Part II.

Be Prepared to Receive All Forms of Emotion with Susan Conley

a. Elena Ferrante’s novel, “The Days of Abandonment” is about a marriage ending and a
woman coming close to losing her mind in the days after her husband leaves her for
another, younger woman, someone she knows. The novel starts out in April, one day
(somewhere in the North of Italy) and peaks with the narrator’s nervous breakdown in
August. It’s all an interior monologue about her thoughts to keep control and the
barometer of her feelings about being abandoned. There are stages in her crisis—there’s
the haunting figure from her childhood of La Poverella, who was similarly abandoned
and left to mother her children. Olga is highly intelligent however, a writer in fact, so her
moods are matched by her mind’s acrobatics in trying to keep herself aloft the
devastating ocean of her husband’s departure. Ferrante creates an astonishing emotional
undercurrent throughout the piece, which is in one way a very Italian book, because of
the way the pitched feelings impact the main character. She finally takes up with an older
musician in her apartment building who at a respectful distance, woos her, after a very
awkward night of aborted sex. By the end of the novel, the children are spending time
with their father and his girlfriend, Carla, and she and Carrano, the musician, embrace:
“We loved each other for a long time, in the days and months to come, quietly.” (p 188).
So tranquility and a kind of happiness is achieved.
In Leslie Jamison’s “In Defense of Saccharin(e)” the author explores the concept of
sentimentality in literature. Early on she states: “If sentimentality if the word we use to
insult emotion – than saccharine is the word we use to insult sentimentality.” (p 111).
Jamison points out that she hated Madame Bovary when she was sixteen, but has grown
to love it, analyzing the “melodrama” and even desiring the doomed protagonist’s highs
and lows herself. Jamison quotes numerous subjects on the question of ‘sweetness” and
sentimentality. It is an incredibly well-researched and thought out essay. At one point
(something mentioned by Susan Conley) the writer admits to the many times she’s risen
from her computer to dump more packets of Equal into her fresh cup of tea.
b. At the outset of the seminar, Susan talked about how a personal essay has to have “a real
human-flavored voice.” And the voice has to be compelling because it drives the whole
enterprise. Her focus question was: “How to create voice?” She insisted that pace and
urgency need to animate the text and tension, “spikes and falls.” There has to be
volatility and range so the reader can connect. I thought about her talk as akin to how we
talk about movies, and indeed, Susan gave examples, with incredible quotes on Power
Point slides, from all three texts she assigned, particularly those that “stay in the scene” to
great effect. She encouraged us to express a range of emotions and not to withhold in our
writing. This seems to be an element of the craft. Susan also pulled in examples from
pop culture (cinema) in talking about Claire Dederer’s essay: “What Do We Do About
Monstrous Men?” In particular she noted the Woody Allen predicament for those of us
who love his films, especially “Manhattan” and who take issue with his sexual/romantic
appropriation of his step-daughter. Beyond the question of the #Metoo movement and
the ways men are being revealed to be “monsters” she reminds us, “You have to be
 ruthless to write. Are all ambitious writers monsters?” I left this seminar wanting to
revise my own work and to deepen the emotionality in my personal essays. It was really
valuable for me.

c. None at the moment.