ENGL489 Advanced Portfolio Workshop LTs Stuff
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Need to be in touch with me?
LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 [email protected] www.leetorda.com |
Spring 2016 Office Hours:
W 2:00-3:00 R 1:00-2:00 Fridays 11:00 to 12:00 (noon) and by appointment Need to make an appointment? Click here: https://goo.gl/3CqLfo |
18 March 2016
The thing is, my movie idea would really be the book idea but in a movie. The one about the two sisters who kill people for their grandfather mobster. I can see how that would work as a movie. I have other book ideas, but I don't think they are as good for movies--like my idea about the man who walks away from his entire life on 9/11, leaving his wife and child, but who ends up moving from disaster site to disaster site, collecting the people he sheds--a kind of wife, a kind of daughter. I think that would make a good novel, but I don't know that I think it would make a good movie. I also have an idea about a superhero movie, but, again, when I think about that, I think about it in terms of a graphic novel first. I love movies. I always have, but I don't think in terms of making movies. I don't see the world like that. I know people who do. My father was one. We'd be watching a movie and he'd say something like "nice lamp" and I would not know what the hell he was talking about. But it would be a lamp in the background. I think people who want to make movies see the world this way.
Favorites. I've got too many favorites to write about. When I was a kid I used to wait until my mother would fall asleep on the couch on
Tuesday nights and then creep downstairs and turn Remington Steele on. I would sit there with a notebook and I would write down every line I thought was great. I don't really know if the lines were great, but the character loved old movies, and I wanted to be a kid who loved old movies. And, as TV shows go, it was super talky. I love talky shows. I think the difference between good TV and bad TV is totally about the script. A thin script means thin characters means thin plots means just blah. It doesn't have to be high-brow--like Breaking Bad or the Sopranos--though those are shows that are excellent and are excellent because of the essential story, the essential script of the show. But even a show like Grey's Anatomy or Scandal or, heck, Friends, though not really important or groundbreaking shows are good watchable stories. And that's all about the writing. On TV I want great story. I do. I like dramas better than sit coms unless the writing is totally perfect (Brooklyn 99, Blackish, old Modern Family come to mind).
Of course, as anyone will tell you, writers are the worst paid and worst treated part of the creative chain that leads to a movie. I think TV writers might not have it so great either. That's why people want to be show runners.
19 February 2016
What is yours like exercise:
My backyard is small. I don’t really mind its smallness; it’s its relative unloveliness that I mind more. My backyard is in the city, and it is blocked off by chainlink fence on two sides, an ugly garage on the other, and a loud neighbor on the other. But the beauty of my backyard, and there is a beauty to it, is the back porch that faces the backyard. It’s right off the kitchen and every morning, rain or shine, cold or hot, I go out on my back porch and feed my outdoor cat and drink my first cup of coffee of the day. And there I look out over my backyard. Beyond my backyard is my neighborhood in Jamaica Plain. I like to tell people that there are two parts of Jamaica Plain: there is Jamaica plain and Jamaica fancy. And I live in Jamaica Plain. They actually call my little end of JP, south from hyde park square and above Columbus Ave, Jamaica Spain. Most of my neighbors and all of the checkout staff at the Stop-n-shop speak almost exclusively Dominican Spanish. Which is harder than regular Spanish according to my Honduran neighbor, but he’s got his own issues. Anyway, I am a half mile from Jamaica Pond and 500 feet from the orange line at Jackson square—where there were two murders this year, knifings, but, still—the orange line is the best line. You can get anywhere in the city you want, if you can stand the smell.
12 February 2016
Breaking NewsI noticed language. I noticed how they say "according to" and "may have occured" The word unknown appears a lot. Can't confirm comes up a lot.
A relationship to facts--what's possible to know and what's not possible to know. The unknown. Here is for me the greatest example: when they release the name of the tapes called the Elliot Rodger retribution, they don't say for another whole day that it is acutally Eliot Rodger that is the suspect. And he is always the alledged suspect.
There is a precision to the information. We get a clear timeline. at 9:27 this happened. Cops are called at this particular time. The person turned down Del Playa Drive. There was a BMW. They report with precision as they know it. They were congregated at the Habit restaurant.
Quotes from actors involved.
Think, even, of the timeline of the release: the web ones happen hours after the shooting. The majority of the articles come out on the 24th and the 25th. All of the articles are out by the 30th.
The unfolding of the event. At first, it is immediate and related rather exclusively to the events at hand. The web entries are about sheltering in place. But, as more is known, other issues become of interest: Namely, gun control. We learn about this by learning very specifically about the players--about the killer through his videos. About the victims through profiles--I'm thinking of Christopher Martinez's father (I've got that quote on my website). I would also argue, wealth and privilege, and, also the killer's mysogeny. But, at first, none of that is apparent. Possibly mental illness. The role of the police and the killer's family in trying to prevent what happened.
Last thing: no commentary. Only facts.
Written by a lot of different, named people.
Editorials
So, most pointedly, every article has a clear opinion. It's got a clear argument about what happened. The governor should do something. St. Louis is a hotbed of racism. Inequality is historical. The cop should be named.
But it's not just opinion. These also have a call to action--this should be done. There needs to be an investigation. We need to do A, B, & C to the schools. The supreme court justices need to take this stand. That seems key to me.
Look at the timeline. This follows a story and is not really about the actual events in ferguson. If we think about this in the Santa Barbara piece, the events of these pieces are the events, but you can imagine the series of editorials about all the issues that seem to unfold as we learn more about stuff of the events.
Facts are used here as evidence of the rightness of their opinion. It is also not just facts from the events. In fact, there are no event facts really. There is information that comes from many, many years.
They are more broadly emotional.
29 January 2016
Here are some things that have stayed the same. I’m going to write about this generically.
Two: subgenres.
Three: Metaphor. In TTSH, the entire thing about bugs listening is a metaphor for what we need to do in the world. And, of course the most metaphorical piece of all that we read is A picture of A River. Here the writer, in very tight space, describes the image of the river styx—the river that leads people to the underworld, as a metaphor for the regular everyday misery of life. It took me a few reads to figure that out. The key lines were buried in there: “The worst thing that could happen was a lifetime of physical labor under ground.” “There was a river in my town: it did nothing.” “It takes the dead away from the dead.”
22 JANUARY 2016 ICRNs
I would say that the number one rule of the genre is to tell a personal story. Here he tells really two stories. He tells the story of his grandfather and his childhood. And it is a particular part of his childhood—his reading life. So perhaps that is another rule of the genre: you don’t learn everything there is to know about a person, you learn about what they choose to tell you.
The result of the story is that we understand something about how the author became the thing he became. An author. But, who knows, if he had become a fireman or a doctor or a lawyer or a cattle rustler he might have perhaps made the connection to that career. So, two points here, perhaps a rule of the genre is something about an author figuring something out about themselves in their present by considering events in the past. Another point: the author crafts the narrator to tell us the story he/she wants us to read. It connects to my second rule—we only learn some things.
I don’t know what rule the language of the piece suggests. He uses nouns as verbs. I like that. It is descriptive, but not by the use of adjectives. It is specific without feeling waited down by unimportant details. It’s the language version of rules 2 and 4 (I’ve lost count): you use the language you need to get the reader to see/be in the moment you want them to be. Some stuff goes by very fast—his reading summers. Some moments that would have taken less time than it did to read about it stretch out on the page. The writer is telling us what is important by how much space they devote.
We’d have to test these rules.
Well, in comparison, these two pieces have a lot in common. I’m going to guess, though, that not every piece of creative nonfiction is about the role reading and books played in becoming the person you came to be, but, in these two instances, that’s exactly what happens.
So, first rule: Tell a personal story. Check.
Rule two: tell us only what you want us to know and focus on. Definitely check.
Rule three: does the author seem to figure something out about himself? Check and double check.
So language here is different. Ray Bradbury was an accomplished writer in his last years of life. He read different texts and learned to write in different ways than Scabona. So, even with me reading both outloud, it’s clear that these are two different authors. So maybe there is something here about voice. Maybe there is a rule about sounding like your “authentic self.” I’m not sure why I put that in quotes because I just made that up, but there is something there I think.
On the other hand, there is still that same privileging of some moments and the skimming over of others.
Sample Writer's Notebook
The story I always tell about myself to my students in terms of my reading life is that I learned to read almost entirely out of guilt. When I was very young, no more than 4, I shared my room with my baby sister, and she was loud. I objected to my sister in all manner of ways. I objected to her simply being. One day I barricaded myself in my bedroom—excuse me, our bedroom—by moving a chest of drawers in front of the door.
I question this point of memory. I don’t understand how I could have managed that. I was a tiny child for any age and furniture, back then, was heavy. But, whatever I actually moved, the end result was that I was stuck in this bedroom. I was pouting primarily. I think.
Meanwhile, outside my door, my parents and what seems like all of my relatives, and, again, I contest this point of memory because I had a lot of relatives and it seems only marginally possible that they were all there at that particular moment. But it’s not impossible, because they were, actually, always around. My sister and I were the youngest of the youngest of the 8 original siblings. We filled a long drought of babies. We were greatly cherished.
When my family finally managed to get the door open they will tell you they saw me reading. But I was not reading. I was peering over the edge of a Charlie Brown Encyclopedia. Books previous to this I had largely used to build doll houses out of. But, at the time, I didn’t let on, and the result was that I was identified as a near genius and a reader. A proud family is a fearsome force.
The result of this grave misunderstanding was that my Aunts and Uncles, and as I’ve said I had many, started buying me books. And then there was the book shelf. Things were careening out of control. I’d either have to confess my status as an un-genius or I’d have to learn how to read.
You can see where this is going.
29 January 2016 DRAFT Mentor Text Memoir
The story I always tell about myself to my students in terms of my reading life is that I learned to read almost entirely out of guilt. When I was very young, no more than 4, I shared my room with my baby sister, and she was loud. I objected to my sister in all manner of ways. I objected to her simply being. One day I barricaded myself in my bedroom—excuse me, our bedroom—by moving a chest of drawers in front of the door.
I question this point of memory. I don’t understand how I could have managed that. I was a tiny child for any age and furniture, back then, was heavy. But, whatever I actually moved, the end result was that I was stuck in this bedroom. I was pouting primarily. I think.
Meanwhile, outside my door, my parents and what seems like all of my relatives, and, again, I contest this point of memory because I had a lot of relatives and it seems only marginally possible that they were all there at that particular moment. But it’s not impossible, because they were, actually, always around. My sister and I were the youngest of the youngest of the 8 original siblings. We filled a long drought of babies. We were greatly cherished.
When my family finally managed to get the door open they will tell you they saw me reading. But I was not reading. I was peering over the edge of a Charlie Brown Encyclopedia. Books previous to this I had largely used to build doll houses out of. But, at the time, I didn’t let on, and the result was that I was identified as a near genius and a reader. A proud family is a fearsome force.
The result of this grave misunderstanding was that my Aunts and Uncles, and as I’ve said I had many, started buying me books. And then there was the book shelf. Things were careening out of control. I’d either have to confess my status as an un-genius or I’d have to learn how to read.
You can see where this is going.
The moments are of course cumulative. I was not a reader and then I was one. I was not a good reader and then I was one. I was not a writer. And then I was one. I read Little House on the Prairie, over and over and over. I read Little Women, over and over. Gone with the Wind. Over and Over. I dust the old copies with special care now. If they were people I would take their arms and walk them to the most comfortable chair and kiss them tenderly on their brow and serve them tea and toast.
But you have to read on. And I did. I read all of Jane Austen. I read all of all of the Brontes. I read all of Edith Wharton. I am a
very thorough reader. It’s not enough to ever read around, only through.
On and on through books about queens (real) and horses (imagined) and first ladies (real). I am leaving out the difficult moments. I’m leaving out the two failed attempts to read Wuthering Heights. I’m leaving out Portrait of a Lady and that unhappy ending. But I became a very fast and excellent reader, now, in part because of these struggles, able to spot some imagery miles and miles away. I am no fun to go to the movies with—there is no plot I haven’t read before.
And then I read Virginia Woolf. I read To the Lighthouse because I wanted to be the sort of girl who read To the Lighthouse, but I didn’t know how to read To The Lighthouse. I had to slow down and reorient myself to reading. Suddenly, I needed to understand the semicolon. Woolf loves semicolons. I’m still not sure, but it feels to me that she uses them as a kind of cross between a comma and a true semi-colon. It separates out her bits of stuff and ideas and moments and images. There is a passage when Mrs. Ramsay is walking with a young man and he is rhapsodizing about walking in the world with a beautiful woman. I have the most vivid memory of reading the whole paragraph with all those semicolons, like I was sailing on a choppy sea, and then stopping and reading it again. I wanted to understand this piece in a way that I had never wanted to understand a paragraph before. I wanted to understand how she was using the semicolons. I wanted to understand how they were working to make the passage work the way it did. I’d never done anything like that before.
Maybe I’m wrong and I did read other things like that, but I feel certain this was an important moment. Because I think after that is the first time I tried, myself, to write with a semicolon. I tried them on like a new outfit. Sometimes I overdressed. But then I learned.
Somewhere along the line I became a reader in truth and not just in fiction and nothing was the same after that. I am forever in the debt of my sister, her birth, my family, and Charlie Brown.
The thing is, my movie idea would really be the book idea but in a movie. The one about the two sisters who kill people for their grandfather mobster. I can see how that would work as a movie. I have other book ideas, but I don't think they are as good for movies--like my idea about the man who walks away from his entire life on 9/11, leaving his wife and child, but who ends up moving from disaster site to disaster site, collecting the people he sheds--a kind of wife, a kind of daughter. I think that would make a good novel, but I don't know that I think it would make a good movie. I also have an idea about a superhero movie, but, again, when I think about that, I think about it in terms of a graphic novel first. I love movies. I always have, but I don't think in terms of making movies. I don't see the world like that. I know people who do. My father was one. We'd be watching a movie and he'd say something like "nice lamp" and I would not know what the hell he was talking about. But it would be a lamp in the background. I think people who want to make movies see the world this way.
Favorites. I've got too many favorites to write about. When I was a kid I used to wait until my mother would fall asleep on the couch on
Tuesday nights and then creep downstairs and turn Remington Steele on. I would sit there with a notebook and I would write down every line I thought was great. I don't really know if the lines were great, but the character loved old movies, and I wanted to be a kid who loved old movies. And, as TV shows go, it was super talky. I love talky shows. I think the difference between good TV and bad TV is totally about the script. A thin script means thin characters means thin plots means just blah. It doesn't have to be high-brow--like Breaking Bad or the Sopranos--though those are shows that are excellent and are excellent because of the essential story, the essential script of the show. But even a show like Grey's Anatomy or Scandal or, heck, Friends, though not really important or groundbreaking shows are good watchable stories. And that's all about the writing. On TV I want great story. I do. I like dramas better than sit coms unless the writing is totally perfect (Brooklyn 99, Blackish, old Modern Family come to mind).
Of course, as anyone will tell you, writers are the worst paid and worst treated part of the creative chain that leads to a movie. I think TV writers might not have it so great either. That's why people want to be show runners.
19 February 2016
What is yours like exercise:
My backyard is small. I don’t really mind its smallness; it’s its relative unloveliness that I mind more. My backyard is in the city, and it is blocked off by chainlink fence on two sides, an ugly garage on the other, and a loud neighbor on the other. But the beauty of my backyard, and there is a beauty to it, is the back porch that faces the backyard. It’s right off the kitchen and every morning, rain or shine, cold or hot, I go out on my back porch and feed my outdoor cat and drink my first cup of coffee of the day. And there I look out over my backyard. Beyond my backyard is my neighborhood in Jamaica Plain. I like to tell people that there are two parts of Jamaica Plain: there is Jamaica plain and Jamaica fancy. And I live in Jamaica Plain. They actually call my little end of JP, south from hyde park square and above Columbus Ave, Jamaica Spain. Most of my neighbors and all of the checkout staff at the Stop-n-shop speak almost exclusively Dominican Spanish. Which is harder than regular Spanish according to my Honduran neighbor, but he’s got his own issues. Anyway, I am a half mile from Jamaica Pond and 500 feet from the orange line at Jackson square—where there were two murders this year, knifings, but, still—the orange line is the best line. You can get anywhere in the city you want, if you can stand the smell.
12 February 2016
Breaking NewsI noticed language. I noticed how they say "according to" and "may have occured" The word unknown appears a lot. Can't confirm comes up a lot.
A relationship to facts--what's possible to know and what's not possible to know. The unknown. Here is for me the greatest example: when they release the name of the tapes called the Elliot Rodger retribution, they don't say for another whole day that it is acutally Eliot Rodger that is the suspect. And he is always the alledged suspect.
There is a precision to the information. We get a clear timeline. at 9:27 this happened. Cops are called at this particular time. The person turned down Del Playa Drive. There was a BMW. They report with precision as they know it. They were congregated at the Habit restaurant.
Quotes from actors involved.
Think, even, of the timeline of the release: the web ones happen hours after the shooting. The majority of the articles come out on the 24th and the 25th. All of the articles are out by the 30th.
The unfolding of the event. At first, it is immediate and related rather exclusively to the events at hand. The web entries are about sheltering in place. But, as more is known, other issues become of interest: Namely, gun control. We learn about this by learning very specifically about the players--about the killer through his videos. About the victims through profiles--I'm thinking of Christopher Martinez's father (I've got that quote on my website). I would also argue, wealth and privilege, and, also the killer's mysogeny. But, at first, none of that is apparent. Possibly mental illness. The role of the police and the killer's family in trying to prevent what happened.
Last thing: no commentary. Only facts.
Written by a lot of different, named people.
Editorials
So, most pointedly, every article has a clear opinion. It's got a clear argument about what happened. The governor should do something. St. Louis is a hotbed of racism. Inequality is historical. The cop should be named.
But it's not just opinion. These also have a call to action--this should be done. There needs to be an investigation. We need to do A, B, & C to the schools. The supreme court justices need to take this stand. That seems key to me.
Look at the timeline. This follows a story and is not really about the actual events in ferguson. If we think about this in the Santa Barbara piece, the events of these pieces are the events, but you can imagine the series of editorials about all the issues that seem to unfold as we learn more about stuff of the events.
Facts are used here as evidence of the rightness of their opinion. It is also not just facts from the events. In fact, there are no event facts really. There is information that comes from many, many years.
They are more broadly emotional.
29 January 2016
Here are some things that have stayed the same. I’m going to write about this generically.
- Nonfiction requires you write from where you are at. You can and often will use “I.” We understand the events being covered in the story are your stories to tell.
- We assume that, at least on some deep level, these stories are true.
- We assume, however, that some of it is, if not made up, we assume that the level of detail recalled with such precision demands something of a fiction-writer’s skill.
- While the story is about the everyday, about the personal, we assume there is a larger point to be got. And that larger point, on a sliding scale of obviousness, will not just be, like, a sentence, that tells us “this is my larger point.”
Two: subgenres.
Three: Metaphor. In TTSH, the entire thing about bugs listening is a metaphor for what we need to do in the world. And, of course the most metaphorical piece of all that we read is A picture of A River. Here the writer, in very tight space, describes the image of the river styx—the river that leads people to the underworld, as a metaphor for the regular everyday misery of life. It took me a few reads to figure that out. The key lines were buried in there: “The worst thing that could happen was a lifetime of physical labor under ground.” “There was a river in my town: it did nothing.” “It takes the dead away from the dead.”
22 JANUARY 2016 ICRNs
I would say that the number one rule of the genre is to tell a personal story. Here he tells really two stories. He tells the story of his grandfather and his childhood. And it is a particular part of his childhood—his reading life. So perhaps that is another rule of the genre: you don’t learn everything there is to know about a person, you learn about what they choose to tell you.
The result of the story is that we understand something about how the author became the thing he became. An author. But, who knows, if he had become a fireman or a doctor or a lawyer or a cattle rustler he might have perhaps made the connection to that career. So, two points here, perhaps a rule of the genre is something about an author figuring something out about themselves in their present by considering events in the past. Another point: the author crafts the narrator to tell us the story he/she wants us to read. It connects to my second rule—we only learn some things.
I don’t know what rule the language of the piece suggests. He uses nouns as verbs. I like that. It is descriptive, but not by the use of adjectives. It is specific without feeling waited down by unimportant details. It’s the language version of rules 2 and 4 (I’ve lost count): you use the language you need to get the reader to see/be in the moment you want them to be. Some stuff goes by very fast—his reading summers. Some moments that would have taken less time than it did to read about it stretch out on the page. The writer is telling us what is important by how much space they devote.
We’d have to test these rules.
Well, in comparison, these two pieces have a lot in common. I’m going to guess, though, that not every piece of creative nonfiction is about the role reading and books played in becoming the person you came to be, but, in these two instances, that’s exactly what happens.
So, first rule: Tell a personal story. Check.
Rule two: tell us only what you want us to know and focus on. Definitely check.
Rule three: does the author seem to figure something out about himself? Check and double check.
So language here is different. Ray Bradbury was an accomplished writer in his last years of life. He read different texts and learned to write in different ways than Scabona. So, even with me reading both outloud, it’s clear that these are two different authors. So maybe there is something here about voice. Maybe there is a rule about sounding like your “authentic self.” I’m not sure why I put that in quotes because I just made that up, but there is something there I think.
On the other hand, there is still that same privileging of some moments and the skimming over of others.
Sample Writer's Notebook
The story I always tell about myself to my students in terms of my reading life is that I learned to read almost entirely out of guilt. When I was very young, no more than 4, I shared my room with my baby sister, and she was loud. I objected to my sister in all manner of ways. I objected to her simply being. One day I barricaded myself in my bedroom—excuse me, our bedroom—by moving a chest of drawers in front of the door.
I question this point of memory. I don’t understand how I could have managed that. I was a tiny child for any age and furniture, back then, was heavy. But, whatever I actually moved, the end result was that I was stuck in this bedroom. I was pouting primarily. I think.
Meanwhile, outside my door, my parents and what seems like all of my relatives, and, again, I contest this point of memory because I had a lot of relatives and it seems only marginally possible that they were all there at that particular moment. But it’s not impossible, because they were, actually, always around. My sister and I were the youngest of the youngest of the 8 original siblings. We filled a long drought of babies. We were greatly cherished.
When my family finally managed to get the door open they will tell you they saw me reading. But I was not reading. I was peering over the edge of a Charlie Brown Encyclopedia. Books previous to this I had largely used to build doll houses out of. But, at the time, I didn’t let on, and the result was that I was identified as a near genius and a reader. A proud family is a fearsome force.
The result of this grave misunderstanding was that my Aunts and Uncles, and as I’ve said I had many, started buying me books. And then there was the book shelf. Things were careening out of control. I’d either have to confess my status as an un-genius or I’d have to learn how to read.
You can see where this is going.
29 January 2016 DRAFT Mentor Text Memoir
The story I always tell about myself to my students in terms of my reading life is that I learned to read almost entirely out of guilt. When I was very young, no more than 4, I shared my room with my baby sister, and she was loud. I objected to my sister in all manner of ways. I objected to her simply being. One day I barricaded myself in my bedroom—excuse me, our bedroom—by moving a chest of drawers in front of the door.
I question this point of memory. I don’t understand how I could have managed that. I was a tiny child for any age and furniture, back then, was heavy. But, whatever I actually moved, the end result was that I was stuck in this bedroom. I was pouting primarily. I think.
Meanwhile, outside my door, my parents and what seems like all of my relatives, and, again, I contest this point of memory because I had a lot of relatives and it seems only marginally possible that they were all there at that particular moment. But it’s not impossible, because they were, actually, always around. My sister and I were the youngest of the youngest of the 8 original siblings. We filled a long drought of babies. We were greatly cherished.
When my family finally managed to get the door open they will tell you they saw me reading. But I was not reading. I was peering over the edge of a Charlie Brown Encyclopedia. Books previous to this I had largely used to build doll houses out of. But, at the time, I didn’t let on, and the result was that I was identified as a near genius and a reader. A proud family is a fearsome force.
The result of this grave misunderstanding was that my Aunts and Uncles, and as I’ve said I had many, started buying me books. And then there was the book shelf. Things were careening out of control. I’d either have to confess my status as an un-genius or I’d have to learn how to read.
You can see where this is going.
The moments are of course cumulative. I was not a reader and then I was one. I was not a good reader and then I was one. I was not a writer. And then I was one. I read Little House on the Prairie, over and over and over. I read Little Women, over and over. Gone with the Wind. Over and Over. I dust the old copies with special care now. If they were people I would take their arms and walk them to the most comfortable chair and kiss them tenderly on their brow and serve them tea and toast.
But you have to read on. And I did. I read all of Jane Austen. I read all of all of the Brontes. I read all of Edith Wharton. I am a
very thorough reader. It’s not enough to ever read around, only through.
On and on through books about queens (real) and horses (imagined) and first ladies (real). I am leaving out the difficult moments. I’m leaving out the two failed attempts to read Wuthering Heights. I’m leaving out Portrait of a Lady and that unhappy ending. But I became a very fast and excellent reader, now, in part because of these struggles, able to spot some imagery miles and miles away. I am no fun to go to the movies with—there is no plot I haven’t read before.
And then I read Virginia Woolf. I read To the Lighthouse because I wanted to be the sort of girl who read To the Lighthouse, but I didn’t know how to read To The Lighthouse. I had to slow down and reorient myself to reading. Suddenly, I needed to understand the semicolon. Woolf loves semicolons. I’m still not sure, but it feels to me that she uses them as a kind of cross between a comma and a true semi-colon. It separates out her bits of stuff and ideas and moments and images. There is a passage when Mrs. Ramsay is walking with a young man and he is rhapsodizing about walking in the world with a beautiful woman. I have the most vivid memory of reading the whole paragraph with all those semicolons, like I was sailing on a choppy sea, and then stopping and reading it again. I wanted to understand this piece in a way that I had never wanted to understand a paragraph before. I wanted to understand how she was using the semicolons. I wanted to understand how they were working to make the passage work the way it did. I’d never done anything like that before.
Maybe I’m wrong and I did read other things like that, but I feel certain this was an important moment. Because I think after that is the first time I tried, myself, to write with a semicolon. I tried them on like a new outfit. Sometimes I overdressed. But then I learned.
Somewhere along the line I became a reader in truth and not just in fiction and nothing was the same after that. I am forever in the debt of my sister, her birth, my family, and Charlie Brown.