Writing Life

Writing is almost like air and water and food for me. Yet, I have yet to make a living doing this thing I love more than (dare I say it?) chocolate. When someone asks me what I do, the first thing that always wants to tumble from my lips is: "I'm a writer." Then, in this oh-so-grown-up and serious world in which we live, I realize that the inquisitor wants to know how I put victuals on my family (Thank you G. W. Bush). Then, I sigh, because that's what you do when you're forlorn, and give them some long, rambling blah blah that bores them and me and the fishes of the sea. These latter have been known to drown themselves from utter boredom.

So, why is it so damn difficult to send my writing out into the world? Surely I'm the only writer who feels this way. I am the only person writing in the safety of anonymity. But, who, unlike the Earl of Oxford, hasn't money with which to pay someone to let me ghostwrite for them and to persuade them to keep my identity secret. Alack the day.... The question, then, should be: "What do I want from my writing?" And: "Can I get that by writing 'only for myself'?"

Maybe you've seen Anonymous. In that film, the Earl of Oxford tells Ben Jonson that all art is political and if it's not then it's mere decoration. I have been thinking on that since I heard it. It has gnawed and scratched the recesses of my skull. Is it true? Is it not true? Is my challenge that I don't like politics? Is my challenge that I like chocolate too much? If I write with these things in mind, how will that feel? Or, maybe the artist doesn't keep the political gobbledygook in mind, but rather it just sorta seeps out like the toxins in sweat. Perhaps.

I know I'm somewhat nervous about sending my writing out. All kinds of thoughts work on me. E.g. What if I'm delusional and this sucks so badly that it makes people want to rip their eyeballs out? What if it's sooooo bad that it's like I'm unconsciously putting all my garbage out on on other people's lawns? What if others hate it so much that I am forbidden to ever eat chocolate again? Ever!

I have read many horror stories. No, not Stephen King's fiction, but rather his non-ish-fiction memoir, On Writing. He talks about the rejection letters. Other writers do this, too. It's like:

"See my scar?"
"Oh yeah? Look at mine!"
"That's nothing! I've lost a finger!"
"..."
"Why's that guy pointing at the air?"
"I think he's trying to tell us that he's lost his head."
"Oh yeah? Well, I've had my brainchild story rejected a gazzillion and eighty times...."

I think the writers who share those anecdota are in a sadistic way trying to encourage us lesser mortals. My self-doubt demons always chime in. "See, real writers get rejected. What hope do you have? No one wants to read your drivel. You should "keep it secret, keep it safe." You wouldn't want to be responsible for someone hurting themselves by inflicting that on them..... And on, and on it goes.

But, I know I'm the only one who feels this way, so I'm sorry for subjecting you to all of this codswallop.

Cheers!

Review of Thomas Merton's Echoing Silence

Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing by Thomas Merton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book, but didn't get a lot out of it as far as the "vocation of writing" is concerned. It is more memoir-ish, dealing with Merton's own vocation. And that leads to another concept: I think it has to do with his vocation to be a Catholic monk and a writer. Vocation in the narrower/earlier sense: i.e. a calling, rather than the more broader/more current sense of a career/job. And I really expected more about writing itself--as a skill/practice. There is some of that, but as you probably realize (and I missed) is that it deals more with being a Catholic monk, contemplative, and a writer in the world, in the context of readers and fellow-writers, etc.

That being said, there are a few ideas and concepts that are important across the board for writers from any lifestyle. So, that begs the question: is it worth reading to get those few nuggets that one may find in other books on writing? I guess that depends on the potential reader's interest.

If you're interested in Christian writing/writing as a Christian: yes
If you're interested in Thomas Merton's writing in general: yes
If you're interested in being a monk and a writer: definitely
If you are simply interested in becoming a writer: there's probably a better book out there, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't read this one....

The things I like most about this book is that it is a sort of anthology, with parts taken from several of Merton's books, so it's an introduction to his writing while trying to focus on the vocation of writing. There are a lot of good thoughts within the pieces included. Thoughts on life and on living, but that are (imho) not that pertinent to writing.

I recommend this book and hope you enjoy it as much as I did. But, if you're looking for a book on how to be a writer don't expect too much.

Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing

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Review of Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success

Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success by K.M. Weiland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Most of the other reviews cover it pretty well. What I liked about this book is that K.M. Weiland presents several variations on the humble outline.

Most people hearing the word 'outline' immediately remember I. A. 1. a. and all the indenting and if you have A and B, then you must have C and on and on.... THAT kind of outlining is a nightmare, and there is no way I could use it to get my stories straight.

K.M. Weiland also includes interviews with authors who choose to outline or not and why or why not. It's a neat feature, but wasn't important for me in making a final decision to outline, but it did seem to make it "Okay" if you decide that outlines only work for you under certain conditions, say.

Aside from a few cliché phrases the book is well-written, which one would expect from someone who teaches writing. The author takes a descriptive tone, rather than a prescriptive one, when writing about outlines; that is always refreshing when reading writing books. Weiland also gives examples of the benefits, which according to her conclusion in this book, far outweigh the cost in time and frustration if an outline is not used, i.e. if one is a "pantser."

K.M. Weiland also has a helpful vlog, which is how I first learned about this book. Check it out.

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Review of Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation

Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation by Tom Bissell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is upsetting: I wrote a review here, about an hour ago. It's gone. I wrote the whole thing, clicked save down there at the bottom and ...

What have I learned from this? In future I will write reviews in a word processor or text editor and save them; then, I will cut and paste them here. This is a very frustrating experience: first, because I don't like writing reviews about collections--whether of essays or short stories or poems. My mind tries to go too many ways, even when, as in this collection, there is clear connection between the individual works.

Bissell connects his essays with the theme of the creator and the act of creating, whether that is in film, TV, fiction or video games. I'll confess that I did not read that essay: i.e. "The Invisible Girl," because I have no interest in video games or in how they are made.

The essays I most enjoyed are: "The Theory and Practice of Not Giving a Shit," in which Bissell visits the author, Jim Harrison (Legends of the Fall) and "Writing about Writing about Writing."

Harrison has the persona of the gifted artist; that special person who has been touched by the Nine Muses, maybe he has. There is a definite agon, here, with Hemingway, et al; it could be fun to look at Harrison in light of Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence.

Well, sadly, that's about all I can recall from my earlier attempt.

I do look forward to reading more of Tom Bissell's work, which I'll approach with curiosity and pleasure.


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Review of Cormac McCarthy's Child of God

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Coming to this book, I knew only that the main character, Lester Ballard, had some strange ways, but I didn't know how strange until several chapters into the book. It is an interesting read; McCarthy has a way of making it seem dream-like: broken up, but still flowing together. I'm not sure that makes sense, but that's how it reads to me. He kept the chapters short, most being only a single scene: some shorter, some longer. The short chapters coupled with Lester's bizarre behavior keeps you turning the pages, not to mention the "need" to know what happens....

There is a strong link to mythology in most of McCarthy's work and this book is no different. There are trips to the underworld, shape-shifting and tragedy among other motifs.

Without giving away too much, I will say that this book is not for the faint of heart. If Nabokov's Lolita bothers you, then there is a possibility that this will, too. It isn't exactly the same as Lolita , but the deviance of Lester, the main character, is very pronounced as is that of Humbert Humbert. But, in the case of Child of God, Lester is not the narrator.

I wonder if you could still call Lester a protagonist? He does change, but not much. The reader gets the sense that he is depraved right from the beginning. It's the level, or depth, of his depravity that changes.

The writing itself will not disappoint fans of McCarthy. His prose, as always, is tight and musical; the critics like to call it poetic, which it is. It damn near sings. I give it four stars simply for the prose. The content gives me pause; that's not to say that we should ignore it, it's just more unsettling than a book with a happy-go-lucky attitude and a bright happy ending. McCarthy almost never has happy endings and this is no exception. He does have "just" endings on occasion, or endings in which those who deserve it get it, if you get my drift.

I will read it again, simply because I love McCarthy's writing and want to learn from him. If I were reading it as a reader only, once would be enough--maybe more than enough.

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Review of Alone With All That Could Happen

Alone with All That Could Happen: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom about the Craft of Fiction by David Jauss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I just finished this; there is much to absorb, but for starters Jauss, as is hinted at in the subtitle, comes at writing from a different angle. At least one I haven't seen. There are several chapters dealing with many aspects of writing, but none of it is prescriptive: I loved that.

Not that I dislike prescriptive books on writing. They have their place. But, sometimes, you have to be reminded why you're doing this (beyond the "I just have to write" thing). Jauss shows some ways to make the connection between craft (which is necessary) and art (which is vital). Without art, fiction feels plastic: and I'm not talking about the good kind, i.e. flexibility. I'm talking about it feeling fake, lifeless. Art without craft makes for some tough, and let's be honest, boring reading on occasion. So, we need both, and Jauss helps.

It was refreshing to read a book about writing that isn't trying to make you sit down and write a set number of words everyday, or to write for a set number of hours. Jauss brings out different aspects that many beginning writers probably never even get around to thinking about. And I know some published writers haven't gotten around to them, either.

One of my favorite parts was the last chapter: in it Jauss argues that writers, in order to really be creative, must learn to think differently: they must learn to hold contradictions in their mind; they must learn to negate themselves in certain situations in order to spark the creativity.

That may sound weird, but I don't want to give away too much. If you are a writer, or are even interested in literature, this is an excellent read.

I'm going to read it again....

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Review of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Faulkner was not afraid to break from mundane and predictable writing; that which later leads to obscurity. If you are looking for a nice point A-to-point B type story, this is not it. This leans more toward something like a mixture of his other work and Joyce/Woolf amalgamation. Yes, it has that in it (stream of consciousness writing). That said, it isn't Joyce or Woolf. It is Faulkner rollicking in the intoxicating power of words, at the height of his game. I love it because of that. Stick with it and you will see that there is a method to the madness; it is not for the faint of heart, to be sure (please excuse the cliché); it requires breaking out of the trained-laziness that much of contemporary literature and internet reading is breeding in us.

On that note, it is disheartening and nauseating to read about people who get bored because there wasn't tension in the previous two sentences, or because an author wants to take some time and really have a play with language. Editors, agents, publishers, writing gurus all spew the same thing: tension, tension, tension. It's as if the entire world is suffering from learned ADHD (not to take that disease lightly: I struggle with this condition myself, so I understand the pain it can cause; but, we cannot allow it to govern everything: i.e. make literature easier, more exciting, tension, tension, tension; but instead, we must make ourselves stick to something and why shouldn't that something be great works of literature?). If this is to change, we have to change it. Reading great literature requires sacrifice and sometimes it requires breaking out of the the blasé expectations of how literature "ought to be." "Oughts" are very ugly things....

Faulkner's writing, especially in this case, is more art than craft. Many of his other works are very tight, craft-wise (as is The Sound and the Fury; but it's tight in its own way: i.e. when there is what seems like a lot of jumping around, it really should not bother a contemporary reader, whose attention span has been hacked down to nearly nil by television and internet; this part of the book is very much like a movie: quickly switching from scene to scene, bringing into the reading the dizzying effect that the character is experiencing on the page).

The Sound and the Fury is one of Faulkner's more difficult books and didn't really catch on until after he had published Sanctuary. It isn't my favorite of those I've read of his works, but it is a strong book and has a lot to recommend it: chief being the way Faulkner plays with language and builds his characters.

Don't give up, it's worth the time you put into it.

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Freedom, Faith and Responsibility - Part 1

To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce.

— Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

Since we're coming up on the month of July, and that reminds me of revolutions, I want to think particularly about the events leading up to the American Revolution. There were people taking the freedom that they believed to be theirs by right and they were using that freedom to write pamphlets.

Today, we are witnessing the largest experiment in democracy that the world has ever seen—the internet. People can comment on just about every news item and if they can’t comment directly, they can save the article on any number of social bookmarking sites. This, is in effect saying to everyone else that this is the news that I think is worth reading.

The problem I have with the democratic, free speech of comments is that many of the comments are irrelevant, degrading to others, disrespectful and some are simply a waste of cyber-ink. But, to take the right to comment away would be worse than if it had never been granted in the first place. So, what is the solution?

Comments are not the only thing. Blogs, “tweets” and status updates on Facebook all share the same pros and cons. It is important to some people to be able to tell the entire world that they just relieved their bowels and are now going out for a night of wild partying. And the next day we get to hear about the hangover!

I know! I don’t have to read these things, but they are there. This is why comments are especially bothersome; one has to read through all the garbage to find one useful or even meaningful comment. People cannot refrain from replying to the first idiot commenter and so the stupidity soon begins to fly and before you know it there are pages and pages of worthless bantering about which President is to be blamed for the color of toilet paper in the bathroom of some backwater gas station. It is asinine and annoying and democratic!

NOTES:

1.     Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th Anniversary Ed. (New York: Continuum, 2000). 87

In Shakespeare's Defense

Shakespeare is one of  the best writers of all time. Of course that is my opinion, but there are many who share it. He has inspired and influenced myriad writers, and his works have been re-done, made into movies, told in different ways, plots stolen, characters pilfered. Much as Shakespeare has done, has been done unto him.

Why are others from the late 1500 and early 1600's not adapted as much as Shakespeare?  D'uh! The reason nobody else from that time is being regularly adapted, is because they were too ordinary. Yes, they may have been popular at the time, but they did not also simultaneously reach a high character-driven level of literature.

Shakespeare is one of the most serious writers I have ever come across. He went away from his family, his home: to act, then to write. How many writers do that today? They usually read in one of the writing magazines about how they can balance their writing and personal life, then they try it until the next article comes out telling them they need to have their space. For Shakespeare there seems to be no difference between the personal and the writing life. He was a writer, first and foremost.

Shakespeare is still going because he was able to write many plays that (had they been written today) could be considered popular fiction, but at the same time he was able to write at a level of literary above any before or since.

I think people want to stop reading Shakespeare simply because they are too lazy to learn to read the Elizabethan English.  They fail to see the variety of characters that come alive in Shakespeare's works.  I know no writer today who is able to achieve the high level of popularity, as he did in the theatre: and, at the same time, have such realistic characters and the ability to make his audience suspend disbelief in those situations where that is necessary.  And on top of all that, maintain his level of output.  It just isn't being done.

Shakespeare has plenty to say to us, if we will take the iGarbage away from our ears and faces for five minutes and actually pay attention.  This is the trouble: all the tech is causing brain rot.  Soon, we'll all be zombies who won't know how to piss without first consulting an app on our phone.  Jesus!  But that is for another blog post....

All hail the Bard!  Bardolatry for life!

WTF Is This Blog Even About?

I know, I know.  I have no rhyme or reason to my posts.  Well, I do to some of them... Right?
I have a tendency to blog about things that strike me at the moment, and thus require almost immediate comment or they will be lost to the archival darkness and my chance to have my voice heard will be gone.  I know this, because I have let these opportunities slip by uncommented upon too many times.  I'm ashamed, really.

Well ... anyway, often I read a news article or another blog post or hear someone say something while I'm out and about (which is rare, by the way--since I am something of a recluse), and it sparks ideas that I cannot get away from.  So, I start pounding away on this blog.  (That almost sounds naughty).

As you can tell, if you read enough of my posts, there is a sort-of thread or connection.  No, I don't know what it is, but it has to be there, right?  I mean, I'm not doing all this writing for nothing.... am I?  Am I?  Hmmm....  Good question.

The blog is a conglomeration of my thoughts spilled out into words and posted here for all the world to ignore, if they so wish.  Or to read and comment on, if that is more to their liking.  Or to take and make better, which I hope is what happens most.

I am a writer and I write about things that are important to me, about things that move me, about things that make me think or wonder or just shake my head in utter dismay....  For example, my last post about heeding warnings.  How many people ignore those?  Why do they do that?  If I was involved in preparing those warning systems and those people didn't listen and died, and lost their dogs and their homes and their belongings and everything else, it would eat me alive!  I would want to scream from the rooftops, "WHY????"  even if I am a reclusive introvert and don't want that kind of attention.  Lives are important, life is important.

Wow!  I have officially ranted and raved on and have basically said nothing.  If you've read this far, I'm not sure if I should congratulate you or be afraid of you.

Now, a point (which according to all the rules, I should have made much earlier, but, hey, I didn't wanna!): it is writing that ties this blog together.  I'm not published in the strict sense of the word.  Yes, I have this blog and that is a form of being published, but I would be hardpressed to use this as an example of my writing that would win me a book contract with a publisher of books.  That was a clunky sentence, huh?  O well.  This is my place to practice publicly.  You know you can practice writing all you want, but you have to let someone read it.  I mean, what else is the purpose of writing anything other than a diary/journal?

I write because I feel compelled to write.  It drives me.  Most of the time I am writing in a journal, or notebook or working on a novel (that is not in a state to be seen by anyone, yet) and so I have to write a blog post, to get that feeling that someone, anyone, is reading what I write.  It  may sound crazy, because I'm just writing about all kinds of things that are not closely related when I write here, and in my other writing, I am hopefully keeping a cohesion and a tightness in my writing.  But, this is a necessary part of my writing.

This blog is my way of discussing ideas that are important; some of those ideas will eventually end up in my other work, simply because I took the time to hammer out some of the kinks in my thinking right here, for all the world to see.

You have to be getting tired of all this by now, so, I'm shutting up.

Thanks for reading....

Music While Writing?

I mentioned a few posts ago about Stephen King's listening to music when he writes. I know people who listen to music while they study. Many arguments/debates have taken place between me and my children and between my college student peers and me on this subject.

They claim that they can concentrate BETTER with music or TV playing while they read and study. I have told them, and stick to this: the human brain is not capable of handling this efficiently. And this is especially true if there are vocals. Classical music may work for short periods, but the human voice is one of the most distracting sounds to other humans; so, if you are listening to music while reading, writing, or studying, you are in effect causing your brain undue stress by making it attempt to pay attention to two separate things at once. Not good.

Now, on to listening to music while writing. In some cases listening to hard and heavy music while writing is extremely helpful:

• When your inner critic refuses to shut the hell up
• When you are attempting to drown out other distractions
• To increase your feeling of energy while you work
• Because that Homeric Geek guy said I shouldn't

There are probably other reasons for listening to music while writing, but those are some that I have argued for.

On the other hand, it is a bad idea to listen to music when you are:

• trying to work your way through a difficult plotting issue
• trying to hear your characters' voices
• writing at 3:00am and everyone else in your house is sleeping

Seriously, it is nearly impossible to truly give your undivided attention to deep issues while Ozzy is cranking in your ears. Dr. John Medina in Brain Rules states that it is actually impossible to multitask, which is what thinking and listening to music amounts to.

So, next time think about what you are attempting, then make an informed decision about cranking up the Metallica while writing....

Attention Contention

Publishers and editors seem to suffer from what appears to be adult ADHD (Disclaimer: I am not a psych doctor, so I can't make this diagnosis for real).  They press new writers to maintain constant tension for their potential readers; keep the pressure on, keep them turning pages; in other words, don't bore them with anything that might strain their weak, failing, meager attention spans.

It won't be long that novels will have to be the length of short stories and short stories will have to be one word that captures the entire emotional and psychological life of a character: e.g. Jesus wept.

I contend that we, as humans, as readers, as writers, have the responsibility to rebel against the publishers and editors, for the sake of our children and their children.  Attention spans are quickly becoming endangered and if something drastic is not done, will follow the Dodo into extinction.

Reading Genius

"The genius of our brain's construction is not that it contains 

a lot of hardwiring but that it doesn't." 

- Nicholas Carr, The Shallows, 31.

It's not bad enough that television kicked our attention spans' collective asses, but it prepared the way for an all out annihilation to it, which has come in the form of the internet.  Email, social media, IM: these all play a part in distracting our minds from whatever productive task we have on our TO DO lists.  Cory Doctorow, as quoted by Carr, writes that "leaving your IM running is like sitting down to work after hanging a giant 'DISTRACT ME' sign over your desk, one that shines brightly enough to be seen by the entire world."  When I think of the telephone ringing, the doorbell sounding, the dogs barking at something only they can hear, the thought of having another potential distraction is more than irksome.

I'm going to say that Carr, in The Shallows, makes some rather sobering points regarding the internet's changing of the human brain.  And, as he passingly mentions, the answer is obviously not to stop using the internet at all costs.  Luddites have a difficult time uniting, with their lack of technology, which is the reason their way of thinking is an exception to actual social acceptance of the  technology they fear and loathe. But I, for one, don't want my brain to be changed in such a way that I am unable to read long, difficult works of literature, and I hope you don't want that for your brain, either.

A good idea, then, is to follow the Buddha; i.e. follow the middle path.  Use the internet to skim information, to grasp the main points of knowledge and to share our own knowledge with others; but, use books and other less distraction prone media for developing depth.  Old fashioned books for depth; new fangled internet for breadth.

Otherwise subsequent generations' attention spans won't be as long as their eye-blinks.

LINKS: Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction

Reading and Writing to Write

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut."
- Stephen King

I agree with this very simple-seeming piece of advice; there are no magic spells, no secret buttons, no fairy dust—unless you want them in your stories; but they will not arrive serendipitously to give you the edge to write.  King, it has been belabored by many writing teachers, points out that reading provides the tools for writing.

Thinking about this in connection with Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, I believe this advice needs to be modified with the following caveats:

• Online reading does NOT equal deep reading of actual books
• Reading like a reader must be changed to reading like a writer
• Both reading and writing should be done in distraction free environment, if and when possible

In following posts we’ll look at these in turn, with an eye toward distraction, the changes to our brains from online reading, and reading like a writer.

There will be many that will disagree with me on one or more of these points: that’s understandable, because everyone is different.  The area that I have received the most debate in is that of distraction free reading and writing.  Even Stephen King states in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft that he writes while listening to music (usually hard rock or heavy metal).  I will say that there are times when doing this can be helpful and I will go into that, also.

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Please feel free to comment, but be nice to me and to other commenters.  This is meant to be a discussion on writing and reading and comments should reflect that.  Thanks.

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Evolution of the Wastebasket

  “A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.”

~ Margaret Atwood

The wastebasket evolved into the delete key, which sometimes, unfortunately, sometimes, not unfortunately, is final. I have hit the delete key too many times, in the course of my writing in general. Once, I highlighted a folder, yes, an entire folder, held down the shift key and punched delete—sending that disgusting shit I had written and was allowing to ferment in that precious space on my hard-drive into the dark recesses of wherever shit goes when you delete it from your hard-drive. I should hit the delete key on that sentence.

Writing is difficult and it doesn’t—does NOT—get easier the longer you do it. Certain aspects of writing may become nearly effortless, or nearly automatic with persistent practice, such as grammar, spelling, organizing thoughts. You know, the mechanical shit. The great thoughts, the great syntactical fireworks that you know will blow the roof off your readers’ heads—that shit does not get easier, so stop waiting for it to attain simplicity and just keep writing. OK? OK.

Now, back to that delete key. The writers who refuse to use computers to write have an advantage: it is a great deal more difficult to throw away an actual piece of paper with words written in sweat, tears and blood, than it is to delete some magic dots on the screen. I know. I have tried this. Also, if you wake up and realize that not everything you have written is fly-covered dung, you can simply reach into the wastebasket and retrieve the virtuosity of your pen or typewriter. Or, maybe frantically begin throwing all the balled up pieces of paper (some with sunflower seed shells and gum and … what is that? covering them, causing the blood or sweat or tears to run into illegibility) and flattening them madly, in your attempt reclaim the brilliance you so blithely tossed aside. The finality of the delete key scares hell out of me, because I have many times remembered something somewhat dazzling that I had written, and when I went to hunt it down, realized with great horror that it was in that folder which was sent to digital hell by the swift unmerciful action of the delete key and my impetuous judgment of the shitty-ness of my writing contained therein.

Well, I hope that cheered all your little souls to bursting. Have a great day and use care in the presence of the devil… I mean, delete key.

Being Changed by Literature

Change can be good, but it is not necessarily always easy.  Several changes that a person can experience may be barely noticeable: they wake up one morning and something is different.  Changes brought about by literature are usually not so quiet; at least not in my life.  Some of these changes I have instigated, others have been instigated for me by assigned readings in university, and others are serendipitous.

The changes that I have experienced in reading T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, for example, were of the latter kind.  I picked it up on purpose, but simply to distract myself.  It ended up being the focus of my 60 page senior thesis for the B. A. in English Literature.  Because of that one moment, the one choice to read something for the sheer distraction of it, I have stumbled onto the concentration for my future literary pursuits.  I still have more to say about it, lots more.  And, I really hated The Waste Land the first few times I read it; I thought to myself, “How can people call this good?”  But, now, I call it good!

Albert Camus changed the way I look at life in general.  I would say that the changes that have happened in my life since first reading his works were self-instigated.  I purposely and purposefully chose his Myth of Sisyphus with change in mind.  What happened was not so much an actual outright change, but a merging and an upgrading of my thinking.  I found that I already shared several of his thoughts and ideas, but was unable to articulate them and that he had been kind enough to put them in writing.  Others of his ideas were not mine, but I agree with them and now they are.

The reading that I have been doing lately has both intrigued and bothered me.  It is of the assigned variety.  It is mostly philosophical in nature, which I have not had much experience with.  Well, I should rephrase that.  I have read literature that is philosophical, but have not read much systematic philosophy and then attempted to read literature through it.  Some of these works are difficult, and my initial response is dislike or distaste.  The dislike is not because of the difficulty, nor because they are philosophy or philosophical, but because they lack poetry—I am mostly referring to Kant.

I have read many things that are merely good, enjoyable; that I am glad to have read, but that I will most likely not read again.

Then, there are those works that initially I dislike, or even hate; yet, as I read them I realize that I am changing.  In these times, change is not comfortable.  My mind will not stop working on the new ideas.   I lose more sleep than usual.   The Waste Land, as I mentioned, is one of these works.

Soon, if the literature is strong I will begin to let the words become a part of my way of thinking.   But, this is a choice.  My choice.  I will not blindly believe; I absolutely refuse to call something good just because someone else does.  If I did that, I would lose respect for myself as I have often lost respect for others that do this; i.e. call something good because that is the popular consensus.

Some of the works I have been reading lately are not literature, but philosophy and literary criticism.  The professor raves about them and I was initially excited to be introduced to them; that is, until I read them.  I had a strong dislike to a few, but after thinking about them and discussing them, they are slowly moving into my “must read again and again” category.  And, several have given me ideas for expanding my research on Eliot.

Not only will I not call something good simply because that is the general consensus; I will argue, fight, declare my disgust of the work—if I do not like it.  I will, however, usually give the work a fair chance by reading it for myself.  Sometimes, but not many times, the work of literature will remain on my “do not like” list.  More often the work will become one of my favorites, and not merely because of my investment in it, but because of its investment in me.

Investment in literature is not something I take too seriously, nor is it something I take lightly.  I am serious about literature and the part it will play in my future; I will wrestle with a text as long as is necessary, if I believe that it is worth it.  I refuse to take any of it so seriously, however, that I am angered when others joke or have fun at the expense of the literature.  If there is no fun in it, I will not bother.  The day I lose pleasure in literature and its study is the day I find something else to be fill my time.

That does not mean that I will only read silly literature—how much of that is running around in the wild?  What I mean is that I will not let literature become something about which I cannot change my mind.  If it is good, I will read it, enjoy it, wrestle with it, write about it, but I will not let it be my holy text.  I have no holy text and will have none, thank you.  Nothing is sacred unless we make it sacred.

My mind is my mind and I will run it the way I want to run it.¹ Literature does have an enormous impact on much of my thinking and my way of being.  However, I have no problem changing my mind if I think that what I am reading no longer suits me, or serves me.  Maybe I am fooling myself.  Maybe I just think I change my mind, when in reality it is another work of literature that has done it for me….

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1. At least I think this way; I could be wrong and have no free will whatsoever.  I’ll have to keep reading the philosophers and get back with you on it.

Adjectives

Most adjectives are shapeless, gray, boring.  Those tired three serve as a twenty-four carat example.

A couple of my new favorite adjectives (though I will superhumanly fight against their overuse) are: sadicidal, or gloomicidal; words which describe the murder of sadness or gloom.  D’uh!

I’ve been giving some Herculean thought to sexceptional adjectives that I can use spice up my dishwater writing.  I have found that sometimes you just have to make that shit up, just like the rest of the fiction you’re slapping madly on the page.

For extra fresh reading pleasure, I suggest this blog post on Sin and Syntax.

A couple of books for you to check out on the subject: