Patrick_Response to Chapter 5

[Sondra Perl]

#390

After reading chapter five, I found myself reflecting on the writing I have repeatedly returned to throughout my reading life, a handful of non-fiction books that invited me to read and re-read. To be more specific: Maggie Nelson’s “Bluets,” Joan Didion’s “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” and Anne Carson’s “Eros the Bittersweet.” What’s interesting about these books is that they are not driven by plot. They are, instead, galvanized by a particular voice—a voice that intrigues, engages, educates, and challenges the reader. For me, reading these books for the first time was like encountering a new friend—or if not a friend, then a comrade—as if someone I loved was speaking to me from far away. And when the book was over, I felt a sense of mourning because it was as if a burgeoning relationship was suddenly ending, as if I had lost a friend.

I think this speaks to the power of voice, the way a writer’s voice can enchant, delight, ingratiate, and befriend the reader. As the writer of chapter five makes clear from the very beginning: “One of the strengths of creative nonfiction is its person-to-person feeling, as if writer and reader were friends” (56). And so the writer’s voice becomes a mechanism in which the self is revealed, made transparent and clear. This is a process that renders the writer vulnerable, much like the way one feels on making a new acquaintance. There is a desire to be authentic; and yet, at the same time, there is a distinct fear of rejection. In the pursuit of an authentic voice, a voice that reveals the self, a writer takes on the risk of rejection.

That being said, I like to think of writing as an act of faith: I believe that every writer has a reader. And with this in mind, I think it best to write towards authenticity. I think most of chapter five’s suggestions help one write authentically, while simultaneously holding up authenticity as malleable. As the author states in chapter five, “authenticity, for writers, means finding the language to convey the complexity, irony, and ambivalence of what we—as individuals—experience in our lives” (68). This understanding of authenticity is rooted in subjective experience. Consequently, writers of non-fiction “plumb the depths within ourselves, to find the right voice(s) for the occasion, voices that capture what matters in the worlds we inhabit” (68).

As chapter five indicates, a writer has access to many different voices, several constituent selves. The act of writing allows one to access these different constituent selves—and the voices are sometimes contradictory (experienced vs. innocent, irreverent vs. reverential, humorous vs. angry). These contradictions, or as the writer of chapter five puts it “opposing points of view,” allow the writer to embody a perspective that “sees the world in more than one dimension” (64-65). Through this technique, a non-fiction writer can hold up subjective experience as complex, ambiguous, and irreconcilable without sacrificing the desire to be authentic.

[Sondra Perl]

#403

Patrick:

Spot-on! Reading memoirs and narratives that are not plot driven but voice driven is what has to engage the reader. People tend to interact within society by seeking out similar beings/perspectives/voice, like seeks like, probably an innate attribute from our primordial days.

As a reader, if the story is interesting but the voice/tone/style is limited, I tend to not want to engage. It is no wonder that many readers align themselves with writers that offer the same voice, or a voice they know. It takes both the observant writer who can convey many voices, grounding those voice(s) in a substantial style, that works to speak to many readers. Which means the reverse is also true, an active reader will seek out many voices, familiar or not to grow as a reader and as a person.

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