Lopate: An Interview On Literary Nonfiction

lizshine74by lizshine74

In Book Reviews!, On writing.

Here’s a great interview with Philip Lopate on literary non-fiction. Note what he has to say about our infamous James Frey. Also, what he says about “reflective nonfiction” , which I think is very wise and so necessary in a world where writers are so concerned with “the market”: “You could finesse a certain amount of technique, scenes, and dialogue, but it’s hard to finesse having or not having an interesting mind. I try to read writers who are better than I am, or who have deeper minds than I do because I need to learn.”
I read Lopate’s book Being With Children when I was studying to be a teacher. It was cool to stumble upon him again and to find in his interview unexpected wisdom in the middle of my day, this time on writing, reading and living, “One issue is the limits of our sympathy, and that we can’t always sympathize with people in need or in trouble. We wrestle with our solipsistic condition, and most people fall into a kind of self-absorption. We know that we should be open more to others, but we’re very self-pre-occupied. But, if we become friends with our minds, we will be less harsh on ourselves for not being perfect, for not being saints. We’re not saints, for the most part.
One of the things that literature does—and here I’m not just talking about essays, but about Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, the great novels of the nineteenth century—is it allows us to be more understanding about human frailty, about error, tragic flaws, and therefore, makes us more forgiving, and more self-forgiving. That’s a kind of wisdom.”
Amen.

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Some past posts to keep you making time: 
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone

lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.