Roueche vs. Sacks

Working as a technical writer has, in many ways, opened my eyes to how writers of non-fiction and fiction can and should use the technical aspects of good writing to reach their audience and tell their stories.

This week, for example, I’m reading Oliver Sacks’ “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat.” I can’t exactly say I’m enjoying it. I have to blame Berton Roueche.

I found Roueche years ago at a thrift store, and after reading “The Medical Detectives,” I spent a lot of time looking for more of his books and devoured them.

Roueche, with the eyes of a journalist, found his niche in medical writing. But that kind of cheapens what he does. Because his real skills lie in interviewing, and in taking raw interviews and combining them into compelling tales.

That’s a skill Sacks, at least in the book I’m reading, appears to lack. Roueche wants his subjects and their ailments and detection of ailments to be center stage. Sacks appears to want his musings and interpretations to be center, and that makes for less appealing storytelling.

I was not surprised to learn, then, that Sacks describes himself as shy. That comes out clearly in his treatment of his subjects, whom you get the feeling he never interviewed, just observed. That may also be systemic of his position as a clinician, seeing the stories from the inside, rather than as Roueche did, as a journalist from the outside.

So what does this have to do with writing in general?

Writers need to keep themselves out of the story. It’s their characters who tell the tale. Throw in too much of what John Steinbeck describes as “hooptedoodle,” and it’s the writer who becomes the center. And it’s those kinds of writers who irritate me.

And I’m probably that kind of writer, which makes me say “Oh dear.”

So that’s another lens through which I should look at my writing. Am I character- and story-centered, or am I egocentric? If the latter, it’s time to pluck it out.