{"id":13246,"date":"2013-04-26T12:17:39","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T16:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=13246"},"modified":"2013-04-26T12:17:39","modified_gmt":"2013-04-26T16:17:39","slug":"getting-the-syrup-to-pour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/getting-the-syrup-to-pour\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting the Syrup to Pour"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"From<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: visual.ly’s infographic-style interpretation of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Shape of Stories” theory. Click to enlarge; go here<\/a> (starting at the bottom of the page) to see Vonnegut’s own expression of the idea: a lecture whose text (with drawings) appeared in his<\/em>\u00a0A Man Without a Country. See also the <\/a><\/em>Brain Pickings<\/a> post on it<\/a>\u00a0— including a video.<\/em>]\n

From\u00a0whiskey river<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(two italicized stanzas):<\/p>\n

Why We Tell Stories<\/strong>
\nFor Linda Foster <\/span><\/p>\n

1<\/span><\/p>\n

Because we used to have leaves
\nand on damp days
\nour muscles feel a tug,
\npainful now, from when roots
\npulled us into the ground<\/p>\n

and because our children believe
\nthey can fly, an instinct retained
\nfrom when the bones in our arms
\nwere shaped like zithers and broke
\nneatly under their feathers<\/p>\n

and because before we had lungs
\nwe knew how far it was to the bottom
\nas we floated open-eyed
\nlike painted scarves through the scenery
\nof dreams, and because we awakened<\/p>\n

and learned to speak<\/p><\/div>\n

2<\/p>\n

We sat by the fire in our caves,
\nand because we were poor, we made up a tale
\nabout a treasure mountain
\nthat would open only for us<\/p>\n

and because we were always defeated,
\nwe invented impossible riddles
\nonly we could solve,
\nmonsters only we could kill,
\nwomen who could love no one else<\/p>\n

and because we had survived
\nsisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
\nwe discovered bones that rose
\nfrom the dark earth and sang
\nas white birds in the trees<\/p><\/div>\n

3<\/p>\n

Because the story of our life<\/em>
\n becomes our life <\/em><\/p>\n

Because each of us tells<\/em>
\nthe same story<\/em>
\nbut tells it differently<\/em><\/p>\n

and none of us tells it<\/em>
\nthe same way twice<\/em><\/p>\n

because grandmothers looking like spiders
\nwant to enchant the children
\nand grandfathers need to convince us
\nwhat happened happened because of them<\/p>\n

and though we listen only
\nhaphazardly, with one ear,
\nwe will begin our story
\nwith the word and<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Lisel Mueller [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Let us think of the still nameless poets, still nameless writers, who should be brought together and kept together. I am sure it is our duty to help these future benefactors to attain that final discovery of themselves which makes for great literature. Literature is not a mere juggling of words; what matters is what is left unsaid, or what may be read between the lines. Were it not for this deep inner feeling, literature would be no more than a game, and we all know that it can be much more than that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jorge Luis Borges [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In the Garden of Eden<\/strong><\/p>\n

No one tells much about it,
\nbut there were vultures in the Garden of Eden,
\nTurkey vultures, to be exact.
\nDark eagles, they would soar like gods
\nvoiceless, their wings held out in blessing,
\ntheir unfeathered heads the red jewels
\nof the sky of the garden.<\/p>\n

They were vegetarian then.
\nThere were no roadside kills,
\nno bones to pick, no dead flesh to bloom, ripen.<\/p>\n

And they were happy.
\nThey could not imagine
\nwhat they would become.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Sheryl St. Germain [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from\u00a0whiskey river<\/em> (the “he” here is Pirsig’s former self, whom he calls Phaedrus):<\/p>\n

The subject he’d been brought here to teach was rhetoric, writing, the second of the three R’s. He was to teach some advanced courses in technical writing and some sections of freshman English…<\/p>\n

To a methodical, laboratory-trained mind, rhetoric is just completely hopeless. It’s like a huge Sargasso Sea of stagnated logic.<\/p>\n

What you’re supposed to do in most freshman-rhetoric courses is to read a little essay or short story, discuss how the writer has done certain little things to achieve certain little effects, and then have the students write an imitative little essay or short story to see if they can do the same little things. He tried this over and over again but it never jelled. The students seldom achieved anything, as a result of this calculated mimicry, that was remotely close to the models he’d given them. More often their writing got worse. It seemed as though every rule he honestly tried to discover with them and learn with them was so full of exceptions and contradictions and qualifications and confusions that he wished he’d never come across the rule in the first place.<\/p>\n

A student would always ask how the rule would apply in a certain special circumstance. Phaedrus would then have the choice of trying to fake through a made-up explanation of how it worked, or follow the selfless route and say what he really thought. And what he really thought was that the rule was pasted on<\/em> to the writing after the writing was all done. It was post hoc<\/em>, after the fact, instead of prior to the fact. And he became convinced that all the writers the students were supposed to mimic wrote without rules, putting down whatever sounded right, then going back to see if it still sounded right and changing it if it didn’t. There were some who apparently wrote with calculating premeditation because that’s the way their product looked. But that seemed to him to be a very poor way to look.\u00a0It had a certain syrup, as Gertrude Stein once said, but it didn’t pour. But how’re you to teach something that isn’t premeditated? It was a seemingly impossible requirement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Robert M. Pirsig [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Rather than giving us license to write about what we don’t know, Henry James [in The Art of Fiction<\/em>] wants us to understand that the notion of experience is complicated. “The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life in general so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it — this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.” James astutely shifts the focus from the quantity of experience to the quality of experience by urging the writer, “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jerome Stern [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

The End of Science Fiction<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is not fantasy, this is our life.
\nWe are the characters
\nwho have invaded the moon,
\nwho cannot stop their computers.
\nWe are the gods who can unmake
\nthe world in seven days.<\/p>\n

Both hands are stopped at noon.
\nWe are beginning to live forever,
\nin lightweight, aluminum bodies
\nwith numbers stamped on our backs.
\nWe dial our words like Muzak.
\nWe hear each other through water.<\/p>\n

The genre is dead. Invent something new.
\nInvent a man and a woman
\nnaked in a garden,
\ninvent a child that will save the world,
\na man who carries his father
\nout of a burning city.
\nInvent a spool of thread
\nthat leads a hero to safety,
\ninvent an island on which he abandons
\nthe woman who saved his life
\nwith no loss of sleep over his betrayal.<\/p>\n

Invent us as we were
\nbefore our bodies glittered
\nand we stopped bleeding:
\ninvent a shepherd who kills a giant,
\na girl who grows into a tree,
\na woman who refuses to turn
\nher back on the past and is changed to salt,
\na boy who steals his brother’s birthright
\nand becomes the head of a nation.
\nInvent real tears, hard love,
\nslow-spoken, ancient words,
\ndifficult as a child’s
\nfirst steps across a room.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Lisel Mueller [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: visual.ly’s infographic-style interpretation of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Shape of Stories” theory. Click to enlarge; go here (starting at the bottom of the page) to see Vonnegut’s own expression of the idea: a lecture whose text (with drawings) appeared in his\u00a0A Man Without a Country. See also the Brain Pickings post on it\u00a0— including a video.] […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,5,50,324,372],"tags":[1459,2314,2340,3445,3446,3447],"class_list":{"0":"post-13246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-06_writing","9":"category-language-writing_cat","10":"category-researchresources","11":"category-style-and-craft","12":"tag-jorge-luis-borges","13":"tag-lisel-mueller","14":"tag-kurt-vonnegut","15":"tag-jerome-stern","16":"tag-robert-m-pirsig","17":"tag-sheryl-st-germain","18":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3rE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13246"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13281,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13246\/revisions\/13281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}