Last Updated: May 26, 1999
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Book review: Journalism as depicted
in print
‘Companion’ is no place like our home
This collection of writing essays may score with the
literary set, but it ignores the realities of daily journalism
"The Writer’s Home Companion", $14.95, edited by Joan
Bolker.
By Jack Hart
"The Writer’s Home Companion" best serves those who write at home. It
offers far less to the wretches who pound their keyboards in newsrooms.
Too bad. Joan Bolker, the editor, is a clinical psychologist who specializes
in writers. Lord knows, most newsrooms could use her services.
But Bolker developed her literary bent in the rarefied air of academic
writing and the Northeastern literary establishment. In her circles, "writer"
is spelled with a capital "W," and her natural audience views writing as
a spiritual calling ... something that unfolds in a room of one’s own,
in its own good time.
So the advice she has assembled probably will receive little notice
where reporters working elbow-to-elbow push piles of foam cups and fast-food
wrappers aside, put their hands to dirty keyboards and just grind it out.
For one thing, it wallows in the self-absorbed angst that simply isn’t
kosher in a newsroom. The book’s general preoccupation with artistic inspiration,
procrastination and the distractions of daily life will strike most journalists
as self-indulgent.
Not that this anthology doesn’t include some morsels likely to energize
any writer. Don Murray, one of America’s pre-eminent newsroom writing coaches,
adds a little grit to the book’s silky texture with his usual sage advice.
B.F. Skinner advances a behavioral (what else?) theory of writing that
might unstop a blocked feature writer or two. And an essay on voice by
Bolker herself could help editors understand why newspaper writing can
be so damned dull.
Those are, however, raisins in the oatmeal. Most of the essays wander
off on tangents that have little to do with punching up words on a screen.
The Anne Tyler piece laments the distractions that beset a wife and mother
as she squeezes writing in between trips to the supermarket and the vet.
Anne Eisenberg discusses e-mail. Alicia Ostriker wonders why motherhood
was never fit fodder for poetry.
In a sense, the claim that the "Home Companion" contains "the world’s
best writing advice" is false advertising. It offers little in the way
of writing specifics. News executives looking to prime their newsrooms
with good reading on writing would do better with time-tested standards
such as William Zinsser’s "On Writing Well" or Bill Blundell’s "The Art
and Craft of Feature Writing."
Those books are, at least, uniformly well written. "Home Companion"
offers relatively few examples of the kind of writing we would be proud
to see in our newspapers. There are exceptions. Ursula Le Guin’s lead-off
essay is typically lyrical. Don Murray turns several beautiful and provocative
phrases. And Natalie Goldberg is her pithy, no-nonsense self when she commands
that "if you want to write, you have to cut through and write."
But Bolker herself sets the writing standard for the book with this
convoluted sentence: "In answering the question of how she became a writer,
when she grew up never reading any writing by a black woman like herself,
Gloria Naylor describes how her mother inspired her love of books and education,
reminds us of the importance of public education and libraries for all
children, particularly poor ones, and traces the subjects of her fiction
to her own roots."
Skinner, in contrast, writes a straightforward sentence and grounds
his suggestions in empiricism that may have some application. "Good examples
of work produced with the help of drugs," he tells us, "are still lacking."
Despite that bit of wisdom, this remains a book for those untainted
by the dirty business of putting ink onto newsprint. And with the bad coffee,
stale sandwiches, heaps of discarded press releases and kitschy PR knickknacks
that typify the newsroom environment. ...
The ultimate tip-off is Skinner’s description of the perfect writing
space. "It should be a pleasant place," he says, "and should smell good."
Hart, senior editor at The Oregonian, Portland, is a writing coach
who conducts workshops nationwide and a columnist whose "Writer’sWorkshop"
appears in Editor & Publisher.
