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The thing to learn from her is a simplicity of style. Saying that it is understated, is, well, an understatement. She has a polite, but razor honesty. Stealthy, when she slaps, she comes hard and her eyes don’t flinch. She means it!
What she does is build pristine paragraphs, and pages, and stories. Other writers conjure up gaudy facades. Like a Shaker, with her plain, unadorned words she builds a sturdy cottage. A cottage where murders happened. Her effort is put into moving you through surprise, and the unexpected nothing, and rarely, the eternal, permanent insight.
It is a good example that you don’t have to be a hero. That not every sentence has to have a state-of-the-art set of words. That the observations are the thing. She creates a clean window into the truly profound knowledge she has about the faintest, the most shapeless, but also the most deep seated of human events. She keeps that window crystal clear, with what must be an unearthly amount of effort.
She’s not Bellow. Thank god. At first it seems like what she achieves is within your grasp. Then, trying to write something in her hand, you realise that in terms of technique, on some fair scales both balance the other. You wouldn’t think so to look at them. I guess, that’s her point. You can only see so much just by looking. Her roots are burrowed deep into the character of her medium.
The devastating idea that Judith is, or was, or still is, a bad mother has so much depth, gives you so much to think about. Especially as it is introduced with such sensitivity. She thought everything was okay. She still doesn’t really know what she did. But she can feel the truth in her pared down clothes, her faded hair, the authenticity of her reading, and her motionless libido. The fact that she doesn’t make an effort to track Penelope down. The fact that she burdened Penelope so selfishly. That she seemed to be so concentrated on her career that she didn’t hand back the same compassion. But, did she really do all those things? It isn’t clear cut. They are all things that sound trite when said out loud, but are awakened with such a delicate touch that one must sit back in the chair and let out a dumb whistle of awe.
She is everything this essay is not. How do you write so softly?
Posted 2 years ago
