So it IS Maine!
Three of my top five favorite writers live in Maine New England. Below the top five, Maine litters the list so frequently, I started thinking I should move to Maine, if I wanted to be the writer I hope to be.
R.J. Keller suggested it was the Moxie. (The soda indigenous to Maine, not the wonderful word the pop inspired that means vigor, verve, pep, courage and aggressiveness.)
I was going to order a case, but Alexander Chee provided an interesting explanation in his essay, Annie Dillard and the Writing Life:
From the things Annie circled in my drafts, it was clear one answer to my problem really was, in a sense, Maine. From my mom’s family, I’d gotten the gift for the telling detail—Your Uncle Charles is so cheap he wouldn’t buy himself two hamburgers if he was hungry—but also a voice cluttered by the passive voice in common use in that of that part of the world—I was writing to ask if you were interested—a way of speaking that blunted all aggression, all direct inquiry, and certainly, all description. The degraded syntax of the Scottish settlers forced to Maine by their British lords, using indirect speech as they went and then after they stayed.
My favorite Maine writers write differently from all my other favorite writers—very differently. They are exceptional at telling details. They all tend to tell a story that will later be the detail for something else. They are all verbose. And while they don’t clutter their writing with passive voice, they do tend to flit back and forth in time when describing something or someone. They tend to put a thing in context of its history.
Those are generalizations, of course, so they are not true of every Maine writer. I’ve never been to Maine, so I couldn’t even begin to guess why Maine writers seem to be a particular set as opposed to American writers. (Maybe they just describe things by a story and in context of time in their everyday storytelling and conversation?) I don’t know.
I sometimes think of the U.S. as one culture, but it’s not. It’s not even the same culture in Southern Ohio as it is in Northern Ohio. I know generalizations are dangerous when they become stereotypes, but I miss Social Studies. I loved learning about and understanding other cultures, and there really is no other way to do that than to generalize. I hope that the understanding generalizations provide can help overcome the prejudice that stereotypes inspire, but who knows? I suppose people smarter than I have done studies on it, which is why you don’t see as many Social Studies classes anymore.
On a more useful-to-you note, Chee goes on to quote this explanation of telling vs. showing from Annie Dillard:
“If you’re doing your job, the reader feels what you felt. You don’t have to tell the reader how to feel. No one likes to be told how to feel about something. And if you doubt that, just go ahead. Try and tell someone how to feel.”
The essay has lots of gems in it, and well worth a read.
On a related note, John Irving’s latest novel, Last Night in Twisted River, will be released on October 27. I can’t wait!
Have you found a region/culture/state whose writers particularly appeal to you?
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Natasha Fondren is a writer traveling the U.S. in a camper with her four cats. She is currently enjoying the lizards and desert heat in Arizona.
You’re not counting John Irving as a Mainer, are you? He’s from New Hampshire, and lives in Vermont . . . so maybe it’s more broadly “Northern New England”!
Really?! I thought he lived in Maine! Well, then, two of my favorite five.
Or maybe it is New England! Now I feel dumb, LOL!
That’s an intersting question, and one I’ve never really given any thought too. I don’t know if I know the geographical homes of most of my favorite writers. I guess a number of them have been western types. I have two favorite writers from Texas, Howard and Lansdale. but Burroughs is from California, and Burke is from Louisiana
I’m with Charles. I don’t know where many of my favorite writers live.
It’s odd, I’ve never been to Maine, but I’ve felt drawn to it. As though I’ve lived there in another life.
Come to think of it, Charles and Edie, I only know those writers whose culture they tend to write about, those writers who make their geography part of their “package,” I guess. Like if they’re from New Orleans, from the South, from the Caribbean, or from New England. Stuff like that.
Edie, me, too! I know of several people who felt the same way, and just up and moved there, too.
I don’t usually know where writers are from unless they reveal it in their writing, which often they do. Stephen King lives in Maine and he’s a favorite of mine. More important though, to me, E.B. White split his time between Greenwich Village and a salt water farm in Maine so I guess Maine writers loom large for me too!
And Herman Melville lived there, didn’t he? Weren’t you the one who loved Moby Dick, recently?
Wow… Greenwich Village and Maine are two very cool places to live!
Honestly, I don’t pay any attention to where writers are from. I always read the little author blurb in the back and sometimes am surprised if the book (esp a series) takes place in a completely different place than where the author is from, but it rarely registers for future recollection.
Me either, Melanie. I don’t even read the author blurb.
Although, like you, I’ve been surprised when, say, a series that’s very Southern is written by a Northerner, LOL!
I love your observation. I never really thought of it, but I can see how the place that you are from, or region, I suppose, would mutate the way you tell your stories. I don’t pay particular attention to the locales of my favorite authors, but I’m going to have to go look at the little bios again and mentally note where they live
Lauren, I’m curious, now! I think I’m going to have to pay more attention, too.
We’re all different. I want to know how we’re different.
A lot of Maine writers aren’t from Maine–like me, though I’m not in the same league as Annie Dillard, Steven King, et al. But you should move to Maine because Northern Maine’s realty prices are dead cheap. Just remember: It’s frigging cold in the Winter!
But I paid 34k for a 3 br house ten years ago (although it needed twice that cost in maintenance work) and for the present house I paid 56k last Christmas! Cheap. So if you don’t have the need for a day job (really, mean income is about 20k in my area) you can buy cheap.
WOW, Written! I want to move to Maine. In fact, when I get tired of the road, I think Maine will be at the top of my list. That’s amazing! And reasonable!
I have no clue where most of my favorite writers are from. I suppose if one assumes that literary writers usually set their stories in the area they’re from (do they? I’ve sort of gotten that impression but wouldn’t swear to it) then it might depend what genre you’re into.
Also, just as a data point, this:
I was writing to ask if you were interested
is not passive voice. There’s a meme going around which says that any instance of the verb “to be” signals passive voice, but that’s not accurate. Rewriting that into passive voice, it would be more like:
The letter was written to ask if you were interested.
In passive voice, the subject of the sentence is not the actor, but rather is the acted-upon — the object of the verb. So “I was writing” is perfectly active. It might not be incredibly vivid writing, I’ll grant you, but it’s not passive.
Angie
LOL, Angie! I’m just laughing because I was waiting for Joey to jump all over that one.
That’s his pet peeve, too. XD
Yeah, I don’t know. Some authors make the region or city more of a character and part of the essence of a book than others.