I Won’t Hold Your Hand

Posted on 2011/09/272011/09/30 by Jason Hensel

One of blogging’s cardinal rules is to always to let a reader know the importance of an entry, to tie content together. For example, if I work in the dog-walking industry and I post an entry on our company’s official blog about, let’s say, NASA, then I should state up front why it’s important you read the blog entry and how it’s relevant to you in the dog-walking industry.

I’d like to respectfully disagree with that nonsense. You’re not a baby. You’re an intelligent reader who knows how to make connections between topics. There’s no need for me to hold your hand when you’re reading.

Think about it. Wait. That’s exactly what this content-tying rule is helping you not do. It takes away thought. It takes away the opportunity for readers to do some of the work themselves. Reading is a partnership between the writer and the reader. The content-tying rule negates that partnership.

“Oh, but people don’t have time to read much nowadays, so you need to tell them why what they’re reading is important,” I can hear you say. You know what? If they don’t have time to read and think, then I don’t want them reading my writing. I write for readers who are thinkers (this is not to suggest that I write esoteric things). I write for people who don’t need to be hand-held and overtly pointed out things. I write for people who take responsibility for their reading.

My stance is not a popular one in this day of quick reads and SEO needs. But I’m not in it for that. I’m in it for the long haul. I’m in it to get you to think for yourself.

What kind of reader are you?

(Photo credit: close to spectacular / creative commons)

Send to Kindle

Review: The Architect of Flowers by William Lychack

Posted on 2011/06/042011/09/27 by Jason Hensel

My friend Danny introduced me to William Lychack’s writing a few years ago. The story he had me read was “A Stand of Fables,” which is about a woman who yearns for the sea, to return to what she was once before. The story is beautifully written with a vein of sadness streaming through it, like a red line of clay in limestone. And even though there was that sadness in it, there was also hope and redemption.

This duality of sadness and hopefulness is Lychack’s bailiwick in his collection of stories, The Architect of Flowers. Opening with “Stolpestad,” a story about an animal mercy killing gone wrong, Lychack bats the reader back and forth between grief and discovery. He doesn’t let up for the whole collection, and if you were to read this book straight through, you too may need to go for a walk in the dark woods to find yourself.

Lychack’s prose is lyrical and often sparse. It reminds me of Raymond Carver’s writing (or maybe I should say Carver’s writing heavily diced and sliced by Gordon Lish). There were several times I ended a story and had to pause, contemplating Lychack’s overall meaning, much like one does after reading a poem.

And much like great poets, Lychack knows how to construct a line that causes you to do exactly what he wants you to do. Here’s the beginning of the first line of “Stolpestad”: “Was toward the end of your shift, a Saturday, another one of those long slow lazy afternoons of summer…” Just try reading “long slow lazy” fast. I dare you. It’s impossible without sounding like half your tongue is cut off. Those three words slow the reader down, immediately putting you in the story’s time location.

Lychack’s syntax in these stories is like a short earthquake, often throwing you off balance, but never to the ground. This goes along with his major themes of grief and redemption, forcing you to re-examine the world, to re-evaluate what is important to you, what you can live with and without.

There are 13 stories in the collection. A lot of the stories feature birds. You’ll come away knowing more about flowers and gardening. You’ll learn where to properly kill an animal on its body. You’ll often pause and think and daydream a bit, much like most of the characters. Lychack sets his fabulistic stories in a world of truth to help secure your footing. And then he tells you that the world you know isn’t what you expected or hoped for. It’s up to you to imagine a new one, maybe even something better than was once here before.

Send to Kindle

Books Read in 2010

Posted on 2010/12/29 by Jason Hensel

I met my goal again this year of reading, on average, a book a week. I failed to review them all, which I predicted would happen after the first few ones, due to laziness and/or my ever growing ADD affliction.

Here are the top 10 books I liked best during the past year: Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, The Art of Fiction by John Gardner, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower, Truth in Comedy by Charn Halpern, Del Close and Kim Johnson, Stoner by John Williams, Guru: My Days With Del Close by Jeff Griggs, Nine Lives by J.D. Salinger, The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, and The Ask by Sam Lipsyte.

And here’s the full list.

Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
The Mystery Guest by Gregoire Bouillier
Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts by Jorie Graham
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
The Art of Fiction by John Gardner
The Phaedo by Plato
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
District and Circle by Seamus Heaney
Collected Stories by Donald Margulies
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
Airships by Barry Hannah
Truth in Comedy by Charna Halpern, Del Close, and Kim “Howard” Johnson
Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill
Autobahn by Neil LaBute
Endgame by Samuel Beckett
Improvising Better by Jimmy Carrane and Liz Allen
Stoner by John Williams
The Eumenides by Aeschylus
Two Trains Running by August Wilson
Stitches by David Small
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis
Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies
True Grit by Charles Portis
Unpopular Essays by Bertrand Russell
Our Late Night / A Thought in Three Parts by Wallace Shawn
The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts
Guru: My Days with Del Close by Jeff Griggs
The God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton
American Buffalo by David Mamet
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck by Charles Bukowski
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Nine Lives by J.D. Salinger
Play It Again, Sam by Woody Allen
Obscenities by Michael Casey
Joe Egg by Peter Nichols
Alcestis by Euripides
Kid by Simon Armitage
The American Dream by Edward Albee
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd
Aesop’s Fables by Aesop, edited by Jack Zipes
The Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht
Brooklyn Boy by Donald Margulies
On the Shortness of Life by Seneca
Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thinch Nhat Hanh
Filthy Talk for Troubled Times by Neil LaBute
The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht
The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
The Empty Space by Peter Brook
The Break of Noon by Neil LaBute

Please feel free to let me know in the comments your favorite reads of the past year. Thank you.

Send to Kindle

Lazy Takeaways

Posted on 2010/11/29 by Jason Hensel

I’m growing increasingly frustrated with articles that offer information via bulleted or numbered lists.

Here’s an example:

November is a busy shopping month
It is during this month that a lot of businesses go in the black.
December can get crazy shopping mad, too
Because of multiple holidays in the month, there are a lot of shoppers out there.

I understand the reason behind it—readers rarely have time to read much anymore, so let’s bold the main takeaways so at least they have read and learned something. There are a lot of lazy readers out there, sure, but you’re only filling the slop bucket when you do things like this.

And that’s why I’m getting frustrated. I find myself just reading the bold, bulleted text, and then afterwards I feel guilty, like I did the writer a disservice by not reading the complete story. Does the writer care? If the writer put those bold, bulleted lists there, then maybe all the person cares about are eyes on a page and not deep, meaningful prose that may cause a reader to contemplate the ideas and news presented.

I may be in the minority; however, I’d rather read 1,000 words on a topic than short takeaways. If you really want to tell me what the story is about, then put it in your subhead or spell it out in the title. Just please stop with the lazy takeaways.

Send to Kindle

Year of Books: The Mystery Guest by Gregoire Bouillier

Posted on 2010/02/12 by Jason Hensel

I’m getting behind in the reviews of books I’ve read this year. So maybe this and a few of the following reviews will be short and sweet.

I became aware of The Mystery Guest via the great book site, The Millions. Maybe I missed (or forgot) the part about it being a memoir, and finding out that it was one disappointed me right off the bat. You see, I don’t much like reading memoirs, especially by authors that are within a decade of their writing career. I get it, though, they just have something to get off their chests. And I guess fiction writing is not good enough for them—I’d rather they kill their inner demons through fictionalized narrative. It’s more fun, and I don’t have to feel like the writer is whining all the time.

To Gregoire Bouiller’s credit, his memoir reads like a great novella. It’s the story of a Bouiller being invited as a mystery guest to an artist’s birthday party (someone he’s never met) by his ex. Throughout, he philosophizes about lost connections, literature, and how everything fits perfectly in place.

I enjoyed Lorin Stein’s translation—the prose was direct and reminded me of Camus’ style (or is that how French writers write most of the time?). If you’re ever stuck inside on a rainy day, I recommend this book. And don’t forget to pour yourself some wine at the same time.

Send to Kindle

Year of Books: Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

Posted on 2010/01/18 by Jason Hensel

One of the good things about writing reviews long after a book is read is that one usually only focuses on the items that stick in the mind. The downside is that if the book doesn’t have any stickiness, the review can be quite quick.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee kind of falls in that quick category and is also like a good meal. You definitely know that you liked it and you would go back to the restaurant, but you are unable to pinpoint exactly what it was that you enjoyed about the food. With Scorch Atlas, I could tell you want I did or did not like about the book. Both types have their own ways of hanging on to me.

Let me give you a plot summary: A South African professor has an affair with a student and leaves his position. He goes to live with his hippy daughter on her farm and learns that the black-and-white world in South Africa is flip flopping. Basically, what was once the status quo is now old hat.

What I most enjoyed about Disgrace was that reading it was effortless in that I was never awakened from the fictional dream. I found myself staying up late at night wanting to know what would happen next to the professor. I felt that the writer did a great job balancing character and plot, and I would definitely read another of his novels. Other than that, though, I’m unable to go into much more detail. It was just good. Can’t that be enough sometimes?

Perhaps I should add that Coetzee’s prose was smooth and traditional—not that there is anything wrong with traditional. In fact, I most often prefer story over syntax. Whereas, Coetzee spins a good story, a writer such as Scorch Atlas‘ Blake Butler deals in sentence theatrics. Both have their pros and cons.

Send to Kindle

Year of Books: Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler

Posted on 2010/01/04 by Jason Hensel

Instead of just listing the books I’ve read the previous year, I thought I’d revive this blog and write about the books I read. Of course, I may still talk about random items—I mean, really, don’t you want to know that I don’t think the heater is working properly in my house at the moment? Writing about the books I’ve read will at least help me keep the blog up to date, as well as help me remember why I do or don’t like some of the books. My analysis probably won’t be academic; it will primarily be stream-of-thought reflections on the books. I reserve the right to change my mind, and I’m open to your thoughts and debates about particular books.

The first book out of the gate for 2010 is Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler. I was drawn to read this book by Kim‘s review of it in Time Out New York. Her review sums up this short story collection best.

The 14 linked stories in Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas depict the fragility of the American family through relentless accumulation of apocalyptic detail. Parents disappear or are held captive by their children. Babies are born malformed and enormous. Homes are destroyed by water or fire or accreting dust.

Malformed babies! Apocalyptic landscapes! Sounds awesome. And it was for about two, maybe three, stories. Then it grew tiresome. Maybe that was Butler’s plan all along, and if so, then bravo to him for making the reader feel as tired and downtrodden as the characters.

While I enjoyed the bleak settings of most of the stories, what I found most frustrating was Bulter’s syntax. I never understood why he would use more words, primarily prepositions, than necessary. For example, in the story “Seabed,” there is this sentence: “The men he’d spent endless nights with pounding shots with, fly-licked blood now flooding from their mouths.” I know it’s the editor in me, but damn I want to cut out that first “with.” I can hear the poetic structure of the sentence, which I find good up to a point. But when I start noticing style over substance, then I start to get bored with the story. Do writer’s really want readers to be bored with their stories?

Maybe Butler is more interested in wordplay, and if so, then I think some of these stories would have worked more effectively as poems and short plays. I think that sort of variety would have kept me interested, seeing as how these apocalyptic stories all seemed to run together, pages and pages of full-justified text.

In the end, I remember some of the story ideas, but not the full story. The ideas I enjoyed most are the mother eating lace to so that her daughter would have a gown and the children holding their mother hostage so that they could feed on her. My favorite story was “Smoke House,” because it was the most straight forward and the most tender in its telling of the pain of losing a child. It was the one story I got caught up in, not once thinking about the syntax. It was the one smooth item in an otherwise charred book.

Speaking of charred, the book’s design is top-notch. It was designed to look like it went through hell and back, and it looks it. Still, shouldn’t a reader remember more of the stories instead of the design?

Send to Kindle

Books Read in 2009

Posted on 2009/12/17 by Jason Hensel

Once again, my annual list of the books I’ve read this year. Going over this list, I see there are several that I enjoyed. So, instead of naming my favorites, let me this year name three books read that I found terrible or boring (or both). They are Actual Air, The Watchmen, and World War Z. You may be asking, “Why read a book if you think it’s so bad?” The answer, in two words: book group. And yes, I know there’s a couple more weeks left in the year. I thought, though, I’d go ahead and put this list up now and get ahead on reading books for next year’s list. If my goal is 52 books a year, then I’ve already safely met it. Time to move on to 2010.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter

High Windows by Philip Larkin

Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by August Wilson

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Miss Julie by August Strindberg

The Medea by Euripides

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare

The Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

Black Dogs by Ian McEwan

Temptation by Vaclav Havel

Short Shorts: An Anthology of the Shortest Stories by Irving Howe and Ilana Wiener Howe (editors)

Bash: Latterday Plays by Neil LaBute

Telling True Stories by Mark Kramer and Wendy Call (editors)

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Reasons to be Pretty by Neil LaBute

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

In a Dark Dark House by Neil LaBute

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh

Copenhagen by Michael Frayn

The Dead Lecturer by LeRoi Jones

How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster

Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays by David Ball

Tiny Geniuses by Emily Feldman

26 Miles by Quiara Alegria Hudes

True West by Sam Shepard

The Lonesome West by Martin McDonagh

Management Rewired by Charles S. Jacobs

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes by Jim Holt

I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter

Art by Yasmina Reza

Actual Air by David Berman

World War Z by Max Brooks

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

A Village Life by Louise Gluck

In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders

King Dork by Frank Portman

The Physicists by Friedrich Durrenmatt

Mojo by Jez Butterworth

The Choephori (or The Libation-Bearers) by Aeschylus

Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser

Here, Bullet by Brian Turner

My Children! My Africa! by Athol Fugard

Dinner With Friends by Donald Margulies

The Maids by Jean Genet

Sum by David Eagleman

Send to Kindle

Books Read in 2008

Posted on 2008/12/31 by Jason Hensel

Here’s my annual list of what I read during the year. The three I found most memorable are Then We Came to the End, The Pillowman, and Made to Stick.

Travel Writing by Don George

Beneath the Wheel by Hermann Hesse

Oleanna by David Mamet

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

I am My Own Wife by Doug Wright

Alls Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare

Sun Stone by Octavio Paz, translated by Muriel Rukeyser

Time & Money by William Matthews

I am America (And So Can You) by Stephen Colbert

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by Simon Armitage

Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

Look Back in Anger by John Osborne

Tartuffe by Moliere

Lust in Translation by Pamela Druckerman

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

The Visit by Friedrich Durrenmatt

The Futurist by James P. Othmer

Lord Weary’s Castle by Robert Lowell

The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick

Sea Grapes by Derek Walcott

Burnt Island by D. Nurkse

Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Human Dark with Sugar by Brenda Shaughnessy

Come Back, Little Sheba by William Inge

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster

Charcoal by Jasmine Dreame Wagner

On Writing Well by William Zinsser

Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, M.D.

Sex at Noon Taxes by Sally Van Doren

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

The Niagara River by Kay Ryan

The Bellarosa Connection by Saul Bellow

Jazz for Beginners by Ron David

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

Introducing Jung by Maggie Hyde

Ghost on Fire by Michael Weller

Bucolics by Maurice Manning

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Wit by Margaret Edson

The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh

The Distance from Here by Neil LaBute

Wieland, or the Transformation by Charles Brockden Brown

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD

The Father by August Strindberg

The Goat or Who is Sylvia? by Edward Albee

Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

How to Read a Play by Ronald Hayman

Desire Under the Elms by Eugene O’Neill

Send to Kindle

Journeys: The Midwives of Thought

Posted on 2007/07/16 by Jason Hensel

Lately, I’ve been reading all of the introductory essays in the Best American Travel Writing series, and I’ve noticed a recurring theme: storytelling. That seems like a “well duh” theme, but series editor Jason Wilson and the guest editors hit home the same point year after year—specifically, great travel stories are just that, stories. Sure, one can read articles full of facts and figures, and that’s great if you’re memorizing them for a test, but in reality, how many of those facts and figures will you remember a year from now? I’d place a bet that you’d remember a story that ignites your senses more than one that rattles off trivia like counting sheep.

So, how do we get to a place in our lives where a travel experience becomes more than a trip and one in which it becomes so much a part of us that we feel the need to share it with others?

In The Art of Travel, philosopher Alain de Botton may have the answer. De Botton—best know for his book How Proust Can Change Your Life—ruminates on why we travel and how we can make our travels more satisfying and memorable. The key, to him, is in the details, taking time to ask the questions of why and how about destinations. Instead of following a guidebook, for example, and letting it tell you what is important in a city and why it’s important, de Botton suggests that you step away from the common tourist flow and follow your own path.

“What, then, is a travelling mind-set?” de Botton asks. “Receptivity might be said to be its chief characteristic. Receptive, we approach new places with humility. We carry with us no rigid ideas about what is or is not interesting.”

To de Botton, “journeys are the midwives of thought.” Introspective time spent on a plane (or in a car or train) can open up the mind to new ideas that otherwise would have been blunted in everyday, working life. This reflection gives us time to formulate why we enjoyed our trip, or why we’re even taking one.

De Botton’s fascinating, philosophical book has caused me not only to be more mindful of my travels, but to explore why I enjoy travel stories and what I enjoy about them.

Upon contemplation, the travel articles that I enjoy are the ones that, as Wilson says, “transcend their chosen destinations.” I enjoy writers who “understand that a trip’s context is as important as the trip itself.”

In the 2002 Best American Travel Writing introduction, guest editor Frances Mayes wrote, “I found that what I remembered, what seemed to transcend topic and what affected me were not only essays with a grounded sense of place, but ones written in a highly personal voice.”

This personal voice, though, can only be found with introspection, contemplation of what is going on around you, breaking down what your senses are registering and figuring out what they mean to you.

A good way of doing so is through writing and telling stories. Sharing with others your experience not only entertains, but makes you more aware of what you’re sharing. You may self-censor a story, because you don’t think others will find it interesting. That is when you should stop and ask, “Why don’t I find this interesting?” Only then can you begin to enjoy the art of traveling (and the art of storytelling) for what it really is—a journey of self discovery.

Send to Kindle