WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 2011
Arthur Plotnik is in the House
Q:Could you tell us why you decided to write Better Than Great, A Plenitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives (that's a mouthful). I realize that this is designed to bolster a writer's vocabulary, but I'm wondering if you might have another secret agenda you'd care to divulge.
A: I could say it was to liberate humankind from the tyranny of stock superlatives, such as great, awesome, amazing, incredible, andunbelievable. But first, I'd wanted to purge my own vocabulary of these exhausted, one-size-fits-all terms, the ones we use for anything to be emphasized. A plate of nachos: awesome. A trip to Machu Picchu:awesome. New haircut: amazing. The seas parting: amazing. I was tired of words that had lost all force and make no distinctions. I even tired of wishing people a great this or fabulous that.
So I started gathering and shaping playful alternatives for my own use. Soon, in a greeting card, I was wishing friends a "spumescently brilliant, rapturous, pleoperfect, clangorous, jollified, gladsome, ebullient, soul-schvitzing, luminous, boffo, festal holiday season, not to mention a nirvanic New Year's and annum analeptic." The list soon grew into a book idea that everyone called, for their (then) lack of a better word,great.
You seem to genuinely delight in language. Since words are our humble tools, how can this love of language be passed along to beginning writers?
A: They have to experience that delight---the heart-juddering frisson of the perfect, unanticipated word or turn of phrase; the savor of sustained lyricism.
The trouble is, our everyday world hardly brims with language virtuosos or personalities who ignite a passion for words. Abbreviated communication forms like texting are anathema to language-love (though a well-Twittered word can still delight). Without inspiring models (mostly from reading), new writers become message-oriented, attitude-oriented, their language rarely acquiring the texture that makes it adhere and resonate. And so if falls to the deft writing coach to guide beginners through model passages---eloquent to funky examples, Jane Austin to Junot Diaz---hoping to plant the love that cannot be suppressed.
Q: What is your explanation of how language stimulates the senses in a reader and your tips for doing so?
A: Hey, no essay questions! But the short advice is: Write to the guts. Get something visceral into the equation---something that stimulates the sensual memory, the emotions, appetite, nervous system. Devices for doing so include surprise (we react chemically to the unexpected), sensual particulars, sensations spelled out, or an association with felt experiences.
For instance, how do you describe a color to make it sensed and felt? Some examples: "Hectic red" (Shelley),with that surprising, visceral modifier. "The black of the void" (Gary Shteyngart), evoking fear---the alarm bell of the senses. "A green-green-green that makes you want to cry" (Sandra Cisneros), spelling out the palpable sensation. "Eyes of "anti-freeze green" (Chuck Palahniuk), a particular reference with chilling associations. "Upholstery the color of Thousand Island Dressing"(John Banville)---something you can, ugh, taste.
Q: Do you have sage advice for when to modify and when to leave the noun alone? And what about adverbs? I'm an anti-adverb editor, but I'm wondering if you're more lenient than I when it comes to these critters.
A: Leave nouns alone when, in context, they have all the force and clarity they need. "Memories lurk like dustballs at the back of drawers," wrote Jay McInerney. Did he mean affecting memories? Fragile, hiddendustballs? Dresser drawers? Probably. Did he need to say it? God no. On the other hand, when John Lanchester writes, "This grew in me an . . . an intellectual tumescence," we do appreciate having the type of tumescence clarified, as well as the evocative image.
Same story with adverbs, which tell us the how (manner) and the how much (degree) of a verb or modifier. He drank copiously (degree). He drank sloppily (manner). He's a reportedly excessive drinker (manner). Adverbs evolved to supply extra information, nothing wrong with that. What has given them a bad name is their frequent (or cliché) use when the information and/or force is already there: She's completely unique. I was incoherently babbling. You are totally bedazzling. I hungrily wolfed the meatballs.
Q: Years ago you wrote that voice is in "harmony with your roots." I've used that expression many times while talking to writers about voice--crediting you, of course. I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about voice in fiction and nonfiction and how writers can develop a consistent, potent voice.
A:Greater genius-gods than I have opined that voice is the total of all the decisions you make as you choose words and put them together. Just about everything in your education and experience influences those decisions, beginning with your roots and including your homies, your favorite literary models, your aspirations, and your relationship to an audience of listeners or readers. Some writing mavens say that you don't make or "develop" a voice, but that it simply emerges along with your personality. Rhetoricians from the Greeks on have presented figures of speech ( for example, hyperbole, metaphor, and irony) and other devices as the means to a style or voice.
I'm a little of both schools: the flavor and consistency of your voice will take care of itself; but understanding the elements of rhetoric---which are about emphasis and persuasiveness---help give it force. Good writing guides teach these elements one way or another, and are worth studying to a point. Mainly, they clear the junk from your writing and reveal patterns for styling your own wit and inventiveness into something voice-like. But when you write, don't think about your voice being heard and adored; what you want an audience to "hear" is ideas, feelings, and story well rendered. The adoration will come.
Q: What's your best advice to writers on editing their own writing?
A:Standard advice says: Write first---get the words down---and edit later. I edit partly as I write; it makes me feel better as I go forward, but it's disablingly slow. Whenever you do edit, though, follow the big rules: Omit needless words, as Strunk & White rightly tell you; say it shorter, making sure the verbiage is never too much for the thought. Kill your darlings---those belabored turns of phrase that call attention to themselves and away from the message. Favor the concrete---particulars---over abstractions and generalities. Pay attention to verbs; choose lively ones and drop in an unexpected zinger now and then. Of a victim falling to his death from a building, Gary Shteyngart writes, "his head knew the ground" instead of "his head hit the ground." Wow. Don't overdo any device. And of course, burn and kill all clichés and anything that seems stale; when you talk about voice, freshness is everything!
A:Standard advice says: Write first---get the words down---and edit later. I edit partly as I write; it makes me feel better as I go forward, but it's disablingly slow. Whenever you do edit, though, follow the big rules: Omit needless words, as Strunk & White rightly tell you; say it shorter, making sure the verbiage is never too much for the thought. Kill your darlings---those belabored turns of phrase that call attention to themselves and away from the message. Favor the concrete---particulars---over abstractions and generalities. Pay attention to verbs; choose lively ones and drop in an unexpected zinger now and then. Of a victim falling to his death from a building, Gary Shteyngart writes, "his head knew the ground" instead of "his head hit the ground." Wow. Don't overdo any device. And of course, burn and kill all clichés and anything that seems stale; when you talk about voice, freshness is everything!
Q: I'm also wondering if you could start a movement to resuscitateawesome so that it recaptures its original meaning? We'd be happy to aid in the cause.
A:Yes---in the New Order, "awesome" will be applied only to thingsinspiring extreme fear or reverence. No more "awesome toilet paper" or other Yelper-ish acclaim for the trivial.
Meanwhile, to prop up the moribund term, Better Than Great suggests such intensifications as: tongue-dryingly awesome, Colossus-of-Rhodes awesome, fall-to-your-knees awesome, awesome on a toot, giga-awesome, industrial-strength awesome, and tera-awesome, which is 10-to-the-twelfth-power awesome, suitable for most divinities.
But in our campaign, Jessica, let's require anyone uttering "awesome" to stagger backward all atremble, respecting the gravity of the word. Writers using it casually will be forced to watch hour-long sequences of "King Kong," fearing and revering the awesome ape. Cruel but necessary.
Q: While attending the University of Wisconsin I enrolled in a class on tree identification. We'd meander through lovely parks near the campus identifying trees and learned the differences between spruce and pine. Then I moved to the Northwest and am still learning the names of species out here. Can you tell us about your passion for trees as illustrated in The Urban Tree Book? Do you tree gaze in Chicago these days?
A:When I started that book (with my wife, the illustrator) I was a new convert to tree love, the most passionate kind. Learning enough to write an authoritative guide opened worlds of pleasure on every block. Trees took on personalities. I could all but talk with them. Okay, I do sometimes talk to them. Sadly, these days the conversation is often depressing. It's like walking through an injury ward: practically every urban tree is fighting off ailments, many of them caused by our carelessness or lack of care. Trees are like writers to some degree: they give so much, don't ask a lot, get pissed on, and somehow keep giving.
A:Why Shakespeare, of course, the real genius-god. We'd quaff a few pints of grog, talk about words, and have a laugh over the evolution of English into rap. I might ask, "Ay yo, Will---whutup wit all dem mysteries 'bout ya'll and who scribed ya plays?" Thus I'd be getting the 411 for a definitive biography with a seven-figure advance.
Q:Pasta or sushi?
A: Basta with the pasta. And make my maki a dal makhani, the summa-cum-yummy Indian dish.
Q:What's on your nightstand?
Q:What's on your nightstand?
A: Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, as you might have guessed by now. His eye and ear are Wüsthof-knife sharp in this, his best novel. Also on the table, my Soft Bite guard against tooth grinding, because apparently it's not enough for writers to grind it out all day
Q: What projects are you working on next?
A: Launching the new book is a big time-suck, but I'm amusing myself gathering modern metaphors as I encounter them, putting them in categories. Something might come of it, but here's what kind of fun they offer in the meantime (from the APPEARANCE category):
“You’ve had a face like a smacked arse since you got here.” —Zadie Smith
“Look at the head on that sheygets, the thing has its own atmosphere, . . . Thing has ice caps. . . . Every time I see it, I feel sorry for necks.” ---Michael Chabon
". . . his father’s nose like a skinned animal pinned to his face with the shiny metallic tackheads of his eyes, his mother a shapeless sack of organs with a howling withered skull stuck atop it." ---T.C. Boyle
"He had the complexion of baba ghanoush." ---Marisha Pessl
" ... a visage of absolutely uncompromising vapidity and bloodlessness; a face like the belly of a toad." ---Will Self
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