Three from the Judge

Did you read the piece by Josh Rolnick, My Life inStories, in Millions? A short story writer, Rolnick describes the most liberating advice he got on writing from an essay by Betty S. Flowers. Basically, the advice is this don’t let your judge get in the way of your madman. I’ve rewritten this next sentence about three times, which might suggest something of what I am trying to say. This past week, the madman disappeared. I sat solemnly beside the judge who stayed my hand anytime my fingers met the keyboard. While all the Labor Day parties went off in my neighborhood, fireworks, grills, and booming sound systems, the madman poof! was gone. Well, I exaggerate. He’s dozing but what a long doze!

I have been re-reading a book of Sherwood Anderson stories (The Egg and Other Stories). And came across a Lionel Trilling essay that claims Anderson never matured past the point of using feeling as the ultimate critical tool. And in attempting to net feeling, something universally profound, he created characters that faded further and further into an unmemorable mix.

I also just finished Paula Fox’s News From the World. So beautiful. A collection of essays, criticism, and short stories. I’ve never quite read anything like that all in a single book. And it was luminous and unified. One essay in particular, Other Places, was particularly moving. Madman and judge companionably together. Or counselor. That was really the tone of the piece. Counseling a person not to move to quickly to conclusion, to opinion, to language—instead, to give space. “The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,” T.S. Eliot wrote (and Fox quotes). There is also a beautiful section in the essay about giving children the space to feel threatened or scared instead of trying to protect protect against losing what seems secure. In spoon-feeding, one learns the shape of the spoon. The essay spoke of children but it was not about children at all.