"Voice" in Student Writing

The concept of “voice” is somewhat controversial in academic circles. Here I put that controversy aside to share my experiences with “voice” in my students’ writing. We are aware of voice in the writing of well-known authors. But it is much harder to discern, naturally, in that of amateur writers, especially students. Most students take a while to develop distinctive voices, and often produce a high proportion of pedestrian, unoriginal writing. But over time, whether in academic or creative writing, they gradually develop, or uncover, their own idiosyncratic and particular ways of expressing themselves. It is such a pleasure to see their imaginations at work, to read an unusual turn of phrase, or to note a sense of humor or a unique perspective. When this happens, something exciting occurs: the student’s voice calls out to the reader in a specific way that only that student could enact. What a joy that is for the reader!

"Lucky in the Corner," by Carol Anshaw

Having enjoyed Carol Anshaw's newest novel, "Carry the One" (and written about it here on 4/8/12), I decided to read one of her earlier novels, "Lucky in the Corner" (Houghton Mifflin, 2002), and enjoyed it as well. The most crucial relationship in the novel is the complex and vexed one between Nora and her college-age daughter Fern, but their relationship is embedded in a tangle of other relationships with lovers, parents, siblings, and friends. Nora, who has a similarly complicated relationship with her own mother, Lynette, left her husband Russell some years ago, when Fern was very young; Nora could no longer suppress or ignore her true lesbian self. She has now been for many years in a relationship with Jeanne, and together they have created a calm and happy home. But Nora's desire for another great passion tempts her to betray Jeanne with Pam. Meanwhile, Fern is doing well in college, loves her Uncle Harold (whose alter ego is Dolores), has a part-time job as a telephone psychic, starts a relationship with James, and becomes increasingly responsible for her friend Tracy's baby Vaughn. She is also in danger of losing her dog Lucky, whom she dearly loves, and who represents to her a kind of stability and continuity throughout all the changes in her life (her parents' divorce, her mother coming out as a lesbian, etc.); he is now old and arthritic, and in clearly declining health. The story moves along quickly, the characters are interesting, and although they are in nontraditional family configurations, readers can relate to the misunderstandings and communication breakdowns among them. What the novel portrays well is the ways in which we all have contradictory impulses that are hard to reconcile. For example, Nora loves her daughter and her partner, yet can't stop herself from betraying them as she follows her passion. Fern loves her mother, but doesn't trust her not to let her down again, so she doesn't let Nora get too close to her. My only reservation about the novel is that its portrayals of the characters, while realistic and sympathetic, do not seem to go deep enough. I found myself wishing that the characters had shared more about themselves. Perhaps because of this, I found the novel enjoyable but not memorable.

Do We Believe Good-Looking Authors Write Better?

In a New Yorker article about Albert Camus (“Facing History,” 4/2/12), Adam Gopnik puts forth the intriguing theory that we, the reading public, give more credit to good-looking authors than to those who are less so. He begins by noting that Camus “was a terrifically good-looking guy whom women fell for hopelessly” and that this was part of his appeal. He goes on to assert that “when handsome men or beautiful women take up the work of the intellect, it impresses us because we know they could have chosen other paths to being impressive.” The rest of Gopnik’s article on Camus focuses on more usual literary and political topics, but the introductory assertion caught my attention and made me wonder about its validity. What IS true is that writers’ appearances -- especially those of women writers -- are often mentioned in reviews, biographies, and other works about them. Just recently, in Jonathan Franzen’s New Yorker article on Edith Wharton (about which I posted here on 2/22/12), he made the point that Wharton was “not pretty” and speculated about how that affected her writing. Another woman writer whose lack of beauty is often pointed out was George Eliot. Some writers who have been romanticized, such as Byron and Kerouac, are known for their looks (and life styles) as well as their literary work. Photographs of writers on book jackets often appear to be somewhat glamorized. Maybe there is some truth to Gopnik’s assertion; who doesn’t like to look at beautiful people, whether writers or others? But I resist believing that we readers actually give attractive authors more credit for their writing. Surely we are not that shallow?

About Mr. Bennet in "Pride and Prejudice"

I have read Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” many times, and heard audio versions several times. Each time I am struck by different aspects of the novel. While recently listening to this timeless book read to me on CD by the estimable Flo Gibson, I focused on Mr. Bennet, the father of Elizabeth and her four sisters. Everyone knows that Mrs. Bennet is rather crude and embarrassing at times, especially in her pursuit of husbands for her five daughters. But Mr. Bennet, because he is more sophisticated, scholarly, and wryly humorous, gets a pass, at least to a certain point. But truly he is just as bad a parent as Mrs. Bennet is, and with less excuse, as he is much more intelligent. He loves his girls, but just doesn’t get very involved with raising them, or with putting any sensible limits on them, especially his out-of-control youngest daughter, Lydia. He can’t be bothered; he would rather stay in his study reading, or entertain himself by teasing his wife and daughters. For example, Elizabeth pleads with him not to let Lydia go stay with Colonel and Mrs. Forster in Brighton, but he carelessly thinks she will be fine, and he can't make the effort to stand up to Lydia's pleading. The only time he admits his errors as a father is when Lydia runs off with Wickham, and even then he states that he will admit them once and then not again. This event is a disaster for the family, and only Darcy’s intervention saves the day. I realize that although I was critical of Mr. Bennet about this episode during past readings, I had really been letting him off the hook because of his love of books, his humorous remarks, and his having the discernment to prefer Elizabeth as his favorite daughter. Ironically, she is similar to her father in her intellect and sense of humor, but has much more awareness and sense than he does, at least regarding raising his daughters.

Wolitzer on Gender Inequities in the Book World

Readers of this blog know that a topic I occasionally address, and one that I feel strongly about, is gender inequities in the book world. Even today, when many women writers are published and widely read, there are problems. The novelist Meg Wolitzer recently (4/1/12) wrote in the New York Times Book Review an essay titled “The Second Shelf” (an allusion to Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist manifesto, “The Second Sex”). She argues, as other women writers have recently done as well (e.g., Jennifer Egan), that when women write about marriage, families, sex, and children, their work is labeled as “women’s fiction,” but when male novelists write about the same topics, their work is not labeled or ghettoized, but praised. Case in point (as Wolitzer’s essay begins): “If ‘The Marriage Plot,' by Jeffrey Eugenides, had been written by a woman yet still had the same title and wedding ring on its cover, would it have received a great deal of serious literary attention? Or would this novel (which I loved) have been relegated to ‘Women’s Fiction,’ that close-quartered lower shelf where books emphasizing relationships and the interior lives of women are often relegated?” Further, Wolitzer states, “Some people, especially some men, see most fiction by women as one soft, undifferentiated mass that has little to do with them.” This concern about inequity is backed up by facts: for example, VIDA, a women’s literary organization, showed statistically that “women get shockingly short shrift as reviewers and reviewees in most prestigious publications. Of all the authors reviewed in the publications it tracked, three-fourths were men.” Such practices disadvantage women writers, limit their audiences, and limit the kind of recognition they receive. Wolitzer acknowledges that there are many exceptions: women writers whose books have sold well and been acclaimed. But, she concludes, “the top tier of literary fiction – where the air is rich and the view is great and where a book enters the public imagination and the current conversation – tends to feel peculiarly, disproportionately male.” Many female authors feel the same; for example, in the “letters to the editor” section of the NYT Book Review on 4/15/12, there was a letter of strong agreement with Wolitzer, signed by 89 women writers. What will it take to change this inequitable situation?

"The Red Book," by Deborah Copaken Kogan

Why am I and many other readers so drawn to fiction set in Ivy League colleges (or their prep school predecessors – witness the big bestseller of a few years ago, “Prep”)? Is it the same impulse that has made many readers through the years want to read about the upper class, the affluent -- a kind of wanting to learn how the upper crust (what we now call “the 1%") lives? Is it admiration, envy, jealousy, political criticism, outrage? Or something much simpler: wallowing in the opulent details of the lives of the rich? It is perhaps a win-win situation: We can enjoy the pleasures of the luxury that the affluent experience, but also take a kind of satisfaction in seeing that the rich have the same problems we all do: health problems, relationship problems, family problems, work problems, unhappiness, and yes, sometimes even money problems. (Meanwhile, as someone very concerned about the huge inequities in the distribution of income/assets in the U.S., a part of me feels guilty about enjoying reading about the lives of the rich…) (In a strange sort of way, this kind of novel is a successor to Edith Wharton’s far better written novels that I recently wrote about, her novels about the rich in New York 140 years ago.) This is not to say that everyone who goes to Ivy League colleges is rich, but most -- especially the ones written about in fiction -- are at least upper-middle-class. This is a long prologue to saying that as I expected from the description that I would, I thoroughly enjoyed Deborah Copaken Kogan’s novel, “The Red Book” (Voice/Hyperion, 2012), about a group of friends who graduated from Harvard and are now at their 20th Class Reunion. We learn about them through their surprisingly (unrealistically?) candid entries in Harvard’s alumni publication, the “red book,” and through a description of what happens during the days of the reunion in Cambridge; there is plenty of action, involving not only the four friends but their spouses, partners, children, friends, and acquaintances. The four main characters are Clover, Mia, Jane, and Addison. (This is another popular and seductive trope in current novels: the group of women friends and how their lives develop -- full of drama and crisis -- separately and intertwined.). Each character’s role is somewhat predictable: Addison is the spoiled rich girl, Clover the half-black scholarship girl, Jane the adopted Vietnamese war orphan, and Mia perhaps the happiest and most mainstream one, but frustrated not to carry out her dreams of a career in acting. There is certainly more than a hint of formula in this novel and in the characters; is this high-flown “chick lit”? “Ivy League lit”? “Girlfriends lit”? Whichever category we might put it in, the novel tells a good story (actually several stories), is expertly constructed, is reasonably well written, and definitely keeps the attention of the reader.

Pamela Paul's "Books I Have Read" List and Mine

"Bob." That is the name Pamela Paul, a New York Times Book Review editor, gives the notebook in which she keeps a list of books she has read. "Book of Books" = "Bob." I enjoyed reading Paul's essay about Bob in the 4/15/12 NYT Book Review. But when she spoke of having kept her list for 24 years, I had to smile, with just a tiny touch of -- I admit it! -- superiority. Although I have never given it a name, I have kept such a list since earlyish childhood (see my posts about this when I first started this blog, on 1/24/10 and 1/25/10), for a total (so far!) of - ahem! - 51 years! I am now in "Volume III" -- which simply means in my third plain lined school notebook -- and have read a total of 5231 books (some are repeats). Paul and I differ a little bit in our list method. For example, she includes books she didn't finish, but marks them with "inc." for "incomplete"; I do not list unfinished books at all. She occasionally notes where she was when she read a certain book (China, France); I have not done that. I occasionally note whether the book is a repeat read, and whether I listened to the book in audio form. A similarity is the condition of the notebooks. She says "Bob is showing his age. At some point I spilled coffee on him; the gray cover is mottled, and one corner is woody and bare." My "Volume I," a notebook bought from the school supply store at my school in India, with the name of the Indian town on it, is worn at the edges, and Volume II shows some signs of age as well. But despite the large disparity in the number of years Paul and I have kept our notebooks of "books read" lists, we both value our lists very highly. Paul claims that "Were my house to burst suddenly into flames, I would bypass the laptop and photo albums...in order to rescue Bob," and I completely understand that statement!