The Art of the Essay: An Interview with Patrick Madden

Posted by Angela | May 20, 2010 | 15 Comments

I recently reviewed a fascinating collection of essays called Quotidiana, written by author and BYU professor Patrick Madden. Such an interesting conversation with Pat ensued in the comments that I thought it would be a great idea to invite him back and interview him on the topic. Here at Segullah, we’re particularly interested in the creation and appreciation of good essays, so thank you, Pat, for offering your wisdom on the subject.

First, let’s make sure we have a clear understanding of some of the terminology we’ll be using. What is creative nonfiction?

I’m not sure it’s possible to be very clear on terminology, or, I suspect that the only people who are clear on such things are those who don’t know very much (Socrates: “I know only one thing, namely, that I know nothing”). Nevertheless, a simple, utilitarian definition of creative nonfiction is “literature derived from real events.” The term is a bit unwieldy, but it does serve to distinguish prose that’s made up from prose that’s true to reality.

Could you also describe the difference, as you see it, between “essay” and “memoir”? In your book of essays, Quotidiana, you rarely use the term “personal essay,” which is the term we here at Segullah often use to describe the creative nonfiction published in our journal. Is there a difference between a “personal essay” and an “essay” in your mind, or are the two terms synonymous?

Memoirs, with an s, used to mean a famous person’s autobiography, interesting or important for its content because its author was noteworthy in some way. Memoir without an s tends to mean a story from someone’s life (sometimes story-length, sometimes book-length), typically someone you’ve never heard of and in whom you’re not inherently interested, though the material that drives memoir tends to be interesting for its drama or exotic nature. Essay, originally, when Montaigne coined the noun from the verb, meant an attempt or a trial, an experiment; in practice this meant not autobiographical narrative but far-reaching thinking or meditation on a subject, filtered through the author’s individual sensibility and cast in the author’s personal voice. Nowadays, the adjective “personal” attached to the noun “essay” probably gets us closest to what Montaigne meant and what he did, as well as what centuries of writers after him did, for the most part, when they wrote “essays.” I lament that the term “essay” has been adulterated to mean something very nearly opposite what it meant originally. That is, when many people hear “essay,” they think of a linear article, with a point to prove, full of lofty language that obscures small ideas to fluff them out. So I try, in my small ways, to reclaim the word “essay” to mean a meandering, inconclusive amalgam of experience and ideas, written in a colloquial, engaging voice. I’ll limit myself to one quick quote about essays, an illustrative image from William Hazlitt, speaking of Montaigne as the king of that kind of writing “in which the reader is admitted behind the curtain, and sits down with the writer in his gown and slippers.” That’s what essays (personal essays) are (should be). For some of the clearest thinking on the subject of memoirs and essays, I encourage everyone to read Phillip Lopate’s “Reflection and Retrospection,” which basically argues for the essayfication of memoir.

Many of your essays are idea-driven instead of story-driven. Why do you enjoy writing idea-driven essays? Reading them?

I’m in love with thinking, especially unrestrained, associative thinking, the kind of idle fancying that combines dreams and cold, hard facts into a new creation. And I’ve always had wide-ranging interests, so I see (or find) connections between disparate objects and ideas all the time. I love to read other essayists because I get a sense that when I take their words into my brain, I can reconstitute some essential part of the authors, some sliver of soul, in a way that is not available with other forms of writing, which seem to focus too heavily on what happened or what an author imagined to have happened. An essay is an artistic representation of a whole mind as it thinks and remembers and plays, which gets at something deeper and more important, it seems to me, than a record of happenings.

You teach writing at Brigham Young University, so now I must ask you a question that seems to be de rigueur of writing instructors these days: Do you think writing can be taught?

Yes, absolutely, though perhaps “teaching” writing is something different from teaching mathematics. My writing has improved a great deal as a result of excellent teaching, and I’ve seen my own teaching affect many students in positive ways. What seems most effective is a subtle rhetoric of selection and demonstration, combined with small nudges toward ideas, plus detailed critique. I mean that a good writing teacher will offer excellent example texts, speak about them critically (in small and large ways), then offer writing exercises and make suggestions for student improvement, from punctuation to vocabulary to unexplored questions. I’m big on offering influences to students. I believe creativity, especially artistic creativity, is never ex nihilo, but is a reconfiguring of influences passed through an active and metacognitive individual. Creation is rearrangement. This is easily seen in writing, which consists only in placing old words in new orders.

Every year, Segullah sponsors an essay contest. Could you give our readers and potential writers some general advice regarding what a good essay should do? What a good essay avoids?

Your judges will certainly have their own criteria, but I love essays that move beyond straightforward recounting (recreating) of experience, that don’t rely on drama or sensationalism, that engage in a thoughtful way to grapple with the meaning of experience, or that explore an abstract idea through many concrete examples. I dislike obvious morals (whether stated or implied), preferring instead investigations of answerless questions. I like to learn something new from an essay, especially trivial information. I also value a strong emotional core, something that makes me, a stranger, who shouldn’t care about a writer, care anyway.

Many of Segullah’s readers are also bloggers. Do you have any feelings, pro or con, about blogging as a means of written expression and its relationship to traditional essay writing?

As I see it, “blog” refers to the medium, not the content or the value of writing as art. And with blogs, there’s no consensus about those more important things. So, blogging can be great, a democratic way of sharing insight and emotion. Many blogs, bloggers, and individual posts are enlightening. But my informal, incomplete survey of the blogosphere tells me that most blog posts are not literary, nor are most of them interesting or valuable to more than their authors and a small handful of invested friends and family members. This is OK. It doesn’t bother me. Most published books aren’t very literary. As for blogs’ relationship to essays: I think essays can be posted to blogs, or blogs can become essays, or bloggers are sometimes essayists, people ruminating experience and making a kind of guerrilla art. That’s great. And writing, no matter the writer’s abilities or goals, is nearly always salutary.

Your book is full of quotes and excerpts from others’ essays. Could you offer some reading recommendations for those of us who are interested in widening our essay-reading horizons? Who are some writers of creative nonfiction (both idea-driven essays and story-driven memoirs) that we should be reading?

Although I love the Great and Forgotten Dead, I’ll focus on some contemporary writers and books that have brought me beauty and joy:

- Brian Doyle Leaping: Revelations and Epiphanies (the best book by one of the greatest spiritual essayists in the world)
- Mary Cappello Awkward: A Detour (an exhaustive, humorous personal investigation of awkwardness)
- Annie Dillard Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (a wonderful example of meditative nature writing)
- Ian Frazier Great Plains (a surprisingly vibrant exploration of one of the most seemingly boring places on earth)
- Eduardo Galeano The Book of Embraces (brief vignettes of stark, heart-wrenching, dream-inducing nonfiction)
- Scott Russell Sanders Hunting for Hope (theme-driven essays about parenthood in contemporary culture)
- W. G. Sebald The Rings of Saturn (one of the strangest, most powerful books I’ve ever encountered)
- Joni Tevis The Wet Collection (small memory/imagination excursions through odd jobs and places)

Of course, I could go on and on, but I’ll end with an invitation to low-budget or past-loving readers to visit quotidiana.org, which includes hundreds of wonderful classical essays. I recommend starting with Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, A. A. Milne, G. K. Chesterton, Agnes Repplier, Vernon Lee, Louise Imogen Guiney, and Alice Meynell.

I’d like to thank Pat for a great, insightful interview. And now, for the rest of you: what are your thoughts on what makes a good essay? Memoir? What are some of your favorite essays or memoirs? Do you agree or disagree with Madden that the best essays are idea-driven instead of story-driven? Do you find that blogging encourages “unrestrained, associative thinking, the kind of idle fancying that combines dreams and cold, hard facts into a new creation” that Madden champions? (And are such blog posts even essays? Or are they simply the beginnings of essays?) How has your experience with such writing been different from the “essays” of high school English class?

And to all you essay writers out there: Don’t forget Segullah’s yearly essay contest, deadline: Dec 31. Also, the literary magazine of the Association for Mormon Letters I co-edit, Irreantum, will accept submissions for its annual essay and fiction contests until May 31. Write, polish, submit!.

Comments

15 Responses to “The Art of the Essay: An Interview with Patrick Madden”

Melissa Y.
May 20th, 2010 @ 8:56 am

This is really fascinating. Recently I’ve felt like I’m not writing because I don’t really have anything to say (i.e., my thoughts haven’t reached any sort of conclusion). I’m a little paralyzed by feeling like my essays have to have a clearly defined point or message. This post makes me think that maybe I should give that up for now and just try writing in a more explorative way. I’m curious to read the links for examples.

Thank you!
Th.
May 20th, 2010 @ 11:12 am

.

This is an indirect answer (and, unfortunately, the text is not free online), but here’s my favorite essay this year so far.
Angela
May 20th, 2010 @ 12:44 pm

Melissa, if I had to know exactly what I was trying to say before I said it, then I’d never start writing. (Although I do like to know what I was trying to say before I can say I’m finished with the darn thing.)

And thanks for the link, Th. I haven’t read that one yet (have a stack of New Yorkers waiting for me). I did really enjoy an issue of The New Yorker from 2008 dedicated to “Faith and Doubt” with a bunch of short personal essays by a number of different contributors. This one, “Hypocrites,” is a personal fave (and the text is online!):
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/09/080609fa_fact_saunders
Giggles
May 20th, 2010 @ 1:09 pm

I love a true essay. Reading them makes me think. Writing them allows my thinking to gel a bit. It’s a great art form.
Darlene
May 20th, 2010 @ 1:35 pm

Thanks for a great interview. I’m fascinated by the process that occurs between a teacher and a student of writing. I’d like to hear more from Patrick about the teaching process. How do you help a student write a first draft? How do you help them refine a piece, other than addressing flow and language issues–especially when there are so many different styles of creative nonfiction, and different theories about how much they should be structured? How do you help a writer become more herself and also better?
Tay
May 20th, 2010 @ 3:10 pm

In a partial response to Darlene, I found that when Prof. Madden went over my desperate attempts at being smart he always asked questions at the end. They were never the “where is this going” questions (which were likely merited), but instead thought-provoking. Showing me that my writing could go further, though in a slightly different direction. And always telling me to make sure I was at least trying to answer a specific question. It was all about the investigation and discovery. I wish all of my English prof.s had the same interest. Perhaps I had the wrong emphasis.
Kristine
May 20th, 2010 @ 7:46 pm

So glad you mentioned Brian Doyle. His Joyas Volodoras is as nearly perfect as anything in the English language. When I first read it, I called a friend on the phone, read it, through big hiccupping tears, and said “I want to write something like that and then just die on the spot, because, really, what else would ever be worth saying after that?” The amazing thing is that he keeps finding more things worth saying!
Patrick Madden
May 20th, 2010 @ 8:27 pm

Kristine: you’re absolutely right. “Joyas Voladoras” is a perfect essay. I can think of no other essay that was in both Best American Essays and Best American Spiritual Writing. Do you know The Wet Engine? A small book spun widely from the same “heart” stuff as that essay.

Darlene: Tay is right (thanks, Tay): my main method of teaching is to converse with the texts that my students turn in, to fit them inside my brain and live with their ideas and stories, asking questions to (I hope) help the writers explore further into their subjects. Although I do give writing exercises for students to start on in class, I don’t prescribe what or how students write for their workshop essays. I do assign a lot of reading, especially old works, and I try to show how these pieces work and encourage students to “go and do likewise.” I want them to own their influences, to recognize how they’re affected by and absorb the techniques and ideas of others who’s gone (successfully) before.
Sage
May 21st, 2010 @ 5:04 am

Love how writing explores ideas and life. I look forward to reading the essays recommended.

My writing teacher at BYU, Darrell Spencer, also responded to student writing in a very involved way. sometimes his notes were longer than the student piece!

Hurrah for great writing teachers!
Kathryn Soper
May 21st, 2010 @ 7:09 am

Thanks so much, Patrick and Angela. A terrific interview overall, and there are several passages that I find truly enlightening. I think my favorite is this: An essay is an artistic representation of a whole mind as it thinks and remembers and plays, which gets at something deeper and more important, it seems to me, than a record of happenings. This nails something I’ve struggled to articulate for a long while now. Patrick, I’m gonna quote you.
Angela
May 21st, 2010 @ 8:56 am

Kristine, I have my creative writing students read Joyas Voladoras, and no matter how many times I read that last paragraph, it always makes me want to break down and cry. Such an amazing piece.

And Patrick, I’m sure your students are very lucky to have you. Like Sage, I was fortunate enough to take a couple of classes form Darryl Spencer during my undergrad, and his detailed and incisive responses were the highlight of my time as a BYU English major. It takes an incredible amount of time for a professor to engage with his students like Darryl did and like you do, but the rewards are so great for students.
Kristine
May 21st, 2010 @ 9:32 am

Angela, me too. I made it to “pancakes” once, but have never gotten quite to the end.
Brittney Carman
May 21st, 2010 @ 12:01 pm

Thank you, both, for this fantastic interview!
Patrick Madden
May 21st, 2010 @ 2:09 pm

Maybe in a general way, the best essays reach holiness through a complete engagement of writer-world-reader. Certainly “Joyas Voladoras” is a holy work. I know Brian Doyle, and I think he wouldn’t really mind that someone has posted his entire essay on their blog, but let me still ask everyone here to buy his book Leaping, not because he needs the money, but because you need his essays. Here’s the text of “Joyas Voladoras”: http://nowimjustashotinthedark.blogspot.com/2008/02/joyas-voladoras-by-brian-doyle.html
Shelah
May 29th, 2010 @ 5:15 pm

I was eager for your creative nonfiction class already, but after reading this, I’m very excited!