I wrote essays, musings, blog posts (whatever you wish to call them)—words—regularly from 2009 to 2011 or maybe even 2013 or thereabouts on my personal blog. And I was astounded by the drive, the relentless drive, to write. There was no end to words and re-readings. Because I was always trying to understand and be understood.
And then life just happened TO me. When life happens TO, one is just holding onto a board and riding the waves of being alive. oh I wrote and published etc. but it wasn’t the same. I wasn’t directly being fed from some source.
and then I just didn’t have the desire to write (at least those essays) because I understood so much from a space beyond language.
But now language has become a mine field. There’s a challenge! So, maybe, I will write on my blog again.
RE the noise of publishing.
Hello from last day here in Ireland where I had budgeted to buy all the hype I hear about via the Twat. And found myself instead buying children’s books for my nieces, books not available in the U.S. even via Amazon, for proficient/ advanced readers, books not lacking in imagination.
I am so sad about the state of publishing.
I am sick and tired of my shelf of books I haven’t finished.
I am sick of blurbs.
I am sick of reviews about the person instead of the book.
I am tired of everyone having taken some mass hallucinogen and not realizing how everything sounds the same, it’s poorly edited, and so over the nose self-conscious about its characters’ politics.
Just tell me a story. If it’s good, it can’t help but be political because we are an idiot species.
Oh I did read one book while staying at a friend’s. Yellowface. 2023 hype. True to the hype. Couldn’t put it down. The tone very much reads like a What’s App thread among writers, and at best a 200 page Twitter thread. But couldn’t put it down. The audience is definitely those familiar with the industry and those who are current or former “users” of Twatter. Very clever. I recommend.
It also has me considering leaving X for good. I already use it minimally, but maybe that’s too much too.
I can't stand all the conformist political novels that ram an ideology down your throat, usually a self-righteous, authoritarian, moralistic tone, a trending cause that carries the merit of victim status invented by some delusional professor. As long as it promotes a narrative that sells, it's good to go. As if the virtue signalling company that published it gives a shit about any of it, as long as the money keeps rolling in.
If a story's good, the politics is there to be seen by anyone with any sense. So unimaginative and tedious. As I heard someone say recently, "We're all on campus now!"
So a comment on this nice piece : Often its forgotten today that literature does not consist of ideas, opinions, narratives, theses, objects of/to dispute “objects of intellectual use” etcetera: but of language, that it has nothing other than language. This is sometimes forgotten when people write on literature, even on the science of literature. Further then : It seems to me that if one forgets this then this causes the idea that reading something in the original language is better than reading a translation and yet we know this makes no sense - a few example its surely clear that Marx’s Capital is more important and more read in English than in German, the reference you make to Deleuze and Guattari easily as good in English, and equally interesting as philosophy. as in the original French - should I go on? The science of literature, as literary modernists and hyper-modernists point out refuses both authorship and creativity because of the necessity of accepting that literature is nothing other than language…
as Rob said the opposite… I’ll say the opposite, everything is political - nothing has ever been written that is not political, not ideological. So a trending cause, support for Israel, empire, biological essentialism.. all words are ideological to misquote Volshinov.
I can never place my work in a genre. It don't fit. I recently realised I'm writing folk-law (old-school, but in a modern context) in a picaresque manner. This is the closest I can get to defining my genre. But I doubt it's fashionable. By the way, I reckon you'll enjoy my latest work. It's unlike the conformity of trending books that are lauded by the fashionable.
I wrote essays, musings, blog posts (whatever you wish to call them)—words—regularly from 2009 to 2011 or maybe even 2013 or thereabouts on my personal blog. And I was astounded by the drive, the relentless drive, to write. There was no end to words and re-readings. Because I was always trying to understand and be understood.
And then life just happened TO me. When life happens TO, one is just holding onto a board and riding the waves of being alive. oh I wrote and published etc. but it wasn’t the same. I wasn’t directly being fed from some source.
and then I just didn’t have the desire to write (at least those essays) because I understood so much from a space beyond language.
But now language has become a mine field. There’s a challenge! So, maybe, I will write on my blog again.
RE the noise of publishing.
Hello from last day here in Ireland where I had budgeted to buy all the hype I hear about via the Twat. And found myself instead buying children’s books for my nieces, books not available in the U.S. even via Amazon, for proficient/ advanced readers, books not lacking in imagination.
I am so sad about the state of publishing.
I am sick and tired of my shelf of books I haven’t finished.
I am sick of blurbs.
I am sick of reviews about the person instead of the book.
I am tired of everyone having taken some mass hallucinogen and not realizing how everything sounds the same, it’s poorly edited, and so over the nose self-conscious about its characters’ politics.
Just tell me a story. If it’s good, it can’t help but be political because we are an idiot species.
Oh I did read one book while staying at a friend’s. Yellowface. 2023 hype. True to the hype. Couldn’t put it down. The tone very much reads like a What’s App thread among writers, and at best a 200 page Twitter thread. But couldn’t put it down. The audience is definitely those familiar with the industry and those who are current or former “users” of Twatter. Very clever. I recommend.
It also has me considering leaving X for good. I already use it minimally, but maybe that’s too much too.
I can't stand all the conformist political novels that ram an ideology down your throat, usually a self-righteous, authoritarian, moralistic tone, a trending cause that carries the merit of victim status invented by some delusional professor. As long as it promotes a narrative that sells, it's good to go. As if the virtue signalling company that published it gives a shit about any of it, as long as the money keeps rolling in.
If a story's good, the politics is there to be seen by anyone with any sense. So unimaginative and tedious. As I heard someone say recently, "We're all on campus now!"
So a comment on this nice piece : Often its forgotten today that literature does not consist of ideas, opinions, narratives, theses, objects of/to dispute “objects of intellectual use” etcetera: but of language, that it has nothing other than language. This is sometimes forgotten when people write on literature, even on the science of literature. Further then : It seems to me that if one forgets this then this causes the idea that reading something in the original language is better than reading a translation and yet we know this makes no sense - a few example its surely clear that Marx’s Capital is more important and more read in English than in German, the reference you make to Deleuze and Guattari easily as good in English, and equally interesting as philosophy. as in the original French - should I go on? The science of literature, as literary modernists and hyper-modernists point out refuses both authorship and creativity because of the necessity of accepting that literature is nothing other than language…
as Rob said the opposite… I’ll say the opposite, everything is political - nothing has ever been written that is not political, not ideological. So a trending cause, support for Israel, empire, biological essentialism.. all words are ideological to misquote Volshinov.
I can never place my work in a genre. It don't fit. I recently realised I'm writing folk-law (old-school, but in a modern context) in a picaresque manner. This is the closest I can get to defining my genre. But I doubt it's fashionable. By the way, I reckon you'll enjoy my latest work. It's unlike the conformity of trending books that are lauded by the fashionable.