On Writing Well
A few months ago, before the election, a judge and I were talking about the presidential candidates (a discussion made easier by our complete and total agreement on our preference) and I asked her whether she had read Obama’s memoir “Dreams From My Father”. She hadn’t.
Oh you must, I insisted. The only downside is realizing that when someone can express themselves and turn a phrase as well as he does, my own dreams of becoming a published author, perhaps of the next Great American Novel, start looking, well, like pipe dreams. It’s all for the best, I said. I can write my book when I get done reading all the good ones I haven’t gotten around to yet.
She then recommended Barbara Kingsolver’s collection of essays “Small Wonder”, and it’s taken me this long to get around to it. Just started it in fact, but something in her dedication struck me.
The book was published in 2002 and some of the 23 essays are a semi-direct response to September 11th. She ends the foreword with these words:
I dedicate this book to every citizen of my country who has suffered bereavement with honor, trepidation without panic, and the insult of fundamentalist condemnation without succumbing to similar thinking. We may yet show the world we are worth our salt.
Well written indeed, and better expressed than I could have. Downright prescient six years later. And the best Bush can come up with? Some other dude did it.
[Update: Well, no update update, that is... As I waited 3 weeks to write my next post, I thought to myself, writing semi-often is also a component of writing well. Use it or lose it...]
