I feel as if lately I’m honing a craft never desired: the tribute piece.
In July, I wrote a farewell to my best friend – that may seem an odd term to apply to an 88-year-old man, but it’s the right one. His name was Bob Hammel, and he was a sportswriter by trade and a mentor by whatever bad luck delivered me to his door. He loved words. I’m thinking of that now, because I just heard from the widow of Daniel Woodrell, a great writer who died last weekend, and another man who loved words. If you’ve ever seen me at an event, you’ve likely heard me mention his work. You can read his New York Times obituary here.
I first met him on one indelible Florida night when I drank Pappy Van Winkle (thanks, Stewart O’Nan!) with Daniel, his wife, Katie, and a host of exceptional writers and people. I was in awe of him and no doubt drove him crazy with questions. He was kind and funny and patient. Reviewing dozens of e-mails over the years, I see those qualities never changed. He was humble but also clear-eyed in what he was chasing. An example:
I’m a pathetic idealist (Don’t tell anybody!) and want writing to do more inside of me now, help me slip deeper into the world I have walked through, on the Chekhovian advice that a writer needs to respond to his or her times, directly or slyly or by a carom shot, but somehow.
If you were searching for writing inspiration, you’d struggle to find better than that, and this was something he fired off in a casual e-mail to a young writer. Or maybe not so casual – he knew what his work meant to me. Conventional wisdom would suggest a writer’s heroes are other writers, but the real inspirations are the sentences. Daniel Woodrell wrote some of the finest lines of prose you’ll ever encounter. Here is one I will admire and teach for the rest of my life: “His voice held raised hammers and long shadows.”
Breathe that in.
It is a description of Teardrop, a terrifying but morally fascinating centerpiece of the remarkable novel, WINTER’S BONE, and it is a sentence I enjoy teaching. Before I read the students that line, I give them a challenge: describe someone speaking with menace. Make me feel it.
They dig in, do their best. They’re talented. I’ve heard some wonderful lines over the years. What they don’t think to offer, though, is an eye instead of an ear. I’ve requested a voice, after all; they lean on the obvious sense. Daniel Woodrell, on the other hand, used a visual to convey the emotion of a sound, and the resulting virtuosity – in a mere eight words, ten syllables – is original, clear, and haunting. His books are the same, the result of spare, stacked brilliance. They are chilling and hilarious, grim and graceful, deeply human.
I mentioned that sentence in my last e-mail to him. If I could send one more, I’d tell him that when I next teach those eight perfect words – which I will do for as long as anyone cares to hear my thoughts on this craft – I’ll tweak it to the present tense, so that the voice “holds raised hammers and long shadows.” I’ll do that because I want the voice to remain active and present, as Daniel’s is, and forever will be.