An Opportunity, & Why Being a Deep Reader & Reading Great Books Matters to Your Writing

 

Okay, so, first off, the link if you're interested in learning more: https://www.bookcritics.org/emerging-critics/fellowship/

Secondly, to my second point, why is it important to be a good reader and read good books?

Of course, you already guessed the answer, because it makes you a better author.

When I do work as an editor, I see less expert writing very often, and, after decades as a college writing professor, I had already had a lot of experience with that.

When writing is not at its peak, there can be a lot of reasons for it.

And, unbeknownst to you, I had just written a long-winded explanation about that.

And then, following my own advice, I read it over, and decided less is more; screw the lecture.

So, to be a better writer on your own, read better books, and then study them, and then ask yourself, "What makes this writing so good?" That's the meat of what I want to convey here.

Now to stop blathering away, and give you one small example of what I mean.

One of my all time favorite books is THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, by Tim O'Brien, and it could work as a novel (which is how it is billed) or as a collected short stories, which is how many of the chapters first were published, as O'Brien built up his street cred. So let's consider the chapter called, "On the Rainey River." This chapter is around 15 pages long, most chapters (in most books) average 6-10 pages, so this is a little bit long. It is longer because the main character (Tim) has received his draft notice to go to the Vietnam War, and he is hovering, on the brink of Canada, between going to war to honor what his country expects of him, and to avoid being a family embarrassment (the deserter!), and going into Canada to renounce his American citizenship and seek asylum from a war he doesn't understand or believe in, and is afraid of. He is dithering, in the chapter, a very monumental and important dithering, but he is dithering. And the pace of his own dithering is driving him crazy. There is a deadline, he knows, and he wishes he would just make up his damn mind, but he can't. The only other character in the chapter, Elroy, watches, and waits. He says nothing; he makes no judgement, but the readers know that Elroy knows, and the character even says, "In the morning, though, I found an envelope tacked to my door. Inside were the four fifties and a two-word note that said EMERGENCY FUND.

"The man knew."

And, finally, both Elroy and Tim know time is up on the decision, and so Elroy takes Tim fishing, right to a spot where he could step from the boat to Canada. And, finally, faced with the chance to escape, Tim knows that he can't do it. He dissolves into tears, and Elroy steers the boat back to the American shore.

And so the long decision process is over, and then author O'Brien does one of the most brilliant little minutes of writing I have ever been blown away by. He ends the chapter like this:

I don't remember saying goodbye. That last night we had dinner together, and I went to bed early, and in the morning Elroy fixed breakfast for me. When I told him I'd be leaving, the old man nodded as if he already knew. He looked down at the table and smiled.

At some point later in the morning it's possible that we shook hands—I just don't remember—but I do know that by the time I'd finished packing the old man had disappeared. Around noon, when I took my suitcase out to the car, I noticed that his old black pickup truck was no longer parked in front of the house. I went inside and waited for a while, but I felt a bone certainty that he wouldn't be back. In a way, I thought, it was appropriate. I washed up the breakfast dishes, left his two hundred dollars on the kitchen counter, got into the car, and drove south toward home.

The day was cloudy. I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.

Now look at that progression.

The have their last night together.

They have breakfast in the morning.

Elroy, the witness, the key piece to the character not committing the "societal suicide" of being a deserter, is no longer needed, so he disappears, like a guardian angel who has done his part. Right? Because no one can commit suicide with an observer. Who has the balls for that? So Elroy, just by watching, has saved Tim from a rash act that would have cut him off from his life as surely as a gun to the head or a handful of pills and a bottle of hooch.

All that is brilliant.

And then O'Brien adds on gorgeous:

The day was cloudy. I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.

Every time I read it my breath catches in my throat, even when I'm reading it silently.

Truly, the book could end there.

He drives south from Elroy and Canada, and he goes down through the prairie; he has to drive downhill, no effort, like he could take his foot off the gas and coast into his future. And then, in a few words, he goes and does his stint in the horrible Vietnam War, the war that really made Americans see how war can F a man up, and, comes home again. There and back, with no tale. Because for the character, for Tim, there is nothing to tell except, "I was a coward. I went to the war."

And, if you read the whole chapter, you'll see that his cowardice lies in not being able to stick to his own principles and beliefs, to being "peer-pressured" into war. Elroy just helps Tim realize he could not survive the peer pressure.

And so there it is.

The dithering is long-winded, to get us really uncomfortable, to make us feel the sweat in our skins.

The experience of the war after is nothing compared to the screws the decision put to him, and nothing to his disappointment in himself for needing to "fit in" more than he ever realized. He doesn't believe a man should die for his country, but he does believe a man should die to fit in.

Wow.

When you read superb writing like that, and you look at what the author is doing, and realize how that whole chapter is, for the main character, more painful and terrifying, more scarring than the experience of war could ever be, you get it. You get pacing... the tenterhooks of waiting for the dithering to end, and then the quickness of the entire war, dismissive, proving how little it mattered compared to his failure to be true to himself.

And so, I would hope, that for those who enter a fellowship like the one the NBCC is offering, they will learn how to not just read something like THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, but to also figure out why it is a beautifully written book, and start, in some small way, to think about their own writing, and how they can apply that high level of thinking to their own construction, and become better authors in the process.

Not going to apply to the NBCC? It's okay. Start your own journey to being a better, deeper reader, and, in response, a better author. Buy a damn copy of this book! THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

PS. It has had many covers over the years, but this is the cover on the old beat-up copy I taught with for 20+ years, and I'm sentimental about it.

Also, I'm not into war books or movies, and this book is not one of those. This book is about writing.