On Writing

I read a fair amount of new literature, along with current nonfiction, and I miss writing. Don't get me wrong -- there are plenty of good stories and readable biographies. But today's writers, by and large, just type -- they don't write. They communicate prosaically, not poetically -- in everyday, colloquial language, like we're doing here on FB. Blame social media -- God knows we always do -- but every contemporary author sounds the same, with no literary flair or distinction.

I miss writers like Edith Wharton and F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ralph Ellison and William Styron. Writers who thought hard about every sentence, who carefully crafted each word.

"Never use the first word that comes to mind -- use the second or third -- even though it takes more time," Steve Chapple once counseled me. He was one of the best writers I knew -- still is. (I'm glad to hear he's returning to fiction.)

My wife, Camille Peri, is weeks away from finishing a joint biography of the bohemian literary couple Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson. I had long been a fan of RLS's writing (Treasure Island, The Suicide Club, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), but Camille encouraged me to read works he wrote back in the late 1800s that I hadn't read before. I was stunned and delighted to read some of Stevenson's sensual, descriptive passages -- of nature and people.

Read this passage from Catriona, Stevenson's intriguing (but not altogether successful) sequel to his masterpiece Kidnapped:

"There began to fall a greyness on the face of the sea; little dabs of pink and red, like coals of slow fire, came in the east.... With the growing of the dawn I could see it clearer and clearer, the straight crags painted with sea-birds' droppings like morning frost, the sloping top of it green with grass, the clan of white geese that cried about the sides, and the black, broken buildings of the prison sitting close on the sea's edge."

Stevenson conjures such a vivid impression in the mind's eye -- that's the magic of brilliant writing. What comes close to this evocative prose today?

Here's a tip for modern writers. Before you sit down at your laptop, seek inspiration from poetry or lyricists like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Let their words dazzle and inflame your imagination. Dare to use words like each one matters.

F. Scott Fitzgerald