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Basically I agree with the view that writing novels is an unhealthy type of work. When we set out to create a story, like it or not, a kind of toxin that lies deep in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have to come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it, because otherwise no creative work in the real sense can take place. (Please excuse the strange analogy: with a fugu fish, the tastiest part is the portion near the poison -- this might be something similar to what I getting at.) No matter how you spin it, this isn't a healthy activity. (H. Murakami, WITAWITAR, 96)
And on the other hand:
We are standing on the most frightening territory in all of history,” Bernhard tells his mute audience... “Everything is explained to us and we understand nothing,” he says in another. “The words to which we cling because our impotence makes us insane and our insanity makes us despair, these words merely infect and ignore, blur and aggravate, shame and falsify and cloud and darken everything.(Thomas Bernhard, NYTBR 12/26/10; C.I.: Tulk)
And Mary Gordon again:
My only way out is to be interested in the process. Which gives me pleasure, the kind of pleasure I get from a good meal. To know I'm taking the risk of being ridiculous. The risk of self delusion. But to forget that in solving the problem.
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8 comments:
Some Christmas-tide bafflement.... What do you suppose this means?
Can't imagine, say, Trollope believing this.
Is that the litmus test? WWATB?
Hard to imagine him coming "face-to-face with toxin" because "no creative work in the real sense can take place".....
High-flown, for sure. Meaningful? Can't tell, because can't follow the thought. There's an essay in this morning's Times Book Review about Thomas Bernhardt that might be relevant here.
(I've been reading Celine recently and he's certainly a toxic guy... But he'd probably hit somebody who said stuff like this. Especially somebody who exercised. But who knows?)
Here you go: Thomas Bernhard, quoted this morning in the NYTBR:
“We are standing on the most frightening territory in all of history,” Bernhard tells his mute audience in one of them. “Everything is explained to us and we understand nothing,” he says in another. “The words to which we cling because our impotence makes us insane and our insanity makes us despair, these words merely infect and ignore, blur and aggravate, shame and falsify and cloud and darken everything.”
Actually the Bernhard seems more like posturing, because he's projecting his dark mood onto The Way We Live Now.
Murakami's tone is always frank and straightforward. I take this simply as an attempt on his part to describe something he feels. This is full description, BTW; no self-indulgent wallowing. I read him to be saying that running is a way to remind himself every day that he's a healthy, disciplined, normal person,when the work he does sometimes seems to suggest the opposite.
Also: a distinction between writers who take an external view of what they're creating (what Trollope might have in common with a good thriller writer) and those who feel they're pulling something up from the depths. Or does that swerve too close for comfort to characters who have minds of their own?
You seem to think I have an abiding love of my own casual opinions... Not true.
Thomas Bernhard may have been many things, but there's no evidence that he was a poser.
Not sure I find the distinction between external and internal that useful.
I have no idea what Murakami is like in his non-writing life and was a bit surprised that he takes such a dark view of his process. As for close to toxic: I offer you Reverend Crawley from the Last Chronicle, who is as tortured a fellow as you're likely to meet outside Dostoyevsky. (In fact far more so than any Murakami character who comes to mind...)
Point taken.
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