Because this blog post is optional, I'm going to allow myself to be extremely tangential here. Well, maybe not THAT tangential.
Reading Lorrie Moore as that last required reading not only of this year, but of my SU career could not be more fated, serendipitous, coincidental, whatever. My senior year of high school I had this amazing English teacher who assigned the best readings, (Right after writing this, I'm going to send him an email and tell him how great he was and blah blah blah), How to Become a Writer being one of them. He was also one of the only English teachers to assign creative writing homework. One of the assignments we had was to mimic How to Become a Writer in our own creative piece. The story I wrote was one of the pieces that would be included in the portfolio I used to apply to SU.
Anyway, How to Become a Writer has stuck in my head these past few years, but due to my shit memory I couldn't figure out who had written it or what exactly it had been about. The scene that haunted me the most was sitting across a table from a guy as he flattened all his arm hairs in the same direction. You have no idea how excited I was to open up 3x33 and discover the lost story, the one that I've tried so hard to force to the surface of my memory. As I read it, I tried to remember how I felt when I read it in high school, how I connected to it then. I know it had a major influence on me deciding "I'm going to major in writing." I mean, maybe it wasn't entirely this story, but it was that teacher, that class, that time in my life.
I know that most of the posts will probably focus on what they connected to in this story and what they didn't. Personally, I think my favorite parts were "really great sense of humor" creative writing class calls "self-contempt giving rise to comic form" and "Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life." Ouch.
As for the other stories. I enjoyed both, though they were a bit longer than my stressed and pressed for time self could tolerate. I'll have to give them another reading during the summer maybe. Again, I felt like I related to the main character of "You're Ugly, Too" more than I felt comfortable with. My jokes, ugh my jokes. Anyway, I'll stop this nonsense here and save something to say for class.
Schappell’s introduction says that Lorrie Moore “authentically captures the inarticulateness and awkwardness of people who have just met,” and that the “prototypical Moore character… is a painfully self-knowing oddball whose life has not unfolded the way she imagined it.”
That being said, I read “How to Become a Writer” and a lot of “You’re Ugly, Too,” with an internal monologue that sounded like a preteen listening to her favorite pop singer, like “holy crap holy crap she knows me, she REALLY knows me!” Of course though, a real celebrity artist doesn’t know a damn thing about that fangirl; Lorrie Moore doesn’t and probably won’t ever know me.
What she does know, though, are people in general. Her stories (“How to Become a Writer” specifically) can reach out to anyone in a way that at least feels personalized. And yea, sure, maybe “anyone” here only applies to people trying to become writers, but the point here is that she’s got THOSE people down so damn well.
Like when she says “In three years there have been three things...” and the one that seems most obviously to be the “good story” is the one that Francie can’t write. Or when Moore writes “[You wonder] if you have anything to say. Or if there even is such a thing as a thing to say.” Or when she mentions Francie’s roommate, who only likes her story because she “went out with a violinist once.” Or when Francie tries too hard to sound “poetic” and claims to be only interested in “syllables, because they are the atoms of poetry.”
I could keep going, but my point here, which may be too obvious to have spent so much time on, is that what drives Moore’s stories for me is how well she knows people. This is probably due to a perpetual distaste for them; a recognition that everyone will simply and frustratingly “look down at their arm hairs and…smooth them, all, always, in the same direction.” People suck, people are annoying, people don’t understand each other or themselves, and we’re all guilty—Lorrie Moore is here to capture every moment of that.
I had one of those moments (one of those stupid moments) while reading "How to Become a Writer" where I read it as if it was my story instead of another. It might have been Will and Kim talking about how they related to the story before I'd read it, or just a long week, poor reading. Doesn't matter. Of course I was like, this isn't me at all. It isn't even metaphorically me. I became a writer because my parents left me in a car while they went into Giant to do the shopping and I got bored and started writing on the back of old recites I found in between the seats. When my dad came out, he laughed and said, you know you should be a writer. Or something to that effect.
My favorite section was the one about taking other courses. Mostly about "Sex by the Arm". Not only did it involve octopi, but I thought it would have made for an awesome metaphor, but I'm not even sure how to write that. It wasn't in the story but I felt like the purpose was to show the narrator noticing these things. There were other sections that sounded more "smooth and energetic" but this section made me stop and reread it a couple times.
I was told that one of many keys to having a good story to to keep your character curious. If not the characters than I would defiantly have to keep myself curious. Without curiosity the questions and the plots of stories become bogged down and full of elderly people randomly stepping on land mines in their kitchen. But the questions can't be obvious, no "If there is a God, then why is my brother now crippled?" Instead they are simpler more powerful questions that only ever seem to more questions. I don't know if i'm putting this need for curiosity into the story but it's what I took out of it. This narrator was curious and kept trying and I think those are the two most important things to be/do as a writer.
Upon Completion of my reading of How To Become A Writer, I felt like there was some kind of reoccurring theme. When I thought about it, one thing came straight to mind; Old people dying strange ways, but it didn’t end there. I soon realized that it was more than simply old people, but people in general, dying strange ways. After closer examination, I noticed that the people dying were always in groups of two. I wondered what that meant.
So the story is half serious, half telling a story, which (as Moore as the narrator, says about the reader) doesn’t have a good sense of a plot. They are more of side stories to exhibit a point, which the narrator is trying to establish. None of them can really be linked to one another, with the exception of the narrator’s roommate, she is in a few scenes.
I particularly liked this story because I can relate to it in the sense that I came to school as a psychology major, and found myself in creative writing classes before I decided to make the switch. The two paths described by the narrator contrasted in an interesting fashion. Psychology is what was encouraged, as opposed to Creative Writing, which I felt was vaguely discouraged. Years down the road, the narrator still thinks about what might have happened if she continued with child psychology. I thought at this point that the reoccurring theme was not 2 people dying in a strange manner, but rather 2. This however brought me to the question of how these two things are actually linked.
Two was the number, but in one scenario two people die the same way whereas in the other scenario we see a lowly writing life with only and idea of a child psychology paradigm. In the first of the scenarios, the two people doing the same thing end up dying, so what Moore is trying to say, is that through life, doing the same thing is not the correct path, which leads me too the other branch. If put in an imaginary (family tree-style) chart, Lorrie Moore would start at the top. From here, there would be an extending branch which leads to the path of two people dying. A second branch would extend, ending with the creative writing story, which How To Be a Writer ends with. There is an imaginary branch stretching from the second branch. This imaginary branch is the story of the narrator continuing as a Child Psychology major. After this tree was former, I realized that the theme of this story was not 2, but 3. The choice of three paths.
On the second branch we have the Writer, who is jobless and writes mediocre fiction. That doesn’t seem like the encouraged path. The imaginary branch is simply the wondering what would have happened had the narrator remained in psychology. This also doesn’t seem like the encouraged path, and I have a hard time believing a fiction author would discourage writing fiction. This is when it dawned on me that the first branch of the tree I mentioned earlier was actually the imaginary branch. This is because the people dying referred to in the story were actually in the narrator’s imagination, but the imaginary side of the second branch was actually a real branch because that could have actually happened, so it leaves a real paradigm.
Had the narrator stuck with child psychology, she could have gone on to make more money; everyone said she was good with kids. But if there were two paths, this contrasts with the newly made imaginary branch, because in each scene of two people dying, they were doing the same thing whereas in the second branch, both paths are completely different. Two paths on one branch, but one on the other? The element is actually 2, not 3 because there are two branches from Moore, which each have two outcomes. The first branch has the path of imaginary person A and the path of imaginary person B. Both have the same outcome and the entire first branch is imaginary. I believe at this point that the continued references of two people dying were simply an example of symbolism with the reoccurring number of 2. If the tree were to be reformed, then Moore would still have two branches, the first being the Child Psychology paradigm, the other being the real outcome of this story.
Reminiscing on the past and what could have happened was the only part of this story that I found to feel somewhat depressing, however the ending is not exactly enlightening. Since the narrator adds creative, quirky commentaries and side stories, it almost seemed to give creative writing a bright aura, unlike the idea of writing being similar to polio. Despite the seemingly depressing ending, I concluded from my analysis that the theme of this story does relate to the number two, but it encourages creative writing in a subtle sense. For any writer there will always be the ‘what if?’ I even wonder where I’d be had I stayed a psychology major. If someone wants to write, then they cannot have the ‘what if’ mentality as we see in this story, but a writer should rather write because he or she enjoys it.
While I was reading How to Become a Writer, by Lorrie Moore, I had to constantly remind myself that this was considered a work of fiction. It reads so much like a nonfiction piece would, that when the narrator would be called “Francie,” my mind would jolt slightly. Also, from Moore’s introductory biography, we can see that unlike poor Francie, the author received some very positive feedback and recognition for her writing very early on in her career. Something that continuously irked me about How to Become a Writer, was the narrator’s stubbornness when resisting other people’s advice or criticisms. Her family, her roommate—fine ignore them and their negativity. Your writing peers and your trained professors—those opinions you might want to consider more carefully. When a person has been receiving the same comments and critiques since high school, all through college, and you have still not reached success after graduation, does it never cross your mind to try to put all of those words of wisdom to good use and admit that you need to improve your skills? After that rant, I realized that I was writing in the same tense that Moore used in How to Become a Writer and this is a style that I generally do not appreciate. I find it difficult to enjoy a narrative that is constantly telling me how I feel or what course of actions I take. This was especially true with this story, where I found that I could not relate at all to this supposedly stereotypical wanna-be writer young person. Maybe I would be considered a normal writer, but does that make me abnormal? Thoughts, Lorrie Moore?
This is my second time reading Lorrie Moore's "How to become a writer." It was interesting reading it again, because this time around, I am further on in my writing journey. While reading it, I felt like some of the things were pretty accurate. Obviously I can't relate to all the things mentioned in this story, I can't even relate to the majority of the things in this story, but I think she captured the general feelings pretty well of what trying to be a writer is like. Although I don't think she is trying to just spell out what the general feelings would be for any person trying to become a writer. Most of the things in this story are not supposed to remind other writers of their own experiences. I think the bigger project that Moore is up to is telling the story of this one individual, only tellig it in an interesting and unusual fashion. We get to see some little windows into the life of this character we are following. Her home life, and her parents are mentioed a few times, and we get to see the progression of that story as this writer's journey progresses. The brother is mentioned a few times, and we are able to see his story unfold as our writer's journey progresses. I feel like this story is mostly about how a person's life is influenced by the stories and the hardships that happen around them. That idea is shown through this character's writing, and how it progresses. So I think the whole idea of writing really comes second in the story, even though virtually it takes the foreground. I think that is an interesting, and difficult trick that I would like to learn to incorporate into my own writing style. She does a few clever things in this story, which I enjoy and it really amused me. So for the most part I thought this story was pretty good and it keped me interested even the second time around. I give it a thumbs up.
God damn. How to Become a Writer took me about an hour to read because I had to keep stopping and going back to real life for a bit to stop me from crying. Lines like, “Decide that you like college life…You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.” I mean, it could be because I’m a little wonky because I’m emotional about half of my college life being over, but I had to stop myself from crying on this line. I don’t want to think that how I feel—I have to close 33x3.
Okay, I’m back. Another line that meant a lot to me was, “You have broken up with your boyfriend. You now go out with men who, instead of whispering, ‘I love you,’ shout: ‘Do it to be, baby.” This is good for your writing.” I think this piece is breaking me; it’s so raw and beautiful. I feel like any writer can compare to this in at least one-way, even if only about the technical details. It hurts so much to read.
I'm not sure why I always want to pick someone out and disagree with them, but I do and I'm picking Alex, not because I think you're wrong but just because I don't know, my favorite thing about "How to Become a Writer," what I thought made it unique from other, similar things I've read, was that the "you" wasn't general, or applicable to everyone. The you was an incredibly specific, incredibly quirky person, and her name was Francie.
I'm not sure what it is about second-person and first-person-talking-to-a-second-person narratives. I like them and then I don't at the same time...For my first ever nonfiction piece last year, I wrote it in a letter-to-myself-as-a-child form, which is cliche, I know, (I didn't really know at the time, since it was my first, after all). I was so uncomfortable giving up that information about myself that it was either write in 2rd person or 3rd person--I couldn't handle 1st yet. By the end of the semester, I was able to look at the audience straight on, I earned/learned my first-person voice. But I'll always remember my one attempt at 2nd-person.
I guess I'm just always hyper-aware of the "you." In poems, stories, songs, speeches, I always notice and a "you" changes the entire meaning for me. I remember in poetry last semester, I think it was one of Dana's poems, maybe? there was a "you," just one, that a bunch of people didn't even notice, but my entire reading swirled around it. I think in poetry and lyrics, a first-person-talking-to-a-second is very, very common, and in fiction it's slightly less so, but still way more common than true second-person. Maybe it's because true second-person is so obvious, so hard to pull off, and so hard for the writer to disappear from it. "How to Become a Writer" didn't strike me because it was so familiar, or applicable to myself, but rather because it wasn't, and I still didn't find myself saying, "Oh no I did not do that." (Which I legit think almost every time I see "you" in a story/poem/lyric, because I'm an annoying reader.)
So I'm realizing, just now, where I'm going with all of this. At AWP this year, Madie and I met a writer named Tod Goldberg, who is fantastically funny and smart and a good, even though he lives in California and gets paid to write. He had a nonfiction-thinly-veiled-as-fiction short story that was similar to a letter piece Madie had written for nonfiction class, and we talked to him about how to pull off the you without alienating the reader. He said humor was always a trick he used--he starts you off laughing, and you're halfway through the story before you realize it's not that funny and actually quite tragic and angry--both his story and the one Madie was telling were quite angry, and they were both angry at the "you." He said, "Your readers are people sitting in Starbucks, people coming home from work, they have hard lives and they don't want to be yelled at. If your story is always "you this, you that" they're going to feel attacked." His second piece of advice was to bury the "you." Start the story off easy, giving them subtle things that will make them feel the way your narrator/character does (this may be why Alex felt like Moore was speaking to him directly and I didn't feel like arguing "No I didn't" with her). Which, I'm extrapolating from that: You're writing in second person, but you still want readers aligned with the main character, whether that character is Francie, or the one speaking, not feeling alienated from the story by being called out. Moore doesn't exactly bury the you, but she's also not writing as angry a story as Madie and Tod were, and she definitely uses humor to keep the readers engaged. I think she does some of what Tod said, and also brings a new technique to the page, which is to make the "you" such a clear person, that defensive readers like me can focus on Francie as a person first, and THEN on the universal-everyman-implications-of-the-second-person-voice-blah-blah-etc. I'm really sorry that I'm abusing dashes so much in this post.
On an extremely vaguely related note, there's a quote from an article Tod wrote, that is specifically about writing for money and more broadly about artistic sensibilities and being an artist and what makes a true artist and capitalism, where he talks about the stuff he was working on when he got an offer to write tie-in novels for the show Burn Notice. He says, "My first reaction was muted. I was finishing a short story about very depressed people doing very depressing things and trying to figure out another word for 'desperation.'"
I just thought that was funny and sad and apt, and since I've been focusing a lot on happiness lately, and the idea of when can I write about a character who isn't terribly, horribly miserable and doomed. I guess Tod Goldberg captures me as a writer a little more accurately than "How to Be a Writer" or at least speaks to me more specifically. Then again, maybe the whole point of "How to Be a Writer" is Lorrie Moore saying, "Emma, stop being so freaking serious and write about something other than stories about moments when people die terribly strange (emotional) deaths."
When we had to read Lorrie Moore last semester, I didn’t really like her and I still don’t. I guess her kind of humor is very different from mine and her writing style took me a little bit longer to get through. I do like the questions she poses in “How to Become a Writer” because it is so true like she says “why write” and “where does writing come from” These questions are very similar to what other writers such as myself ask ourselves while we get ripped apart in workshop.
I guess I have never been a fan of second person point of view because it forces me to become the character. And for this piece I didn’t want to be the character the narrator is talking about. I don’t want to be in her position yet at the same time I already am. With second person, the reader could fight against being the character of the story yet what they don’t realize is that they already are without thinking about it. This is what makes Lorrie Moore really connect with the reader, which is something I do like. But overall I didn’t really get that much out of her stories.
I think I'm going with the general favorite and blogging on 'How to Become a Writer' with a dash of 'You're Ugly Too'. I sat down, read them straight through started on the last one and couldn't get through it because it was depressing from the start and it's next to impossible for me to read depressing things from the start.
So, 'How to Become a Writer'. I can't quiet take it seriously because I can't help but say 'no writer is THIS hopeless' but maybe there ARE some writers who are that hopeless and just can't make it.
Anyway,it made me depressed. it's like it's saying - you're doomed, you'll never be a good writer. The second story just increased the dread melancholy, and I just thought that most of the people in Zoe's life (excluding her family of course) are jerks.
Makes me wonder where Lorrie Moore GOT this stuff from. i mean, it seems interesting but I don't think it's really my cup of tea. Especially the cross between the narrator being themselves and the narrator talk at the reader and putting the reader in the narrator's shoes.
Like Ryan said, she captures the 'hardships' (and I use that term VERY loosely) of being a writer well - namely the workshops. And like Amy, I questioned why this girl was so stubborn about her writing and not changing anything. I wouldn't want to read her stories either.
Lorrie Moore’s “How to Become a Writer” was definitely an entertaining read and made me laugh here and there. I probably won’t be the only one to say this, but there were some points when this piece hit really close to home for me, maybe too close. The first place where I really felt like the “you” in the story arrived on page 697, when Moore writes, “Some people are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.” In the margin I wrote “oh god yes/no”—yes because that is very often how I view the world exactly, and no because Moore includes “unfortunately” and “for the rest of your life,” which makes me feel doomed to continue in this narrow, judgmental mindset forever. Two paragraphs later, Moore grabbed my attention again when she says, “Decide that perhaps you should stick to comedies.” I’ve felt that way sometimes, not surprisingly. When it came time to write the last short short for this course, I found myself writing something weird, humorous, and downright frivolous, mostly because I could do it quickly and easily. I want people to think I’m funny first and foremost, which is why making jokes sometimes takes priority over being, say, nice. That’s not how I should behave, but when I get in trouble that’s often why. Moore goes on to say that what in high school was called a “really great sense of humor” is thought of in college as “self-contempt giving rise to comic form.” I guess I’m lucky I’ve never had that phrase leveled against me, at least not to my face. That sounds more like Kim to me—in everyday life, not in her writing.
Because this blog post is optional, I'm going to allow myself to be extremely tangential here. Well, maybe not THAT tangential.
ReplyDeleteReading Lorrie Moore as that last required reading not only of this year, but of my SU career could not be more fated, serendipitous, coincidental, whatever. My senior year of high school I had this amazing English teacher who assigned the best readings, (Right after writing this, I'm going to send him an email and tell him how great he was and blah blah blah), How to Become a Writer being one of them. He was also one of the only English teachers to assign creative writing homework. One of the assignments we had was to mimic How to Become a Writer in our own creative piece. The story I wrote was one of the pieces that would be included in the portfolio I used to apply to SU.
Anyway, How to Become a Writer has stuck in my head these past few years, but due to my shit memory I couldn't figure out who had written it or what exactly it had been about. The scene that haunted me the most was sitting across a table from a guy as he flattened all his arm hairs in the same direction. You have no idea how excited I was to open up 3x33 and discover the lost story, the one that I've tried so hard to force to the surface of my memory. As I read it, I tried to remember how I felt when I read it in high school, how I connected to it then. I know it had a major influence on me deciding "I'm going to major in writing." I mean, maybe it wasn't entirely this story, but it was that teacher, that class, that time in my life.
I know that most of the posts will probably focus on what they connected to in this story and what they didn't. Personally, I think my favorite parts were "really great sense of humor" creative writing class calls "self-contempt giving rise to comic form" and "Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life." Ouch.
As for the other stories. I enjoyed both, though they were a bit longer than my stressed and pressed for time self could tolerate. I'll have to give them another reading during the summer maybe. Again, I felt like I related to the main character of "You're Ugly, Too" more than I felt comfortable with. My jokes, ugh my jokes. Anyway, I'll stop this nonsense here and save something to say for class.
Schappell’s introduction says that Lorrie Moore “authentically captures the inarticulateness and awkwardness of people who have just met,” and that the “prototypical Moore character… is a painfully self-knowing oddball whose life has not unfolded the way she imagined it.”
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I read “How to Become a Writer” and a lot of “You’re Ugly, Too,” with an internal monologue that sounded like a preteen listening to her favorite pop singer, like “holy crap holy crap she knows me, she REALLY knows me!” Of course though, a real celebrity artist doesn’t know a damn thing about that fangirl; Lorrie Moore doesn’t and probably won’t ever know me.
What she does know, though, are people in general. Her stories (“How to Become a Writer” specifically) can reach out to anyone in a way that at least feels personalized. And yea, sure, maybe “anyone” here only applies to people trying to become writers, but the point here is that she’s got THOSE people down so damn well.
Like when she says “In three years there have been three things...” and the one that seems most obviously to be the “good story” is the one that Francie can’t write. Or when Moore writes “[You wonder] if you have anything to say. Or if there even is such a thing as a thing to say.” Or when she mentions Francie’s roommate, who only likes her story because she “went out with a violinist once.” Or when Francie tries too hard to sound “poetic” and claims to be only interested in “syllables, because they are the atoms of poetry.”
I could keep going, but my point here, which may be too obvious to have spent so much time on, is that what drives Moore’s stories for me is how well she knows people. This is probably due to a perpetual distaste for them; a recognition that everyone will simply and frustratingly “look down at their arm hairs and…smooth them, all, always, in the same direction.” People suck, people are annoying, people don’t understand each other or themselves, and we’re all guilty—Lorrie Moore is here to capture every moment of that.
I had one of those moments (one of those stupid moments) while reading "How to Become a Writer" where I read it as if it was my story instead of another. It might have been Will and Kim talking about how they related to the story before I'd read it, or just a long week, poor reading. Doesn't matter. Of course I was like, this isn't me at all. It isn't even metaphorically me. I became a writer because my parents left me in a car while they went into Giant to do the shopping and I got bored and started writing on the back of old recites I found in between the seats. When my dad came out, he laughed and said, you know you should be a writer. Or something to that effect.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite section was the one about taking other courses. Mostly about "Sex by the Arm". Not only did it involve octopi, but I thought it would have made for an awesome metaphor, but I'm not even sure how to write that. It wasn't in the story but I felt like the purpose was to show the narrator noticing these things. There were other sections that sounded more "smooth and energetic" but this section made me stop and reread it a couple times.
I was told that one of many keys to having a good story to to keep your character curious. If not the characters than I would defiantly have to keep myself curious. Without curiosity the questions and the plots of stories become bogged down and full of elderly people randomly stepping on land mines in their kitchen. But the questions can't be obvious, no "If there is a God, then why is my brother now crippled?" Instead they are simpler more powerful questions that only ever seem to more questions. I don't know if i'm putting this need for curiosity into the story but it's what I took out of it. This narrator was curious and kept trying and I think those are the two most important things to be/do as a writer.
Upon Completion of my reading of How To Become A Writer, I felt like there was some kind of reoccurring theme. When I thought about it, one thing came straight to mind; Old people dying strange ways, but it didn’t end there. I soon realized that it was more than simply old people, but people in general, dying strange ways. After closer examination, I noticed that the people dying were always in groups of two. I wondered what that meant.
ReplyDeleteSo the story is half serious, half telling a story, which (as Moore as the narrator, says about the reader) doesn’t have a good sense of a plot. They are more of side stories to exhibit a point, which the narrator is trying to establish. None of them can really be linked to one another, with the exception of the narrator’s roommate, she is in a few scenes.
I particularly liked this story because I can relate to it in the sense that I came to school as a psychology major, and found myself in creative writing classes before I decided to make the switch. The two paths described by the narrator contrasted in an interesting fashion. Psychology is what was encouraged, as opposed to Creative Writing, which I felt was vaguely discouraged. Years down the road, the narrator still thinks about what might have happened if she continued with child psychology. I thought at this point that the reoccurring theme was not 2 people dying in a strange manner, but rather 2. This however brought me to the question of how these two things are actually linked.
Two was the number, but in one scenario two people die the same way whereas in the other scenario we see a lowly writing life with only and idea of a child psychology paradigm. In the first of the scenarios, the two people doing the same thing end up dying, so what Moore is trying to say, is that through life, doing the same thing is not the correct path, which leads me too the other branch. If put in an imaginary (family tree-style) chart, Lorrie Moore would start at the top. From here, there would be an extending branch which leads to the path of two people dying. A second branch would extend, ending with the creative writing story, which How To Be a Writer ends with. There is an imaginary branch stretching from the second branch. This imaginary branch is the story of the narrator continuing as a Child Psychology major. After this tree was former, I realized that the theme of this story was not 2, but 3. The choice of three paths.
On the second branch we have the Writer, who is jobless and writes mediocre fiction. That doesn’t seem like the encouraged path. The imaginary branch is simply the wondering what would have happened had the narrator remained in psychology. This also doesn’t seem like the encouraged path, and I have a hard time believing a fiction author would discourage writing fiction. This is when it dawned on me that the first branch of the tree I mentioned earlier was actually the imaginary branch. This is because the people dying referred to in the story were actually in the narrator’s imagination, but the imaginary side of the second branch was actually a real branch because that could have actually happened, so it leaves a real paradigm.
ReplyDeleteHad the narrator stuck with child psychology, she could have gone on to make more money; everyone said she was good with kids. But if there were two paths, this contrasts with the newly made imaginary branch, because in each scene of two people dying, they were doing the same thing whereas in the second branch, both paths are completely different. Two paths on one branch, but one on the other? The element is actually 2, not 3 because there are two branches from Moore, which each have two outcomes. The first branch has the path of imaginary person A and the path of imaginary person B. Both have the same outcome and the entire first branch is imaginary. I believe at this point that the continued references of two people dying were simply an example of symbolism with the reoccurring number of 2. If the tree were to be reformed, then Moore would still have two branches, the first being the Child Psychology paradigm, the other being the real outcome of this story.
Reminiscing on the past and what could have happened was the only part of this story that I found to feel somewhat depressing, however the ending is not exactly enlightening. Since the narrator adds creative, quirky commentaries and side stories, it almost seemed to give creative writing a bright aura, unlike the idea of writing being similar to polio. Despite the seemingly depressing ending, I concluded from my analysis that the theme of this story does relate to the number two, but it encourages creative writing in a subtle sense. For any writer there will always be the ‘what if?’ I even wonder where I’d be had I stayed a psychology major. If someone wants to write, then they cannot have the ‘what if’ mentality as we see in this story, but a writer should rather write because he or she enjoys it.
While I was reading How to Become a Writer, by Lorrie Moore, I had to constantly remind myself that this was considered a work of fiction. It reads so much like a nonfiction piece would, that when the narrator would be called “Francie,” my mind would jolt slightly. Also, from Moore’s introductory biography, we can see that unlike poor Francie, the author received some very positive feedback and recognition for her writing very early on in her career.
ReplyDeleteSomething that continuously irked me about How to Become a Writer, was the narrator’s stubbornness when resisting other people’s advice or criticisms. Her family, her roommate—fine ignore them and their negativity. Your writing peers and your trained professors—those opinions you might want to consider more carefully. When a person has been receiving the same comments and critiques since high school, all through college, and you have still not reached success after graduation, does it never cross your mind to try to put all of those words of wisdom to good use and admit that you need to improve your skills?
After that rant, I realized that I was writing in the same tense that Moore used in How to Become a Writer and this is a style that I generally do not appreciate. I find it difficult to enjoy a narrative that is constantly telling me how I feel or what course of actions I take. This was especially true with this story, where I found that I could not relate at all to this supposedly stereotypical wanna-be writer young person. Maybe I would be considered a normal writer, but does that make me abnormal? Thoughts, Lorrie Moore?
This is my second time reading Lorrie Moore's "How to become a writer." It was interesting reading it again, because this time around, I am further on in my writing journey. While reading it, I felt like some of the things were pretty accurate. Obviously I can't relate to all the things mentioned in this story, I can't even relate to the majority of the things in this story, but I think she captured the general feelings pretty well of what trying to be a writer is like. Although I don't think she is trying to just spell out what the general feelings would be for any person trying to become a writer. Most of the things in this story are not supposed to remind other writers of their own experiences. I think the bigger project that Moore is up to is telling the story of this one individual, only tellig it in an interesting and unusual fashion. We get to see some little windows into the life of this character we are following. Her home life, and her parents are mentioed a few times, and we get to see the progression of that story as this writer's journey progresses. The brother is mentioned a few times, and we are able to see his story unfold as our writer's journey progresses. I feel like this story is mostly about how a person's life is influenced by the stories and the hardships that happen around them. That idea is shown through this character's writing, and how it progresses. So I think the whole idea of writing really comes second in the story, even though virtually it takes the foreground. I think that is an interesting, and difficult trick that I would like to learn to incorporate into my own writing style. She does a few clever things in this story, which I enjoy and it really amused me. So for the most part I thought this story was pretty good and it keped me interested even the second time around. I give it a thumbs up.
ReplyDeleteGod damn.
ReplyDeleteHow to Become a Writer took me about an hour to read because I had to keep stopping and going back to real life for a bit to stop me from crying. Lines like,
“Decide that you like college life…You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.” I mean, it could be because I’m a little wonky because I’m emotional about half of my college life being over, but I had to stop myself from crying on this line. I don’t want to think that how I feel—I have to close 33x3.
Okay, I’m back.
Another line that meant a lot to me was, “You have broken up with your boyfriend. You now go out with men who, instead of whispering, ‘I love you,’ shout: ‘Do it to be, baby.” This is good for your writing.” I think this piece is breaking me; it’s so raw and beautiful. I feel like any writer can compare to this in at least one-way, even if only about the technical details. It hurts so much to read.
Over all, this piece made me feel far too much.
I'm not sure why I always want to pick someone out and disagree with them, but I do and I'm picking Alex, not because I think you're wrong but just because I don't know, my favorite thing about "How to Become a Writer," what I thought made it unique from other, similar things I've read, was that the "you" wasn't general, or applicable to everyone. The you was an incredibly specific, incredibly quirky person, and her name was Francie.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what it is about second-person and first-person-talking-to-a-second-person narratives. I like them and then I don't at the same time...For my first ever nonfiction piece last year, I wrote it in a letter-to-myself-as-a-child form, which is cliche, I know, (I didn't really know at the time, since it was my first, after all). I was so uncomfortable giving up that information about myself that it was either write in 2rd person or 3rd person--I couldn't handle 1st yet. By the end of the semester, I was able to look at the audience straight on, I earned/learned my first-person voice. But I'll always remember my one attempt at 2nd-person.
I guess I'm just always hyper-aware of the "you." In poems, stories, songs, speeches, I always notice and a "you" changes the entire meaning for me. I remember in poetry last semester, I think it was one of Dana's poems, maybe? there was a "you," just one, that a bunch of people didn't even notice, but my entire reading swirled around it. I think in poetry and lyrics, a first-person-talking-to-a-second is very, very common, and in fiction it's slightly less so, but still way more common than true second-person. Maybe it's because true second-person is so obvious, so hard to pull off, and so hard for the writer to disappear from it. "How to Become a Writer" didn't strike me because it was so familiar, or applicable to myself, but rather because it wasn't, and I still didn't find myself saying, "Oh no I did not do that." (Which I legit think almost every time I see "you" in a story/poem/lyric, because I'm an annoying reader.)
So I'm realizing, just now, where I'm going with all of this. At AWP this year, Madie and I met a writer named Tod Goldberg, who is fantastically funny and smart and a good, even though he lives in California and gets paid to write. He had a nonfiction-thinly-veiled-as-fiction short story that was similar to a letter piece Madie had written for nonfiction class, and we talked to him about how to pull off the you without alienating the reader. He said humor was always a trick he used--he starts you off laughing, and you're halfway through the story before you realize it's not that funny and actually quite tragic and angry--both his story and the one Madie was telling were quite angry, and they were both angry at the "you." He said, "Your readers are people sitting in Starbucks, people coming home from work, they have hard lives and they don't want to be yelled at. If your story is always "you this, you that" they're going to feel attacked." His second piece of advice was to bury the "you." Start the story off easy, giving them subtle things that will make them feel the way your narrator/character does (this may be why Alex felt like Moore was speaking to him directly and I didn't feel like arguing "No I didn't" with her). Which, I'm extrapolating from that: You're writing in second person, but you still want readers aligned with the main character, whether that character is Francie, or the one speaking, not feeling alienated from the story by being called out. Moore doesn't exactly bury the you, but she's also not writing as angry a story as Madie and Tod were, and she definitely uses humor to keep the readers engaged. I think she does some of what Tod said, and also brings a new technique to the page, which is to make the "you" such a clear person, that defensive readers like me can focus on Francie as a person first, and THEN on the universal-everyman-implications-of-the-second-person-voice-blah-blah-etc. I'm really sorry that I'm abusing dashes so much in this post.
ReplyDeleteOn an extremely vaguely related note, there's a quote from an article Tod wrote, that is specifically about writing for money and more broadly about artistic sensibilities and being an artist and what makes a true artist and capitalism, where he talks about the stuff he was working on when he got an offer to write tie-in novels for the show Burn Notice. He says, "My first reaction was muted. I was finishing a short story about very depressed people doing very depressing things and trying to figure out another word for 'desperation.'"
I just thought that was funny and sad and apt, and since I've been focusing a lot on happiness lately, and the idea of when can I write about a character who isn't terribly, horribly miserable and doomed. I guess Tod Goldberg captures me as a writer a little more accurately than "How to Be a Writer" or at least speaks to me more specifically. Then again, maybe the whole point of "How to Be a Writer" is Lorrie Moore saying, "Emma, stop being so freaking serious and write about something other than stories about moments when people die terribly strange (emotional) deaths."
When we had to read Lorrie Moore last semester, I didn’t really like her and I still don’t. I guess her kind of humor is very different from mine and her writing style took me a little bit longer to get through. I do like the questions she poses in “How to Become a Writer” because it is so true like she says “why write” and “where does writing come from” These questions are very similar to what other writers such as myself ask ourselves while we get ripped apart in workshop.
ReplyDeleteI guess I have never been a fan of second person point of view because it forces me to become the character. And for this piece I didn’t want to be the character the narrator is talking about. I don’t want to be in her position yet at the same time I already am. With second person, the reader could fight against being the character of the story yet what they don’t realize is that they already are without thinking about it. This is what makes Lorrie Moore really connect with the reader, which is something I do like. But overall I didn’t really get that much out of her stories.
I think I'm going with the general favorite and blogging on 'How to Become a Writer' with a dash of 'You're Ugly Too'. I sat down, read them straight through started on the last one and couldn't get through it because it was depressing from the start and it's next to impossible for me to read depressing things from the start.
ReplyDeleteSo, 'How to Become a Writer'. I can't quiet take it seriously because I can't help but say 'no writer is THIS hopeless' but maybe there ARE some writers who are that hopeless and just can't make it.
Anyway,it made me depressed. it's like it's saying - you're doomed, you'll never be a good writer. The second story just increased the dread melancholy, and I just thought that most of the people in Zoe's life (excluding her family of course) are jerks.
Makes me wonder where Lorrie Moore GOT this stuff from. i mean, it seems interesting but I don't think it's really my cup of tea. Especially the cross between the narrator being themselves and the narrator talk at the reader and putting the reader in the narrator's shoes.
Like Ryan said, she captures the 'hardships' (and I use that term VERY loosely) of being a writer well - namely the workshops. And like Amy, I questioned why this girl was so stubborn about her writing and not changing anything. I wouldn't want to read her stories either.
Lorrie Moore’s “How to Become a Writer” was definitely an entertaining read and made me laugh here and there. I probably won’t be the only one to say this, but there were some points when this piece hit really close to home for me, maybe too close. The first place where I really felt like the “you” in the story arrived on page 697, when Moore writes, “Some people are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.” In the margin I wrote “oh god yes/no”—yes because that is very often how I view the world exactly, and no because Moore includes “unfortunately” and “for the rest of your life,” which makes me feel doomed to continue in this narrow, judgmental mindset forever. Two paragraphs later, Moore grabbed my attention again when she says, “Decide that perhaps you should stick to comedies.” I’ve felt that way sometimes, not surprisingly. When it came time to write the last short short for this course, I found myself writing something weird, humorous, and downright frivolous, mostly because I could do it quickly and easily. I want people to think I’m funny first and foremost, which is why making jokes sometimes takes priority over being, say, nice. That’s not how I should behave, but when I get in trouble that’s often why. Moore goes on to say that what in high school was called a “really great sense of humor” is thought of in college as “self-contempt giving rise to comic form.” I guess I’m lucky I’ve never had that phrase leveled against me, at least not to my face. That sounds more like Kim to me—in everyday life, not in her writing.
ReplyDeleteThen, as if I wasn’t having enough of looking into a distorted but nevertheless accurate mirror, Moore gives us some voices from undergraduate creative writing seminars: “But does it work?” “Why should we care about this character?” “Have you earned this cliché?” For this audience (us), you really have to be able to laugh at yourself in order to like this story. I think I’m pretty good about being the butt of a joke, but for me those lines were just too spot-on to elicit a laugh. Reading these all-too-familiar questions reminded me of my own weariness with workshops that I (as well as Alex and others, I think it’s fair to say) have expressed or alluded to in past classes. The next paragraph, on the top of page 698, stood out to me because it’s far less close to my own experience. While I am comfortable with thinking of my writing as “a calling, an urge, a delusion, an unfortunate habit”—all of those things and more—I must say that I rarely feel the “exhilaration” of knowing I am a “genius.” Sure, I can get excited about my own writing, usually more often when I’m brainstorming than when I’m actually writing down sentences. But I think Moore is describing a sort of fervor, even mania, in the act of writing, and I hardly ever experience that. Here’s another part that really worries me: “Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say.” Again I wrote, “oh god.” On Tuesday, Catherine was describing George Saunders as a man on a mission, with a deeper meaning about our culture driving all of his work. I have no such mission! What if I have nothing to say? That’s an extremely troubling question and one that I’ll consider if I’m feeling brutally honest with myself one day.