Rendering Real Places
In his essay entitled “What We Said of It Becomes a Part of What It Is: Rendering Real Places,” Bob Cowser, Jr. speaks about how a sense of place is essential to one’s writing. Growing up in the small town of Martin, Tennessee, Cowser always felt like an outsider. He carried with him a sense of “placenessness,” as he says (110).
Even though he lived there throughout his entire infancy, childhood, and adolescence, he was still seen as “a Yankee whose daddy taught out at the college” (110). In regards to Martin as a place, Cowser mostly saw it for what was on the outskirts of town, and how tempting it was to leave. In one of his essays, he writes about this concept, how the lines “drawn between Martin and surrounding communities” “meant ‘wild begins here’” (112).
Through his depictions of his hometown, he realized that he had not portrayed Martin in the best light, and that the people he grew up with that either used to or still do live there would not be too pleased about that. Because Martin is a very real place for them, they could possibly take offense to some things he has said about it as it reflects poorly on the town as a whole. This ties into the main concept that Cowser is dealing with in his essay: depending on how a person feels about the place he or she is writing about, their words will personify that place, making it a character of its own that readers will either choose to like or dislike. If people are reading a piece about somewhere they have never been, they may see it as an accurate representation, even if biases are present. Therefore, “what we say of a place becomes a part of what it is” (114).
Without the stories that live inside all the nooks and crannies, a place is “merely landscape” (114). There have been consequences to Cowser’s depictions of Martin. Cowser wrote a book entitled Green Fields that explores his personal boyhood and upbringing while also dealing with the murder of a child he went to grade school with and the man who killed her. He received some backlash from the victim’s family. Her step-grandfather thought that Cowser hadn’t been sympathetic enough to the community and that his impatience with the place made him near-sighted (122).
With this, Cowser ends his piece with one final thought: can one really see a place for what it’s worth while living there, or is it necessary to leave and give it some time and distance in order to find clarity?
^(That is a link.)^
The two images above are the same exact location—the City of Edmonton in Canada. On the left, the space is empty, while on the right, there is some sort of event going on in the very same space. How could this difference affect a person’s view of Edmonton?
If someone were to visit Edmonton at a time that this event was not taking place in what seems to be the town center, they would see Edmonton only for its external attributes—a landscape, something to look at. Unless they further explored the depths of the city, they would see it only as a space, and they probably would not make any strong connections to a sense of place. If a different person were to visit at a time that this was taking place, he or she would feel more of a sense of community. This would be for a number of reasons, but the most obvious are that there are many people there to socialize, and everyone is there for the same thing.
In another example on the differences between space and place, the Canadian artist Susan Kordalewski held an exhibition in 2011 that examined “the reprocessing of memory and the complexity of location and identity.” 
These images are part of Kordalewski’s piece. They showcase that even though the displaced object looks similar in both photos, when put in a different location, it does not maintain its essence… Or does it? This is what Cowser is getting at.
Making Further Connections
The concept of place can be incorporated into many aspects of writing. For example, I even equate the idea of place with time. When I think about The Great Gatsby, I think of materialism at its finest: beautiful women in black flapper dresses with red lipstick, men in fancy suits smoking Cuban cigars, etc. Although all the glitz and glamor of The Great Gatsby may truly showcase some parts of New York in the 1920s, for others it could be viewed as the Hollywood version of real life. Whenever I hear someone mention the “roaring ’20s,” Gatsby is the first thing that comes to mind. It goes to show that Fitzgerald’s novel had, and still has, a strong impact on how we view even the history of our country. Is this dangerous?
Another great example is Los Angeles. Any time I have ever talked to people that have never been to Los Angeles, they always refer to either books, movies or TV shows to provide them with the context for what it’s like. They think of LA as this beautiful, glamorous city where there are celebrities around every corner and something fun and interesting to do every couple blocks. I have actually had people say how excited they are to see the Hollywood sign. To me, a person who has lived in Southern California her entire life, this is almost bizarre. In fact, any time I hear this, I fear for them that their expectations of LA may not meet the reality of it, and will therefore leave them disappointed. While in some regards I do see LA as an artistic community at the very foreground of creativity, I also see it as transient, dirty, and superficial.
I will end this with the last thought in Cowser’s essay. After dealing with the angry family of the little girl that he wrote about in his book, Cowser turns to Joan Didion, a famous American author and literary journalist, for advice. Didion once said,
A place belongs to whoever claims it the hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.
And with that, Cowser replies, “Okay then. Game on” (122).
Questions for Further Discussion
- How might you consider place when writing your creative works in this class? Will you do extensive research in hopes of capturing its true essence, or will you base your writing off of what you have either seen or heard about a place? How could either choice help/harm you?
- Cowser states that for Hemingway, he was able to see his hometown of Oak Park, Illinois more clearly when he was in Paris. Faulkner, however, was able to live in the actual place that he was writing about, and in doing so, he could see it for what it truly was. How can this apply to you and your writing?
Works Cited
Cowser, Bob Jr. “What We Said of It Becomes a Part of What It Is: Rendering Real Places.” River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative 12.2 (2011): 109-122. Web. 15 September 2015.
Male, Mack D. “Space for Place: Placemaking in Edmonton.” MasterMaq. Mastermaq, 22 April 2015. Web. 15 September 2015.
“Space vs. Place.” Kordalewski, Susan. Kordalewski. Kordalewski, n.d. Web. 15 September 2015.
