REALITY HUNGER: A MANIFESTO, by David Shields

Reality Hunger is a thought-provoking book. Nonfiction writers like me will probably come away from it thinking about where to draw the line between fiction and nonfiction. Should there be a line at all? Maybe a blurrier line? Do we need new forms or a new taxonomy? Are we obsessed with reality? (I think I am.) Non-writers will probably ponder how the books they read are put together. Did the author base this novel on facts, possibly autobiographical? Is this alleged nonfiction piece journalistically nonfiction? Consider the books you read, but the magazine articles, too, and the television you watch. (Reality TV!) True? Not true? Have you investigated? Are you skeptical?

Reality Hunger is made up of short, numbered entries that circle around a particular cryptically-named topic: Memory, Books for people who find television too slow, Contradiction, Thinking, Manifesto. Don't get too hung-up on the section titles, though, because the numbered entries are all interesting, even if the section titles are not inviting. Check this one out:

615 What actually happened is only raw material; what the writer makes of what happened is all that matters. 

This rings true for me, the creative nonfiction writer, because I take an experience, a thought, a place, or even the concert I'm watching on PBS right now, and create some analysis of it. It is a fact that I am watching the Vienna Philharmonic New Year's concert right now on my TV. You can't argue with that. To make this story my own, I have to provide some sort of analysis or reaction. You may disagree with me that this concert is an annual treat, but you can't disagree with me that I see it as an annual treat. Tonight's host, Hugh Bonneville (from Downton Abbey) was just standing in the Vienna Opera House!!! You may not be excited by Hugh Bonneville or the Vienna Opera, but I am because I am a Downton fan and I got to tour the Vienna Opera when I was there in 2015. I remember its opulence, and I remember being impressed at how important opera is to Viennese culture. While you may not agree with me or share my taste or travel history, but reading my thoughts, you understand why I enjoy watching this concert on TV. Maybe I haven't convinced you to watch it, but I have explained my music nerd-ness. Go back to #615 above and read it again.

The Vienna Opera on the Ringstrasse, 2015

573 To write only according to the rules laid down by masterpieces signifies that one is not a master but a pupil.

Think about Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms (staying in Austria) for example: if they hadn't broken the musical rules they were taught we probably wouldn't remember them today. They broke the rules and created new art that got attention. They were innovators! I chose this excerpt because it illustrates the concept in this book that got the biggest reaction out of me. At the end of the book is an Appendix. Here, the author, David Shields, explains that the numbered quotes were not all his original thought. Some are. Some, like #573 above, are not. Personally, I did not appreciate not knowing as I read the book that these were not all David Shields's thoughts. In fact, in the Appendix he writes, "However, Random House lawyers determined that it was necessary for me to provide a complete list of citations; the list follows (except of course for any sources I couldn't find or forgot along the way.)" He encourages the reader to tear these pages out and destroy them. WHAT?!?!?!?! I spend my life teaching college students how to cite their sources and why this is necessary. Unlike David Shields, I don't emphasize copyright. I tell students that it is important to cite borrowed material in case your reader or listener would like to follow up on some quote, and to read more. Here's a perfect example: #573 above is a quote from Prokofiev, a Twentieth-Century composer who will probably be included in one of my 2019 lectures. I'd love to know the context of this quote so that I can use it (and cite it), but I won't get that from Shields. I'll have to start from scratch to find where, when, and why Prokofiev said or wrote this sentence. All I find in the Appendix is that #573 came from Prokofiev. I'm not even sure if he's referring to Dmitri Prokofiev, the composer, or Fred Prokofiev, the barkeeper.

Aside from my disagreement with David Shields over the provenance of these quotes, I found this to be an intriguing, thought-provoking, and worthwhile book. I marked many of the quotes to re-visit when working on various upcoming projects, and some just to think about further. If you have an interest in writing, reading, truth, or fiction vs. nonfiction, get your hands on this book! (Just know that not all of the entries come from the same mind!)


 

The Pine Barrens by John McPhee

I was never a scientist. I was only briefly a science student because it was required. Nonetheless, one of the most critical life-changing events of my teenage life happened because of a research paper assigned by a high school Biology teacher. All of the students in the class were required to write a research paper about the Pine Barrens region of our home state of New Jersey. My friend and I did not know how to approach this, so upon arriving at the Hamilton Public Library we mustered up courage to ask the reference librarian. Of course we expected her to be mean, aren't all librarians? We were so young. That librarian took the time to show us how to look up newspaper articles in the New York Times Index (big red books) and The Reader's Guide to Periodic Literature (fat green books). I had no idea that the library saved old issues of magazines and newspapers and could retrieve them if you asked for them with the titles, dates, and volume numbers listed in the big red and green books. This was huge. "Not all of the newspapers and magazines will be in print," she probably said, and I can make an educated guess about this because I've been teaching library patrons about these mysteries of knowledge for 25+ years now. "The newspapers and magazines we don't have in print will likely be on microfilm, like The New York Times which we have back to its beginning." I remember being stunned. We looked up the Pine Barrens, found the dates and pages we needed, and the librarian taught us how to use the giant microfilm readers similar to the one Brick added to his family's living room decor on the TV show, "The Middle."

The librarian had helped other students with the Pine Barrens topic, so she was able to recommend a compelling read about the region by author John McPhee. The Pine Barrens (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968) was the first nonfiction book that wowed me to the point of wanting to be a nonfiction

writer myself someday. First I had to study Music Theory and Library Science, and then I finally got around to advanced study in Creative Writing. (I received my MFA in July.) But anyway, THAT BOOK is so compelling that I bought my own copy with my allowance and savored it. McPhee told us about a certain treefrog that only lives in the Pine Barrens, and how the cranberries grow there in bogs where they are harvested by local residents called Pineys. Pineys work "the cycle" which is a string of jobs relating to the Pine Barrens environment including cranberry harvests, blueberry harvests, and sphagnum moss collecting. (Both berries grow well in the sandy soil of that region.) It was fascinating then and it is still fascinating now. The book might be somewhat dated, but it is still in print which should tell you something. McPhee's writing style includes interviews with experts on whatever topic, and I can imagine him asking at the conclusion of an interview, "Who should I talk to next?"

Read the book. I wouldn't steer you wrong, would I?

The reason The Pine Barrens is on my mind is that John McPhee, a Princeton native, has just released a book called Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process, (also Farrar, Straus and Giroux) in which he writes about writing. I love reading writing about writing. I'm savoring each essay, reading slow. Slow reading. Savoring. The second essay included, to my delight and fascination, a story about McPhee when he was preparing to write The Pine Barrens, and I hadn't formulated my nonfiction research organizing strategy yet, but oh how I wish we could have collaborated on that book!

that Pine Barrens book, and he didn't know how to go about it. There was so much information, coming from research, interviews, and observations, that he put himself flat on his back on a backyard picnic table and just thought about organization and about all that research. After a few days he figured out a strategy to mold all that information into a logical story, and he got up off the picnic table and went to his typewriter to write it. (Yes, he did leave the table to eat and sleep he assures us.) This fascinates me because it is a story about how a favorite author wrote one of my all-time favorite books. It delights me because I'm teaching an actual 3-credit nonfiction writing course next semester on how to organize research for nonfiction prose into a coherent story. I was 5 when McPhee was writing The Pine Barrens, and I hadn't formulated my strategy for organizing research for nonfiction yet. What an interesting conversation we would have had!

But Beautiful [A Book About Jazz]

Dyer, Geoff. But Beautiful [A Book About Jazz]. Picador, 1996.

I was impressed with how Geoff Dyer writes about music. I picked up the book with a certain prejudice, since I had just read about how he likes to study a subject intensely for a few years and then create a book about the topic. He calls it ‘gatecrashing.’ This sounds familiar: I do kind of the same thing although I may not immerse myself for quite as long (usually it’s a year-long project chosen on New Year’s Day), and I produce an article or essay instead of a full-length book. I’ll be honest with the reader about my dilettantism and even crack jokes at my own expense. I blogged about my gatecrashing here in 2012: http://margaretmontet.blogspot.com/2012/12/resolving-happy-new-year.html.

What would a whole book about jazz by a non-jazzer be like? It was compelling! Without using jargon, he describes the sonic fabric, the onstage environment, and influences acting upon the musician. It’s no secret that many depend(ed) on substances in order to cope with life on the road, or unstable home and family lives damaged by that life on the road. They toured anyway, creating new interpretations of standard solos and tunes as they travelled from town to town. That recording you’ve listened to a thousand times of Art Blakey’s group playing “A Night in Tunisia” would sound different live in Philadelphia, and different again in Chicago. Dizzy Gillespie’s version would sound different still. You’d still recognize the tune, but the performances would differ. The point in jazz is not to make your performance sound the same as the original (as with a pop or rock cover band), but to make it sound new and unexpected. With the standard tunes often performed in jazz, it’s not even common knowledge who recorded it first. 

But Beautiful profiles Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Ben Webster, Charles Mingus, Chet Baker, and Art Pepper. Somehow, Dyer makes clear to the reader that the performance being created onstage as we read is a direct product of the experiences and tribulations that each musician has gone through. Their emotions and memories come out in the music. We are there on the stage with the musician, with cigarette smoke impeding our breathing, and the sound of ice in glasses mingling with the music. Dyer is a Brit—this is obvious from words like serviet for napkin—and he seems unaware of jargon that an average American jazz fan like me would know. At one point he has Ben Webster telling Charlie Parker that “you don’t play the tenor sax that way.” But we all know, (don’t we?), that Parker played alto saxophone. I’ve noticed over the years that saxophone players say ‘saxophone,’ not ‘sax,’ or more simply refer to the range: ‘Charlie Parker played alto.’

These quibbles don’t take away from the book. The descriptions of the musicians are superb. I was tempted to call out from work so that I wouldn’t have to put the book down.

“Throughout I relied more on photographs than on written sources…” That acknowledgement appears in the paragraph leading into Dyer’s bibliography. Sure, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but still, what a curious, interesting way to put together a profile of a jazz musician. That comment stopped me in my tracks as a lot of the book did. Dyer is writing as a listener and as such has no need for pesky jargon. He has to make himself clear to his readers, not his jazz subjects, and he does this with aplomb.

Arctic Dreams--Go Get a Sweater

Barry Lopez. Arctic Dreams. Vintage, 2001.

    The first book in this new BookoftheMonthClub is the 1986 National Book Award Winner for Nonfiction, and thus a model for nonfiction writers like me. But I think anyone interested in nature writing, a sense of place, or simply excellent, compelling prose would appreciate this particular book. I started it years ago and got distracted. It sat on my Shelf of Shame (books I started and didn't finish) until I read it for my Master of Fine Arts program (a different kind of book of the month club!). It's the kind of book that takes a while to get into, but the tenacious reader will be rewarded with an awareness of a unique environment on our planet. Narwhals live there!

Firkin. "Narwhal." 25 Sept 2016. https://openclipart.org/detail/262550/narwhal

     American writer Barry Lopez informs the reader in the book’s Prologue of three themes that guide Arctic Dreams:

• The influence of the arctic landscape on human imagination
• How a desire to put a landscape to use shapes our evaluation of it
• What does it mean to grow rich?

After reading the book, I’d agree to the first, but the second two points got lost for me in the complex texture of the narrative. They were addressed near the end. I was riveted by his descriptions of the stars of this vulnerable arctic ecosystem, the 607 (!!) species of birds, and the muskoxen, polar bears, and narwhals. I’ll read anything Barry Lopez decides to write about narwhals and wonder with him what that single tusk is meant for and what it is like to live in a three-dimensional acoustical space. As curious as I was about the animals my interest came alive when Lopez began describing the historic and contemporary people of the arctic region: Eskimos (his word), explorers, artists, historians, and writers, and how they have survived (or not) in the brutal, unforgiving climate. Representatives from different walks of life bring us multiple perspectives on a place. The arctic has influenced my human imagination and I haven’t even been there.

     “I am not entirely comfortable on the sea ice butchering walrus like this.” That sentence appears on page 408, in the Epilogue. It’s one of the most compelling in the book at face value, but it tells us about Lopez’s journey. He never seems like a neophyte to the reader, but this sentence reveals that although he’s uneasy with the walrus butchering, he is comfortable with the eskimos (and they with him) to be present at the event. He has told us about the eskimos’ relationship with the land and how hunting is a succinct metaphor for that relationship. In order to hunt, the hunter goes out on the land and becomes part of the animal world. During the walrus butchering, Lopez has become part of the eskimo world and the animal world. Lopez does not treat this experience lightly.

     Lopez ponders the theme of ‘a sense of place’ throughout the book. He admits that he loses perspective and distance while contemplating the various kinds of Ice: icebergs, glaciers, ice islands, tabular icebergs, nilas, gray ice, pingos, and ice shelves. Imagine having to ask if that animal is a small one up close or a large one far away! Lopez read many journals about the same regions, realizing through the process that gaps in knowledge emerged eventually. Also through his careful study of the history of exploration in the region, he notes that the earlier explorers were simply trying to find a Northwest Passage and get through it. Later explorers planned to ‘overwinter’ and learn what they could about the environment. He identifies patterns in historical writings of exploration rather than merely reporting interesting factoids. Considerable thinking about thinking is going on in this book.

     Maps, Lopez says, give us a false sense of place. The making of maps is traditionally a contemplative exercise. ‘Imaginary lands’ and ‘fabled landscapes’ are depicted, and sometimes maps are used as mnemonics—here is where that person lived, here is where I saw that deceased willet. I was inspired to draw a mnemonic map of a walk I take often. It’s not easy to get things in the right place on gridded streets, so imagine the difficulty of mapping a jagged coastline.

     Lopez describes how land and place work their way into the mind of a person. The place humbles the person and he becomes part of the landscape along with the polar bears and muskoxen. He’s like the animals, depending on the landscape for survival. That’s the large sense of place, the Umwelt, or ‘our place.’ I cannot comprehend the mind-expanding experience of living in the arctic. The closest I come to that kind of dangerous beauty is watching a huge blizzard or hurricane and then dealing with the recovery. It is awesome in the literal sense as well as the vernacular. Nature is boss and will put me in darkness or light as she sees fit.

     On a smaller scale, one might find an object, a tool or a building, and wonder what ideas were attached to this artifact when it was created and used. Take this line of thought further and imagine what thought accompanies industry in the arctic region. Those not part of the landscape probably think “What else is it good for?” and “It is too vast to be hurt.” The land must produce somehow or it is a waste of real estate. We readers of Arctic Dreams know this is not true. This immense, accident-prone ecosystem supports life independent from what we know as far as we know. There’s no waste in that.

     “I lost for long moments my sense of time and purpose as a human being.” Lopez says this on page 404 as he contemplates the glacial landscape at Axel Heiberg Island. At times, this was my experience while reading this book. I lost track of time and place and achieved a clarity of the reading mind similar to the ‘flow’ in creativity. The rich tapestry of Lopez’s National-Book-Award-winning prose knocked me out. I’ve known this phenomenon before, but it is a rare treat to be so transformed and transfixed.