[Nils Monad]

I would like to start somethig here, a string, to sort out the differences between my two favorite forms, that being contained in the subject liner: The break in the continental tradition, where I think Proust is the nexus -- the narratorial flow of consciousness and the transgressives, who claim him, they being writers like Claude Simon, Lautreaumont (out of historical context), Bataille, Kristeva, Joyce, Beckett and the hard, Austrian/German/Prague connection of Kafka, Musil, Hesse, Broch, et. al.
Is there a way (lying to the sides of Proust) to join the discursive German style with the sexualist, psychological prose. I think, critical to this examination must be Rilke's one novel, The Diaries of Malte Laurids Brigge, which influenced many of the Germans, was itself, I believe, coterminous with Proust.
What I am having difficulty grappling with is the matter of style expressed here... The transgressive school, often using sex or a very unorthodox structure in their works, versus the German form of referencing highly philosophical dialogues.
I'm not sure -- and perhaps that will be a problem -- what it is I am after, or asking of others to contribute, but I believe examination of these styles would be helpful to my personal writings.
I also think, somehow, there is a tie between modern Russian literature (beginning with notes from underground) and all of this. Persons familiar with the poet Bely, the thinker, Kojeve and others, may have a critical eye for what I am after.
Dostoyevsky was criticized in the West for exploding the story, as was Tolstoy... telling it in too grand of a style. What the reader wants, however, to my mind, is far too much of a concern, though, I think, it must be considered in the evolution of the whole thing. We live in a world now, where Kafka, Dostoyevsky (for various reasons), of course Shakespeare (but perhaps not Dante or Cervantes) would not be possible... and I am concerned, though nodding to the need to overthrow tradition, that we are excluding something else in this information age, which has allowed the perfection of drivel. And who could imagine someone publishing in America, say, by telling the publisher, the editors, the agent... "No one is allowed to touch one word of what I have written"? To tell them, "I presume no one on your staff is competent to meddle with what I have done." I understand there are a lot of poets here at this site (and they seem very good, I might add), but I can't help wondering, with their mastery of prose, whether they are great writers who woefully (and for various reasons) cannot or find themselves unable to tell a story. This is where the transgressives come in, because I think they have made it easier, broke the ground, for the non-story teller to write the important novel. On the other hand, the Expressionist writers, though debunking the story... breaking genre lines, by making fantasy without allowing it to be science fiction... have done the same, in a different way -- and yet, in the world's largest publishing area -- the reader, for whatever reasons (why, why, why -- do you think?) doesn't want either of these traditions.
Certainly in the old days there was not as much editorial capability, nor the competition... but this does not seem to explain how these light-year old stories still can stand up, look better than, what we produce now. Does anyone know of an author who is, say, shunning the word processer, and writing from scratch, on a type writer -- how can the automatic voice, with little competition against it, end up better than the refined voice, with all that competition?
But has this strayed from the initial question? Good writing always takes time, that is the answer, but how much of it is just thought, contemplation, rather than rushing to push words around?
Anyway, these are just some thoughts to jumpstart a subject.

[Nils Monad]

I think, here in Italy, we suffer from a similar sort of problem. The really great artists in writing (also painting) seem to be disappearing. We have produced Italo Calvino and Alberto Moravia, and these works, along with similar ones fill the bookshelves at the stores (along with the classics) We are stuck in a time warp it seems, for Italy is a very artistic country... and yet, post WWII it has focused its energy in a model after American, so that the arts have become more practical, almost craft-like save for the excellence in their skills: leather works, paper making, household item design, the best made and best looking clothes in all the world, architecture and so on, yet a lack in real philosophers, painters, writers, poets... not as bad as in Central North America, but still, a depression... It has been easy for Italians to fall back on these artisanships, for there is a long history here of such craftsmanship, and with the new pragmatism sweeping the north, with its greater wealth than in the south, but also its boring industrialismo, there is bound, as in De Tocqueville's America, to arise a system where pragmatism has overruled creativity... Though the typical Italian would never admit to such a thing... believing they have fused the two -- really, I am out of place here, because there is such an eye for the design of everything -- although, and kill me for it -- I do not think the architecture is that good, other than it bears an important link to the past -- but I see great strides in the quality of the building, how they are put up, but no Frank Lloyd Wright type breakthroughs, just the same old boxy thing, put up with great care, great materials (even -- in the north -- for the working poor). I think too, the church/state run educational system is to blame, which still points people in a certain direction from very early on, and almost always, a direction useful to the economy -- just as it is doing in the US, but not veiling this directedness so much as there; giving the image of freedom with no real freedom... and so, though the people are offended at the idea they may be losing touch with great writing, great painting, great architecture... they are, no less, losing touch with it. I think Pesce and, particularly de Chirico (who unfortunately remains largely undiscovered in the Central North American area) are the last great artists of the modern age... and that was some time ago. There is, however, starting to be a renaissance, not in worn out Tuscany, but to the north, in Turin, where modernist movements are again flourishing.

So perhaps this is turning, in my mind, into a discussion of geopolitical implications of writing and art styles. Hopefully someone will care to add, on such a vein as this, or the earlier points.

[Michael Juster]

I don't think this discussion will help your writing. I would abandon this kind of academic theorizing and go out and lead a full life.

[Michael Cantor]

Bravo, Michael!

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Nils,

Perhaps you could refine your question(s)?

You seem to be after something other than empty theorizing. That is, you haven't settled your own worldview--and this limits how you might approach your own writing. The "get a life" advice is parallel with "get a view," in this case.

Interestingly--and, given the rambling & abstract nature of your posts above, perhaps accidentally--the areas that seem to be the most bothersome for you could be said to be the results of just the sort of communal-think patterns such a questioning/questing thread as this might promote. So "get a life" or "get a view" would really be advice to stop asking others for a worldview which you could adopt: Do your own thing, in other words.

But in case I am quite wrong about your motivation, I'll posit this for consideration: How do changing worldviews, in the individual and/or in the society, shape approaches toward art? I'm thinking that the loosely named "worldviews" might be the result of more than merely aesthetic concerns. (For instance the supposed link between the theory of relativity & quantum physics theories, and post-modern or, now, "post-post-modern" approaches.)

One might suppose (I'd suppose) that in-depth analyses of various factors would require much time--and so distract from the actual creation of poems and fictional prose. Still, we are influenced by what we know/don't know.

[Nils Monad]

Well, I think the first two replies aren't exactly what I'm looking for. It is as if they assume the life I lead is less than theirs; what if I am handicapped, autistic; what if, perchance, my life is filled to the maximum with such "academic theorizing," and theirs, without it, is lacking. What if I was married to the most beautiful and sexually alluring person alive, had happy children, lots of money, a satisfying job, but I have these curiousities? Are you so satisfied, so cock sure of yourselves and what you are about that you can give, without the apparent bat of an eye, and with applause for the murderere who escapes domination by the authorities -- whose life is everything about authority -- such downright bad, insensitive, quite possibly hurtful, or otherwise naively malicious advice? What I am attempting to do, here is what my third responder has coyly (though not exactly hit upon) -- My own writings do need the advice of people who are experienced in the works I mentioned, but my life as a regular guy, as a defender of murderers and child molesters, as an expatriot, as a wild lover and my studies have not fully prepared me for -- and yet, though search for a method is and always will be critical -- please feel free to exclude yourselves.

"You seem to be after something other than empty theorizing. That is, you haven't settled your own worldview--and this limits how you might approach your own writing. The "get a life" advice is parallel with "get a view," in this case."

I think you are soft peddling their maliciousness. I get this all the time with people who live boring lives and ask me to do what it is I am already doing, and they themselves can only wish or imagine to do. I will weigh the life of mine against either of these two foolish scoundrels for any amount of money they wish to wager, say, with some Andy Warhol, Charles Lindbergh, Picasso, Gauguin, Ernest Hemingway, Mother Theresa, Dorian Grey type grouping of experts to objectively and subjectively weigh them in the balance. I am not afraid of changing worldviews whatsoever (seeing it as a sign of openmindedness), but am always in the process of developing a world view, a weltanschaung -- and therefore, I don't think it hurts my approach to my own writing, but helps it... the best writers to my ear are timid in the overall tone, which, sometimes I lose, say, in personal correspondence -- I like the passive voice, find it far more interesting and informative than the active voice -- So one of my key views about getting a view is that one must always be in the process of that -- but really, I wish there were experts out there, I am lamenting, that there are or seem to be no experts in refining the passivbe voice, which is a project I wish to undertake, rather than achieving, perfecting the active voice (which seems, largely, a waste of time).

Interestingly--and, given the rambling & abstract nature of your posts above, perhaps accidentally--the areas that seem to be the most bothersome for you could be said to be the results of just the sort of communal-think patterns such a questioning/questing thread as this might promote. So "get a life" or "get a view" would really be advice to stop asking others for a worldview which you could adopt: Do your own thing, in other words.

Thank you, I am, what I am looking for is that rare bird who knows what I'm talking about, who has a clue, a real friend.

But in case I am quite wrong about your motivation, I'll posit this for consideration: How do changing worldviews, in the individual and/or in the society, shape approaches toward art? I'm thinking that the loosely named "worldviews" might be the result of more than merely aesthetic concerns. (For instance the supposed link between the theory of relativity & quantum physics theories, and post-modern or, now, "post-post-modern" approaches.)

This is what I am getting at. People don't like changing world views, like like to hang on to something solid, and which, seeing this as a not only a major source of alienation in life, but also a major flaw, I think a work must be representative of some sort of inconsistency. If a work takes long enough, say three or eight years to write, or paint, or draft -- then why should it's views, its styles not change... for the sake of some silly judge's to critique it and say, "it's not symmetrical. She doesn't express a consistent view"? This is something I'm very much after. For an artist to be an artist they must at the same time feel positively they have something to share, but at the same time not feel that they are bound to the rules of that mobocracy of which, our two friends have so adeptly proved themselves to belong.
For instance, I've started a work which is about,say, deconstruction (with of course my own spin on it), then I read Bataille (who is a natural occurrence if one is in that area, reading, researching) or, say, I commit a larceny (to eat and stay alive while starving to death writing), or I have a fling with a beautiful and wealthy, married woman I meet at an arts and croisants party (allured to me by my Rilkeesque qualities) each of which dramatically changes my views (the impetus, the inertia of which, even if only for a while, a year, a few months) -- what credit would the artist have then, in his or her own eyes, or to the world, which would later view his or her works? Art does not occur in a glass bubble and it should not pretend to.



One might suppose (I'd suppose) that in-depth analyses of various factors would require much time--and so distract from the actual creation of poems and fictional prose. Still, we are influenced by what we know/don't know.


This I cannot agree with. If one has serious writing in mind, then everything that falls from them is worthy of examination and contemplation -- and even moreso, those times in which they are idle contemplating, are too. that is why I type so fast -- This whole dialogue, having taken exactly six minutes forty five seconds to write.
Perhaps you haven't gotten anywere. In any event, carry on,
Nils

[Nils Monad]

"I think I've because less obscure over the years, though I'm still often accused of obscurity. I've written the odd article justifying putative obscurity to mainstream readers, trying to distinguish various types. Obscurity's easy to do, and I think some writers do too little to help mainstream readers. I tend nowadays to assume that
much of the audience will feel more at home with 'straight' writing. Once they trust me (once they think I'm fulfilling my side of the conventional author-reader pact) they'll follow me into places they wouldn't normally go."

I think you are incorrect, that obscurity is easy to do. In fact, it is much harder, it takes a lot more academic research... and the idea, that it is still intended to make the reader (though perhaps less of them and more serious ones -- i.e., a smaller, more thoroughgoing audience) read. I think, without derriding its thoughtfulness and earnestness, that this view, that obscure writing is easier, actually derives from market forces that could be defined by Marx or Foucault -- that is, what is selling, what is marketed is put there for a reason, not by the unseen hand of the market, but by carefully plotting and plodding power structures, whether it is the authors themselves, the publishing companies, the universities, the whole literary marketing structure, which wants to cultivate the mobocracy and to profit rather than to create art. What I am finding, a whole lot of boring new books by supposedly acclaimed authors, written in straight style -- versus what I want to find, hardwrought experimental works. The slave, however, always adopts the masters view in some form or fashion in which that view is tolerable to the master (here, I give life to the indefinable "they," the Hegelian Spirit of the collective). I find, and I see it in the experimental writers I have listed here and at the beginning of my fiction post, that they do bring more to the table than do those writing for marketability... besides, what is marketable in English markets is not at all what readers, say, in France or Germany are looking at... they, perhaps not having progressed to the demands of the desired market satiation, still enjoy Faulkner, Simon, Ewe Johnson. It is an odd bird in Germany who is educated and who has not read Musil (most consider him, though somewhat abashedly, to be the only real rival of Shakespeare), and yet, in my vast experiences in the english speaking world, I have yet to meet one person (by correspondence or in person, who has read the work -- in fact, I was introduced to him by Walter Kauffmann [in person, at a speech in Bonn], Nietzche's biographer). Musil was, no doubt, experimental. His writing is exceedingly difficult, not only to digest, but to imagine someone going about writing it... yet, clearly, a world (an incredibly beautiful one) existed inside his head, which very few are privvy to, would understand, but especially, could ever conceive of duplicating in even the remotest sense of the word. Again, it is axiomatic that market driven economies, of which the publishing world is a clear example (with certain anomalies) wish to market what it can get its hands on... and then sell easily. If the market knows that such writers as Musil come along every ten, forty, one hundred years, or every two thousand years... imagine the impetus it, (they, them, us) have to insure that mediocrity reigns supreme... that books, of all stripes, should cater to common readers, or not be put in print at all... Imagine then, the suffering of a Kafka against the publishing world... Kafka bore, I belive, more public sins than the original Christ.
I must go, but will continue.


"I can write straight, it just bores me." But suppose it interests the readers? It might take them a while to see how straight the text is. During that phase, while they're malleable, one can try to anticipate their reponses and steer them. One can still have fun - e.g.: "you must hide profundity. Where? On the surface" (Hofmannsthal); steganography
I'm interested in the interaction between mainstream/non-mainstream writing. In "Problems and poetics of the nonaristotelian novel" (Leonard Orr) it talks about the strenuous efforts made by some critics to convert nonaristotelian texts into aristotelian forms as if behind each text there's a straight text that can be recovered (perhaps with the help of the author). This longing for normalisation can be played upon, but again reader response needs to be anticipated - if you take too little account of the readers don't be surprised it they ignore you
Just for the record, I think Ulysses is fine, but Finnegan's Wake isn't on balance worth the effort. Tristram Shandy bored me after a while.
'I would say your writing would benefit from a bit more of an orthodox, direct, style--not too much however'- Alvaro As they say, make it as simple as possible, but no simpler. Some of the pentimenti seem more like acts of a nervous performer than attempts to destabilize the narrative

[Clive Watkins]

Dear Nils

At the start of your post of 27th August you cite the following paragraph:

"I think I've because less obscure over the years, though I'm still often accused of obscurity. I've written the odd article justifying putative obscurity to mainstream readers, trying to distinguish various types. Obscurity's easy to do, and I think some writers do too little to help mainstream readers. I tend nowadays to assume that
much of the audience will feel more at home with 'straight' writing. Once they trust me (once they think I'm fulfilling my side of the conventional author-reader pact) they'll follow me into places they wouldn't normally go."

To this you then offer the following rejoinder:

“I think you are incorrect, that obscurity is easy to do. In fact, it is much harder, it takes a lot more academic research... “


I am no doubt being dimmer than usual, but I am not clear what the source of your citation is and to whom, therefore, your rejoinder is offered.

By the way, obscurity of the kind which your reference to “academic research” implies is easy to do. I have only to string together a text whose sense depends on a reader’s knowing in advance the following three pieces of information, none of which is to be declared in the text itself: the name of my local greengrocer, the occupation of my maternal great-great-grandfather and my favourite phrase from the works of David Jones. I guarantee that most readers will find the piece sufficiently obscure. Add some deformations of customary grammar and usage and the riddle would be complete. Pace your remark, none of this is very hard to do.

Of course, obscurity and significance are not antonyms and can coexist fruitfully in a text.

Regards

Clive Watkins

[Nils Monad]

Sorry for the use of so much space and duplication, but I am back now after my emergency. It seems to me that I do not wish to be automatically included in the pantheon of writers I list here and elsewhere at this site, but that the opportunity to join them, to be judged among them, to be considered among them (during one's lifetime) is far too narrow in the publishing and reading world as it exists... and what is more, there is no ethical defendable reason that this should be so. Have you ever considered why average reading tastes are so... poor... so mediocre? You are writers, but to say you have written something like Musil's or any other great work which is ignored, and to hear that the sales of a pulp fiction author have outstripped his lifetime sales in one week is quite a situation worthy of comment, public indignation and so on, and yet, what I get to such comment is almost always a universal scorn... accusations of elitism, accusations of taking the easy way... it is far too coordinated to be a coincidence. there are those on my side. I know there are. I have met them, but it does seem that the world in English speaking terms, in the west is largely divided (not as Christian versus atheist, Catholic versus Protestant, conservative versus liberal... no, something much greater, reflecting core economies... for you can lambast someone's politics and relgion and get away with it at times, but never, never, never their economies) that the writing world is divided along these lines, without regard to real intelligence (but, I think, in regard to real world experience correllated to intelligence... yes, perhaps) that the writing market works or it does not work... that great writing will be discovered if it is great, or that great writing is destined never to be published for exactly that reason... because it is great. This latter view, flies, of course, in the face of all of the people's who have arrived at some success while alive, as writers, it flies in the face of the publishers, or the readers... yet the possibility of its truth must be acknowledged... and further (there is the possibility, though I'm sure it's much in dispute), the tragedy behind its possible truth (if true), is perhaps something worse than any famine, nuclear holocaust, etc. What is our society doing with real poets?


"I can write straight, it just bores me." But suppose it interests the readers? It might take them a while to see how straight the text is. During that phase, while they're malleable, one can try to anticipate their reponses and steer them. One can still have fun - e.g.: "you must hide profundity. Where? On the surface" (Hofmannsthal); steganography"
Here again, "the interest of the readers" REaders should be damned. Great writing (a hyperbole, I'm sure) leads the reader, around by the nose, if necessary. It kills them. It makes them not want to read, because what they are reading is too difficult, too time consuming, too everything over the top... it slugs them in the gut, it makes them want to commit suicide, it breaks apart marriages and the mundanity of the world... I say these things, despite, yet, knowing we are schooling a slew of writers to do nothing more than giving the reader what they want. A great analogy, which beats this point home, is the Ayn Rand movie, the Fountainhead, where the wealthy publisher's motto is "give the public what they want." Nowadays that is the catch word, "give the customer what he wants." "The cusotmer is always right," and so on. But again, there are those with certain market beleifs who will never allow for this to be critiqued... Let the painters lead the way by dying, but not us writers, we want a comfortable life and to be assured of our rightness, hefty audiences who love to read what we have written, though we ourselves,once we've written it, are too embarassed ever to go back to look at it again.
To hide things on the surface? Isn't that what I've just done, what you want really is for the surface to be defined in your favor.


"I'm interested in the interaction between mainstream/non-mainstream writing. In "Problems and poetics of the nonaristotelian novel" (Leonard Orr) it talks about the strenuous efforts made by some critics to convert nonaristotelian texts into aristotelian forms as if behind each text there's a straight text that can be recovered (perhaps with the help of the author). This longing for normalisation can be played upon, but again reader response needs to be anticipated - if you take too little account of the readers don't be surprised it they ignore you"

And so, Again, here we have the concern over the reader, set into different context... It is not the reader who will ignore, it is the cultivation of readerly tastes industry, the pharisees, who will ignore. It was not the mob who bore real responsibility for putting Christ to death, rather, it was the pharisees who worked that mob into a frenzy of hatred who bore the blame. The Christ is reputed to have said, of the mob, father forgive them, they know not what they do. The point again, far too much emphasis on the bottom line of the reader, (an economic, utilitarian sort of argument), rather than on the processes. The emphasis, as I see you putting it, is that a fiction is supposed to tell some sort of story, it is supposed to bear this utility... and do so under classic or standard definitions (of course, which all bear up toward an autocratic power structure who just happens to profit and at the same time bears these traits) whereas, to me, readers, from early on, must be cultivated to understand that a story is not a story. That, like all things in life, good literature reflects the obscurity of its existence, the accident of its existence, the dubiousness of its flow, the fact that nothing in life is reconciled, that gross injustices continue unabated for eons, that everything is about misunderstanding, trial and tribulation... that even with the best of governments and economic systems life is still either nasty, brutish and short, or it is, in the alternative, exceedingly boring. We need readers (who though they feel these things in their interiority) who can come to grips with these indecidabilities, the non-utility of life and its beauty, the cosmopolitan reflections and so on... in a way they will thirst for it. This is, perhaps a crusade for me, to change readerly expectations in English speaking areas of the world.


Just for the record, I think Ulysses is fine, but Finnegan's Wake isn't on balance worth the effort. Tristram Shandy bored me after a while.
'I would say your writing would benefit from a bit more of an orthodox, direct, style--not too much however'- Alvaro As they say, make it as simple as possible, but no simpler. Some of the pentimenti seem more like acts of a nervous performer than attempts to destabilize the narrative

"In general, if we are educated, if we have lived a life of, generally, the pursuit of knowledge, we assume ourselves intelligent and that we know the limits of intelligence, and that therefore, we may judge what is (the products of a life's mind, for instance) simple for one and not for another. We may judge what was simple for Einstein, or Musil, or Shakespeare, or Husserl and say, "They kept it simple (for them, simple, of course [with an aggressive laugh veiling a mild embarassment] being relative) and you see, er, my friend, how it worked out in the end for them (but, of course, if you are not such a person [and, because the publishing industry and the readership of the world has identified you as not being such a person or has not {yet} done so], it is invariably so {worth betting a lot of lives on it} and axiomatic, that if I think your writing is too complex, too obscure, doesn't make good sense to me and my astute understanding of what the common man on the streets wants from literature, then I can conclude, in the most assumptory fashion, that you are putting on airs, trying to avoid difficult writing by being obscure)."

Nils

[Nils Monad]

Dear Clive, you wonderfully intervened in a dialogue moved by the moderators suggestion fromm the fiction section. But as to this, I again, cannot agreee.

By the way, obscurity of the kind which your reference to “academic research” implies is easy to do. I have only to string together a text whose sense depends on a reader’s knowing in advance the following three pieces of information, none of which is to be declared in the text itself: the name of my local greengrocer, the occupation of my maternal great-great-grandfather and my favourite phrase from the works of David Jones. I guarantee that most readers will find the piece sufficiently obscure. Add some deformations of customary grammar and usage and the riddle would be complete. Pace your remark, none of this is very hard to do.

One may string out all kind of acamdemic research, and plaguerizing it, call it unusual, but this is legalistic, pharisiacal to assume that is what true research involved in diligent contemplation, to make something one's own, to have subsumed the great thoughts, spun them around on their heads, and then put them back out into one's own words is what I am referring to here, in a way, which cannot be plagarizm, but which is the fusion of thoughts in an original form, not copycatting obscuring, which makes its, then not, truly obscure. It is lightening here, and I msut go again.