Review of Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story

For writers of personal narrative and memoir, here is a book which brims with acute insights delivered with a passion and skill that I suspect will not only improve one's odds of giving readers a rewarding experience, but also of having a more enriching time as a writer. And even setting utilitarian purposes aside, this book's relentlessly beautiful sentences are a delight to read for their own sake.

In her conclusion, Gornick observes that "any attempt to teach writing out of anything other than that which the teacher knows intimately (rather than theoretically) is...doomed." She also says, "To approach the work in hand as any ordinary reader might was to learn not how to write but--more importantly by far--why one was writing."

Well, in The Situation and the Story, it is clear from go that Gornick not only knows her stuff when it comes to this type of writing, she reveres it.

Gornick entices readers along an exhilarating path of discovery, exploring various ways in which a writer can make use of the stuff of life, temperament, character, and style to craft a rewarding story. She identifies what distinguishes personal narrative from memoir. She talks about the importance of honing in on the "about" of a piece. She speaks about the importance of winnowing distractions that don't serve the core purpose. And she displays (via abundant excerpts from other works) the wide variety of subject matter (and approaches to that subject matter) which a writer can utilize in order to tell a memorable, rewarding story.

Some may be frustrated by Gornick's strategy to come at all of this slant. She does not issue step-by-step instructions as if writing well could be reduced to a how-to manual. Rather, toward the end, she explicitly states what has been her conviction and strategy all along: one learns better writing by learning better reading. And in my experience, this is exactly how my skill with writing has grown: mostly through exposure to good writing, learning how to pay better attention and absorb that writing, and investigating over and over <i>why</i> I write.

I'll quote Gornick back at her, using the same words of praise she aimed at W.G. Sebald: "In the act of responding so prodigiously to what [she] sees, recalls, and broods upon, this calm, solitary pilgrim-like narrator performs a peculiar act of compassion toward world-and-self, one that extends a lifeline of hope."

This book is a work of love: love for the craft of writing in general, for memoir and personal narrative in particular, and above all for the messy and redemptive possibilities inherent in the heart of anyone who picks up a pencil in hope of ascending to a higher place of connection.