{"id":1582,"date":"2021-03-23T13:55:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-23T13:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=1582"},"modified":"2021-04-27T22:16:02","modified_gmt":"2021-04-27T22:16:02","slug":"the-hidden-machinery-essays-on-writing-margot-livesey-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2021\/03\/the-hidden-machinery-essays-on-writing-margot-livesey-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"<i>The Hidden Machinery: Essays on Writing<\/i> &#8211; Margot Livesey, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I no longer remember where I heard about this book, but the title grabbed me. I enjoyed it, especially the analyses of great novels, but it didn&#8217;t quite deliver on the explanation of how the machinery works. There were some useful tips &#8211; now I want to read Forster&#8217;s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aspects_of_the_Novel\">Aspects of the Novel<\/a><\/em> for his description of flat characters who can become three-dimensional &#8211; and I&#8217;m also going to seek out Livesey&#8217;s novel <em>The Flight of Gemma Hardy<\/em>, which is a reworking of <em>Jane Eyre<\/em>. (Tangent: the Wikipedia article on <em>Aspects of the Novel<\/em> has two great quotes, one from Maughm &#8211; &#8220;I learned that the only way to write novels was like Mr. E.M. Forster&#8221; &#8211; and one from Woolf &#8211; &#8220;So then we are back in the old bog; nobody knows anything about the laws of fiction.&#8221;)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A few bits I took away:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Livesey says memorable characters need attributes that convey their attitude: &#8220;No amount of details&#8212;eyes, teeth, hair, jobs, dreams, relationship to mother, history of dog ownership, horoscope&#8212;will avail unless it conveys attitude. Indeed, long lists of detail without affect may simply make the task of imagining the character harder, for both writer and reader.&#8221; This sounds plausible but I want to chew on it a bit. <\/li><li>&#8220;Dialogue is a wolf in sheep&#8217;s clothing&#8212;often pretending to be woolly and vague, actually all teeth and meaning.&#8221;<\/li><li>She explains why re-reading can be exciting by distinguishing between two kinds of suspense: what&#8217;s going to happen, or how and why it happens. <\/li><li>I was intrigued by her suggestion that fiction can sometimes be made more believable by employing what she calls &#8220;antifiction&#8221; &#8211; techniques that make the narrative &#8220;messier, more confusing: in other words more lifelike.&#8221;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A great list of signals that indicate you&#8217;re reading fiction, specifically about the introductory paragraph of <em>Ulysses<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>1. There is no visible narrator.<br \/>2. The act of writing is concealed. We are made to believe that the words sprang up on the page without effort.<br \/>3. Characters are shown to us through action and dialogue.<br \/>4. There is no initial attempt at explanation.<br \/>5. There is considerable specificity of detail and a kind of heightened density to the style.<br \/>6. Both narrator and characters are unnaturally eloquent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And finally, she asks an artist friend, Gerry Bergstein, why one would rewrite a famous book and he tells her:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>1. To provide a contemporary update of older themes that often contradicts the original<br \/>2. Sheer love<br \/>3. To make a cultural critique<br \/>4. To demonstrate political, or other forms, of social evolution<br \/>5. To distill the earlier work<br \/>6. To develop the traditions of a beloved forebear<br \/>7. Any combination of the above<br \/>8. As a joke<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But that leaves off what I&#8217;m afraid is the most frequent reason, even if it&#8217;s unconsciously motivated and not sheer crassness: To get more attention than naturally accrues to a less-famous creator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Subsequently I searched for reviews, and found <a href=\"https:\/\/rohanmaitzen.com\/2021\/01\/15\/and-then-what-margot-livesey-the-hidden-machinery\/\">this very helpful one<\/a>, which contains a list of other writing books I could add to a request list:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Charles Baxter\u2019s\u00a0<em>Burning Down the House<\/em><\/li><li>Nancy Kress\u2019s\u00a0<em>Beginnings, Middles, and Ends<\/em><\/li><li>Sarah Painter\u2019s\u00a0<em>Stop Worrying, Start Writing<\/em><\/li><li>Robert Boswell\u2019s\u00a0<em>The Half-Known<\/em>\u00a0<em>World<\/em><\/li><li>Graywolf Press\u2019s\u00a0<em>The Art Of<\/em>\u00a0series<\/li><li>Tin House\u2019s\u00a0<em>Between the Covers<\/em>\u00a0podcast<\/li><li>Ursula LeGuin\u2019s\u00a0<em>Steering the Craft<\/em><\/li><li>Janet Burroway\u2019s\u00a0<em>Writing Fiction<\/em><\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I no longer remember where I heard about this book, but the title grabbed me. I enjoyed it, especially the analyses of great novels, but it didn&#8217;t quite deliver on the explanation of how the machinery works. There were some useful tips &#8211; now I want to read Forster&#8217;s Aspects of the Novel for his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1582"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1605,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582\/revisions\/1605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}