In an interview about writing Bel Canto, Ann Patchett mentions “stealing”a sentence. The interviewer says, “that’s what writing is all about,” and Patchett responds, “yes” and laughs. She had used a statement overheard after an opera, Rusalka, that was subtly witty in context. Since the statement was in casual conversation, not recorded, Patchett had no duty to acknowledge any source. So It was especially honest and gracious of Patchett to credit the “owner” of the phrase. She didn’t know him personally but without providing his name, she still gave him his due. She could simply have been noting a particularly interesting source. The choice of “stealing,” though, opens a delicate matter. It implies an ownership. Since the interviewer defined the word and the response was laughter, there’s no certainty in how either the interviewer or Patchett actually interpreted the word. It was softened in the acceptable acquiring of subjects and skills and tools from one’s environment. This wasn’t really stealing. I agree. So what was it? A form of using another’s creation that’s acceptable. How do we know when it’s acceptable? How careful should we be to leave another’s words alone? When, if ever, should we ask permission? Doubtless, writers aren’t going it agree about this, but thinking about word ownership can’t do any harm and might lead to some easier decisions by some of us, based on personal ethics at least.
A nice, borderline distinction about word ownership occurs in the movie Nim’s Island. Jodie Foster’s character Alexander (Alex) is a successful (but agoraphobic) writer. She appreciates a remark a pilot states, and says “That’s a very good line. You know, I might steal that. I’m a writer.” He refuses, saying he’s a writer, too, and he’s going to use the line. Her response credits the fellow’s right: “Well. Okay. That’s fine. It’s all yours.” She acknowledges a common understanding about ownership of language with that “It’s all yours.” Here, though the phrase is oral, the speaker plans to use it. He claims it. But it’s still not recorded. Will he write it? Isn’t it a little precious to hang onto one line? Yes, maybe. How different would the scene be if he answers “Sure. I’m a writer, too, but there’s more where that came from.” The whole situation changes. The dynamics between them change. If he’s a writer, too, the words are part of his work, his image, his tool kit. If he hoards them, he’s rather comic; if he grants them, he’s generous, confident. The deciding factor here is Alex asked. If she had remained silent, the pilot couldn’t have refused, and Alex might have written it first. Granted, the movie is not a heavy one, the scene has a comic element, but the point is clear nonetheless. Lightness often accompanies touchy subjects.
While writers are constantly drawing from all their senses for material and techniques, including what they hear—dialect, inflection, jargon, tone, etc.–even oral language can sometimes be the creation of someone and that person may want recognition. How important can a few words be in a person’s career? That depends on the person. To Alex or any seasoned writer, probably very little, but to a new writer, still unsure of talent and potential, possibly very much.
The advice to “steal what you can” is pretty common among writers—I’ve heard it a number of times in workshops and casual settings, and even in a presentation by a visiting writer. Though they’re suggesting that writers should read good prose—learn up, which is definitely true—commonsense dictates the advisors don’t intend that anyone should lift written words and phrases without credit. They mean we can become better writers by immersing ourselves in good writing, by absorbing language and techniques as far as our own abilities will allow. Even deliberate copying to internalize structure and sound is a good and ancient practice. Claiming the copy as your own, though, is a practice of a different sort—stealing. Most of us know the common word for that kind of stealing: plagiarism. That’s not the subject here.
When someone else’s words impress me enough that I remember them, I shy away from writing anything remotely similar. During my graduate work at the University of Arizona, I was very moved by a description in a classmate’s story. It went something like this: “The shape of her head was engrained in the palms of my hands.” The sentence captured the gentle nature and tender love of the protagonist. It has come to mind many times through the years. Recently I phoned the person I believed wrote the story, Marvin Diogenes. He recalled that I had praised that particular line, and corrected my memory—the wording had changed slightly. Another phrase that often tempts me is “sculpted from lard” to describe a very pale person. Where did it come from? I feel it must have been in Carson McCuller’s work, or Faulkner’s. Suffice it to know that it isn’t mine. The description was perfect wherever it was. I carry a figurative sack in which to keep others’ words that I love, can’t forget, but also can’t use. So many!
Humans love words and like to acknowledge talent, wit, sarcasm, succinct observations. Communities tend to have their own metaphors, similies, a whole jargon, and to give credit within their own circles. (Edd Smith, a Tucson fiddler, was a walking non-urban dictionary. Recently, Adam Lambert was credited in the Urban Dictionary with coining “flubbing.”) When a phrase passes into the larger community, sometimes the source is forgotten (maybe claimed much later). People are careful not to use famous words without crediting, unless the source is considered common knowledge to the particular audience, such as “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” “Ask not what your country can do for you,” “my guitar gently weeps,” “Frankly I don’t give a damn.”* “Houston, we have had a problem.”* “It’s a far, far better thing that I do. . . .” I’ve read a few “screw my courage” without the completing words “to the sticking place.” They never seem to fit well in the new spot.
Among writers, painful memories are often shared about seeing their spoken or written words under someone else’s name—a colleague, a teacher, a friend. Not an entire piece, not plagiarism, just the use of words and short phrases. It’s a common, unfortunate side of writing, but not a hard blow. Easily overcome by persevering. Many writers have been asked and will be asked again “May I borrow” or told “That’s great, I’m going to use that.” It’s an opportunity to be generous, to be confident. You have a store of words, a wealth. No one can use them as you will. Your thoughts and heart dictate the context and tone. Bless the user and the language. Be fair-minded when you’re the finder. How free is the word or phrase really? Should you ask?
*”Frankly” was added by scriptwriters.
*As actually spoken
We’re All in the Race: Ann Patchett’s Run
Any book that leads me to recognize my biases and expectations is valuable to me, and Ann Patchett’ s Run is one of those. A rare book, too, given the topics she deals with. She constructs a small mixed family whose members’ status and interactions raise questions on complex issues, particularly race, heritage, legacy, duty, honor, and love. She does so while engaging the reader in a family’s plight over an injured person and her child. It’s a book of many small mysteries and connections that create a very contemporary, important story, and could lead to a personal revelation as well. It’s a bold, beautifully crafted book.
Patchett prepares the reader for the work’s complexity by underlaying the present circumstances with a family legend. A statue of Bernadette, an early ancestor, has for four generations been passed to the female descendant who bears the closest resemblance—fair, redheaded, rather ethereal, in pose and expression like the virgin Mary. The legend contains the truth—a lie about who the statue represented and its origin. The dominant legacy, though, is that the similarity of surface features entitles one descendant to the statue and all it represents. The family now in possession of the statue includes no mother—she died years ago—no daughter, but three sons, one white and two black, both adopted. Who most closely represents the statue and thus will inherit it? The story that follows eradicates wonderfully the surface identity of characters and brings the reader into each character’s nature, never predictable by skin color. Actually, not predictable at all. And there lies the beauty and the power of this book. Some readers may be surprised at the difference between what they expect and what they find.
Though the beginning of present time is a bit slow, an unexpected event occurs that snaps the story into action and focuses sharply on family and divisions within it. While walking to a party to meet with Jesse Jackson, one of the brothers is saved from a wayward vehicle by a black woman who thrusts him out of danger and is herself injured. She is accompanied by a young girl. Why would she save him? Are they related? The ensuing hours will reveal who she is, why she and her daughter were nearby. And, increasingly important, how injured she is. Will she live? Priorities change as they must and should. The more long-term conflicts and estrangements become clear, too.
There’s so much inviting speculation that artifice seems heavier than story, but that’s only for a very brief while and possibly just my own take. Prominent politicians are mentioned, squarly placing the family on the Democratic side. The sons seem to represent religion, politics, and science. Names are clues. The young girl is Kenya and her mother is Tennessee. These and many more engaging hooks are not adequate to what the characters truly represent and how individual they become. They work wonderfully as little mysteries that, being followed, provide more important details. Who is the mother? Which child belongs to whom? Who was the father? Does it matter which child was adopted first? What was the original name? Are the characters who love Shubert related? Patchett can turn a view around, which encourages looking at the other side, and then questioning that, too. Sullivan quotes to Teddy part of a Martin Luther King’s speech but then remarks that “the white brother part doesn’t work exactly. It should be our black brothers. ‘We have sometimes given our black brothers the feeling that we like the way we were being treated.’” But Teddy, who is the artist at remembering speeches, thinks that if the next paragraph had been remembered his own “entire enterprise would have been sunk.” The passage has personal and positive meaning between the two men, and our immediate understanding is not the final one. Some of the signs are misleading, and our speculation about them is telling. This small community is our larger one, the view made palatable, not strongly emotional or even dramatic. Rather low and gentle.
Central is that the people love each other. They try to work together for one common goal. Sullivan and his father, Doyle, try to find one thing they can agree upon, because they are divided in many ways. They agree on Kenya, the young girl, on helping her. Of course. They agree on a person, not a cause. The cause is the unity and the unity is helping. How wonderful. The whole work suggests this. A similar suggestion is to be courteous and kind by pretending to feel if you can’t feel. That brings to mind the old adage (I forget the source, which may be Shakespeare, Aristotle, or some other wise person) to pretend a virtue if you have it not. In pretending, you may develop the virtue. Maybe you just need the opportunity. The pretense can always be dropped. One son does this, adopts a career as a duty, and relinquishes it when he feels the duty has been met. There’s no rule about such responsibility in Patchett’s work. It’s one of the possibilities for an individual. One of life’s vicissitudes.
Patchett expands the concept of mothering and disallows harsh judgment against women who give up their children. A woman can relinquish a child because of great love for the child or for another person. Most of the biological mothers here are missing, which of course matters to the child, as we learn through Tip’s later thoughts. But the absence in Patchett’s view is never abandonment, neither emotional nor physical. Love is the cause. And mothering is a genderless activity, a choice, an experience. It is nurturing and caring. As is fathering. Many characters here are mothering, including the twelve-year old Kenya, who wishes only briefly not to have the role. Perhaps the greatest is Sullivan. He is named after a priest and family member. He furthers the cause of protecting, evident as a dominant admirable trait of any person, male or female. Sullivan has the physical traits of his mother and, though his father thinks Sullivan doesn’t have any of his mother Bernadette’s traits, he definitely does. Sullivan loves children and knows how to love them, to comfort them. That’s his calling.
No character is left knowable only through surface details. In Patchett’s graceful, precise prose their thoughts and feeling reveal each more fully, different from outsider’s perception. This occurs with every character, but more strikingly, and possibly the most difficult for Patchett to achieve, with the two characters named Tennessee. The injured woman, Tennessee, hallucinates with (or truly talks with) her deceased friend. Thoughts and feelings are clearly separate, except when, briefly, they’re not. It’s an extreme example of the fluidity among characters and issues that makes the book profound and beautiful. While the shifting point of view in this passage answers questions that might otherwise go unanswered, it doesn’t seem an artifice as much as it does the realistic mental and emotional journey of the injured mother in remembering her friend. Only she could share this. The depth of individual emotion warms the passage and raises it above artifice.
Without giving away any details, let me say the ending is a positive and comforting view.
What rich and intricate messages this story contains. A mixture we are. Yes. And all of us heirs to a human nature and human rights, despite surface details. The original question, about who gets the statue, is answered. It’s a mild reward compared to all the answers Patchett has presented about the true nature of family, which includes all of us as individuals, flawed, but deeply concerned about life and desires and deeply loving someone, and paying some cost to serve others. All valuable.
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