When young writers, particularly would-be journalists, ask me for advice about improving their thinking as well as their writing, I tell them to consider some topic about which they have strong personal feelings.
Then write an essay arguing vigorously in favor of the other side’s opinion. Make sure it is loaded with facts and figures to support the thesis. And construct your argument with just the one hand—no other hand, please.
We thought we knew how Voyager would end. The power would gradually, inevitably, run down. The instruments would shut off, one by one. The signal would get fainter. Eventually either the last instrument would fail for lack of power, or the signal would be lost.
We didn’t expect that it would go mad.
A chicken recipe calls for a half cup of red wine, but you never have leftover wine for cooking with because why on earth wouldn’t you just finish it? A corked bottle, at someone’s house, with two inches of wine at the bottom? It’s so quaint it makes you chuckle. What are they — Amish? You open a bottle, pour half a cup into the pan, and then drink the rest of it while the chicken cooks, like a normal person.
In the shed outside your house, where the garbage goes, some of your empties are stashed on the floor in assorted bags and boxes because the 50-gallon recycling bin is always already full of them. When you see them, you flush with shame.
More than anything, this is a novel about the power and importance of stories.
Why we feel so deeply and act so strangely toward these twilight creatures is the subject of Erika Howsare’s consuming The Age of Deer. In this profound and courageous walkabout of a book, she traipses into a dense thicket of social and economic history, myth and imagination, culture and ecology. The result both pleases and demands.