In Fear of Abstraction

And moments of recognition

A little concrete… photo by Derek Lee on Unsplash

I wrote recently about “knowing” and “knowing about.” I could say knowing versus knowing about, but let’s leave it at “and.” When we include the possibilities instead of choosing between them, our work grows.

I promised a post to explore the more concrete in writing… which inevitably coughs up Ezra Pound and friends:

“No ideas but in things” —

William Carlos Williams’ words.

And Pound’s —

“Go in fear of abstraction.”

Whether or not we’ve endured literature classes, we are the inheritors of these ideas and thought. The idea to push for the concrete, the palpable, and the thought that the perfect image can replace a myriad of abstract words. (And when I sift through too many abstract, fuzzy, even cloying, words, I can be in agreement; abstracts can take you to an echoing Hallmark place.)

Writing for each of us is a a vastly different path—what we write and how and why, and more. There is rarely one way to do anything. Life is complex. We are complex. The natural world is. Humans are still learning—maybe more than ever—that to adjust even a small piece is to set in motion some set of dominoes, too often set up in a circle with our own selves in the middle. Rich writing—experienced and practiced writing—is a mix.

Some years ago I bought a cookbook. I’d gone through busy years of toddlers and little ones, a time when four ingredients for dinner felt like too much, and found myself wanting more. This new cookbook had recipes with as many as two dozen ingredients—all vitamins and minerals and Stuff for Health, it promised, with so many ingredients that really, if I missed a few, it didn’t matter. The joy of flavours: pomegranate and honey, a hint of walnut, tarragon… It was a time in my life when I couldn’t afford the music or theatre that I’d like to see and hear, or the travel that I’ve always wanted. But every night, for dinner, I could go somewhere layered; it became a creative time, an invigorating space. Nourishing—emotionally, mentally, physically. (The “mentally” came in with the working with the recipe—making changes, substituting; it became a constructive piece.)

Humans are composites; art reflects this. A cookbook can reflect this.

When work is bereft of any image, any bit of concrete, it reads as something hard to take hold of. Physicality creates “real.” There’s a point for me when a story begins to feel that it’s something I can grab with my hands. Before it reaches that point it doesn’t feel complete.

But work that is nothing but “concrete” has all the appeal of the photograph above; it’s just another parking lot, really, nice curve, angle, shadow, and all. (Though if we need to park a car, a parking lot works.)

One sentence

Margie P., subscriber here, made me hungry to re-read Anne Tyler’s Breathing Lessons. Here’s a sentence:

“They entered Pennsylvania and the road grew smooth for a few hundred yards, like a good intention, before settling back to the same old scabby, stippled surface.”

These words, one sentence, is such an example of the strength in understanding when and how to create one of those multi-ingredient dishes for a reader.

The connection between the page and the reader (with writer hidden away) is the goal—how to create that? What is the goal—the real goal—to being concrete, to offer a visceral image, to creating—or trying to—the “tangible”? Might it be to bring about a moment of recognition, a moment of new or renewed knowledge? To create that moment of knowing what it is to be human in a world that often does not make sense? In this sentence, it’s the phrase “good intention”—even the word “settling”—that makes the concrete “thing” resonate.

Tyler’s mix of concrete, abstract, words and phrases, image and sound, offers the reader varied sensations, and in the end a jolt of “I know this—this feeling and this place—in my gut.” Maybe a good story, well-told, is like someone running to you, handing you a ball to hold, and telling you it’s your turn now. We become part of the game, we can do with that as we will: it is in our hands, we recognize what it is, and know what we can do with it.

If you read the novel, you see too that this one sentence, taken from about fifteen pages in, is closely thematic. The characters are filled with “good intentions”—and that one bit of not-concrete connects with the tangible, and together create that moment of recognition: we know “good intentions”—we all have them, and yes, we know that road. We’ve all been on a newly paved bit, felt our old tires heave a sigh of relief, moments later to return to the gut-shaking, full-bladder-gonna-explode of an old, neglected, pitted road surface.

The sentence does not go on to develop the theme; it doesn’t need to. We’ve caught the meaning.

The next sentence—I had to go back and see— is:

“The views were long and curved and green—a small child’s drawing of farm country.”

It’s almost as if, in the previous sentence, we’ve gone in for so close a look, internal scrutiny—and here, had to pull back, and just let it be. Have some breathing space. And there’s the title: Breathing Lessons. All the way through.

Evoking is what we do when we write. We aren’t explaining, and we’re trying to avoid telling.

Explaining and telling means that we know what we’re saying before we say it. But evoking, and leaving pieces for the reader to capture or absorb, means that we are creating and absorbing, too. It’s about the experience, the questions. Yes, we know more than the reader; but not much more. Just enough. Enough to write. Often in writing, process can be “build it and they’ll come.” I’ll start with the physicality of a story-element, a setting, a symbol of sorts, a character description… and the heart, meaning, theme/s, ideas—the intangibles—will come through.

Go in fear?

Abstraction has its place. Concreteness has its place. Fear and bravery have theirs, too.

Post and share sentences that capture this mix and are effective—do they have that moment of gut-recognition?

They can be either your own sentences or those you stumble over in others’ works.