I was emailing with a reader last night about how I thought it was boring that writing hadn't come that far compared to music or painting; the reader disagreed and had some good reasons for doing so but still I remain disappointed in writing's laggardlyness. (Not really a word.) Now I see that, in a shocking turn of events, the LA Times published, over the weekend, a piece by poet Matthew Zapruder. It is sort of about growing up as a maker of things, and about being old enough to not be reactionary (something I would know nothing about). "It's easy now to make fun of formalists by calling them old-fashioned or even reactionary. But when the great 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson wrote, 'After great pain a formal feeling comes,' she was connected to a deep truth about human nature, and writing. Form is the literary expression of our need to be consoled by some kind of order."
Every day I am consoled by New Order.
For me, it's usually a drive-thru order.
Hmmm. Popeye's.
i used to think that the day would never come.
But music and painting still rely on fairly strict formalism, for several very good reasons, even if they sound/look really out there.
I love John Currin.
Currin reminds me of Odd Nerdrum. Got to love the big Odd.
Painting I'll buy, but has music really come terribly far? Please tell me that we are not trying to suggest that something like Radiohead is the greatest music in human history.
Well, not now that we have Soulja Boy Tell ’Em, we aren't.
I think that a survey of current music (or any other artistic form) gives the superficial appearance of diversity far beyond previous eras, but that what we're really seeing is the lack of a historical filter having yet been applied. And that's as true of writing as it is with any other artistic pursuit: we've yet to determine what new forms of expression are effective and interesting, and trying to separate out the noise of experimentation from the signal of successful art while immersed in it is not likely to yield much other than judgments of dubious merit. There are plenty of folks playing with the written word, and some of those folks are getting somewhere and some are not, but I don't think that writing lacks for adventure.
Never has an Awl comments section more sorely needed for DFW
The abandonment of more traditional formal structures is a large part of what has alienated people from contemporary art, be it music composition or painting or what-have-you. One could say these media have abandoned one of the principle tenets of art; mainly, that art, in order to remain "alive" needs to engage with the world in which it was created. Without this engagement, you might as well just put it in a museum and forget about it.
It's a tragedy that we've moved so far away from formal accessibility.
and this ^
read some burroughs and his cut-up dreck. attempting to subvert linear time in prose by creating portals of experience that will take the reader back to page one and forward 50 pages later is an idea that must sound sooo good when you're stoned. if you're not, though...not so much. goodness, that is.
My mother was an editor of trade fiction back in the day. When I went through my late teens Burroughs period, she said, "Why would you want to read that crap? All he does is write about little boy's assholes."
ahh, the wisdom of mothers.
and delicacy. also.
"The abandonment of more traditional formal structures is a large part of what has alienated people from contemporary art, be it music composition or painting or what-have-you."
Pushing formal structure, alone, isn't the problem. It is when people feel like they are the butt of the joke while engaging with the work, I think, that is alienating.
We learned that everything we understand
is a pattern made, breaking on the strand.
* * *
In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
from time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're both trying to explain, the fact
that we're at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move.
She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
capable of life apart from her.
We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, the composition
fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering--
it's this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.
Second paragraph quoted from Louise Glück, "Celestial Music"
PEDOFYL CAT HAZ DICKINSON.
LOLZ.
I so look forward to my next life to look at this one through a historical filter.
I remember a discussion at Key West on this very topic...
Then Hemingway poked Stevens for telling his sister that Ernie was a sap.
Then he clicked "close tab." There was no more noise. And sat in the dark room. Alone.
Now, don't you fret. There's good stuff. Diamonds, even.
There's just too damn many of them.
Keep thinking that, Karen. My heart is with you. Don't follow that old line that says technology separated the artist from his audience and when the two no longer depended upon each other for nourishment, it all (gradually, definitively) died but the pretence, and someday even the funding will die. Don't believe it. Testify. Say a guy can't even go barefoot anymore because the path is so edgy with immortal pebbles.
RUFF!
That's what she said.
And by she, of course, I mean my dog. Who is a dude. But a little prancy, like.
TOUCHE!
It's not surprising that Choire would pretend to be shocked by somebody's overt pledge of allegiance to form. The controlling formal feature of the genre that Choire works in has always been (since Horace's epistles at least) that the form isn't really a form at all, and that the author isn't pulling any formal strings in any case.
"[That] writing hasn't come so far compared to music or painting ..." -- Let me count the edges on that sword.
Whoa. I was not pretending! I just wondered why I'm so boring... and repetitive.
Oh now Choire.
There should be a contest to complete Zapruder's limerick:
"There simply is no way to rhyme
And not sound a bit out of time.
Our world is too wary ..."
... .... ....
.... .... .... ....
(Either the rhyme and the doggerel rhythm were produced consciously, in which case they're sort of slack and silly, or they just slipped out, in which case this is a poet who doesn't listen closely to his prose.)
for conspiracy theory
could you kindly produce a plausible explanation as to how the only the police vehicles are visible in frame 132 of your film, yet the whole presidential car is visible in frame 133?
somethingsomething CIA-sponsored crime*
*this is a poet who doesn’t listen closely to his prose. or her Google.
Dear Dave Bry,
Could you do me up one of them apology thingers? Ta.
Writing is different in the sense that it's made up of symbols, which makes it difficult to abstract.
If anything hasn't come far enough, it's road signs.