The Digital Writer |
Some characters forming from our contact on the NET:
We do run into some ready-made characters, which is another unintended consequence for the writer. Ah, the overly-educated buffoon, from that ivy league college who ingested LSD at an impressionable age and has been chased out of all his talents until he is a bitter, hateful, sadly whining blogger; trying to get legit. He has no chance in the world. His "intelligence" and "education" have totally failed him and his fate is rather predictable. Running scared under the skirt of the bully conservative Republicans.
That madman who wrote madness and has been hired by marketing firms for his approach to reality.
The television personality who destroys her last manuscript in rage and tears as she reaches that maniacal age of 40.
What use is literary theory unless it teaches to be a better
writer? Some of the essays of Orwell have inspired me. Gasset inspired me
in an earlier period of time.
The writer must make peace with the problems
that literature, books, writing all encounter in any particular period of time.
The culture will lodge in the writer. If he has a clear goal and writes through
the culture on a pathway to the goal, good things happen.
The free people should struggle for things that have value and count. That they are easily bought off by the "free" or cheap is common enough insight. Struggle for what is rare. Few will follow you. Few will know. I wouldn't worry a bit over what the era's disposition is toward writing or literature or thought for that matter. It's usually rotten; sometimes less rotten than others.
One thing I don't discount and that is the importance of the internet to assure the production of wonderful new works of literature; free and full of confidence, pandering to no interest, no politics, no professor, nothing but the writers full- being laid out and expressed in higher and higher forms of expression. Writers need to know how to use the internet, how to turn a virtual space into something wonderful and enriching. That it is done in relation to everyman's attempt to make millions on the beast, in relation to marketing and commercial enterprise anathema to the literary imagination is really a boon.
In relation!
Even though the Net is filled with indescribable nonsense and can even, sometimes, be dangerous we know how wonderful it is to embrace, to lovingly lick it into shape in, at least, the one small space we allow ourselves and invite all others into.
The digital space is exciting because it has no precedent, no baggage, no legacy, nothing but emptiness, a beautiful thing because our minds light up with splendid visions at the sight of nothing.
I suspect in the long run everything will be changed. We don't know how but it will. Writing will change, the nature of information will change, publishing will change, readers will change, editing will change.
What never changes is for the writer to be in some moment he grasps as his own. That could be past, present, or future. Rarely is it all three at the same time.
I mentioned before that at the beginning of the publishing revolution initiated by the Gutenberg press, there were no publishers. There were writers and there were printers. We are returning to that pristine moment in our era with one fact in place. We know what happened the past 500 years in printing and publishing. We know the good, bad, and ugly. We know that Don Quixote was wildly popular and pirated which led to the consciousness of copyright protection. We know that Milton in the mid-1600's wrote a protest against censorship signifying the struggle and tension between the state ownership of the press and the needs of the free mind. And Milton, parenthetically, was very venerated in America, among the group that framed the Constitution.
We know that books, the written word, the vast resource of knowledge and information are fundamental to a good, free, civilization. But that the production of books can become as corrupt as anything else. Everytime I pick up a book at Barnes and Noble and read it I am astounded by how rotten it usually is. There are significant exceptions to that of course. There are enormously resourceful and beautiful books. But, without question, literary values have plummeted. Why is this? It's the stubborn king marketplace that doesn't want Melville but does want to look at pictures of naked Madonna. The publishers are forced, whatever their intentions, to put the Madonna book at the front and center and marginalize the new Melville. "Go away Melville, you're not wanted in our house. Our King is the amorphous sludge called the marketplace and he or she has ostracized you, banished you from the kingdom of delights." And Melville slumps away angry and disheartened. "Oh wait a minute Melville, come back here." And they pull him back into a silent and empty room with one small chair and have him sit. An assistant editor brings him milk and cookies and pats his head. "We really love you Melville and you just wait there until Mr. King or Mr. Grisham or Ms. Winfrey tells the world what book to read. Then we will give you a shot."
At this point Melville is humiliated and burns with hatred against the King Marketplace and all who participate in it. "My next book will attack this King and bring him down to his knees."
And so it goes on and on. The people notice that the King has marginalized Melville and all stubborn souls of the literary imagination. It reinforces their innate disdain for anything that makes them think and they celebrate by making wrestlers the new governors. "Conan will save us from the evil magicians!" Suddenly the great American mind is reduced to watching disparate images flit across the brain. It frightens the American and makes him paranoid. He can't make any sense of it so it ignores his mind altogether and lets the talking heads figure it out for him.
This is a state of awakening for writers. The 60's generation destroyed the legitimacy of literature in favor of drug images and now they are bosses of a dumbed-down, addicted, Bush-led fortress. It is the worst nightmare come alive, leaping around us as some witches dance in the middle-ages.
What the Internet does is break open the seal so that the literary imagination can flourish. It flourishes through devotion and confidence. The King becomes rather irrelevant. Maybe a new King arises who is yet undefined, unshaped. Because of the devotion and confidence literature can regain its legs, its vitality, its blood and bone.
We'll see.
The Wal-Mart effect is precisely this:
Publishers used to go to book-sellers and convince them to shelve this book,
that book, etc. Just as manufacturers would go to Sears and sell their latest line
of tractor. The lines of command are reversing now and retailers are dictating
to manufacturers what they want and need and the price they will pay. The publisher
is not even King in his own Kingdom.
Tip: There's a new publisher coming out who will convert digital files to printed book. We'll check it out when it gets online but it looks promising. It is pushing the envelope closer and closer to that day when the writer will publish using this technology that will, in the end, make the big boys obsolete. And that is an unkind word but appears more and more likely. It will take a long time simply because the habits of the people are way behind the habits of those directly impacted by these things. Remember e-books? Well, they are still around but there isn't the mad rush for them because the public, generally, don't know what they are and don't like them.
For all of that I am still a book lover and when a good book, a resourceful book, a true book is in my hands it reminds me of the best days I have spent on Earth. I think the digital publishing world is for the holy idiots who write poetry, stories, converse with God or on a high level at any rate, who tell satirical and biting things and so forth. The rest are welcome to the bloated whale called print publishing.
So we are in a quandary. We love the printed book, the printed page but we love our own efforts and the new distribution channels on the net. And make no mistake about it. The writer has a better chance on the beast than in print I believe. That's a wild statement perhaps but the Net does two things that print can't do. It makes the writer better by putting at his feet resource writ large and it gives the writer real-time incentive. The motive is not only to publish one's words but to blaze a trail, to be the first colonists, to go where no man has gone before. The smug and comfortable ones who worship a specious kind of success can have the homeland.
As I mentioned back in '97 or '98, the Net will flourish with the sinners and the saints for a time. That may have passed although there are plenty of both, sinners with a slight edge. In our niche, in our wonderful opportunity, the literary type can break wonderful bondage's that have plagued literature in my lifetime. For one thing it can get off the "alienation is the optimal state of being," attitude. An attitude developed because the literary imagination had scant patronage. And no self-respecting literary type can afford not to throw some rocks against the side of it or kick against the pricks. That said, a state of eternal alienation will not grow and develop and so lose its potential. Literature to grow and develop and reach that potential needs some very jarring things to happen. An increase in interest would be one.
A new communications system that is dropped at its feet. Ok, another. The brave heart on a new virtual adventure with nothing to gain but joy and magnificent structure.
Even though the internet is more confusing, chaotic, weird, dangerous, and putrid in many respects than the print literary system it's much more likely that a creative writer, a literary minded type will get lost in the print literary system than in the internet, digital system. Here, one can build their truth. One can build their beauty. One can build a structure undreamed of in print. There's no guarantee of anything but there you have it. Integrity and passion win out. It is the law of nature.
The key is the devotion that the literary type brings to his or her space and what they do with that space. We will tell tales in that space! Well, of course. That's fait acompli. We will sing with rhythms they haven't heard yet. Certainly, that is expected. We will run circles around them, most assuredly.
David
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