In “Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!”: Courage and Creative Nonfiction,” Brenda Miller demonstrates the value in “contrasting deeply interior material with a more outward persona” (104). Miller goes on to demonstrate the value of form as a way of “translating experience into artifact” (105). By treating experience as an external “artifact,” “the writer doesn’t need courage; the essay does” (Miller 104). In this way, the process of rendering our experience becomes a matter of how the writing of an experience contributes to the effectiveness of the chosen form. In other words, by “manipulating experience for the sake of art” a writer can approach difficult material without feeling vulnerable, or even needing courage to begin with (Miller 104).
Miller goes on to suggest that a focus on form, creates the potential for “inadvertent revelations” to arise from an essay (104). Miller defines “inadvertent revelations” as emerging insights that the essay “reveals….about the writer” (104). By focusing on form the writer directs the focus away from an “emotional center or ostensible topic,” and therefore uncovers “details that exist at an oblique slant to the center of the piece” (Miller 107). Miller uses “peripheral vision,” as a way of understanding the way this deviated focus functions. By directing the gaze away from the “emotional center” a writer can hone in on the fuzzy parts of their experience they previously never took note of, and/or expose “a truth accessed only through” an “artistic interpretation of experience (Miller 109).
Miller also examines essays that use “concrete forms” as a way of transferring the need for courage onto the essay (107). Among these forms, Miller presents the “braided essay,” and describes it as a “kind of armor” to use when writing about particularly sensitive material (106). She uses Sherry Simpson’s essay, “Fidelity” as an example of how the “braided essay” negotiates with “the strong emotions involved in dealing with sensitive, emotional material” (107). Miller notes that Simpson’s braided essay employs a “container scene,” a main image that “both bolsters and buffers the emotional material to come” (107). This use of a “container scene” also provides “narrative momentum,” and “contains” or frames the “sensitive, emotional material” being dealt with (Miller 107).
The following questions are ones that came up for me in my reading of Miller and Doerr’s essays. Feel free to answer one, some, or none of them, particularly if you have your own question about these essays that I haven’t posed here. I look forward to your thoughts!
In reference to Miller’s essay:
- What happens to the remembered self when we treat our experiences as “artifacts?”
- Miller suggests that “honesty, authenticity, [and] bravery are “traits [that] emerge under cover of form, voice, metaphor [and] syntax” (109). Do you agree with this statement or no? How do you think “authenticity” comes through in your own work?
- How do you write about “sensitive, emotional material” (107)? Do you have a tendency to use certain forms over others? How does courage play a role in your writing?
- When you write does “momentum” ever take over, where you don’t “even know what [you’re] writing until [you’ve] written it” (103)? How do you get to this point? Is there a specific form that lends itself to this kind of momentum?
And thinking about Doerr’s Essay:
- If we were to apply Anne Panning’s “wheel plot” to this essay, what is the “axle,” “main idea/object”? Does it align with the essay’s driving question?
- What did you make of the titles for each of Doerr’s sections? Were they effective, or ineffective? If you were to write a braided essay, would you use headings? Why or why not?
- How does “honesty, authenticity, [and] bravery” function in this essay?
- How does Doerr’s essay reflect or resist Miller’s description of the “braided essay” as a “kind of armor?”
Miller’s piece is one I’ve read before, and one that has stuck with me. I’m especially fond of her discussions of courage, and I always remember the “hermit crab” metaphor. I suppose this piece strikes me because I tend to write about “sensitive, emotional material” and so everything she says makes sense to me. I also dislike the term “bravery” when someone describes the act of writing that sort of material.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, to answer question #3, I do find that the braided or segmented essays works well for me when I write about “sensitive, emotional material.” On one hand, I think that there’s something to giving both the reader and the writer room to breathe when working through the hard stuff. I don’t think I ever decide that that’s what I’m doing, but it makes sense to me now. And, incorporating other ideas or scenes into an emotional/sensitive piece changes the affect. In Doerr’s piece, for example, there are all the emotions associated with both fertility treatments as well as with impending fatherhood to twins. But when the story of the O’Farrells accompanies these brief ruminations, there are new layers of feelings and ideas that ultimately give way to Doerr’s final, lovely thoughts in the last paragraph.
I do feel like the form acts as an armor in Doerr’s essay. His discussions about the difficulty of conceiving and the fears associated with his wife’s pregnancy make up a very small portion of the piece, yet they permeate the entire essay. Recounting the story of John and Mary O’Farrell cocoons the fragility of Doerr’s experience, and reminds me very much of the hermit crab shell and Miller's ideas on courageous writing.
I agree with Emery's opening statement. I remember this piece and have referred to it many times in conversations on cnf. I think it speaks to the idea that this craft is and can be more than a blood letting. I also really latch onto the instruction of finding something on the periphery to lead you, and then the other part, the thing you are trying to write about has a more natural way of seeping in. I think this is one of the reasons I am so attached to images. I find easier to talk about boiling eggs on the stove than I do my father. And yet, they end up being the same thing. I suppose that kind of gets after question three.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to question 4 on the Miller piece. I think we all know what that momentum feels like, that truth serum. For me it happens when I can stop thinking so much and I actually get to the writing. I know this is happening because I stop reading over what I am doing. When I am unsure I stop ever few sentences and read the thing to make sure it's still there.
In the Doerr essay, which I very much enjoyed. I live right near that little cabin. I drive by it nearly every single day. Never once have I stopped and wondered about exactly what it is. I think the little house in in this piece works as the periphery thing, the sloth. It gives him a doorway to examine how we make homes, what it means to bring people to us, and some ideas on love and hope. I am thankful in this for the braid. Hanging out too long in the O'Farrell section I think might lose readers. It also helps remind us time and time again that he is fabricating a narrative for these people. I think if we didn't come back to him often and remember where it was all coming from then we might get lost in that, or lose the power of that imagining.
Great job, Ariel, on summarizing some of the key ideas in the Miller essay; it's really helpful to anchor us back in the work as we respond to it here.
ReplyDeleteI'm grateful, too, for both Erin and Emery's comments, which are starting to convince me that Miller's thesis--that form can provide confessional writers refuge--makes sense. My other readings of the piece left me skeptical. What always did make sense was that deploying images and objects can shift the writer's (and reader's) gaze away from the "emotional center" of the work. The sloth in the flash piece Miller writes about is a fine example. Of course, this is also the nature of metaphor--it "stands in" for an idea or feeling--so we see it indirectly, and this would likely comfort the writer and make her feel less vulnerable. In practice, however, I wonder how true this is. I was working on a piece for many years that opened with a near total eclipse of the sun, an event I experienced at a summer camp in Wisconsin when I was young. This stood in for the darkness that descended on me that summer, and in the many years after. Writing about that eclipse was painful because the metaphor was so apt--that moment of dim and bent light so powerfully contained my feelings about what happened. But did it take less courage to write? I'm not sure, though I suppose it might have made it easier to publish. But once I commit to write honestly, the desire to say true things seems to wash away most reservations, and courage is secondary to craft: how can I say this so that people understand how it felt to be me? Then, I suppose, form arises as a consideration.
Ariel's application of the "wheel plot" from the Flash Nonfiction Guide to describe Tony's essay was spot on, I thought. And I do agree with both Emery and Erin that it could have served as a kind of "armor," though I wonder whether he felt it was really necessary in that piece because the subject wasn't particularly confessional nor did the narrator seem especially vulnerable. I'm looking forward to talking about this essay this week, especially the moves he makes that border on fiction. I find the essay inspiring and instructive.
Question #2 drives at an unsettling idea for me in Miller's piece: Miller suggests that “honesty, authenticity, [and] bravery are “traits [that] emerge under cover of form, voice, metaphor [and] syntax” (109). I can't help but wonder, are we really closer to honesty and authenticity when we speak in metaphor or alter our voice for the task at hand? I'm intrigued by this possibility but reserve a certain skepticism for some of the language used in this piece. Another passage Ariel mentions—“the writer doesn’t need courage; the essay does”—simply felt untrue to me, or misspoken. I think she is saying that courage isn't necessary at all in these instances when form or voice (or anything, really) removes the resistance that makes courage requisite to the work. I don't understand why she placed the attribute of courage on the essay itself.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Erin and Emery regarding the Doerr piece. To Erin's point, I loved the weaving of now and then, placing complementary ideas in proximity across broad spans of time. Through this structure, we are able to witness people caring for each other over a broad sweep of time. The conclusion ties all of the threads together. To Emery's, I felt the presence of Doerr's personal struggle from the moment of its mention. It is rare to hear the subject of infertility spoken of. I think it called for considerable courage.
The quote that stood out to me most in the Miller piece was her last sentence: “The evolution of nonfiction, for me, means that we have become adept at recognizing that artifact owes a debt to experience, but that experience itself no longer has the upper hand” (109). Responding, then, to the question what happens to the remembered self when we treat our experiences as “artifacts” I am inclined to say the selves are separated by “artifacts.” The remembered and remembering selves make sense to me in the way Miller expresses in her final lines “experience itself no longer has the upper hand.” I do not believe it is possible to write in a healthy or constructive way if the remembering and remembered selves cannot separate themselves. That is not to say that x amount of time has to pass, just that past and present must be able to distinguish themselves in some way. The person writing should hold some sort of mastery, like the back and forth of braided essays (for example remembering needlepoint to write about miscarriage), in order to move experiences into artifacts. To me, the remembering self is aware that an experience is becoming a piece, artifact, and so on and the remembered self is (to attempt to borrow another classmate’s metaphor) looking at a polaroid (a moment’s unfiltered snapshot) and trying to capture that with the proper and appropriate filtered form.
ReplyDeleteFor Doerr’s essay I liked the sectioning but don’t know how I felt about the numbers and titles themselves. I am drawn to subsections and love titling but they distracted me from the beauty of the essay’s braiding and stories. I am thankful nonetheless to have the exposure to this idea (I simply never thought of them for CNF) and would definitely consider it in my own work.
I'm really intrigued by what Miller identifies as something that seems like a paradox: "that writings imbued with qualities of what we recognize as 'honest' or 'brave' may actually be so strong because they focus away from that material directly" (107). It makes me think about some of the other conversations we've had about reflection time and the maturity of the now narrator. I remember when we read "Charade" a lot of people were surprised both that the author had written the piece so young and only a few years after the events of the essay.I don't think there's a formula for how long it takes to be able to reflect effectively and find an indirect way into the big honest thing, but I wish overall that it could happen sooner. Today I tried to write about something that happened yesterday, and it's an absolute wreck. I tried to reflect more, tried to find a significant image or anecdote that wasn’t about the exact point, but I just couldn’t find it yet. That's my attempt to answer questions 1 and 3.
ReplyDeleteI want to focus on the 2nd question about Miller though--I agree that things like style and form contribute to building up bravery and honesty in an essay, but I think something really significant is missing from that statement. I think an audience will be much more likely to praise writing as brave if the content is taboo in some way, and even then the reading can very so much, regardless of style. After reading Truth Serum a few years ago I looked into responses to it; I saw that many LGB people tend to appreciate the bravery because it's relatable and it can be hard to find something to relate to, and that many straight people appreciate it because they're baffled and humbled that one would have to be brave to talk about that content. I guess I'm just saying that readers will view things as brave not just because of how they're presented, but because of their particular relationship to the material and the material’s cultural situation.
That leads me to think about the writer views her own bravery...Miller often mentioned that essayists don't think they're brave when they're writing. I wonder how varied that experience could be--what happens when a writer is unaware of the consequences their writing might have, and that's why their material reads as brave? How is that different from the scenario Miller seems to be describing with her own writing?
I thought that the miller piece was kind of discouraging, and maybe it is because of my inexperience as a writer. In response to Ariel's 2nd and 3rd questions, I've chosen experiences and relationships that I wanted to figure out as the subjects of my essays, and for me, the question of form came as a sort of reaction, a desire to retroactively justify my exploration, and to avoid "making an ass of myself in public" by being so self-indulgent, as well as hopefully to produce something worthy of consideration in a graduate workshop. I also really appreciated Madison's comment, in that it kind of gets at the point that form alone is not responsible for how successful a given essay is going to be with a given reader. I've read lots of essays that didn't resonate with me at all, and their use of form just seemed hollow and pointless, but which other people found to be wonderful emotionally relevant writing. I've also read things that deeply impacted me, which other people didn't relate to or care about at all. Because of this, I think that the author's experiences and the meaning made of them, for me at least, have to take some primacy over craft.
ReplyDeleteI think that this is sort of illustrated by my reading of Doerr's essay. I absolutely loved everything he had to say about the O'Farrells and their Cabin and his research, but in his discussion of his own experiences with desiring to be a father, it all seemed so phony. There was nothing in there that I found relatable at all. If he had maybe examined the topic more directly instead of only obliquely connecting to it through the discussion of the O'Farrells, then maybe it would have been more interesting. As it was, it seemed to me that his wife and potential future family came second to his desire to play that role.
Reading Miller and thinking about your questions, Ariel, have both been really helpful this week as I try to avoid one of the biggest problems I had with my first workshop draft (not sharing enough narrative and hiding behind abstractions) to improve my second workshop draft. I still find myself hiding a bit, but I don’t know that it’s really an issue of needing to be brave (although it may be in some cases). I wonder how often form, metaphor, etc. help us avoid the feeling that we are whining or “navel-gazing” and instead writing something that others will connect to and want to read. In other words, when done well, these seem to be the magic ingredients that connect with the audience and make the essay worth reading instead of something that is more like reading someone’s diary entry or attempt to be booked on the Dr. Phil show. Does this make us braver, or does it just help us avoid wallowing in self-pity in our essays? I’m not sure. I do know that I did view my experience as an “artifact” to be explored when I drafted my first essay, and it created an emotional distance (or at least an appearance of emotional distance) that was problematic and that there seems to be a balance we need to find. Or maybe I’ve just created this wall between myself and some of my experiences to protect myself, and I really do need to find the right forms to break that wall down.
ReplyDeleteI love Doerr’s essay, but I wasn’t a big fan of the titled sections (or at least I didn’t really feel like they were necessary) until “Probably I’m Wrong About a Lot of This” (94). I love that the uncertainty was presented in such a concise way, yet it was emphasized, and then when I read “What Lasts” for the final section, the title helped prepare me for the reflection that followed (Doerr 95). That made the use of titled sections worthwhile to me.
I don’t know if I see the form of Doerr’s essay as armor, though. Maybe it was, but I also see the possibility that the form brought out some feelings in Doerr that he might not have discovered otherwise or that needed this form to be expressed so well.
I love how Emery referred to Miller's strategy of focusing on form as "room to breathe." As I was reading Miller for this week, I kept coming back to this 'attitude' regarding courage. Miller says that "courage seems to have been superseded by form" and that the best autobiographical writers "shift their allegiance from experience, itself, to the artifact they're making of that experience;" and "to do so, they mustn't find courage; the must instead, become keenly interested in metaphor, image, syntax, and structure" (104). I find that when writers are capable of making this move--to me it's incredibly courageous and is an intentional act of transformation in the writer. The reason I say this is because I battle with making this move--I've finally made to the stage that I can articulate on the page all of the feels and conflicts and narratives that rest at the emotional center, but haven't quite learned to walk, so to speak, in regard to finding the right form. To add to what you've all touched on about time and reflection, I have to concur that there isn't a fixed formula that can determine when a writer will be able to cross that bridge from 'then' into 'now' perspectives. I feel like that gap between perspectives, like Maddi mentions, is all contextual. But I think that in playing with form through metaphor and such could be useful in helping writers to bridge that gap. Hell, maybe even give them the courage to jump. Miller's suggestion about experimental forms made me wish I had read her piece before submitting my draft for this week.
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