Swallowing the Sea: On Writing & Ambition, Boredom, Purity & Secrecy

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Synopsis

This is an inspiring book about writing and—more unusually—a book that honors ambition, that idiosyncratic drive that compels writers and other artists to action despite every kind of obstacle. Upton explores forces that threaten our ability to fulfill the most daring aspirations, and she examines ambition’s adjuncts, including failure, boredom, and purity, offering a provocative antidote: obsession. Ultimately Upton argues for a new perception of literary art as “a good secret” for our time, when our interior lives and our imaginations are under threat.

Praise for Lee Upton’s work:

Swallowing the Sea confronts powerful, sometimes uncomfortable facets of the writing life with honesty, humor, erudition and élan. Lee Upton is a delightful guide through fascinating terrain.

— Sam Lipsyte

Lee Upton has written a refreshingly honest, compact, ambitious, nuanced, anecdotal, and capacious book about writing. It will make you flinch with recognition. It may also steel your resolve and steady your hand. I find it exhilarating and even wise.

— Edward Hirsch

Books on writing are seldom as entertaining as the one that Lee Upton has put together for us. Watching her muse about each of her chosen topics — ambition, boredom, purity, and secrecy — alerts us to the pleasures and mysteries of writing and reading. She's sly, eclectic, and never at a loss for bulls-eye examples. Our memories and moods are roused and revisited. We're reminded of writings we've enjoyed and alerted to ones we may not have encountered yet. There's not a shred of pomposity or self-importance in this wonderful rumination on a writer's life, world, and surprised delight.

— David Young

Lee Upton announces at the beginning of her marvelous new book, "This is a book about ambition." This is true, and it's also an ambitious book, but an ambitious book that wears its ambitions, and brilliance, lightly, endearingly. I can't think of another book like it--at turns erudite, conversational, anecdotal, self-deprecating, commanding, personal and polemical. This is a book about why literature matters, but more than that it's example of why literature matters. The best, most remarkable book from one of our best, most remarkable writers.

— Brock Clarke

Lee Upton advocates 'writing across genres.' Why shouldn't the poet write novels or stories or history or essays? As if to prove the point, here comes Swallowing the Sea, this talented poet's take on ambition, boredom, failure, and secrecy, the four points on any writer's compass. Full of insight, a virtual chrestomathy of apt quotations, this book sails across a Sargasso Sea of modern culture, docking at this port and that, pausing to comment on such landmarks as The Wizard of Oz, the poetry of Dickinson and Plath, the novels of Alberto Moravia and Ivy Compton-Burnett, and the sight of Elizabeth Taylor emerging from her bathtub. It's a grand voyage.

— David Lehman

[Her] language seems an exact reflection of Upton’s startling, invigorating vision . . . . She’s a true original. . . .

— David Walker

[W]hile she writes in the lyric tradition of Ophelia’s songs, her work is delicacy grounded in strength. . . . For Upton ‘curiosity is the mark // of our relentless experiment,’ and she uses language to test the reality of art.

— Virginia Quarterly Review

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Excerpts

Some ambition, depending on its aim, can be a symptom of malignant egotism—the preoccupation of a writer who would try to succeed at any cost. And yet a lack of ambition can signal timidity—writing small, without courage or discipline. The aim of ambition is what matters. We have to decide how to fill the concept and what form our relationship to ambition may take. And that’s the problem: the act of writing is so dependent on unknowable factors, the momentum forward so unpredictable that one’s aims may be continually modified. I don’t mean to exaggerate. It’s not as if we start out intending to compose a recipe featuring chick peas and wind up creating a new sort of graphic novel—but the instability of the act, its volatility, and the uncertain likelihood of success, can make predicting the final form an unsettling and sometimes nearly futile venture.

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Reviews

For anyone in love with writing, Swallowing the Sea is an homage to the delicate, painful, and (for some) necessary impulse to write. Upton explores the process of writing, the hurdles and frustrations along the way, and the fervor of being an avid reader, while employing personal anecdotes, literary criticisms, and poetical metaphors to make sense of writing’s place in our culture.

—Courtney McDermott, NewPages

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This is not a how-to manual, and it would be a mistake if only other writers or would-be writers were to read Swallowing the Sea. Readers will find themselves becoming more self-aware as readers, not to mention receiving many reading suggestions. Upton ponders emotions and experiences common to all humans—such as those named in the book’s subtitle. Her poetic gift shows in her often sparse prose, which at times can stop readers in their tracks.

—The Christian Century