Local author to discuss ‘insignificant detail’

Ask a Vassar student what makes a novel great and they will easily give you a list of criteria: a richness of detail, character development, etc. Ask the same kid what makes nonfiction great and the question might not be so quickly answered. With his talk, "Bill Sikes's Dog: The Value of the Insignificant Detail in the Work of Creative Nonfiction," author Peter Trachtenberg will posit a solution to this problem while discussing the nuances of nonfiction writing.

Trachtenberg, a Hudson Valley writer/memoirist, will lecture in Sander's Classroom this Thursday at 5:30 p.m. In addition to his neighborly proximity to campus, Trachtenberg is married to the English Department's current writer-in-residence, Mary Gaitskill. His works include The Book of Calamities: Five Questions About Suffering and Its Meaning, which is the recipient of the 2009 Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Award "for scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity."

The person responsible for bringing Trachtenberg to Vassar was Assistant Professor of English Julie Park. "It's important because it's a topic that we don't get to think that much about in such a philosophical and also spiritually resonant way," said Park on the subject of suffering. "It's as much of an intellectual narrative as a medium for healing."

This powerful notion of the worth of writing was not something Trachtenberg always considered. The writer went through a period in his life where, though he could technically write well, he was unsure of his motives. Trachtenberg recalled, "I didn't know what the purpose was. I just really wanted people to read what I was writing. It wasn't until I was 40 that I began to write in order to write the best thing that I possibly could, to acquire some kind of mastery and to understand something about the world."

He cites varied influences such as Vladimir Nabokov, Charles Dickens, Joan Didion and Simone Weil, among others. Like some of these authors, Trachtenberg writes in different genres, fiction and nonfiction. Park characterized Trachtenberg: "He's wry and compassionate and endlessly curious."

A way to utilize both fiction and nonfiction well is by intricately detailing events. In the title of his lecture, Trachtenberg references the antagonist from Dickens's Oliver Twist. The love between the villainous Bill Sikes and his dog gives Sikes depth and pathos. This seemingly extraneous figure, a dog, adds to the realistic quality of the text.

"We're used to thinking of fiction as seeing these incidental, irrelevant, insignificant details," Trachtenberg explains. "The details can be a character like Bill Sikes's dog, a description of something or even an episode. We don't know what its function in the larger work is except that it gives the work a depth and life it wouldn't often have. Some critics cite their presence in fiction or theater, but I also think they're present in great nonfiction. So, I'm talking about it from a critical perspective, but I'm also talking about it from a practitioner's perspective. The key about being a fiction writer is that if you're good enough, you invent stuff. But if you're a nonfiction writer, you can't invent anything, so how do you describe or see those details if they're there?"

Trachtenberg encourages students to "be conscious and attentive" in order to write compelling works. This is not to say that the talk is only for nonfiction writers or English majors.

Park reasoned, "I think it's always fascinating to talk to writers because they turn anything into a great story. It should be really cool to come, even if you're not a practicing writer to see how the very materials of life, everything, can be turned into stories. Nonfiction, stuff that happens in reality, is the material for a narrative."

To hear an artist talk about his or her work is always a great privilege. Vassar students are spoiled with opportunities to hear talented people explain their crafts. At the very least, Trachtenberg should help students answer a few pesky critical theory questions the next time some literary type accosts them on the way to lunch.