literary craft

The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown

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Most people are familiar with this story of the rowing team from the University of Washington that won the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. A good example of narrative nonfiction, it is a well-researched, factual account that is eminently readable.

All the basic elements of good prose are here: the clarity of well-constructed sentences, good pacing through varying sentence structure, consistency achieved by presenting information in a logical sequence that the reader can easily follow. Beyond these, I want to point out a few methods that Brown employed to make it so absorbing a read.

One is that he centers the book on one character: Joe Rantz, a student from a working class background, left to fend for himself at a young age after his remaining parent abandoned him in the small town of Sequim, Washington. Recruited by rowing coach Alvin Ulbrickson, he attended the University of Washington; however, for him to aspire to a coveted spot on the rowing team meant competing against the privileged young men from expensive prep schools who embodied the elite image of rowing.

With a main character to root for as he confronts the physical challenges of competitive rowing and the psychological challenges of the U.S. class system, Brown begins to introduce other people of interest. One at a time—giving us a chance to get to know them before moving on—he gives us Ulbrickson, the head coach; Robert Mox, coxswain; Donald Hume, stroke; and freshman coach Tom Bolles.

Another way Brown makes the story so compelling is through making the Olympic race the climactic moment near the end of the book. Even though most readers know the outcome before starting the book, the suspense of waiting to see how it happens is immense. The suspense is fed by all the minor trials and setbacks, all the races against Washington’s main rival, California, and the Ivy League founders of the Rowing League, Columbia, Cornell, and Pennsylvania. Adding to the tension is the fact that the story takes place during the depths of the Great Depression.

These details are proof of the extensive research the author completed. The details that Brown chooses to include—the tip of the iceberg—serve the story by giving the reader a fuller picture of the time and the character’s motivations. In particular, the details about the construction of the shells are presented in context and in such a way as to fascinate any reader.

Three themes of the book adds to its hold the reader. One is the portrait of poverty at the time (though it’s certainly as bad as today in some areas). Joe’s struggle to get by as an abandoned teenager, as well as his and some of his teammates’ difficulty in coming up with the necessary funds, give the reader a better appreciation of the effects of the Depression.

A second theme is the difference between today and life in 1930s. Beyond economics, there is the relative isolation, with only radio and newspapers as media. The physical isolation comes through in the description of the trip to the East Coast to compete in the League championship. It is Joe’s first train trip and his first view of other parts of the country.

The final theme I want to point out is the context of the 1936 Olympics itself: Hitler’s Germany. The Berlin Olympics served Hitler’s goal of presenting Nazi Germany as a superior nation. Beyond hiding evidence of the Nazi’s abuses, the image of Berlin was meticulously orchestrated by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and filmed by Leni Riefenstahl as propaganda to prove to the world Aryan “purity” and Nazi supremacy. However familiar we may already be with this context, the details and the engaging way they are presented give us a deeper understanding of this early foray in marketing an image and a precursor of the horror to come. They also add further pressure to the U.S. team in the climactic race, as they strive to overcome the handicaps imposed by the Nazi organisers and beat their German rivals.

Narrative nonfiction occupies a particularly fertile middle ground between fiction and nonfiction. And it’s even more challenging for an author who must undertake the necessary research and abide by the limitations of accuracy imposed by nonfiction, while also employing the tools of a fiction writer. Brown ably demonstrates proficiency in all of these areas. This book deserves its accolades.

If you’ve read this popular book, what was your main takeaway?

Burning Questions, by Margaret Atwood

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Subtitled Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021, this is Atwood’s third collection of essays, speeches, book introductions, and reviews. What astonished me was how readable this heterogeneous collection is. Of course, we have Atwood’s voice throughout: intelligent, calm, learned, self-deprecating, and witty.

In today’s world, where so many people value opinions and beliefs over fact, it is a huge relief to communicate with someone who actually believes in science. Both of her parents were scientists–an entomologist and a nutritionist–and she spent much of her youth in the woods of Northern Ontario. She talks about the family pulling over when an infestation was spotted so that they could collect the invading critters. “Other families stopped for ice-cream cones. Ours stopped for infestations.”

That early influence shows in her concern with the threats to our environment, both in her fiction and her nonfiction, including a number of pieces in this collection. She writes of how this concern fueled her Oryx & Crake trilogy and her MaddAddam trilogy, as well as a moving tribute to Rachel Carson, calling her “a pivotal figure of the twentieth century” and “Saint Rachel.”

Another theme that threads through this collection is the way autocracies try to silence writers and control women. She has been a force in founding Pen Canada and acted as its president in the 1980s. In “If We Don’t Defend Free Speech, We Live in Tyranny” she writes about the attack on Salman Rushdie and the murder of translator Hotoshi Igarashi. In another piece she states that “There is nothing that repressive governments desire more than imposed silence . . . secrecy is an important tool not only of power but of atrocity.”

She generously continues to write about The Handmaid’s Tale, noting that “absolutist governments have always taken an inordinate interest in the reproductive capabilities of women.” She adds that writing a dystopia from a woman’s point of view “does not make The Handmaid’s Tale a ‘feminist dystopia,’ except insofar as giving a woman a voice and an inner life will always be considered ‘feminist’ by those who think women ought not to have these things.”

These pieces are not all darkness with a glimmer of wit. In “Literature and the Environment” she writes that “as long as we have hope—and we still do have hope—we will be telling stories, and—if we have the time and the materials—we’ll be setting them down; because the telling of stories, and the wish to listen to them, transmit them, and derive meaning from them, is built into us as human beings.”

Indeed, the pieces I most appreciated were about how essential the arts are to our well-being and about writing in particular. Parsing out her approach to these short pieces taught me so much about her methodology. Often she starts with a clear statement of purpose: “I’ll divide my talk into three parts, and I’ll even tell you what they are, just so you know what’s coming.” That’s from a speech honoring the Department of Forestry’s centennial. I’m touched by how, despite her blockbuster status, she’s willing to turn up and speak at so many events.

After the statement of purpose, she wanders here and there in the best tradition of essay-writing. She includes asides, rhetorical questions, digressions, allusions. She explores the question without answering it, instead opening our minds—gently and respectfully. I also especially appreciated the pieces about other authors and about her late husband, author Graeme Gibson: both joyful moments and mor trying times as he drifted deeper into dementia.

While some readers may be unnerved by this collection’s length, diversity, and chronological structure (rather than thematic), I found it a joy to read. Most of the pieces are quite short, making it a perfect bedtime book: you can read a few pieces and chuckle at her quips before you turn out the light.

I’m grateful to Atwood for collecting these pieces—no small task—and putting them out for us to absorb. In fact, for a more global understanding of the issues facing us, their interconnectedness, and how we can move forward, this book cannot be beat.

What have you read by Margaret Atwood? Her novels, poems, and/or essays?

On Interpretation

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The first theater class I took was Oral Interpretation taught by the inimitable Esther Smith. If you ask anyone who was lucky enough to know Miss Smith, I bet they would tell you about the profound influence she had on their lives. She certainly did on mine.

The class was on how to work up a part based on a written script, i.e., how to interpret the text and deliver it in a way that conveyed your interpretation. One of the first things she said to us was about the three components of communication. I don’t remember the exact words she used, but basically the originator, the thing itself (book, painting, spoken words, etc.), and the person receiving it.

As a writer, I think about this often. I have control over the first two, but not the third. As a reader, how I understand a story or poem depends on me alone. Well, me and my cache of experiences, cultural contexts, predilections, etc.

I know what kind of experience I intend my story or poem to create in a reader, but they may get something entirely different from it.

What brought the idea of art as communication to mind was a recent review by Thomas Meaney in the London Review of Books, Vol. 45 No. 4, of an exhibit of George Grosz’s work at the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart.

It actually was an illustration that struck me: Grosz’s Tatlinesque Diagram. You can see a reproduction of it here.

The description by Paloma Alarcó on the website of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, says that the woman is a prostitute, based on her connection to another collage, and says that the collage simply represents contemporary people of various sorts. The title refers to Vladimir Tatlin, a Russian and Ukrainian artist and architect who famously designed The Monument to the Third International, also known as Tatlin’s Tower.

Indeed, in his review Meaney quotes this artist statement from Grosz’s autobiography: “My drawings had no purpose, they were just to show how ridiculous and grotesque the busy cocksure little ants were in the world surrounding me.” Meaney does not mention the Tatlinesque Diagram in the review but does describe “Grosz’s great theme – the domestic horror show of bourgeoisie.”

The collage says something quite different to me. The first thing I noticed was the walking man’s turned head. I thought it clever the way his larger head continued facing forward, while a tiny head inside is turned to fix on a photo of a naked woman. A woman in the foreground has just passed him. She, too, is naked, though wearing a hat, a ribbon around her neck and thigh-high stockings. She’s furtively glancing back at the man who just passed her. We see a grinning man approaching her, his head shown in outline like that of the larger head of the other man. We are left to imagine what his inner head is doing.

What struck me immediately was how accurately this collage depicts the way it feels, as a woman, in a public space where men are also looking at depictions of naked women. It might be a calendar on the wall or something on a computer screen or even a cartoon. No matter how fully clothed you are, you immediately feel naked.

It doesn’t matter if that’s what Grosz intended or if he just meant to depict the world around him. That’s what the collage conveys to me.

The writing life is one full of rejections. I try to remember how subjective the reader’s opinion is. We all bring different experiences and mindsets to what we read. The first piece of mine that won an award is a good example. In the same envelope with a letter saying the piece had won first prize (yay!) was the critique I had paid extra for—obviously written by someone else—saying it was one of the worst pieces they’d read, and that I should take an introduction to creative writing course.

All we can do as a writer, actor, or artists, is create as best we can and put it out there in the world. Sometimes a reader will actually see something in a story or poem that I didn’t intend but am delighted to have pointed out to me. Here are two quotes from authors, responding to a request from a student as to whether that ever happened to them:

Ralph Ellison: “Yes, readers often infer that there is symbolism in my work, which I do not intend. My reaction is sometimes annoyance. It is sometimes humorous. It is sometimes even pleasant, indicating that the reader’s mind has collaborated in a creative way with what I have written.”

Joseph Heller: “This happens often, and in every case there is good reason for the inference; in many cases, I have been able to learn something about my own book, for readers have seen much in the book that is there, although I was not aware of it being there.”

Has something you’ve created ever been understood by others in a way you didn’t intend?

“The Practice,” by Barbara O’Neal

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This blog of mine grew out of a reading journal I had been keeping at the recommendation of the marvelous writer and teacher Jewell Parker Rhodes in her craft book Free Within Ourselves: Fiction Lessons for Black Authors. Its lessons on writing craft are honed by exercises and illustrated by story examples and analyses, making it a treasure for all authors.

In the reading journal I jotted down three things that I, as a writer, learned from reading each book. I found the exercise so useful that when I started this blog, I decided to review books with a slant toward what writing lessons I took away from it. Thus the blog would be useful to writers because of that slant, and to readers who, as I often hear in book clubs or discussions, can’t always identify why they particularly like or dislike a book or some aspect of it. A little understanding of the elements of creative writing can help both writers and readers deepen their appreciation of the stories they engage with.

Just as I consumed Jewell’s book, I continue to learn more about my craft. I read a lot, obviously. I take workshops, read craft books, listen to podcasts, and follow useful websites. One of the best websites for writers is WriterUnboxed.com. With a large group of contributors, the daily posts are a goldmine of craft lessons, inspiration, and supportive ideas.

This post by Barbara O’Neal so moved me that I now reread it as part of my prewriting routine at least weekly. The opening quote from Annie Dillard hit me where it hurts: “How you spend your days is how you spend your life.” How often have I procrastinated, knowing that any deadlines are of my own making?

I urge you to read the full post here. I’ll just say that the author acknowledges all her excellent reasons for skipping that day’s writing whether it is garden chores calling or a potential lunch date with a friend. As she says, “something always gets in the way of writing.”

Yet writing, she says, is a practice like meditation or journaling. The only way to do it is to just do it. Let each day’s work add to yesterday’s. In the gentlest way possible, she reminds us that “practice” is not just a noun; it is also a verb. No matter how much I want to be able to play the Courante from Handel’s Piano Suite in E minor, I’ll never be able to unless I actually work on it. And keep working on it. I’ll never finish this novel unless I keep working on it.

I don’t want to get to the end of my days and find that I have procrastinated them away. It’s fine to take a day of rest now and then. It’s necessary to take a walk and water the garden. Yet I cannot forget my practice. And I’m grateful to Barbara O’Neal for this reminder. Read it for yourself.

What is your practice?