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Mar. 8th, 2010 12:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsMy feelings about Margaret Atwood are complicated and go something like this:
FIRST HAND: Well, you thought The Handmaid's Tale was awesome when you read it in your high school library, right?
SECOND HAND: But it makes you kind of unhappy that she is all "ewwww, don't call my books science fiction." Seriously, what is with that attitude about sff?
OTHER HAND: Okay yes, but that aside, she does write in interesting ways about feminist issues!
OTHER OTHER HAND: But for a book written by a feminist author, man were you disappointed with the whole exotic orientalism thing going on in Oryx and Crake.
BACK TO THE FIRST HAND: But otherwise Oryx and Crake was pretty interesting, wasn't it?
SECOND HAND: Interesting, yes. But very difficult to connect to! Likewise, Cat's Eye (which you cannot now remember anything about.) Basically there seems to be kind of a disconnect between the way you see the world and the way Margaret Atwood does, which may mean that you are not the ideal audience for her.
FIRST HAND: Possibly you are sort of unfair to judge that off of three books.
CONCLUDING HAND: And yet, do you really have a strong wish to read a fourth? No? Thought not.
But then![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
schiarire recommended me Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer On Writing, so I ended up reading a fourth after all.
My thoughts: the author of these essays is someone I like a lot better than I usually like the author of Atwood's fiction. I could have a good time hanging out with the author of the essays! They're clever and funny and grounded, and at times very incisive; overall they're a lot of fun to read, and I'm glad I did. But there's still a fundamental difference between the way I see things - in this case, the idea of being a writer - and the way Margaret Atwood does. Much of this book is about the writer-identity, the myths and mystique that surrounds that. Atwood spends a lot of time deflating the mystique, but - well,areyoumymemmy put it really well in an email conversation we were having last week, so I'm just going to quote her: she doesn't buy into the usual glamorization myths but she's sort of created her own (funnier and more realistic!) myths to replace them and they're actually pretty important to her, despite all the self-deprecation.
And it's not that I don't understand the impulse, because goodness only knows I get all shiny-eyed sometimes at the idea of being a Writer, a Real Writer, With Capital Letters Involved. But by this point in my life I find it hard to think of writing as some grand business of negotiating with the process of death, or descending into the underworld and coming out with a story; it's hard to think so self-importantly about something you do every day. I mean, if you want to write literary theory and argue that that is what writing is, then sure, fine, it's an interesting theory. But on a day-to-day basis - well, almost all of you guys are writers to some degree or another (just keeping a journal like this makes you a writer to some degre or another, I would say), so you can tell me if you disagree. But I don't think Writer-ness is a solid identity that you inhabit, like putting on a cloak: "now I am a Writer, and however petty my everyday identity may be, when I am wearing my Writer Cloak I perform the grand business of negotiating with the dead." I don't think it works that way. And if I don't have an alternate interpretation to provide, that is mostly because I'm sort of dubious about the concept of defining The Writer and The Writing Process at all.
FIRST HAND: Well, you thought The Handmaid's Tale was awesome when you read it in your high school library, right?
SECOND HAND: But it makes you kind of unhappy that she is all "ewwww, don't call my books science fiction." Seriously, what is with that attitude about sff?
OTHER HAND: Okay yes, but that aside, she does write in interesting ways about feminist issues!
OTHER OTHER HAND: But for a book written by a feminist author, man were you disappointed with the whole exotic orientalism thing going on in Oryx and Crake.
BACK TO THE FIRST HAND: But otherwise Oryx and Crake was pretty interesting, wasn't it?
SECOND HAND: Interesting, yes. But very difficult to connect to! Likewise, Cat's Eye (which you cannot now remember anything about.) Basically there seems to be kind of a disconnect between the way you see the world and the way Margaret Atwood does, which may mean that you are not the ideal audience for her.
FIRST HAND: Possibly you are sort of unfair to judge that off of three books.
CONCLUDING HAND: And yet, do you really have a strong wish to read a fourth? No? Thought not.
But then
schiarire recommended me Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer On Writing, so I ended up reading a fourth after all.My thoughts: the author of these essays is someone I like a lot better than I usually like the author of Atwood's fiction. I could have a good time hanging out with the author of the essays! They're clever and funny and grounded, and at times very incisive; overall they're a lot of fun to read, and I'm glad I did. But there's still a fundamental difference between the way I see things - in this case, the idea of being a writer - and the way Margaret Atwood does. Much of this book is about the writer-identity, the myths and mystique that surrounds that. Atwood spends a lot of time deflating the mystique, but - well,
areyoumymemmy put it really well in an email conversation we were having last week, so I'm just going to quote her: she doesn't buy into the usual glamorization myths but she's sort of created her own (funnier and more realistic!) myths to replace them and they're actually pretty important to her, despite all the self-deprecation. And it's not that I don't understand the impulse, because goodness only knows I get all shiny-eyed sometimes at the idea of being a Writer, a Real Writer, With Capital Letters Involved. But by this point in my life I find it hard to think of writing as some grand business of negotiating with the process of death, or descending into the underworld and coming out with a story; it's hard to think so self-importantly about something you do every day. I mean, if you want to write literary theory and argue that that is what writing is, then sure, fine, it's an interesting theory. But on a day-to-day basis - well, almost all of you guys are writers to some degree or another (just keeping a journal like this makes you a writer to some degre or another, I would say), so you can tell me if you disagree. But I don't think Writer-ness is a solid identity that you inhabit, like putting on a cloak: "now I am a Writer, and however petty my everyday identity may be, when I am wearing my Writer Cloak I perform the grand business of negotiating with the dead." I don't think it works that way. And if I don't have an alternate interpretation to provide, that is mostly because I'm sort of dubious about the concept of defining The Writer and The Writing Process at all.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2010-03-08 06:53 pm (UTC)Also, I just finished Soulless, and I can definitely see some of the points you brought up! I also think that there were many places where the ridiculousness was played up, sometimes to the detriment of the plot/prose, but as it was ridiculously ridiculous I don't see that as stopping me from reading the sequel when it comes out.
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Date: 2010-03-08 07:07 pm (UTC)Hah, yeah, Carriger is totally in it for the lulz. Which I am not complaining about! I approve of lulz. I will totally be reading the sequel - and I am also really curious about how she will be handling the romance aspect now that her main couple is actually married. Happily married protagonists in a romance novel! I APPROVE OF THAT.
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Date: 2010-03-08 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-08 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-08 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 12:03 am (UTC)I, uh, liked Ender's Game a lot when I was twelve. Looking back, I can see exactly why I liked it when I was twelve, and I don't really have a desire to reread it ever.
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Date: 2010-03-09 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-08 07:05 pm (UTC). . . Which I'm kind of bad at, so it may be why I'm still not much good at writing. ^ ^ But yes, I don't think Being A Writer is some huge grand heroic thing. If it was, I know I wouldn't have the attention span for it. :D
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Date: 2010-03-08 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-08 07:09 pm (UTC)Well, to be fair to Margaret Atwood, she does put together a whole bunch of writers' mythology - one or two of which do resemble more what you're saying - and then try to pull patterns about them. Which is interesting, but I'm still not sure there is an overarching mythology to be found . . .
Hah! Attention span: the main reason that the longest thing I have ever actually finished is a Yuletide fic. Oops.
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Date: 2010-03-08 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-08 07:42 pm (UTC)I have a feeling that Atwood tends to be at her most enjoyable when she's being playful; in novels she feels the need to be very bleak and srs bsns, and srs bsns-face SRS WRITER Atwood is not someone I enjoy hanging out with half so well.
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Date: 2010-03-08 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-08 07:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-08 07:50 pm (UTC)You know how writers will often have some weird snarky answer for the question "Where do your ideas come from?" Well, am I the only one who is actually really kind of freaked out -- but less in a horrified and more in a deeply perplexed way -- by having ideas? By thinking? By speaking?
Seriously? Where do ideas come from? Hume said that all our ideas are, at their core, basically just our perceptions, albeit combined in weird ways, or stretched, or magnified, or shrunken, or otherwise permutated. For instance, a unicorn is a horse with horns. A spaceship is a plane that goes to other planets and stars, etc, but we can only think in terms of things we've already percieved. Someone who's never seen an airplane can't imagine a spaceship. In fact, someone who's never seen an airplane can't really conceive of an airplane, except by analogy (a car that flies like a bird, etc).
That sounds kind of obvious, right? But I find it conforting to think that what's happening when I have ideas is that my mind is just sort of semi-randomly, and without any sort of discrimination, jumbling up and screwing around with all the things I've perceived in a set of ways. Kind of like how a carpenter turns wood into objects using a limited set of actions (cutting, sanding, etc, whatever carpenters do). Because the alternative is much weirder. How can my mind actually be, you know, creating things?
And when I try to have ideas. I can actually feel myself falling into familiar ways of permutating my environment. For instance, when I read an article on the internet about China buying up vast tracks of Ethiopia to grow food and I place the strange into a familiar setting by thinking, "Wow, what if all of California's Central Valley was operated by a massive Chinese agribusiness" (to use an offhand example).
But, that's not actually a conscious process most of the time. Mostly ideas, not just writing ideas, but all of the ideas, from the words I say to the food I eat to the places I go, that I use on a day to day basis just sort of pop into my head, and I'm left to decide whether to put them into action on the basis of metrics that, actually, are incredibly arbitrary, and at their core are just ideas that also just popped into my head at some point.
Basically, my conscious mind, even at its most powerful, feels limited to deciding which parts of this constant stream of words that float into my mind deserve to be put into concrete form, whatever that form is. And all of my power of abstract thought is basically devoted to defining the metrics for a "deserving" thought.
But where do the words come from? On the one hand, they honestly feel somewhat random. But that's clearly not the case. As I've gotten older, and more educated, the quality of my unfiltered thought (the words that I let pass silently through my mind) has grown better (according to however I define better). Clearly, I have alot of input into _what_ I am thinking. But I don't _feel_ the input. It's like there's some kind of beast in there, and I can affect the composition of its excrement by feeding it different food, and I can maybe train it to do a few tricks, but I can never _be_ it.
So...yeah...this could go on in circles for a really long time. But, that's kind of what I imagine people mean when they talk about writing in terms of divine inspiration and such. When they're writing, I think that people, or maybe just some people, feel more immediately the immensely puzzling nature of what we're all doing, all the time.
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Date: 2010-03-08 08:33 pm (UTC)But basically the gist of what I wanted to say is that I think it's interesting that you're talking about thought in terms of a stream of words, because - while I also feel like I think in words - I am not sure that is automatically true for everyone, that thought = verbalization.
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Date: 2010-03-08 09:07 pm (UTC)After all, there are famous cases of feral children, like Genie, who never learned to speak until it was too late. They could say words and use them to mean things. But they couldn't properly internalize any sort of grammar, or construct sentences except by rote. But they must still have had ideas. For that matter, I've always assumed animals had ideas. At least, something within my cat must be devoted to finding new ways to torment me at 7 AM.
I think of words as more of a shape we put on something inside us. Perhaps for some people that's more of a conscious endeavor. For instance, many writers say that they begin stories with an image. That is not at all what I do.
Maybe the source of my perplexed feeling is just that a good portion of my thoughts come to me partially shaped (i.e. in the form of words). However, some do not. For instance, there's the feeling of deja vu -- remembering something as it is happening -- that is entirely nonverbal.
Deja vu is actually not perplexing for me at all. I've never looked it up, but I just assume its some neurolochemical memory misfire. Because it's not verbal, it doesn't create that strong feeling of communicating with some other being. Maybe the part that verbalizes is what consciousness is.
Mmmm, this whole conversation feels like I just smoked pot. But such is not the case, I assure you!
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Date: 2010-03-08 09:28 pm (UTC)I tend to verbalize my thoughts, but then, I also tend to sometimes catch myself narrating my life, so I am not sure that's the best judge either . . .
Well I hope not, seeing as you are theoretically at work right now! (Unless you are not in the country right now, which I guess is also possible. WHERE IN THE WORLD IS [INTERNET] [PSEUDONYM]?)
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Date: 2010-03-09 05:25 pm (UTC)In three hours I will be on a plane. And tomorrow I will be hella in Manila...but in four days I will be hella back in DC!
EDIT: also, I eat animals _because_ I think they have ideas. How else can I gain their wisdom?
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Date: 2010-03-09 08:37 pm (UTC)Dude, Manila! Awesome! I expect touristy details when you are back.
Re: edit - I have now formed a resolution never to say anything that might be construed as intelligent around you again.
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Date: 2010-03-08 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-08 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-08 09:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-08 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 12:10 am (UTC)I don't think I have a writer's mythology? I like to turn on pretty music and then just write. I think using Write Or Die has demystified a lot of the process to me. You cannot wait for inspiration to strike if you want to finish things on a regular basis! Please note that I STILL spend too much time waiting for inspiration to strike. /o\ Oh, me.
I hope this comment makes sense, because I just got out of bed... two hours ago. Hooray sick days.
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Date: 2010-03-09 12:31 am (UTC)Yes, sitting around and saying hopefully 'O MUSE' while waiting for inspiration to strike is not a method I think that actually works! Um, which is not to say that I don't on occasion either use the 'but I don't feeeeeeeel like writing' whine/defense to myself. But. (Interestingly, I cannot write to music, though! Or at least not to music with lyrics. Background classical stuff is okay.)
It does make sense! Also erk, sickness. :/ Feel better!
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Date: 2010-03-09 12:30 am (UTC)For me, the thing about craft books is that I need to be in the right place to need them, otherwise I get really frustrated with them. I happened to like Negotiating With the Dead because it dealt with some issues I was thinking about at the time, and because for me the desire to write is, at least sometimes, motivated by thoughts about mortality/tragedy/similar topics I find it easier to write about, or around, than talk about.
As for the Writer Cloak idea -- I don't think I agree exactly with Atwood's argument that it's all about negotiating with the dead. But I do think there's a way of seeing the world as a writer -- at least for me, there's a part of my brain that's always a bit removed from the action, going hey, that was an interesting line or huh, those two people had a dynamic that I'm curious about, and churning it all into story ideas. Which is maybe a Writer Cloak of a sort.
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Date: 2010-03-09 12:43 am (UTC)And that makes sense, as to why Negotiating With the Dead would resonate for you. It didn't particularly for me, but that doesn't mean she's wrong in a lot of ways/for a lot of people. I just don't happen to agree with it as a grand unifying theory.
Hmmm. I feel like in a certain way there's this idea that writers are always observing life, and that's true. But I'm not necessarily sure that's as unique to capital-W Writers as a lot of the writer-myths say. I mean, how many of us experience something and then are like "I have to come home and tell LJ all about this!"
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Date: 2010-03-09 01:51 am (UTC)Hmm, true. But I'd say that's a writerly thing, too -- I'm not sure I buy the idea of capital-W Writers.
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Date: 2010-03-09 03:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 12:41 am (UTC)I have a weird history with writing because I grew up in in a household where my father and two sisters were Writers, of a sort, and I was supposed to be an Artist. I did write--I wrote a lot of poetry as a child that wasn't bad for a little kid's poetry, and when we kids discovered fanfic, I wrote fanfic that was...not worse than you might expect for a young teen. But when I tried to "cross over" from being the family Artist to being another Writer, one of my sisters told me that I shouldn't write, because that was her role--SHE was a Writer--that I wasn't any good at it, and that I should stick to drawing; maybe I could illustrate her work...? In keeping with our very dysfunctional relationship, I hated her for saying it, and took it entirely to heart. It was not until several years later that I realized that I'm not a half-bad writer, and I enjoy writing--in all kinds of contexts--quite a lot.
I still don't share my writing with most members of my family, though, because even though it's clear to me by now that I have as much affinity and skill for writing as my writing family members have, there's still a part of me that believes that I'm not a writer, and that my work isn't good enough for them to see. I mean, I don't regularly produce poetry, and I was never a prolific fanfic author, and one of my single biggest reasons for not going into academia is because I hate writing under deadlines and don't want to have to regularly produce academic writing for my career. So what kind of writer can I possibly be? Nothing worth bragging about. Irregular, lazy, and not terribly productive...and yet, I have linguistic aptitude and can occasionally turn a lovely phrase or write a sentence in a paper or a blog post so good that it sends me to bed happy. I organize my thoughts by writing. I take a narcissistic delight in rereading my own writing, particularly the good stuff. I am hugely proud of my writing skills, particularly as time in the workplace has shown me that my writing skills are, if not exceptional, certainly better than average. I'm not a Writer--but I do write, constantly, and writing is a huge and integral part of my self-identity. I have never approached writing as being some kind of transcendent thing--it's just something I do because I have natural tendencies towards writing and other kinds of creative expression, and I was immersed in reading and writing early on. And most of all, more than anything else, because I enjoy doing it. I cook for pretty much the same reasons.
Writing is like...running, or swimming. Most people have some potential there; you will learn to do it and practice it more or less depending on what necessity requires and what opportunity affords (after all, it's hard to learn to swim if you don't live near a good-sized body of water). Some people will be better at it than others; some will be excellent, and might win championships in their state; some will be spectacularly good, and might win an Olympic Medal, and make a career out of it. There are many needs and purposes for running or swimming or writing; you might need to do one or the other even if you aren't good at it; you might want to do it even when you don't need to, for the sheer pleasure of it, or because you have an inner drive. I don't think you necessarily have to go spiritual or philosophical to explain why writers write--it's certainly no more transcendent than a theological or scientific zeal towards parsing the universe.
Still, far be it from me to tell someone that they're experiencing their own life inaccurately. Everyone lives by their own narrative, and lots of intensely personal interpretations of the world sound pretty silly to other people.
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Date: 2010-03-09 12:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 02:29 am (UTC)I'm still a [person] who writes, too. With luck, I will soon be a [professional librarian] or [cataloger] who writes, but I might still go with [person] who writes, because for all the enthusiasm I feel towards my future profession, it might still be more accurate that way. Will I be a librarian who writes? Or a person who wrote to begin with, and later went on to be a librarian (and hopefully, a cataloger)?
...huh. I've never in my life had a problem with the idea of being PC--"un-PC" is so often a synonym for "racist prick"--but I think I just suddenly, for the first time, truly internalized what it meant, why someone might prefer to be thought of as a "person of X," instead of being just "X". The whole yes, I want to be a person first, and have my other essential/important/inseparable qualities listed after that.
....why yes, I am white, what gave it away?
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Date: 2010-03-09 03:04 am (UTC)I kind of like this notion that people start out from the intrinsic state of 'person' and have [x] descriptor after; which does not make [x] descriptor removable, or any less important to their identity as a whole. But I guess also, if people want to take [x] as their intrinsic state and have all other descriptors come after, that is their right too.
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Date: 2010-03-09 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 01:33 am (UTC)+ I really liked The Robber Bride. Especially Tony, who is one of my favorite female characters for reasons I can't really articulate. (Her actress was also astoundingly good in the astoundingly lackluster Lifetime movie version of said book.)
+ I think of myself as an apprentice or journeyman writer in the same way I would any craft. I don't like the pretentiousness that can surround the idea of self-identification as a writer/actor/artist/dancer/singer/etc (why do I only pursue things that won't make me any money), but nor do I like the shame or reticence I have in identifying as a writer. Normally I make it a verb: "I write."
+ One of my least favorite things about being alive in this era is its sense of deconstruction. We're post-modern post-feminist post-colonial post-racial, we're post-objectivity and post-free press, we're post-grand gesture and arguably even post-theatre. I don't know if this is what happens in every era, but ... for example ... we hardly have Enlightenment-style intellectual optimism. We don't take people's word for it-- whatever 'it' happens to be.
All of which to say, even if the Writer With Capital Letters is still possible, I doubt it's particularly relevant.
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Date: 2010-03-09 01:35 am (UTC)Whatever. I need coffee.
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Date: 2010-03-09 02:56 am (UTC)b.) I haven't read The Robber Bride, but I know that Margaret Atwood is a really good writer. Just, for me her books have generally been one of those non-click experiences. Someday I will try another one, though, and see if that's still the case. Because I really did enjoy reading this one even though I don't agree with it, if that makes sense.
c.) That shame and reticence is a weird thing, isn't it? It's those weird cringing feelings (for me, at least) that I really don't 'deserve' to call myself a writer. I don't know - I think that's part of what I backlash against in the idea of Writer As Identity as anything else.
d.) I'm not sure I have a d! Except I maybe feel like it's a lot of Writer-With-Capital-Letters people who are spearheading the deconstructing, but that may just be my sulky bitterness at a lot of contemporary literary fiction coming out and not a fair judgment.
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Date: 2010-03-09 01:45 am (UTC)I don't think of myself as a writer. I'm not sure I ever did. But I am also very very loathe to call myself a reader; so take that as you will.
Maybe it's too capital W but I like some things John Gardner said about writing, including that for some people (like me, a lot of the time) it's a way--even a mechanism-- of thinking.
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Date: 2010-03-09 02:59 am (UTC)I think it is a mechanism for thinking for me, too. Or at least - I find myself framing my thoughts in the way I would write them, a lot of the time, even if I don't ever actually write them down. But in a way that weirdly makes it less capital-W to me, I guess because it seems so familiar/ordinary . . .?
I don't think of 'reader' as a particularly charged term; I am curious why you do? If you want to elaborate. You don't have to!
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Date: 2010-03-09 03:18 am (UTC)I always felt that admitting you liked to read was like pasting a sign that said "MALADJUSTED MISANTHROPE: CAN'T GET ALONG WITH ANYONE. SOMEONE PLEASE LIBERATE THIS CHILD FROM THEIR DEVIANCE" on your forehead. I guess because... there aren't really other readers in my family. And obviously outside the home it was even more frowned upon if you weren't either indifferent or hostile to reading.
That's how I experienced things, though I was probably too sensitive about being different.
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Date: 2010-03-09 03:28 am (UTC)That being said I guess I am still awkwardly self-conscious about being seen toting books around at work.
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Date: 2010-03-09 04:56 am (UTC)My irritation isn't helped by hearing that she thinks of herself as a kind of literary wunderkind (or so my professor described it) and that she wrote Written on the Body as a kind of ~uber love story~ when um, that cancer plot over there? Oldest soap opera cliche in the book. And I am sorry, Winterson, but your pretty prose does not make that plot any less annoying, whatever you might fondly hope
She does write lovely prose, but.. BUT, I sort of feel. XD;
Sometimes I think Elaborate Thoughts about writing in my head, but to be absolutely honest my feelings on writing are best described by that macro of a dog being hosed in the face: "BLARGAHZXVZGWRH". Why did I think this was a good idea? This is a TERRIBLE idea. But I keep doing it anyway blargarfgzgz
I'm never going to win the Booker prize, but oh well, who needs those anyway XD
I've only ever read one Atwood - Alias Grace, which while fascinating left me feeling so inexplicably DEMORALISED that I re-read the Little Women books to console myself afterwards, ahaha. But this does sound like an interesting read! [makes note of it]
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Date: 2010-03-09 05:11 am (UTC)ahahaha those are OFTEN MY THOUGHTS when I'm in the middle of writing time. Or, uh, rereading for the first time what I wrote late the night before. "What is this wait WHAT?"
I have heard good things about Alias Grace! But . . . Atwood is good at demoralizing. Yeah.