Tom Robbins ‘Lite’ fails to quench readerly thirsts

Published June 30, 2009 Books , Publishing , Reading , Review , Short story , Style , Writing Leave a Comment
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Years ago, while in university, I used to enjoy the sly, self-reflexive playfulness of Tom Robbins’s early books. In fact, somewhere between Aldous Huxley and Stephen King I went through a Tom Robbins phase. So it was with a certain sense of nostalgia and curiosity that I picked up his most recent book, B is for Beer.

B is for BeerI wish I could report Robbins and I hit it off again like old chums, but one of us has changed. Billed as an adult book for children and a children’s book for adults, B is for Beer is a slim, sappy little tale I can’t imagine appealing to either group. The story, whose kindly narrator is always talking down to the reader, transports Gracie, our six-year-old heroine, to the mystical reaches beyond “the seam,” a sort of parallel otherworld. There she learns all about, what else? Beer. Her guide is none other than the Beer Fairy.

Perhaps it doesn’t look so bad sketched out like that, but the result manages to be so boring and predictable I felt like I missed the transcendent intoxication part and went straight to the hangover.

Much of the text, for example, is devoted to Wikipedia-type information on the origins of beer and methods for brewing it. And although you might expect a stylist like Robbins could overcome those shortcomings with some prose pyrotechnics, such is not the case.

Many of the figurative devices are either incomprehensible, juvenile, or both:

“The week passed as slowly as a snowman’s gas.”

“…if good looks were two flakes of snow, she could provide nesting grounds for half the earth’s penguins.”

“…her bright and bouncy little life seemed to lie scattered in pieces, like a disco ball after an earthquake.”

And then there are the preachy little asides like this one:

“Some brewers will leave particular beers unfiltered, however, so they can continue to age in the bottle. Children such as you, Gracie, are best left unfiltered while you age, although some parents and institutions, regrettably, do attempt to filter the young souls in their charge.”

And many, many puns and other wordplay:

“…(for a time she believed yeast to be the opposite direction of west)…

Oh Tom. Stop. You’re killing me.

If all that isn’t enough to leave a bad aftertaste consider the cover price: $24.99 for what is essentially a hard-covered short story. (I wisely borrowed from the library.) However many bottles of beer those $25 bucks might buy, I promise you they’ll bring more amusement than this little belch of a book.

Bottoms up.

Tree of Smoke casts spreading shadow

Published June 24, 2009 Books , Film , History , Novel , Publishing , Review , Writing Leave a Comment
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Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson shows how great writing can deliver the reader straight into the stinking belly of the whale, largely without the reader realizing they’ve been swallowed.

TreeOfSmokeWinner of the United States’ National Book Award in 2007, this dense, 700-page novel of Vietnam ranges from the war’s most visceral evils, to quiet, human moments of the people caught up in it. Johnson references myth, scripture and history, but also uses a pointillist’s brush to render scenes of striking depth and texture.

The overall effect is harrowing and unforgettable.

Challenging, too. Tree of Smoke isn’t an easy read and the mixed reviews on Amazon reflect that. (There are as many one- and two-star reviews as four- and five-star reviews.) Most of the naysayers invariably begin, “I must not be smart enough for this…” or “I just couldn’t get into this….” or “I picked this up because it won an award but I can’t see why…”

Interesting how books sometimes review readers. Do you really need to be a member of MENSA to appreciate literature? Clearly not. (As this blog and its author attest!) But readers will always be rewarded by a little patience, an openness to different narrative approaches, and a willingness to expend some candle power on what they’re reading.

Movies have trained us to be passive receivers of narrative. We grab our popcorn, strap ourselves in and then the story simply unspools in front of us. It’s no wonder many of us now apply the same strategy to books. We straddle the first sentence and then ride it to its conclusion many pages and chapters later. We notice the surroundings as they pass, but we rarely pause to reflect on the journey while we’re taking it. How many of us routinely go back and re-read something that happened a few chapters previous? How many will read a book twice before passing judgment?

Perhaps readers no longer have the desire to nurture the close collaboration with the writer that a rounded appreciation of fiction requires. The reading public, drunk on books like The Da Vinci Code, has only one demand: “Just tell us what happens next!”

What happens to the various characters in Tree of Smoke is, in a sense, beside the point. What happens is the giant wheel of war, with its iron spokes of history, idealism, hatred, glory, treachery, humanity and hope, grinds through a span between 1963-70. The characters in the novel either have their shoulders to that wheel, are getting ground underneath it, or are hanging on for dear life.

Granted, it takes the first 200 pages to get the wheel turning, and it’s this apparent decoupling from a traditional narrative engine that many readers probably find difficult. But go ahead – live a little. Ask yourself if your inability to enter into anything but the most traditional narrative dream state may be a symptom of an atrophied imagination.

It’s been said that novelists can’t disguise their personal cosmologies. Ian McEwan may claim he’s an atheist, but a book like Atonement suggests at the very least he’s a Church of England atheist. (I wish I could claim ownership of that line — can’t remember where I heard it.)

Johnson, on the other hand, weaves the idea of God into the very warp of his novel. I love how Jim Lewis’s review in the New York Times speculates that his dedication to H.P. stands for Higher Power. (Incidentally, Lewis himself writes the kind of insightful review that makes me want to search out his books.) I’m sure that among the many PhD dissertations ripening at this very moment, at least a few will examine Johnson’s expression of God in Tree of Smoke.

From the trees all around came the waterfall sound of scrabbling claws and the curses of demons driven into the void.

More women screamed. The men howled. The jungle itself screamed like a mosque. Storm lay naked on his back and watched the upward-rushing mist and smoke in the colossal firelight and waited for the clear light, for the peaceful deities, the face of the father-mother, the light from the six worlds, the dawning of hell’s smoky light and the white light of the second god, the hungry ghosts wandering in ravenous desire, the gods of knowledge and the wrathful gods, the judgment of the lord of death before the mirror of karma, the punishments of the demons, and the flight to refuge in the cave of the womb that would bear him back into this world.

His poem whirled upward as an ash…

Tree of Smoke is the best novel I’ve read in a long time. Thank God people still write like this; thank God books like this still get published; and thank God writing like this still gets critical acclaim.

Amen.

Writing contests: some pointers, perils and peeves

Published February 23, 2009 Contests , Non-fiction , Style , Voice , Writing 3 Comments

Herewith an item I wrote for a professional association about my recent experience as a judge in a writing contest. All views entirely subjective and idiosyncratic.

The weary evaluator looked at the pile of writing samples, then the digital egg timer, then the unopened Shiraz on the counter. Would it be wrong to drink while judging a writing contest?

old-typewriterMaybe. But he needed something to brace himself for another submission that began like all the others. They invariably described their subject in some small situation, threw in a few details – like ‘Shiraz,’ or ‘digital egg timer’ – then pulled back to announce the subject and significance of the piece: This is an article about judging a writing contest. It includes pointers for anyone thinking of entering one, which could help you some day.

OK – so I exaggerate.

Truth is, my recent experience judging an awards competition held by a large North American professional organization was at times humbling, at times exasperating, but never, never dull. I and two others had the privilege of assessing magazine features, news releases and specialized writing from a variety of publications. It got me thinking about what worked and what didn’t, what resulted in automatic disqualification and what automatically got a second look. Here are my pointers and pet peeves.

Distinguish yourself.

Rest assured that most of the entries in a writing contest are going to be solidly written and researched pieces about interesting subjects. Consider it the minimum threshold. But there’s a difference between good and award-winning. To get to the winner’s circle, you’ll need to stand out. Look for a fresh approach – if you didn’t surprise yourself a little bit when you wrote it, you’re not going to surprise the reader when she reads it. And kidding aside, there really is a certain safe similarity in much that gets submitted. Surprise us.

But don’t distinguish yourself in a bad way.

It’s a sad fact that with so many good entries, judges are looking for a reason to reject yours. Sure, your editor may have been asleep at the switch, but if you misuse a word, misspell it, make grammar mistakes or include errors of fact, we’re hitting the buzzer. For example, Machiavelli might approve of the term “complicated machinations,” but it isn’t the right way to describe the intricate workings of a mechanical device. “Impassable” doesn’t mean the same as “impassible.” “Who” and “whom” are not interchangeable.

And don’t waste my time.

You’re going to have to grab me by the lapels right from the git-go. The best entries pulled me 10 paragraphs in before I remembered I was reading. And make sure it is plainly obvious what the significance of your story is. There is nothing more frustrating than being tantalized by a strong opening, then reaching the end of a lengthy feature and having to ask, “So what?”

Writers try readers’ patience in smaller ways, too. You know that puffy quote from the VP that reads like a PR winkie wrote it? Cut it, or at least write it so that a breathing human being might actually have spoken it. There may be some in your audience who will understand your specialized jargon, but don’t assume so.

When it comes to length, aim for the Goldilocks standard.

Just right. Have you got enough story for the length? Have you got enough length for the story? In other words, news releases shouldn’t be three pages. If you’ve cured cancer, you may want to  consider sending two pages, but most of the time you should be able to say what needs saying in one. Beware of repetition. And don’t leave out the important bits, either. If your piece raises more questions than it answers, it’s incomplete.

Other peeves:

If you’re writing an obituary, and you lapse into “he was born” way up in the third paragraph, it will seem like the deceased didn’t do much of significance.

Sometimes that clever, winking lead will work, but sometimes you’ll wind up wearing it. If there’s a chance someone can construe something, someone will.

Don’t bother describing what the subject is wearing, what colour their eyes are or the state of their office unless those details really do indicate something unusual, or reveal something important about character. Is your interviewee standing there with a hand in her pocket? Sorry. Don’t care.

For longer magazine pieces, you need a frame, an arc, or some other structural engine that will bear the weight of the length. It’s not enough simply to connect one paragraph full of facts after another and expect to pull the reader through. We want story.

Don’t bother trying to dazzle me with your writing. Aim for clarity, detail and engagement. Be careful about inserting yourself into the story. If you’ve got a blockbuster of a subject, the best strategy might just be to get out of the way.

Does your ending resonate? Recall the beginning? Make me feel satiated? Endings deserve figurative as well as literal closing punctuation.

There is an unspoken contract between me the reader and you the writer: in exchange for my time and attention, I’m expecting you are going to give me something of value. Maybe it’s information I haven’t heard about, a way of seeing the world I haven’t considered, or your own entertaining grasp of language. Fulfill your end of the bargain and you’ll earn a place in my memory – and if I’m a judge in a writing contest, that’s the only place to be.

I know it was free, but do I have to like it?

Published February 3, 2009 Books , Novels , Reading , Review , Writing Leave a Comment
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The nice people at Anansi Press give away free books on Facebook every now and then in exchange for 200-word reviews of said book. I cashed in recently and they sent me a new novel called Valmiki’s Daughter. Despite wanting to like it, well, we never really hit it off. I sent back this tepid review a few weeks ago, which I don’t think will ever see the light of day on their site, so here it is on mine – in all its lukewarm splendour.

I opened Valmiki’s Daughter by Shani Mootoo fearing it just wasn’t going to be my cup of chai. And despite the often evocative writing, the intriguing setting in sun-splashed Trinidad, the multifaceted themes of identity – and despite my own best efforts – I never really embraced the experience.

n20137676200_1387My outsider status is partly due to my lack of interest in gay-lesbian themes. But I must also confess an aversion to novels featuring a self-absorbed cast of characters who are, with few exceptions, pretty unlikeable – especially the men. (Satire excepted, of course, but Valmiki’s Daughter is earnest to the hilt.)

There is such a fog of sadness that clings to this novel. Viveka, the title character, is a young woman who discovers she loves other women – one in particular. Her father has lived a lie with his own homosexual longings, but does that mean she must also?

For a moment it appears Viveka will break free from the restrictive disapprovals of family and Indo-Trinidadian society: “She had no map of her future, but she knew who she was. She would not be diminished because of it.” And…

“In exchange for honesty, integrity, a lifetime of service, she prayed that she and all people like her be granted the freedom, so long as it did not hurt anyone, to love whomever they chose, to love well and have that love returned without judgment.”

Amen to that – even without the bargaining preamble. The hopeless ending, no matter how realistic it may be for those living a closeted existence, comes as such a disappointment. How sad.

At times Valmiki’s Daughter has an unfocused, second draft feel to it. Why does one of the principal characters – the captivating French woman Anick – only show up halfway through the book? And am I imagining this, or does the novel at times want to be more about Anick than Viveka?

Other quibbles: I’m not sure the showy second-person travelogue interspersed throughout always carries its weight, especially in the lengthy opening passage. And although I was initially impressed that the text was free of so many of the silly spell-check editing errors that creep in these days, there it was on the beach on page 380, “a slow parade of people in bathing suites.”

Nevertheless, there is clearly talent on display here. And I will freely admit that I am the wrong sort of reader for this novel. For the right sort of reader, I’m sure Valmiki’s Daughter will be more than a satisfying experience.

Yes, I’m a bit nuts too: 50,277 words in 29 days

Published December 1, 2008 Books , Novels , Writing 5 Comments
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you_won

Of course, the hard part is just beginning, but I’m going to savour my nifty little web badge for a day or two, if you don’t mind. It’s not every month I write a novel.

Reading the right road, traveling the right book

Published October 23, 2008 Books , Culture , History , Non-fiction , Novel , Reading , Setting , Travel , Writing 2 Comments
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By themselves, reading and traveling are two of the greatest pleasures in life; combined, the effect can be, well, transporting.

We all have our favourite passages. I once spent an idyllic afternoon on the train from Copenhagen to Stockholm, amiably accompanied by Henning Mankell, the great Swedish mystery writer.

Pierre Berton and his fine book Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush, kept me company while I toured Alaska. Charles Dickens and A Tale of Two Cities illuminated my vacationing footsteps to London and Paris, and Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea struck the perfect note for an afternoon at the beach in Cuba. 

Cape of Good Hope, South Africa

Cape of Good Hope, South Africa

Books can do what no tour guide can – by providing resonating detail and bringing different times, places and people to life. You can’t look out on the Cape of Good Hope without thinking about its mythical place in the briny literature of sea-faring adventure – that is, as long as you’ve dipped your oar in that particular writing current.

I also take great delight in purchasing books – good, bad or otherwise – in the places in which they are rooted. I’ve picked up A Town Called Alice, by Nevil Shute, in Alice Springs, while cruising through the Australian Outback; I bought Sarum, by Edward Rutherford, in the little gift shop set up near the site of the ancient settlement near Salisbury; and most recently, I risked missing a ferry ride to buy Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela, at Robben Island, the former South African prison turned museum.

Maybe I’m alone in this. Maybe for other people it doesn’t matter what sort of reading material they pile into their carry-on, or what sorts of books they cart back home. But such indifference will never work for me. It’s been said there are really only two rules of the open road: make sure you have good shoes on your feet, and keep your bowels open. To those I’d add a third: make sure you’re packing a book that tells you something interesting about the place and its people.

What are your most memorable passages?

Happy trails; happy reading.

Time-traveling with Harlan Ellison

Published July 31, 2008 Books , Fantasy , Film , History , Non-fiction , Openings , Review , Science fiction , Short story , Voice , Writing 2 Comments
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When you return to a writer you loved in your youth, it is also in some sense to return to the person you once were. If you’re lucky, the cringe factor will be slight in both cases.

I’ve had the opportunity to do a little literary time-traveling with the recent release of the bio-doc Dreams With Sharp Teeth, which is an entertaining look at the life and world of science fiction author Harlan Ellison. Has there ever lived a more pugnacious, irascible writer? ‘Prickly’ would be another apt word. (The film’s trailer is embedded below — you’ll get a pretty good sense of the type of guy he is in two-and-a-half minutes.)

It’s been said that if we’re really lucky, not only do the books from which we will most benefit find their way into our hands, they’ll do so at exactly the most opportune moments of our lives. I’ve always thought Ellison had pretty good timing that way. I was a geeky, outsider adolescent in the 1970s when I first stumbled on his work and I was immediately transfixed by that voice: clear, angry, fearless, smart — and with a conscience.

Here was another apparent outsider who felt the same way about many of the things I did. I nibbled at his short fiction but positively devoured his essays and other non-fiction, such as his scathing indictments of ’60s and ’70s television, The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat. I can remember buying his short story anthologies just so I could read his introductions; now and then I’d finish one of the stories, too, but more often than not I’d put them away until the next impassioned diatribe came along.

After watching Dreams With Sharp Teeth I thought I’d dip back into his work and see how it’s held up. Tellingly, despite the many culls my book collection has undergone over the years (seven boxes punted before the last move), I’ve never quite managed to let go of the handful of Ellison books I own. These now have faded, creased covers, missing dust jackets and some with a shaky name inscribed by a 14- or 15-year-old mini me.

Here is an excerpt from the introduction to the short story collection Approaching Oblivion, which encapsulates both Ellison’s tone and worldview. He refers to a letter he received from a James Chambers, who has described the four Kent State university students who were killed when the National Guard opened fire at a demonstration as “communist-led revolutionaries, hooligans and anarchists.”

Now that scares the piss out of me.

That is approaching oblivion. It is reaping the whirlwind of half a decade of Nixon/Agnew brainwashing and paranoia. It is a perfectly apocryphal example of the reconditeness to which The Common Man in our time clings with such suicidal ferocity. I won’t go into my little dance about the loathesomeness of The Common Man, nor even flay again the body of stupidity to which “commonness” speaks. I’ll merely point out that the Ellison who believed in the revolutionary Movement of the young and the frustrated and the angry in the Sixties, is not the Ellison of the Seventies who has seen students sink back into a charming Fifties apathy (with a simultaneous totemization of the banalities and mannerisms of those McCarthy Witch-Hunt Fifties), who has listened long and hard to the Chambers letter and hears in it a tone wholly in tune with the voice of the turtle heard in the land, who — when the defenses are down in the tiny hours after The Late Late Show — laments for all the martyrs who packed it in, in the name of “change,” only to turn around a mere five years later and see the status returned to quo.

I still find that compelling, but maybe not quite as much as I once did. Can any indignation burn as hot or self-righteously as adolescent indignation? And the angry writer, angry Jew schtick in Dreams With Sharp Teeth strikes me at times as simply wearisome. OK — everyone in the world has their heads up their butts except him. Whatever.

The short stories in Approaching Oblivion are uneven. (Yes, all these years later I’ve managed to read all 11.) Despite the strange and bleak futures they depict, they serve as strong indicators of the age in which they were written. Many carry the burdensome freight of a really important MESSAGE. Some show signs of quaintness, a susceptibility to which science fiction, as it ages, seems particularly prone. For example, in “Hindsight: 480 Seconds,” one man is left alone on earth to record for posterity the death of the earth when an asteroid hits. And what does he record his thoughts on? “Memory cassettes.” I guess at least they weren’t “Memory Eight-tracks.”

In “One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty,” a successful man travels back in time to visit the persecuted boy he once was. Like re-reading Ellison, the experience is tinged with various parts excitement, nostalgia and sadness. You really can’t go back again. Sometimes it’s the memories of things that are best savoured, and not the thing itself.

But I’m still not getting rid of his books.

Can you ever read too many novels?

Published July 27, 2008 Books , Culture , Novel , Novels , Research , Writing 1 Comment
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A while ago I wrote a blog post about research published in the May Scientific American touting the therapeutic value of writing. Now, research published in the June issue of New Scientist says longtime readers are more empathetic and have better social skills than their less well-read peers.

Interesting. Describing someone as being well-read connotes a certain worldliness that may well encompass social graces that are above average. It’s curious that even though film and television have been around so long, we never refer to people as being well-viewed. Despite its immediacy, film still can’t show us the hearts, minds and souls of others as effectively as fiction.

On the other hand, why do so many bookworms sometimes seem nerdy and maladjusted? I guess this particular research assumed a broad reading base and not an exclusive diet of SF or fantasy.

Here is a link to an interview with one of the researchers; the article on the New Scientist site is not available for free. For other interesting psychological research on reading and writing, check out the researchers’ blog On Fiction.

Photo credit: Moriza, Creative Commons

It’s hard not to gush about Price’s Lush Life

Published July 9, 2008 Books , Character , Film , Novel , Novels , Point of view , Setting , Style , Voice , Writing 1 Comment
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Lush Life by Richard Price is flat out one of the best books I’ve read. I’ve always loved his novels for the windows they open on urban life, for their rich portrayals of people caught in awful events, and for their sheer propulsive drive. Clockers, Samaritan, Freedomland — these are books one can’t help but guzzle in a few long, greedy gulps; Lush Life is no different.

But calling it a page-turner or crime novel devalues its abundant artistry, and there is much here to admire. I’m painfully aware that trying to tease apart all the different strands that go into fine writing is a difficult and clumsy business. Focusing on narrative pacing leads to a discussion of scene construction and before you know it, to plot, with several branching threads like tone and setting emerging at the same time. And can you really separate character development from dialogue, description and plot? The sum is definitely greater than the parts.

Nevertheless, Price’s greatest gifts may be with dialogue and in rendering character in a few deft strokes. Here’s his introduction of one of the main characters, Eric Cash, 35, who runs the front of the house at a restaurant called Berkmann’s:

He had no particular talent or skill, or what was worse, he had a little talent, some skill: playing the lead in a basement-theater production of The Dybbuk sponsored by 88 Forsyth House two years ago, his third small role since college, having a short story published in a now-defunct Alphabet City literary rag last year, his fourth in a decade, neither accomplishment leading to anything; and this unsatisfied yearning for validation was starting to make it near impossible for him to sit through a movie or read a book or even case out a new restaurant, all pulled off increasingly by those his age or younger, without wanting to run face-first into a wall

Why is it so many writers still insist on providing physical details like hair or eye colour? Are those details ever important? Price, in just one sentence, situates his character within the arc of his own life — and then gives us the character’s response to that.

Even the relatively minor characters in Lush Life have lives that are rich and textured. Making the most of  the walk-ons gives a novel heft and authenticity; it makes the world being created seem deeper and therefore more believable.

Realistic dialogue is another technique that aids in the portrayal of character, but also keeps the narrative humming along.

“See you din’t live round here back in the heyday, so no way you’d know, but about ten, twelve years ago? [...] Man, it was, there was some bad dudes up in here. The Purples on Avenue C, Hernandez brothers on A and B, Delta Force in the Cahans, nigger name Maquetumba right in the Lemlichs. Half a them got snatched up by RICO for long bids, the other half is dead, all the hardcores, so now it’s like just the Old Heads out there sippin’ forties and telling stories about yesteryear, them and a bunch of Similac niggers, stoop boys, everybody out for themselves with their itty-bitty eight balls, nobody runnin’ the show.”

“Maquetbumba?”…

“Dominican dude. Dead now. My brother told me him and his crew had the Lemlichs sewed tight.”

“What kind of name is that.”

“I just said. Dominican.”

“What’s it mean, though.”

“Maquetumba? Man, you should know, you Dominican.”

“Puerto Rican.”

“Same shit, ain’t it?”

Tristan shrugged.

“Sss,” Little Dap sucked his teeth. “Like, ‘he who drops the most,’ some shit like that.”

“Drops what?”

Little Dap just stared at him.

And so on. I love the omission of question marks in some of those questions — it’s pitch perfect. Price manages to capture the speech sounds of these two without resorting to an overabundance of annoying word contortions. He gives us one “din’t” for didn’t, but doesn’t overdo it. “My brother told me him and his crew had the Lemlichs sewed tight,” is just as strong and less distracting than something like, “Ma brother tol’ me him ‘n’ ‘is crew had the Lemlichs sewed tight.” Our ears are already filling in the speech patterns by that point.

Lastly, Price’s lower eastside Manhattan also figures as a character. Here’s a nice bit of rendered setting — a description of a desanctified synagogue that now serves as a condo — which also gives us some detail about the main character:

“But for all this reborn carriage house’s ingenuity, its artful attempt at appeasing its own history while declaring itself the newest of the new, it was the double layer of evicted ghosts — pauperish tenants, greenhorn parishioners — that still held sway for him, Matty having always been afflicted with Cop’s Eyes; the compulsion to imagine the overlay of the dead wherever he went.”

One of Elmore Leonard’s rules of writing is to leave out the boring bits that readers tend to skip over. There’s nothing boring here; this is a riveting account of what happens after a routine mugging turns fatal when a twitchy teen holding the gun overreacts at a victim’s bravado. So rich. So believable. I recommend it without reservation.

Incidentally, there’s an interesting interview with Price about Lush Life at Amazon, here, and another from NPR’s Fresh Air, here.

Eat veggies, get exercise, write blog…

Published June 13, 2008 News , Research , Writing Leave a Comment
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…or write novel, or diary, or grocery list. Evidence mounts for the therapeutic value of putting thoughts into words, sentences and finally onto a page of some kind, whether it’s papyrus or html. An article in the May Scientific American reports on the health benefits of writing as a possible reason for the boom in blogging.

Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of The Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.

Haven’t the behaviourists long recognized the positive impact of this sort of thing, what with all the different kinds of art therapy? But perhaps soon the neuroscientists will pinpoint exactly why and how it works.

Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have shown that the brain lights up differently before, during and after writing, notes James Pennebaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin. But Pennebaker and others remain skeptical about the value of such images because they are hard to duplicate and quantify.

Writing lights up the brain? What a beautiful image. Right now I’m bashing this out pretty fast, so I’ve probably only generated some kind of generic strobe. But later? When I get back to writing that novel?

Next Page »

Meanwhile, on Twitter…

  • Phew. That was a month. Changed jobs, sold a house, moved a thousand miles away. Excited to be back in Calgary - such a great city! 2 weeks ago
  • I wanted to say something truly momentous for my 300th tweet, but I think I have tweeter's block. 2 months ago
  • @echogarrett I did a TnT marathon in Portland several years ago. Great city, great race. And if you like books, it's got Powell's. 3 months ago
  • Shame on Israel; shame on Canada. http://bit.ly/Iz4Fj - via @globeandmail: Israel targets Palestinian-Canadians 3 months ago
  • Why oh why does my XM radio now require regular web refreshings? Is it the new Pioneer XM MP3? Never had to do this with my old Delphi. 3 months ago

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