DagSeoul: Positions, Populations, Punk, Poetics

dagNotes: on the common and insipid sentiments about publishing and writing and their relationship with living well

How young writers love to talk about their dedication and publishing and the value their work should be afforded/should possess—because it’s dedicated and they’ve been published. Or, they write to publish. Or, whatever. It’s a poser’s struggle.

The worry about publishing always results from either unearned ambition or competition for a teaching job. The latter is unavoidable for those of us who’ve decided to teach while the former is the result of privilege. Always. Talented writer or not. We all know the writers who were raised in pools of privileged cash who were taught that all the free time they spent reading and writing should pay off for them. All the tuition mom and dad paid to insure appropriate introductions would be made in the most elite workshops and studios should lead to the right internships should lead to the right publications. It’s about getting what you’re worth as a result of paying/knowing who you know.

My contempt is visible, no? Too bad. This much I’ve earned. I’m the guy in your workshop who wants to stick a fork in your thigh, even when I’m the instructor. (Unnecessary but useful Bataille reference. I’ll buy a drink for the first person to get it. And anyway, it’s all a form of sadistic seduction. It’s the appropriate literary violence. It’s just, accurate, precise. And painful.)

It’s worth exploring the relationship of living well to publishing and contrasting to publish with to write.

• to publish can be the result of writing that is not intended to publish;
• to publish is not a reward for properly dedicating your life to writing;
• to live is not a privilege, though the privileged live well;
• to publish is more often a result of privileged living than writing well;
• telling others you’ve dedicated yourself to writing in writing can not rise above self-parody;
• when you’re dead, we might be able to determine to what you dedicated your life;
• after all, living is not the result of publishing;
• to publish is not to successfully live, but to successfully live may depend on being able to write;
• writing and publishing are not synonymous; therefore, to dedicate yourself to publishing is not the same as dedicating yourself to writing;
• (CONTINUE)

dagEssay: On Tropic Verisimilitude

The link at the bottom of this post is to an essay, well draft, for an answer to one of my doctoral exam questions. I wrote it in 2004. I like it. Exam essays always require so much information to presented in such a small space. And I think I handled the task well. I’d love to expand this after I finish my dissertation. I think, as the footnotes show, I have more to work out. And I’d like to use different texts. It’d make a great thesis, I think. An argument for the novel as useful historical document.

Because I’m working on my novel and I have to consider the arguments I made for it in my prospectus proposal/defense, I’ve been reading through my work back in 2004-2005 when I took my exams and then offered my prospectus for my dissertation. In 2005, I endured a series of unfortunate events beginning on Memorial Day and ending in late September: two violent muggings and I cut off a finger working on an old scooter. The three events left me a traumatized mess likely the direct result of having been on an emotional high for the previous four years when my work as a writer, scholar and teacher was being well-received. Great conferences, publishing, a full-time lecturer position. I was teaching a lot, writing a lot, traveling a lot. I went from a high high to an incredible crash. January 2006 to September 2007 was a slowly unraveling nervous breakdown that ended, finally, with an outpouring of blood. Literally, blood. In seven days, I lost a third of my blood mass through a bleeding wound in my small intestine. Bigtime Suck. It took me a year to recover my mental and physical health, and I moved to South Korea for a fresh start.

So, I’m finally taking a year off to write and finding that I’m distant enough from my original project and proposal that I’m having to reread not only the texts I was using, but my own work as well.

I’ve talked about this a little before, but I’m coaching myself back to my book, which deserves my time. Writing, unfortunately, is a solitary task.

_____

On Tropic Verisimilitude

Friedrich Nietzsche’s definition of the free spirit is grounded in the hopeful appearance of future philosophers to whom he refers as “experimenters” (Versucher).  In his lecture “The Relation of the Rhetorical to Language,” he explains that the essence of language is not truth but the “power to discover” and “to make operative that which works and impresses”.  In other words,

Language does not desire to instruct, but to convey to others a subjective impulse and its acceptance.  Man, who forms language, does not perceive things or events, but impulses: he does not communicate sensations, but merely copies of sensations.  The sensation, evoked through a nerve impulse, does not take in the thing itself: this sensation is presented externally through an image.
(21)

If we are to consider the relationship of art to truth, then we must be willing to give up the notion that truth is attainable as a thing that can be grasped, held, and cherished.  Truth is not a thing.  If it were, we would examine an image of truth not truth itself.

_____

If you care to look at the essay, I’ve put it in my public folder on Dropbox. Here it is.