January 12, 2010
quote out of context
He went on to say, “the extent to which you think writing is about something other than words then you will fail.”
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He went on to say, “the extent to which you think writing is about something other than words then you will fail.”
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Deron, this makes me both sad and sick, but I am glad you posted it though I don’t know why and I was never part of that scene and the thought of it sends shivers down my backbone.
you know what’s interesting Sheila, is I believe it to my core.
I am with you when it comes to words . . . almost — well, close enough as makes no difference.
It is the Specter of the Publishing Industry whose presence in this piece chills me.
I like it that you put this link in one of your “quote out of context” posts. I enjoyed reading Sarki’s piece, and like you, Deron, I believe what is being said in this quotation–but it does need some qualification since there clearly is writing worthy of being called art that traffics in meaning and attempts to persuade. I see this as similar in its gist to something Auden (I think) said: that he saw more promise in a writer who wrote because he wanted to play around with words than in a writer who wrote becaue he “had something to say” (my paraphrase). The making of fictions and poems requires the practice of self removal, which allows a view that takes courage (and skill) to follow. The self is never fully removed, since something in the psyche is making selections. But the self can become entirely irrelevant–and that’s the place where greatness may be found.
There is something I would say here whether I can formulate the thought or not. I have in past years equated some of the words in the “Q” and words since as “abstract art.” The words? The paint. The author? The brush-strokes. I think this is what I took from Lish though he didn’t use those words.
When I read words, say, backwhen in the Q, more recently in “Sleeping Fish 8,” I am reading abstract paintings that work me over, I am not privy to the machinations of the artist (whether in words or paint or any other conveyance of (a message) I can find myself wrecked by what I’ve seen. (Sometimes I look and feel nothing and I dismiss that viewing nearly as soon as seen.)
Lish talked of “the universal.” For me, the words, the paint that speaks IN WORDS OUT LOUD but utterly undecipherable to the viewer/the reader. For me, at the root of it, an essence is conveyed that is not apparent on the surface.
It strikes at the heart, it is known when seen. It is felt, in me, as an ache. That I might deliver that essence to someone else. I’ve said it before, when I see what I call art, a chasm opens at my feet and I find myself looking into the maw of the universe.
Sometimes there might be a plot, but most times I only know I have been moved and I can’t understand why. There is this thing I looked at, I don’t comprehend it and yet its essence showed me something great, terrific and knowable that I can’t express.