I’ve just started a book on writing entitled Good Prose by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd.  I could tell in the first few pages that the writers were kindred spirits.  Here are just a few of the quotes from the first chapter.  Unfortunately it is a library book so I can’t underline all of the wonderful thoughts in it.  I’ll just have to share some with you all instead.

“Beginnings are an exercise in limits.  You can’t make the reader love you in the first sentence or paragraph, but you can lose the reader right away. You don’t expect the doctor to cure you at once, but the doctor can surely alienate you at once, with brusqueness or bravado or indifference or confusion.  There is a lot to be said for the quiet beginning.”

“Expansiveness is not denied to anyone, but it is always prudent to remember that one is not Tolstoy or Dickens and to remember that modesty can resonate, too.”

“Clarity isn’t an exciting virtue, but it is a virtue always, and especially at the beginning of a piece of prose.”

‘With good writing the reader enjoys a doubleness of experience, succumbing to the story or the ideas while also enjoying the writer’s artfulness. Indeed, one way to know that writing deserves to be called art is the coexistence of these two pleasures in the reader’s mind.”

“Journalists are instructed…to make sure they tell the most important facts of the story first. This translates poorly to longer forms of writing.  The heart of the story is usually a place to arrive at, not a place to begin.  Of course the reader needs a reason to continue, but the best reason is simply confidence that the writer is going someplace interesting.”

The heart of the story is usually a place to arrive at, not a place to begin.  I love this thought!

This is going to be a good book.  I can feel it in my bones.

Last week, Amazon was offering several of C.S. Lewis’s non-fiction literary/criticism kindle books for sale.  As I still had some money on an Amazon gift card and there were several of these that neither my library or I have, I decided to purchase them while I could afford to do so.  One of the books was An Experiment in Criticism.  This was one that I had read many years ago but I had forgotten everything in it so I opted to start with it.  Wow, what riches.  Lewis is so readable!

The sure mark of an unliterary man is that he considers ‘I’ve read it already’ to be a conclusive argument against reading a work.

Those who read great works, on the other hand, will read the same work ten, twenty or thirty times during the course of their life.

the majority, though they are sometimes frequent readers, do not set much store by reading. They turn to it as a last resource. They abandon it with alacrity as soon as any alternative pastime turns up.

literary people are always looking for leisure and silence in which to read and do so with their whole attention. When they are denied such attentive and undisturbed reading even for a few days they feel impoverished.

I was happy to determine from the first chapter that I fall into the Lewis’s category of a literary [woman].  I read and I re-read; reading is usually my first resort, not my last thought; and I purposely carve out time for reading or else I feel not just impoverished, but starved.

Finally, and as a natural result of their different behaviour in reading, what they have read is constantly and prominently present to the mind of the few, but not to that of the many. The former mouth over their favourite lines and stanzas in solitude. Scenes and characters from books provide them with a sort of iconography by which they interpret or sum up their own experience. They talk to one another about books, often and at length.

Do you do this?  Think about the characters and favorite passages and copy down beautiful prose to remember and re-read and talk about books whenever you can find a fellow literary person?  Working in the library has been such a blessing as I am surrounded by people who love reading and books as much as I do and who are always ready and willing to discuss books in general as well as specific titles they have been reading.  Bliss!

Now the true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemnly or gravely. For he will read ‘in the same spirit that the author writ’. What is meant lightly he will take lightly; what is meant gravely, gravely. He will ‘laugh and shake in Rabelais’ easy chair’ while he reads Chaucer’s faibliaux and respond with exquisite frivolity to The Rape of the Lock. He will enjoy a kickshaw as a kickshaw and a tragedy as a tragedy. He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison.

This is true!  I read very differently depending on the genre.  I read some books slowly, savoring every word, copying bits down in a commonplace book, telling everyone I can about how wonderful it is.  Other books, I gobble like cotton candy–it tastes good for the moment but melts away almost immediately.  Then there are the meaty, thoughtful books that take time and effort and attention but are so worthwhile.

I think the two kinds of readers are already foreshadowed in the nursery.

Hmmm.  An interesting thought.  I know that I was always this way but I wonder if it is innate or environmental or a little bit of both.

One last quote:

There are those who read only when there is nothing better to do, gobble up each story to ‘find out what happened’, and seldom go back to it; others who reread and are profoundly moved.

There are books to be gobbled and not revisited but the best books, the worthwhile books, are ones to be read and re-read, pondered and meditated upon, copied and discussed.

What worthwhile book are you reading right now?

I finally finished The Magic Apple Tree by Susan Hill last week.  I have been reading it as slowly as possible to draw out the pleasure but I read the last few chapters in a rush because it was about my favorite season, autumn.  Here are some final quotes from this lovely book:

“In summer in this wood every tree looks much like every other, though of course if you are close up, you can distinguish them by the shape of the leaves, and in the open, where they stand in ones and twos, by the shape of the whole body of the tree. Now though, in decay, the trees have become distinct, separate again, they take back their individual character, for no two species are the same in shading and depth of colour. I stand still and see sulphur-yellow and bright, bright gold, copper and tawny owl’s feather brown, sienna and umber and every kind of nut, and the whole pattern breaks like a child’s kaleidoscope as a sudden wind blows over the wood, becomes mottled, darker, and then lighter, as the leaves show their backs.”

“When we reach the top of the slope and the stile again, we look back, and see that the ribs of the wood are showing through at the sides, like those of a starving man, and the grey bones poke upwards to the sky, topped by a last few bunches of dried leaves, like old, curly wigs, and even as we look, the wind rises and blows and tosses the trees about again and more leaves fall.”

“In the kitchen, autumn is my favourite season, too, because it is preserving time – jams and jellies, chutneys and pickles, fruit butters and cheeses, and the whole, glorious session rounded off with the making of the mincemeat, to be stored until Christmas.”

“This is one reason why preserve-making takes up whole days, with bouts of hard work, and minutes of stirring gently, scattered over long periods of waiting, during which I read a book that doesn’t mind being broken into every so often, or write a few letters, or go out to pick some ripe elderberries from the tree on the other side of our garden, for tomorrow. And friends drop in for cups of coffee and wasps are slaughtered and the telephone is answered, and I go outside, just to stand in the sunshine and look about. It is all very pleasant.” [This description caused me to look forward to next year’s jam and preserve making!]

“There are rows of glowing jars on the dresser shelves, like so many jewels, deep red, orange, burgundy, pale pink, pale green, purple-black. I label them, before carrying them upstairs to the store cupboard, which is in our bedroom, and there, when I have lined them up, I gaze in deep satisfaction. I feel as if we shall indeed be ‘preserved’ against the ravages of this coming winter, and go off to have a long, hot, soothing bath.” [There are few things more satisfying than row upon row of jars, filled with summer fruits and vegetables.]

“Composting is a good activity, but I have certainly not found it so straightforward or foolproof as all the books and magazine articles make out.”  [How true!]

“Summer Time ends next week. But I don’t mind. I have tired of summer, it is time things began again.” [Don’t we all feel this way by the time September comes?]

“The W.I. is a good institution. It is not only about jam- and cake-making, though it is about those things, and so it should be, for they are good activities, at a premium now more than ever before, in a fast-moving, mechanised, society: it is about tea-drinking and exchanging recipes, then, and garden plants and knitting patterns, too….It expresses, by its very existence and strength for so many years, a very great many of the important concerns of all kinds of women, and women make up more than half the population, after all. It has a voice, it carries weight, it cares about national and international issues, matters of life and death and health and sickness, of community care and survival, of the upbringing of the young and the welfare of the old.” [We don’t have the W.I. here in the United States but it would be nice to have such a community of women in each area, perhaps in our churches.]

“There is nothing like literary or mythical significance for provoking interest and affection for a particular wild creature. To have a house mouse or spider or even mole is tiresome, to have a party of roosting jackdaws in the chimney is worse, but to have our own hedgehog, by adoption, is very pleasing.”

“We are all here, my family, the animals, all safe, all well and happy and free in the sunshine, and up the lane and down the lane, the houses of friends and neighbours, and beyond our low stone wall, the ‘happy autumn fields’. The countryside is at its best, mellow, ripe, glorious. It is a time for rejoicing, it is easy to be glad here, to praise, to be thankful. We have had the best of years.”

What a wonderful ending, “We have had the best of years.”  I hope I can say that at the end of 2014.

I’m currently reading Madeleine L’Engle’s “The Rock That Is Higher: Story as Truth”. I don’t always agree with all that she writes, but so much of what she writes resonates strongly with me, even if I decide that I don’t agree with her in the end. And she is so quotable:

“One of the results of the Fall is that we have forgotten who we are, and so have forgotten how to be.  Learning to be hurts.  We can sing songs of happiness without knowing pain.  But we can sing the joy of our creation and honor our Creator only from within the fire.” p. 40

This is so true.  It is easy to “do” and so, so difficult to “be” and it was when I walked through the “fire” of temptation and pain and suffering that I met the Lord in a new, close way that I doubt would have occurred if I hadn’t needed Him so desperately.

“Eating has always been important to me, because the focal point of the day is the dinner table, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.  The dinner hour is a sacramental time for me, a time of gratitude for whoever is gathered around the table, for the food, for our being part of the great story of Creation.  We share the day’s events, tell stories, look up words in dictionaries, linger long after the meal is over while the candles burn down.” p. 56

Yes!

“We are not meant to be plaster saints who are never frightened or angry.  These are human emotions and few people can avoid them.  However we are not meant to be stuck in them, but to turn to God, and move on.  When I am angry with someone I know, to my rue, that there have been many times when I, too, have been less than I ought to be, when I have not honored God’s image within me.  This understanding alone should be enough to keep us from hanging onto grudges” pp. 76-77

I love her wisdom here.

And one last quote for now:

“The storyteller is a storyteller because the storyteller cares about truth, searching for truth, expressing truth, sharing truth.” p. 103

I am loving reading Madeleine L’Engle’s thoughts on writing, God, love, friendship, story, and ultimately life itself.  I am reading this very slowly and thinking about it and rereading bits.  It’s been well worth my time and effort.