Two Good Books

Two good books:

"The Greek Way"
by Edith Hamilton
and
"The Forest For The Trees"
by Betsy Lerner

They do not have anything particular to do with one another, except that I own both. Have finished reading Lerner's Forest; have spot-scanned Greek Way.

FOREST is "An Editor's Advice to Writers"
(it says "editor" -- since publication of the book in 2000, Betsy Lerner apparently has become an agent. She has her own blog; you might like it)

[from FOREST - Lerner]:

Asking for advice about what you should write is a little like asking for help getting dressed. I can tell you what I think looks good, but you have to wear it. And as every fashion victim knows, very few people look good in everything. Chances are that you have been writing or trying to write in one particular form all your life. There are very few writers who, by switching genres, say from novels to plays, suddenly achieve great results and conclude that they have been working in the wrong mode all along. But in my experience, a writer gravitates toward a certain form or genre because, like a well-made jacket, it suits him.

It is true that some people can write well in more than one genre. Although his plays may be ignored, T.S. Eliot's brilliant literary criticism changed the way we read modern poetry and had the added bonus of reinforcing the importance of his own work in the canon. Today we have our own poet-critics, such as Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodksy, our poet-novelists, such as Denis Johnson and Margaret Atwood, our novelist-critics, such as John Updike and Cynthia Ozick, and novelist-essayists, such as Susan Sontag and Joan Didion. But we are more likely to be suspicious of someone who attempts to write in more than one genre--who cross-dresses, generically speaking.

When I was getting an MFA at Columbia University, it was considered anathema, if not altogether taboo, for someone from the poetry side of the program to write a short story or for someone from the fiction side to write a poem. We suspect those who attempt creative work in more than one genre or field of being dilettantes or dabblers.

Gone is the idea of the Renaissance man.

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(My feeling is the idea of "the Renaissance man" is one which should NOT be "gone.")

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[from "The Greek Way"]:

Our word "idiot" comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters. Pericles in the funeral oration reported by Thucydides says:

"We are a free democracy, but we are obedient. We obey the laws, more especially those which protect the oppressed, and the unwritten laws whose transgression brings acknowledged shame. We do not allow absorption in our own affairs to interfere with participation in the city's. We differ from other states in regarding the man who holds aloof from public life as useless, yet we yield to none in independence of spirit and complete self-reliance."

This happy balance was maintained for a very brief period. No doubt at its best it was as imperfect as the working out of every lofty idea in human terms is bound to be. Even so, it was the foundation of the Greek achievement. The creed of democracy, spiritual and political liberty for all, and each man a willing servant of the state, was the conception which underlay the highest reach of Greek genius.

It was fatally weakened by the race for money and power in the Periclean age....

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