[W r i t e r' s N o t e b o o k]
The writer does not intentionally, go to the outside of the
castle walls and dream of a new castle. He finds himself, at
times, in the deep forest and must dream himself to the center of
the castle and is permitted to do so as long as he learns about
the castle rather than try and destroy it.
He loves the life between the forest trees and
the castle walls.
Everything contains vitality
and decay and the art of life is to extract the one, drive out
the other, and put vitality at the center where it can thrive.
Rather than sprawling novels that hold no one's interest it
is better to produce something of extraordinary compression
SOME NOTES ON THE PROPOSITION: THE MEDIUM MUST BE BUILT
What is needed is the
desire to build and create things; then, "principles of construction."
How do you grapple with America? It can be a large and angry
beast but all its people and
systems, dreams and aspirations, can be experienced through the
region.
The man of letters arrives when he sees the female in a
positive light and demands that she fulfill her potential.
There is a dark night of the soul; those who avoid its pains
end up as killers.
Rather than project into empty sticks we would rather go out
in the real world and accept the behavior of others as evidence
of their truth. "I will begin from the endpoint of your
manifestation."
Personally I assumed long ago that the novel was not
dead but rather had become a wild weed, proliferating out
in the hot dry fields for the benefit, not of literature
and the novel form, but as raw material for the movie
and TV industry. Thousands of novels are written and,
apparently, read but then, thousands of crimes are still
committed each day and thousands of young children get sick
every year. It's not necessarily a good thing.
Every novelist has the desire, I assume, of writing like
Balzac or Dickens. That is, an accurate portrayal of society
with characters everyone knows showing, between the lines,
what everyone is thinking. That was the great central fact of
the novel; the heart of it.
The world has devised other ways for the society to get to
know itself and, while not as comprehensive as a novel, it seems
to work for the people who pay the bills. One of those forms is the modern biography. Another
is the medium, TV, that presents multiple channels showing
every variety of life, in situ, often.
A novelist then must become a truly creative being, an epic
poet for instance. A Milton could thrive today because the age
presents ample time for the development of skill and mind and
has enough surplus to support a Milton. Whereas it won't support
a Dickens because Dickens is in the employ of a TV or movie studio,
his talents crushed in the studio hierarchy that has the writer
near the bottom and the lascivious actress (who can't spell her
name, not even when she's not doped up) on top, calling the shots.
Any writer who accepts this as a good thing is not going to produce
the quality work anyway.
It's ironic that the modern novel rose out of a protest against
niche tales like romance novels and is now a niche form untended
and unloved.
"But Eide, we live in a very unliterary period of
time, dominated by sight and sound. The market is dominated by
sight and sound, corruption and pro wrestling, tobacco and junk
food". Yes, it's all true. But it's filled with marvels and
filled with the necessity to move into the future. If writers
would sacrifice something of their obsession with the present and
its temptations and focus on the future something of significance
could be done. The writer has to take on the myth of explorers
and be there first, however painful it may be.
Forms come and go. The novel was very strong for a two hundred
year period and has declined for many decades. It happens throughout
literary history. Literature is Protean and the writer reads the
tea leaves adroitly and changes. It's the literary system that
is way behind in the learning curve since it is dealing with
rewards and punishments, reputation-building and reputation-destroying.
These things, apparently, move books through the market. The
writer shrugs his shoulders.
REFLECTIONS ON A HISTORY BINDER ETC.
It is
a good thing to get a map of the globe and imagine the
development of life from the beginning to the present. A
profound continuity is interesting to contemplate.
America forms another sort of history, one that replicates the
world history in a short amount of time. History and conscience
would make a lifelong study no doubt. History reveals stand
alone objects, paranoid Emperors, horrific events among other paranephalia. The ways of life of
people are rolled under by progress but survives in many forms.
Technology and capital have changed history for good and
we vector away from our ancestors in ways we haven't fathomed
yet. We must connect with them on a deeper level, one that feeds
our common humanity, one that roots us to the daily life that we
must have whether we want it or not. The fact that we fly around
in jets and drive cars and use computers and credit cards makes
our culture and civilization different than those in the past but
the people using the jets, driving the cars, using the computers
and card are pretty much the same. They fly, drive, compute,
and buy with the intention of effacing the ties with the past but
it is useless to do. The flying, driving, computing, and buying
belong to a collective civilization and not to a person. In fact,
we may be worse off by the fact that we rely so heavily on
the collective nature of technololgy. Don't fly, don't drive,
don't compute, don't buy and see what is substantial in life.
When you find the substantial than you can fly, drive, compute,
and buy. That looks to be true in some faahion.
The growth of the citizen was not a harsh thing; with sharp and abysmal changes
but a gradual and certain change from one state to another connected
all together by the tendons of rich memory.
What inspires one about
American history? The revolution and Constitution would be one.
All of the sincere attempts to stop or protest againat slavery
through the Civil War. The inventive period between 1870 to the
turn of the century, to flight. The literary attempt to
form an identity of America through Emerson, Whitman, Hawthorne,
Melville up through the present time, including Black identity. Explorations through different epochs.
Baseball. Fighting and defeating the totalitarians of the 30's
and 40's. Adventure into Space. Expanding opportunties for
all people, inclusion, protection of minority rights. Cleaning up the Environment.
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