Getting real

At The Writer we’re starting to put our December issue to bed this week and an essay in there by fiction writer and poet David Harris Ebenbach has managed to press a nerve and bring to mind one of the many pleasures of reading—coming across a writer who’s been wrestling with an idea somewhat similar to your own and has gracefully put it into words.
 
Having thoroughly marinated in a sea of newspaper journalism for 24 years, then gotten myself immersed, at The Writer, in editing craft stories that consistently advise conflict and negative experiences of one kind or another as the essential stuff of fiction, I’ve been increasingly wondering for years: To what extent do the “formulas” of writing distort reality? For true measure, let’s add to journalism and literary fiction the conflict-heavy nature of mainstream television and all types of movies, even the often mindless, imposed “storylines” of athletic contests so eagerly developed by announcers. What is the accumulative effect of all of this reality-molding?
 
It takes a complete separation from newspaper work to gain a perspective on the distorting quality of daily journalism in its various forms--which so worships what is new, different, divisive, negative and not holding--and on the infinitesimally small slice of day-to-day global life it actually captures. (And yet journalism, most of us would argue, I think, is more important--and threatened--than ever. For all its faults, it remains our truly crucial spotlight, one of the best means of speaking truth to power.)
 
What also fed my changing view of reality was a considerable amount of travel, which included, as it happens, traveling around the country for The Writer to a lot of writers conferences and talking to a lot of new people. This, of course, does not a random, scientific sample make, but it was reassuring to meet so many decent people in so many places doing their best to maneuver through life.
 
Along these lines of how one sees the world, then, comes what I think is an unusually stimulating Off the Cuff column for our December issue, selected by the column’s editor, Sarah Lange. In the article, headlined “Writing toward the light,” Ebenbach describes his literary journey toward a new conception--that the short story is a form built not only for sadness, as he puts it, but also more positive themes: humor, hope, possibility, awe. “Have you examined your worldview?,” he asks readers. “Is there another truthful way you might see the world?”
 
I want to keep quoting from it, but that would be bad. Instead, I urge you to read the article in our December issue, which is due out in early November. And as always, your comments are welcome.

-- Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer

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