End of Year Observance from one Writer to Another

It’s time to reflect. The end of the year is a good time to do that; one’s birthday is even better. Nevertheless, I do a lot of introspection these days. My horoscope said 2011 would be a superb year in which I would have much success in many areas including, publishing, the arts (meaning to me – writing), journalism, job opportunities, increased wealth, love, etc., etc. In fact, I have had some success in those areas but not what I expected when I published my novel earlier this year.

Even though I may have accomplished some of my goals, I feel I've been less than successful in others.  But this is intended as a message of inspiration -- not of disappointment!

You see, one must look at things from a positive perspective. (My son Stephen says, you get more of what you focus on). So, let me recite instead the good things that have happened in my life recently.

I’ve expanded my writing community through the publication of my novel.

I’m averaging 20 or so hits a day on my blog. Not a lot, but growing.

Sales from my book got off to a pretty slow start earlier in the year, but are now picking up.

I was selected (without promoting myself) to become a featured novelist by 5-STAR books and their new website.

I’ve had a few good reviews that I didn’t have to pay for.

I have friends who are there when I need them and are very supportive.

I live in a nice house, and am not picking through trash cans to stay alive.

I’m robust and healthy and full of the “ol’ Nick,” as my husband likes to say.

I have a good man who helps me through the dark times.

My writing has been described as compelling, lucid, graceful, limpid, and thoughtful.

This is certainly progress and yet I want more. 

You see, I’ve been writing since I was twelve, seriously writing. I started when I received a five year diary and believed I would not live to finish it at seventeen. The diary turned into journals, essays, short stories, novels, plays and now blogs. 

I make myself remember the history behind Karl Marlantes’ novel, “Matterhorn, a novel of the Vietnam War.” I love his story because it reflects the victory of the human spirit over rejection upon rejection. Here is a veteran who came home from war in the early seventies, began writing a novel at that time, tried to get published, was rejected, tried again, put it in the drawer, dragged it out a year or so later, submitted again, and was still rejected. His novel was finally published by Atlantic Press in 2010. That’s something like 35 years, folks.

I decided not to wait that long and have gone the "Indie" route. But I believe in the tireless perseverance of people like Marlantes who have the faith in themselves and in their talent to keep at it -- those of you who are still trying to go through the agent-publisher-rejection routine.  I wish you nothing but  success and a good financial advisor.

As for me, I'm a hard woman to keep down.  I will never stop writing for long, and I, like many of you, have an agenda of projects that are as long as my arm.  In fact, just writing about it here and now, inspires me to sit down tomorrow and begin my next novel.  I have a spunky protagonist who wants to be heard and the conflict is as weird and whacky as I am and maybe a little complicated, too.  I like that.

For better or worse, we are writers who don't just talk about it.  We follow the voices wherever they may take us and we learn from them -- the sometimes weird, quirky characters that rise up out of our imaginations and clarify who we are. These people make sense out of a sometimes non-sensical existence.  They keep me sane even if they are in-sane.  I love them and I miss them and I can't live without them.

Because of that, I can never stop writing and neither can you.  That is the one thing we can never do. That would be anathema to everything we are.
 
So, here's wishing us all a very happy and busy new year, filled with writing, learning, good conversations with interesting people at the coffee shop or in our minds and in keeping our focus and our faith.   

Ciao for now, Sue McGhee

E. L. Doctorow and the Postmodern Era

Here is a sample of my essay on Doctorow in my soon to be released collection entitled The Moving Finger Writes: 

The Stylistic Freedom of E. L. Doctorow
The postmodern agenda has been described as a revolt against the Moderns, a departure from order, Enlightenment, reason, unity and system, while it embraces fragmentation, depthlessness, indeterminacy and chaos, to name only a few of its most frustrating characteristics. The postmodern world in general favors a creation-centered, spirituality over the "God is Dead" alienation of the Moderns and the anthropic principle over the accidental universe. In aesthetics, the search by the Moderns for meaning and transcendence from alienation has been discarded like yesterdays newspapers to be recycled into a "New Age" cosmic consciousness, whose superficiality discourages the need for interpretation. Much of the writing (Marquez, Borges and Pynchon, notwithstanding) is self-indulgent and cathartic, exemplified by the poetry of Adrienne Rich, or deliberately vague and flaccid as in much of John Ashbery, or it rests haphazardly within the category of the absurd; it becomes carnavalesque, anti-form and diegetic as in Robert Coover's work. There is a very superficial tip of the hat, if indeed there is any acknowledgment at all, to serious issues, with which the Moderns at least attempted to grapple.

E. L. Doctorow is one of the few writers today who is eager to embrace the larger political and social issues of our time, believing it to be not only the writer's responsibility, but "the passion of our calling…the belief that writing matters, that there is salvation in witness and moral assignment" (qtd in Harter 12). However, in portraying the social issues of the past and present, Doctorow combines an impelling synthesis of authorial devices; he is neither a realist in the modernist tradition, nor depthless and ludic' in the postmodern sense, yet his work embraces many of the techniques of both worlds, resulting in an historical view which he has described as slightly off center. "Somehow I was the kind of writer who had to put myself though prisms to find the right light--I had to filter myself from my imagination in order to write" (Trenner 34). It is this distorted view of history, the juxtaposition of imaginary historical characters with real ones, all of whom are implanted into altered historical situations, which is the focus of much poststructuralist criticism today and indeed occupies several paragraphs in Fredric Jameson's often quoted essay, "The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism." While discussing Doctorow's novel, Ragtime, Jameson states, "This historical novel can no longer set out to represent the historical past; it can only 'represent' our ideas and stereotypes about the past (which thereby at once becomes 'pop history')" (69). "Re¬presentation" is a major tenet of postmodernism and a valued tool in Doctorow; it is "simulacrum," the exact copy for which there is no original.

That Jameson admires Doctorow is clear, once referring to him as, "…one of the few serious and innovative Left novelist's at work in the United States today…" (68), a sentiment which is echoed by others perhaps less knowledgeable than Jameson, who read into Doctorow's work a political message that is both simplistic and reductive. Still others are outraged by Doctorow's manipulation of historical facts, regarding them as mis-representations rather than representations. Nevertheless, in most of the criticism reviewed, it is the content of Doctorow's social comment that fires the debate today rather than his treatment of it. The focus of this essay will be Doctorow's techniques, many of which I believe fall well within the postmodern paradigm: the revision of history, which is evident in all his works, the almost cinematic structure of his prose as seen in The Book of Daniel, his early and perhaps greatest novel, and his voice--the symbiosis of author and character--evident not only in The Book of Daniel, but more recently in the novella and collection of six short stories, Lives of the Poets.

To be continued . . .