Customer Reviews

The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Vivian Gornick invariably delights me, whether in her memoir, Fierce Attachments, her occasional essays in various journals, her book about reading, or this new one, which gave me a lot to think about.
The Situation and the Story focuses on essay and memoir-writing. Rather than trying to cover a lot of ground superficially, Gornick lays out one main idea and explores it in depth, using a wide variety of examples to illustrate her ideas. It was particularly helpful to have long excerpts from these examples, so I could really get a sense of the essay or memoir being discussed. She deals most intelligently with the question of the narrator -- the narrator's "persona" on the page, and the relationship of the narrator to her/his material.
As someone who writes and teaches memoir, I found this extremely helpful, but it will be equally interesting to anyone who writes or reads narrative nonfiction and wants to think seriously about it.
It is a great relief to find a book about writing that has gracefully sidestepped every pitfall of the advice genre. Gornick's style is respectful: she expects her readers to be as serious and smart about literature as she is herself and, even if we're not, we can always find a lot to think about in her work.

Vivian Gornick writes beautifully, whether she's writing about love, politics, or the craft of writing. The Situation and the Story is based on her many years of teaching creative writing and focuses on ways of making nonfiction personal without wallowing in self-absorption. In other words, it helps writers discover where the 'universal truth,' the essence of Story, is in the millions of anecdotes in our lives.
As an author and writing teacher, I've found this book invaluable and have read it several times. My copy is well thumbed and appropriately coffee-stained.

The Situation and the Story, by Vivian Gornick is immensely entertaining while adapting an educational prose designed to enhance awareness of "self" as narrator. She uses excellent examples of non-fiction narratives that serve to further the invitation of speculation through tone, syntax, and perspective. The self as a persona is developed using wonderful writers such as Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, and Edmond Gosse.

Vivian Gornick breaks down the writing barrier and gets right to the contents of human emotion. We are what we write, and our personal truths are conveyed in our words. She does a fabulous job taking a stand against the "boring, agitated" self and replaces that with the truth speaker who can move an essay forward creatively and effectively. Non-fiction can instruct without losing the personal voice.

For anyone who likes to write, this book is the first step to question your narrative self and begin to discover the wonderful implications that "self" can bring to your writing. I highly recommend this book.

Gornick manages to analyze exactly what makes a personal essay successful without sounding didactic or sentimental. I'm not surprised, as she is a terrific writer herself. She uses examples of pieces and excerpts from well-known and not-so-well known writers. For anyone who has written creative non-fiction and hasn't always known what to do to improve their work, Gornick offers an unusual way of looking at things, an interesting combination of intuitive and analytical. If you are new to writing, she offers suggestions on how to read other writers, and what to look for. I would add this to "Bird by Bird," by Anne Lamott, as excellent and inspiring books for writers.

I thought I'd read 'The Best' works out there on writing, especially a Memoir, but this surpasses all so far since she gives a very CLEAR analysis of using 'your voice' so that you "intrigue, not bore" the reader... making the reader believe and trust in your story and guiding them to a conclusion. I like being offered examples to match my work up against, not unlike when you in a writing workshop.

Writers can be like cats, waiting for the right piece of string to be dangled in front of them, the one that tugs. The Situation and Story was that string for me, with the right words and examples at the right time to pull me forward. It's how Gornick describes the necessity to get inside one's own mind, excavate its interiority that makes the book magic. For example, she says, memoir is "a mind puzzling its way out of its own shadows," a way to get acquainted with the stranger who lives inside your own skin." Her use of favorite writers' (Joan Didion and Loren Eisley) stories really helped illustrate for me the situation and the story. Most useful, as a writer of memoir, were these words: "Memoir isn't what happened but what the writer makes of what happened." That's the key to memoir I didn't understand before.

The Situation and the Story although easy to follow is a tough read. Gornick's book tells how to read memoirs as well as how to write them. She strives for the highest standards and lays great responsiblity on the wrier's shoulders. Beyond just relating a good story that happens to be true, Gornick expects the writer to impart wisdomto the reader gained by the writerfrom the act of writing the memoir. If the writer didn't gain wisdom, t she probably shouldn't write the memoir.
For serious memoirist the book is a must read, and reread, and reread.

It would take a writer more brilliant than the best memoirists of all time to be able to house and examine the architecture and genius therein. Vivian Gornick is such a genius. And I recommend this book to nonfiction readers, memoirists and anyone who is introspective in the least. This is the type of book whose return is based on the creativity and intelligence of the reader, this book has something to give to everyone who reads it. It is highly readable for any occassion, of course, because it speaks of every aspect of life and living, and the individuals relationship to the story of it.

If you're looking for a how-to book on writing personal essays, this is the wrong book. This book is mainly Gornick effusing about essays and memoirs she likes and dislikes.

A personal essay or memoir is a writer's impressions about a subject or his or her life. We read the essay or memoir and respond in some way. In the case of this book, Gornick chooses some essays and summarizes them and excerpts them into fragments of phrases and ellipses, and then gives us her opinion of them as if how she responded is God's truth about the value of the piece--end of discussion.

Here's a typical example of how the book goes, picked at random (page 98). She's writing about a passage from a memoir she has just excerpted for us: "The reader becomes aware of a number of things at once. The father's will is oppressive, but the father himself is not oppressive; the atmosphere is stifling, but the boy is not stifled; the emotional air is close and the space confining, but always--from the beginning--there is room enough for the boy to walk around inside himself, to take himself in, to puzzle things out. This air, this space is created by the steady, liquid flow of the father's tender affection."

Of what use is it to have a second writer, one who gives us his or her impression of a first writer's impressions? To have to see the original writer's thoughts and feelings and life through the pane of another writer's thoughts and feelings is frustrating. It is like viewing a painting through a tinted window. It is unnecessary. Gornick usually doesn't even talk about the writing (which is what we came to the book for) but reinterprets for us the writer's interpretation of his or her life.

The point here is that Gornick's commentary in nearly every case is so specific to the particulars of the writer's essay and life that it is fairly useless to help us to write our own essays. Are we supposed to write a memoir where our father's will is oppressive, but our father himself is not oppressive, etc.? To talk about the particulars of the lives depicted in her chosen essays helps us not one iota in writing our own essays. We want a process. For examples of essays good and bad, we can simply read essays directly and form our own opinions.

To belabor the point and say it another way. How much can an actor, screenwriter, or director learn about their crafts from reading a collection of a film critic's reviews of films? I'd say, a miniscule amount, but not as much as they can learn either by watching the films directly or by reading how-to books and going to classes, etc.

If you're looking for a how-to book on writing personal essays skip this one. If you're looking for Gornick's opinions on some random essays and memoirs then this is a good choice.

One book was required and one book was recommended for the eight week class I'm taking this summer on writing personal narratives. This was the recommended book. I read it and a Western on the plane ride from Houston to Salt Lake. A quick read.

Not sure I took much away from this book. Did I miss something? It seemed to be a series of short essays where the author analyzes what works in good personal narratives.

But what did I retain from reading this book? Just an idea about going with one's gut feeling about what works. Maybe I need to read this again.