MFA in a Box: A Why to Write Book - Softcover

Rember, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 098257942X ISBN 13: 9780982579428

Publisher: Dream of Things, 2011

Synopsis

As Rember notes in his introduction, “MFA in a Box is not a How to Write Book. It’s a Why to Write Book.” By exploring the relationships between the writer and love, grief, place, family, race and violence, Rember helps writers dive deep into their own writing. He tells them how they can breathe down there and how they can get back.“A big part of writing involves grappling with the terrors and discouragements that come when you have writing skills but can’t project yourself or your work into the future,” says Rember. “My hope is that MFA in a Box will help writers balance the despair of writing with the joy of writing. It’s a book designed to help you to find the courage to put truth into words and to understand that writing is a life-and-death endeavor—but that nothing about a life-and-death endeavor keeps it from being laugh-out-loud funny.”

About this title

About the Author

John Rember lives and writes in the Sawtooth Valley of Idaho. Recurring themes in his writing include the meaning of place, the impact of tourism on the West, and the fragility of industrial civilization. His books include A Hundred Little Pieces on the End of the World; Traplines: Coming Home to Sawtooth Valley; MFA in a Box: A Why to Write Book; Sudden Death, Over Time; Cheerleaders from Gomorrah: Tales from the Lycra Archipelago; and Coyote in the Mountains and Other Stories.

Reviews

Drawing on Gilgamesh, the Book of Job, the myth of Orpheus, his own life, and the lives of Ezra Pound and Jack Henry Abbott, with a little James Hillman thrown in, Rember (Traplines) argues that the only reason to write is to tell the truth about the soul-less, life-denying, nature-destroying culture we inhabit. This news simultaneously taps into a writer's deepest fantasy-I'm the one, the truth teller-and nightmare-writing really does require a descent into hell, and makes the writer superhuman, able to bear truths the rest of society can't. There must be a lot of kryptonite about, then, because Rember's effort often reads like a cross between self-help manual (face the darkness!) and a teacher's cri de coeur (go deeper; don't make me read another puerile story!). It's hard to argue with some of his points-yes, language lies, especially when writers mistake prettifying for deepening. But when the insights have to be plucked from a mash-up of overstatements, self-indulgent personal narratives, and gnomic and risible rules like "Dream as a God, write as a mortal," most writers and would-be-writers will opt to find another box.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Dream of Things
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 098257942X
• ISBN 13: 9780982579428
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272