In Search Of Imagery
When I read Sam Cook and John McPhee I can’t help but notice the imagery in their work. For me, the search for the perfect description of sight and sound is unattainable. There are certainly quality anecdotes for these two senses, and I would say Cook and McPhee both show that in their works.
My question is how does one find the imagery?
For instance do they analyze a situation through interaction or do they take a step back and evaluate and observe like a scientist? When they are picking out mannerisms of someone or describing their attitude how do they do it so tastefully?
A good example of this imagery can be seen when Cook describes Rob Hursh and his deer processing shop and how he keeps working while the football game is on or he’s on the phone.
In my head I could see him multitasking, the deer processing continuing as body’s hang around Hursh in the air.
I found John McPhee’s work interesting. His, in the sense that he seems to mix sentences structures which is something I look for in good writing. I believe some of that is because he’s writing how he’s observing or recounting the information as he saw it.
“People watch for ice from Dawson — which is about a hundred miles away in Yukon Territory — and whenever barrels, garbage, foul debris go hurtling by on soiled floes, someone will grunt knowledgeably and say, ‘Dawson ice’. The White, the Klondike, the Stewart, the Pelly, the Nordenskiöld, the Teslin, the Fortymile let go their ice arrhythmically and give it into the Yukon. Pelly ice. Stewart ice. Teslin ice. Fortymile ice. It takes two or three weeks for it all to go by a single point like Eagle…” McPhee said.
It makes me feel like McPhee is telling me the story here, or talking to me about it and recalling it from memory. I could almost see the names on the map pop up as he listed where the ice comes from (I had to look at a map to actually see where this was after reading it to be honest, but the result is the same).
I think the best thing about writing is that when done well, it’s better than watching a movie. This is because it caters to an imagination and puts you in your version of “there”. I think Sam Cook and John McPhee are solid examples of writing done very well based on their ability to make me feel “present” at the described scene.
I think the ability to have that imagery and putting an audience “in the scene” comes from how you evaluate the sources. Sources are everything, McPhee’s “abc/d” is a pretty good example of that, and how he builds a feature is interesting.
I’m interested to evaluate more source gathering techniques because I think that’s where imagery truly comes from. The ability McPhee exhibits to jump at a chance and understand that each piece is abstract, is inspiring. In my head I concluded we have to be scavengers of information and there is information all around yet to be discovered. Our collection methods vary, and they must do so if we seek to prod the truth and do our imagery justice.