The Writer’s Drug of Choice

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Interview, Literature, Writing

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Alcohol, Art, Caffeine, Coffee, Drugs, Ernest Hemingway, Hysteria, John Bennet, literature, Oliver Sacks, Sasha Weiss, The New Yorker, tobacco, writers, Writing

Interviewer: John, you’ve been an editor for a very long time, and I imagine that you’ve worked with writers who have used various drugs to stimulate their writing.

John Bennet, New Yorker editor: Mostly caffeine and tobacco, and drugs of that nature. And simple hysteria.

I think it’s pretty hard to really write a complicated piece of writing if you’re hallucinating. That’s not to say that many of these writers haven’t done that in the past. But when they’re actually producing, they rely on caffeine, which is of course a drug.

Most writers I know write better than they’re able to write. That’s to say if it’s a good writer, he or she can write a great piece. But they do it by dent of great personal sacrifice. They tend to adrenalize themselves, whether it’s with caffeine or with just simple hysteria or panic, into this highly agitated state, whereby they are able to produce writing of the quality that they want to produce — that otherwise they feel they can’t produce.

And in general I must say it’s a rather destructive process to watch, when you work with writers who essentially have nervous breakdowns every time they have to write a piece. Which means it’s really a damnable profession, writing, because most people who are writers tend to be miserable — at least when they’re writing.

__________

Bennet, exchanging words with Sasha Weiss, story editor for the New York Times Magazine, in his joint interview with Oliver Sacks for The New Yorker Out Loud (Bennet’s remarks start at around 19:30 in the audio above).

You’ll find Sacks’s longer takes on this stuff in his highly acclaimed new memoir On the Move, which I plan to pick up in the coming weeks.

Read on:

When Exclamation Marks Get Excessive

15 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Writing

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A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Exclamation Marks, Grammar, Grammar Rules, H.W. Fowler, Jeb Bush, Jeb Bush Campaign Logo, Jeb Bush Presidential Announcement, Punctuation, Writing

“Not to use a mark of exclamation is sometimes wrong: How they laughed., instead of How they laughed!, is not English. Excessive use of exclamation marks is, like that of italics, one of the things that betray the uneducated or unpracticed writer: you surprise me, How dare you?, Don’t tell such lies, are mere statement, question, and command, not converted into exclamations by the fact that those who say them are excited, nor to be decorated into You surprise me!, How dare you!, Don’t tell such lies!. It is, indeed, stated in a well-known grammar that ‘A note of exclamation is used after words or sentences which express emotion’, with, as example, How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan!. The second half of this quotation clearly violates the rule laid down above, being, however full of emotion, a simple statement, and yet having an exclamation mark. But anyone who will refer to 2 Samuel i. 26 will find that mark to be not the Bible’s, but the grammarian’s; the earlier one of verse 25 is right. So far, the inference seems obvious and simple — to confine the exclamation to what grammar recognizes as exclamations, and refuse it to statements, questions, and commands…

Though a sentence is not to be exclamation-marked to show that it has the excited tone that its contents imply, it may and sometimes must be so marked to convey that the tone is not merely what would be natural to the words themselves, but is that suitable to scornful quotation, to the unexpected, the amusing, the disgusting, or something that needs the comment of special intonation to secure that the words shall be taken as they are meant. So: You thought it didn’t matter!, He learnt at last that the enemy was — himself!, Each is as bad as the other, only more so!, He puts his knife in his mouth!. But not: That is a lie!… Who cares!, I wish you would be quiet!, Beggars must not be choosers!; in all these the words themselves suffice to show the tone, and the exclamation mark shows only that the writer does not know his business.”

__________

From the section “Exclamation” in H.W. Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, first published in 1926. The book has just been reprinted as part of the Oxford World Classics series and may be worth picking up for that strange someone in your life who’s into this sort of thing.

Continue on:

Will Self: Why I Don’t Teach Creative Writing

17 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Interview, Writing

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Christine Fears, Communications, Creative Writing, Creativity, interview, Will Self

“I don’t teach creative writing because I think it’s a fatuous thing to do, but if anybody young asks me for advice, what I say to them is: ‘Do you, when you look back at a page of your work, get inflicted with a dreadful sense of futility and a sense that it’s cardboard, and it’s meaningless and that it doesn’t express an iota of what you wanted to say, and that it’s hackneyed, and it’s clichéd?’, and they go: ‘Yeah.’

I respond: ‘Right. You’re always going to feel like that. Accept it. It doesn’t matter how many languages you’re translated into, or how many awards you win or accolades you receive, you will still feel that way about what you do’. That is not all art, that is the virtuality of being a writer.”

__________

Will Self, speaking in an interview with Christine Fears.

Flow

12 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Interview, Writing

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Flow, Guardian, Ian Katz, Ian McEwan, Work, writers, Writing

“When I’m working, there are those moments when something goes well in the morning for half an hour or an hour. I try to describe this experience, and I think everyone’s had it. We don’t have a good word for it, but it’s a form of happiness — one psychologist called it ‘flow’, which isn’t quite enough — that consists of total absorption in trying to do something. It could be playing a game of tennis or gardening or cooking a meal, or writing a novel. But it’s that wonderful suspension from time and from the narrative of your existence, when you are simply, absolutely lost in the thing you are doing. And you don’t even remember who you are. And you don’t even feel any pleasure at the time.

And those moments — which I think are rare for all of us — are only realized in retrospect. It’s when the doorbell rings and you pop out of it that you realize you have been supremely happy. But not the happiness of laughter or exhilaration. And it’s those episodes that I really treasure — those moments when there’s only the writing, only the page or the screen, only the thing itself. They’re very hard to sustain, but every now and then — maybe only once or twice a week — there are those moments of pure absorption.”

__________

From Ian McEwan, during a conversation with Ian Katz at the Guardian’s Open Weekend festival last year.

Why the World’s Greatest Advertising Man Added Four Words to a Beggar’s Sign

03 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Writing

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Ad, Advertising, Art, Arthur C. Clarke, Creativity, David Ogilvy, Design, Ernest Hemingway, Frank Chimero, Mad Man, Mad Men, Story, Storytelling, The Shape of Design, Writing

“There’s an old story about David Ogilvy, one of the original mad men that established the dominance of the advertising field in the 50s and 60s, that seems to deal with storytelling as an avenue to create empathy. One morning on his walk to work, Ogilvy saw a beggar with a sign around his neck.

I AM BLIND

The poor man slouched in a corner and would occasionally hold the cup up to his ear to give it a rattle, because he was unable to tell how much money was in it by looking. Most days, the beggar didn’t hear much. Ogilvy was in good spirits that day. It was late April in New York, when the air is beginning to warm, and there’s a peaceful pause before the city falls into the oppressive heat of summer. He decided to help the beggar, and dropped a contribution into the cup. Ogilvy explained what he did for a living when the beggar thanked him, and he asked for permission to modify the sign around the man’s neck. Upon receiving consent, he took the sign and added a few words.

That night, on his way home, Ogilvy said hello to the beggar, and was pleased to see his cup overflowing. The beggar, frazzled with his success, and uncertain of what Ogilvy did to the sign, asked what words were added.

IT IS SPRING AND
I AM BLIND

Ogilvy was able to create empathy in the passersby, who would have ignored the blind man, by adding a story.”

__________

From The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero (You can download the entirety of this book on Chimero’s website).

Ernest Hemingway was once at lunch with a smattering of friends and other writers. As they waited for the bill, he made a wager with the table, betting that he could tell an entire story in just six words. Once his skeptical dining companions had eagerly tossed their bills into the center of the table, Hemingway jotted on a napkin and passed it around for each to read. On it was the six-word story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Not one person at the table raised an objection as Hemingway smirked and scooped up the pile of cash.

Read on:

Ogilvy’s ten rules for writing
Sebastian Junger confronts the question of how to understand your relationship to your audience
I took every book I read last year and reviewed each in a sentence

I Like Words

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Film, Humor, Writing

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Battleground, Copywriter, Cover Letter, Creative Writing, Hollywood, Hollywood Cover Letter, I Like Words, Job Applications, language, letter, Robert Pirosh, Screenwriter, Screenwriting Cover Letter, Words

Here’s the story: In 1934, a twenty-five-year-old named Robert Pirosh quit his well-paying but tedious job as a copywriter in New York and moved to Hollywood, hoping to kickstart his dream career as a screenwriter. Arriving in California, Pirosh compiled the names and addresses of as many top studio execs as he could, then proceeded to send each of them what is without doubt one of the most colorful, creative, and irresistible cover letters ever produced. This document secured him three interviews, one of which would land him a job as a junior writer at MGM. And as they say, the rest is history: Pirosh would go on to win the Oscar for best original screenplay for his 1949 war drama Battleground, but his other masterpiece — the one which first set him on his path to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre — is reproduced in full below:

Dear Sir:

I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave “v” words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land’s-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp.

I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around.

I have just returned and I still like words. May I have a few with you?

Robert Pirosh

__________

The 1934 cover letter sent by Robert Pirosh to Hollywood executives.

I took the above picture a few minutes ago.

Read on:

Mark Twain’s hilarious, furious letter to a snake oil salesman
J.R.R. Tolkien’s smart, sharp letter replying to a Nazi publisher
Ernest Hemingway’s first letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Robert Pirosh

10 Rules for Writing from David Ogilvy

07 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Writing

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10 Rules for Writing, Ads, Advertising, Clarity, David Ogilvy, Don Draper, How to Write, Joel Raphaelson, Kenneth Roman, Mad Men, Marketing, Ogilvy and Mather, Style, The Father of Advertising, The Unpublished David Ogilvy, Tips for Writing, Writing, Writing that Works

For over a half century, David Ogilvy was the dapper executive behind New York’s powerhouse marketing firm Ogilvy & Mather. He was also the original “Mad Man,” a martini-slugging, pipe-puffing male now personified by Don Draper and idealized by a generation of guys who, like myself, have gone on one too many outings to Pottery Barn.

But Ogilvy’s brilliance must not be lost in this romanticization. He is also considered by many to be “The Father of Advertising,” a creative wit who coined such memorable quips as, “the consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife — don’t insult her intelligence.”

On September 7th, 1982, Ogilvy distilled four decades of this insight and experience into a memo he sent to all agency employees. It was called, simply, “How to Write,” and it is reproduced below as it originally appeared.

The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well.

Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.

Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:

1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.

2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.

3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.

4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.

5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.

6. Check your quotations.

7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning—and then edit it.

8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.

9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.

10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.

David

__________

This memo, along with other gems, may be found in The Unpublished David Ogilvy. If you’d like to start with Rule #1, you can pick up a paperback copy of Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson’s Writing That Works: How to Communicate Effectively In Business.

A Quick Look Back at 2013

17 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Original, Personal, Writing

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2013, blog, Books of the Year, Highlights, Look Back, Retrospective, Writing

The theme threading through the next two weeks is retrospection. In these 14 days left in 2013, I’m going to post a series of glances back — to the overriding ideas and lingering questions which have taken shape in the short life of this blog. Part of my motivation here is to ventilate some pieces of writing and media which were posted months ago, before I had much of a following, and have since been unfairly neglected as they collect dust in the corners of this website. Another motivation stems from my desire to identify and describe what I see as some very definite patterns of thought which have directed my reading and writing in the 467 days this blog has been alive. While the 327 posts which have appeared during that stretch seem to have come in an unpremeditated, case-by-case way, they have in fact been related to a set of discrete subjects I only now have been able to partially identify.

So, the plan is to try to reorganize the filing cabinets and set the house in order before the new year is here.

To start, I’m going to borrow the standard mid-December lead from so many magazines and create a list of what I think are the Best Books of the Year 2013. Except this list will be for the past fourteen months, and it’ll feature every book I’ve read (and some that I’ve tried but failed to finish) along with a one sentence review of each.

Next, a look at some headlines. These are the fundamental questions which I’ve grappled with — in my spare time, schooling, and work — over the past year. These will not be subjects like “Politics” or “War” or any of the others listed on the sidebar, but rather more refined ideas which traverse those subjects and have been, for one reason or another, resonant for me throughout the past year. The plan here is to write one or two summary paragraphs about each of these ideas, synthesizing various disciplines to explain why they in particular are so vexing and compelling. This is a challenge of concision: to strain some dense subject matter through the sieve of several different disciplines, and in the process, formulate a definitive answer to the question of where I stand on each subject.

I’ve narrowed this list down to 7. They are, in reverse order of personal significance, the following:

7. War’s immortality
6. Why power corrupts
5. What makes you one person?
4. Modern healthcare is making us stoics — but not philosophers
3. How do Americans form their political opinions?
2. Is a human life a narrative?
1. Fideism

I want to give each of these topics their due. Consequently, if the holidays become too hectic, I may not be able to get to the last few before the New Year.

Finally — and this I will get to before 01/01/14 — I’m going to assemble a ‘highlights’ list for each subject I’ve posted on this year. These will be inventories of my 5 favorite works of fiction, philosophy, politics, original writing, etc. of the year, as well as a list of my 10 favorite posts of the year. Again, the point here is to summarize some major themes and bring other ignored and previously-posted works to the light of day.

So, in addition to regular posts, keep your eyes out for these looks back.

__________

The photo: I took it over the Thanksgiving holiday in New Ulm, Texas.

Why I Think the Novel Will Never Die

11 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Literature, Original, Poetry, Writing

≈ 23 Comments

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Art, Bring Up the Bodies, Fiction, film, Hillary Mantel, In One Person, John Irving, literature, Louis Macneice, Man Booker, movies, Novels, painting, poetry, sculpture, Stephen Spender, T.S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, The New York Times, W.H. Auden, Writing

W.H. Auden called poems, “the only art form that you either take or leave.” What he meant was that when you are listening to a song, you can also be impatiently contemplating your next meal; while you watch a movie, you can rehearse the intricacies of your last phone call with your girlfriend; as you stare into a painting, you can also be deliberating about whether you’ve paid September’s water bill.

A poem doesn’t let you do that. When you read a poem, you read a poem. You can do nothing else. But Auden was wrong to draw the line at poetry, because novels also demand the totality of your conscious mind in a way other types of art do not.

Recently there has been a good deal of fevered and idle speculation about whether the novel is dying. Much of this stems from the advent of the e-reader and Kindle, which coupled with the general diminution of our collective attention span could give us, at least on a superficial level, reason to suspect that the novel as a medium is on its way out.

Last year, the New York Times published its list of the Ten Best Novels of 2012. First among these is Hillary Mantel’s fictitious account of Thomas Cromwell in the tudor court, Bring Up the Bodies, which also won the coveted Man Booker Prize in England – the award many see as the most prestigious annual prize in literature. Her book has sold roughly a quarter of a million copies worldwide. In terms of U.S. sales, BUTB and the list’s other nine titles have total sales that top out at fewer than 600,000.

This is in a country of 300 million people — all of whom are literate, excepting children.

According to a HuffPost/YouGov poll from last week, 41 percent of U.S. adults admitted – admitted – to not reading a fiction book in the past year, while 28 percent said they had not read a book of any kind.

I don’t point this out in a cloying attempt to lavish a smarmy air of literary superiority on an audience who is, after all, reading what I’m writing. I understand that finishing a novel takes time and energy, and most people just don’t have enough of either to sit down and sift through In One Person. They’re filing their tax returns, playing with their children, watering the lawn, or having a glass of wine. And among those who have the time and the energy, and who aren’t busily going about those other tasks, half wouldn’t make it five minutes into a book without pulling out their cellphones in order to Instagram a picture of themselves reading it (#JohnIrving #Postmodernamericanlit).

But the novel will never die.

It is immortal because human beings just haven’t found – and perhaps never will discover – a form of storytelling and expression that reveals the workings of a mind and heart the way a well-crafted novel does. It is a wholly pre-technological medium: a succession of monochrome sheets bearing arranged chunks of curled cuneiform. Yet through these lines you connect with another psyche trimmed of its gender, age, epoch, social class, and ethnic identity. The author may’ve been dead a hundred years. Still when you finish the last page you want to keep the conversation going – to write to them, to have coffee with them. “Tell me more about…”.

For all of their charms, songs, sculptures, movies – they do not have that power. Novels, which are written alone and in silence, and are savored by readers in the same way, are not in danger of going so long as people are still around.

__________

The picture is of the writers Louis MacNeice, Ted Hughes, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, and Stephen Spender.

New Page: Quotes

23 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Original, Personal, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

brilliant quotes, famous quotations, quotations, quotes

I’ve just created a new page where I will start keeping a list of my favorite quotes. Access it here.

They are arranged in no particular order, and, like the larger excerpts I post here, follow no specific guidelines in terms of subject matter, ideology, or speaker. The only criteria is that they each be readable in a few seconds and that they each be brilliant.

If you were to ask me which is my favorite, for a long time I would have responded — depending who you were and how I was feeling — with the cynical crack from Voltaire or the steely observation from Reinhold Niebuhr featured on the page. But now I would just echo Thomas Jefferson, who wrote (when he was 32) the perfect sentence and the foundational principle of the only revolution that still possesses any power to inspire: “All men are created equal.”

I’m not sure how often I’ll be updating the quotes page, so it’ll be accessible on the sidebar at any time.

I took the picture in an old barn outside Houston, Texas.

How to Communicate

28 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Journalism, Writing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

books, communication, literature, Sebastian Junger, Writing, Writing with Power Clarity and Style

“When you write a book, when you write for people, what you’re saying is, ‘Okay, please step out of life, and into this weird mental place where you’re just alone with me… for hours, days.’ That’s a big request, and if [your readers] honor you by accepting, you have to really work hard to make it worth their while.

There’s a relationship there. They’re not there to admire you — they may end up admiring you — but that’s not what they’re there for. You are writing to give them an experience, on some level, an entertaining and fulfilling experience. And it’s really not about you…

The sort of world of writing for me is divided into two things: there’s content and then there’s style. There’s what you’re writing about, and there’s the way you write about it. Style is what gets people to keep reading, but ultimately it doesn’t have any inherent value. God forbid we write a book where the writing is the point.

That’s just too self-referential, and it betrays a kind of lack of respect for the world. You’re not more interesting than the world is. Your writing is not more beautiful than the world is. You don’t want the facts of the world to serve as a platform for your skill as a writer. It’s the other way around. The relationship goes the other way. Your skill as a writer serves the world.

You’re not supposed to tell people what to think; you’re supposed to tell them what to think about. You want to address the readers directly. I mean, you want to kind of look them in the eye. It’s like a conversation. It’s a conversation where you have respect for their intellect. You’re not talking down to them. You’re kind of amazed by the world. I mean, the world’s an amazing place, but it’s easy to forget that. If you open yourself to how amazing the world is, your writing will communicate something really valuable to other people.”

__________

From Sebastian Junger on Writing with Power, Clarity, and Style.

I think these ideas generalize to nearly any form of communication. You can replace “writer/writing” above with “artist/painting,” “teacher/teaching,” or “speaker/speechmaking,” and it make exactly as much sense.

Junger upheld this outward-looking philosophy so doggedly that he lived for many years without a mirror in his New York apartment. “So I wouldn’t be thinking about myself,” was Junger’s justification. “When he has to shave or brush his teeth,” his ex-girlfriend once explained, “he uses the back of a CD.”