TO BE SENTIMENTAL OR NOT TO BE

My mother-in-law,

some years before her death, read my memoir about growing up on an Iowa farm, Curlew: Home, and pronounced it "not the least bit sentimental." That was high praise from a former chair of the English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. And it set me to wondering why my book was not sentimental, when many other such remembrances get sticky with the syrup.

Lately I have been doing some editing which brings me into contact with the personal narratives of other writers, some of which go towards sentimentality and some that do not. And again I am led to consider: what's the difference? And, if a sentimental telling has good bones, how can it be saved?

The difference is this: the author of the nonsentimental memoir reports her experience as truly and accurately as possible and lets it speak for itself; the author of the sentimental piece tries to tell us not about the experience but about how to feel about the experience. It's a question of focus. In the first case, the author reports the experience as truly as is humanly possible, and leaves it to us to establish what it means and how we feel about it. In the second case, the author is not so much interested in the experience, but in shaping our response to the experience, manipulating us with cheap effects.

Sadness and loss don't have to be sentimental. And, if a story that tends towards sentimentality has good bones, it can be saved from itself. It can be revised to lay out the facts of the experience; the instructions about how we should feel can be excised. Yet the authors of sentimental writing often resist such editing - because the story is so personal and its meaning would be lost for them if anything were removed. Such writers stand too close to what they are telling. If one is going to tell a story clearly and truly and without sentimentalizing it, he has to pull back and see it for what it is. "Art" in writing requires perspective and sharpness. Perspective requires that the writer knows where he stands in relation to the experience and in relation to the reader. Sharpness demands that any fuzzy cheap sweetness be fully excluded.

Sentimentality in writing is a way for the writer to manipulate the reader so she will feel what the writer wants her to feel, and nothing else.

Now I would be lying if I said that the good writer, the unsentimental writer, was not trying to manipulate the reader. That's our business, and that's the magic of writing - getting readers to feel what we want them to feel. It's a lot harder work than sentimentality, this setting up all the elements in the art of it , laying out the story in such a fashion, so the reader gets what we want him to get. Yet the good writer makes a compact with that reader: I won't push you around if you come with me. The sentimental writer is like a bossy older brother, pushing and shoving and telling us how to feel.

Comments

[Jean]

Oh, this is something I need to read! How to be lean with sentiment, even when wanting to be lush or complex with words and images - that is the hard thing to learn, I think. Hard for the novice to know the difference sometimes.

[Dave]

Absolutely right on. I should bookmark this post for future use.

[Tom Montag]

Jean and Dave--both of you, thanks for your good words. This about sentimentality IS one of the hardest things to learn, but I think it can be learned, if not in a theorical way, then with the editor's pen.

[jen bateman]

the topic of sentimentality came up in our writing group - i found your article - by accident on the www AND very helpful - thank you Tom, kind regards, cheerio from down-under, jen

[Tom Montag]

Cheerio, Jen. Glad to be of help. Regards from The Land of Winter Coming On.