Anna DeForest on Writing Without Artifice

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Introduction

Years ago, I took a test called the Sackheim-Gur, an assessment that measures a person’s tendency towards self-deception. I did already suspect there was something wrong with me, but I was young enough that the contours of the problem remained vague, showing up as a general failure to routinely perform the large and small tasks of daily living. I was young enough to not yet notice that most of my deficiencies came with reciprocal strengths. The Sackheim-Gur consists of twenty questions, mostly regarding subjects considered taboo or abject. For example:

1. Have you ever hated your parents?
2. Have you ever enjoyed your bowel movements?
3. Have you ever been uncertain as to whether or not you were a homosexual?

Subsequent studies show a positive correlation between Sackheim-Gur scores and the Beck Depression index, which indicates that lying to yourself is probably a necessary part of maintaining something like happiness. Of note, I scored near-perfect on the test, meaning I am a hateful deviant who relishes the pleasures of the body, and I won’t lie about it—at least not to myself.

The Role of Storytellers

Storytellers are supposed to be liars; someone somewhere told me that. But I have never been one to tell stories, either. As a child growing up alongside many brothers, I did not like to stand out. When they would run from me (I was told to be a girl), I would run after until they beat me just to make me go away. But some early mornings I would be allowed in their shared bed, where the oldest of them would tell us his dreams, each thrilling and fantastic with through-lines and recurring plots, lacking completely in the strange logic and opaque symbols with which the subconscious tries to signal us. I mean, he made them up. I did not know at the time why I knew that all his dreams were lies. What does the truth sound like?

Writing Fiction as a Means of Paying Attention

I am meant to tell you about writing fiction, and instead I am telling you about lies. Writing, how I do it, is not inventive or imaginary, it is merely a means of paying attention. We live in a world of unreality and dreams, Simone Weil said. To give up our imaginary place at the center means to awaken to what is real.

The Unconscious Mind and Language

I recently learned that Cormac McCarthy published one essay in his lifetime, an essay about the origins of language. Using the lens of dreams, he describes a tension between the mind we know and live with, the conscious mind, and the unconscious mind from which the surface mind seems to arise. When you say, “Let me see, how can I put this,” what exactly is the “this” which you are trying to put? How can it be said to exist? And where? The same assertion comes from the mouth of Alicia Western, the patient in the doctor-patient dyad that composes Stella Maris, the last novel McCarthy published before he died. Can he be said to exist now, and if so, where?

Seeing and Speaking Beyond the Mind’s Limitations

To know what you cannot know, you have to see what you cannot see. You are in possession of a brain, a perceptual device which works hard by design to make sure you stay the same person you were yesterday. Most of all, it will show you what you have already seen, and tell you things that you believe already. In the common language you feed to it, your dominant hemisphere chatters endlessly, barely listening to itself. So to learn to see, you learn to see beyond what the mind tries to show you, and to learn to speak, you learn to listen below the common language, to find instead, as Jack Gilbert called it, the fresh particularity of difference.

The Writing Process

The writing I admire and aim to produce works in a language that is entirely without artifice. This means, to be direct, short blunt words without flourish, minimal description, limited internality, and a lot of direct observation of the external world. I prefer to write in the first person, for the same reason, an atheist stance—there is no one outside of the story, there is no place outside from which to tell it. The narrator is only a person desperate for a voice, desperate to name experience, to bring our vast amorphous perceptions under that pretense of control we only get from language. Something clear to anyone with eyes in their head is that the world is at heart unknown and unknowable, mostly unsayable—and still the writer’s task is to try and try to approach this place to which you know you will never arrive. None of this, you might note, is invention. There is nothing to make up.

Conclusion

Additional Information

Our Long Marvelous Dying by Anna DeForest is available now via Little, Brown. Featured Image: “Woman before a Mirror,” Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, via the Met Museum.

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

• SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
• SDG 4: Quality Education
• SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities

2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

• SDG 3.4: By 2030, reduce by one-third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being.
• SDG 4.7: By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including among others through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.
• SDG 10.2: By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic, and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, or economic or other status.

3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

• Indicator for SDG 3.4: Prevalence of mental health disorders
• Indicator for SDG 4.7: Proportion of students achieving proficiency in sustainable development literacy
• Indicator for SDG 10.2: Proportion of the population reporting having experienced discrimination or harassment in the previous 12 months based on a ground of discrimination prohibited under international human rights law

4. Table: SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

Source: lithub.com