How Art Intensifies Life – Robinson on Writing, Metaphor, & the Sacred

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authors, Gilead, interview, literature, Marilynn Robinson, Novel, writing

I came across this interview with Marilynne Robinson, who is one of America’s finest living writers, in an old edition of The Writer magazine when I was cleaning out my bookshelves.

I know now why I saved it, and why I will save it again. She speaks my language and the language of so many creative people I know. That she feels the same way about art, writing and the sacred as I do, is an affirmation. That she expresses it in ways that inspire me anew is a gift.

I hope her words will inspire you as well.

Excerpts from “Waiting for Gilead,” an Interview with Marilynn Robinson by Sarah Ann Johnson

On what drives her to write

“I write for the same reasons other people dance or paint, I suppose. Any art is an intensifier of experience, an exploration of experience itself. The recruiting of one’s faculties in order to do something so difficult and, in the ordinary sense, unnecessary, is really  very interesting, in part because so human. I feel that I am in the world in a particularly interesting way when I am writing, or doing anything that makes that kind of demand.

Of course there are things I wish to express, but it is truer to say that I find or understand them in the course of writing than it is to say that the writing simply serves as a way to express them”

On the power of metaphor?

“I share the Emersonian view that language is metaphorical in its origins and its fundamental character. The fossil poetry of single words is generally lost to familiarity, and we forget the potency of syntax, its amazing ability to capture meaning. Extended metaphors have syntax at a larger scale, and they exploit the fact that the mind moves through the likenesses in things.”

On what she admires about Melville, Faulkner, and the Old Testament

“Melville and Faulkner both write from a love of the splendors of consciousness, of the largest life of consciousness, including such things as knowledge and speculation, never to the exclusion—instead the enhancement—of immediate experience . . .  .  They explore conceptions of reality that are vast, generous, open and as ambitious as any metaphysics. The demands they make on language and the possibilities they open for it—these are the things that yield great prose. And, in the case of the Old Testament, great poetry.

The Old Testament is an entire, complex literature, which developed over a thousand years—a conservative estimate. It is dedicated to the proposition that human life and human history have very high meaning . . . and to the proposition that the cataclysmic world and obstreperous humankind are essentially holy and good. So it is a very this-worldly text in which metaphysical attention is brought to bear on sunlight and childbearing and warfare and greed and love and despair.

All its great beauty is earned by the directness with which it confronts , and laments and celebrates the world as it is .  .  .  . The beauty of the literature is the character of its engagement, the lyrical or pained or astonished—but always imperfect—perception of the holy.”

On the sacred and secular

“I don’t really accept the distinction between sacred and secular. . . . Nothing is without meaning, [everything] has its truest meaning under the aspect of eternity. The fact that we have no name for the  sacredness of most ordinary things does not by any  means put them in a searate category.”

Advice for new or aspiring writers

“Write the book you want to read. Never calculate or condescend. Keep your eyes open. Listen for the music of the language. Enrich you own sense of things and then be loyal to it.”

 

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My Art or My Novel. Which Would You Choose?

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art, Blogging, creatiity, Novel, painting, personal, Pleasure, writing, writing process

Dorothea Lange’s iconic photograph

Someone asked me recently what I loved more, my painting or my writing? Or, she added, is that like trying to choose which child you love most?

It is a little bit like that. Writing has always been the love of my life. Like a first child, I never thought I could love another as much as I loved him. And then number two came along and I learned that I could. Just as much, but differently.

Some children are easier to raise than others. My writing, like my first child, has wild mood swings. It’s like riding a roller coaster, one moment were up, up, up, dizzy with exhilaration, and the next were down, down, down, hating each other and sure we will never write another word again. But painting, like my second child, couldn’t be easier to live with, and there’s never been a cross word between us. She’s always ready to play when I am, and she keeps me delighted for hours.

Painting gives me more pure pleasure than writing. There’s pleasure in looking for a new project and in planning it. Pleasure in the process of painting and in the finished product. Pleasure hanging it, and every time I enter the room to view it anew.

There’s pleasure in writing too, especially in those first few hours, or days, or weeks, when the writing is hot and flowing out of me like I’m taking diction from some inspired muse. There’s even pleasure in the revision process where I’m weeding out what is extraneous and trying to make it as lean and luscious as possible. There’s pleasure in reading what I’ve written when it goes well, when I’m in the right mood, when I’m feeling confident or inspired.

Those are the peak moments. But in between all this pleasure are deep, deep lows. The sense of futility and frustration and despair can seem overwhelming. And then there are the long droughts when nothing inspires me. And the long, cold slogs when nothing is going well. And the times when I cannot force myself to sit down and try again, to keep it going. When I’d rather clean the toilet or go to the dentist or pull out my own teeth with pliers than sit down and write.

With painting, I never have to force myself to start or finish a project. If anything, I have to force myself to leave it be so I can do the laundry or prepare dinner. It’s not that I absolutely love everything I paint. But at the end of the day, it’s deemed good enough. And I feel my time was well spent. Sometimes I’m thrilled with the results and hang them on the wall. Other times I’m mildly pleased and lean them against some bookcase or pin them on bulletin board. Either way they keep me company. They suffice.

But writing, when I’m finished, disappears from sight. I might get pleasure re-reading it from time to time, but mostly I don’t bother. The few pieces that get published seem to go into a dark vault and are forgotten. Worse are the pieces that were much-loved but remain unread, unpublished. Instead of pleasure is a sense of loss and regret, of unrequited love, of stillborn life.

Given all that, you might wonder why I bother to write at all. Why not give it up for painting?

Because I can’t imaging life without writing. In some ways, for me, it’s like breathing. It seems a natural, intrinsic part of me. I can’t live without it, as difficult as it might be. I’m writing in my head all the time. Thinking and writing gets all rolled up together. Writing–putting thoughts on paper–takes me to a deeper place, and sometimes I don’t know what I think until I write it. It’s like the act of writing pulls up astonishing things from my unconscious and twirls them before my eyes so I can see what I’ve never seen before and be amazed. How could I give up something like that?

Writing this blog gives me pleasure and is a great outlet for my need to write. And your “likes” and comments help to sustain that pleasure, make it seem worthwhile. I don’t feel like the writing has dropped into a black hole or disappeared into cyberspace. I don’t feel I’m engaged in a futile exercise.

But my novel. My poor, poor novel. Unless I return to it, it will remain stillborn. And that I can’t bear. Pleasure or no, I must do it justice and publish it myself if nothing else. But all that takes time. Days, weeks, months of dedicated painstaking work. And I’ve become bewitched by painting. I can hardly stand to be away from her for a minute, let alone days, weeks, months.

So if you were me, what would you choose? Pure pleasure, or high anxiety and uncertain results? The answer seems obvious.

And yet, and yet, in the still of night my novel still calls to me.  In soft, wistful whispers.

Help Me Celebrate a Writing Milestone

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books, celebration, Novel, writers, writing, writing milestone, writing process

I just finished writing an 85,000 word novel that I’ve been working on the past couple of years.  It feels good to have completed something of this magnitude, even though I still have a lot of work to do to get it ready to send out to agents.

I’m hoping you can help me do that by “liking” my author page on Facebook, or following me on Twitter.  A strong “platform” could give me the edge I need in a competitive market.  You can do so by clicking the links in the sidebar, or going to the pages at the links below.

https://www.facebook.com/DeborahJBrasket

https://twitter.com/DeborahBrasket

I’m also looking for a new set of readers, people who will commit to read the novel and provide feedback on several levels:  how well it holds your attention, where it sings, where it sags; if there are any holes or gaps in the content (dangling threads, illogical time warps, etc.); anything that comes to mind that could make the novel stronger.  If you think you’d like to help out this way, please let me know.

“From the Far Ends of the Earth” is about what happens when the one person who has been holding together a difficult family mysteriously disappears. Will those left behind have the strength and love, or even the will, to keep from falling apart?

The novel is told from the perspective of the three family members left behind.

Kay is a “cranky” grad student studying archeology.   While distrusting men in general, and her father and brother in particular, she has been extremely close to her mother, who now leaves mysterious messages on Kay’s answering machine.  Mourning her loss, Kay sifts through the shards and debris of childhood memories trying to understand the past and learn how to trust again.

Cal has spent most of his life on the street strung out on heroin, but he’s living at home when his mother disappears. He is deeply hurt and angry at her disappearance, and mystified by the strange photographs she mails him.  When his father suddenly leaves, he is left on his own with a house to care for and no clue how to do it. Eventually he discovers his own artistic outlet welding sculpture from scrap metal. Then he takes in a boarder whose tattooed body reveals a past even more tragic than his own.

Walter awaits his wife’s return by paying her credit card bills and tracking her journey through Central and South America.  Then he decides to take his own long-delayed trip to Alaska, where a new life, new love, and new tragedy await him. When his wife’s credit card bills stop coming, he travels to Machu Picchu in the mountains of Peru to find her.

I wrote more about the novel in a blog post, which includes a link to a short story “When Things Go Missing” adapted from one of Cal’s chapters.

I have a second short story adaptation in the works from one of Kay’s chapters set Mexico at an archeological dig.  It’s called “The Fragrance of Rocks.”  While I’m finishing up the final revisions on the novel, I’ll be working on it and some of my other short stories.

The writing life, I’m finding, is one never-ending process.  Which is why it’s so important to share and celebrate the milestones with others.  I hope you will join me!

“Friday I tasted life. It was a vast morsel.” – Emily Dickinson

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”  – Anaïs Nin