The Art of Reflection in Creative Nonfiction
Robert Root
I have a scholarly bent that produces articles and monographs and a literary bent that generates creative nonfiction. I think I sometimes bring into essay and memoir the habits of article and monograph. I write not only about what I do but also about what I learn, and so I not only narrate my experiences but also contemplate their contexts. Friends sometimes chide me for the writerly voice in this section of an essay and the scholarly voice in that section. I think of the first as “the experiential voice” (it records events, experience) and the second as “the reflective voice” (it reflects on and responds to information).
Certainly some narratives never risk reflection, some reflections never include narrative; in either case they never reveal competing voices. A nonfiction writer creates a persona in one work that may differ from the persona he or she creates in another work. The problem is when, in a single work, two or more personas work against each other, shifting the tone of the work and perhaps its mode of discourse. Apparently I’m not alone in feeling –or being made to feel—that, when I juxtapose the two voices, my experiential voice and my reflective voice sometimes clash, seem to come from two different writers.
Just a year ago, discussing the switch from a narrative voice to a reflective voice, Richard Terrill made this off-hand remark (or something very like it): “The way to get reflection into the writing is to always write reflectively.” I couldn’t tell if he was being profound or flippant—perhaps both—, but his remark stayed with me and when I read his essay in a recent River Teeth, I thought I discovered a passage that illustrates how experiential and reflective writing might work together. (The italics in this excerpt are mine.)
My car climbs a hill through a rock cut, and down the other side lies the village of Colfax, with its white water tower like a golf ball on a tee at that country club a few miles back. It appears against a green hilly background. Across the way a herd of dairy cattle takes its time to be itself. In Colfax you can find “Karaoke with Dave: 5 P.M.” at the Viking Bowl. You can find at least seven churches, the names of which are listed on the sign at the edge of town: United Methodist, First Lutheran, Church of Christ, and four more names I would have to stop moving to read. The Outhouse bar lies a half block from Railroad Street. “Colfax: Half Way Between the Equator and the North Pole. 3,186 miles.” It’s one of many towns to brag of this. I wonder, if they had to leave, which way the residents would go, pole or equator? I like to think they’d go north. Just as Minnesota and Wisconsin carry meaning in my personal mythology, so do the concepts of north and south. North is fewer people, in more space, and weather designed to keep them out. North is a short growing season so you can better appreciate every day of it. We shouldn’t be able to control the weather. The weather is not supposed to be nice most of the time. Do I sound WASPy in this? Do I care? This is what North means, and thus exactly what South means is not very important because it can’t mean this. Perhaps in Argentina, South means this. But Buenos Aires is a long way from the Halfway Bar and Karaoke with Dave.
In my reading of this passage the plain text is predominantly experiential, the italicized text predominantly reflective, and some are probably both at the same time. I doubt whether it’s always clear when prose is experiential or reflective, except at extremes of expression, but at least here we can see reflection rising from experience; the present tense hints that this process of intermingled observation and contemplation is happening as the author lives through the experience. The combination makes us realize that “thinking” is as much a narrative act as “doing” is.
I think we need to collect more examples like this if we want to understand the art of reflection in creative nonfiction.
Work Cited
Terrill, Richard. “Trout Fishing : A Manifesto,” River Teeth. 5:1 (Fall 2003): 127-128.
Terrill Passage:
My car climbs a hill through a rock cut, and down the other side lies the village of Colfax, with its white water tower like a golf ball on a tee at that country club a few miles back. It appears against a green hilly background. Across the way a herd of dairy cattle takes its time to be itself. In Colfax you can find “Karaoke with Dave: 5 P.M.” at the Viking Bowl. You can find at least seven churches, the names of which are listed on the sign at the edge of town: United Methodist, First Lutheran, Church of Christ, and four more names I would have to stop moving to read. The Outhouse bar lies a half block from Railroad Street. “Colfax: Half Way Between the Equator and the North Pole. 3,186 miles.” It’s one of many towns to brag of this. I wonder, if they had to leave, which way the residents would go, pole or equator? I like to think they’d go north. Just as Minnesota and Wisconsin carry meaning in my personal mythology, so do the concepts of north and south. North is fewer people, in more space, and weather designed to keep them out. North is a short growing season so you can better appreciate every day of it. We shouldn’t be able to control the weather. The weather is not supposed to be nice most of the time. Do I sound WASPy in this? Do I care? This is what North means, and thus exactly what South means is not very important because it can’t mean this. Perhaps in Argentina, South means this. But Buenos Aires is a long way from the Halfway Bar and Karaoke with Dave.
Richard Terrill, “Trout Fishing : A Manifesto,” River Teeth. 5:1 (2003): 127-128.