Sunday, June 26, 2005
Anne Fadiman
My, I have been away for a while. I've still been reading all the time, of course, but I haven't had time to update the blog. So let's pick up with Anne Fadiman.
She is, of course, the daughter of Clifton, and former editor of The American Scholar, and a nifty essayist in her own right. (Two of her essays appear in the Composition 1 textbook we use at TSU.) Listening to her book, Ex Libris, is (for me, at least) much like sitting down with a new friend and trading stories, except that she doesn't hear any of mine. One small part of this is that she mentions in passing one of her friends, a writer who did some work for me when I was in packaging. But there is much more than that.
Fadiman grew up wit books and with the love of books, and the love of writing and its tools. She explores that relationship, between reader (and sometimes writer) and text, in the essays in this book. These are not essays that challenge us; as I mentioned above, I listened to this book, and had no trouble (as I did with, say, Walden) having to stop the recording so I could think about the implications of what she had written. They are, however, enlightening in small, resonant ways.
Her essay about writing bad sonnets, for example, taught me that William Kunstler wrote bad (or mediocre) sonnets, but also helped express why those of us who don't have the gift for formal poetry still mangle the form sometimes. (And there's nothing wrong with that, as long as we don't try to impose our work on others.) And it also explores why anyone should bother with sonnets at all (quoting one that I have used in the classroom, Wordsworth's "Nuns Never Fret").
You don't come away from this with the feeling that she's brilliant (although she really is; writing of this ease and resonance and intellectual breadth is not easy) but with a sense that she is just a little luckier in her family and a little better read than the rest of us. And if some of the people she mentions talking to are not so much Peter Lerangis (our mutual acquaintance) as William Shawn, well, someone has to have those experiences we dreamed about. At least she is willing to share them with us as a peer.
dmh
She is, of course, the daughter of Clifton, and former editor of The American Scholar, and a nifty essayist in her own right. (Two of her essays appear in the Composition 1 textbook we use at TSU.) Listening to her book, Ex Libris, is (for me, at least) much like sitting down with a new friend and trading stories, except that she doesn't hear any of mine. One small part of this is that she mentions in passing one of her friends, a writer who did some work for me when I was in packaging. But there is much more than that.
Fadiman grew up wit books and with the love of books, and the love of writing and its tools. She explores that relationship, between reader (and sometimes writer) and text, in the essays in this book. These are not essays that challenge us; as I mentioned above, I listened to this book, and had no trouble (as I did with, say, Walden) having to stop the recording so I could think about the implications of what she had written. They are, however, enlightening in small, resonant ways.
Her essay about writing bad sonnets, for example, taught me that William Kunstler wrote bad (or mediocre) sonnets, but also helped express why those of us who don't have the gift for formal poetry still mangle the form sometimes. (And there's nothing wrong with that, as long as we don't try to impose our work on others.) And it also explores why anyone should bother with sonnets at all (quoting one that I have used in the classroom, Wordsworth's "Nuns Never Fret").
You don't come away from this with the feeling that she's brilliant (although she really is; writing of this ease and resonance and intellectual breadth is not easy) but with a sense that she is just a little luckier in her family and a little better read than the rest of us. And if some of the people she mentions talking to are not so much Peter Lerangis (our mutual acquaintance) as William Shawn, well, someone has to have those experiences we dreamed about. At least she is willing to share them with us as a peer.
dmh
