{"id":2596,"date":"2014-03-13T07:00:32","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T11:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/?p=2596"},"modified":"2014-03-12T23:19:03","modified_gmt":"2014-03-13T03:19:03","slug":"respecting-the-craft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/respecting-the-craft.php","title":{"rendered":"Respecting the craft"},"content":{"rendered":"

Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air<\/em> shares a beautiful interview with author\u00a0Colm Toibin<\/a> which weaves through religion and ritual and beauty and faith. While the whole thing is worth a listen, I was struck by the last little bits of their conversation. Gross notes that Toibin dislikes the label ‘storyteller’ and the assumption that his gifts for writing come from the oral tradition of his Irish heritage.<\/p>\n

\"Clay<\/a>

Flickr user LittleLexxis<\/p><\/div>\n

Says he:<\/p>\n

I hate being called a storyteller, because I’m a novelist<\/em>. In other words, I hold and wield textures and tones and language. And if you think that it’s natural for me to do that, it is not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Novel writing is an endeavor of endless craft and struggle and focus and flair. While novels can certainly tell stories, they are vastly more than storytelling. As for the oral tradition, Toibin has a response for that too:<\/p>\n

I don’t come out of an oral tradition, I come out of silence… What I noticed most in my childhood or even in my adulthood was the silences between the words, the things that were not<\/em> said. The reason why a story was told so that some other<\/em> story, that was more true, might not be told. And it’s my job to tell that<\/em> story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have a tendency sometimes, and I’ve seen the tendency in others, to place a populist frame around creative work. In an effort to encourage the ideas that ‘art is for everyone’ and ‘creativity is common to us all’ I play a bit fast and loose with the slow and focused craft of true artistry. Both extraordinary and more ‘ordinary’ expressions have value, both have purpose and place in our lives and in our world. But they’re different.<\/p>\n

A favorite music review back in the 1980s said that “calling Bobby McFerrin a singer is alike calling the Grand Canyon a hole.”<\/p>\n

Toibin’s remarks reminded me to take greater care in how I consider and discuss the difference between the exceptional and the simply expressive, between the canyon and the hole.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air shares a beautiful interview with author\u00a0Colm Toibin which weaves through religion and ritual and beauty and faith. While the whole thing is worth a listen, I was struck by the last little bits of their conversation. Gross notes that Toibin dislikes the label ‘storyteller’ and the assumption that his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2596","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}