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Explorations
in Creative Writing by Kevin
Brophy. Melbourne
University Press, 2003. ISBN
0522850561. R.R.P.
$34.95. |
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Kevin
Brophy has written two books about creative writing,
Creativity: Psychoanalysis, Surrealism and Creative Writing
(1998) and this one, Explorations in Creative Writing.
Both of these explore areas of creativity and writing
that make them decidedly different from most other books
on the subject: they are not how-to books, not strictly
'inspirational', nor are they strictly 'scholarly' approaches
to literature. They are truly explorations of the
vastness and intimacy of creative writing, with particular
emphasis on the imagination and surrealism.
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Explorations
is divided into three main sections: Reading Writing,
Making Writing and Talking Writing. Brophy explores Kafka's
'Metamorphosis', the prose poem, gender issues, sentence-thinking,
the novelisation of the poem. He gives us samples of his
own short stories and poems, as well as those of others,
including an excerpt of the strange but moving 'Sheep-Child'
of James Dickey.
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In
my ignorance of this poet and this poem in particular,
I sought out the complete verse, and listened to a recording
of Dickey reading it. One wondrous thing that books can
do is to lead you to other books and authors, and I was
completely seduced by this poem I had never heard of before.
Brophy introduces this piece in the context of metamorphosis
and Kafka's famous story.
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Brophy
informs the reader in his introduction that this is a
book about 'how writing gets done', and also how important
reading is to a writer. He continues his references to
the personal, with illustrative, and unsentimental, stories
of his children and family life, particularly the birth
of his first child, his daughter Sophie, in the first
chapter. The openness and vulnerability of his writing
here is appealing, and relevant to the process of writing
in surprising ways. He writes that a 'parent is like an
author whose characters have got riotously out of control
- but in ways that can make the author see, briefly, what
he or she is' (22). |
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There
is a chapter on the sentence, and Brophy postulates whether
writers are sentence-thinkers. He gives us examples of
sentences he has collected, such as one by William Burroughs:
'Krup whinnies like a cynical horse'. Brophy cannot remember
where this comes from in Burroughs' work, but enjoys it
for its sense of timing. He writes about the need for
writers to hear their sentences, not just see them. He
writes a paragraph which is a delight to read, its sentences
rolling over the tongue like the waves it contains roll
over the sand.
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"Prose
lies on a page before us as the sea lies under a great
bird flying from one continent to another. The sentence
is no more a distinct unit of language than the wave is
distinct from the ocean ... they tell us something of
what might be happening underneath the surface; they have
their own storms and moods; we read them because we birds,
moving from the continent of birth to the continent of
death, must feed off what is swimming just below those
waves." (34)
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