I haven't written in awhile. Don't get me wrong, I think about writing all the time. Like learning to sew this summer, I would think all the time about how a piece of clothing was constructed. How wide is the hem in that skirt? Are there clearly defined bodice and skirt pieces in a dress? Where is the zipper placed? Are there darts? Or is the structure in the seaming? And for me, the same is true about writing. What can you pinpoint in a conversation that reveals that this is an argument that two people have had before. How can you describe an image? Rick and I took the red-eye back from San Diego this summer, and I was excited the entire time to watch the sunrise in the sky. We were sitting over the wing of the plane, and behind us, the sky was dark blue and empty. In the morning, the colors along the horizon were so bold, and textured, like drawing with the chubby stumps of crayons. I wish I could better describe that image, and I will keep thinking about it until I find the right words.
I've read a lot this summer, but two books really stand out as influences: The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel and Seek My Face by John Updike.
Before reading Seek My Face this July, I would have (incorrectly) stated that my favorite narrators were young males. Murakami's narrators, for example, or the narrator in Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall, or from Carlos Ruiz Zafon's novels. I realized within the first few pages of Updike's novel that I actually love an older, female narrator. Seek My Face is set entirely around an interview of an abstract painter. The interviewer wants the story of her three marriages (two of which were to other successful painters). Most of the novel, then, is dialogue and the re-telling of the protagonist's life. (Again reminding me of my fury over the idea of the "flashback curse.") I've written before about needing to work on dialogue in my stories and dialogue as a less-biased, more sophisticated method of story-telling. Suddenly, the story shifts from what the author says about a character, to what a character says about himself. In Updike's novel though, the narrator constantly worries that she is misrepresenting herself to the interviewer, that she has failed to paint an accurate picture of her life. Now this can be construed as bias on the part of the interviewer (who clearly has an opinion already on how the article should be written), but also as a possible failing with dialogue itself. How well do we ever represent ourselves by speech alone?
Amy Hempel, I stumbled across in a used bookstore on a day-trip to Amherst. Technically, she just writes very sharply; her writing is a pleasure to read. More striking is her ability to be honest. In an interview she states that "I failed my best friend when she was dying." No other details, no elaboration; Hempel just trusts the power of an individual sentence. [Paris Review interview]. I love her stories, and I am so excited about the other authors she recommends in her interview.
