This one’s about writing craft. If that’s not your jam, feel free to skip it.
I read Total Eclipse1 by Dillard. In the same way that the moth essay does, it hits like a hammer. You can find it in Teaching a Stone to Talk, and online too (but I don’t think you’re supposed to).2 This time I wasn’t reading to count similes; I was looking for permission and instruction on how to revisit the subject and not explain what it means.3 The essay has four numbered sections, a move I don’t think I’ve seen done before. It also has subsections in the sections, the groups of paragraphs with double line breaks between them. Each subsection is either about the eclipse or something else, either a scene from the two day trip or some mental imagery inspired by the scene, a personal experience.
I get it. Those personal thoughts, the internal things, maybe grandiose when you think about it, but they’re very natural in the moment and the way that Dillard tells it. They’re juxtaposed against the more regular things, some guys at the hotel, or an interaction at a coffee shop. But the epic thoughts of the Euphrates and the rendering of the eclipse. I can relate.
It does not appear to eat the sun; it is far behind the sun. The sun simply shaves away, gradually, you see less sun and more sky.
…
The sky’s blue was deepening, but there was no darkness.
…
I turned back to the sun. It was going. The sun was going and the world was wrong. The grasses were wrong, they were platinum.
That stuff hiiits. It hits more if you read the whole essay (and are in the right mood) which I recommend you do.
My take on the writing move, circling, is it’s like walking down a long hallway, and you enter a big room on the left. You describe what you see, and you go back out and walk down the hallway some more. If you’re doing it, open a door on the right and describe that; it’s a little room, something related. Then back to another view of the big left room, but since you’re further down the hallway the perspective is different and you’ve seen that other room, and you’re thinking different thoughts. It’s a more accumulated view, perhaps a deeper look, depending on the rhythm the author is going for.4 These different views pile up to a picture that converges on the essay’s personal experience, the point of the writing. The alternate views add space, breathing room, and add more ideas to resonate and amplify the central feeling in some way.5
It’s the same as the moth one, because it’s a personal essay, it’s all real experience. Well, compressed, expanded, edited, remembered, but supposedly the true felt experience. Something that rings true, anyway.
And I really should go out of my way to experience a total solar eclipse, at least once.
jg
footnotes
Dillard witnessed the February 26, 1979 total solar eclipse in the morning, near Yakima, Washington. It was a Monday. The Wikipedia article mentions both of these facts. Yakima is an area I know reasonably well. ↩︎
I’ll lend you my copy if you want to read it. Reading in paper is the best. And you can see my own scribbled notes, plus the previous owner’s equally inscrutable marginalia. ↩︎
The reader has to do some work for there to be sufficient impact on them, they have to do the work because doing the work is the fun part for readers of this type of writing. That’s my current hypothesis on this move. It can also be very difficult to translate a feeling or thought or idea into language that really transmits it successfully. For feelings, I get it. Just saying what you’re trying to say is very flat for feelings. In other contexts, just say what you’re trying to say, please. ↩︎
I sound all sophisticated, like I know what the heck I am talking about. I do not. Really. I am learning as I go here. ↩︎
The argument essay version of this sentence is “The alternate views add more support to the core claim.” ↩︎
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