Hi Crafters!

Have you missed some posts? Visit the Craft Club archive.

I received an advance copy of a craft book coming out in September from the author’s publicist. I’m going to take a looksie and see if it’d be a good fit for Craft Club. If you all have any recommendations on what book we should read together next — do share!

<3,

Minda

This was my favorite chapter of the three we read this session. I have an affinity for echoes within writing. Whether that’s scenes that remix and reappear or language and sentence structure that repeats later within the same text. My reasoning is much like Jane’s. It can show character development, it can be a satisfying hat tip to the close reader and provides alluring symmetry to a narrative.

I also find that, as a memoirist and personal essayist, that often the moments of my life I’m writing about are those that double back on themselves. I find it fascinating how life is always returning us to the scene of the crime in this way (or sometimes we arrive there are the power of our own poor decision making…). Giving us an opportunity to make a different choice.

In “Meander, Spiral, Explode,” Jane defines a wave pattern in within writing by stating

To demonstrate this pattern, Jane turns toward a novella by noted misogynist Philip Roth. But I’d like for us to look “I Found God at Queer Summer Camp” by Jeanna Kadlec (sadly, Narratively has this brilliant piece mostly behind a paywall).

In this essay, Jeanna, on the other side of divorce and an exit from the Evangelical faith, heads off to a queer summer camp put on by Autostraddle. Over the course of the essay, Jeanna learns that she can have both her queerness and her faith.

Following a post dance party hook up, Jeanna and her lucky lady perform an after sex ritual,

(Oh BTW: Happy Pride!!) Later in the essay, after her grandmother’s funeral, she sheds tears with her sister. Her grandmother was the only family member that truly accepted her and her new partner after her divorce. We see a rhyming scene, Jeanna’s tears fall on dirt, once again returning her to where she came from. The author seems to be reminding us of the spiritual aspect of the sexual, that sex and religion can both be a (re)birth.

At this same funeral, during the Episcopalian service, Jeanna does not feel like she can take communion. But later in the essay, at the Gospel Brunch at queer summer camp, the leader invites those who would like to to take communion and Jeanna is one of the first out of her seat.

This echo shows the growth of the character and how she’s been transformed by her experience, from feeling unworthy to a sense of belonging. As Jane puts it, “Their symmetry and crucial differences mark all that transpired.” (79) Symmetry shows progress. Same context. Different you. Jane also notes that mirroring can present potency and its eventual fulfillment.

I was uncomfortable with “The Lover” excerpts even before we get to the mention of a teenager’s white cotton panties being tossed aside on page 130. Jane describes the girl in the opening scene,

The girl is 15.

You don’t have to search long to see criticism of this book over colonialism, romanticizing pedophilia, and the use of Asian stereotypes.

And while some insist this book is a masterpiece, as I was reading Jane’s description of it, it felt as if she was trying awfully hard to justify and add a sheen of brilliance to the kind of writing any college classroom creative writing workshop would pan outright.

In a Paris Review discussion of the book marking the 30th anniversary of its English translation, one author describes it as “disjointed ramblings.” And apparently, Duras herself was no fan of her own book.

Reading over these three chapters, I began to wonder who gets permission to “meander.” Why is there so much investment in continuing to praise writing that clearly has not held up over time? This is writing that would otherwise be labeled as bad in our contemporary literary landscape (and perhaps it’s why Jane doesn’t use many recent works to pull examples from…). I cannot imagine if one of Jane’s students turned in something Duras-esque that she’d be raving about and eager to grade it an A.

While grades and the opinions of workshop aren’t everything, I do find it frustrating when the literary establishment tries to gaslight us into believing writing that breaks all the same rules we’re expected to abide by and produces the poor results we’ve been warned of, is supposed to be celebrated until the end of time for it’s rebellious writing moves. (This is not to say the rules can’t be broken and produce miraculous results, this just to say that often the work we’re expected to praise has not).

Ch. 5 & 6 after the paywall…