Process Diary #3 đ
On writing a near-perfect sentence, Leslie Jamison, and the power of words.
Good morning! Welcome to Wednesday. The weather in Tokyo has finally become warm enough to pack away my kotatsu (a Japanese low table with a heater underneath), which means that after living in Japan for almost three years, I have officially experienced my final winter as a resident of my old and drafty, but otherwise wholly excellent apartment.
This weekâs reading recommendation is an essay by Leslie Jamison, who, in an exploration that is equal parts critical and inquisitive, unpacks the cultural phenomenon behind the popularity of gaslightingâboth the using and the doing of the term. From a craft standpoint, the essay reminded me of Cheryl Merrillâs â13 Ways of Looking at an Elephantâ, which, very obviously, examines âelephantââthe term, its context, its historiographyâfrom thirteen different lens. Jamison, too, does something similar in this essay, which is why I wanted to share it with you. Through interviews with patients, clinicians, herself, and with friends, she offers up a very detailed exposĂ© of something that has taken deep root in todayâs culture. You can read excerpts of both below, followed by this weekâs Process Diary for paying subscribers: a discussion on sentence structure and why I obsess over it.
From Leslie Jamisonâs âSo You Think Youâve Been Gaslitâ:
âGila Ashtor, a psychoanalyst and a professor at Columbia University, told me she often sees patients experience a profound sense of relief when it occurs to them that they may have been gaslit. As she put it, âItâs like light at the end of the tunnel.â But Ashtor worries that such relief may be deceptive, in that it risks effacing the particular (often unconscious) reasons they may have been drawn to the dynamic. Ashtor defines gaslighting as âthe voluntary relinquishing of oneâs narrative to another person,â and the word âvoluntaryâ is crucialâthatâs what makes it a dynamic rather than just a unilateral act of violence. For Ashtor, itâs not a question of blaming the victim but of examining their susceptibility: what makes someone ready to accept another personâs narrative of their own experience? What might they have been seeking?â
From Cheryl Merrillâs â13 Ways of Looking at an Elephantâ
âAn elephant's vision is front facing, binocular, but an elephant also has a large blind spot caused by its nose. Place both hands between your eyes in the manner of prayer and you will see what I mean. The rods in an elephant's eye register mostly greens and blues, helpful to a creature who needs huge amounts of water and browse. It is said that elephants will stare at a full moon; do they also see the stars?
What would it be like to think without words and recognize shapes without names?â
Process Diary #3: On Aspiring to Write a Near-Perfect Sentence
This week I have been focusing a lot on sentence structure and sentence variabilityâaspects of writing that, when done well, can determine whether your audience remains interested in what you have to say or not. I myself will often put a book or magazine down as soon as I discover that I donât like the writing styleâeven if the story or the author or the research are worthy of praise. While a lot of this comes down to personal taste, I do believe that a writerâs ability to keep readersâ attention lies not in any grandiose sweepings of the pen, but in the barely-there and hardly perceptible mechanics of their sentences. Like any relationship, that which exists between a writer and a reader ought to be built upon mutual curiosity of, and investment in, one anotherâwhere small and intentional building blocks can create a whole world of trust.
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