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A review by jimmylorunning
The Word Pretty by Elisa Gabbert
4.0
This collection starts off with an essay about keeping a writer's notebook. It's something you put half formed ideas in, things that intrigue you but you don't exactly know why yet, little phrases or thoughts, but also take notes on current projects in. A few pieces into the book, I noticed that there's also something resembling a writer's notebook about these essays.
There are definitely interesting thought morsels within each short essay, but they aren't developed to the point of essay-istic rigor. They still retain the raw edge of the "personal take" that has a casual "ah i noticed this" quality to them, which I found very inviting because I also have thoughts on many of these topics, and these essays kind of invite the reader in, like a good conversation starter.
And so I will attempt to converse with some of these pieces:
Personal Data: Notes on Keeping a Notebook -
I used to keep a writer's notebook everywhere I went. Then I stopped for a long time, and recently (last month-ish) I've picked up the habit again. And I don't know why I ever stopped. It's really helpful because half formed ideas always strike me at weird times. Weird phrases that just pop up are sometimes way better than ones I sit down to labor over.
I also relate to when she talked about curating her own stuff over old notebooks. I find this way of writing to be very stimulating and open-ended, and sometimes I don't even feel like what I'm putting together is mine. It almost seems like someone else wrote them. So I can be truly un-biased when editing them.
Unlike Gabbert, I do not like buying nice notebooks. Instead, I prefer making my own custom ones. They are 4.25" x 5.5" around 30 pages (standard printer paper), with a simple cardstock cover. I write the date I first started it on the cover. This means it's small enough to fit in most of my pockets, and it's not precious (or expensive) enough for me to worry about ruining it with my bad writing. When I finish one, I simply make another one. Sometimes I make a batch of 4 or 5.
Variations on Crying -
This makes me think of crying as a sort of pornography. Like instead of cumming, you watch this type of porno in order for a different salty clear liquid to be emitted. Her fascination with crying also reminds me of a book I read years ago that I'd recommend her, if I were in a real conversation with her. It's a book about [b:people crying in front of paintings|165715|Pictures & Tears A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings|James Elkins|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347361140l/165715._SY75_.jpg|160005] throughout history.
There's also a [b:book about crying|43835525|The Crying Book|Heather Christle|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1555075317l/43835525._SY75_.jpg|68216202] by an acquaintance poet that I plan on reading. Eventually I'll get around to it.
Certain things elicit tears and others do not. Certain people have a freer relationship to releasing them than others. She talks about how the kids on Masterchef Junior (a show I also enjoyed immensely) cry openly and without shame. We've lost that relationship with crying. When did crying pick up all its social rules?
I like her observation about speech as a trigger for crying. I have noticed the same thing. If I just think about something sad, often tears do not come as easily as if I recount it out loud to myself or an audience. It is surprising how this works. The voice starts cracking as if the emotion is in the throat. It comes out even if you don't want it to.
The Inelegant Translation -
Lots here about translation. I also read a lot in translation, in fact, I probably read more translated works than non translated works. I find that even bad translations are interesting in some way, English seems new after it has been forced through the mold of another tongue, new and weird in a good way as we are too used to seeing it in only one way. And just the fact that it was an idea that sprouted in someone's mind after having been formed in another language, and has now been translated to my language which in turn sprouts a similar but probably/inevitably different idea in my mind. Well, even if it were the same language, it would still be a different idea, but this time the difference can also be compounded by differences of language and culture. I like these minor inexactnesses in literature, the same way that minor mutations creates diversity and a more evolutionarily fit populace, so do misunderstandings, mistranslations, mistranscriptions. Even misspellings and bad grammar interest me, and I think it stems from the same drive.
I wonder if Gabbert's read Via by Caroline Bergvall, certainly she would be interested in it.
Seeing Things -
I don't see things that clearly when I read. I don't imagine them in fleshed out surroundings based on places I've been or have lived. In fact, I will read a description of a person in a novel very quickly, maybe picking up on one or two things, but they will still remain pretty vague. There are even some people who can't visualize anything in their "mind's eye". It's an actual condition. It's called aphantasia.
Impossible Time -
One minor quibble... she says that Alain-Fournier's book Le Grand Meaulnes has a title that is nearly untranslatable. Then she says "it tells the story of Augustin Meaulnes, known as 'grand' at school for both his height and his charisma". Hmm... that doesn't sound very untranslatable to me. Meaulnes is simply a name, so that stays. Grand is grand, or great. To say this title is untranslatable is almost like saying the title "The Great Gatsby" is untranslatable. I'm sure I am not getting something, so someone please enlighten me.
The Art of the Paragraph -
Definitely appreciate her going into detail about a craft like this. I've long thought that the high school 5 paragraph essay with each one including a thesis sentence followed by supporting sentences is one of the worst english classroom creations ever. Writers in real life almost never write like this, maybe for business applications they do, but like for literary purposes it always felt like a zombie-fied way of writing. I understand it though, it makes things simple, there's a formula and you just plug it in. And the general concept kind of makes sense. In a very general sense, you do want each paragraph to say one thing, but the variation on that is immense and I love how Gabbert covered the one sentence paragraph and the book length paragraph here, both of which showcase the incredible undefinability of what a paragraph really is except some weird concept in our collective minds.
In the end, I think a paragraph is just the mind getting tired. I'd love it if people taught it like that, not even as a unit of thought, but as a way for the writer to control how much you dump into the reader's brain. They say a person can only hold 7 numbers in their head at a time, and the paragraph is kinda like this, it's an intuitive gauging of how much can fit in a head. But along with that it's also how much a writer wants to play with that expectation of storage and relief. And also as a way of creating continuation a la Proust, and kinda testing those limits of how much can flow from one thing into another, how far can that go before we need a breath?
I always think of paragraph breaks, as I do with line breaks, as an auditory break, as breath. I guess it's just the poet in me coming out.
What is Poetry -
The mind of winter, the mind of poetry. Separate modes of thinking, I can totally relate. You're in the mood for poetry the way you are in love with someone and you just have no eyes for anyone else (prose). Although one thing I wonder for Gabbert is that when writing poetry, does she also read poetry? Does she read nothing? Often when I am in the mind for writing poetry, I find reading poetry to be distracting, and kind of dangerous, as other styles may sometimes have too much influence on me. It's not always the case, sometimes I can read and write poetry at the same time. But I tend to stick with fiction and nonfiction when I'm in the mind for writing poetry, and I save reading poetry for when I'm writing prose.
An excellent point she makes is about what separates poetry from prose. "This or that critic, as a way of calling a poem basic, often balks at its being 'just prose chopped up into lines.' Reader, this statement may sound radical at first, but it couldn't be more obvious: Poetry is just prose chopped up into lines. I mean this to be final, categorical, and no slight on poetry." She goes on to emphasize how the chopped up-ness of poetry is significant because it creates ambiguities in the breakages and affects the rhythm of the writing/reading/interpretation of it.
As a poet, I always think of the line breaks as a way of regulating breath, as a way of slightly nudging the reader towards one way of reading a thing, but also sometimes as an intentional misdirection. But above all, for me, the line break allows me to even write the poem to begin with... to THINK in lines and to THINK in breaks means that the way I write is affected ambiently (and in a positive way), so that what comes out is not the same as what would have come out if I wrote a block. The line guides the thought itself.
So maybe when people say "it feels like prose chopped into lines" in a derogatory way, maybe they mean that the line did not guide the thought. That it feels like prose was written first, and line breaks were inserted afterwards, but that the line breaks were not performing an important/integral enough role in the creation of thought itself. In that case, I do understand the "chopped up prose" criticism because I have often thought that of certain works as well.
Aphorisms Are Essays -
"I became fully committed to hating Goodreads while reading some of the early reviews of my second book, a poetry-prose hybrid [...] that is full of aphorisms. Several of these reviews included statements like 'While I like the philosophical ramblings, and love the brevity of the collection itself, I found myself disagreeing with many of her postulations.' [...] Part of the job, I think, of the aphorist is to write statements that even she does not necessarily agree with."
Yes, I'm frustrated with you too Goodreads. But I guess I also like adding my stupid opinions to the fray. I love hating on other reviews in my reviews. So often they miss the point completely. But then again, I guess it's not Goodreads fault, people in general miss the point.
BTW I've read [b:her book|18808921|The Self Unstable|Elisa Gabbert|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1384605419l/18808921._SX50_.jpg|26742108] (at least I think it's the one she's referring to here) and it is amazing. I gave it 5 stars, but I recently went back to look at it and realized it's one of the few that I haven't written a review for. Usually I won't write a review for books that don't move me one way or another, but that's clearly not the case here. I was surprised because I remember toiling over the review for a long time, but I guess nothing ever satisfied me enough. It seems odd that I was so quiet about the book when, in my mind, it's one of my favorites. I guess it says something about the book that it was so hard to write a fair review of it. It's hard to pin down, in a good way.
The Self-Destruct Button: On the literary death drive -
Tying in 'Two Serious Ladies' and 'Broken River' (I haven't read the latter, but the former is one of my favorites) Gabbert attempts to explain what attracts her to these characters who are driven to destruction:
Title TK -
Her strategies on titling works. My personal experience is that the title just kinda comes to me as I write or as I finish a piece, and it just seems right (80% of the time). Either that or, in the other 20% of cases, it never comes and I can never find a title that "feels" right. I go about it very intuitively, and there is no real strategy. I almost never use the "pull a line or phrase out of the piece and make it the title" method, even if the phrase is re-phrased slightly. It's usually something that's tangential but sounds interesting and makes the mind take a leap.
Writing That Sounds Like Writing -
Or the precarious situation of having to write something like you just rolled out of bed and didn't even try to write it. It can't be "overwritten" or else you'll be branded a try-hard.
I agree with her that sometimes I like florid excess in writing, if done right. But the key is "if done right". My own example of this is Robert Walser. He tends to overwrite in the most interesting ways, and it's always surprising and funny. Overwriting when it's done badly seems to be humorless. But when done well, it doesn't feel "heavy" and it always gives me a strange pleasure.
There are definitely interesting thought morsels within each short essay, but they aren't developed to the point of essay-istic rigor. They still retain the raw edge of the "personal take" that has a casual "ah i noticed this" quality to them, which I found very inviting because I also have thoughts on many of these topics, and these essays kind of invite the reader in, like a good conversation starter.
And so I will attempt to converse with some of these pieces:
Personal Data: Notes on Keeping a Notebook -
I used to keep a writer's notebook everywhere I went. Then I stopped for a long time, and recently (last month-ish) I've picked up the habit again. And I don't know why I ever stopped. It's really helpful because half formed ideas always strike me at weird times. Weird phrases that just pop up are sometimes way better than ones I sit down to labor over.
I also relate to when she talked about curating her own stuff over old notebooks. I find this way of writing to be very stimulating and open-ended, and sometimes I don't even feel like what I'm putting together is mine. It almost seems like someone else wrote them. So I can be truly un-biased when editing them.
Unlike Gabbert, I do not like buying nice notebooks. Instead, I prefer making my own custom ones. They are 4.25" x 5.5" around 30 pages (standard printer paper), with a simple cardstock cover. I write the date I first started it on the cover. This means it's small enough to fit in most of my pockets, and it's not precious (or expensive) enough for me to worry about ruining it with my bad writing. When I finish one, I simply make another one. Sometimes I make a batch of 4 or 5.
Variations on Crying -
This makes me think of crying as a sort of pornography. Like instead of cumming, you watch this type of porno in order for a different salty clear liquid to be emitted. Her fascination with crying also reminds me of a book I read years ago that I'd recommend her, if I were in a real conversation with her. It's a book about [b:people crying in front of paintings|165715|Pictures & Tears A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings|James Elkins|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347361140l/165715._SY75_.jpg|160005] throughout history.
There's also a [b:book about crying|43835525|The Crying Book|Heather Christle|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1555075317l/43835525._SY75_.jpg|68216202] by an acquaintance poet that I plan on reading. Eventually I'll get around to it.
Certain things elicit tears and others do not. Certain people have a freer relationship to releasing them than others. She talks about how the kids on Masterchef Junior (a show I also enjoyed immensely) cry openly and without shame. We've lost that relationship with crying. When did crying pick up all its social rules?
I like her observation about speech as a trigger for crying. I have noticed the same thing. If I just think about something sad, often tears do not come as easily as if I recount it out loud to myself or an audience. It is surprising how this works. The voice starts cracking as if the emotion is in the throat. It comes out even if you don't want it to.
The Inelegant Translation -
Lots here about translation. I also read a lot in translation, in fact, I probably read more translated works than non translated works. I find that even bad translations are interesting in some way, English seems new after it has been forced through the mold of another tongue, new and weird in a good way as we are too used to seeing it in only one way. And just the fact that it was an idea that sprouted in someone's mind after having been formed in another language, and has now been translated to my language which in turn sprouts a similar but probably/inevitably different idea in my mind. Well, even if it were the same language, it would still be a different idea, but this time the difference can also be compounded by differences of language and culture. I like these minor inexactnesses in literature, the same way that minor mutations creates diversity and a more evolutionarily fit populace, so do misunderstandings, mistranslations, mistranscriptions. Even misspellings and bad grammar interest me, and I think it stems from the same drive.
I wonder if Gabbert's read Via by Caroline Bergvall, certainly she would be interested in it.
Seeing Things -
I don't see things that clearly when I read. I don't imagine them in fleshed out surroundings based on places I've been or have lived. In fact, I will read a description of a person in a novel very quickly, maybe picking up on one or two things, but they will still remain pretty vague. There are even some people who can't visualize anything in their "mind's eye". It's an actual condition. It's called aphantasia.
Impossible Time -
One minor quibble... she says that Alain-Fournier's book Le Grand Meaulnes has a title that is nearly untranslatable. Then she says "it tells the story of Augustin Meaulnes, known as 'grand' at school for both his height and his charisma". Hmm... that doesn't sound very untranslatable to me. Meaulnes is simply a name, so that stays. Grand is grand, or great. To say this title is untranslatable is almost like saying the title "The Great Gatsby" is untranslatable. I'm sure I am not getting something, so someone please enlighten me.
The Art of the Paragraph -
Definitely appreciate her going into detail about a craft like this. I've long thought that the high school 5 paragraph essay with each one including a thesis sentence followed by supporting sentences is one of the worst english classroom creations ever. Writers in real life almost never write like this, maybe for business applications they do, but like for literary purposes it always felt like a zombie-fied way of writing. I understand it though, it makes things simple, there's a formula and you just plug it in. And the general concept kind of makes sense. In a very general sense, you do want each paragraph to say one thing, but the variation on that is immense and I love how Gabbert covered the one sentence paragraph and the book length paragraph here, both of which showcase the incredible undefinability of what a paragraph really is except some weird concept in our collective minds.
In the end, I think a paragraph is just the mind getting tired. I'd love it if people taught it like that, not even as a unit of thought, but as a way for the writer to control how much you dump into the reader's brain. They say a person can only hold 7 numbers in their head at a time, and the paragraph is kinda like this, it's an intuitive gauging of how much can fit in a head. But along with that it's also how much a writer wants to play with that expectation of storage and relief. And also as a way of creating continuation a la Proust, and kinda testing those limits of how much can flow from one thing into another, how far can that go before we need a breath?
I always think of paragraph breaks, as I do with line breaks, as an auditory break, as breath. I guess it's just the poet in me coming out.
What is Poetry -
The mind of winter, the mind of poetry. Separate modes of thinking, I can totally relate. You're in the mood for poetry the way you are in love with someone and you just have no eyes for anyone else (prose). Although one thing I wonder for Gabbert is that when writing poetry, does she also read poetry? Does she read nothing? Often when I am in the mind for writing poetry, I find reading poetry to be distracting, and kind of dangerous, as other styles may sometimes have too much influence on me. It's not always the case, sometimes I can read and write poetry at the same time. But I tend to stick with fiction and nonfiction when I'm in the mind for writing poetry, and I save reading poetry for when I'm writing prose.
An excellent point she makes is about what separates poetry from prose. "This or that critic, as a way of calling a poem basic, often balks at its being 'just prose chopped up into lines.' Reader, this statement may sound radical at first, but it couldn't be more obvious: Poetry is just prose chopped up into lines. I mean this to be final, categorical, and no slight on poetry." She goes on to emphasize how the chopped up-ness of poetry is significant because it creates ambiguities in the breakages and affects the rhythm of the writing/reading/interpretation of it.
As a poet, I always think of the line breaks as a way of regulating breath, as a way of slightly nudging the reader towards one way of reading a thing, but also sometimes as an intentional misdirection. But above all, for me, the line break allows me to even write the poem to begin with... to THINK in lines and to THINK in breaks means that the way I write is affected ambiently (and in a positive way), so that what comes out is not the same as what would have come out if I wrote a block. The line guides the thought itself.
So maybe when people say "it feels like prose chopped into lines" in a derogatory way, maybe they mean that the line did not guide the thought. That it feels like prose was written first, and line breaks were inserted afterwards, but that the line breaks were not performing an important/integral enough role in the creation of thought itself. In that case, I do understand the "chopped up prose" criticism because I have often thought that of certain works as well.
Aphorisms Are Essays -
"I became fully committed to hating Goodreads while reading some of the early reviews of my second book, a poetry-prose hybrid [...] that is full of aphorisms. Several of these reviews included statements like 'While I like the philosophical ramblings, and love the brevity of the collection itself, I found myself disagreeing with many of her postulations.' [...] Part of the job, I think, of the aphorist is to write statements that even she does not necessarily agree with."
Yes, I'm frustrated with you too Goodreads. But I guess I also like adding my stupid opinions to the fray. I love hating on other reviews in my reviews. So often they miss the point completely. But then again, I guess it's not Goodreads fault, people in general miss the point.
BTW I've read [b:her book|18808921|The Self Unstable|Elisa Gabbert|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1384605419l/18808921._SX50_.jpg|26742108] (at least I think it's the one she's referring to here) and it is amazing. I gave it 5 stars, but I recently went back to look at it and realized it's one of the few that I haven't written a review for. Usually I won't write a review for books that don't move me one way or another, but that's clearly not the case here. I was surprised because I remember toiling over the review for a long time, but I guess nothing ever satisfied me enough. It seems odd that I was so quiet about the book when, in my mind, it's one of my favorites. I guess it says something about the book that it was so hard to write a fair review of it. It's hard to pin down, in a good way.
The Self-Destruct Button: On the literary death drive -
Tying in 'Two Serious Ladies' and 'Broken River' (I haven't read the latter, but the former is one of my favorites) Gabbert attempts to explain what attracts her to these characters who are driven to destruction:
"'They seem almost to prefer ruin to voluntary change'This was a surprisingly depressing essay, but it asks some good questions. I think it's the same way in real life too, not just in novels. A lot of times we have a choice, but we don't choose, we prefer not to choose for whatever reason, because we think we don't deserve better or because we're afraid of what other people will think.
We do seem to prefer ruin, don't we? But maybe the ideas of preference and volition are imputed by the gods to us humans, mere slaves to our programming. I read once that a mechanical ant, designed to move in a straight line, would amble in erratic patterns if placed on an uneven surface--it would seem to have its own plans, to be making constant choices. But the code itself is simple. There is no free will there, no mystical intervention between cause and effect. Are Lennon's characters mechanical ants--or, more to the point, is there any level on which they're not mechanical ants?"
Title TK -
Her strategies on titling works. My personal experience is that the title just kinda comes to me as I write or as I finish a piece, and it just seems right (80% of the time). Either that or, in the other 20% of cases, it never comes and I can never find a title that "feels" right. I go about it very intuitively, and there is no real strategy. I almost never use the "pull a line or phrase out of the piece and make it the title" method, even if the phrase is re-phrased slightly. It's usually something that's tangential but sounds interesting and makes the mind take a leap.
Writing That Sounds Like Writing -
Or the precarious situation of having to write something like you just rolled out of bed and didn't even try to write it. It can't be "overwritten" or else you'll be branded a try-hard.
I agree with her that sometimes I like florid excess in writing, if done right. But the key is "if done right". My own example of this is Robert Walser. He tends to overwrite in the most interesting ways, and it's always surprising and funny. Overwriting when it's done badly seems to be humorless. But when done well, it doesn't feel "heavy" and it always gives me a strange pleasure.