Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Be Yourself, Quoth the Poet

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back-light-1145034_640Just before Christmas I read An Essay On Criticism by Alexander Pope. I’d just glanced over it years ago, since it’s in the wonderful poetry volume Anne’s Anthology that we own, but after reading a very interesting guide to English literature this winter that put Pope and several other poets on my list of authors to try, I decided to sit down and read it in earnest. It turned out to be doubly enjoyable for me, since it is in fact all about literature. It starts out, as the title implies, discussing literary critics, but eventually segues into observations on the literature they critique—both pointing out the faults of the critics and suggesting ways authors can avoid laying themselves open to criticism.
There are some marvelous gems of observation on writing here, and the forthright style in which they’re presented is refreshing. How curious, incidentally, that I, much more at home in the prose and history of the 19th and 20th centuries, should find an 18th-century satirist one of the most kindred-spirit poets I’ve encountered so far. Here’s a few choice samples from An Essay On Criticism:
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

Isn’t this true? Though we are always learning, I personally feel that many things I can do easily now were gained during an apprenticeship of sorts, my early days of writing in which I wrote many things not fit for publication, but learned through practice the most effective ways to use words and phrases, to shape paragraphs and scenes and dialogue.

Be sure yourself and your own reach to know
How far your genius, taste and learning go.
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet
And mark that point where sense and dullness meet.

I like this. Know your own powers, he’s saying: be aware of what you can do best and make the most of it, instead of striving for a second-rate imitation of something that’s beyond your knowledge or your skill, at least for the present.

But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,
Correctly cold and regularly low
That, shunning faults, one quiet tenor keep;
We cannot blame indeed—but we may sleep.

This one troubles me a bit, because I see faults of my own in it. Too often I’ve shrunk back and chosen the safest, easiest and most unremarkable way to write something, because I was simply too shy to take a risk with a bolder style or statement. This is something I’m consciously trying to improve this year.

True wit is nature to advantage dressed;
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.

So many others have said this, though seldom so elegantly as Pope (which proves his point right there). It reminds me a bit of what I said about instinct in my post on the three I’s of being a writer. Perhaps one may have an instinctive wit, and must learn how to give it expression; or one has a knack for expressing things that others will instantly recognize but might not have been able to express themselves.

And these excerpts just scratch the surface. There’s many more thought-provoking musings on similar subjects—language, style, content, dullness—in An Essay on Criticism, which I’d encourage anyone in the business of literature, whether writers or critics/reviewers, to seek out and enjoy for themselves.

The Year’s Literature

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Goodreads and my record book and I put our heads together and decided that the total number of books I read in 2014 was 97. As always, that covers anything Goodreads calls a book, including plays, novellas, Kindle Singles and individual short stories. Here’s a look at some of the highlights (linked titles go to my reviews). And if you missed my top-ten list from a few weeks ago, you can find that here.

Classics this year were mainly represented by a re-read of Tolstoy’s War and Peace; I also made the acquaintance of a third and final Bronte sister with Agnes Grey (that would be Anne). I have continued to tentatively feel my way deeper into the world of poetry: I greatly enjoyed Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism; also read Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads and sampled a first volume by Emily Dickinson.

One thing that I read quite a bit of this year was plays. The Mikado and The Gondoliers by Gilbert and Sullivan, The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Man From Home by Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson, Our Town by Thornton Wilder (which, on the page, lived up to nearly everything I’d heard said of it), and a first serious effort at Shakespeare with The Tempest. I tracked down a copy of A.A. Milne’s rare Miss Elizabeth Bennet—and shortly afterward made the discovery that two volumes of Milne’s plays, appropriately titled First Plays and Second Plays, are available in the public domain and delightful besides!

In a switch from last year, I read very few Westerns—a couple by Louis L’Amour (The Burning Hills and The Iron Marshal, both pretty good), a couple by B.M. Bower (The Quirt, good; The Parowan Bonanza I liked less)—but quite a few mysteries. I’ve been continuing with Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey series, which, after a couple of rather uneven books to begin with, has really begun to hit its stride with Unnatural Death, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, and Strong Poison. Also read a decent but not brilliant Georgette Heyer mystery, Detection Unlimited; the first of a brand-new series that promises very well, Rachel Heffington’s Anon, Sir, Anon; and Ethel Lina White’s Some Must Watch.

Speaking of Heyer, after the success of The Grand Sophy I was emboldened to try more of her Regency books: I loved Frederica and the short story collection Pistols For Two. And speaking of short stories, I seem to have read proportionately fewer collections of those this years, compared to novels: I revisited Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party and Other Stories and appreciated it much better this time, and found F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age to be well-written but horribly bleak (excepting one hilarious story with no pretensions beyond comedy). The Five Glass Slippers anthology of Cinderella-themed novellas was a great read as well, and Just Patty by Jean Webster was light cheerful fun.

Historical nonfiction largely reflected my growing interest in World War II history: The Miracle of Dunkirk and Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway by Walter Lord, They Were Expendable by William L. White. I also found some interesting reads among the ranks of Kindle Singles this year. Three Days in Gettysburg by Brian Mockenhaupt was interesting; Peace on Earth: The Christmas Truce of 1914 by David Boyle was excellent, and so was my favorite, Operation Cowboy by Stephan Talty—finally, a nice clear account of the true story of the rescue of the Lipizzaner horses during WWII.

In other nonfiction, I was happy to finally read How The West Was Written, Vol. I by Ron Scheer, a fascinating study of early Western fiction whose progress I’ve been following for a long time on Ron’s blog. Theological highlight, The Kingdom of God by Martyn Lloyd-Jones—and, a little harder to classify, A Turtle on a Fencepost by Allan C. Emery, which I’d describe as an anecdotal memoir of events from a Christian life.  You may remember my mentioning Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, which came highly recommended and is a great little book for any creative type. And Leaving A Trace: On Keeping a Journal by Alexandra Johnson also proved unexpectedly interesting and inspiring.

Last but not least, novels of all varieties! A number of good reviews by friends and acquaintances convinced me to finally read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and also Dear Mr. Knightley by Katherine Reay (yes, you read that correctly: I read a contemporary novel). This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart, and also Madam, Will You Talk?, which I think is the weakest of hers so far story-wise, but her writing is always a delight. The Shepherd by Frederick Forsyth, a short Christmas novella; Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge, a children’s fantasy I adored for the writing and characters in spite of mixed feelings about elements of the plot. No Highway by Nevil Shute, Miss Buncle Married by D.E. Stevenson, Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes by Ella Cheever Thayer, The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery.

Previous years’ reading roundups: 2013, 2012.

The Letter

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I wrote this bit of flash fiction back in September for a challenge, and I’m re-posting it here by popular request. The original challenge was hosted by Yvette at in so many words, with inspiration drawn from a picture—participants got to choose from three vintage illustrations Yvette posted at the beginning of the challenge, and the idea was to write a short bit of fiction to go along with the picture of their choice. Mine was the one seen here, by artist Robert George Harris, and here’s what I imagined lies behind it:

 

I closed the door behind me. The warm, quiet dimness of the room seemed to be standing still and listening, and I stood still for a minute too. I felt like I had shut out the clamor and chaos that had followed me all day, just as if I had cut off a clamor of sound by shutting a door. It had been a strange, tense day, with the consciousness of what was going on in the world lending a distracted edge to everything. Word of a naval battle was filling the news, in stark black headlines on the newsstands; in the tinny, stentorian voices of the war correspondents coming over the radio, with an undercurrent of tight excitement to every word that made you feel like you might hear the boom of the guns in the background at any moment.

I had read all about it in the newspaper at the counter of a drugstore at lunchtime, and then had gone on through my afternoon with a with a feeling of unreality in everything I did and looked at—as if this everyday life was only show, and the real thing outside had intruded on it and turned it hollow. It was a relief to be back in the quiet, comfortingly familiar embrace of my own room—I felt normal again, but still with a lingering, more acute sense of that world outside.

I went over to the desk and took out the letter that I had slid away there before supper, so I could come up and read it in peace and quiet afterwards. I slit the envelope and took out the sheets of paper, and walked over to the fireplace. There was just enough of a flicker coming from the coals that I could see the words on the paper, so I curled up into the comfortable corner of the big flowered armchair, tilted the letter toward the glow, and settled down to read. The letter was the same as always: brisk, practical, bantering; mixing incidents of service life with answers to what I had written. I read it through slowly, quietly enjoying it, a faint smile touching my face now and then.

When I finished, I put the sheets back in order, and my eye traveled up to the heading in the corner of the first one. The date on it stopped me. It was the day after the fleet had been in action, according to the newspaper. I fingered the letter slowly, my eyes drifting upward from it to look into space. It had been written after that battle, only hours after the action. And it was the same as always. I’d always known where the letters were written from, sensed the things they left out. But I’d never made the connection so strongly before to the things not said, as I did now with the black-headlined newspaper containing the account of the battle still lying on a table in the same room. The feeling of something dark and threatening loomed up at me out of the shadows beyond the firelight.

I sat very still and stared out from the depths of the armchair across the room, and in my mind I heard the guns thundering, growing louder till the echoes quivered in the dark corners around me. I saw the hot sun and the violently sparkling blue sea and the metal of the decks, shaken with impact and veiled in black smoke. Behind all the cheerful teasing and anecdotes traded back and forth in our letters, this was the reality; this was the danger that he had to live through. It was always there, though it only became real to me in brief moments of clarity, like this night.

Something broke gently in the fire. I looked at the letter, and then I folded it slowly, the paper crinkled where my sweaty fingers had left spots of dampness. I was about to get up, to put it back in the desk, but I stopped. I leaned my head against the back of the chair and stayed there, very still, the folded letter clasped beneath my hand.