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It feels good to be home @ 11 pm on Friday night posting about Gary Lutz, it feels right
I am glad I am not out being a jerk off.
I am glad I stayed inside to read this lecture on sentences, originally delivered by Gary Lutz at Columbia, and now reprinted in the new issue of the Believer (which also has an interview with Gordon Lish, & from the preview on the site, it looks really funny and righteous). Lish is also on the cover. Believe that.
This lecture by Gary Lutz is probably the most apt deconstruction of language in sentences and how a certain breed of languaged sentences are made. I would show this lecture to people who asked why their story about the Russian expatriate looking for his father wasn’t quite enough just on story alone even though everyone in the boardroom was crying.
As I read the lecture I kept highlighting pieces when I thought ‘this would be a good part to quote when I blog about this lecture,’ though every time I read a new graph, I kept deciding to highlight that one, because every line in the lecture is right on the $$$. But we already knew that.
Here is one thing Gary Lutz says in the lecture:
The words in the sentence must bear some physical and sonic resemblance to each other—the way people and their dogs are said to come to resemble each other, the way children take after their parents, the way pairs and groups of friends evolve their own manner of dress and gesture and speech. A pausing, enraptured reader should be able to look deeply into the sentence and discern among the words all of the traits and characteristics they share. The impression to be given is that the words in the sentence have lived with each other for quite some time, decisive time, and have deepened and grown and matured in each other’s company—and that they cannot live without each other.
Sometimes you can feel the man’s brain vibrating.
He also looks at specific sentences by Christine Schutt (mentioning, among others, one of my favorite stories ever, which is by her, ‘The Blood Jet,’ Barry Hannah, Sam Lipsyte, and others, and explains the intricacies of their construction, down to a level of teeth within teeth.
I felt a blitz of going as today and last night I had been rereading Lipstyte’s ‘Venus Drive,’ which includes the sentences Lutz refers to. It was like someone was nibbling my ear.
I like that story by Gary Lutz with all the day names in the title. I wish Gary Lutz was one of the days of the week. I would stay in on that day too. Or I would go out.
Calamari Press is about to release a new edition of ‘Stories in the Worst Way.’ I told Derek it should have a picture of two men pissing into the same urinal on the back. Derek has a picture of a nice sink for the front. Perhaps a urinal cake in the sink?
The Believer has really been kicking ass lately.
I want to be 11.
Tags: gary lutz, sam lipstyte
Good find.
From BLVR site, I went and reread DFW’s 2003 interview. I am growing sadder and sadder, because I am ‘behind’ and catching up, I’m mourning in reverse. It is painful and beautiful.
Good find.
From BLVR site, I went and reread DFW’s 2003 interview. I am growing sadder and sadder, because I am ‘behind’ and catching up, I’m mourning in reverse. It is painful and beautiful.
Oh man, that looks good.
Oh man, that looks good.
Great lecture, good thing The Believer put it online.
Urinal cake, hmmmm. Right now I am making pasta Putanesca, which literally means whore pasta.
Great lecture, good thing The Believer put it online.
Urinal cake, hmmmm. Right now I am making pasta Putanesca, which literally means whore pasta.
Thanks for posting that article – pretty amazing, especially for the last paragraph that warns writers of too much awareness about such things – I pretty much prefer a sweet spot of page-hugging AND page-turning to one or the other. Definitely an essay that’ll open eyes currently closed to sonics and syntax etc, but, for me, something about seeing in-depth sentence analysis toward the final third made me sort of wanna puke, like it was a violation of trust between readers and words, like such things should be left unsaid, are what you think in the privacy of your own pages, what hypnotized and made reading as sacred as it could be when I was a nondenominationally stoned teenager . . .
Thanks for posting that article – pretty amazing, especially for the last paragraph that warns writers of too much awareness about such things – I pretty much prefer a sweet spot of page-hugging AND page-turning to one or the other. Definitely an essay that’ll open eyes currently closed to sonics and syntax etc, but, for me, something about seeing in-depth sentence analysis toward the final third made me sort of wanna puke, like it was a violation of trust between readers and words, like such things should be left unsaid, are what you think in the privacy of your own pages, what hypnotized and made reading as sacred as it could be when I was a nondenominationally stoned teenager . . .
Lee- I understand your point. I think I go through phases where I cannot even think about the why and how and so on of writing that I am reading, and most certainly that I am making. It ruins things for me. Truly. But then I go through other phases where it is fun to think about it- what I wrote, what others wrote, what and how and pulling things apart and so on. The most important thing is not to be stuck in one or the other phases- to be fluid. The worst is when I get stuck in the “thinking about” phase, and then I fear I’ll never get back to the creative phase. But that is me. It think it is uptight of me, but so be it. I wish I could be more- anything goes all the time- but that is not me.
Lee- I understand your point. I think I go through phases where I cannot even think about the why and how and so on of writing that I am reading, and most certainly that I am making. It ruins things for me. Truly. But then I go through other phases where it is fun to think about it- what I wrote, what others wrote, what and how and pulling things apart and so on. The most important thing is not to be stuck in one or the other phases- to be fluid. The worst is when I get stuck in the “thinking about” phase, and then I fear I’ll never get back to the creative phase. But that is me. It think it is uptight of me, but so be it. I wish I could be more- anything goes all the time- but that is not me.
i gave a craft talk in my mfa class using examples from lipsyte, evenson, lutz, hannah, etc. and here are two great quotes, the first from lutz in regards to the sentence and aesthetics:
“I didn’t set out to overturn traditional grammar (I am a grammarian), and I wanted to avoid the gaudy novelty that limits certain kinds of experimental writing. I was aiming for a less obtrusive form of disturbance, getting one word to bear upon another in ways that depart from the relations obtaining between words in ordinary speech and that release emotion into the sentence.
I wanted to prevent syntax from automatically going through the usual motions. (Even as slight an adjustment as the substitution of one preposition for another can send a sentence over the line from mere reportage to the strange, the startling, the inevitable but overdue.) I became more aware of the physicality of words, and began setting them out, rubbing them against each other, in a process that had as much to do with their shapes and sonics, their vowelly centers and consonantal crusts, as with their meanings alone. The kind of sentence I envisioned–and I don’t know whether I have ever managed to produce even a single one of the things–was an outcry combining the petite acoustical elegance of the aphorism with the force and utility of the load-bearing, tractional sentence of more or less conventional narrative.”
And a quote from Evenson (being interviewed by Ben Marcus) in regards to revision and finding that balance in creation between intuition and procedural awareness:
“Marcus: I am interested in where you see your work failing. Elaborate doubt mechanisms-the new arrogance-seem crucial to the drive to work. When you pursue a piece, and when you revise and remake it, how consciously are you correcting your disappointments with previous work? Similarly, when you outgrow a piece, or, more correctly, when you come to know your work in a manner that allows you to dismiss it, what are the characteristics of that knowledge? The larger question here involves the private criticisms you have of your own work.
Evenson: Of Course I have doubts. I think many people, as you suggest, let their doubts be systematized into a sort of arrogance. It’s a defense mechanism: it is safer to invent elaborate and artificial doubt mechanisms than to face the real doubts.
When I revise, I reach a point where I can’t tell if I am improving the work or ruining, it, where doubt about my abilities becomes paralyzing. I throw away many pieces at that point. The pieces that have the resiliency to make it through that stage intact are the ones worth continuing with. Revision itself is difficult to discuss because I think it can be approached productively in a number of ways. In sentence-by-sentence revision, up to a certain point you can proceed by scientific or pseudo-scientific methods. For instance, you can work towards establishing a certain ratio of glottal stops in a particular sentence, determining that ratio by content of the piece as a whole combined with the percentage of glottals in other sentences. Or you can work to establish syntactical patterns. But there comes a point where the regularity of mechanical procedures must be sacrificed to intuition. The introduction of significant variation both on the level of individual sentences and in terms of the larger structures of the piece will, if done correctly, significantly increase the power and mystery of the writing. There are always structures, but the best writing makes formal and structural elements integrated-there is, Beckett suggests in speaking of Joyce, neither form or content independent of one another, but content is form and form is content-they can’t be separated. Revision I think is where the strongest links between form and content are forged.
At a certain point in revision, I worry that I’ve gone too far and have allowed a concern for formal craftedness to subjugate the other aspects of the fiction. Overmuch concern with formal craftedness can keep one from seeing a more organic type of structuration, closer to chaos or to the unconscious.
I can tell when a piece doesn’t work, but it is harder to tell when it does work. And no matter how well it works, it can always work better. Almost every time I return to a piece, I find things that are wrong with it and problems that I have since learned how to resolve. Sometimes a story has been constructed, almost unconsciously, so that its problems are a part of the structure itself, and to solve them either creates additional problems or ruins the balance of the piece. The best pieces of fiction are the hardest to revise, because by nature they will resist easy solutions. As the repertoire expands, earlier work often seems unsatisfactory-but again, the best work, even early work, will defend itself. Imperfections will always be there and are, perhaps, an integral part of any fiction.”
i gave a craft talk in my mfa class using examples from lipsyte, evenson, lutz, hannah, etc. and here are two great quotes, the first from lutz in regards to the sentence and aesthetics:
“I didn’t set out to overturn traditional grammar (I am a grammarian), and I wanted to avoid the gaudy novelty that limits certain kinds of experimental writing. I was aiming for a less obtrusive form of disturbance, getting one word to bear upon another in ways that depart from the relations obtaining between words in ordinary speech and that release emotion into the sentence.
I wanted to prevent syntax from automatically going through the usual motions. (Even as slight an adjustment as the substitution of one preposition for another can send a sentence over the line from mere reportage to the strange, the startling, the inevitable but overdue.) I became more aware of the physicality of words, and began setting them out, rubbing them against each other, in a process that had as much to do with their shapes and sonics, their vowelly centers and consonantal crusts, as with their meanings alone. The kind of sentence I envisioned–and I don’t know whether I have ever managed to produce even a single one of the things–was an outcry combining the petite acoustical elegance of the aphorism with the force and utility of the load-bearing, tractional sentence of more or less conventional narrative.”
And a quote from Evenson (being interviewed by Ben Marcus) in regards to revision and finding that balance in creation between intuition and procedural awareness:
“Marcus: I am interested in where you see your work failing. Elaborate doubt mechanisms-the new arrogance-seem crucial to the drive to work. When you pursue a piece, and when you revise and remake it, how consciously are you correcting your disappointments with previous work? Similarly, when you outgrow a piece, or, more correctly, when you come to know your work in a manner that allows you to dismiss it, what are the characteristics of that knowledge? The larger question here involves the private criticisms you have of your own work.
Evenson: Of Course I have doubts. I think many people, as you suggest, let their doubts be systematized into a sort of arrogance. It’s a defense mechanism: it is safer to invent elaborate and artificial doubt mechanisms than to face the real doubts.
When I revise, I reach a point where I can’t tell if I am improving the work or ruining, it, where doubt about my abilities becomes paralyzing. I throw away many pieces at that point. The pieces that have the resiliency to make it through that stage intact are the ones worth continuing with. Revision itself is difficult to discuss because I think it can be approached productively in a number of ways. In sentence-by-sentence revision, up to a certain point you can proceed by scientific or pseudo-scientific methods. For instance, you can work towards establishing a certain ratio of glottal stops in a particular sentence, determining that ratio by content of the piece as a whole combined with the percentage of glottals in other sentences. Or you can work to establish syntactical patterns. But there comes a point where the regularity of mechanical procedures must be sacrificed to intuition. The introduction of significant variation both on the level of individual sentences and in terms of the larger structures of the piece will, if done correctly, significantly increase the power and mystery of the writing. There are always structures, but the best writing makes formal and structural elements integrated-there is, Beckett suggests in speaking of Joyce, neither form or content independent of one another, but content is form and form is content-they can’t be separated. Revision I think is where the strongest links between form and content are forged.
At a certain point in revision, I worry that I’ve gone too far and have allowed a concern for formal craftedness to subjugate the other aspects of the fiction. Overmuch concern with formal craftedness can keep one from seeing a more organic type of structuration, closer to chaos or to the unconscious.
I can tell when a piece doesn’t work, but it is harder to tell when it does work. And no matter how well it works, it can always work better. Almost every time I return to a piece, I find things that are wrong with it and problems that I have since learned how to resolve. Sometimes a story has been constructed, almost unconsciously, so that its problems are a part of the structure itself, and to solve them either creates additional problems or ruins the balance of the piece. The best pieces of fiction are the hardest to revise, because by nature they will resist easy solutions. As the repertoire expands, earlier work often seems unsatisfactory-but again, the best work, even early work, will defend itself. Imperfections will always be there and are, perhaps, an integral part of any fiction.”
lee, i could see that it might ache some if he were talking about his own sentences. but i like the way he breaks up things of others, even if the germination of those sentences was more natural. that kind of intense study and playfulness in how he deconstructed them, even if the method does need to be outlaid so plainly on a day to day basis, i thought was really fun and interesting methodoloy, esp. considering it was delivered to students who might not have considered the possibiities so intently. i think the best teaching is by direct observation and concrete things rather than just sweeping, if true, statements, as it can be hard to name what is exactly meant.
gene, awesome quotes. i love that evenson/marcus interview, it is one of the greats, by two of the greats.
evenson is the fucking man.
lee, i could see that it might ache some if he were talking about his own sentences. but i like the way he breaks up things of others, even if the germination of those sentences was more natural. that kind of intense study and playfulness in how he deconstructed them, even if the method does need to be outlaid so plainly on a day to day basis, i thought was really fun and interesting methodoloy, esp. considering it was delivered to students who might not have considered the possibiities so intently. i think the best teaching is by direct observation and concrete things rather than just sweeping, if true, statements, as it can be hard to name what is exactly meant.
gene, awesome quotes. i love that evenson/marcus interview, it is one of the greats, by two of the greats.
evenson is the fucking man.
I was sad I missed this lecture at Columbia. Good to know I can read it in print now.
I was sad I missed this lecture at Columbia. Good to know I can read it in print now.
seeing this lecture made me look at lutz in a new, more generous light.
one thing he said at the end, and this may have been during the Q&A section, was about intuition and how he thought his first book was possibly more intuitive than his more recent works and how his practice of using less intuition these days might not necessarily be a good thing.
i don’t think this is necessarily a contradiction to his lecture, though. maybe more of an interesting and complex addition.
that evenson quote is gas. shit can feed off it.
seeing this lecture made me look at lutz in a new, more generous light.
one thing he said at the end, and this may have been during the Q&A section, was about intuition and how he thought his first book was possibly more intuitive than his more recent works and how his practice of using less intuition these days might not necessarily be a good thing.
i don’t think this is necessarily a contradiction to his lecture, though. maybe more of an interesting and complex addition.
that evenson quote is gas. shit can feed off it.