
On Becoming an American Writer - chmaynard
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/04/19/on-becoming-an-american-writer/
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Nelkins
This essay is getting plenty of votes so maybe I am an uncultured yokel, but
to me this essay smacks of an inflated sense of self-importance. Lines like
"My generation of writers—​and yours, if you are reading this—​lives in the
shadow of Auden’s famous attack on the relevance of writing to life, when he
wrote that 'poetry makes nothing happen'" and "Only in America do we ask our
writers to believe they don’t matter as a condition of writing" and "I know
I’ll have a shorter career for being American in this current age, and a
shorter life also. And that is by my country’s design. It is the intention."
It comes off as one of those essays that is trying to use a veneer of
profundity to mask unsupported hyperbole.

Maybe I am being too harsh here...this is just a person who has written
something they feel passionate about and that reflects their personal
experience. The stories were touching, but what is the takeaway here? Raising
awareness that writers and their craft are under attack? Helping writers to
feel better about their self-worth? I'm curious to know what about this piece
resonated with other readers.

~~~
typomatic
> what is the takeaway here?

You didn't seem to have the endurance to make it to the closing paragraph, so
I've reproduced it here:

> I have new lessons in not stopping, after the election. If you are reading
> this, and you’re a writer, and you, like me, are gripped with despair, when
> you think you might stop: Speak to your dead. Write for your dead. Tell them
> a story. What are you doing with this life? Let them hold you accountable.
> Let them make you bolder or more modest or louder or more loving, whatever
> it is, but ask them in, listen, and then write. And when war comes—and make
> no mistake, it is already here—be sure you write for the living too. The
> ones you love and the ones who are coming for your life. What will you give
> them when they get there?

The author believes that writing, and especially writing in America, is
devalued to such an extent that he personally feels a sense of loss and fear.
His advice to himself and others is that writing and self-expression has real
value outside of whatever the people around you ascribe to it.

Let me know if you want me to break it down any more.

~~~
bernardino
> The author believes that writing, and especially writing in America, is
> devalued to such an extent that he personally feels a sense of loss and
> fear. His advice to himself and others is that writing and self-expression
> has real value outside of whatever the people around you ascribe to it.

I don't see why he would feel loss and fear. Do you think you could break it
down for me? I mean, American culture is particularly toxic and anyways, one
should not be influenced by it but rather think for himself. I would expect as
a writer he would be aware that writing in itself is for the writer, first and
foremost, then for anyone else. With that said, why would it matter if a
particular culture devalues writing? A writer knows inwardly that words and
words alone are beyond powerful. It just seems he is already aware of the
falseness of American culture, so why feel loss and fear in regard to what it
devalues? It's all gravy, just write.

~~~
watwut
That is not how feeling works and author talks about feelings. Breaking
feelings down is exercise in rationalization usually. Feeling is effectively
chemical reaction in your brain after all.

Why would you expect writer to feel the same feelings then you?

People are influenced by culture around them, that is just how we are wired
and that is what allowed us to build civilizations. The one "should not be
influenced by culture" is not fully achievable goal. The the extend it is
achievable, you start by realizing how it is influencing you, by thinking
about it and that is what article is doing.

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cryoshon
meh, as usual my opinion is the opposite here.

step one, don't become wrapped up in the ideal of being "a writer". find
something useful to say, then say it forcefully. or just churn out garbage to
pay the bills. nobody else is looking at your work with the same perspective
as you do.

step two, don't lament that readers might not read what you wrote. if you
build it, they will come, so long as your marketing team does their job right.

step three, open palm slam any notions of "profundity" into the ground,
immediately. profound things come in concise packages, and we call them data.
i guess if you're interested in making some kind of flowery Literature, you
might think that you could get a free pass out of this step, but no, you
can't. you can make things sound pretty and contain real information without
falling into the forced affectation of "Literature". it doesn't matter if
you're telling a story about fantastical characters or telling a story about
how there are four nitrogenous bases in DNA. don't aim for profound, aim for
communication of insight.

step four, if you're concerned that you're not impacting the world as a
writer, you're writing about the wrong stuff, or to the wrong people. the
author complains that swords beat pens. but that's a cop out. swords are
merely the continuation of the work of pens by other means. (shout out to
clausewitz, a guy who understood this principle very well)

finally -- and this is really something that cannot be said enough -- history
is a story of those who lived with both their feet on the ground and whose
focus was on putting one foot in front of the other. the more you fixate on
"living in the shadow of X" or "if only america valued Y, I'd Z" or "They
don't understand Us because We're Enlightened" or "Our Generation Of Writers"
the more you get lost in a fantasy world of thoughts which are disconnected
from the physical reality of your fingers smashing the keys of your keyboard,
which is the primary mode of productivity for writers. does any of the above
stuff prevent you from smashing those keys? no, if you are sitting here and
reading this, it does not.

think about stuff all the time, yeah. but don't talk yourself in circles when
it comes to things that you can't relate back to the physical world at the
moment. mental walls become real, but that doesn't mean that they bear any
weight. live in the here and now, and manipulate information which you can
prove or at least correlate to a physical phenomenon.

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ricksanch88
Well that was a beautiful and inspiring piece. Wasn't expecting that from
hackernews today.

