A Writer's Moment: They're the 'packhorses of literature'

A Writer's Moment: They're the 'packhorses of literature':   “Nonfiction writers are the packhorses of literature. We're meant to carry the story. If we can make it up and down the mountain by a ...

They're the 'packhorses of literature'

 

“Nonfiction writers are the packhorses of literature. We're meant to carry the story. If we can make it up and down the mountain by a reliable if not scenic route, we have delivered.  Technique is optional.” – Stacy Schiff

 

Born in Adams, MA on Oct. 26, 1961 Schiff was an editor before shifting into writing biography and non-fiction.  She’s the author of half-a-dozen acclaimed biographies sandwiched around numerous essays and articles in many magazines and newspapers, including The New Yorker, The New York Times and The New York Times Book Review.

 

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her biography of Vera Nabokov, she also was a finalist for the Pulitzer for her biography of Antoine de Saint Expurey (author of The Little Prince).   Her work The Witches: Salem, 1692 was hailed by The New York Times as "an almost novelistic, thriller-like narrative.”

 

 Schiff’s most recent book The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams also has won numerous awards, including the Colonial Dames of America Book Prize and the William Hickling Prescott Award for Excellence in Historical Writing.    

 

Schiff enjoys research but sometimes runs into walls trying to decipher her subjects’ writing.  “In an ideal world,” she said, “the perfect biographical subject would have been the star of his penmanship class at grade school - and would thereafter write an English that positively sings.” 

 

 “The biographer,” she said, “has two lives:  The one she leads, and the one she ultimately understands.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Like an abstract painting, open to interpretation'

A Writer's Moment: 'Like an abstract painting, open to interpretation':   “Certainly one of the surprising truths of having a book published is realizing that your book is as open to interpretation as an abstract...

'Like an abstract painting, open to interpretation'

 

“Certainly one of the surprising truths of having a book published is realizing that your book is as open to interpretation as an abstract painting. People bring their own beliefs and attitudes to your work, which is thrilling and surprising at the same time.” – Marisha Pessl

 

Born in Clarkston, Michigan on this date in 1977 Pessl grew up in North Carolina.  After earning a degree from Barnard College, she was working as a financial consultant when she decided to try her hand at creative writing.   

 

After two failed attempts at novels, she found success in 2006 with the bestseller Special Topics in Calamity Physics about the relationship between a daughter and her controlling, charismatic father.   Her book Night Film also made the New York Times Bestseller List. 

 

Her most recent title is 2024’s Young Adult novel Darkly.

 

 “I believe writers need to be chameleons, or like (actress) Meryl Streep . . . play all sorts of characters,” she said.  “A good writer should be able to cross gender lines and people of all social classes.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Snapshot . . . Or a big piece of cloth?'

A Writer's Moment: 'Snapshot . . . Or a big piece of cloth?':   “ I think of something quite different from a snapshot. I know of a lot of poems, some very fine ones, that are like snapshots, but I'...

'Snapshot . . . Or a big piece of cloth?'

 

“I think of something quite different from a snapshot. I know of a lot of poems, some very fine ones, that are like snapshots, but I'm more interested in poetry that is like an endless film, long stories, things that weave together many different strands, like a big piece of cloth, not like a photograph.” – Robert Bringhurst 

 

Born in Los Angeles in October of 1946, Bringhurst earned degrees from Indiana University and the University of British Columbia, remaining in Canada to become a Canadian citizen.  He has authored or edited more than 50 books of prose and poetry.  His latest (out this year in each genre’) are Buying the Ghosts a Drink: Eleven Conversations with Robert Bringhurst and Collected Poems.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Bringhurst’s,

 

                                                     These Poems, She Said

These poems, these poems,
these poems, she said, are poems
with no love in them. These are the poems of a man
who would leave his wife and child because
they made noise in his study. These are the poems
of a man who would murder his mother to claim
the inheritance. These are the poems of a man
like Plato, she said, meaning something I did not
comprehend but which nevertheless
offended me. These are the poems of a man
who would rather sleep with himself than with women,
she said. These are the poems of a man
with eyes like a drawknife, with hands like a pickpocket's
hands, woven of water and logic
and hunger, with no strand of love in them. These
poems are as heartless as birdsong, as unmeant
as elm leaves, which if they love love only
the wide blue sky and the air and the idea
of elm leaves. Self-love is an ending, she said,
and not a beginning. Love means love
of the thing sung, not of the song or the singing.
These poems, she said....
You are, he said,
beautiful.
That is not love, she said rightly.

A Writer's Moment: Helping 'make a little more sense to teens'

A Writer's Moment: Helping 'make a little more sense to teens':   “If I can write a book that will help the world make a little more sense to a teen, then that's why I was put on the planet.” – Lauri...