Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing by Roger Rosenblatt

Author:Roger Rosenblatt
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Language Arts & Disciplines, Authorship, Composition & Creative Writing, General
ISBN: 9780061965616
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-01-04T19:53:46.672771+00:00

Chapter 5

Writing Like a Reader

Before we go on to poems—I had asked the students to write their poems for the class after this one—I want to take up a question Robert asked me as we were finishing the last class on essays. At our ninth meeting, I ask Robert to tell the others what he’d said to me.

“It was about the connection between reading and becoming a writer,” he says. “Our cranky professor is forever belittling us for how little we read or have read. . . .” Professor Cranky smiles with satisfaction. “But I wonder, does it really matter how well-read a writer is?”

“How well-read was Shakespeare?” says Nina. “Didn’t they say he had little Latin and less Greek?”

“Did Donne learn to write by reading someone else?” asks Donna.

“Would that he had,” says Jasmine.

“So you think there’s no connection between reading and writing? I can prove that’s not true. But you may be right in questioning the direct relationship. And then there’s the special selective way that writers use the reading they do. I don’t want you to be overeducated—”

“No danger in that,” says Robert.

“I want you to read just enough to do your job better.”

“You think the influence of what we read is indirect?” says Ana.

“It is for me. When I was writing my satirical novels, I was rereading Nabokov at the same time. I wasn’t reading him for purposes of imitation. I never could be directly influenced by Nabokov since he outstrides me at every turn. He is simply too great a writer. But I did like having him at my side as I wrote. He was good company, the best. It was like hanging around a superior mind. You can never equal that mind, but you strive to do your best, and not to embarrass yourself in his presence. I just wanted him in the same room.”

John Updike’s idea of influence was more general still. In a pamphlet about The Writing Life, he wrote: “Of course, everything you read of any merit at all in some way contributes to your knowledge of how to write. But my first literary passion was James Thurber. He showed me an American voice and a willingness to be funny. I wrote him a fan letter at the age of twelve, and he sent me a drawing which I’ve carried with me, framed, everywhere I’ve gone since.” Thurber’s “American voice” was probably not the first such voice Updike read, but the “willingness to be funny” is a wonderful phrase to attribute to Thurber, or to anyone, because writing humor is risky business. It takes courage to assume that readers will laugh, especially at intelligent humor. Still, Thurber showed Updike what could be done, not how to do it.

“You’re basically talking about inspiration, not direct influence,” says Robert.

“That’s right. I don’t believe that the influence is direct. Some do.”

In Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose, clearly a superb teacher of writing, describes how reading certain authors with her students helped things she was writing herself at the time.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.