References to the celebrated children's classic JOHNNY TREMAIN (which I never got around to reading, and at this point I guess that ship has sailed) have been popping up around here. There's an essay in THE BRAINDEAD MEGAPHONE about its tremendous effect on the young George Saunders. And just yesterday I came across a tender, sorrowful panel by Alison Bechdel, anthologized in THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2007, involving a reading of JOHNNY TREMAIN. Now the Saunders essay, taken with his Vonnegut and Barthelme essays in the same book, will give you a master class in writing, if you care to take the time, for the price of a paperback book! Or you can borrow it from the library if necessary. There's a little gem on comma placement in the TREMAIN essay that encapsulates what makes a good sentence. The part of the Vonnegut essay where the author's younger self comes to realize WHY Vonnegut uses aliens and other supposedly lowbrow tropes in his fiction is a fine lesson in how to really dig in to what matters as a writer. And his analysis of Barthelme's "The School" shows you what it FEELS like to write a good story and is full of practical advice such as "ENDING IS STOPPING WITHOUT SUCKING." About the Bechdel - what a powerful excerpt. It makes you want to run out and get the entire graphic novel, FUN HOME, from which it is taken. That's the pernicious thing about books! Watch out! Books want to make you read other books. One book is always conspiratorially suggesting another. And if you go down that path, how will you ever get any "blogging" done?
