The Pleasure of Letting Go drove some points home for me regarding the idea of personal essays. I've struggled putting one together for the class, chiefly on the point of trying to find something meaningful to convey from a story about something which has happened to me. For example, my first attempt was about losing my best friend in middle school to a drunk driver - but what meaningful could one take away from that? Don't drink and drive, perhaps - it seemed very cliche. I settled for a story involving stitches, East Texas, and a claw hammer, but interpreting something meaningful from what seemed to me like basically self-indulgence has been difficult (and I still wonder if I've gotten too close to nostalgic dribble). I think Kyoko Mori demonstrated with her subject that maybe my problem was that I was focusing too much on me, and not enough on telling a story. She writes about herself, mostly, but also about an experience. Raising birds is not a singular event, but a transition in her life on which we as readers get to embark. We begin our journey with the young, barely able to fend for themselves, and follow the development of our feathery children until they are ready to be successful at life. By itself, the story had everything anyone could read. On the first layer, it was an interesting story involving generally what it takes to raise birds. On another layer, it was a story about the struggle of a very specific bird, and how it made it into the wild. Finally, She brought the story home to rest, solidly focusing on writing, and how writing was like raising birds, and releasing them into the wild.
After reading her work, I really feel that I need to go back, scrap my story about a hot Texas summer, and focus instead perhaps on the story of Sorrow, a tiny Guinea Pig which didn't make it to adult hood, but worked so hard to stay in the world. Maybe his story, like his namesake's in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, could convey the pains of class struggle - a far loftier idea than don't stand under a ladder while you throw a hammer up to an unfinished second floor.
This was a really insightful post, Chuck. It is hard to write a personal essay, and your thoughts on concentrating on telling a story and not simply concentrating on yourself are helpful. I wasn't really sure how Mori's story fit in with the idea of teaching others how to write, but your thoughts on the layering of the tale helped bring home some of the points Mori seemed to be trying to make. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteChuck, I think you should write what you feel. If that means writing about drinking and driving then do it! Every second in the day is different from the previous so you don't have to worry about it cliche. I don't believe it will be. I am interested to see what you write about. I would try to model your essay after Mori's but you of course would have a different subject.
ReplyDelete