Hard truths
Challenging ourselves
March crawled. April flew. And May is here. Here’s hoping for warmth, pandemic progress and continuing connection to the people and communities that bring us strength and stability.
Craft: Lessons from essayists
I’ve been prepping for the King’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction summer residency, taking place online this year from June 6-14, trying to decide which essayists to include in a lecture I’m doing on “difficult knowledge.” The concept of difficult knowledge was coined by educational theorist Deborah Britzman, who in 1998 articulated the concepts of “lovely knowledge”—information that allows us to think of ourselves basically as good people with noble values—versus “difficult knowledge”—information that pushes us to acknowledge that we may be part of a society or group whose behaviour is not always “good.” I first came across the concepts while reading about museum curation, where it was referenced to help curators in their work of developing exhibits for genocide and Holocaust museums, places where the concepts and content may be emotionally traumatic for some and may challenge preconceived notions of identity for others as they are confronted with the reality of atrocities committed by their nations. It struck me that the challenges that curators face in packaging “difficult knowledge” for public consumption is in many ways similar to the challenges writers face in writing about issues and events that push readers to reconsider their accepted views or comfortable biases.
I’m not going to fully lay out the lecture here (because “Hi students!”). But I did want to touch on two essays connected to it: one I considered but won’t have time to reference in my talk, and another I will include in the list of readings for students. One of my challenges in the lecture is that I have too many great pieces of writing in my “examples” stack—especially as I’m shifting the lecture from in-person delivery to a recorded lecture and want to avoid overloading students. Both contain lessons I’ve learned from.
Confessing your sins: First up is Leslie Jamison’s “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live Again,” which appears in her new collection Make It Scream, Make It Burn. A version of the piece first appeared in Harper’s Magazine under the title “Giving Up the Ghost,” though the essay in the book has clearly been expanded. Both versions cover similar territory—an exploration of stories of children who appear to have memories of past lives, focusing primarily on one researcher who has studied them—but the book version is richer, largely because in it Jamison pulls back the curtain on her own impulses, thoughts and actions as a reporter. Perhaps because she has more space, perhaps because she has had the luxury of more time to reflect, she is more forthcoming in describing her ambivalence about the subject matter, and her techniques in gathering material.
Some examples (all from the book version):
“…I felt defensive of reincarnation from the start. It wasn’t that I necessarily believed in it. It was more that I’d grown deeply skeptical of skepticism itself. It seemed much easier to poke holes in things—people, programs, systems of belief—than to construct them, stand behind them, or at least take them seriously. That ready-made dismissiveness banished too much mystery and wonder.”
Later, she describes doing something we tell writers to do when interviewing subjects in their offices or homes—and she nails why it can be problematic:
“As Tucker showed me around their offices, I scribbled a catalogue of odd details in my notebook, the low-hanging fruit of institutional quirk.”
Ah yes, I’ve harvested those fruits before—the details that let you sum up in one or two short descriptions how your interviewee is serious but with a humourous side (funny cartoon on bulletin board), or how the creepy dolls sitting alongside the books in her office suggest she’s not quite what you’d expect (ok, that’s my office)…
Or later, as she describes listening to her recorded interviews with her key source:
“Weeks later, when I listened to recordings of our interviews, I was embarrassed to hear myself repeatedly declaring to Tucker my ‘openness to mystery.’ This insistence had been in earnest, but I could also hear in my voice the shrill and overeager tones of self-convincing, and the savviness of strategy.”
Ouch: the savviness of strategy…that burns! I’ve heard it in my own interviews: not that I’m lying to sources, but just that I’m hoping my earnest willingness to hear their side will convince them to share all.
And then, as she reflects on possible connections between her journey as a recovering alcoholic and her pursuit of stories about people who, for instance, believed their kids had had past lives:
“I started to believe there was an ethical failure embedded in skepticism itself, the same snobbery that lay beneath the impulse to resist clichés in recovery meetings or wholly dismiss people’s overly neat narratives of their own lives.
“In my own work, I found myself increasingly addicted to writing about lives or beliefs that others might have scoffed at: people who claimed to suffer from a skin disease most doctors didn’t believe in, or self-identified outsiders who felt a spiritual kinship to an elusive whale. But if I was honest with myself, this affinity also carried the faint whiff of self-righteousness. Maybe I liked telling myself I was defending underdogs. Or maybe it was cowardice. Maybe I was too scared to push back against the stories people told themselves in order to keep surviving their own lives.”
There’s a phrase worth thinking about: “the stories people told themselves in order to keep surviving their own lives.” Talk about “lovely knowledge” versus “difficult knowledge”—how many of us really are brave enough to challenge the stories people tell about their own lives, that help them make sense of their own lives? (Counterpoint: Are we entitled to do so?) How many of us are willing to challenge our own stories about our own lives? While in the first version of Jamison’s piece, published in Harper’s, she’s mostly focused on challenging, however gently, the beliefs of her interview subjects, in the second more interesting essay, she exerts at least as much effort in challenging her own. Her original piece in Harper’s was a perfectly fine piece of writing: an exploration of a quirky subculture, with little exposure of her own biases or agenda. The expanded book version is soooo much richer though, as Jamison interrogates herself, her own lovely (and difficult) knowledge about her motives and approach, and launches herself into the uncomfortable, vulnerable territory of confessing her mixed motives.
Telling, and showing: The second piece is Aleksandar Hemon’s “The Aquarium,” an essay about the sudden illness and death of his infant daughter, originally published in The New Yorker and later collected in his book The Book of My Lives. As I read the piece for perhaps the 10th time, I was struck by how often Hemon does something we often tell writers not to do: he tells us his emotions, saying he was sad, or worried, or terrified, or guilty, or heartbroken. But he does not allow those words to stand alone—he uses them as signposts, to ready us for what is to come: he is about to take us inside the difficult territory of that sadness, that worry, that terror, that guilt, that heartbreak. He does us a kindness, one he didn’t have the luxury of, in allowing us a moment to draw a breath before launching into the proof of those scary words.
Some examples:
“The cafeteria in the hospital’s basement was the saddest place in the world, with its grim neon lights and gray tabletops and the diffuse foreboding of those who had stepped away from suffering children to have a grilled cheese sandwich.”
Oof. The punch of the juxtaposition of “suffering children” and “grilled cheese sandwich.”
Later:
“One of the most common platitudes we heard was that ‘words failed.’ But the words were not failing Teri and me at all. It was not true that there was no way to describe our experience. Teri and I had plenty of language with which to talk to each other about the horror of what was happening, and talk we did. The words of Dr. Fangusaro and Dr. Lulla, always painfully pertinent, were not failing, either. If there was a communication problem, it was that there were too many words, and they were far too heavy and too specific to be inflicted on others. (Take Isabel’s chemo drugs: Vincristine, Methotrexate, Etoposide, Cyclophospamide, and Cisplatin—creatures of a particularly malign demonology.) We instinctively protected our friends from the knowledge we possessed; we let them think that words had failed, because we knew that they didn’t want to learn the vocabulary we used daily. We were sure that they didn’t want to know what we knew; we didn't want to know it, either.”
Near the end of the piece, Hemon pushes back at the platitudes about the lessons suffering teaches—he describes it as “one of the most despicable religious fallacies.”
“We learned no lessons worth learning; we acquired no experience that could benefit anyone,” he writes. Your own beliefs may differ, but as Hemon describes the absence of his daughter, the gap left in his family, and crafts one of the most exquisite lines about “her indelible absence” (a line which must be read in context to be fully appreciated), you will understand his pain.
Exercises
Face yourself: While not every piece of writing requires—or benefits from—taking the reader behind the curtain of your reporting, recording your process and developing insights in a reporter’s journal can be useful. First, you may capture details you initially didn’t think worth noting in your “official” notes. But perhaps more importantly, it’s valuable to track your emerging understanding of your topic. What did you think about a particular source or piece of information when you first encountered it? What thought process did you go through in integrating that insight into your larger understanding of the topic at hand? This kind of process journal can be valuable in working through material, and may provide a rich record to return to as you eventually put your piece down onto the page.
Name it, then prove it: Struggling with an emotionally-charged piece of writing? Wish you could just say “I was terrified”? OK, write “I was terrified.” And now do your best to take us inside that terror. Don’t censor yourself: admit contradictions, confusion, self-judgment. In “The Aquarium,” Hemon writes about what he did after hearing that his daughter was about to be rushed into surgery where “there was a distinct risk of Isabel’s bleeding to death.” He’d gotten the call on the way to the hospital, and when he arrived, he had with him cannoli he’d picked up earlier that day: “Before we followed Isabel into the pre-op, I put the cannoli in the fridge that was in her room. The selfish lucidity of that act produced an immediate feeling of guilt. Only later would I understand that that absurd act was related to a desperate form of hope: the cannoli might be necessary for our future survival.” That small detail, and his judgment of himself, would have been tempting to leave out: who wants to admit they stopped to put the cannoli in the fridge before following their sick infant into pre-op? But it is such a human, intimate moment of reality—and those moments are often the ones that connect with readers, as we see our imperfections, our stumbles and our confused emotions echoed on the page.
Bonus round: Go deeper: Have a piece of your own writing that has lingered with you? If you’re a journalist, perhaps it’s a reported piece that, while published, just never quite felt finished. If you’re an essayist or memoirist, perhaps it’s a piece that touches on a theme you find yourself returning to. If you’re able to, read the two versions of Jamison’s piece, referenced above. Now, return to your piece, and pull it apart. Where can you add? Deepen? Expand? Explore? What do you wish you had had room for? What ambivalence did you leave out or avoid? Those ambivalences are especially worthy of notice and exploration—uncertainty can yield rich insight.
What I’m reading: Brightspace FAQs
Seriously. That’s what I’m reading these days: how-to’s on how to get our residency fully online on the university’s teaching platform. I do not recommend them. And I look forward to cracking open a book again soon, though I suspect it may not be until after the residency.
Other good stuff
Read As we all continue to grapple with the realities of the pandemic, I was struck by “Who is Worthy? Deaf-Blind People Fear That Doctors Won’t Save Them From the Coronavirus” by Robin Wright in The New Yorker, on the severe challenges faced by those whose key form of communication relies on person-to-person contact.
Watch I’m looking forward to diving into Season 2 of Ricky Gervais’ After Life. I know people tend to fall into love-him or hate-him camps. But what I find interesting about Gervais is his willingness to push us into discomfort with characters who really aren’t entirely likable, but are entirely human. And ok, I have a high tolerance for British swearing, so that helps. (Lots and lots of c-words. Consider yourself warned.)
Listen This song gives me hope: the High Women singing Crowded Table.
I bought the table in my house at an auction not long after I moved to Halifax: it’s oval with five sections, expanding from seating a roomy four right up to a slightly crowded 12. When the auctioneer’s delivery guys arrived, one of them remarked that the table had come from “the Commodore’s house.” I did some searching, and it turned out to have been owned by a Navy officer (not a commodore, but still, a senior officer). His obit mentioned how much he and his wife enjoyed entertaining, and that at dinners at their home, one of his favourite refrains was “Now that reminds me of a story…” I’d liked the table when I bought it. I’ve loved it ever since I discovered its story. And I look forward to the day with crowded tables are part of our lives again.
Book industry stuff
Book sales are holding their own: But it’s going to be challenging for publishers, authors and bookstores as the effects of the pandemic continue.
Insights on Canadian readers during the pandemic: Latest research from BookNet Canada
Cookbook to benefit US restaurant workers: Recipes from Penguin Random House cookbook authors have been gathered into a benefit book.
Giller winners available for free download: Scotiabank and Audible are making free audio versions of 10 Giller books available
Courses, communities & stuff
Great Canadian writers at Pandemic University: Brainchild of Alberta-based Omar Mouallem, Pandemic U is offering $15 webinars by some terrific Canadian writers (including King’s MFA mentor Ayelet Tsabari).
Give your author website a boost: Webinar with Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia’s Andy Verboom.
Communities for women writers: Reader and author Marjorie Kildare emailed after the last newsletter came out with two recommendations for writing communities specifically aimed at women: The Story Circle Network and the International Women’s Writing Guild.
Tweets & stuff
Good omens
Good girl
Good for the soul
Obligatory picture of Buddy
Buddy says “Christmas toys in May? Sure!”
The 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!
And finally
Share your online course and community recommendations, links to cool things writers and others are doing to get through all of this and whatever else strikes you in the comments section of the web version of this post.