Jacob, regarding Ann William's "Cold Fire":
Just finished reading it. Absolutely beautiful. Now I just need to figure out what the hell I'm going to teach from it :)
Me, regarding "Cold Fire":
Do you know the work of Cy Twombly? I was just thinking about form, and what Ann was doing in that story, and I thought of little circles, and then I thought of Cy Twombly. I kind of wonder if the story might have started out as a series of straightforward paragraphs, which originally proceeded in a linear way, but then maybe the paragraphs were disassembled, and then reassembled to proceed in a kind of loopy way.
I doubt, though, that Twombly's painting, here, was ever straightforward.
Jacob's response (still regarding "Cold Fire"):
Dude, Twombly totally stole my ideas!
I think the fragments are about reflection from multiple viewpoints to create a series of destabilized subjects - uncertainties if you will - which are then set up in a metonymic relationship with the dead child, which, because it is only presented once, is presented as stable - just as the finality of Gordon's not-return is. But I think that's the trick: a bunch of images that gain narrative momentum/tension because of the dissonance in their multiple revisitings and that gain interest in their metonymic relationship to the dead boy.
This is all me, now, writing just to you:
Recently Jared and I were over at Jacob's house for dinner, and he argued that the emotional effectiveness in art is 90% craft. When I hear that, at first I think he's' wrong, and then I think it's quite possible I still don't know how to write a story.
Here is my question: do you think that we can ruin ourselves as artists if we have too much information? Is there some kind of innocence we've retained in our craft-based education that might be somehow harmed by a rigorous academic training, or do you think that all information goes into a creative toolbox, and the more we have, the better. I think I'm leaning toward the latter, that more knowledge is better... nevertheless, I'm pretty sure you don't have to know what a metonym is to write a good story.
Laureen's response:
"...do you think that we can ruin ourselves as artists if we have too much information?"
Yes, yes, and yes. But every artist is different. Some thrive in academia (think Nabokov, John L'Heureux, Tobias Wolff...), others thrive without (Hemingway, Hawthorne, many many modern fiction writers). I think that I agree with your friend's statement about the emotional effectiveness of art, with a bit of a caveat. To me, it seems that craft (HOW the art is executed) is absolutely responsible for a work's effectiveness, but the point of any work is also its lasting meaning (not just the instinctual, emotional response), and if meaning is tied up with inspiration (big, general word for a big, general concept), then the real question is where does craft draw its ingredients from? I think this is different for everyone, but that staying true to where your own craft comes from means staying true to your writing. Not sure if that makes absolute sense, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's like one of those logic questions on standardized tests (ie if all boozles are bazzles, and all bazzles are beezles, is every beezle a boozle? kind of a thing): a virtuoso craft-person does not necessarily make a good artist. Does anyone remember Junse Kim? (Katie? Mary?) To me, he is the epitome of an excellent craftsman but a terrible writer. Anyway, craft and "the how" seem to lie on the academic side of things, whereas "inspiration" is obviously organic, ever-changing, often-elusive. Good stories come from a combination of the two.
I think I'll leave it at this: we should all strive to not overthink the process while we're executing it; we should follow our instincts and, dammit all, have fun doing it!
Best,
Laureen
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