Quoteskimming
The sentence in the icon is from one of Jane Austen's letters.
On writing biography
And, as you know, Jane is the subject of the biography I'm writing. And so, in addition to researching all the facts and fictions of Jane's life, and in addition to reading a lot of period verse in order to be certain what I'm writing is limited to the forms used during her lifetime, I've been reading about writing biographies.
Here's what Freud had to say as a caution against the biographer becoming fixated "in a very peculiar manner" on their subjects:
They frequently select the hero as the object of study because, for personal reasons of their own emotional life, they have a special affection for him from the very outset. They then devote themselves to a work of idealization, which strives to enroll the great man among their infantile models, and to revive through him, as it were, their infantile conception of the father. For the sake of this wish they wipe out the individual features in his physiognomy, they rub out the traces of his life's struggle with inner and outer resistances, and do not tolerate in him anything savoring of human weakness or imperfection; they then give us a cold, strange, ideal form instaed of a man to whom we could feel distantly related. It is to be regretted that they do this, for they thereby sacrifice the truth to an illusion, and for the sake of their infantile phantasies they let slip the opportunity to penetrate into the most attractive secrets of human nature.
And yes, it figures that Freud would make it all about psychology and father-figures, and yet what he has described is typical of many of the so-called biographies that were developed in the 19th century, including the first biography of Jane Austen (written by her brother Henry shortly after her death), in which she was depicted as a pious Christian maiden aunt, and in the later "Memoir" written by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh during the Victorian era, where "dear Aunt Jane" was further sanitized. I doubt that either Henry or James was acting out of a misguided Oedipal complex, but they were certainly motivated to ensure that the witty, well-rounded woman who penned six complete novels and a novella, along with a number of other minor works, would be seen as a staid and, if possible, unexceptional woman. They were looking out for the family reputation, you see.
On researching for a biography
Leon Edel wrote a brilliant, slim volume called Literary Biography, which has been a very valuable source of information to me on the principles and techniques involved in writing the biography of another writer. I am loath to return it to the library, and yet I must. I sense a visit to Alibris coming on as a result, but I digress.
Here are some points Edel made about the research process:
[The biographer] must discover the materials out of which his biography will be written. They must be gathered in a strange and often compulsive quest upon which every biographer embarks with a single-mindedness which makes him look into every book index for the mtion of his subject and keeps him browsing endlessly in libraries. He enters a labyrinth, the exit of which he cannot know. From page 25 of Literary Biography.
[T]he biographer is a kind of Sherlock Holmes of the library; [readers] know that he has delved and traveled and asked questions and read many books. They are nevertheless interested not in the writer of the life, but in the life itself. The delights of the search, the uncovering of documents, the discovery of persons who have outlived their time and can still put the biographer into relation with a "visitable past"-these belong to the joy of biographical re-creation which the reader is unlikely to want to share. The emotion, or shall I say the passion, of the searhc must, by the very nature of the biographer's task, be reconverted into a dispassionate account of the life. The peculiar satisfaction of unearthing a fact must take second place to the importance of the fact itself. From page 27 of Literary Biography.
On becoming a Top Chef and, I argue, a good writer
As you may know, I have in the past gleaned writing tips from watching Top Chef on BravoTV. And this week, Chef Tom Colicchio said something that I think translates well to writing. Just swap out "write modern books" and you'll see what I mean:
"You have to know the classics if you want to cook modern food."
On what romance means
I started thinking about the word after reading She Went All the Way, an adult romance novel by Meg Cabot, which follows all the formula conventions of romance, but at the end left me, as the reader, feeling vaguely dirty. (I think it was the sex scenes.) Enter Ryan Sutter, who married Trista the Bachelorette a few years back, who said on the "Where are they now?" special:
"Life done properly is romantic."
Huzzah and amen and, um, I need to work on doing it more properly.
On writing horror
My friend and sometimes work partner/bedmate Angela is in the process of revising her middle grade horror novel, which has made me more apt to notice bits and bobs about writing horror.
From the February edition of The Writer Magazine, in an article entitled "Scare the heck out of your readers-and other horror-writing tips," G.W. Thomas credited H.P. Lovecraft for expressing the rule "If it's scary, it's good horror writing." From which Thomas extrapolated as follows:
"If you want to be a horror writer, your one and only purpose is to scare the reader."
On writing mystery
Prior to writing Literary Biography, Edel had written a biography of Henry James. During his research, he discovered some information about James in a small medical volume by Sir James MacKenzie. The good Lord only knows what any of MacKenzie's writing had to do with angina pectoris, but here's a bit of what MacKenzie had to say:
After my examination of the novelist I referred to [The Turn of the Screw] and said to him "you did not explain the nature of the mysterious interviews." He at once expounded to me the principles on which to create a mystery. So long as the events are veiled the imagination will run riot and depict all sorts of horrors, but as soon as the veil is lifted, all mystery disappers and with it the sense of terror. Quoted on page 42 of Literary Biography.
On writing biography
And, as you know, Jane is the subject of the biography I'm writing. And so, in addition to researching all the facts and fictions of Jane's life, and in addition to reading a lot of period verse in order to be certain what I'm writing is limited to the forms used during her lifetime, I've been reading about writing biographies.
Here's what Freud had to say as a caution against the biographer becoming fixated "in a very peculiar manner" on their subjects:
They frequently select the hero as the object of study because, for personal reasons of their own emotional life, they have a special affection for him from the very outset. They then devote themselves to a work of idealization, which strives to enroll the great man among their infantile models, and to revive through him, as it were, their infantile conception of the father. For the sake of this wish they wipe out the individual features in his physiognomy, they rub out the traces of his life's struggle with inner and outer resistances, and do not tolerate in him anything savoring of human weakness or imperfection; they then give us a cold, strange, ideal form instaed of a man to whom we could feel distantly related. It is to be regretted that they do this, for they thereby sacrifice the truth to an illusion, and for the sake of their infantile phantasies they let slip the opportunity to penetrate into the most attractive secrets of human nature.
And yes, it figures that Freud would make it all about psychology and father-figures, and yet what he has described is typical of many of the so-called biographies that were developed in the 19th century, including the first biography of Jane Austen (written by her brother Henry shortly after her death), in which she was depicted as a pious Christian maiden aunt, and in the later "Memoir" written by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh during the Victorian era, where "dear Aunt Jane" was further sanitized. I doubt that either Henry or James was acting out of a misguided Oedipal complex, but they were certainly motivated to ensure that the witty, well-rounded woman who penned six complete novels and a novella, along with a number of other minor works, would be seen as a staid and, if possible, unexceptional woman. They were looking out for the family reputation, you see.
On researching for a biography
Leon Edel wrote a brilliant, slim volume called Literary Biography, which has been a very valuable source of information to me on the principles and techniques involved in writing the biography of another writer. I am loath to return it to the library, and yet I must. I sense a visit to Alibris coming on as a result, but I digress.
Here are some points Edel made about the research process:
[The biographer] must discover the materials out of which his biography will be written. They must be gathered in a strange and often compulsive quest upon which every biographer embarks with a single-mindedness which makes him look into every book index for the mtion of his subject and keeps him browsing endlessly in libraries. He enters a labyrinth, the exit of which he cannot know. From page 25 of Literary Biography.
[T]he biographer is a kind of Sherlock Holmes of the library; [readers] know that he has delved and traveled and asked questions and read many books. They are nevertheless interested not in the writer of the life, but in the life itself. The delights of the search, the uncovering of documents, the discovery of persons who have outlived their time and can still put the biographer into relation with a "visitable past"-these belong to the joy of biographical re-creation which the reader is unlikely to want to share. The emotion, or shall I say the passion, of the searhc must, by the very nature of the biographer's task, be reconverted into a dispassionate account of the life. The peculiar satisfaction of unearthing a fact must take second place to the importance of the fact itself. From page 27 of Literary Biography.
On becoming a Top Chef and, I argue, a good writer
As you may know, I have in the past gleaned writing tips from watching Top Chef on BravoTV. And this week, Chef Tom Colicchio said something that I think translates well to writing. Just swap out "write modern books" and you'll see what I mean:
"You have to know the classics if you want to cook modern food."
On what romance means
I started thinking about the word after reading She Went All the Way, an adult romance novel by Meg Cabot, which follows all the formula conventions of romance, but at the end left me, as the reader, feeling vaguely dirty. (I think it was the sex scenes.) Enter Ryan Sutter, who married Trista the Bachelorette a few years back, who said on the "Where are they now?" special:
"Life done properly is romantic."
Huzzah and amen and, um, I need to work on doing it more properly.
On writing horror
My friend and sometimes work partner/bedmate Angela is in the process of revising her middle grade horror novel, which has made me more apt to notice bits and bobs about writing horror.
From the February edition of The Writer Magazine, in an article entitled "Scare the heck out of your readers-and other horror-writing tips," G.W. Thomas credited H.P. Lovecraft for expressing the rule "If it's scary, it's good horror writing." From which Thomas extrapolated as follows:
"If you want to be a horror writer, your one and only purpose is to scare the reader."
On writing mystery
Prior to writing Literary Biography, Edel had written a biography of Henry James. During his research, he discovered some information about James in a small medical volume by Sir James MacKenzie. The good Lord only knows what any of MacKenzie's writing had to do with angina pectoris, but here's a bit of what MacKenzie had to say:
After my examination of the novelist I referred to [The Turn of the Screw] and said to him "you did not explain the nature of the mysterious interviews." He at once expounded to me the principles on which to create a mystery. So long as the events are veiled the imagination will run riot and depict all sorts of horrors, but as soon as the veil is lifted, all mystery disappers and with it the sense of terror. Quoted on page 42 of Literary Biography.