I decided to stop reading novels set in the US for a while, out of the tiredness of reading scenes from New York or San Francisco. And I question myself why, they are just fiction. Then a part of me explained to myself that by reading fiction, I want to be brought to a place that I don't have an idea about, a fantastical place (not in the meaning of fantasy genre or science fiction, but fantastical in the meaning of completely different life and scene).
I found that through fiction, for example, I might not ever read a history (factual) book about the Tamil Tiger and Sri Lanka because that country is not in my concern or interest yet, but reading "Seven Moons of Maali Almeida" (Shehan Karunatilaka) is so different. The book is written about the Sri Lanka Civil War, yet the way the war is dissected into personal experience and spiritual explanations merged with local belief and life makes the reading incredible. That is part of the reason fiction stays with me, it is the glimpse of life with multi-layered experience. it is not necessarily to be "factual" or "truth", and beyond, by revising many nonfiction books I read, a lot of "factual" turned out to be not factual or just half-factual. So I will not compare fact/not fact between non-fiction and fiction. Instead, I would argue that fiction gives us a glimpse and a window into other possibilities for living and other worldviews.
This is such a beautiful description of how fiction operates!! I do think that novels can create a really specific emotional attachment to some place, or some history (the "glimpse of life with multi-layered experience" that you describe).
Your comment is helping me articulate something…when a novelist can really, convincingly depict some other world, the reader becomes more curious about that world and it becomes an invitation to learn more. This is basically the "fiction trains your empathy" argument, but a bit more specific: the fiction doesn't directly produce empathy for others and their lives, but it creates the curiosity, and that curiosity can lead you to learn more about others/the world, and THAT can create an investment in other people.
I also had a weird aversion to fiction in my 20s, mostly in favour of essays. Still not sure why, and I couldn't imagine life without fiction now. Glad it wasn't just me. Your description of the Lemann novel brought to mind Helen Garner's 'Monkey Grip' which is great on characters simultaneously appealing and unappealing.
Thanks as ever for your writing. Your newsletters always take two or three goes - one to read it, the others to follow up the references. Always plenty new to me and always appreciated.
Thank you for this kind comment!! And yes, I similarly feel that fiction is so obviously integral to my life now—it complements the nonfiction reading that I still (clearly) am attached to.
I haven't read any of Garner's fiction yet, but I really want to—I read her diaries last year and was just so moved by the quality of her prose, the appealing simplicity and expressiveness of her descriptions, and her acute insight into the unpleasant and pleasant emotions of our lives…
If you loved the diaries you’ll love the fiction: you’ll find the same things there. I love her written voice so much, it’s so caring, so ruthless, and she makes it seem so easy - so clear! - which is obviously one of the hardest things of all. Hope to see your impressions pop up in a future dispatch, maybe.
Interesting take on fiction vs. nonfiction. I never read nonfiction as it's simply one person's perspective -- and after all, history is written by the victors. Facts presented as being the truth are actually simply a sample of facts, collated to serve a purpose. On the other hand, fiction is universal and has the potential to impact the future.
This is a really great point (and a really fascinating way to invert the fiction-is-subjective-nonfiction-is-objective belief!)—there is something about the assumed objectivity of nonfiction that collapses a bit when you think about the author, their position, their political or theoretical affinities…
So much to think about! Thank you. I am particularly struck by the quote from Carl Wilson. “how vigilant I was against being taken in – unaware that I was also refusing an invitation out…”. I wish I could send that back to my younger self.
Huh, Grand Rapids. I lived there for awhile after graduation a long time ago. A pleasant place particularly for families. I bolted for CA when I could.
I wouldn't normally read a novel like this but I'll consider it.
I'm definitely a California partisan (grew up there!) but it was a lovely fictional visit, even though Stagg's protagonist feels quite cramped and trapped there, it seems. (But maybe that's just adolescence, and specifically adolescence in America without a car?()
it's amazing how lively poptimism discourse has been for the last decade! but perhaps because everyone is invested in what is popular (ideally we'd like OUR favorite things to be popular, but not TOO popular, because how will we feel special and discerning?) and what this says about our cultural health
big Reichardt fan. what got me about The Mastermind (one thing) was how you could be on the run for forever at the time and being on the run just meant living in a different city. i mean, slow is Reichardt’s way, but matches the content here in a neat way.
I'm very new to Reichardt but loved the narrative structure of The Mastermind—definitely want to see more of her work. And yes—so funny that the glamorous ON THE RUN part of the story is depicted as…him hiding out in another ordinary city with an old friend.
So many recommendations in this that I want to check out: Small Moods especially, The shape of Design, The lives of saints, Mastermind... It's the first time I'm hearing of Kowalski and Chimero, but they both seem really interesting.
I love heist stories (and con stories) too. A heist novel I really enjoyed — and just a book I enjoyed, period — is Swag by Elmore Leonard. It was probably one of the most fun and unputdownable books I've read, not profound, but just thrilling and very well written.
The booklets on process are interesting, and I'm wondering, are there "process booklets" for writers? Sometimes I really wish writers left journals and notes on how they wrote their stories. What was going on in Raymond Carver's life that inspired him to write Feathers? How did the first and last draft look? What were the seeds of "In the cart" and "The wife" by Chekhov? What writerly decision did he make every day? If you have any recommendations in this regard, would love to know. I've read "Daily rituals" by Mason Currey and "Process" by Sarah Stodola. Kind of useful, but I'd like something that goes beat-by-beat on just one work, like a designer explaining why they picked Astro or a particular font.
The Sheila Heti interview seems interesting. I recently read "How should a person be?" by her, and I found the intentional communication and work that the protagonist (probably a stand-in for Sheila) and her friend put in very unusual and cool. "I think making friends you can work with is a skill like any other; developing those particular kinds of intimacies." This resonates.
"One argument for reading fiction is that it gives you the opportunity to read—well—even more. And sometimes what you can read is literary criticism about said fiction, which doesn’t seem that enticing, perhaps..." I totally get this feeling. Years ago, a friend of mine shared a video breaking down Good Will Hunting. "Watch the movie first, but the movie is just the teaser. This video is the real deal, he said." And I've had that feeling often, wanting to read or watch something to be able to read a critique of it or talk about it with a friend (reading "The Lonely Voice" currently and reading all the short stories listed in it to understand their analysis by Frank O'Connor). So maybe some fiction is fulfilling in itself, but others encourage discussion and communion, like book clubs that discuss the same book. I find this range of possibilities quite exciting. (Though I do feel some uneasiness when I feel like "I didn't really like that story that much, but this critique is hoodwinking me into thinking it's great.")
Small Moods is so great—I was really, really charmed by Kowalski's endless energy for experimentation and doing strange funny things with his sentences. It's just a very lively read.
Regarding process books for writers…I'm endlessly searching for this kind of thing! I really liked this NYT article where the literary translator Sophie Hughes shows how she translated, and revised, a specific sentence from Fernanda Melchor’s 2017 novel, Hurricane Season: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/07/books/literature-translation.html
I was corresponding with a Substack mutual recently about how I'd really, really like to do some kind of craft-oriented…writing group? study group? about sentence-level craft. Which, now that I'm thinking about it, is also reminding me of this great Garielle Lutz piece about all the things that can happen in a single sentence: https://www.thebeliever.net/the-sentence-is-a-lonely-place/
These essays about working with a single sentence are exactly the kind of thing I was looking for... So cool! I'll check out all of these, thanks. If you find any such resources at any time, please can you drop me a mail or message? I'll do likewise.
The craft/study group idea sounds great, and if you ever do it, I'm just adding myself to the wait list in advance.
I too stayed away from fiction and now in my thirties I’m pulled to it. I found myself not being able to finish a book in my twenties and since adding fiction back to the rotation last year, I reached a double digit count. I’ve really been enjoying translated fiction. I read this beautiful and terrifying book last year called Our Share of the Night by Mariana Enriquez (translation by Megan McDowell). It was a staff pick at my local bookstore and the book cover caught my attention. I loved the way the author weaves the witchcraft storyline with the realities of Argentina in the 80s and the history of missing people from political persecution. I studied Argentina’s history in undergrad and I felt more transported to that experience in this book than in my college class. There’s a personal element that tethers the history that can get removed when we read it in the non-fiction world.
Thank you for this newsletter. I love learning about the process pamphlets. Im always adding something to my queue as I read your post.
I decided to stop reading novels set in the US for a while, out of the tiredness of reading scenes from New York or San Francisco. And I question myself why, they are just fiction. Then a part of me explained to myself that by reading fiction, I want to be brought to a place that I don't have an idea about, a fantastical place (not in the meaning of fantasy genre or science fiction, but fantastical in the meaning of completely different life and scene).
I found that through fiction, for example, I might not ever read a history (factual) book about the Tamil Tiger and Sri Lanka because that country is not in my concern or interest yet, but reading "Seven Moons of Maali Almeida" (Shehan Karunatilaka) is so different. The book is written about the Sri Lanka Civil War, yet the way the war is dissected into personal experience and spiritual explanations merged with local belief and life makes the reading incredible. That is part of the reason fiction stays with me, it is the glimpse of life with multi-layered experience. it is not necessarily to be "factual" or "truth", and beyond, by revising many nonfiction books I read, a lot of "factual" turned out to be not factual or just half-factual. So I will not compare fact/not fact between non-fiction and fiction. Instead, I would argue that fiction gives us a glimpse and a window into other possibilities for living and other worldviews.
Thank you for another lovely newsletter <3
This is such a beautiful description of how fiction operates!! I do think that novels can create a really specific emotional attachment to some place, or some history (the "glimpse of life with multi-layered experience" that you describe).
Your comment is helping me articulate something…when a novelist can really, convincingly depict some other world, the reader becomes more curious about that world and it becomes an invitation to learn more. This is basically the "fiction trains your empathy" argument, but a bit more specific: the fiction doesn't directly produce empathy for others and their lives, but it creates the curiosity, and that curiosity can lead you to learn more about others/the world, and THAT can create an investment in other people.
I also had a weird aversion to fiction in my 20s, mostly in favour of essays. Still not sure why, and I couldn't imagine life without fiction now. Glad it wasn't just me. Your description of the Lemann novel brought to mind Helen Garner's 'Monkey Grip' which is great on characters simultaneously appealing and unappealing.
Thanks as ever for your writing. Your newsletters always take two or three goes - one to read it, the others to follow up the references. Always plenty new to me and always appreciated.
Thank you for this kind comment!! And yes, I similarly feel that fiction is so obviously integral to my life now—it complements the nonfiction reading that I still (clearly) am attached to.
I haven't read any of Garner's fiction yet, but I really want to—I read her diaries last year and was just so moved by the quality of her prose, the appealing simplicity and expressiveness of her descriptions, and her acute insight into the unpleasant and pleasant emotions of our lives…
If you loved the diaries you’ll love the fiction: you’ll find the same things there. I love her written voice so much, it’s so caring, so ruthless, and she makes it seem so easy - so clear! - which is obviously one of the hardest things of all. Hope to see your impressions pop up in a future dispatch, maybe.
Interesting take on fiction vs. nonfiction. I never read nonfiction as it's simply one person's perspective -- and after all, history is written by the victors. Facts presented as being the truth are actually simply a sample of facts, collated to serve a purpose. On the other hand, fiction is universal and has the potential to impact the future.
This is a really great point (and a really fascinating way to invert the fiction-is-subjective-nonfiction-is-objective belief!)—there is something about the assumed objectivity of nonfiction that collapses a bit when you think about the author, their position, their political or theoretical affinities…
(also, thank you for reading and commenting!)
So much to think about! Thank you. I am particularly struck by the quote from Carl Wilson. “how vigilant I was against being taken in – unaware that I was also refusing an invitation out…”. I wish I could send that back to my younger self.
I loved Wilson's book so much—endless, endless passages worth quoting; it was incredibly hard choosing one. Thank you for reading!!
Huh, Grand Rapids. I lived there for awhile after graduation a long time ago. A pleasant place particularly for families. I bolted for CA when I could.
I wouldn't normally read a novel like this but I'll consider it.
I'm definitely a California partisan (grew up there!) but it was a lovely fictional visit, even though Stagg's protagonist feels quite cramped and trapped there, it seems. (But maybe that's just adolescence, and specifically adolescence in America without a car?()
I like your compact definition of poptimism much better than the thousands of words spilled on the subject back in the day (and now)
it's amazing how lively poptimism discourse has been for the last decade! but perhaps because everyone is invested in what is popular (ideally we'd like OUR favorite things to be popular, but not TOO popular, because how will we feel special and discerning?) and what this says about our cultural health
Wanting to still feel special and discerning while embracing what’s mega-popular is the paradox of poptimism
big Reichardt fan. what got me about The Mastermind (one thing) was how you could be on the run for forever at the time and being on the run just meant living in a different city. i mean, slow is Reichardt’s way, but matches the content here in a neat way.
I'm very new to Reichardt but loved the narrative structure of The Mastermind—definitely want to see more of her work. And yes—so funny that the glamorous ON THE RUN part of the story is depicted as…him hiding out in another ordinary city with an old friend.
you can't go wrong with any of her movies but if you want a charmingly disorienting view of the Wild West, check out First Cow if you haven't.
So many recommendations in this that I want to check out: Small Moods especially, The shape of Design, The lives of saints, Mastermind... It's the first time I'm hearing of Kowalski and Chimero, but they both seem really interesting.
I love heist stories (and con stories) too. A heist novel I really enjoyed — and just a book I enjoyed, period — is Swag by Elmore Leonard. It was probably one of the most fun and unputdownable books I've read, not profound, but just thrilling and very well written.
The booklets on process are interesting, and I'm wondering, are there "process booklets" for writers? Sometimes I really wish writers left journals and notes on how they wrote their stories. What was going on in Raymond Carver's life that inspired him to write Feathers? How did the first and last draft look? What were the seeds of "In the cart" and "The wife" by Chekhov? What writerly decision did he make every day? If you have any recommendations in this regard, would love to know. I've read "Daily rituals" by Mason Currey and "Process" by Sarah Stodola. Kind of useful, but I'd like something that goes beat-by-beat on just one work, like a designer explaining why they picked Astro or a particular font.
The Sheila Heti interview seems interesting. I recently read "How should a person be?" by her, and I found the intentional communication and work that the protagonist (probably a stand-in for Sheila) and her friend put in very unusual and cool. "I think making friends you can work with is a skill like any other; developing those particular kinds of intimacies." This resonates.
"One argument for reading fiction is that it gives you the opportunity to read—well—even more. And sometimes what you can read is literary criticism about said fiction, which doesn’t seem that enticing, perhaps..." I totally get this feeling. Years ago, a friend of mine shared a video breaking down Good Will Hunting. "Watch the movie first, but the movie is just the teaser. This video is the real deal, he said." And I've had that feeling often, wanting to read or watch something to be able to read a critique of it or talk about it with a friend (reading "The Lonely Voice" currently and reading all the short stories listed in it to understand their analysis by Frank O'Connor). So maybe some fiction is fulfilling in itself, but others encourage discussion and communion, like book clubs that discuss the same book. I find this range of possibilities quite exciting. (Though I do feel some uneasiness when I feel like "I didn't really like that story that much, but this critique is hoodwinking me into thinking it's great.")
Small Moods is so great—I was really, really charmed by Kowalski's endless energy for experimentation and doing strange funny things with his sentences. It's just a very lively read.
Regarding process books for writers…I'm endlessly searching for this kind of thing! I really liked this NYT article where the literary translator Sophie Hughes shows how she translated, and revised, a specific sentence from Fernanda Melchor’s 2017 novel, Hurricane Season: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/07/books/literature-translation.html
And then the translator and renowned fiction writer Lydia Davis (a huge, huge inspiration to me) has this amazing essay (you can read it here https://www.theparisreview.org/letters-essays/7431/revising-one-sentence-lydia-davis or in her essay collection Essays One) about revising a single sentence as well.
I was corresponding with a Substack mutual recently about how I'd really, really like to do some kind of craft-oriented…writing group? study group? about sentence-level craft. Which, now that I'm thinking about it, is also reminding me of this great Garielle Lutz piece about all the things that can happen in a single sentence: https://www.thebeliever.net/the-sentence-is-a-lonely-place/
These essays about working with a single sentence are exactly the kind of thing I was looking for... So cool! I'll check out all of these, thanks. If you find any such resources at any time, please can you drop me a mail or message? I'll do likewise.
The craft/study group idea sounds great, and if you ever do it, I'm just adding myself to the wait list in advance.
I too stayed away from fiction and now in my thirties I’m pulled to it. I found myself not being able to finish a book in my twenties and since adding fiction back to the rotation last year, I reached a double digit count. I’ve really been enjoying translated fiction. I read this beautiful and terrifying book last year called Our Share of the Night by Mariana Enriquez (translation by Megan McDowell). It was a staff pick at my local bookstore and the book cover caught my attention. I loved the way the author weaves the witchcraft storyline with the realities of Argentina in the 80s and the history of missing people from political persecution. I studied Argentina’s history in undergrad and I felt more transported to that experience in this book than in my college class. There’s a personal element that tethers the history that can get removed when we read it in the non-fiction world.
Thank you for this newsletter. I love learning about the process pamphlets. Im always adding something to my queue as I read your post.
OMG I love the process pamphlets! Definitly a keeper!