Noted Without (Much) Comment: Quotes from Hampl and Lopate

From Hampl:

“I think of the reader as a cat, endlessly fastidious, capable by turns of mordant indifference and riveted attention, luxurious, recumbent, ever poised. Whereas the writer is absolutely a dog, panting and moping, too eager for an affectionate scratch behind the ears, lunging frantically after any old stick thrown in the distance.”

“A memoirist must acquiesce to selectivity, like any artist. The version we dare to write is the only truth, the only relationship we can have with the past. Refuse to write your life and you have no life.”

From Lopate:

“…but the kinds of students drawn to creative nonfiction usually retain a taste for the unadulterated truth, and a naïve hope that here at last they will not have to lie, so that when you tell them “art is a lie” or some such clever- ness, they look at you with these large disappointed eyes.”

“The greater sensitivity that today’s academy brings to issues of stereotyping seems to have rendered writing students preternaturally cautious, as though making any generalizations were invid- ious. It seems to me obviously desirable for a writing style to be able to move freely and easily from the concrete to the general and back. As for debatable generalizations, when a workshop voices exceptions to this or that generality in a fellow-student’s piece, I point out that we are not in a court of law. I would rather the emerging writer get into the habit of attempting sweeping generalizations, even if they prove not to be true in every instance, so long as they are enough true to stimulate thought.”

I selected these for their imagery or their relevance, respectively. I certainly feel like a pup seeking attention when I write. And like the students with “large disappointed eyes” in Lopate, I am frightened of inaccuracy. I want non-fiction, even creative non-fiction, to be really, really true. Everything I read suggests that this is impossible.

As for the second quote of each writer, I am taking them for advice. Or I’ll try. Not to fear sweeping generalisations. To write even when I know that I can never touch “the whole truth and nothing but.”

An aside: It’s telling about memoirists that both Lopate and Hampl comment on (and decry) the old writers’ adage: “Show, Don’t Tell.”

Another aside: I nearly wrote “It’s interesting to me that both…” but then I remembered that “interesting” is meaningless. All it means is that I noticed it. “Telling” is slightly less vague. “Telling about memoirists” is better (although my browser doesn’t believe that “memoirist” is a word).

Lopate’s Introduction to Writing Personal Essays

This introduction to a book on personal essay writing by Lopate includes a lot of little tips about how to write personal essays with quotes from other personal essay writers to explain how the tip is used. The essay is originally divided into formal and informal with personal being the informal essay.
The introduction is organized almost like a textbook with its subheadings acting more like a Spark notes guide to personal writing rather than an introduction to a book. The point of the introduction is to have the reader understand what to expect what the book with a definition on the personal essay and some key points. I feel like from reading the introduction I probably wouldn’t need to read the rest of the book and just look up the essays mentioned in the introduction instead if I needed more detail. This introduction goes beyond what is usually found in most books’ introductions.
Back onto the actual topic on hand of writing a personal essay. I find the advice very useful and detailed to help someone write a personal essay. It’s about how personal the essay can or cannot be and how honest and open people are. It also gives tips on how to get the readers to be entertained while still keeping it in like with being a semi-autobiographical without delving all the way into fictional territory. Even the personalities of the writers are explained as accepting the appearance of egotism that comes along with personal writing but also the criticism and self-deprecating that the writer experiences when exposing their flaws to everyone else. There is a focus on the past generally rather than a concern for the path their life may take based on these decisions. They are referred to as “idlers”, meaning they are not doing much with their time other than writing and observing the life around them.
The upside to personal essay writing to the ability to think and reflect on what one has done. The freedom of the format allows for the author to do whatever they what with their writing, including the creation of a character that is almost identical to them, but still fictional. They can say whatever they want for the sake of writing about themselves and just expressing their thoughts. In the end, they may not even need to follow anything I typed in the paragraph above because it’s a personal essay and they can do whatever suits them best.

Writer, Honesty, Ego = ALL ME

Terry Tempest Williams’ “Why I Write”, was an eye opener for me. Four sentences into the second paragraph, I started wondering why I write. I wrote out some reasons. However, my reasons are inevitable. I write because I can.

Reading this piece brought me to the question: why not write? ….I don’t have any reasons. I feel sorry for those who never held a pen and pity for those capable, but decide to write only when necessary.

Everyone thinks, but not everyone writes. Because writing takes time, writers are valued. Respect is given to them without question. Ideas, facts, and opinions are there in the open when one writes, contrary to when one thinks. Words are strong. Although not stronger than sticks and stones, written words possess a power—one that cannot be taken away once given. It is a power which depicts one’s knowledge and capability.

This message is those who know how to write, but don’t write unless necessary: You have an unknown power and skill that you have yet to discover. Writing. It moves and influences others (both in positive and negative ways). If you’re feelings and thoughts are left unexplored, you will not have made any difference. Writing is sharing. Simply a sentence or a thought can impact a honest individual. This is where Lopate and his introduction to “The Personal Essay” comes in.

In Lopate’s introduction of “The Personal Essay”, I learned more about the essaist than the essay itself. Truth be told—nothing is as important as the ethos of a writer. Unlike any other essay, one can learn more about oneself through trusting oneself rather than another piece of research an individual would depend on to write a report or essay. In this case, the researcher is the research himself/herself! Although difficult to remain honest for long, I believe this is a part of self-discovery while writing a personal essay.

Lopates take on egoism was interesting, because this was an issue I faced during writing my proposal for an “I-Search” Report. Insecurity took over me when I read “I” four times in one paragraph. I feared how the audience would see me. Would they be offended? Would they think I am boastful, talkative, egoistic maybe?  It was then that I realized the obvious—using “I” was unavoidable (especially if I am trying to relate to the audience)!

Alexander Smith’s quote, noted by Lopate, calmed me. “The speaking about oneself is not necessarily offensive. A modest, truthful man speaks better about himself than about anything else, and on that subject his speech is likely to be most profitable to his hearers.”

– Farzana Karim

Lopate, Lopate, Lopate….

 

In The Art of the Personal Essay it is said,“the hallmark of the personal essay is its intimacy.”  What makes this form of writing special is the way we, the reader, are invited into the author’s private world; like a friendship as Lopate exemplified. This connection that Lopate speaks about is never found in any formal essays such as a scientific paper. The links people often shared in a personal essay—the human quality of it—are simply just not there.

 

As a third-year science major putting my own thoughts into a paper almost seem foreign to me.  (“What is this ‘opinion on my life and self-reflection’ you speak of? ”) To make faceless and nameless readers empathize and sympathize with my anecdotes, yet at the same time be able to still tell my story, the lesson that I learned, and be able to express my thoughts? Lopate even continues on to say that a personal essay is a mix of honesty and perhaps a little hyperbole.  It seems Lopate is trying to scare me out of writing a personal essay. I’m not even a little scared. I’m really scared.

 

Although The Art of the Personal Essay was written in 1997(?) most, if not all, part of introduction still remains true about the common characteristics of the personal essay. I really love how he simply just list some of the elements of a personal essay such as having a conversation with the reader, being honest and confiding your thoughts to a stranger (like I’m even honest with myself). In all seriousness though the one thing that I found strange was his thoughts on youth and writing personal essay how there weren’t many who “excel[ed]” in it. I honestly feel that the advent of personal blogs (like the one we’re on right now!) certain thoughts Phillip Lopate wrote doesn’t seem to be as reliable as it was in the nineties.

 

I think that the personal blog has allowed young people to share their experiences and stories, which are often ignored or went unheard—at least in the world of literature.  However, “blogging” has allowed anyone, even the young to write their stories, anonymously, for the world to judge.   Even though they wouldn’t win any Pulitzer anytime soon, I believed my peers have written some of the best personal essays that I have encountered. While they are strangers to me as I am to them, their experiences, thoughts and values I understood and could easily identified with.

 

So isn’t that what a personal essay should be about? Those paragraphs of the author’s experiences and thoughts, we as the audience are suppose to believe in and make us “feel a little less lonely and freakish?” Of course everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, even the young and inexperienced at a personal essay like me because I don’t always write a personal essay, but when I do, it’s really bad.

Essay as Experiment…

…or what is Lopate saying?

Where to begin? Philip Lopate’s introduction to The Art of the Personal Essay is a dense (dense meaning “containing much matter per unit volume”, not dense meaning “thick-headed”) opening which could itself be a treatise on the personal essay, rather than a mere introduction. He describes in great detail what an essay entails (here’s a short list, from his headings: a conversational element; “honesty, confession, and privacy”; contractions and expansions of the self; “the problem of egotism”; “cheek and irony”;  “the idler figure”; “the past, the local, and the melancholy”) and what worth the essay has in this modern world.

Being an egotist myself, I read this entire essay through the lens of someone looking to write personal essays and found myself daunted. Lopate says, and I’m inclined to agree, “While young people excel at lyrical poetry and mathematics, it is hard to think of anyone who made a mark on the personal essay in his or her youth.” I certainly am better at lyrical poems than I’ve ever been at essays (though I’m crap at mathematics, so I’m not sure what young people Lopate’s been talking to). Essayists focus mostly on the past, he says, and I find that daunting, as well, because the past eludes me at every turn (I’m crap at memory, too).

I can be as self-effacing as E.B. White, but self-effacement alone won’t write a good essay and I’m not sure my tone is one anyone would want to read (some whiny twenty-something complaining that their writing isn’t what they’d like it to be? Please. [The key point here is the “whiny” not the content of the complaint]). I find myself judging myself by the standards Lopate sets for good essayists and am reminded of the Kerouac quote on my mini-fridge: “The only ones for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved … who never yawn or say a commonplace thing…” I judge myself by that, too, and inevitably fall short (though I’ve read On the Road and I wouldn’t live Kerouac’s life for anything).

I took a glance at the already existing blog posts when I first started writing this response (this is my 2nd try, the first one got eaten by an accidental click of the Back button on my browser. I’m smarter now; I’m writing it in the Notes app) and some of my classmates already seem to have a grasp of the form of the personal essay–the conversational tone, the honesty and vulnerability, the digressions that nevertheless lead back to the main point…

I think I’ve gotten into the habit of reading advice for writers or works about writers from the perspective of someone who’s already done their best work and will never write that well again. Wrong perspective. I’m only twenty-one. I think I’m going to have to re-read this introduction as advice rather than as judgment and see what I think then.

Oh, hey, there’s the epiphany in the midst of my writing! I think I’m getting the hang of this!

Lopate = Awesome

As the world changes, its forms of communication change as well. From Guttenburg’s printing press to the MacBook, the written word has taken on so many different forms. Similarly, the “type” of writing that is published through various social and print media has also changed. I think this is why it has become so important to so many people that “writing” be defined.

I think Lopate’s take on the personal essay brought to light so many things that I know to be true about the form that I may or may not have been able to articulate myself. Lopate breaks down the characteristics of the personal essay by using categories such as “the conversational element”, what it means to be honest and discovering ourselves both as writers and as readers.

I feel that Lopate really got it right when he said that the personal essay creates a “friendship” with the reader. So much of my own “personal essays” are re-tellings of extremely private, embarrassing and special moments. Putting those experiences on paper (or on screen) takes a great deal of courage and, perhaps more importantly, trust. The writer is trusting the reader not to judge him or her for what is being written – much like the relationship between friends.

I know there are people in my life whom I can tell anything to without fear of being judged or laughed at and it is this same knowledge that allows personal essayists to publish their work.

I also think the conversational element is really significant. Often times when reading a formal essay, I feel disconnected. Even if the essay is on a topic I am interested in (i.e. Shakespeare’s Lost Years), I may lose interest if the essay is “too wordy” or “too formal”. If there are a ton of footnotes and italics, I tend to get turned off. But if it feels like the writer is putting his or her arm around me and saying, “You’ll never guess what I discovered about Shakespeare…” – then I am more inclined to listen/read.

In addition, Lopate’s views on Autobiography vs. Memoir vs. the personal essay were really interesting. I like that he stated not everything has to be linear – the personal essay is so malleable and you can contour it to fit your needs and your vision as a writer. The Role of Contrariety also grabbed me because in my own work I am always struggling with not being cliche and to continue to be fresh.

I greatly enjoyed reading this piece and feel I am wiser for it