Book Review: The Tin House Writer's Series

It is easy to envision Tin House as the ultimate home for modern literature. An edgy, intelligent literary magazine hangs out in one room; in the dining room, a writers’ seminar lingers around the table; the living room is filled with books that radiate a devotion to the craft of writing. For the aspiring writer who stands outside, nose pressed to the cold glass, The Tin House Writers’ Series provides an invitation into the warmth of this fearless, funny, dysfunctional, and brilliant family. On its own, each of the four books in the series is a delectable course in contemporary literature. Together, the volumes are a feast for the language-starved, best consumed in small bites, but likely to be taken in gulps.The Story About the Story, The Writer’s Notebook, The World Within, and The Journal of Jules Renard comprise the set. A two-hour CD of panel discussions from the Tin House Writers’ Workshops accompanies The Writer’s Notebook. These are books for the writer or reader who loves the craft of writing as much as the end product. In an era of “reality” television, 140 character whatevers, viral media, and rampant self-publishing, this series reminds us why we write. The collection provides the reader with a sense of family, a tightly woven community of authors who care passionately about their art. With the familiarity of recurring characters, many authors appear in more than one volume of the set to make their cases for the craft of writing. Charles D’Ambrosio writes on The Catcher in the Rye in The Story About the Story; he interviews and is interviewed in The World Within, and chats with other panelists about truth in literature on the CD. Dorothy Allison holds forth on the importance of Place in the opening essay of The Writer’s Notebook and discusses character on the CD. Jim Shepard, Chris Offutt, Anna Keesey, Denis Jonson, and Tom Grimes can each be found in more than one volume of the set as well. This overlap of respected authors from one volume to the next produces a sense of familiarity, and of trust in the work. With a consistent message repeated in more than one place, the reader senses that these people do indeed believe their own words.The Tin House Writers’ Series is not a read for the tired of brain or faint of heart. Beginning with the journal of the turn of the twentieth century French poet and playwright Jules Renard and progressing through the heart of contemporary literature into interviews and essays with some of today’s most respected literary figures, this series – rather like a family – spares us nothing in telling us exactly what we need to hear. Though threaded throughout with humor, none of these volumes is a light or easy read, and many passages will produce a squirm of discomfort in any reader possessed of even a modicum of self-awareness.It’s difficult to decide how best to approach the series. Having already reviewed The Story About the Story, and being eager to find hints to improve my own writing, I decided to attack The Writer’s Notebook first. From there I moved through The World Within and on to The Journal of Jules Renard. Next time, I would progress slightly more chronologically, beginning with The Journal of Jules Renard. Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Directly or indirectly, Renard is at the origin of contemporary literature.” Okay, I may be easily dazzled, but if a work is blurbed by Sartre, there’s got to be something there. Jules Renard (1864-1910) was most famous for Poil de Carotte and Les Histoires Naturelles. He associated with the likes of Toulse-Lautrec and Sarah Bernhardt, both of whom are discussed, lauded, and occasionally skewered in his journal. Poil de Carotte was a semi-autobiographical work based on his own dysfunctional family and emotionally abused childhood. The same fearlessness and clarity that must have driven Renard to produce such a work shines through the journal. Shifting from merciless realism through exquisite miniatures of the natural world and engaging aphorisms to deprecating irony, Renard’s journal is a fragmentary prelude to the modern memoir. A reader who expects a contiguous, plot driven autobiography will be disappointed. Instead, The Journal of Jules Renard is a literary grab bag of scraps and gems. For writers, he gives lines such as, “That poignant sensation which makes you take hold of a sentence as though it were a weapon,” and “The profession of letters is, after all, the only one in which one can make no money without being ridiculous.” For the reader, he offers: “One enters a book as one enters a railway carriage, with glances to the rear, hesitations, and a disinclination to change one’s place and one’s ideas. Where will the journey take us? What will the book turn out to be?” The lover or beloved has: “Our life was a lake of friendship through which ran a current of love.” And hints of the modern memoir: “The green waters of memory, into which everything falls. They must be stirred up. Things rise to the surface.”

Article Author: Christy Corp-Minamiji

Christy Corp-Minamiji is a livestock veterinarian, writer, and mother living in Northern California. She writes fiction and blogs on the eclectic range of topics that interest her.

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