Chuck Klosterman: preference

Transcript context

…Okay, but how are you worse? What is it you fail to succeed at? Well, the most important quality of writing, in my view at least, is the unteachable element, which is voice. If writing has voice, the content — I wouldn’t say it’s irrelevant, but voice can compensate for a lot. A lot of times, when you’re teaching kids about writing, they ask questions like, “How do you find your voice?” Or “How did you find your voice?” is something they often want to know. The reality is, your voice exists inside of you. You just have to pull it out. You’re not finding it. You’re not going to find it from reading other people. My take on this is, I think of my life, and there was this variety of writers. When I was in high school, I really liked Dave Barry. Then I went to college and I was into Douglas Coupland. Then, I was into Raymond Carver for a while, and so I’d want to read all of this, and then it was like, “Oh, Michael Lanier.” I thought that was really great. Then David Foster Wallace — I was obsessed with that, but he was the last one. I think that you don’t become a writer until you no longer want to be like other writers. That’s sort of the key. The key is getting beyond the idea that there is some idea of what you think writing is that you can somehow match or find or replicate. And you just go off and do your own thing that only you can do. I feel pretty strongly about that, but there again, I’m going by my experience. You can teach mechanical aspects of writing to someone, and you can make one little jump. You can make somebody who’s very mediocre into okay, and you can turn somebody who’s okay into pretty good, and somebody who’s pretty good, maybe you can make very good. But to really change the experience for people consuming that work, to take someone and say, “If you do these things, you’ll be able to become the writer you want.” It doesn’t seem like that’s how it works to me. I taught a writing class, and I think it was kind of useless. In the same way, when I was in college, I was an editor at the school paper. I found that I was a real bad editor because I had two natural inclinations that were dissident. Either I would be like, “I’m going to rewrite everything in this because this is terrible. ” Or I would be like, “That’s him, it’s her, she gets to do what she wants, just put it through.” It’s hard for me to be that middle person because anytime I read anything, any book I read, as I’m reading it, I’m changing the sentences in my mind That’s how I’ve always been. Now, you’ve put out a deck of cards called HYPERtheticals. I’ll ask you one of your own questions. Here I’m quoting you: “Every person you have ever slept with is invited to a banquet where you are the guest of honor. No one will be in attendance except you, the collection of your former lovers, and the caterers. After the meal, you’re asked to give a 15-minute speech to the assembly. What do you talk about?”…

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