Posts Tagged ‘fiction writing’

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Thursday, October 15th, 2009

October 15, 2009
Washington, DC

WillaCatherVanVechtenfrLOCWeb

Portrait of Willa Cather by Carl Van Vechten, 1936. From Library of Congress collection

Betty Kort is the former executive director of the Willa Cather Foundation. Based in Red Cloud, Nebraska, the foundation is dedicated to preserving and promoting the understanding and appreciation of the life, time, settings, and work of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Kort is also the photographer-curator of Willa Cather and Material Culture, a traveling photography exhibition of select objects important in Cather’s life and work. In this interview excerpt, Kort talks about Cather’s  development as a novelist.

The. . . thing I would say about My Ántonia was that everything was an experiment. With O Pioneers! she took a big step in writing about immigrant populations, and no one was doing that. When [Cather] started out, I believe that she thought she probably had to write novels like people on the east coast were writing novels. And they were writing about sophisticated people in sophisticated settings.  Her first novel was a novel like that, Alexander’s Bridge, and it was not a particularly successful novel, at least in Cather’s eyes.  She had to come home to her roots, to what she knew best, and then she had to have the courage to write about common, ordinary people working the soil, and that took some time.  That took some courage. And she also had to figure out a way to do it that would be successful and would compete against what was being written at the time.

Hear more from Kort and others on Willa Cather and her work on The Big Read radio show for My Ántonia. Visit The Big Read calendar to find out where a Big Read celebration of My Ántonia is taking place near you.

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Monday, October 5th, 2009

October 5, 2009
Washington, DC

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A view of Ernest Hemingway’s Key West library. Photo by David Kipen

Having majored in journalism at the University of Kentucky, Bobbie Ann Mason (a 1983 NEA Literature Fellow) knows a little something about transitioning from journalism to writing fiction. In this interview excerpt, Mason muses on how Ernest Hemingway’s training as a journalist influenced his inimitable style.

I think Hemingway’s style is very, very distinctive, and it may have influenced decades of writers. But even though he would seem to be easily imitated, it’s not easy to produce the kind of powerful original writing that he did. I think it’s because Hemingway’s style grew out of his own head, his own experiences, his own necessities for creating something in the way that he did so that he wasn’t starting with his style, he was starting with sensibility. If you’re imitating his style, you’re starting with those nice, clear, clean words on the page, and that may not be where you start.

Hemingway’s style was rooted in journalism, and when he was a reporter he gave a very hard accounting of details and facts. So when he began to write fiction he drew on very simple words, everyday ways of saying things, ordinary speech, [and] speech rhythms. [He used] . . . suggestion, repetition, rhythm, and the selection of descriptive details and incidents so that a scene might seem to be very repetitive, but the drama is building because we’re adding a detail here and there. He writes extensively and frequently about things outside—trees, weather, sky, mountains, snow, river, the roads—and that seems to be a very important part of the way he saw things and the way he was able to describe them.

He doesn’t give you anything extraneous. Every word counts, and all of this adds up to a tone. In A Farewell to Arms the tone is one of quietness and steadiness and a kind of control. What this does is send you along a tightrope between sorrow and joy, and these sentences that seem so simple are really loaded with emotion. . . .

Celebrate A Farewell to Arms with Wisconsin’s Waukesha Public Library throughout October. Visit The Big Read calendar to get the scoop on the library’s Big Read activites, including a roadtrip to visit Hemingway’s childhood home in Oak Park, Illinois.

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Thursday, October 1st, 2009

October 1, 2009
Washington, DC

TimOBrienBookFestWeb

Tim O’Brien read from his memoir-in-progress (on fatherhood) to a capacity crowd in the NEA Poetry and Prose Pavilion at the 2009 National Book Festival in Washington, DC. Photo by Tom Roster

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TIM O’BRIEN! O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is certainly a book about the Vietnam War, but it is also a book about how to tell a story. In this interview excerpt, O’Brien shares his thoughts on fiction and the difference between what he calls “the story truth” and “the happening truth.”

Well, I can make an effort to distinguish between the two. There are times in life when an event occurs and you go to tell about it. And you’re utterly and absolutely factual in your effort to recount what occurred.  But when you’ve finished, it feels as if, somehow, a part of the truth is missing, even though the facts are there.  And there are other times in life when you begin exaggerating and revving up the facts, maybe adding a little bit here, subtracting a bit there; it is a way of trying to get at an emotional or spiritual or psychological truth. 

So, for example, there’s a chapter in The Things They Carried called “On the Rainy River.”  And it’s a story of a fellow who bears my name, Tim O’Brien, who gets drafted and heads for the Canadian border. He spends six days on the Rainy River, which separates Minnesota from Canada, trying to decide should [he] cross that river and go to Canada or should [he] go to the war.  Well that never happened.  I did not get in my car and drive to the Rainy River, although I was drafted.  I didn’t spend six days there.  In fact, I’ve never been there in my life.  The characters that are up on the Rainy River don’t exist. 

And yet, although the story is largely invented, it feels to me truer in a way than the literal truth that I could recount about that terrible summer I was drafted. The literal truth would be to say I played golf. I worried a lot [and] had trouble sleeping. And that pretty much would be it.  I could tell you about my pars and my bogeys, and it’d all be true.  And I could describe the golf course, and that would be true.  But it would have little to do with what was happening inside me the summer I was drafted.  That horrible squeeze that I felt on my psyche or my soul. 

And that’s probably as close as I can get to explaining the difference between the two.  It has to do in the end with why I write fiction. I make things up, yes. And invent a whole bunch of stuff. But it’s an effort to get at, you know, certain emotional or spiritual truths that I can’t get at by recitation of fact.       

 Here’s who’s reading, discussing, and celebrating The Things They Carried this month: Kaskaskia College Learning Resource Center Library (Centralia, IL); Lewis & Clark Library (Helena, MT); Scranton Public Library (Scranton, PA); Shrewsbury Public Library (Shrewsbury, MA); and West Plains Council on the Arts (West Plains, MO).

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