Sven Birkerts Day!

Sven Birkerts’ “The Time of Our Lives” brings up many interesting and stirring points. For me, the ones below struck the biggest chord. I’d like to hear what you think about these quotes or points, and other things I haven’t brought up.

“Memoir begins not with event but with the intuition of meaning” (3)

“All I know is that there came a point in my life when the memories and feelings started coming in loud and clear. It was as if cause and effect had fallen into some new alignment” (5)

“…use the vantage point of the present to gain access to what might be called the hidden narrative of the past” (8)

“To trust in the details is but the beginning” (10)

The talk of Proust’s influence by Bergson’s idea of voluntary and involuntary memory (11-13) and examples in Nabokov’s Speak, Memory (14-15)

Other points for possible discussion/thought include: men write of their fathers and women their mothers (18) and “we are experiencing a crisis of representation in the arts, literature included” (21)

In Birkerts’ other essay “Strange Days” I’m particularly interested in your thoughts on how he uses time and sensory perception and what effect this has on you the reader, and whether this is something you’ve seen before, or something you’d like to try out?

Feel free to answer/comment in any way…

I look forward to the discussion below and in class. Speaking of which I have devised a couple of fun activities for class. So hope to see you there.

Cheers!

Christopher

Playing With The Dark Arts

The Dark Art of Description by Patricia Hampl is one of my favorite craft essays. This is not becuase I feel like it presents some revolutionary ideas on writing nonfiction but rather pulls out and polishes an inherent and fundamental truth about writing that we might sometimes forget about.

This passage speaks most clearly on her feelings about description I believe: "In attending to these details, in the act of description, the more dynamic aspects of narrative have a chance to reveal themselves–not as action or conflict or any of the theoretical and technical terms we persist in thinking as of the sources of form. Rather description gives the authorial mind a place to be in relation with the reality of the world."

I think this idea, this tether or entrance, we have via description is perhaps the most mesmerizing way to go about writing. A narrative arc without a well told world or tea cup is just a structure with no adornments. I am curious how all of you see description in you writing. Is it the trappings that you add to the story or is it the story itself? How important are well chosen details and can they do more than create the couch for your narrative to sit on? In best or worst case what do details do? All of these questions I think speak to the same function of detail in your writing.

I am also curious on everyones thoughts in regards to the section in which she speaks about using detail to get to a story she didn't know she wanted to write: "Description written from the personal voice of my own perception, proved even to be the link with the world's story, with history itself." The story she arrives at from the teacup she believes is the act of divine description. Thoughts? Have you ever had a similar experience?

And speaking of experience I'd like to set aside a moment to consider this in tandem with our essay Arrival Gates. How do you see the detail as divine in this essay? Is it functioning in the way Hampl suggests?

I am also curious just on your thoughts about the essay: it's structure in relation to the squiggly lines we talked about. About the bait and switch in the tour of disaster? And the almost zealous conversation and comments about time and arrival?

Happy thinking.
-Erin