The Grasshopper targets writers but writers must be, by nature, voracious readers. What are you reading this month and what do you think of it? This is a dialog to share things that mean something to you (and us)! Don’t be shy…M
I’m going to start with a book written in 2005 by Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, which is a memoir of her year after the unexpected death of her husband, the author John Griffin Dunne. During this year her adult daughter was in and out of a coma, a double whammy for Didion.
I had never read her books, just some essays, and this is a powerful example of why she is revered and respected as a writer. She conveys a whole experience of severe disconnection, recurring memories, and shifting around in time, with a style unlike any other I can think of. A masterpiece that is also a great read
I’ve been reading Breaking Hate, by reformed extreme rightist Christian Picciolini, as research for the novel I’m currently writing. It’s a bit of a frustrating book, and not just because he gets halfway to an insightful conclusion, and then manages to overlook it, although it is so obvious it just about knocks him down and sits on him. However it isn’t fair to criticize the book, only because I wanted it to say something other than what it does.
I keep thinking how much better a book it could have been, even on its own terms, if a good tough editor had taken the author in hand and made him re-write the passages wherein he contradicts himself, or doesn’t substantiate a conclusion, or comes up with a valuable conclusion, and then blows it off by spending the next five pages tearing after a red herring. And lets not even get into the times where he finishes a gripping factual account of a fraught interaction, and then thinks he has to lighten the mood with a cutesy lame joke. It’s as if he isn’t sure what kind of readership he thinks he is addressing.
Even with these flaws, the book is still worth a read. I’ve taken copious notes. The really serious flaw is the way in which he distances himself from his own experience, by re-interpreting it, and the experiences of others that he relates, through the lens of current tropes of popular psychology. This process degrades the authenticity, and thus the value of the information. This is, however, a fault that is prevalent in much contemporary reportage and advocacy writing.
Sounds to me like he is a very inexperienced writer who had a very sale-able story combined with poor editing. Hot topic but no idea how to construct long form memoirs. I might have read that book because I write about politics, but now I won’t bother. Thx.
I agree about the inexperience and poor editing. Worst of all, valuable information gets discarded because of gnarly writing, which is why it’s still worth a read, if only because there isn’t a lot out there that covers the territory
I’m going to start with a book written in 2005 by Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, which is a memoir of her year after the unexpected death of her husband, the author John Griffin Dunne. During this year her adult daughter was in and out of a coma, a double whammy for Didion.
I had never read her books, just some essays, and this is a powerful example of why she is revered and respected as a writer. She conveys a whole experience of severe disconnection, recurring memories, and shifting around in time, with a style unlike any other I can think of. A masterpiece that is also a great read
Unrequited Infatuations: A Memoir by Stevie Van Zandt. A perfect summer read. Full of crazy rock and roll stories.
Met him a few years ago in the Strathallan Hotel. Very nice guy.
I’ve been reading Breaking Hate, by reformed extreme rightist Christian Picciolini, as research for the novel I’m currently writing. It’s a bit of a frustrating book, and not just because he gets halfway to an insightful conclusion, and then manages to overlook it, although it is so obvious it just about knocks him down and sits on him. However it isn’t fair to criticize the book, only because I wanted it to say something other than what it does.
I keep thinking how much better a book it could have been, even on its own terms, if a good tough editor had taken the author in hand and made him re-write the passages wherein he contradicts himself, or doesn’t substantiate a conclusion, or comes up with a valuable conclusion, and then blows it off by spending the next five pages tearing after a red herring. And lets not even get into the times where he finishes a gripping factual account of a fraught interaction, and then thinks he has to lighten the mood with a cutesy lame joke. It’s as if he isn’t sure what kind of readership he thinks he is addressing.
Even with these flaws, the book is still worth a read. I’ve taken copious notes. The really serious flaw is the way in which he distances himself from his own experience, by re-interpreting it, and the experiences of others that he relates, through the lens of current tropes of popular psychology. This process degrades the authenticity, and thus the value of the information. This is, however, a fault that is prevalent in much contemporary reportage and advocacy writing.
Sounds to me like he is a very inexperienced writer who had a very sale-able story combined with poor editing. Hot topic but no idea how to construct long form memoirs. I might have read that book because I write about politics, but now I won’t bother. Thx.
I agree about the inexperience and poor editing. Worst of all, valuable information gets discarded because of gnarly writing, which is why it’s still worth a read, if only because there isn’t a lot out there that covers the territory