I say tomato, you say “Creative Nonfiction”
Or, what are genres good for?
For a long time now, Dialogue has subdivided the prose in each issue into Articles and Essays, Personal Voices, and Fiction. These divisions are strained by current submissions.
The division between Articles and Essays always seemed pretty nebulous to me–”Articles” is, I think, meant to signify academicishness, while “Essays” are, presumably, thinky but not necessarily heavily footnoted. But since most academics younger than 40 (50?) don’t feel the need to scrupulously avoid the first person or affect the semblance of “objectivity” that once characterized scholarly writing, and since postmodern theoretical frameworks in many disciplines actually encourage the self-conscious articulation of one’s subject position, a good deal of academic writing seems less formal and more “Essay”istic than in decades past. Still, since these two categories have been lumped together for a long time, it’s easy to just leave them that way, without too much fretting about what’s an article and what’s an essay.
The distinctions between “Personal Voices” and “Fiction” are blurred by the newish category (is it a genre yet, or still?) of “creative nonfiction.” There is, of course, a whole (sub)genre of writing devoted to the exploration of what creative nonfiction is, but this is the sort of thing that even someone who managed to tolerate an entire graduate seminar on the definition of postmodernism (and its discontents), can hardly wade through for more than a few dozen pages without starting to mutter things like “ivory tower”, “navel gazing”, “job security for English majors” under her breath. If pressed for a shorthand definition, I would say that “creative nonfiction” organizes itself around a narrative sequence, where a personal essay grows out of the exploration of an idea or a theme. [I know that's not a terribly satisfying definition, and I hope it will lead to plenty of interesting quibbling in the comments].
So far, I’ve lumped one creative non-fiction piece in with the fiction, and put one into Personal Voices, which used to mean “Personal Essays.” But the Table of Contents is not really the problem, of course–such practical issues of categorization are easily managed. What troubles me is that I think Creative Nonfiction may eventually edge out Personal Essays altogether, and Mormons will join the rest of the world in creating slightly detached, ironic memoirs, heartbreaking works of staggering genius, and non-fiction that is so “creative” as to create epic scandals on Oprah.
This, it seems to me, would be a terrible loss. My sentiment may be merely the midlife nostalgia of someone whose early intellectual life was nurtured by Eugene England, Laurel Ulrich, Marden Clark, Louise Plummer, Elouise Bell and other mid-20th-century Mormons who found the personal essay form apt for the function of exploring the tangled intersections of their own thoughts with Mormon theology and culture, and, in essaying those heights and depths, laid down a thin golden thread for me to follow home after venturing into my own wildernesses. Certainly Mormon artists and thinkers have used other genres to accomplish some of the same work–there were the novelists of the 1940s, historians and biographers whose narratives of the Mormon past took on the contours of a founding epic (or myth, if the word can be tolerated), poets and hymnodists who made both art and theology, folklorists and storytellers, and always autobiographers and journal-keepers. One could argue, in fact, that the sine qua non of modern Mormonism, Joseph Smith’s account of the First Vision, was itself a work of creative non-fiction, and that the proliferation of that genre is thus wholly appropriate and ought to be welcomed as quintessentially Mormon.
And still, I want to argue that we need the Mormon personal essay, for another couple of decades, at least. It is an important mode of resistance against the tropes of post-post-modernism: irony, satire, parody, snark. We like our memoirs biting–David Sedaris vivisecting his family for our amusement, Augusten Burroughs mining addiction and ruin for dark comedy, Elizabeth Wurtzel and Marya Hornbacher making depression and eating disorders into lurid spectacle. Always, the narrative “I” is disconnected–the story is always in the past tense. Wherever these authors were then, they are not now–now they are on book tours (which will later be cynically described and illustrated with sketches of amusingly pathetic audience members), allowing readers a faux-intimacy with a literary version of their past selves. Sincerity has somehow come to be seen as antithetical to the “authenticity” of such rehearsals. And Mormonism could lend itself perfectly to the wry, sardonic-but-affectionate tone of the memoir/sketch/vaguely parodic short story. What could be better, funnier, more authentic then poking a little fun at your own religious convictions and practice? How better to show that Mormons are not weird, that we are good Americans, that we get the jokes in Big Love, too, and ought to be allowed to hang out with the cool kids now? Maybe we could even get Ira Glass to do one story where the Mormon character is not a bigot or a rube!
But we are weird. We believe (or wish we could) in angels, gold plates, prophets in bad suits and conservative ties, sending our children to faraway places to do that most unhip thing of all–proselyting! We spend three hours (!) every week talking didactically [I would say sermonizing, except that "sermon" implies a liveliness and polish we eschew in favor of unskilled sincerity] about our doctrine, debating the significance of grammatical errors in holy writ, exhorting each other to repentance, enduring “special musical numbers” [seriously, how could you possibly parody something that unironically calls itself "special"?], organizing do-good-y projects of all sorts, testifying in tearful, clumsy words and acts of pure grace. We are earnest.
And so is the personal essay–it’s not properly “authentic”, because the author deigns to invite the reader into the creative thicket with her. The invitation only works when it is sincere, when the author cares about the reader, recognizes that author-ity is always a gift, whether by the laying on of hands or of eyes and reading glasses. Creative nonfiction can be “truth…independent in that sphere where [the author] has placed it.” If a memoir falls in the forest, it makes a noise whether or not anyone hears it–its narrative is still “true.” Not so the essay–it is meaningful only in community, where two or three (well, at least two–a writer and a reader) are gathered. It is tentative, pensive, incomplete, partial; it believes in and relies on that which is yet to be revealed. [Like blog posts by certain writers, it may overuse the em-dash, the semi-colon, and the parenthetical aside]. It works only when it is earnest, unabashed, when the writer is willing not only to confess her indiscretions, but to abandon discretion and announce her convictions as well as questioning them. Belief and hope are terribly out of fashion just now, and look to be so for a few years yet, and that is why Mormon literature needs a literary form that allows us to “believe all things, …hope all things,” to “seek after” things that are true and lovely, not from the artist’s garret or the therapist’s couch or the book tour lectern, not in the safety of the ironic past tense, but in the earnest, present willingness to subjugate narrative authority for the sake of communal pursuit of ideas.
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January 22nd, 2010 at 5:13 am
Wonderfully described and inspiring. I’ve decided to spend my free Sunday cycles writing devotional, personal material for many of those same reasons.
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:43 am
“What troubles me is that I think Creative Nonfiction may eventually edge out Personal Essays altogether, and Mormons will join the rest of the world in creating slightly detached, ironic memoirs, heartbreaking works of staggering genius, and non-fiction that is so “creative” as to create epic scandals on Oprah.”
::Cheers, Applause::
I mean, I know, I’m the blogger, postmodern, irony guy, but I couldn’t agree more. I don’t write Personal Essays (at the moment) specifically because I don’t yet have the writing skills and topic knowledge and voice to accomplish what I’d want to accomplish, which is what you describe. It’s the Gen X taint (which I love, but only in some spaces). Although it’s heartening to hear about the em-dash, semicolon and parenthetical. I’ve been an em-dash overuser since my teens.
I also have to give a hearty amen to this: “the earnest, present willingness to subjugate narrative authority for the sake of communal pursuit of ideas.”
I wonder if one way to go about doing more of this is to engage in writerly conversation. BCC has done some roundtable posts that use this format, but I’d like to see it with only two or three authors and with a bit more of bringing in outside references and quotes and attention to prose crafting. I’ve tried to do the same thing with several people for AMV with good results, but, sadly, nothing that has yet sustained itself long enough to reach a point where I could publish it.
January 22nd, 2010 at 8:08 am
Lovely, K. I will be thinking about this all day… Especially this- “…exploring the tangled intersections of their own thoughts with Mormon theology and culture, and, in essaying those heights and depths, laid down a thin golden thread for me to follow home after venturing into my own wildernesses.” Yes. Yes. Yes.
January 22nd, 2010 at 8:17 am
I should probably note that “bad suits” is a conjecture. I’m no judge of such things.
January 22nd, 2010 at 8:27 am
Very fascinating post. I think also Personal Essays will always be around in some form and maybe under some new label, but they will be around.
When it comes to “creative non-fiction” I’ve just understood that to be an encompassing label that really isn’t much defined as yet, but gives lots of MFA students another category they can develop their skills in. Your idea that it is a form of literary, ironic memoir is probably it’s most well known form at the moment, but that will change. I been told that a lot of the New New Journalism easily fits under the umbrella of “creative non-fiction”, i.e. In Cold Blood, The Executioner’s Song, etc…, which have very little to do the personal essay as has been practiced.
Philip Lopate, an excellent essayist, both personal and otherwise, once said, ” ‘Creative nonfiction’ seems slightly bogus. It’s like patting yourself on the back and saying, ‘My nonfiction is creative.’ Let the reader be the judge of that.” http://tiny.cc/eNKJk
I don’t think one will edge out on over the other. They can do different things, achieve different aesthetic results. There has always been room for good personal essays – so don’t anyone give up hope.
January 22nd, 2010 at 8:53 am
Very interesting view from the editor’s desk, Kristine. I’ve In this context it’s probably worth mentioning Mary Bradford’s “I, Eye, Aye,” a gentle theory of the Mormon personal essay and a history of its early practice, now, yikes, over thirty years old. Is there a newer meta-piece in the same vein?
Perhaps Dialogue’s submission pool for “personal voices” does not overlap much with the Bloggernacle, or maybe I’m just not reading widely enough among the blogs, but it doesn’t seem to me that the Mormon personal essay is in too much danger of being mugged by Dave Eggers. If anything, I experience a bit of personal essay fatigue. That particular “writing down the bones” voice, the segmented form/conjoining theme structure, with alternating italicized present-tense refrains, and always always converging on the final insight, the morsel of message at the center. (And I can mock this because I have published, in Dialogue, a personal essay to these precise specs.) I guess in that sense I would mildly disagree that the Mormon personal essay is “tentative, pensive, incomplete, partial; it believes in and relies on that which is yet to be revealed.” The ones I have read almost always resolve into a shared knowing.
It’s not that the conventions are stale. I’ve argued before that an affirmative (rather than subversive) relationship to form is a central feature of Mormon letters, and I don’t kick against those pricks anymore. I may just have reached my lifetime quota of “suddenly I realized” personal insights.
On a slightly different note, I’ve often thought that Mormon cinema is especially strong in documentary, and that this is analogous to Mormon letters’ strength in personal essay, in other words that documentary and personal essay are sister genres. I’d like somebody smart to comment on that, please.
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:11 am
I’d like to see more of just The Essay.
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:27 am
Rosalynde (et al.), Mary’s essay is available online (thank you Signature Library!!) and linked in the third paragraph from the end.
You’re dead right, of course, about the too-often formulaic nature of the essay. But it seems to me that the failure to _essay_, to leave things open and untidy, is just the flipside of ironic detachment. Whether to offer nihilism or testimony, the writer has to step away from the desk and up to the lectern or pulpit, has to move away from the process of engagement with the reader to present the authoritative interpretation. A good reason not to abandon the essay yet is that we mostly haven’t really done it yet! (with some wonderful exceptions like Gene England’s “Easter Weekend,” or some of Terry Tempest Williams’ stuff, or Stephen’s “Weight of Priesthood”)
Also, Dallas, you’re right that it’s hokey to set up “creative nonfiction” and “essay” as opposing categories. The situation is, as you point out, much more complicated and interesting, and probably less fraught than all that. It was getting late, and I was already 5 minutes past my self-imposed limit of 30 minutes for blog posts
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:28 am
But biting, ironic memoirs are so much fun to read!
I agree they leave something wanting, though. After reading Sedaris’ books, The Glass Castle, and the like, I’ve thought, that was great, but who are you now? What do you hope for and believe now? Is it just that belief and hope are out of fashion, or is it that those are pretty scary things to reveal about ones self?
I think you’re quite right about proselytizing being just about the most uncool thing there is (or at least doing it openly), so that may well be where the lack of personal essay stems from. It’s an interesting question.
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Ah! I had missed that link. Thanks for pointing it out, Kristine.
So do you think the personal essay impulse is different in quality than the testimony-bearing impulse in Mormons? I’ve been thinking about them as related, but perhaps you are drawing out a difference. In Gene’s work I do get that sense of open-endedness and question that is also very Mormon at the bone. Williams’ work, as much as I admire it, seems to me in many ways not Mormon in its feeling and moods—not that I am trying to police the boundaries of a pure Mormon canon, just that I don’t recognize the interior emotional setting, despite all the local detail of its geographical setting.
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Excellent, Kristine.
Creative nonfiction as a genre includes the personal essay.
The difference between a personal narrative and a personal essay is that the former tells a story for the sake of story, and the latter uses storytelling elements (to some extent, at least)for the purpose of exploring an idea. Some personal essays are written entirely in scenes, like a novel. Others are very talky, with a lot of “tell” and very little “show.” Like spiffed-up internal journalism.
I take issue with the point that there are only a handful of Mormon personal essays out there. Hello: Segullah has published a dozen issues full of them!
I agree that the formulaic essay can be wearying. I think it’s important, though, for Mormon women to write even if we tend to fall back on this form. We have to start somewhere, and those of us who master the more predictable essay are more ready to branch out into more experimental and complex writing.
Creative nonfiction as a genre is benign. The kind of postmodern, self-deprecatingly sophisticated, fact-based literary writing Kristine is rolling her eyes at does not define the genre any more than the same flavor of imaginative writing defines the genre of “fiction.” It just so happens that this wearying flavor of prose has been in high style at the same time the genre has grown wings. But the genre itself can and will encompass a huge spectrum of writing styles, and has incredible potential.
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Ah, Kathryn, I know I’m goring your ox. Sorry about that. Also showing my grandiose high-modernist stripes. I didn’t mean that there are only 5 or 10 Mormon personal essays, just that I think relatively few of them are really fully achieved instantiations of the form. (Which is to be expected–how many zillion bad sonnets are out there, ferPetessake?)
And you’re right that the vagaries of literary fashion don’t necessarily tell us anything useful about defining a genre. And, in the end, it wasn’t really the genre I was after, but a style, a fashion. I started by thinking about genre and category, but ended up somewhere rather different. Which makes my post performative of at least the meandering, not-linearly-argued nature of the essay, at least. And also mistaken in the ways you point out. Thanks.
January 22nd, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Also: with all the usual caveats, let’s not discount blogging. There have been some incredibly powerful, incredibly Mormon personal essay-type blog posts. And many (I’d say even more than half) have been written by Mormon women.
And I’ve said this before (and am remiss in not doing so above) but the Segullah set up is genius for providing a bridge from blogging to the more crafted personal essay.
January 22nd, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Nice thoughts, Kristine. I would hope that both the personal essay and creative nonfiction (if done well) are part of ongoing Mormon writing. Nobody has mentioned Refuge, the best example of Mormon creative nonfiction, but it was published almost twenty years ago and did not lead to other writers attempting similar projects related in whole or in part to Mormonism. That’s too bad — it would be a nice way to package LDS history for the broader market.
January 22nd, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Thanks, William.
And Kristine, thanks for your response. You’re right–the stuff we’re publishing can’t rival “Easter Weekend.” But there’s a lot of important writing going on. You and Rosalynde both rightly pointed out the limitations of the essays in The Mother in Me, but let’s bear in mind how revolutionary it was for DB to publish such a volume. If we’d gone any farther toward the edge in form or content we would have been denied that audience, and I felt it was important to try to bridge the gap.
Likewise, there’s all kinds of territory we haven’t covered within the pages of Segullah, but there are important reasons why certain boundaries have been drawn, both in terms of form and content. We’re trying to open up new realms of discourse in the Mormon mainstream, and in order to do so we can take only so many steps away from the center. Our next anthology will be self-published and so we’ll have more freedom than we did with The Mother in Me, but still we’ll keep an eye on the comfort level for average readers. Boundaries can only be effectively challenged a little at a time, and there are some that we’re not interested in challenging at all.
It’s a great post, Kristine. I responded to the parts that chafed but neglected to point out the many parts that really resonated with me. The whole topic is, of course, one of my favorites and I’m delighted to see you explore it. I especially loved the image of the thin golden thread–that will stay with me for a good long while.
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:30 pm
I appreciate the declarative, “But we are weird.”
Not that I’m in Mormon literature neck deep but it seems much of what is out there is on opposite poles of thought. It’s finding the chink the the gospel armor to enable the death blow or skittering the surface to avoid the depths where the hard questions are. Whether narrative or creative, essay or non-fiction, the title isn’t as important as getting the meat we’re hungry for.
Thanks for the mention of quality works, I’ll look them up and go a little deeper in the pool.
January 23rd, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Excellent post. My dissertation, which I am currently writing, is a critical history of Mormon autobiographical writing. This conversation is spot on for what I wanted to discuss in chapter 4! So, Kristine, I look forward to quoting a blog post as a critical source in that chapter! Thanks for the thoughtful post.
There is a lot of yet untapped potential in this genre for Mormon writers, and the worst thing we could do is merely imitate the current fashions.
January 25th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Thanks for the discussion, I have enjoyed the post and comments.
March 29th, 2012 at 3:35 am
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