Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair

Someone who should know told me today that my manuscript looks "very, very capably written but not with a tremendous amount of beauty." She encouraged me to scour my draft and mine for beauty.

My style is direct and journalistic. My personality style is direct, and I am, or was, a journalist. I appreciate aesthetic writing, but it does not come naturally to me.

Oh, woe, this work of writing is work indeed.

The analyst of my work suggested I look at a memoir like "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt for beautiful writing. Here's a passage from McCourt's Chapter 1:

My father, Malachy McCourt, was born on a farm in Toome, County Antrim. Like his father before, he grew up wild, in trouble with the English, or the Irish, or both. He fought with the Old IRA and for some desperate act he wound up a fugitive with a price on his head.

When I was a child I would look at my father, the thinning hair, the collapsing teeth, and wonder why anyone would give money for a head like that. When I was thirteen my father's mother told me a secret: as a wee lad your poor father was dropped on his head. It was an accident, he was never the same after, and you must remember that people dropped on their heads can be a bit peculiar. 

Because of the price on the head he had been dropped on, he had to be spirited out of Ireland via cargo ship from Galway. In New York, with Prohibition in full swing, he thought he had died and gone to hell for his sins. Then he discovered speakeasies and he rejoiced.

One reviewer describes McCourt's voice as having "originality and immediacy" and another describes his memoir about his poverty-stricken childhood and alcoholic father as having "astounding humor and compassion." McCourt's writing is, of course, superlative; he got a Pulitzer Prize for his work. Pulitzer Prize winners are like that -- with a bit, or a lot, of clever language, they can turn a tale of sorrow into a humorous redemption story, a classic.

"Because of the price on the head he had been dropped on" is both beautiful and funny. McCourt deserves the kudos.

My story is a tale of sorrow -- and redemption -- and my editor said I write "fairly objectively about a highly emotional, subjective experience," which is perhaps compassionate, but I am not astoundingly humorous or even sort of funny. I am the straight man in any skit. Wry maybe. But funny is out. I must aspire to beauty.

"Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair,
offering us for a minute a glimpse of an eternity that
we should like to stretch out over the whole of time."

~ Albert Camas

Show, don't tell

As a journalist, I have a propensity for telling. But the gold standard advice in storytelling is "show, don't tell."

I found some notes taken while I was at Printer's Row Lit Fest earlier this summer which read, "Not 'my heart was so full I could burst' or 'I was so angry'; put description of my body, mind, jaw, hunger; avoid putting feeling on the page."

Thus, I attempted to follow this advice throughout my manuscript, including this passage:

The revelations in Detective Oxton’s investigation file seemed to go on and on. By now, I had spent a couple of days sifting through the interview transcripts. I curled up in the cushiony upholstered chair in the living room with the big stack of papers on the floor beside me; my shoulders hunched over whatever I was reading, and more than once the leg I tucked under me fell asleep. Colin was almost always nearby, either agreeing with my muttered analyses or scoffing at my accusatory inquiries. Sometimes he would sneak outside for a smoke, to alleviate his stress. I was vaguely aware of his escalating depression, but I was in no position to want to do anything meaningful about it.