change or shape who you are today? How?
Unleash a demon: This one is inspired by cartoonist Lynda Barry’s book One! Hundred! Demons!, a book itself inspired by a 16th-century Zen monk’s scroll painting of 100 demons chasing each other. Barry advises readers to use water-based ink and Asian-style brushes to paint a demon from your own life—and then name it and tell its story. My suggestion: Don’t start with life’s biggest demons. Start with a little one. You can go the ink and brush route, or grab some crayons or markers. Draw the monster. Tell its story: maybe it’s a kitchen pixie that always hides the salt, or a garden goblin who sprinkles aphids on your roses. This isn’t a fiction exercise, though it’s not strictly factual either: connect the monster back to your real life. I suggest handwriting rather than typing for this one.
What I’m reading: Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
It was the classic airport reading conundrum: I’d accidentally packed my book in my checked luggage, so was searching the rack in the departures area for something worth reading. My options: a “Girl on the….” or “Woman in the…” suburban noir thriller; a “Dead Girl on the Moors” mystery; a “Man of Action” spy thriller; or a business book on how to work less, manage better and still succeed beyond my wildest dreams. Blech. Then I spotted it, tucked down on a shelf near the bottom: Once Upon a River, a fairy tale-ish story set in the late 1800s at an inn on the Thames. I devoured the first 200 pages on my flight, and squeezed the rest into quiet moments over the first couple of days home. Setterfield—who I hadn’t heard of before—does a wonderful job of creating a compelling world populated with intriguing characters from the very first pages of the book, a world that is almost realistic but with a small dose of the fantastic threaded through it. The perfect book for curling up with next to a fire, losing yourself in on a flight, or going to bed early with just to have an excuse to dive into the next chapter.
Other good stuff
Read So in the spirit of imperfectionism: I try to be a positive, generous person. But I will admit to occasional feelings of jealousy, and yes, even to sometimes taking a sip (ok, perhaps even a gulp) from the goblet of schadenfreude. And when I do, I am reminded of this glorious poem by Clive James, “The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered.”
Watch A documentary to inspire creativity, but you’ll have to hunt for it, since it doesn’t seem to be on streaming services (at least not here in Canada). Released almost 20 years ago, Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time follows sculptor and photographer Andy Goldsworthy as he creates works with rocks, sticks, leaves and other natural materials, often in circumstances where they will be disturbed or disrupted by the natural elements. (That’s where the photography comes in, to capture the “sculptures” before they disappear.) Watching Goldsworthy painstakingly create a woven structure of branches that will be blown away by the wind, or a stacked hive of stones that will be washed away by the tides, provokes questions about the nature of art, what it means to be seen or appreciated as an artist, the transience of our existence… And his work is just plain wonderful, as well. Goldsworthy also produces some more permanent works, including two stone walls at Storm King Art Center in New York State. There is also a more recent doc about Goldworthy called Leaning into the Wind that I’m trying to track down—looks like it’s available on DVD in Europe but not in North American DVD format.
Listen The Longform podcast has a great conversation with Leslie Jamison about her latest collection Make It Scream, Make It Burn. Jamison is just so bloody smart, and listening to her discuss her pieces—some reported, some more memoir-driven, and some works of cultural criticism—is a masterclass in nonfiction essay writing. There is much to dive into in this almost hour-long episode (skip the first 5 minutes of host blather though), but one particularly interesting section is when she talks about interviewing people: earlier in her career, she admits she obsessed about asking questions that would make her look smart—and gradually learned that the less concerned she became with measuring up, the more productive her interviews became as she asked the questions she needed to ask to truly understand.
Book industry stuff
Romance Writers of America implodes: Karen Ho breaks down what happened and why it matters for the publishing industry.
Who gets to tell the story—and who gets paid seven figures for it: The controversy around American Dirt. Two New York Times reviews (one panned it and the other didn’t), this takedown, a NY Times story on the controversy, and the publisher’s response.
And a helpful perspective: On writing the “other” from Alexander Chee, penned before these latest issues.
Facebook’s ongoing idiocy: This time with the King’s Co-op Bookstore and the promotion of Desmond Cole’s book The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power.
Vivian Gornick re-issued: An oral history of American Communists gets a second life—and author Vivian Gornick isn’t sure what to make of it.
Tweets and stuff
A winter brightener
A beautiful drum
Dazzling skill
Obligatory picture of Buddy
Buddy says “Wake me up when it’s spring…”
Stuff at the bottom
I’m a writer, editor and teacher. This is my personal e-newsletter on the craft of writing nonfiction, sprinkled with occasional feminism and social justice. You can find out more about me on my website at kimpittaway.com. You can also find me on Facebook and Twitter. I’m the executive director of the MFA in Creative Nonfiction limited residency program at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. If you’re interested in writing a nonfiction book, you should check our program out!