 |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
||
 |
 |
|
||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
Words MatterDecember 26, 2005 Words matter word smatter a smatter of words . . . I've grown irregular about reading the local papers. Disclosure notice: I used to work for the Martha's Vineyard Times, and in those years the only reason I didn't read the paper once it hit the newsstands and the mailboxes was that I'd read the whole damn thing before it went to press. I kept up with the Vineyard Gazette too, in order to know what the competition was doing -- and because it was in the Times office so I didn't have to pay for it. My beat was culcha and community. Still is, only now I'm trying to create it instead of write about it. After reading the papers, I don't know if culcha and community have died out on Martha's Vineyard or if it's just that the newspapers don't know where to look. Sometimes it's that the stringers who find it don't have the guts to write about it. I've read a few of those articles lately. Recently I fantasized going up to one writer and rudely peering into her face. When she, with exquisite politeness, inquired what the hell I thought I was doing, I said, "I'm looking to see if your nose is growing." Pinocchio -- remember him? I've got this problem as a writer. It's also my biggest asset. When something I write fudges the truth, or exaggerates the negative, or gives excessive vent to the bilious, I choke. The muscles in my throat tighten. Is that fair? Do you really think that? Aren't you going a bit too far? Have you checked your motives lately? Some call it self-censorship. I call it self-editing, and my writing is the better for it. In my newspaper days, I reviewed local theater. At first I didn't know you weren't supposed to say anything bad about anybody. I called 'em as I saw 'em. As a result I was trashed at least once in an op-ed, and a few times in letters to the editor; I got into a few contretemps on the streets of Vineyard Haven. I've kept nearly all my clips, and on the whole I'm proud of my local oeuvre. Sometimes I missed something big, and sometimes I was a bit -- just a bit -- full of myself, but mostly I did OK. I expected directors and actors and techies to do their best, and I expected the best to take a few risks. I expected the same of myself. My worst fear was that if I pronounced a mediocre production "great," someone would plunk down good money to see it and then walk out thinking "What the hell . . . ?" These days, when I read a review that inspires me to plunk down money for something, my rational mind overrides the impulse and warns: "What's good is good, what's bad is good: it's island journalism -- don't believe everything you read." Granted, it takes courage to write words that are more than insipid and less than laudatory about people you may -- probably will -- encounter at the grocery store the day the paper comes out. But though, or perhaps because, I'm both a writer and a reader, I expect that courage of anyone who writes for publication. Fudging the truth when honesty is called for: perhaps we can forgive it in a small-town weekly? Perhaps. Surely we shouldn't forgive it in a big-city daily that influences movers and shakers all around the world? Surely not. There's a connection between one and the other. I believe it; I know it. Again I fall back on Adrienne Rich's "Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying":
When we expect words, published words, to lie, where do we go for the truth?
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
Home - Writing - Editing - About Susanna - Bloggery - Articles - Poems - Contact Copyright ©
Susanna J. Sturgis. All rights reserved. |
||||