It could be you. It could be me.
Mar. 16th, 2009 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leahbobetMarch 16, 2009 Progress Notes:
"Testimony"
Words today: 550.
Words total: 550.
Reason for stopping: Bedtime for writers.
Books in progress: Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth.
The glamour: Some house chores, copious revising, some Ideo slushreading.
The Brittain is one of my The Enchanted Generation research books, and I appear to have hit gold. It's what's now termed creative nonfiction, I guess? The author's recounting, with help from her diaries and other sources, her WWI experiences, but in a style which admits that it's omitted or smoothed things to make them more accessible to a reader.
I've got to say it works. I meant to read a chapter before bed last night and got almost 100 rather dense pages in. I like Vera Brittain, or at least her self-presentation. She's rather hard on herself as a teenager -- unnecessarily so, I think -- and occasionally quite snobby, and she's decidedly a product of her era, but there's a core of intellect and compassion there which is really admirable.
Example, for the commonplace book, from an anecdote about her brother: "At sixteen he was inclined to be rather priggish and self-righteous -- not such bad qualities in adolescence after all, since most of us have to be self-righteous before we can be righteous." Testament of Youth, pg. 40.
That's more...patient, I think, than most people would be. Or are.
"Testimony"
Words today: 550.
Words total: 550.
Reason for stopping: Bedtime for writers.
Books in progress: Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth.
The glamour: Some house chores, copious revising, some Ideo slushreading.
The Brittain is one of my The Enchanted Generation research books, and I appear to have hit gold. It's what's now termed creative nonfiction, I guess? The author's recounting, with help from her diaries and other sources, her WWI experiences, but in a style which admits that it's omitted or smoothed things to make them more accessible to a reader.
I've got to say it works. I meant to read a chapter before bed last night and got almost 100 rather dense pages in. I like Vera Brittain, or at least her self-presentation. She's rather hard on herself as a teenager -- unnecessarily so, I think -- and occasionally quite snobby, and she's decidedly a product of her era, but there's a core of intellect and compassion there which is really admirable.
Example, for the commonplace book, from an anecdote about her brother: "At sixteen he was inclined to be rather priggish and self-righteous -- not such bad qualities in adolescence after all, since most of us have to be self-righteous before we can be righteous." Testament of Youth, pg. 40.
That's more...patient, I think, than most people would be. Or are.
