In 1982 Ford got into sports writing. He had trouble making it anywhere so he wrote his first novel in his trilogy, “The Sportswriter”. Far before that he started writing short stories but never successfully finished any of them. In the 1970’s he was friends with a number of good short story writers and feels he honed his craft through them.
“...maybe it is I grew into being a short story writer around some people who were really good short story writers Anne Beatty, Ray Carver and Toby Wolfe and we were all pals back in the 70’s but prior to that I hadn’t been able to write short stories at all. When I started trying to be a writer that was the thing that I really set my sights on and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. Whatever a short story was I was incapable of writing one.”
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Richard Ford DIRTY REALISM
DIRTY REALISM
Ford strives for realism in his writing and most of the time it’s dirty. He makes unfavorable comments, gives his thoughts, and critiques American society but he’s being truthful. His novels and short stories are portals for his commentary on subjects that irk him, like any writer. But Ford’s are harder subjects to tackle. They present themselves in a very grey light. I’m reminded of Michael Winter talking about describing the darkness of the night by describing the light of a cigarette. The vastness of something can only be explained piece by piece. Ford wants to find a real natural place for his characters and readers to exist.
(about setting scene’s in cars)
“There is a way in which T think about writing novels having to do with where they take place in which you just simply look around you. I’m a realistic novelist. I’m trying to find places that are plausible for events to occur and relationships to go forward and you look around and you see a lot of people doing a lot of things in cars so it seems perfectly natural and not weird at all.”
He also speaks about the harshness of the human condition. He finds it hard to come up with completely original, horrible things to happen to his character but he writes them anyways.
“The truth about novels is you cannot keep up with reality. There’s nothing you can dream up or nightmarishly realize in the night and write down on a piece of paper that isn’t happening somewhere.”
Ford speaks on writing as a craft as well. He says that a good way to be natural and have eb and flow to your writing is to involve things that don’t make sense. Unexplained things. And that since you are a writer you will be able to sort it all out in the end. “Put things that don’t make sense in and then use your ability as a novelist to make them make sense.”
He goes on to talk about intention and how things from his life get into his writing and how his writing get into his life. He humorously talks about accidents and intentions and how writers don’t make accidents.
“Ff your a novelist everything you do you do intentionally. You don’t do anything by accident. At least after doing it by accident you have to finally take credit for doing it by accident and then it’s part of your intention.”
Ford strives for realism in his writing and most of the time it’s dirty. He makes unfavorable comments, gives his thoughts, and critiques American society but he’s being truthful. His novels and short stories are portals for his commentary on subjects that irk him, like any writer. But Ford’s are harder subjects to tackle. They present themselves in a very grey light. I’m reminded of Michael Winter talking about describing the darkness of the night by describing the light of a cigarette. The vastness of something can only be explained piece by piece. Ford wants to find a real natural place for his characters and readers to exist.
(about setting scene’s in cars)
“There is a way in which T think about writing novels having to do with where they take place in which you just simply look around you. I’m a realistic novelist. I’m trying to find places that are plausible for events to occur and relationships to go forward and you look around and you see a lot of people doing a lot of things in cars so it seems perfectly natural and not weird at all.”
He also speaks about the harshness of the human condition. He finds it hard to come up with completely original, horrible things to happen to his character but he writes them anyways.
“The truth about novels is you cannot keep up with reality. There’s nothing you can dream up or nightmarishly realize in the night and write down on a piece of paper that isn’t happening somewhere.”
Ford speaks on writing as a craft as well. He says that a good way to be natural and have eb and flow to your writing is to involve things that don’t make sense. Unexplained things. And that since you are a writer you will be able to sort it all out in the end. “Put things that don’t make sense in and then use your ability as a novelist to make them make sense.”
He goes on to talk about intention and how things from his life get into his writing and how his writing get into his life. He humorously talks about accidents and intentions and how writers don’t make accidents.
“Ff your a novelist everything you do you do intentionally. You don’t do anything by accident. At least after doing it by accident you have to finally take credit for doing it by accident and then it’s part of your intention.”
Richard Ford GOVERNMENT
Politics
Ford, like most political writers wanted some kind of social breakthrough and revelation to occur with the publishing of his new novel “Lay of the Land”. More than anything he wanted political consequences. He felt (rightly so) that it made no sense that a party could come into power simply by rigging the election. But he knew that this was inevitable he feels voting is a forgotten responsibility, “To Americans, politics is a TV show every night between six thirty and seven. And we’re promised by our constitution the privilege of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... but [for Americans] politics falls into a sort of forgotten responsibility which is taken care of by a highly polished political class...” Ford thought that setting his newest novel in that tender time of political confusion during the 2000 election would bring people back to what happened. To make them remember and make them upset again.
“I thought if I set this book in that interregnum period between when we American’s voted when the Republican via the Supreme Court stole the election, I thought I could draw attention to something that American’s slept through, which is our civic responsibility, our franchise, when we didn’t rise and revolt, when we didn’t do more than almost just sheepishly vote. There was a time in that particular period of weeks, and Vice President Gore was particularly egregiously lax in this, when we as citizens, and I count myself as culpable here, should have done more than we did to [connect] to the people who were deciding the election, ‘Hey, a lot of people voted for Vice President Gore. In fact more voted for him than this moron who became the President.’ and I just thought that it was a time that America needed to come, through the agency of my book, back to.”
In Ford’s recent commentary “Gov’t on our Minds” he remarks on similar topics as he did in the Frye Festival interviews but with a slightly different twist. He still thinks Americans (himself included) don’t like voting but he now says they never think of politics when in reality they can’t think of anything but politics simply because American’s are bombarded with it left right and center.
“The midterm election, however—the constitutionally mandated annoyance whereby all of the Congress and a third of the Senate (plus eight jillion local likelies) have to stand before us once again—pretty much insures that we can’t get government out of our minds, lives, hair, dreams, and just be satisfied being “the governed.”
That goes back to the analogy of the TV show. American’s are just observers of a terrible soap opera that they are addicted to (eg. Ms. Kaye and Coronation Street). The TV show becomes a lifestyle or a fad (think Team Edward/ Team Jacob but with political candidates).
Ford also has bad news for anyone who tries to speak out against politics and those involved in it.
“Writers don’t have a platform in America today, you can’t do what you can do today which is write into the Globe and Mail if you know something and Peggy Atwood can write to the Globe and Mail have something on her mind and see it published. You can’t do that with the New York Times. You probably can’t even do it with the ‘Des Moines Register’. Can‘t do it with the ‘Sacramento Bee’...but you can write a novel whose intention is to get at something that hasn’t been got at before,”
Although Canada’s government is unfathomably boring at least we have the ability to comment on it in a public forum. A lot of work has to be done to say something about the situation now. By the time it takes to write and publish a novel, the political situation could have completely cooled off. No one would be interested. I feel Ford must feel this way sometimes. He’s used to writing about things that happened though and uses fiction as a vehicle for it. An essay on the 2000 election doesn’t exactly tantalize readers in bookstores across America. Lay of the Land does.
Ford, like most political writers wanted some kind of social breakthrough and revelation to occur with the publishing of his new novel “Lay of the Land”. More than anything he wanted political consequences. He felt (rightly so) that it made no sense that a party could come into power simply by rigging the election. But he knew that this was inevitable he feels voting is a forgotten responsibility, “To Americans, politics is a TV show every night between six thirty and seven. And we’re promised by our constitution the privilege of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... but [for Americans] politics falls into a sort of forgotten responsibility which is taken care of by a highly polished political class...” Ford thought that setting his newest novel in that tender time of political confusion during the 2000 election would bring people back to what happened. To make them remember and make them upset again.
“I thought if I set this book in that interregnum period between when we American’s voted when the Republican via the Supreme Court stole the election, I thought I could draw attention to something that American’s slept through, which is our civic responsibility, our franchise, when we didn’t rise and revolt, when we didn’t do more than almost just sheepishly vote. There was a time in that particular period of weeks, and Vice President Gore was particularly egregiously lax in this, when we as citizens, and I count myself as culpable here, should have done more than we did to [connect] to the people who were deciding the election, ‘Hey, a lot of people voted for Vice President Gore. In fact more voted for him than this moron who became the President.’ and I just thought that it was a time that America needed to come, through the agency of my book, back to.”
In Ford’s recent commentary “Gov’t on our Minds” he remarks on similar topics as he did in the Frye Festival interviews but with a slightly different twist. He still thinks Americans (himself included) don’t like voting but he now says they never think of politics when in reality they can’t think of anything but politics simply because American’s are bombarded with it left right and center.
“The midterm election, however—the constitutionally mandated annoyance whereby all of the Congress and a third of the Senate (plus eight jillion local likelies) have to stand before us once again—pretty much insures that we can’t get government out of our minds, lives, hair, dreams, and just be satisfied being “the governed.”
That goes back to the analogy of the TV show. American’s are just observers of a terrible soap opera that they are addicted to (eg. Ms. Kaye and Coronation Street). The TV show becomes a lifestyle or a fad (think Team Edward/ Team Jacob but with political candidates).
Ford also has bad news for anyone who tries to speak out against politics and those involved in it.
“Writers don’t have a platform in America today, you can’t do what you can do today which is write into the Globe and Mail if you know something and Peggy Atwood can write to the Globe and Mail have something on her mind and see it published. You can’t do that with the New York Times. You probably can’t even do it with the ‘Des Moines Register’. Can‘t do it with the ‘Sacramento Bee’...but you can write a novel whose intention is to get at something that hasn’t been got at before,”
Although Canada’s government is unfathomably boring at least we have the ability to comment on it in a public forum. A lot of work has to be done to say something about the situation now. By the time it takes to write and publish a novel, the political situation could have completely cooled off. No one would be interested. I feel Ford must feel this way sometimes. He’s used to writing about things that happened though and uses fiction as a vehicle for it. An essay on the 2000 election doesn’t exactly tantalize readers in bookstores across America. Lay of the Land does.
Richard Ford POST KATRINA
New Orleans post-Katrina
Ford’s thoughts on the situation in New Orleans are based mostly on the unspoken tension between the black Democratic population of the city and the Republican party in power at the time. He thought that since the population of New Orleans wasn’t (and still isn’t) Republican the Government saw no benefit to making a presence.
“I was writing about this as you know right from the get go, we saw, those of us who were sort of watching new orleans, that all of these African American people were not Republicans. And so they weren’t a voting block that the Republican party had much of an investment in. They could come down here and Bush could come down to New Orleans and make a speech on Jackson Square and grab the sympathy vote of the rest of the country but he didn’t do very much for the people who were actually washed out of their homes.”
These are not light points Ford is making. He offers a reasonable and very shocking explanation to why nothing happened in the days, months and weeks after Katrina struck. He does not hold punches and although he has made these frightening revelations, he treats it like nothing. He goes on to speak about the dire conditions New Orleans residence are faced with.
“They have not been rescued. To this day they have not been rescued. They’ve just been told ‘Come back if you want to and if you come back and you build a house on this land that was inundateable and is inundateable now, if you do that and enough of your friends do that we will begin to restore city services to you but we’re not going to say how many have to come back for that to happen and we’re not going to do much for you.’”
Ford knows the devastation that New Orleans and its citizens have faced first hand, which makes his statements on the matter all the more viable. These are awful truths he presents his readers (and in this case listeners) but the question arises; why was he the only one talking about it? Perhaps the answer is in that quotation. Since the government never made major steps in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane it didn’t make big news beyond the week or so following and the reassurance of a government spokesperson. And since it didn’t make big news after that did people stop caring? Is that possible? It reminds me of a youtube video where a man is trying to stop a robbery but ends up getting beaten by two other men in broad daylight with people standing around watching. The three involved get into a scuffle and still the ones watching do nothing. Finally someone runs in to intervene he lands one kick but slips in a puddle before he can do much good. The muggers decide they’re finished with the man so they begin to run away and a man in a suit who has been closest to the encounter the whole time simply sticks his foot out in an attempt to look useful. It didn’t work. The muggers are Katrina, the good Samaritan is the local and international aid that tried to help but was swamped by the storm and the man in the suit is government who was closest the whole time and made no effort but tried to look like they cared. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJnaDg8MYVI&feature=related (ignore the ridiculous audio)
Ford also writes about New Orleans pre and post Katrina in Leaving for Kenosha. He talks about how some people used the storm as an excuse for their poor behaviour.
“Betsy explained to him during the divorce that she’d read a book in college at Hollins, about some children who were caught in a cyclone on a South Sea island. All the animals on the island—birds and lizards and furry creatures—went crazy before the storm came. Which didn’t explain anything. It had become fashionable to blame bad things on the hurricane—things that would’ve certainly happened anyway—failures, misdeeds, infirmities of character that the hurricane could’ve had nothing to do with. As if life weren’t its own personalized storm.”
This also speaks to the looting that was going on after Katrina hit. There was news footage of people stealing food and tents and gasoline played before footage of people stealing televisions and cars and microwaves. In a situation like that both people could use the excuse of “the storm” but one would hold more merit than the other. We need to steal to live or we are alive so we might as well steal. Ford speaks about a neighbourhood near the parish line in Leaving for Kenosha that was devastated more than the rest of the city because of its proximity to the levee’s and it being below the sea level. He talked about the markings on the door of houses declaring the number of dead or missing and the detritus left throughout the area.
“Charbonnet Street was a long street of wreckages. Where the floodwater had hurtled through, houses had been flattened, others moved off their foundations, others had their roofs floated away. Though others—the compact, sturdy brick ones—had simply been ruined in a way that left them seeming almost whole.”
Ford creates such an image with this passage. In the story, Walter and Louise are driving through the neighbourhood described and you can picture the ghost of the water hurtling past them.
Ford’s thoughts on the situation in New Orleans are based mostly on the unspoken tension between the black Democratic population of the city and the Republican party in power at the time. He thought that since the population of New Orleans wasn’t (and still isn’t) Republican the Government saw no benefit to making a presence.
“I was writing about this as you know right from the get go, we saw, those of us who were sort of watching new orleans, that all of these African American people were not Republicans. And so they weren’t a voting block that the Republican party had much of an investment in. They could come down here and Bush could come down to New Orleans and make a speech on Jackson Square and grab the sympathy vote of the rest of the country but he didn’t do very much for the people who were actually washed out of their homes.”
These are not light points Ford is making. He offers a reasonable and very shocking explanation to why nothing happened in the days, months and weeks after Katrina struck. He does not hold punches and although he has made these frightening revelations, he treats it like nothing. He goes on to speak about the dire conditions New Orleans residence are faced with.
“They have not been rescued. To this day they have not been rescued. They’ve just been told ‘Come back if you want to and if you come back and you build a house on this land that was inundateable and is inundateable now, if you do that and enough of your friends do that we will begin to restore city services to you but we’re not going to say how many have to come back for that to happen and we’re not going to do much for you.’”
Ford knows the devastation that New Orleans and its citizens have faced first hand, which makes his statements on the matter all the more viable. These are awful truths he presents his readers (and in this case listeners) but the question arises; why was he the only one talking about it? Perhaps the answer is in that quotation. Since the government never made major steps in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane it didn’t make big news beyond the week or so following and the reassurance of a government spokesperson. And since it didn’t make big news after that did people stop caring? Is that possible? It reminds me of a youtube video where a man is trying to stop a robbery but ends up getting beaten by two other men in broad daylight with people standing around watching. The three involved get into a scuffle and still the ones watching do nothing. Finally someone runs in to intervene he lands one kick but slips in a puddle before he can do much good. The muggers decide they’re finished with the man so they begin to run away and a man in a suit who has been closest to the encounter the whole time simply sticks his foot out in an attempt to look useful. It didn’t work. The muggers are Katrina, the good Samaritan is the local and international aid that tried to help but was swamped by the storm and the man in the suit is government who was closest the whole time and made no effort but tried to look like they cared. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJnaDg8MYVI&feature=related (ignore the ridiculous audio)
Ford also writes about New Orleans pre and post Katrina in Leaving for Kenosha. He talks about how some people used the storm as an excuse for their poor behaviour.
“Betsy explained to him during the divorce that she’d read a book in college at Hollins, about some children who were caught in a cyclone on a South Sea island. All the animals on the island—birds and lizards and furry creatures—went crazy before the storm came. Which didn’t explain anything. It had become fashionable to blame bad things on the hurricane—things that would’ve certainly happened anyway—failures, misdeeds, infirmities of character that the hurricane could’ve had nothing to do with. As if life weren’t its own personalized storm.”
This also speaks to the looting that was going on after Katrina hit. There was news footage of people stealing food and tents and gasoline played before footage of people stealing televisions and cars and microwaves. In a situation like that both people could use the excuse of “the storm” but one would hold more merit than the other. We need to steal to live or we are alive so we might as well steal. Ford speaks about a neighbourhood near the parish line in Leaving for Kenosha that was devastated more than the rest of the city because of its proximity to the levee’s and it being below the sea level. He talked about the markings on the door of houses declaring the number of dead or missing and the detritus left throughout the area.
“Charbonnet Street was a long street of wreckages. Where the floodwater had hurtled through, houses had been flattened, others moved off their foundations, others had their roofs floated away. Though others—the compact, sturdy brick ones—had simply been ruined in a way that left them seeming almost whole.”
Ford creates such an image with this passage. In the story, Walter and Louise are driving through the neighbourhood described and you can picture the ghost of the water hurtling past them.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Excerpt From "Cities of Refuge"
I put my money on Michael Helm for the Writers trust but probably because I can find comfort in his writing style. It's very different from Michael Winter's in that it hands you the layout of an image that you get to toy with. His writing is cinematic at a base level. He writes about seeing a woman through a security camera but my guess is that he thinks of things that way. Through a camera. I would love to be able to write a clear and precise 100 words of the things that I see on a day to day basis and I try to when I write shorts but helm is very, very good at it. He can give something as simple as "A clutch of Arab men speaking at once in a cigar shop on the verges of Chinatown." And we instantly have an image in our heads. Goes back to King's idea that writing is telepathy. The Arab men may look different and your edge of Chinatown may look different but Helm is sharing a moment with us.
Excerpt From "Death of Donna Whalen"
I've got a lot of respect for Winter and I think everyone should. It's damn hard writing like people speak or talk and he's got it down to an art. His use of fragments and run on's just add that layer of "human" to the story, even though it's true. He could have just sat down and made five feet of paper into two or three hundred pages of cold fact but he got into peoples head speaks through them. This excerpt isn't terribly different from any of the others I've read or heard but it shows that you can still tell a fantastic descriptive story without using a lot of adjectives, clear direct speech or trying to force feed what something or place looked like into the readers brain. I'm going to start fiddling around with his kind of style. Through the formats and rules out the window and just kind of write.
Cathy's Visit
Blog about Cathy Gildiner's visit to class today. Write a paragraph-long personal response. What did you learn from her about the writing life? Did her discussion raise any new questions for you?
Cathy's visit was pretty informative. She was honest about her experiences with writing and how much work was involved not only on her part but on an array of others. The glamour that a lot of writers present as their life isn't the case for Cathy, or probably the writers themselves. The process she described of going through lawyer after lawyer to settle on the names and occupations of some of the characters in her book was really interesting because it shows how much easier it is to write fiction than fact. Yet she was committed. I have still been thinking about charting out a memoir and how brutally difficult it would be to cut out parts of your own life. The only questions I have for Cathy have to do with the identities of some of the characters. I know I won't be satisfied.
Cathy's visit was pretty informative. She was honest about her experiences with writing and how much work was involved not only on her part but on an array of others. The glamour that a lot of writers present as their life isn't the case for Cathy, or probably the writers themselves. The process she described of going through lawyer after lawyer to settle on the names and occupations of some of the characters in her book was really interesting because it shows how much easier it is to write fiction than fact. Yet she was committed. I have still been thinking about charting out a memoir and how brutally difficult it would be to cut out parts of your own life. The only questions I have for Cathy have to do with the identities of some of the characters. I know I won't be satisfied.
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