Tuesday, 16 January 2007

Who Wants to be Acknowledged? Part II

The best sentence from the chapter I stupidly sent people this morning:

His novels are therefore both nostalgic and utopian, morality plays describing how would have become Americans who they are if they had been who they are at the time of the Revolutionary or Civil Wars.

See what happens when panics creeps into the night?  In the shrill light of day, I recognize some of the basic errors I made.  (For example, the introduction should appear earlier, maybe even in the first ten pages.)  That said, I appreciate all the feedback—past, present and future—as it clarifies in hours what might otherwise take days. 

Jan 16, 2007 5:02:29 PM | Dissertation

3 Comments

Gwynn Dujardin

Oh, I don't know, Scott -- the sentence is almost utopian in its vision of English unshackled from the rules of syntax. Think of it as revolutionary, a form following content kind of thing (wink). (More soon.)

Posted by: Gwynn Dujardin | Wednesday, 17 January 2007 at 06:49 AM

prefer not to say

None of the rest of us EVER write such sloppy panicked prose in the interests of actually finishing a project before we die.

None of us.

Posted by: prefer not to say | Wednesday, 17 January 2007 at 09:44 AM

Luther Blissett

Scott, just tell them you were fragmenting discourse in the interest of showing how the Real erupts through all totalizing structures. Then buy yourself a pina colada and enjoy having finished a chapter draft.

Posted by: Luther Blissett | Wednesday, 17 January 2007 at 12:47 PM

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Too Hot for Jack_London Early last week, someone on the Jack_London listserv complained about "struggling through" some of London's later works. He asked whether they were the product of a once-talented drunkard pumping out hack-work. This is not, for the record, an unreasonable characterization of late-period London. He may not have been a drunk, but few would oppose the idea that as his debts mounted, he began to churn out mediocre work. I mean, every London scholar worth his or her salt knows he paid Sinclair Lewis for story ideas. Another member of the listserv said as much, then added that "there is nothing to be gained by struggling through the crap." The listserv exploded. An email entitled "Crap Criticism" shot into my inbox and demanded he provide the gathering mob "with a bibliography of his or her published books and stories so we may examine them and determine what their professional writing and critical credentials are." Fellow torch-bearers sputtered congratulations: "You tell him!" "Well done!" "Martin Eden!" After a brief interlude in which people debated the vulgarity of the word "crap," the original nay-naysayer returned to object again. I paraphrase: To call supremely terrible work written solely for money "crap" offends my scholarly sensibility! Now I quote with emphasis: Otherwise we have only opinion, perhaps useable on a blog or over beers at Heinold's, but not useful in a serious London discussion website ... I asked for the credentials of the crap-sayers because few, if any, of them have ever written creatively and therefore know nothing of the creative writing process. Confused by the use of the word "website" to refer to a discussion on a listserv? You're not alone. Had this statement been made in a film like CNN or ESPN—you know, one which didn't complain about the accuracy of a particular claim or question the authority of the person who made it—I might have let it slide. Couple that with the fact that my contribution has been deemed "unsuitable" by the list-moderator and you see why I must stick to my guns and post my crap-saying on my blog: Credentials don't make the critic, as I'm sure the St. Grottlesex-prepped, Ivy-educated London would agree. While I may not use the word "crap" to describe some of London's work, I would venture the following: "philosophically unsophisticated," "didactic," "overwrought," and "egomaniacal." Despite not having an extensive record of publication, I think myself capable of defending each of those terms. For the first, I'd discuss the cultural Lamarckism of Call of the Wild and White Fang; the second, any of the relatively frequent discussions of Darwin or Spencer (this would, obviously, dovetail neatly with my discussion of the first); the third, almost anything from the closing chapters of The Iron Heel; and the fourth, well, how many times do must you rewrite an idealized version of your own life before someone calls you "egomaniacal"? That said, I find London's work fascinating, oftentimes for the very same reasons I find it, say, philosophically unsophisticated. He...
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Of Abomination in Prose Whoever will revise a work of mine knows how impressionable I am, and how indulgent in my whims, to what location soever they direct me, here near and comforting, there remote and disturbing: always shifting without reason, like fickle winds, which wear away foundations now from the north, now from the south; so my voice, once stable, sways and threatens ruin: these are common menaces, and having, peradventure, thought of them a thousand times, I am afraid I have set them down somewhere else, and more profitably; but never in the style of Montaigne, whose sentences, in translation, kick and whinny like a sleeping horse, bucking nothing, stampeding nowhere; in this manner, his manner, I have yet to testify how the pacing and the phrasing of the words before my eyes works upon those my pen extrudes, or how I abominate the resultant inanity.

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