dose

Lifted from dandruff: eternal bad hair days, comes this wonderful quote from The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly (writing as: Palinurus):

The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of the writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence. Obvious though this should be, how few writers will admit it, or having drawn the conclusion, will be prepared to lay aside the piece of irridescent mediocrity on which they have embarked! Writers always hope that their next book is going to be their best, and will not acknowledge that they are prevented by their present way of life from ever creating anything different.

Every excusion into journalism, broadcasting, propaganda and writing or the films, however grandiose, will be doomed to disappointment. To put our best into these is another folly, since thereby we condemn good ideas as well as bad to oblivion. It is in the nature of such work not to last, and it should never be undertaken. Writers engrossed in any literary task which is not an assault on perfection are their own dupes, and, unless these self-flatterers are content to dismiss such activity as their contribution to the war effort, they might as well be peeling potatoes.

That’s a great line, about peeling potatoes. I wonder what he would think of blogging? Perhaps not so bad since it’s not blogging for hire, but out of the desire to write, though certainly not perfection. Ms. Dandruff makes a comment on this quote worth reprinting too:

Reading a book is forever an intimate process; the touch, the smell, the sanctity of words on a page always virgin to your eye until you turn the previous page over. And the time I spend away from the deafening, fast-paced static of the digital world, I suddenly find I have the time to mull over details, to pay attention to the song being sung at the back of my mind, to the wisdom of words written to last.

It’s funny I have not finished reading a novel in a month or more. Bizarre. I’m not a totally voracious reader, but I do generally knock off about a book/novel a week, but I’ve been stuck somehow of late. Some of which has to do with time (rugby, wedding plans, and of course novel writing), but I just seem apathetic lately to reading words on the page. Perhaps poor choice of reading materials? Not sure. It often happens that I go weeks and months without finding one of those books that overtakes my life, and then suddenly I find one, and think, “This is what reading can be!” … It’s been a long while since that happened. But even my other reading — Harpers, NY Review of Books, Walrus — has taken a hit of late.

Some of the problem is also the insidious effects of too much online reading. For everything Dandruff has to say about reading a real paper & ink book, the opposite is true of the internet… the mind becomes accustomed to skimming not for the detail, but for the general, and once the gist is gotten, more info (from elsewhere) is sought — I often don’t even read whole short blog posts, once I get the drift I’m done, and then it’s onto the next link. This lack of ability to pay attention to detail is deadly, and pervasive.

I remember my universtity days when I would read texts through once very slowly, then a second time immediately, copying out verbatim passages of interest, taking pages of these notes. Reading a Meister Eckhart text or Heidegger or Neitzsche was like taking some kind of drug, the mind so tuned to another thinker, so keyed into thoughts about what the universe is, what life is, and whirrling with such a feeling of understanding and euphoria. I often read over several coffees at the Chinese Laundry Cafe in Kingston, and the walks home, with all that caffeine, nicotine and mental stimulation pulsing through the body–the worse the weather, snow, rain, the better–were among my most lasting and wonderful memories of that time.

Yet as pleasurable as those moments were, I rarely if ever now pay such close attention to the things I read, on-or-offline. Why, I wonder? Laziness is part of it surely. But the great things in life all take time, it’s the lull of the quiet, the attention to detail, the calm of perservence that leads to that transforative excitement of accomplisment — true of reading, writing, or any bit of work. Travelling is like that too — the excruciating boredom of being alone with oneself often yields those revelatory experiences where suddenly the planets line up and something magnificent happens, something you would have missed had you decided to give up and go home early.

Maybe I feel the pressure to write as Palinurus would have me write, and worry I’m not doing myself justice quite. The novel is nearing completion (again!) and I go through bouts of intense doubts about the quality. I am targeting the end of July to have a full clean revised good draft, for sending out to publishers (I hope) in September. I do something masochistic, that another writer-friend has called my Pynchon Test … I take my manuscript and sit down with a favourite book (eg The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon) and read a random Pynchon passage, then a random passage from my manuscript and compare. It’s usually pretty disheartening, but sometimes I think to myself, yeah, yeah, OK, not bad.

But is not bad good enough? Well, back to it.