Brilliant Writing

When would-be authors ask me what great writing is, I usually ask them what they've read and am invariably distressed to see how little reading they do.

A better response might be to ask them, "Do you read Anthony Lane in the New Yorker? You should. You will learn what great writing is."

Lane is the main reason I maintain a subscription to that magazine since his witty and literate film reviews are gems. Not long ago I found on sale his book of reviews (book as well as movie reviews) called "Nobody's Perfect."   As I skim through these brilliant essays on everything from The Godfather to obituaries in the New York Times to T. S. Eliot, whose work he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, I delight in the wide range of his interests and tastes, from high to low-brow. He puts just as much attention on the latest Hollywood non-starter as on Nabokov or Shakespeare on film (the topic of one of his longer essays).  And it is obvious that he has honed and polished his sentences to a high gloss, a great gift to any reader.

I read Anthony Lane with (I must admit) a bit of envy at not being a Brit, the kind of highly literate guy who seems to have read everything and seen nearly everything else and who expresses himself with panache.  American critics and actors rarely seem to have the range and depth that make writers like Lane sparkle without being snobbish.

In his most recent review (August 26, 2019), Lane makes a memorable comment about the importance of listening, about how it is the most "delicate of the dramatic arts."  He cites an anecdote from the life of Alec Guinness, who was told by a senior actor doing Shakespeare, "Don't just look at me. Listen. Listen."   What applies to intelligent actors also applies to everyday life. I spent several hours at a dinner party recently across from a couple who were interesting to talk to but whose faces registered no feeling, no interest in who I was; they were not really paying attention to who I was. We shared opinions and experiences but went away as strangers.  They never asked me any questions in an effort to know me. They heard  what I said but never really listened.

That evening, I watched Ingrid Bergman, in close up shots, in Hitchcock's "Notorious" and I saw a woman I could know, a face that registered fear and love and regret and so much more.  She was really listening.

I am grateful to Anthony Lane for mentioning this topic in his typically thoughtful review, and I am grateful to writers like him who make the ordinary (movie review) into something special, a work of art in itself.

At least be interesting

"If you can't be funny," Harold Ross used to tell his writers at the New Yorker years ago, "at least be interesting."  He was the founding editor of that magazine, which continues to maintain high editorial standards in everything from comedy to commas.

His advice is not bad for such a publication and for the kind of non-fiction books I especially savor, the latest being at 2010 book by Dianne Hales, Bella Lingua, which succeeds in being informative and entertaining at the same time.

Being a sometime student of Italian, who taught Dante and longs for a third trip to Italy, I have long appreciated most things Italian: the food, the music, the culture, and, of course, the musical, playful language.  This is what Hales manages to capture in her book.

It's remarkable that an American with no knowledge of the language or country managed to immerse herself in the Italian language with such enthusiasm and good humor that she makes the reader--or at least me--want to read on, beyond the opening chapters.

What is the secret of her success? The main one is that she provides a bounty of examples of what Italians say, and don't say: they don't have a word for "lonely," she points out, or for "spelling."  There is no need for either, for reasons she explains.  And some words, like brio and gusto and inamorata, are untranslatable.  So is Bravo!

Hales gives the earthy and colorful details of Italian speech so that the reader gets a sense of the country and its people: the emotional pull is there.  And so is wit and a lively writing style and a feel as I'm reading that I am there on that beautiful peninsula.

The reason, as she makes clear, is that a love of a people's language opens the door to their soul.  And Italian, the most musical of tongues, is also the most emotionally expressive.  The words are mostly easy to pronounce and play with, and Hales clearly enjoys her subject and knows how to make it interesting--the hallmark of good writing.

Any topic can be rendered dull or interesting, depending on the way an author approaches his or her subject. Mere knowledge of the subject is never enough.
It takes an effortless ease and grace that the Italians call (in another untranslatable word) "sprezzatura," in which what is challenging is made to look easy.

This book has made me eager to return to the study of Italiano, so to its skillful author I say, Bravo!

Sentences to Die For

This post has nothing to do with capital punishment (death sentences!) but with those gems of prose style that I collect and savor, often wishing I had written them.

I do so in part because reading good prose--the kind that is carefully, creatively constructed--is what keeps me fresh as a writer.

And I am a connoisseur of sentences because, again this summer, I will be teaching a writing workshop (at the Winter Park Public Library from June 26-July 31).  I want my students to see how many sentence patterns there are, many worthy of imitation, and what options they have as writers. Of course, I will stress the importance of one overriding fact: the key to good writing is wide, careful reading in which we pay attention to the style of sentences, whether the author is writing fiction or non-fiction.

A number of good writers have emphasized the sentence as the key area of writing (and revision), the unit to focus on. Kathryn Schulz in a recent web post singles out Geoff Dyer, an English writer, for his mastery of non-fiction sentences that catch her eye and ear. She finds that Dyer (author of The Color of Memory) reaches new heights in extending the possibilities of the individual sentence.

For example, on a saxophone solo by John Coltrane Dyer writes, "It's pretty and then dangerous as he reaches so high the sky blues into the darkness of space before reentering, everything burning up around him."

Like Coltrane's music, Dyer reaches, as he does with the daring use of "blues": it serves, as Schulz points out, as verb, noun and adjective at the same time, making it seem "like the solo is still rising and what's falling is the sky."

This is poetic prose, highly calculated to dazzle. And it can be found in many places.  I don't know if I would be able to tolerate too many sentences like the one by Dyer; but one is all I need.

I often find in the New Yorker examples of less fancy but clever sentences that exemplify the left-handed (or periodic) pattern that is worth emulating, in which the modifiers pile up ahead of the main clause, as in this opening sentence by Anthony Lane, reviewing a current movie:

"Wrinkled and crinkled, huge in Japan, heroically reluctant to give up, and forever touring the world on a mission to make us scream, Godzilla is the Mick Jagger of giant amphibians."

I love this sentence not just because of the witty Jagger-Godzilla analogy, which I would never have thought of, but because the main clause--about Godzilla-- comes as a delightful surprise after the calculated opening.  Lane has the ability to make reviewing a Hollywood film into something of a work of art--delightful to readers with no interest in such movies.

I will, no doubt, as the summer progresses, share more sentences and commentary about the importance of the well-crafted sentence as the essence of good writing.

The actor as author

I rarely read books by celebrities, and the ones I've looked at are not well written.  Just recently, a few days after watching an old movie by Mel Brooks, The Twelve Chairs, I saw a book by the star of the movie, Frank Langella, who has had a long career on the stage and in some movies. I could tell right away it was not a book of mere gossip but something of quality.

The book, published last year, is called Dropped Names, a collection of perhaps two dozen vignettes in which Langella recalls some of the famous people he has known or met.  Some, like an amusing encounter with the Queen Mother at the Ascot Derby in 1972, are memories brought to life with deft dialogue and description. And like nearly all of the chapters, this one is concise.

The portraits are rarely flattering; in fact, Langella has devastating insights into some of the 20th century's most notable narcissists, from Yul Brynner and Bette Davis, whom he meets in her old age, to Anne Bancroft, Elizabeth Taylor, and Brooke Astor.  His encounters with Noel Coward and Laurence Olivier are memorable and witty; his appreciation of Alan Bates and Jackie Kennedy are moving.

Especially memorable is one of his early memories as an unknown actor being invited to an afternoon party attended by President Kennedy and Jackie in 1961, where the romance and glamor of the day (at the Mellon estate on Cape Cod) is remembered with beauty, where the reader can share his picture of Jackie radiantly happy to see her husband totally relaxed, laughing until tears ran down his cheeks.  There is an elegiac quality to this gem of an essay.

So, you might ask, is this book another example of a noted actor dropping names and little more? No, it is an example of excellent writing that has something to teach would-be authors. Actors, if they are good, are sensitive, intelligent, and keenly observant. They make carefully planned entrances and exits. So do good writers.

Langella is a sensitive observer of behavior, and he obviously has written a lot over the years.  He knows how to bring a scene alive with details, then end it gracefully.

Langella shows himself to be a man who has lived a very full life. His portrait of his close friend Raul Julia is beautiful. He is typically honest in saying that he, a very healthy and active heterosexual, fell in love with Raul (also a married man with kids), calling him playfully his "boyfriend." He was devastated when Raul died young. At the end Langella writes:

 "Unconsummated love between men can be as powerful as any love between a man and a woman, and equally if not more powerful than physical love with either."  There is great wisdom and courage in this statement and the insight of a man who has experienced life fully.

This chapter alone might make Dropped Names memorable; but all the portraits, in their searing honesty, offer skillful models of the writer's craft, which may have more in common with acting than I ever realized.