Wednesday 10/23/24
We have a saying here: You can't fake voice.
A lot of people try and fake voice in their writing. You have stiff, awkward writers who aren't really writers in any other sense other than that they got an MFA, which means the opposite of what they think and/or hope it does, with no imagination, who cannot inhabit anything or anyone else, making these clumsy attempts at sounding natural and indelible, and it never works.
Why? Because like I said, you can't fake voice. You are either able to do it or you're not. I don't mean the same voice. No two works should have the same voice. You'll see these writers who try and do the same voice every damn time. It's really just shtick. Hard work, of course, can make you a better writer. A clearer writer. You can't learn an ability for voice, though. Comes from within though it captures that which is without.
I'll give you an example of faked voice which I saw today in the VQR. More on the people behind that operation soon enough. This is from Anna Badkhen's "A Soviet Jew Walks Into a Bar in Harlem."
Now she’s telling me that she is an architect and an urban planner, that she’s from Mississippi but she’d lived and worked in the UAE before moving to Harlem a few years ago, she loves Harlem, though it’s getting gentrified for sure, even this Red Rooster isn’t the original, the original was a few blocks north, two steps down in the ground-floor storefront on Striver’s Row, it closed down in the eighties, she’s heard that James Baldwin’s bar in Just Above My Head was based on it—and while my heart boomerangs through the summoned-up lovegrief of that novel, my favorite of his, she’s already on to how she also makes skincare products at home...
People don't just casually reference James Baldwin novels. This is not believable. The way this is presented suggests that the referencing of a James Baldwin novel is an ordinary occurrence. That's the writer coming through. It's not how the characters are. They're stock figures in all of these stories.
You have one character dropping in a reference to a James Baldwin novel but it's more than that because that character has assumed this other character--the narrator--will just get a reference to a James Baldwin novel.
What are the chances that this could happen? Close to zero, right? Unless it was at a James Baldwin symposium.
And adding that that's this person's favorite James Baldwin novel is just an attempt at scoring some white lady/I'm one of the good ones points. It has nothing to do with the story. If it doesn't have to do with the story, it shouldn't be there.
Another attempt to create voice occurs with the sticking together of two words in "lovegrief." Come on. You're doing a move. You're saying, "Look at me, I'm writing, what a special voice this is."
But you also don't really believe it. There's always that voice inside of us that knows better. Alex Turner said it's tough to get around the wind; well, for most of these writers, it's tough--impossible--to outrun that voice so that they can't hear it anymore. And it's that knowledge that plays a big part in making them as petty, envious, catty, and toxic as they often are. Their behaviors are actuated by what they know themselves not to be. Which becomes worse when they are dealing with someone who is all those things and more.
You cannot fake voice. Any time you try to you'll end up with something that rings false.
And boomerangs through? That's a mixed metaphor. You have to really look at your language and what it actually means. Something doesn't boomerang through something--that suggest a one-way journey, so it's also an oxymoron. This is area of writing that you can control, even if you don't have an abundance of ability.
Speaking of which: You already know that Anna Badkhen is a Guggenheim winner and now I'll tell you that she was also long-listed for the National Book Award.
Always the same.
But this isn't the same. It's a paragraph from a new one of mine.
I got drunk that night and demanded to know if Rick was slinging it up her. I don’t remember much else beyond saying what I did in the manner in which I did, given that “slinging” immediately struck me like a word David would use in discussing his plan for taking on Goliath, and sleeping on the couch where I got to watch some TV which I normally can’t do in bed because there’s no set in our bedroom and how The Facts of Life was on at two in the morning and I felt sad for anyone who’d be watching The Facts of Life then. I also felt sorry for myself by the same token and several others, but that was obscured by this rare viewing opportunity, as if I’d gotten lucky or triumphed in one of those small, “at least I have this,” ways. When I was a kid, the first person I masturbated to was Tootie, so I guess it was bittersweet. Homecoming always is. I would use Natalie, too, like we were in a threesome together after the girls had snuck me in and we had to be quiet in order not to wake Mrs. Garrett down the hall. At the end I’d imagine Natalie saying, “Stain her!” as I finished on Tootie’s stomach, which made me wonder if I was racist.
See the difference in indelibility and believability? Poignant, funny, a touch of the wiseacre, but also a sincerity, pathetic in one way, uplifting in another, childish to a degree, wise to another. There's an overall awareness, though, and a lot happening here. It's not "all one thing," or "all the same color." And it's memorable. The language is memorable. The ideas are memorable.
The bit about homecoming? Memorable. Homecoming is that way, and people sense this on some level, but they don't consciously think it. That helps them connect with what you've written. But you can't teach this either. The Facts of Life is a TV show, yes, but the phrase itself becomes part of the story. The facts of life. What Porter Wagoner would have called the cold hard facts of life.
Everyone can identity with the "at least I have this" mode of thinking. There's such specificity here in subject matter, the references that are made, and in voice, but that fosters, rather than hinders, universality.
This is what you're going for and there's more in this single paragraph than there is in entire careers. This is how it works when it works. It's also not someone playing for points. The first example tries to do this peacock strut to receive that credit for being one of the good ones. Which is actually racist. You're just trying to get the bread buttered.
The concluding image of the second example is legit. It's not for show. It's authentic. These people never write authentically. They can't do it. Writing authentically isn't writing autobiographically. They do that, as we know and see time and time again, because they can't invent anything, so even their fiction comes in large part from their lives. But their lives aren't interesting. They're not interesting.
Do you ever wonder what it would be like if these other people had a journal like this? And it was the three million words plus long that this journal is? How quickly would their brains be emptied out? What could they possibly say over the course of those three million words? It'd be so empty and boring and repetitive, right? I can describe a single morning here, and it's fascinating. But all the same, my life is not my work. My work is my life. That's different. But my work doesn't come from my life. I invent.
That elision, and the meaning that transpires and is received within that elision, from "bittersweet" to "Homecoming" is something that people just can't do. It's so natural. Anyone else who even had the idea would need many more words to try and get it across. You write without words. I don't think people understand this. You write so well with certain words that you're also writing so well by not having to put words in. You are writing with words that are not there. Words that aren't there can have as much validity as words in a story as the words we see.
Whoa! Heady! But it's true. This is how we command on a different level.
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