Issue 10 / 1998
10 / Style and Substance
The true potential of creative nonfiction
The essays in this issue are strong examples of how writers can blend style and substance, while using a personal voice. In “Memoir? Fiction? Where’s the Line?” Mimi Schwartz confronts challenges and conflicts in writing memoir in an intelligent and analytic way. Through use of dialogue in “Snakebite,” Connie Wieneke addresses the writer’s difficult and frustrating search for accuracy and truth. “Love, War and Deer Hunting,” by John Hales provides a compendium of fascinating information about a variety of subjects with spiritual and intellectual insight—weaved in a story with dramatic intensity. “The Five Glorious Mysteries” by Genevieve Cotter is exhilarating, eerie, personal—and true. The essays in this issue demonstrate the true potential of creative nonfiction.
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FROM THE EDITOR: Style and Substance
Last fall, James Wolcott roasted me (as the "godfather behind creative nonfiction") and this journal on the pages of Vanity Fair (October 1997). In a 4-page article "Me, Myself and I," Wolcott lambastes most creative nonfiction writers, including Phillip Lopate, Tobias Wolff and John McPhee.The Five Glorious Mysteries
The light stays late in the Montana Valley. It is midsummer. We are at the farm playing Dare Base. My five brothers and sisters and the Tartarkas make nine cunning competitors for this fast-paced sweaty game.Round Trip
Isaac, who is 12, has come involuntarily. “We insist he grow up cultured,” his mother says, leaning over our headrests from the seat behind. “My father brought me to the dam on a bus. There is just no other way to see it.”Margot’s Diary
Photos: Anne, 1941; Margot, 1941: They both part their hair on the left side, wear a watch on the same wrist, have the same eyebrows, same open-mouthed smile. Their noses and eyes are different, the shape of their faces, the cut of their hair, the fall of it.The Better Porch
We sit on the newly built front porch of one of the houses on my street—a street of squat, sided homes for people a step up from trailer living—behind the motorcycle dealership, the pawn shop and half a block from the Mission Mart.Memoir? Fiction? Where’s the Line?
I don’t remember what my second grade teacher wore! How can I recall the dialogue when my Dad left 10 years ago? All my summers in Maine blur together. That’s what my students will say tomorrow when I return their first efforts at turning memories into memoir.Action de Grace
Every time I went to Haiti I felt I was going to die there. It wasn’t because I wanted to or intended to court the risk.Learning From Goats
When I was a kid, my mother was so busy and so often harried I thought she didn’t love me.Love, War and Deer Hunting
I remember my first real deer hunt, the year I turned 16 and was allowed by state law and local custom to finally carry a rifle and kill a deer, as somehow entirely adolescent, unlike any deer hunt I’d been on before.Snakebit
As I dial my mother’s phone number, I skim the first page of my story. On the computer monitor, I mouth the sentences, liking the way they roll one into the next, confident and certain.History of My Hair
Hair. In the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, it was about all you had. All the consumerism and conspicuous consumption— Ronald Reagan and his always perfect conservative hair—were decades in the future.YouMemories Like Splintered Glass
I am in a small black carriage, moving fast. The roof is in place. The gray sidewalk is running away beneath the wheels, as it always runs when you bend over to see it.About the Author: John D’Agata
John D’Agata is a poet. He is a journalist poet. He is a passionate journalist poet. He calls himself “a bit of a crank.”About the Author: Becky Bradway
The essay form is new for Becky Bradway. Before this she wrote stories. Well, maybe she still does write stories. She isn’t exactly sure. Like her life transition in the essay, she is in a parallel transition as a writer.About the Author: Connie Wieneke
“Did we have the same mother?” was the question that kicked off this interview. Having put important genealogical questions to rest, we were able to move on to the more serious issues this question represented: memory and subjectivity.About the Author: S. L. Wisenberg
This essay is part of the fabric of Sandy Wisenberg’s history. “I’ve always been obsessed with Anne Frank. When I was really young, about seven, I had two role models as a writer: Louisa May Alcott and Anne Frank. As a child I identified with someone who wanted to write. I even patterned my diary entries after hers sometimes like, ‘Dear Kitty.'”About the Author: Lucy Wilson Sherman
Sherman tells me “Some people don’t like me at all.” Straightforward remarks like this characterize her. She is someone who is both uneasy about and proud of this, a struggle which is evident in “Learning From Goats.”About the Author: Mimi Schwartz
Mimi Schwartz is a careful observer and a clear thinker, qualities that allowed her to illuminate the evolution of this piece.About the Author: Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
“Memories Like Splintered Glass” is Susan Fromberg Schaeffer’s first piece of memoir. She is quick to explain why this is: “That fear you have that you will be hurting somebody else by writing about their life–that you have no right to it.”About the Author: John Hales
"Love, War, and Deer Hunting," a dense and rich essay, weaves many weighty philosophical, sociocultural and psychological issues into its fabric.About the Author: Genevive Cotter
This essay is one of a collection called “Montana Stories” that Genevieve Cotter is hoping to publish in a book about her coming of age in Montana. Her family moved there in 1939 when she was three.About the Author: Madison Smartt Bell
Complex and powerful describe the essay “Action de Grace.” This is also how Madison Smartt Bell describes Haiti and the process of writing about it.