So what are you reading?

We all ask this question and get asked this question. But when it comes to becoming a better writer this question can mean more than your everyday small talk.

I took the opportunity to attend a lecture at Manhattanville College's Summer Writer's Week, where Francine Prose read from her book on this topic, Reading Like a Writer (2006). Prose looks at "the greats"--Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov, to name a few--and examines why their works have endured through the years.

Prose, who also teaches at Bard College, wants aspiring writers to savor the language of the masters and decipher why they choose particular words to convey certain feelings.

I think Prose's book has some valuable advice to a reader like me, who also wants to write. When I read, I usually speed my way through a story, anxious to know what comes next. It takes a special kind of writer to make me slow down and get lost in the language of the book. Sometimes, I get both.

By poring over the finer details of a story, Prose proffers that the reader, for instance, can learn about creating character and advancing the plot through dialogue.

But then there is Anton Chekov. During the lecture, Prose read from her "Learning from Chekhov" chapter, which examines how Chekov broke all kinds of "rules" for writing fiction. He practiced "writing without judgment" and be the "unbiased observer" of his characters. 

In the spirit of Chekhov, Prose also advises, "Forget about what you read. Go out and look at the world."

With this, I came away with two pieces of advice that somehow don't conflict: learn and then unlearn. This way, the writer has a store of knowledge and tools at hand. Yet, the writer still makes room for the muse.

So what is Francine Prose reading? Well, she said she had just finished rereading David Copperfield. How 'bout you?

"It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same—everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same—people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world."
     - George Orwell, 1984

When most students think of George Orwell ... or ... well ... do most students think of George Orwell? Hmm. Have you ever heard of a little book called Animal Farm? It is a delightful story about a bunch of barnyard animals who overthrow their evil captors and then run their own society. On a base level, it is a colorful children's story where "two legs equals bad" and "four legs equals good" ... or is it the other way around? On a much deeper level (one we needn't worry about til at least college), it is an allegorical commentary about Soviet totalitarianism. "Huh?" Don't worry about it. For now, just have fun reading the book and focus on how the animals take on human qualities and what we (as faulty humans) can learn from their story.

And then, once you've mulled that intensity over, try 1984 on for size. This heart wrenching novel used to be my ultimate favorite. I got over that a few years ago though when I was reading it for no less than the 15th time. The brutality of those words were just too much to live through again. I would, however, honestly give anything to have those first 14 reads back. Listen:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

How can anyone handle that?!? Plus, when the Ministry of Truth, the Thought Police, and Big Brother are all out to get you, it's all you can do to keep yourself safe from what lies in the dreaded Room 101.

Be afraid.

Oh, and happy birthday, Georgie Porgie.

The following two poems were written by Christina Beasley, age 16

canvas

      threads lithe, tight fingers bolted to a frame of
skin and bone
stretching as though born clutching a sky
brought down by the weight of a universe-
here, take some ink and cry me a river, love-
let it sink in and dye these coarse strands
the color of thatched veins reaching across empty pallets
           bringing
life to every fiber
you, conflicted isis, isn't
this how they used to do it lacing
around impossible figures like mid-afternoon clouds
torn down to two dimensionality evanescent and cruel in their dissection
of the natural form?
seizing horizons that could
very well be the end of the world-
and yet You know as you put
away your paints and pastels

that their own flesh border still locks them in
              still holds them fixed to a splintered edge
and a corporeal casing still carries them home.

watercolor

wringing out black strands
of coarse angel hair we stand
on bridges heavy with gothic swirl
              their adornment an embrace.
strokes of graffiti and grime laced inch by inch
on bleak pillars they shout names
so far from umber burnt sienna
vermillion-
But artists bleed this
she confides
her mascara running down like two
                hiroshige
                                   waterfalls
whispering down her cheeks they are
but shadows of their former selves
-every black procession still
a masterpiece.

every touch of authenticity to
canvas is art.