SATIRE

Photo from the official web site of the author (cited below).

If you know me – even moderately well – you know I love to write…
by Charlie Leck

Oh, how I love to write and how fortunate I am to be in a situation where I can spend all the rest of my days writing and that’s what I fully intend to do. Readership? Forget the question. It honestly doesn’t matter. What matters to me is that I put words down on paper as well as I possibly can.

I read a wonderful account this week of writers who are productive in their elderly years. One of my favorites, Gabriel García Márquez, introduced to me by one of our children, continues to write for hours each day even at the age of 82. Why he was asked? Essentially, his answer was that he wants to.

I’ve found I can’t really write each day, however, unless I read each day. Reading is nutritional. It provides the energy and fuel that allows me to write.

I am very drawn to satire – not comedic satire, mind you, but real, honest, biting and witty satire. I'd like to write good satire. A friend of mine told me to forget it.

“Satire,” he told me, “requires subtly. You are about as subtle as an anvil dropped on a blacksmith’s foot.”

I guess he’s correct.

I read a wonderfully satirical piece this week in the New York Times – in the Education Life section – by Walter Kirn. I’m sure it was satirical. Gosh, I hope it was.

“I could never go back there (Minnesota) now. It bothered me that I’d ever even lived there, knowing that people here on the great coast (people like me – the new emerging me) had been laughing at us all along. But what troubled me more was the dawning realization that had I not reached Princeton, I might never have discovered this; I might have stayed a rube forever.”

That’s I. I’m a Minnesota rube. I’m the guy the little bastards back at Princeton laugh at. Oops! Sorry! Let’s rewrite that… “I’m the guy at whom the little bastards back at Princeton laugh.” Yet, even I know that this Princeton graduate should have used the pronoun "I" in the above paragraph and not "me." It's "(people like I (am) -- the new emerging I)..."

“Have you thoroughly analyzed the poetry of Wallace Stevens?”

“I’ve thoroughly read Robert Bly.”

The little bastards titter quite loudly and look at each other with flushed cheeks.

“How about Proust?”

Well, I admit to them I’ve not read Proust, but I boldly boast that I’ve read all of Gabriel García Márquez. Isn’t that good enough?

Titter! Titter!

Princeton is such a long way from Minnesota. During my senior year in high school I went to Princeton for the high school debate championships. I and my partner got soundly beat – drummed really – and finished in an embarrassing sixth place position. Never mind that it was out of over 100 high schools. It was humiliating.

I was never cut out of Princeton cloth. I’m a country boy. Now, a Minnesota boy

Kirn writes:

“And, for me, profoundly enlightening. Who knew that serious art could be like this? Who would have guessed that the essence of high culture would turn out to be teasing the poor saps who still believed in it? Certainly no one back in my home state, Minnesota.

“I decided that it was time to leave behind the sort of folks I’d been raised around and to stand with the characters who’d clued me in.”

Thanks, Mr. Kirn, for the good writing – as long as you’re being satirical.

SATIRE
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word satire derives from the “Latin satura, sitira, perhaps from (lanx) satura ...dish of mixed ingredients,….” I like that well enough. The big, credible book lists “wit” as a synonym. It defines satire as “a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn” or “tenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly.”

Britannica refers to a Samuel Johnson definition that calls it a “censure of wickedness or folly.” It further says that “wherever wit is employed to expose something foolish or vicious to criticism, there satire exists…”

Yeh, Kirn’s LOST IN MEDIOCRACY – THE EDUCATION OF AN OVER ACHIEVER was satire – and it wasn’t a censure or ridicule of me or Minnesota. Good stuff!

To Write Well

The blogosphere is not the place to search for great writing, though…
by Charlie Leck

Since about 1973, over thirty-five years ago, there has been nothing I would rather do with my quiet, private time than write. Around me, here in my study, are volumes and volumes of my letters, essays and both short and long stories. They amount to thousands and thousands of pages. I can't imagine that they are anything but an average sort of literary accomplishment; however, I can say the production of these pages has brought me enormous happiness.

Thousands of pages of my work, from between 1966 and 1977, including over one-hundred poems and 135 essays were lost during a hectic time in my life. They are not to be mourned by anyone other than myself; however, I would love to retrieve a few of those poems that were particularly meaningful to me.

A friend was visiting us a few weeks ago and shook her head in amazement at the volume of blogs I have been producing. She said that she couldn't keep up.

Blog writing is simple compared to my other efforts. A blog gets about two or three revisions – that's it. A serious essay may get written a dozen times or more before I am satisfied and put it aside as accomplished (only I would likely use that adjective to describe my final products). Yet, there is some brilliant writing on the blogosphere; Stan Fish is one example; Blair Hurley has a creative writing blog and he produces some good essays. I'm also pleased with the work of Cynthia Harrison. A blog called Writing Fiction supplies a lot of good advice for writers wanting to be published. Here's an extraordinary list of links for writers.

Years ago I read a book by John Braine, Writing a Novel, which emphasized the importance of reading great novels as a foundation for attempting to write one. He listed dozens of titles that one who is attempting to write must read in order to write well. Gullibly, I copied the list and began to read each one that I hadn't already read. I got hooked on reading and worked my way quickly through each one of them in less than a year. Was I ready to write the great American novel? Not by a long shot!

More recently I read Jane Smiley's intriguing work, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. Smiley talks about confronting 'writer's block' and deciding that she would defeat it by reading 100 of the great novels in one year. I mentioned that to a friend and expressed my amazement. His reply was that this wasn't such a great feat, but an easy exploit. Now wait! In 365 days that means she would be reading a novel each 3.5 days. That's okay, I suppose, if we're talking about The Old Man and the Sea. However, Smiley was talking about a more extensive, classic list of great novels. She displays her list in the front of her book; it includes authors like Shikibu, Boccaccio, Fielding, Balzac, Melville, Wilde, Joyce, Kafka, Proust and Nabokov. One doesn't casually rush through some of these authors in just a few days unless one is a genius. I'm not. Interestingly, one of Garrison Keillor's novels was on Smiley's reading list.

Frankly, it took me more than two weeks to read Smiley's work; though, of course, I had plenty of other things to get done during that two week period.

What admiration I have for extraordinary writers! These are among my current list of favorites. The list also gets regularly revised.

• John Updike
• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• Mark Helprin
• Richard Russo
• Ernest Hemingway
• Saul Bellow
• Gabriel García Márquez
• Thomas Hardy
• Willa Cather
• William Faulkner
• Charles Dickens
• Feodor Dostevsky
• Garrison Keillor
• P.G. Wodehouse
• Tim O'Brien
• James Dickey
• Marilynne Robinson

These are coming just off the top of my head as I tap on the keys beneath my fingers. If I gave it thought, the list could go on and on. I am aware that there are not enough women on the list. I'm not sure that's my fault.

I just finished reading two books by women and both were brilliant and meaningful. They probably belong on the list. Patricia Hampl is a Minnesota woman – from St. Paul – and a brilliant, nationally recognized author. Her book, A Romantic Education, is one of the finest memoir volumes I've ever read. Her newest, The Florist's Daughter, is an absolute delight. One can tell that hours upon hours of writing and rewriting and revising each chapter were involved in this final product.

"Still holding her hand now, I glance away from the figurine my mother has become. I turn to the big window that is black and gives me nothing but my own face. Then I turn to the walls, the cartoon clock, the square calendar – the full compass of these days in the shadowy room. I'm waiting for light to break. It'll be another long night. The last one, probably."

My word processor doesn't like the above paragraph. It is filled with little green, squiggly underlinings that suggest revisions are necessary. Brilliant writing doesn't follow the rules of business letters or journalism editors. Great writing has heart, feeling and life.

The best two novels I've read in recent years?
Easy! Gilead by Marilynne Robinson and Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo.

The years are dashing by quickly; yet I continue to work on my writing skills. Nothing fascinates me quite so much as writing. In terms of reading, I've been stuck on non-fiction for quite some time. Now I must get back to the novel.

Is there a perfect sentence?
Gertrude Stein thought so and she pointed to one written by Hemingway.

"In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more."

Oh, gosh! I am filled with envy – and admiration!

"In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their tails. The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains." [Ernest Hemingway: In Another Country]

Oh, gosh! Look how Hemingway repeated himself about the coldness of season. The newspaper editor would red-line it for deletion. For Hemingway the repetition was essential to emphasize the chill that overwhelmed him. The reader begins to feel the chill also and is penetrated by it.

What next?
Resting here on my reading table, I have a copy of Willa Cather's Sapphira and the Slave Girl. I shall crack the cover today and begin reading it.