Book Review

The Spirit of Writing: Classic and Contemporary Essays Celebrating the Writing Life

Edited by Mark Robert Waldman
Jeremy P. Tacher/Putnam
A member of Penguin Putnam Inc.
New York, NY
CAN $23.50

Reviewed by Lorie Boucher

At first blush, everything about Mark Robert Waldman’s The Spirit of Writing: Classic and Contemporary Essays Celebrating the Writing Life ignited my inner Grinch: the new-age, shaman-esque title; the elegant cream cover featuring the Writer’s clichéd accoutrements; the faux-naive freehand script of the chapter titles underscored by a pretentiously simple graphic flourish. I admit it — I judged a book by its cover. I tightened my Grinchy fists and steeled myself against what I expected to be one more in a long line of syrupy, myth-perpetuating books about Great Writers and their muses, their inspirations, their inner turmoils, and ultimate epiphanies. I could feel the bitter germination of a new installment in my well-entrenched and long-standing diatribes against the exaltation of the enigmatic creative impulse. 

I finally unclenched long enough to read the essays.

And what happened then ...?
Well ... in Who-ville they say
That the Grinch’s small heart
Grew three sizes that day!

Waldman’s selection of contributors is excellent. The Spirit of Writing features over 60 writers, culled from the genres of fiction, poetry, screenwriting, non-fiction, and journalism. While novelists and poets constitute the greatest proportion of contributors, the inclusion of non-literary writers acknowledges their often-overlooked reflections on writing. The tiresome writing-as-birthing metaphor stretched over six painful pages in Jane Eaton Hamilton’s "Congratulations! It’s a Six Pound Eight Ounce Novel" is made tolerable knowing the pragmatic sanity of Celeste Fremon’s "Of Goods and Goodwill" is only a few pages away. This range of perspectives provides a more balanced view of the work of writing than is usual to collections of this type.

The anthology includes several of the essays one would expect to find in such a collection, elevating the profession to vocational heights and exalting the therapeutic benefits of putting pen to paper. In her essay "Without Wings," Lia Scott Price writes: "It was time to set my words free, to embrace writing as my savior, pledging to be my own loyal servant for life." Her sentiments are echoed in John Fox’s "The Leaf Shape Remains." "Poetry," says Fox, "can enter into the severed places in life that explanations do not touch. The open nature of the blank page allows you to experiment with releasing that hurt. Poems of grief can offer a diamond-like truth, an insight-surprise that is sheer gift."

These are eloquent, but familiar words. The healing qualities of writing have been expounded at length in other tomes. This focus, of course, is not surprising, as Waldman is himself a therapist, specializing in "relationship issues and creativity, working with individuals, couples, artists, and writers." Five of the contributors to the collection are fellow therapists. These feel-good perspectives, however, are wonderfully contrasted in Steven Connor’s essay, "Not a Case of Writing," in which he asserts:

I promise never to be a writer …What I mean, I suppose, is that I intend to avoid becoming a Writer, the kind of writer who writes ‘writer’ on their passport, who does readings and public book signings, has photos taken of them trying to look as pretty as they were before they became a writer, takes part in fatuous TV discussions about ‘the art of writing’, or the condition of ‘the writer’ and so on …. Being a professional writer would be like being a porn star, compelled to be combed and pointy at 9:00 sharp every morning, ready to perform private pleasures in public.

How good it is to hear writing discussed in earthly language. Perhaps it is the joy of having an opinion I share validated through publication, but it’s lines like these that make a Grinch smile. Writers can be a shameless bunch of beret-wearing snobs. It makes sense that some hesitate to identify themselves with a community of people with whom they feel no kinship. In "Ruining the Page," Annie Dillard is similarly honest about the difficulty of the work. She discusses the frustrated space between the creative vision and the product, the struggle between what the writer attempts to achieve, and what the page will allow. As Dillard explains, "[T]he page always wins. The vision is not so much destroyed, exactly, as it is, by the time you have finished, forgotten. It has been replaced by this changeling, this bastard, the opaque lightless chunky ruinous work." In "A Sure-Fire Cure for Writer’s Block," the creative struggle drives a young poet to consider suicide. Author Mark Twain’s response: "I said I thought it was a good idea." The young poet follows through on his intent:

He put the revolver to his forehead and blew a tunnel straight through his head. The tunnel was about the size of your finger. You could look right through it. The job was complete; there was nothing in it. Well, after that, that man never could write prose, but he could write poetry. He could write it after he had blown his brains out.

Ah, inspiring stuff. Twain’s essay isn’t the only injection of levity in the collection. Natalie Goldberg compares writing to eating a car, and Stephen King calls any writer who does it for the money "a monkey." The act of writing is too often discussed with the solemnity of a librarian in church; these essays remind us that writing isn’t always a humourless pursuit, and those who choose to pursue it as a career are not holed-up monks inking holy papyrus.

The variety of form in The Spirit of Writing keeps the reading flow interesting. The typical essay format is supplemented with poetry, fiction, an interview, and a letter. Of course, there can always be too much of a good thing — Ward M. Kalman’s "[w] [o] [r] [d] [p] [l] [a] [y]: (a 400 word essay, more or less)" is presented as a crossword grid with the word "words" repeated vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. Très avante-garde. My cynical objection might be just a matter of taste; if you like that sort of thing, enjoy. Your beret looks good on you.

The variety and quality of the essays is, however, somewhat tempered by the sickly-sweet sap I worried would permeate the entire anthology. Luckily, it is confined to the introductory material preceding each of the four sections. Waldman’s writing about the writing in the collection is less than critical or original, and is peppered throughout with hackneyed aphorisms like "Words, like eyes, are windows into a person’s soul" and "What are the seeds from which a writer’s yearning grows?" Luckily, the essays can be enjoyed with little introduction, so I felt little guilt in skimming these wearisome platitudes.

The Spirit of Writing offers a buffet of opinions, insights, and perspectives; any reader could find something pleasing to his or her palate. As Eric Maisel points out in his essay, "Coming in Second": "Isn’t this a lesson we learn again and again: that every opinion is an assertion of personality? That every belief is a fragment of autobiography?" If, like me, you haven’t the stomach for the stale truisms with which Waldman circumscribes the essays, push them to the side of your plate and dig into the centre. And there is even something to be said about the comfort that can be gained from participating in the community of writers, of sharing in each other’s revelations and frustrations. As it turns out, even this miserable old Grinch loves company.

Lorie Boucher is a writer and editor in Ottawa, Ontario. She is a Contributing Editor for Writer’s Block.