Who's Writing This?: Notations on the Authorial I With Self Portraits

by Daniel Halpern (Editor)

This book includes over 50 essays, and the astounding variety and excellence of the group make for a remarkably complete statement on the difficulty, self-loathing, humor, courage, and inspiration involved with the creative process.
Such writers as John Fowles, John Updike, Margaret Atwood, James A. Michener, Susan Sontag, Darryl Pinckney, Alice Hoffman, Roy Blount Jr., Joyce Carol Oates and Arthur Miller cheerfully and skillfully reveal themselves, along with many others, using Borges' playful construct with surprisingly distinctive results.
In addition, the authors have accompanied their pieces with self-portraits, which range from cartoonist Ed Koren's zany figures to Helen Vendler's carefully traced hand, and include a variety of possibilities in between. It is rare that readers are given such privileged information (however tongue-in-cheek) about the identities of their favorite authors - still rarer to meet their personas in the same place.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Anthologies

183 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1994

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some years ago, I had occasion to attend the National Booksellers Convention in Las Vegas. Got lots of books, met the likes of Jonathan Kellerman and Dom Deluise, and also attended a seminar hosted by John Updike and Amy Tan. They spoke of the difference between a writer and a published author, the former being one needing solitude, introspection and self-discipline and the latter being one going on book tours touting their latest efforts and being quite social. Sort of a dichotomy within oneself (for a humorous perspective on the grueling trek of a book tour, read Cynthia Ozick’s “Lighting Out for the Territory,” from the “New York Times Review of Books,” January 2, 2005). In this same vein, one looks to the “inner writer” and its relationship to the person who has to go about his/her business. This relationship can become quite complex (see Stephen King’s “The Dark Half,” which I have recently finished, and his “Secret Window, Secret Garden.”)

I got this book through an obscenely-low-priced Kindle version through BookBub, being an examination of just this relationship. It consists of brief essays by some fifty authors, with remarkably similar issues counterbalancing the creative with the mundane aspects of their lives. To be sure, some of the “inner selves” have the same name as the “outer selves,” and sometimes not; sometimes, it’s a pseudonym. As the Editor, Daniel Halpern, puts it, “These pieces have been assembled to introduce an internalized persona – and the pursuant lifelong comrade, the significant other - capable of expressing the honest lie, the fictive truth.”

So let me give you a few snippets: Rosellen Brown, author of “Tender Mercies” (in my top ten of movies, but I digress) addresses this dichotomy thus: “You write for yourself,…and you are the ultimate judge of what is pleasing, fit, necessary. But now I know it is only when you catch a crowd listening that you discover how lonely you love to be, sitting protectively on those words like a bird on a nest.” And from John Hawkes: “Even in my earliest youth, I knew, if only by intuition that the writer and the person in whom the writer existed were not at all one and the same.” Even the afore-mentioned John Updike speaks of “the Updike I created” as opposed to the Updike others see.

Underlying these metaphorical conflicts is a struggle with the creative process; for example, per Paula Fox (award-winning author of children’s books, also known for being the grandmother of actress Courtney Love): “When I begin a story at my desk, the window at my back, the path is not there. As I start to walk, I make the path.”

There are other, more varied descriptions, such as Pat Conroy’s “writer self” being angry at Mr. Conroy himself for giving up his four-pack-a-day cigarette habit because it is part of “his” creative process. Or Elmore Leonard’s characters griping because of all the things Mr. Leonard makes them do. I found this short book thoroughly delightful, with surprisingly similar insights into this inherent dichotomy from the contributors. I would recommend this book very highly, especially all you creative types of all ilks out there.

[Debi Helgren · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me

I read approximately 1/3 of the book, and decided this book wasn't my cup of tea, and stopped reading it.

[Samantha Adkins · Rating 1 out of 5]

I meant to read all of these, but I found the tone and topic off-putting and only read a few of the author's whose names I recognized.