[stylist] September's Telephone Gathering- this Sunday the 26th

[Robert Leslie Newman]

Dear Membership and STYLIST 

RE: Materials for September 26th telephone gathering

 

Here is a reminder:

 

Pasted into the body of this message and also attached (the same materials),
you will find three parts -- a section on beginnings of memoirs that focus
on theme, a section on questions about style and voice, and a section on
sentence structures that add style.  The first part includes an assignment
of sorts for the meeting on Sunday night. 

 

This is material that Priscilla McKinley has prepared for this coming
Sunday's gathering. It is a modification of a lesson that she has presented
to students in the college level writing courses that she has taught. (We
need to give her a big "THANK YOU")

 

Read, think and work on the assignment and we will see you at the gathering.
(The evenings discussion will be recorded and made available on our
Division's website.)

 

MEMOIRS

 

There is one main difference between autobiographies and memoirs.
Autobiographies tell the story of a person's life from beginning to end.  A
memoir, on the other hand, focuses on one common theme that runs through a
person's life.  In addition, a memoir often focuses on one specific period
of time.  The quotes you will read below, were taken from various pieces of
nonfiction, both personal essays and book-length memoirs.  Most are the
first paragraphs or sentences of the first chapters, which indicate the
themes of or the threads that will run through the memoirs.  

 

SAMPLES OF MEMOIR BEGINNINGS

 

"Dear Daughter,

This letter has taken an extraordinary time getting itself together. I have
all along known that I wanted to tell you directly of some lessons I have
learned and under what conditions I have learned them." --Maya Angelou

"Life changes fast.

Life changes in the instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

The question of self-pity.
Those were the first words I wrote after it happened. The computer dating on
the Microsoft Word file ("Notes on change.doc") reads "May 20, 2004, 11:11
p.m.," but that would have been a case of my opening the file and
reflexively pressing save when I closed it." -- Joan Didion

"Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of
Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.  The great, dark trees of
the Big Woods stood all around the house, and beyond them were other trees
and beyond them were more trees. As far as a man could go to the north in a
day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but woods." --Laura
Ingalls Wilder

"All right, wifey, maybe I'm a big pain in the you-know-what but after I've
given you a recitation of the troubles I had to go through to make good in
America between 1935 and more or less now, 1967, and although I also know
everybody in the world's had his own troubles, you'll understand that my
particular form of anguish came from being too sensitive to all the
lunkheads I had to deal with just so I could get to be a high school
football star, a college student pouring coffee and washing dishes and
scrimmaging till dark and reading Homer's Iliad in three days all at the
same time, and God help me, a WRITER whose very 'success', far from being a
happy triumph as of old, was the sign of doom Himself. (Insofar as nobody
loves my dashes anyway, I'll use regular punctuation for the new illiterate
generation.)" --Jack Karouak
 

"My first memory of hearing comes from the Baltic. I remember my father
holding my hand as we walked to the end of a jetty in Helsinki, Finland.
Although it was late in March, Finland was still bitterly cold and the
harbor was dotted with ice." --Stephen Kuusisto

"There is not much truth being told in the world.  There never was. This has
proven to be a major disappointment to some of us. When I was a child, I
thought grown-ups and teachers knew the truth, because they told me they
did. It took years for me to discover that the first step in finding out the
truth is to begin unlearning almost everything adults had taught me, and to
start doing all the things they'd told me not to do. Their main pitch was
that achievement equaled happiness, when all you had to do was study rock
stars, or movie stars, or them, to see that they were mostly miserable. They
were all running around in mazes like everyone else." --Annie Lamott

"As my husband and I wound up out of the Salt River canyon on the way from
Tucson to Zuni, New Mexico, I found myself thinking about an Afghan woman.
Not one particular Afghan woman, because I didn't know any then, but my
hypothetical counterpart living under Taliban rule. I don't know why she
flitted into my consciousness. It was August 2001, the shattering events
that would come to be known as 9/11 still three weeks away, and the general
public had not yet uttered the word "Afghanistan," although it was mentioned
from time to time in the New York Times and on National Public Radio. But I
had received via e-mail, at least a dozen times, a petition detailing the
plight of the women there, shrouded in burqas, immured in their houses,
beaten and stoned for revealing an inch of a wrist if they venture out to
market. Since I do not drive and have never been able to read in a car, on
long trips my mind lies open to any idea that strays into it. That day I was
haunted by an Afghan woman." --Nancy Mairs

In the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona, the day before I joined the militia, I
saw an Italian militiaman standing in front of the officers' table.  He was
a tough-looking youth of twenty-five or six, with reddish-yellow hair and
powerful shoulders. His peaked leather cap was pulled fiercely over one eye.
He was standing in profile to me, his chin on his breast, gazing with a
puzzled frown at a map which one of the officers had open on the table.
Something in his face deeply moved me. It was the face of a man who would
commit murder and throw away his life for a friend--the kind of face you
would expect in an Anarchist, though as likely as not he was a Communist.
There were both candour and ferocity in it; also the pathetic reverence that
illiterate people have for their supposed superiors. Obviously he could not
make head or tail of the map; obviously he regarded map-reading as a
stupendous intellectual feat. I hardly know why, but I have seldom seen
anyone--any man, I mean--to whom I have taken such an immediate liking.
While they were talking round the table some remark brought it out that I
was a foreigner. The Italian raised his head and said quickly:

"Italiano?"

I answered in my bad Spanish: "No, Ingles. Y to?"

"Italiano."" --George Orwell

"WHEN I WAS VERY YOUNG AND THE URGE TO be someplace else was on me, I was
assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years
described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age
I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am
fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four
hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my
feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping
of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and
vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib
cage. In other words, I don't improve; in further words, once a bum always a
bum. I fear the disease is incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct
others but to inform myself." --John Steinbeck

"months ago, finding myself in possession of one hundred and seventeen
chairs divided about evenly between a city house and a country house, and
desiring to simplify my life, I sold half my worldly goods, evacuated the
city house, gave up my employment, and came to live in New England. The
difficulty of getting rid of even one half of one's possessions is
considerable, even at removal prices. And after the standard items are
disposed of--china, rugs, furniture, books--the surface is merely scratched:
you open a closet door and there in the half-dark sit a catcher's mitt and
an old biology notebook." --E.B. White

"The grass-green cart, with 'J- Jones, GorsehilF painted shakily on it,
stopped in the cobblestone passage between 'The Hare's Foot' and 'The Pure
Drop.' It was late on an April evening. Uncle Jim, in his black market suit
with a stiff white shirt and no collar, loud new boots, and a plaid cap,
creaked and climbed down. He dragged out a thick wicker basket from a heap
of straw in the corner of the cart and swung it over his shoulder. I heard a
squeal from the basket and saw the tip of a pink tail curling out as Uncle
Jim opened the public door of 'The Pure Drop.'

'I won't be two minutes,' he said to me. The bar was full; two fat women in
bright dresses sat near the door, one with a small, dark child on her knee;
they saw Uncle Jim and nudged up on the bench." --Dylan Thomas

"Cancer is an obscenely expensive illness; I saw the bills, I heard their
fights.  There was no doubt that I was personally responsible for a great
deal of my family's money problems." --Lucy Grealy  

 

"In contrast to my grandmother's life in rural Alabama, my own control of my
body seems privileged, liberated.  Whereas her body was restricted by the
prohibitions of her culture and class, I grew up in Middle Class America in
an age of optimism-the late 1950s-just before the challenge of the Women's
Movement."  --Patricia Foster  

 

"It's high summer and I'm out in the yard, gazing back at the vegetable bed,
the sun filled sight of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants."  --Carl Klaus

 

"I was thirty-eight years old when my father died, but I don't feel I had
thirty-eight years of fathering."  --Clark Blaise

 

"I was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood
had passed away."  --Harriet Jacobs

 

"My mother believed in God's will for many years. It was as if she had
turned on a celestial faucet and goodness kept pouring out. She said it was
faith that kept all these good things coming our way, only I thought she
said fate," because she couldn't pronounce that "th " sound in faith." --Amy
Tan

"I'm thinking of asking the servants to wax my change before placing it in
the Chinese tank I keep on my dresser. It's important to have clean money --
not new, but well maintained. That's one of the tenets of my church. It's
not mine personally, but the one I attend with my family: the Cathedral of
the Sparkling Nature. It's that immense Gothic building with the towers and
bells and statues of common people poised to leap from the spires. They
offer tours and there's an open house the first Sunday of every October. You
should come! Just don't bring your camera, because the flash tends to spook
the horses, which is a terrible threat to me and my parents, seeing as the
reverend insists that we occupy the first pew." --David Sedaris

"When my father wrapped me in his arms and carried me onto the screened
porch of our farmhouse in Tennessee during a thunderstorm, he said nothing
about the booming and blowing, merely hummed a tune, a sound I confused with
the purr of the rain. It was as though he had swallowed a bit of thunder,
which now rumbled in his throat. 

Mama thrust her head from the doorway and said, "You'll catch a chill."

"We're doing just fine," Dad answered.

Mama paused, skeptically, for she believed that disaster could strike at any
moment, from any direction. She frowned, as if doubting she would ever see
us again among the living, and then she withdrew inside." --Scott Russell
Sanders

---end of quotes 

 


Thinking about you now: What is the one common theme or thread that runs
through every chapter of your life?  What memories do you associate with
that theme?  If you don't have a theme, think of significant memories in
your life.  Is there a theme that connects those memories?  

 

For the meeting on Sunday night, try starting a memoir with a particular
theme.  How will you introduce that theme in the first few lines or
paragraphs?  What will get the attention of your readers?  Think about
language and tone, about the "voice" of the narrator.  What type of narrator
do you want to be?  Humorous?  Sober?  Witty?  Will you tell the story in
the first, second, or third person?  Will you use present or past tense?
Will you start with a scene that represents the theme?  Will you provide
background information or will you jump right in the middle of the story?
Will you include a sense of place?  Will you focus on another person?  Will
you address a particular individual, or will you address the public?  Also,
think about style.  Will you use plain language that is clear and direct, or
will you use poetic language, like flowers flowing flawlessly across the
page?

 

If you have a few lines or paragraphs, you can send them to the rest of the
group before the meeting on Sunday night, as well as read to the others.  We
will then discuss the importance of style and voice in the memoir, as well
as the importance of finding a theme to hold the book or essay together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

QUESTIONS ON STYLE AND VOICE

 

The writer's voice on the page is an elusive quality, yet one that has a
powerful influence on our experience of reading.  Nowhere is that influence
greater than in personal nonfiction, which conveys a sense that a particular
human being is speaking to us.  The following questions might be helpful
when thinking about style and voice in the memoir and the personal essay:

 

1.  What style and tone does the writer use to narrate the story? Plain,
everyday language? Formal or fancy? Intimate or distant? Ironic, humorous,
matter-of-fact? Does she/he get right to the point or circle around? Does
the style change, and if so, when and where?

 

2.  In what tense is the essay narrated--past, present, both? If the tense
changes, where do those changes occur? Which tense seems to dominate?

 

3.  What point of view is used in telling the story? First person singular
or plural? Second person? Third person? Does this point of view shift, and
if so, when and where?

 

4.  How would you describe the character or persona the narrator has created
to speak in the essay? How do you respond to the persona? Do you identify
with it? Why do you think the author chose that particular voice?

 

5.  How would you describe the writer's language? Is it flowing and smooth,
is it staccato and jumpy, does it circle around or repeat itself, does it
move in a straight line? How does it move? What are its rhythms? What effect
does it have on you?

 

6.  What devices--imagery, metaphor, irony, voice, word play, etc.--are used
in the essay? Are they effective? Why or why not?




SENTENCE STRUCTURES FOR STYLE

 

Periodic Sentence- If the sentence suspends completion of its message,
whether by delaying its main clause until the very end, by splitting the
subject from the verb with qualifying material, or by using any construction
that refines, sharpens, or adds to initial information before putting it to
final use, we call it periodic.   

 

1.  "Then one day, six weeks or so later, when I was having lunch with a
friend and we were swapping stories of failed love and suicide, I saw
suddenly the round pink ruffled form of the little clown dancing through my
door and into my bathroom." --Nancy Mairs

 

2.  "Late one night, while all this had been going on, and while the library
was dark and locked as it had been all summer and I had accustomed myself to
the eeriness of it, I left my carrel to cross the darkness and get a drink
of water." --Annie Dillard

 

Cumulative Sentence- While no set formulas can anticipate the problems or
opportunities posed by the situations in which sentences develop, there are
several general patterns for adding cumulative modifying levels to base
clauses.  Given a base clause containing a subject, verb, and object, we
know three immediate targets for further modification by cumulative phrases.


 

1.  "In fact the actual "celebrants" that evening were not at the Biltmore
at all, but a few blocks away at the Los Angeles Hilton, dancing under the
mirrored ceiling of the ballroom in which the Jackson campaign had gathered,
its energy level in defeat notably higher than that of other campaigns in
victory."  --Joan Didion

 

2.  "We caught two bass, hauling them in briskly as though they were
mackerel, pulling them over the side of the boat in a business-like manner
without any landing net, stunning them with a blow on the back of the head."
--E. B.  White

 

Balanced Sentences- A balanced sentence hinges in the middle, usually split
by a semi-colon, the second half of the sentence paralleling the first half,
but changing one or two key words or altering word order.  In this sense,
the second half of the sentence can be thought of as a kind of mirror-image
of the first half, the "reflection" reversing the original "image." 

 

1.  "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your
country."  --John F. Kennedy

 

2.  "If the flights of Dryden therefore are higher, Pope continues longer on
the wing.  If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is
more regular and constant.  Dryden often surpasses expectations, and Pope
never falls below it."  --Samuel Johnson  

 

Series- Balance is the rhythm of twos; series is the rhythm of threes.
Three phrases of parallel construction, three-part predicates, three
attempts to say exactly the right thing all invoke serial form.  A series,
however, is more than just a list with three or more items in it.  What
distinguishes the series is that its elements build on each other, add to
each other's impact, restate and refine each other's information.  

 

1.  "I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an
American." --Daniel Webster  

 

2.  "I look for them in my reading, I strive for them in my writing, I
contrive them even when I am talking.  So obsessed am I by them that my
thoughts are forever upon them, whether I am brushing my teeth, washing my
car, hoeing my garden, eating my dinner, tying my shoes, grooming my dog,
myself, or my fly line." --Carl Klaus  

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Leslie Newman

President- NFB Writers' Division

Division Website

http://www.nfb-writers-division.org

Personal Website-

http://www.thoughtprovoker.info