Sunday Salter

Followers of this blog will recall my affection for James Salter and the terrific Narrative Magazine, which has no pay wall on its online sight (free membership is required).  This week Narrative has posted a few pages handwritten and set from the story Charisma.  The posting is part of a great ongoing series on the site entitled By Hand which reproduceds original manuscripts of works from the magazine or noteworthy literature.

There is something mystical about see the gener-ation of a story.  One of the reasons I decided to put together Hitchcock's Notebooks was that I knew that Hitchcock fans needed to see his handwriting, his sketches as opposed to being told about these things.  The artwork's DNA is in the artist's noodle work, penmanship, eliminations, stets--symbolic (and this is not hyperbole) of that continual argument between the Creator and its creation.  We know the creator, but it is in the earlier sketches that we begin to know the creation--the child before the man, so to speak. As a writer, it is the best physical proof that I can provide that once the blank page (screen, stage, etc) begins to be filled, that space now occupied begins to push back at you, argue, suggest, complain, grow, and very often whither--until the two of you and that thing you've started finds its fullest meaning in a shape that satisfies the artist.   Now this  story or film must begin its own conversation with the strangers it will encounter in the world.

Pages from Charisma on Narrative.