Resident Writing

[cos]

A story set in a particular place can show how well the writer knows that place. Sometimes, I think it goes to another level, where you don't just realize the writer knows the place really well, but that you're reading something that could only have been written by someone who had lived there. Even if you know nothing else about the writer, you know they've lived in the place where that story is set.

What comes to mind for me is Zodiac by Neal Stephenson. I had no idea Stephenson had ever lived in Boston when I first read it, but it dawned on during the first chaper. Not in a questioning, "huh, did he ever live here?" way, but as fact: "I didn't realize Neal Stephenson had lived in Boston. Huh."

Have you read something that made you realize the writer had lived in the place where it was set?

Any thoughts on what it is about the writing that can make this so evident?

Comments

[emp42ress.livejournal.com]

I don't think this is necessarily as clear as you might think. I'm pretty sure I could write about Seattle and maybe Portland in a way that made you think I had lived there. It requires having spent time there and having good friends who live there, however.

[cos]

Could you do that?

Would I even know the difference, never having lived there myself? That is, could I ever get that confidence that "this could not have been written by someone who hadn't lived in [place]" if I'd never lived in that place myself? I can't remember any examples of that from my experience.

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

Sometimes excessive familiarity with a place can impede instead of facilitate. One nit that comes to mind is "Pattern Recognition," in which Gibson offhandedly mentions the wooden escalators in the Camden tube. Those have been gone for a decade, maybe a bit longer, so anyone with current knowledge of the tube station goes "wtf." It's clear he has a long-term familiarity with place, but for whatever reason (whether he didn't know or decided it was too good to pass up) has introduced an older version. It's a bit disorienting.

[joshwriting.livejournal.com]

Had that same experience reading Zodiac.

[ron_newman]

Jonathan Franzen showed excellent knowledge of Somerville (where he had lived) in his novel Strong Motion.

[cos]

Excellent knowledge, or "this cannot have been written by someone who hadn't lived in Somerville"?

[ron_newman]

I'd say the latter, but it's been a while since I read the book.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

One of the things I live about that book is the intimate feeling of knowing pretty much every place he describes and the way the descriptions resonate. It's not name dropping, it's just there like air and water.

[lindseykuper]

I don't think I could be confident in my ability to know that a writer had lived in a place based only on the way they wrote about it. In one of William Gibson's recent books, one of the characters walks down 111th Street in Manhattan, past the Banco Popular that's at the corner of 111th and Broadway. Alex lived on that street last summer, and I've walked by that Banco Popular lots of times. It was remarkable that Gibson would point it out by name, but I don't get the impression that he necessarily lived there; he might have just walked by once, or a few times, and decided to leave it in a book as a kind of Easter egg for the handful of readers who might notice and appreciate it.

What do you think of Zodiac, by the way? I couldn't get into it when I tried to read it a few years ago.

[cos]

When I think of writing that's really familiarly set in a place, it's rarely about name dropping or easter eggs. Mentions of specific places do appear, but they're not the thing that gives the feeling that the writer had to have lived there. Like you say, merely mentioning specific places by name doesn't imply much. Maybe they walked by once and noted a detail, or maybe they asked someone else to tell them about the place in question.

[bassringer.livejournal.com]

I picked up a book set in Toronto, and it seemed like the author was determined to give that impression. There was gratuitous geographical name-dropping all over the place. "I walked east along Isabella Street, and then north on Church Street towards Bloor." "If I got off the 501 Streetcar here, I could walk two blocks north to Kensington Market. Or I could stay on and go to the western beaches." It was very clumsy. Though not nearly as bad as the main character herself (who, presumably like the author, had just moved to Toronto and was determined to be a part of it).
I couldn't get through more than a couple of chapters.

[cos]

In their determination to give that impression, did the author *actually* convey that they can't possibly have not lived there? Or did they just manage to give the impression of trying to hard to fill it with local stuff, without giving any certainty about whether they'd lived there or not?

What I was describing is not the type of writing that's trying to convince you of anything, BTW. But I'm still interested in your example, even though it's not what I was describing.

[bassringer.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know that it's not what you're describing. This definitely felt like someone who'd just moved to Toronto (or had visited a few times) but was trying to convince the world that she grew up downtown. So she was failing to do what your author did without trying.

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

Actually I've been the research end of people trying to accurately write as if they were local when they're not. It's interesting and highly engaging to provide that level of detail to someone who's not a native. Little details are what makes the grade. (All of these examples drawn from the same research project for an unnamed writer friend.) Which ambulance company would respond to a gunshot wound reported, how long would it take them to get there at a given time of day based on standard traffic variations, what would they pass along the way, where would the shooter have been standing for the victim to have been shot through and the bullet ended up embedded in the wall of a specific alleyway. Why would the EMT recognize the area and remember the church that's now condos when it was still an active parish.

[cos]

Fascinating work! Now, does it result in the more usual lots of local knowledge sort of writing, or can this kind of research actually allow someone to write the kind of thing that would make someone think "only someone who lived there could've written this"? I think almost certainly not, but I'm not sure if you were trying to say that could happen, or you've seen it happen?

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

I was referring to research work I have actually done for writers which they've used. The results have had people asking said writers whether or not they were actually locals, so my take on this is yes, you can write a city without having lived there. But to do so you have to be a very good and careful writer and you have to have the right research to make it work

[cos]

Yes, I understood you were talking about research work you've done for writers which they've used.

"The results have had people asking said writers whether or not they were actually locals, so my take on this is yes, you can write a city without having lived there."

Doesn't sound like a yes to me - it's too indirect to tell one way or the other (in that you're relaying what writers told you about what people asked them, rather than having talked to one of the readers directly yourself and been able to ask them about it.) Comparing to my example, for instance - it didn't make me ask whether Stephenson had lived in Boston, because I wasn't wondering whether he had - I just felt like I knew it, and I was more curious about when and where and such so I looked that up.

My impression is that all the research in the world isn't by itself sufficient to write something like what I described in this post, but it may be that all the research in the world plus a certain kind of writing skill may let someone do that without ever having lived there. Or, it may not. I lean towards "not" but I'm not sure.

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

Actually I've been the research end of people trying to accurately write as if they were local when they're not. It's interesting and highly engaging to provide that level of detail to someone who's not a native. Little details are what makes the grade. (All of these examples drawn from the same research project for an unnamed writer friend.) Which ambulance company would respond to a gunshot wound reported, how long would it take them to get there at a given time of day based on standard traffic variations, what would they pass along the way, where would the shooter have been standing for the victim to have been shot through and the bullet ended up embedded in the wall of a specific alleyway. Why would the EMT recognize the area and remember the church that's now condos when it was still an active parish.

[johnromkey.livejournal.com]

Anything by Stephen King. Or everything by Stephen King. I wish he'd write about somewhere else someday.