STORY PERMANENCE

I used to have on-the-fly arguments with a young English prof at Eastern IL U, when we would run into each other while crossing the campus, about whether Updike or Bellow was the best/most important writer of the 2^nd half of the 20^th century. He favored Bellow, I stuck with Updike.

One way I evaluate writers is story permanence. Can I go back after a month or year or ten away from the partially-read book and know where I am in the story? I read many books a page a day. I learn quickly which authors can get my attention so well that it stays on the track of the story after a break.

I read Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift over about 15 years. But I read the Rabbit series by Updike over a much longer period. Both authors are great at story permanence.

I am not a literary scholar or critic and have no credibility as such, but I know who holds my attention. I read an Updike book—the one about the old woman artist who is interviewed by a young woman who drives up from NYC—in which he describes for what looked like 3 pages but was probably only 3 paragraphs, the older woman making egg salad. I have no interest in egg salad or how to make it, but he described the process so well that I hung on every word. It’s like one of those New Yorker articles on water witching in Nowherestan. You haven’t the slightest interest in water witching or Nowherestan, but you are 8 pages into the article before you realize it. Not surprisingly, Updike wrote for the NYer.

Another way I evaluate is: how much do I skip? Elmore Leonard said that the key to good writing is to leave out the parts readers skip. If there is nothing to skip, that is good writing. I never skip a word of Updike.

There are a lot of writers contending for best of the first half of the 21^st century—Elizabeth Kostova, Donna Tartt, Jane Smiley, Marilynn Robinson, et al. I hope I run into some young professor crossing the IU campus [1] so I can argue with her about which is best.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] It is likely to be the IU [Indiana University] campus if this happens, since Helen and I are moving to Bloomington soon.

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

I hope you never need it, but in case you know someone with cancer…

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”