Big déjà vu when seeing this arrive in my inbox just now. I read your original Gorse essay a few years ago and wrote a very long response which ended up being the first chapter of a book (I called "Acts of Translation") which I consigned to the bottom of the desk drawer out of respect for my fellow reader+writers.
Another of the side effects of reading your essay all those years ago is that I resolved to start reading my fellow writers of the virtual and give up trying to be noticed, allowing myself to sink ever further into delicious anonymity and obscurity. The result of this focus on reading what others write and post on platforms such as this is that I've become part of a small, but vibrant community of writer+readers. So who knows what will happen in the world when bottled messages are tossed into the open sea? Thank you for writing, even if it seems pointless.
Here's an excerpt from my book that will never be forced unwanted onto the world which was written in response to "On the futility of writing":
Maybe we aren’t listening to each other, but whose fault is that? Not listening is a curable defect. If we aren’t listening to each other, it’s because we are so caught up in wanting others to listen to us — read what I’ve written! Please click on this link I’ve just posted on Twitter that will take you to the incredible blog post I’ve just written about a subject that is really very important to me. Please, look at me, read me, I want to be seen. I’ll even take my clothes off, if that will help. We writers are natural exhibitionists anyway. On second thought, at my age it’s probably best if I remain clothed. [“...a body as flabby as his prose,” quipped one critic] Is anybody out there? As desperate as this might sound, a possible solution for our collective invisibility is to stop engaging in self-promotion, stop curating our witty online personas, and invest some time in actually reading what we (the writers of the virtual) are writing. Our challenge, an opportunity even, is to see the internet as the Borgesian Library and the internet as the Barthesian writerly text which is there for us to read (and even add to if we want). If we want to make virtual literature relevant, we have to be willing to read it. We have to start listening to each other. And it’s possible that we already are.
Jul 24, 2022·edited Jul 24, 2022Liked by Fernando Sdrigotti
I am grateful you wrote this (and the irony is that it’s in writing, no?). It did sound familiar—thanks for taking me back to the ancient* Gorse essay.
Have you read Zadie Smith’s essay “Something to Do” from her lockdown collection Intimations? I am glad she is self-aware to acknowledge that were she not Zadie Smith who is known, her lock down essays would be liked by three on subtack. And nada on Twitter. Anyway, it’s a great essay on this writing life and the absurdity of thinking it’s important.
I teach. With all my heart and creativity. Literature. But reading, first. In a very broken system.
And reading/ listening to her read her essay over the summer and then this, I am so relieved. Writing? Who knows? I do it when I absolutely can’t help it. The Twitter discipline gods be damned. But it does matter to plant seeds of literacy. I am grateful to have a vocation that is teaching despite my attempts to resist it.
My niece is 5 and learning to read and I swear every time she is able to connect two words to a larger meaning her eyes light up as if it’s magic she has witnessed.
No one listens and no one reads. The world has been running by those, good and bad, who do, since eternity.
Big déjà vu when seeing this arrive in my inbox just now. I read your original Gorse essay a few years ago and wrote a very long response which ended up being the first chapter of a book (I called "Acts of Translation") which I consigned to the bottom of the desk drawer out of respect for my fellow reader+writers.
Another of the side effects of reading your essay all those years ago is that I resolved to start reading my fellow writers of the virtual and give up trying to be noticed, allowing myself to sink ever further into delicious anonymity and obscurity. The result of this focus on reading what others write and post on platforms such as this is that I've become part of a small, but vibrant community of writer+readers. So who knows what will happen in the world when bottled messages are tossed into the open sea? Thank you for writing, even if it seems pointless.
Here's an excerpt from my book that will never be forced unwanted onto the world which was written in response to "On the futility of writing":
Maybe we aren’t listening to each other, but whose fault is that? Not listening is a curable defect. If we aren’t listening to each other, it’s because we are so caught up in wanting others to listen to us — read what I’ve written! Please click on this link I’ve just posted on Twitter that will take you to the incredible blog post I’ve just written about a subject that is really very important to me. Please, look at me, read me, I want to be seen. I’ll even take my clothes off, if that will help. We writers are natural exhibitionists anyway. On second thought, at my age it’s probably best if I remain clothed. [“...a body as flabby as his prose,” quipped one critic] Is anybody out there? As desperate as this might sound, a possible solution for our collective invisibility is to stop engaging in self-promotion, stop curating our witty online personas, and invest some time in actually reading what we (the writers of the virtual) are writing. Our challenge, an opportunity even, is to see the internet as the Borgesian Library and the internet as the Barthesian writerly text which is there for us to read (and even add to if we want). If we want to make virtual literature relevant, we have to be willing to read it. We have to start listening to each other. And it’s possible that we already are.
I am grateful you wrote this (and the irony is that it’s in writing, no?). It did sound familiar—thanks for taking me back to the ancient* Gorse essay.
Have you read Zadie Smith’s essay “Something to Do” from her lockdown collection Intimations? I am glad she is self-aware to acknowledge that were she not Zadie Smith who is known, her lock down essays would be liked by three on subtack. And nada on Twitter. Anyway, it’s a great essay on this writing life and the absurdity of thinking it’s important.
I teach. With all my heart and creativity. Literature. But reading, first. In a very broken system.
And reading/ listening to her read her essay over the summer and then this, I am so relieved. Writing? Who knows? I do it when I absolutely can’t help it. The Twitter discipline gods be damned. But it does matter to plant seeds of literacy. I am grateful to have a vocation that is teaching despite my attempts to resist it.
My niece is 5 and learning to read and I swear every time she is able to connect two words to a larger meaning her eyes light up as if it’s magic she has witnessed.
No one listens and no one reads. The world has been running by those, good and bad, who do, since eternity.
*yesterday is ancient in online times.