What Even Is “Technique”?
An awkward moment at a dinner party; the best explanation I’ve seen of “craft”
I had an odd experience a few weeks ago, while visiting a university here in the Midwest. I was having dinner with an old friend, a retired professor, and some of her friends—a kind of repeat of a dinner we’d had ten years before, when I visited after the publication of my first novel. That was the only other time I had met one of her other guests, a famous gay academic who had been, on that first occasion, a little prickly, a little skeptical of a young-ish debut novelist who was having, in a minor way, a moment, a little bitter in a mode I recognized as one flavor of gay elderdom.
I wasn’t thrilled to see him again. I respect his work, I had been excited to meet him that first time, but his particular style of gayness—claws out, condescending, grudging every calorie of warmth—has always felt to me like a cautionary tale, something I hope to avoid. But the woman hosting us I loved, and there were other, more uncomplicatedly kind1 people present to talk with, and as we all had a drink on the deck, enjoying the still-warm fall evening, I thought things were going ok. Then, just as we sat down to dinner, literally as he was pulling out his chair, the academic cleared his throat and said, “So can I ask you just one question about”— the next words weren’t in air quotes, but they might as well have been—“your work?”
I had already sat down, so I had to look up at him as I said sure. Here we go, I thought.