The Elegant Variation: GUEST: WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS A LIST

TEV DEFINED

The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

September 30, 2005

GUEST: WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS A LIST

Thanks, everyone, for your emails etc. Who knew that TEVing could be so much fun? I may not give Mark his microphone back.

In the quick housekeeping department of upcoming Voodoo Lounge events:

Tomorrow I'll be in Philadelphia, teaching and then signing at University of Pennsylvania Writer's Conference (along with many other writers, inlcuding friends Barry Raine, Richard Wertime, Foster Winans, and Katherine Ramsland...and, it seems, Ms. Maud!).

Next week there is XPN from Kelly Writer's House on Monday, WHYY with Damian McNicholl and Kevin Smokler on Tuesday, and the 215 Festival on Thursday.

Now...how about some lists. We all love lists. M. Chabon used to have a list on his site, "books that changed my life" kind of thing. So, okay. Absolute Favorite Books in absolutely no particular order and certainly with many gaps, with no more than 2 books given to 1 author and many authors with only 1 listed book yet so many others by them that I enjoy. So there.

In Patagonia and What Am I Doing Here? by Bruce Chatwin

My Own Country and The Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese

The English Patient and Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje

Lying Awake by Mark Salzman

Close Range and Heart Songs (an unfortunate title for a great book) by Annie Proulx

Frederick by Leo Leoni

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Unstrung Harp by Edward Gorey

Gorky Park and Polar Star by Martin Cruz Smith

The Chosen by Chaim Potok

A Farewell to Arms and Collected Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway

Ghost Road by Pat Barker

Salem’s Lot and Different Seasons by Stephen King

About Face by David Hackworth

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein

Koko and Shadowland by Peter Straub

The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama (he’s a very funny guy, the Dalai)

The Matarese Circle by Robert Ludlum

Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin

Woody Guthrie: A Life by Joe Klein

The Cider House Rules by John Irving

Monkfish Moon by Romesh Gunesekera

Meditations From a Movable Chair and Selected Stories by Andre Dubus

Dune by Frank Herbert

One Was Johnny by Maurice Sendak

Birds of America by Lorrie Moore

Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

Arkansas and Martin Bauman by David Leavitt

Where I’m Calling From by Raymond Carver

Wonderboys by Michael Chabon

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman

City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre

Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre

At Freddie’s by Penelope Fitzgerald

What am I reading this month? Recently finished Gilead. What an amazing thing, to write such a quiet book that stays so quiet and completely sustains. On a second reading, I’m sure it will be joining the list above.

I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction recently – something I’m prone to do when I’m in a deep writing phase like now (finishing third novel). One new book that has not been getting a lot of attention and should is The Farewell Chronicles by Anneli Rufus (I think it was excerpted on Salon, if you go looking for it). I read this book in galleys and it knocked me flat. In essence it’s a study of how one reacts to death, but this isn’t any kind of scientific study. It’s an emotional one, Rufus’s own examination of those who’ve passed from her life and her reactions and her thoughts that she is somehow not reacting the way one is supposed to. A very cool book.

Also, re-reading Joel Turnipseed. The memoir Jarhead got all the press in 2002/2003, but Joel’s anti-memoir (I just made that term up; good?) Baghdad Express really did it for me – smart, funny, real. Joel was a truck-driving Marine during the Gulf War who almost didn’t go because he was AWOL. More recently, Joel is home in the Twin Cities working on his second book. Last year he wrote a monthly column for the Go (ancient game like chess but older) organization, about his quest to become a master in one year. He didn’t succeed, but his essays were priceless. Hopefully they will find their way into wider print someday.

And I just finished reading The Dogs of Arroyo (set in Puerto Rico) and re-reading Half Moon (set in Yonkers), two novels from writer Nick DiGiovanni, neither of which you can read because they haven’t been published – a crime of publishing. Attention literary editors: please call Michelle Rubin at Writer’s House and sign this guy up. He’s a national treasure but no one outside of New Jersey has ever heard of him.

On deck? Darcey Steinke’s Milk; William Trevor’s A Bit on the Side; Annie Proulx’s Bad Dirt.

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Comments

Delighted to see Lori Moore in there, I love her writing - the short stories and Who Will Run The Frog Hospital - but she's not well known over here at all. It's a great list which includes some of my all time favourites and even stuff I haven't heard of to intrigue me. I might even pilfer one for my upcoming bookclub choice. :)

Posted by: Sinéad | October 01, 2005 at 02:12 AM

Glad to see Joel T. getting some attention. I couldn't understand why _Baghdad Express_ didn't get the attention that _Jarhead_ did--it was just as good.

Posted by: apsiegel | October 03, 2005 at 12:09 PM

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September 30, 2005