June 9, 2015
by punjacked
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June 8, 2015
by Neelima
1 Comment
Non-fiction was never considered as literature. It was only in 1946 that The Book of the Month Club chose its first Non-Fiction title, even though the club existed since the 1920s. Today even good journalism entails the new American Literature. “Good writing is good writing, whatever form it takes and whatever we call it,” is Zinsser’s motto.
Non-fiction writing is enormous in scope and Zinsser systematically takes you through each aspect.
He starts with the interview- this is a basic skill. You need to talk to people to get information out of them that you can turn into star quotes in your feature. If the interviewee trusts you and gives you a story, it’s your responsibility not to misquote him. Ethics is a part of writing too.
Getting your travel pieces right is all about getting the texture of the place to jump off of the page. You can’t be completely candid as you would in a facebook post, but you should give the reader enough to make them sit up and notice. Zinsser quotes a delightful passage by Pritchett about how in Turkey even the faces of some people ‘sit’. This is very striking imagery and gives you a sense of what it means to be in Turkey, at least to Pritchett.
How do you write a memoir? It’s supposed to be easy, isn’t it? It isn’t though—you may have realized this when you tried to draft an SOP while applying to college. The problem with writing about yourself is that you could end up writing too much or nothing at all.
And now I might just give all of this book away, but I won’t. Zinsser can write about how to write anything and this is because he has taken cues from writers of all genres and all topics.
He talks about writing science with clarity, not jargon. He points to writers like Primo Levi, Oliver Sacks, Stephen Jay Gould. I can’t help adding Dr. Krishnan Chopra and Dr. Deepak Chopra, writers who have made health and spirituality more accessible to the lay person. One way to learn how to write non-fiction is to read books by writers who dabble in your field of interest.
Zinsser also cracks the business writing code. If all the memos, reports, analyses and proposals were dejargonized, corporate life would be so much easier and more productive. Have you read George Orwell’s essay called Politics and the English Language? He stresses on the importance of simple language too; large words and unnecessary coinages mislead people.
The bottom line is writing isn’t very easy at all and not anyone can write unless she is knee deep in the writing world and concerned about the efficacy of every word she uses. It’s a performance and can be improved with practice and a bit of conscience. Zinsser doesn’t believe that you have to write to sell. If you see the check, you don’t make the magic.
Your quest to write better than you did the last time is what does it.
June 5, 2015
by InstaScribe
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June 4, 2015
by Neelima
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William Zinsser is such a discerning writer, I wish I had sat in his class. Please read this brilliant tribute to the doyen of non-Fiction: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/tuesday-with-zinsser.
Reading his best selling book On Writing is a privilege. I’ve read it before, but it’s different to read him now, which goes to show how rereading a book is more of a joy than reading it for the first time.
In case you want to read blog posts by Zinsser, you might find this an interesting resource: https://theamericanscholar.org/the-complete-zinsser-on-friday/#.VWgahdKqqko
If you are a writer, you may have heard how hard it is to be a writer. You appreciate it when people know your pain. But you may also hear the hard to digest ” Anyone can write”.
Writing a facebook post doesn’t mean you can write, you say.
It also means that everyone’s doing it and everyone’s writing.
So can everyone write? Mass literacy means that everyone does write, but is it easy to do? You still believe what you do is unique.
Why aren’t writers paid well enough? Because anyone can do it.
The crux of the argument is a heavy one, much debated. On the one hand, you have freelancers who are paid very little indeed for writing and on the other hand you have content mill owners who argue that writers don’t create anything new and so need to be happy with the fact that they are allowed to compete at all.
But can anyone write? I haven’t forgotten that this post is dedicated to Zinsser. Zinsser believes that writing is really hard and no fun at all. It’s a craft that’s hard to teach. Anyone who wants to write and is willing can write.
How?
Zinsser says to strip the sentence off all its adulterants—if you can do that 50% of your writing is cleared up straight away. To do this, you need to think clearly. Verbal camouflage shows cluttered decision making—think government memos and ambivalent political speeches.
Ever since I’ve been reading Zinsser, I’ve noticed his immense vocabulary. He tells us to us to be obsessive about thesaurus and it’s true, isn’t that what every writer should be obsessed about?
Zinsser knows the cliches, the lack of logic and dull phrases that constitute badly written non-fiction. You may know that a passage is badly written, but he knows exactly why the story has been written by a hack.
For instance badly written non-fiction will have no unity. The pronouns will be all over the place. Past tense is followed by present tense. The travel story turns into a brochure. To know how to write well, you have to know where you are going wrong as well.
In Part 2, we look at the essence of Zinsser’s book- how to write about places, art, science, business and sport. This book is every writer’s bible. Read it, admire and learn.
June 3, 2015
by InstaScribe
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By InstaScribe
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June 2, 2015
by punjacked
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June 1, 2015
by Jandré
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Every now and again, and again and again and again, you come across a list of so-and-so’s Top 100 books of All Time or 100 Books everyone should read before they are 30, 40, or dead.
Many lists allow you to tick off lots and lots of the suggested books. This allows you to luxuriate in your own superiority. They say something like: Top 2/3/4% of xxxx xxxx xxxx people who have completed this list. (Incidentally, in a fantasy league online sports game I recently made the global top 200%!)
After doing a few of these lists, you notice a few books pop up in many of them. In no particular order, Lord of the Rings, 1984, To Kill a mockingbird, and The Grapes of Wrath are generally found in these kinds of lists, to mention but a few.
I have read them all. I remember how impressed I was that the LOTR movies were able to accurately capture the pervading sense of imminent doom. I remember, with awe, how Orwell used his so-called Newspeak to make his people believe in the party, while at the same time he stripped away their vocabulary to disagree.
However, there are lots of Great Books that I haven’t read. And just like with those I have read, it is quite often the same grouping of books.
This brought me to the question: Why haven’t I read ……? For the record, once while living in an isolated village in Madagascar, I read one of Oxford’s Wordfinder dictionaries as I had nothing else to read! To say that I am a voracious reader is accurate, so why is it that some books just do not seem to get ticked off on my “I Have Read” list?
English: Jack Kerouac by photographer Tom Palumbo, circa 1956 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I am sorely tempted to say, because it is on many a list, but I will be a bit more expansive. It is seen as a work that defines the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations.
The Plot
Reader beware! I am probably going to offend you!
A book about two guys called Sal (Jack in disguise) and Dean driving around in the USA. They often drive fast. Sex, jazz and fast driving and some bad music are featured.
Somewhere in the book Dean is accused, “You have absolutely no regard for anybody but yourself and your kicks.”
Sal realizes that this is true, but Dean is envied by all for exactly this reason.
He is generational success personified.
Some other things happen, like dysentery, divorce and disappointment.
The final sentence poignantly captures the loss, disappointment, disenfranchisement and “da” rest of the feelings so many people feel when they weigh their lives and find it wanting.
“… I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”
Why haven’t I read it?
I actually own this book. It is somewhere on my shelf between many other books. I remember struggling through the sentences. It was like swimming in molasses. I got stuck over and over. I would carefully extract myself and dive in again, but to no avail.
Somehow, the greatness of this book passed me by and I just could not get going.
For sale: One slightly read copy of On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
English: Cobbe portrait, claimed to be a portrait of William Shakespeare done while he was alive Lëtzebuergesch: Uelegporträt vum William Shakespeare am Alter vu 46 Joer, gemoolt 1610 zu Liefzäite vum Dichter, haut am Besëtz vum Konschtrestaurator Alec Cobbe. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Why is he great?
Yes, I know Shakespeare is not a book, but I am sure you get my meaning! Some consider him to be the greatest man ever produced by England. Others are a bit more modest and only call him “the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist.”
The Plot
It is great, absolutely great, touching on those themes that make us human. And so forth.
Why haven’t I read it?
Macbeth and Miss Limmington. The first you know. The second was my English teacher in High School.
Boys and girls, let me tell you that I struggled through this. Double, double. Toil and Trouble.
I tried and tried, but could not get the feeling of the story. And Miss Limmington ( Was this a teacher I saw before me?) did not help.
Oh, she loved it and absolutely knew her stuff. But I, for the reasons logical to a sixteen year old, did not like her. And that is why I shy away from the “Bard of Avon.” Sorry!
(I did, however, see the 1993 version of the drama Much Ado about nothing that featured Kenneth Brannagh and Emma Thompson. I loved her and I loved it.)
Murphy by Samuel Beckett
English: Caricature of Samuel Beckett, Nobel Prize winner and author of the internationally acclaimed play Waiting for Godot, holding a book. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Why is it great?
This work of Mr Beckett is called “an absurdist masterpiece.” Beckett is considered to be a close second to Shakespeare when it comes to the innovative use of language.
In reading about Murphy you that this book is great because of who wrote it, but you also see that it would have been great on its own.
The Plot
It opens with “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new” and then, apparently, it gets better. (Oh how I wish I could write a sentence like that!)
Murphy is a “seedy solipsist.” (Solipsism is a philosophical position that holds one can not be sure of the existence of anything outside one’s own mind.)
Rocking naked in a rocking chair is apparently one of Murphy’s methods of extracting himself from that pesky little thing called reality!
Murphy is a man of non-action whose desire is to not act at all. That is why, I guess, he rocks naked, and ends up working in an asylum. The insane, it seems, conformed more to his image of reality than reality itself.
Why haven’t I read it?
You won’t believe me, but it is because Samuel Beckett scares me. (Just like Athol Fugard.) Why does he scare me?
Now that, my friends, I do not want to tell you.
Shakespeare does not scare me. But then again no one is expected to live up to him. He is the epitome of perfection. It is generally accepted that no one will ever be as good as Shakespeare, ever again.
Beckett is not perfect, but he is good enough to be number two, according to some. And here I find my answer. It seems that outside of my mind, my greatness is not recognized!
Somehow, Mr. Beckett reminds me of my failings and shortcomings and the only way I can get back at him is by pretending I do not know about him. Outside of my mind, that is.
This was supposed to be a fun article. I mean, with a title like “Great Books I Haven’t Read,” how can it be anything but fun?
But reality intruded on my efforts at solipsism. On The Road is a story about failure. Shakespeare and Beckett are measuring points for my failure.
The reason I haven’t read these books is because they remind me too much of how I see my achievements.
Which Great Book have you avoided reading and why?
May 29, 2015
by InstaScribe
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May 28, 2015
by Neelima
3 Comments
The seriousness of our May session was interrupted by Srishti’s return to Good Omens. She takes her time with her books. “The baby swapping I told you about finally happened,” she said,” and it was all because of the chattering nuns.” Good Omens is a world where there are points for everything that happens and in the town where nothing happens, both sides claimed points.
Another book she is reading is Birthday Stories, a collection of stories compiled by Haruki Murakami. I am a die-hard Murakami buff, so I understood what Srishti was talking about when she narrated a vintage Murakami story she had once read about a woman who turned insomniac. “The author has added one of his stories to this collection and that’s what I rushed to read first. It’s about a part time waitress who celebrates her twentieth birthday. It’s so engrossing and surreal, and I’m still thinking Dang! What really happened?”
Abhaya started with a Hindi book called Ek Gaddhe ki Aatmakatha (The Autobiography of a Donkey) by Krishnan Chander, a surrealist book where a donkey plays protagonist and navigates his way through a corrupt bureaucracy. “If you know about the 70’s and 80’s, you’ll find this a tad boring after a while.”
Another book that proved disappointing was Phosphorus and Stone by Susan Vishwanathan. “The first part of the book was dreamy and abstract and suddenly towards the end, it was realistic, almost as though the author wanted to finish her story. There were some biblical references I may not have understood—the title itself is not clear to me.”
Being a regular reader means that you come across many coincidences. Abhaya observed how he had read three books Wild Sargasso Sea, Anatomy of a Disappearance and now Phosphorus and Stone where the common thread was a mother with a long term mental illness.
“Have you heard of Logicomix?” Abhaya asked us.
To a dim silence, he said, “Well Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession by Apostolos Doxiadis doesn’t make the cut the way his other book did. “
“The comic book fraternity was not frothing at the mouth with excitement that mathematics and comics could make a good combination, but Logicomix worked for me. Uncle Petros is different. It’s about how mathematics can take you to the edge and how not being able to solve the GoldBach’s Conjecture drove a scientist insane.”
Abhaya is now reading the very interesting book How the Universe got its spots by Janna Levin. “It’s a series of letters that the writer has written to her mother (the mother connection again?) and she touches on every theme possible from the scientific to the sentimental.”
Another book I had read besides The Search Warrant was a book called Ignorance by Milan Kundera. I’ve always been apprehensive of reading Kundera as his aura as a writer and a thinker is great and you wonder if you can do justice to his work as a reader.
However, Ignorance is a book I understood. Perhaps it made sense to read about the experience of someone who was away from the home country. Irene has returned to her hometown. She left her country when there was strife and when she returned, she felt a bit of the traitor as the others stayed when she didn’t. Josef too left his country and found a home elsewhere. Mythically speaking, when Odysseus returned home to Ithaca,he felt more lost in Ithaca than on his travels. The journey can never come full circle. Even memory, the home of your identity, betrays.
What have you been reading?
May 27, 2015
by InstaScribe
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By InstaScribe
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