Montage - Cultural paradigm | Sundayobserver.lk

Two personal investigations of literary dependence and independence: Writing and publishing:

Dependence in writing

[Part -1]

American fiction writer Stephen King has said, "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that." Of course, many others have said this same thing for ages—time honoured advice, what many would call commonsense.

But for me, this has been the source of incessant internal debate as I try to reconcile myself to my feelings as a writer, publisher, and literary philosopher—because to tell the truth, my gut reaction on every rephrasing and rehearing of this bit of wisdom is to disagree. Understand, I do not mean “disagree” in the sense of suggesting one should not read, I do not mean to devalue the act or the rewards that can be found in it—no, it is not a dismissal of reading.

It is only in the alignment of reading and writing that I find myself at odds, and the suggestion that there is a dependency—especially this particular dependency—is something I have great difficulty stomaching.

Why?

For more than a decade, now, I have been, no matter what else the circumstances of my life, constantly producing as a writer. I used to joke that I “write ten times as much as I read”—but in reflection I discover that this not only isn’t a joke, but the proportion of writing to reading is even more lopsided. There was a statistic released that, on average, Americans read only one book per year—on hearing this, I first sighed at the sad state of things, but then found that, truthfully, I was more or less represented exactly by this statistic—I was a one book (if that) American and had been so for years.

As a writer, in the last decade I have produced well over a dozen novellas and novels, several pieces of theatre, and a number of collections of poetry—my unfinished work is too voluminous to readily quantify.

Should my admitted lack of reading be taken as reflection on my work, as something that suggests there must be an intrinsic lack of quality? As an independent publisher, I am afforded the opportunity to indulge in my passion of dialoguing with other writers—in fact I publish a twice annual journal of dialogue in which I discuss literature with other artists, these dialogues rising upwards of 175 pages in length, per partner.

Both old questions, both questions I am often tempted to bat away—indeed, my own activities fuel my general dismissal of the adage currently under investigation, here.

Biographical sketch

Pablo D’ Stair is the founder of Brown Paper Publishing (2007-present) an independent Literature-for-the-sake-of-Literature press representing, as of March 2011, more than 20 works of contemporary progressive literary fiction by more than a dozen authors. Brown Paper Publishing titles have been featured as required reading at New York University and our authors run the gamut from unknown, first time authors to established authors with multiple titles available through University and Small Presses throughout the United States. The author’s own work includes the set of novellas The Unburied Man and The People Who Use Room Five, the novellas Kaspar Traulhaine, approximate, i poisoned you, twelve ELEVEN thirteen, Leo Rache., motion in the winter, and BOOK (forthcoming March 2011). Additionally, through Brown Paper Publishing Pablo has produced the literary dialogue series Predicate which features book length dialogues with independent literary authors including Stephen Graham Jones and 2008 T.S. Eliot Award winning poet Victoria Brockmeier. By mid 2011 Brown Paper Publishing will be launching an Imprint to produce runs of contemporary novella length fiction that will be distributed Only For Free in the Print Medium.

Yet how do I reconcile that this statement of a necessary partnership between reading and writing is so primary to so many people—how do I consider my own position comfortably when I can think of countless individuals—authors, ...

artists, scholars, thinkers—who I hold such dear respect for I would often gladly trade my own words for theirs, yet who wholeheartedly share and often repeat this necessity of readership for authorship?

Admittedly, I have read. I have not read as much as many people think I have, but I have read. In my childhood and through my adolescence there was a time where I took in quite a bit—fiction, philosophy, random science texts, essays, anything—but this intake drastically tapered off until, earlier than I admit to most people, it ceased.

But to draw from King’s exact wording of the thing, is this enough? “To have read” is not the same as “To Read”—the former is blatantly the past, the latter contains both the present and the imperative of the future. Is it enough to have taken in a body of material? Or is the continuing, perpetual, purposeful intake of text an essential part of the act of writing—or writing anything of value, that is?

I immediately assert that it is enough only “to have read”—it must be, for isn’t it enough to have fallen in love once with one woman to consume the rest of one’s life as fuel to keep that single passion warm? Certainly to “know love” one does not have to experience it ten thousand times over.

True—but even for me, perhaps a bit too glib. There is something lacking in this approach to the question, there is something semantic, empty—even as I answer with a bit of poetics, I know I am not getting at the heart of anything, but merely dodging around the edges.

I ask now, in an attempt to knock the adage down: What is it that reading gives to a writer?

Examples of what else has been written—what has come before, what is contemporary, some indication of the possibilities and the histories, perhaps?

Yes, it gives these things. But it gives them so many times over I cannot help but think the volume reduces the necessity—one person will read one book per week another will read ten, one person will hold sentences forever in their memory, another person will forget the world opened up by a volume the moment the cover is closed. But I hardly can imagine someone suggesting that reading ten books, as a matter of flat fact, will lead to being a writer in more measure than reading five—one thousand will not lead to higher quality than one hundred—and from this, it seems, reading one book every ten years is just as much “reading…finding time to read” as is reading one book every day.

But what are these mathematics—is there a quantitative measure of worth and quality—or, for that matter, a qualitative measure of it?

It is an act, a communion, an art, an exploration of self, an exploration of others by way of personal reaction and empathetic openness.

But the two are not the same. No. It is tempting to leave this silly semantic gameplay alone, suggest it as some kind of paradox, but it isn’t. Yes, there are many things the two have in common, but as many things are exclusive to each.

Writing is origination outward of the internal—thoughts create an artwork. Reading is origination inward of the external—an artwork serves as impetus to created thoughts.

Nothing here suggests why the two even need each other, except that reading—even if only in a superficial sense—needs writing, is dependent on there being an object to be read.

But this is the inverse of the advice—this is what reading needs, not what writing needs.

Truthfully, I have never been able to bring myself to say that a reader is required for there to be writing—the idea that there is something incomplete to a piece of literature if no one has read it has always seemed artful fairy tale. Understand, I don’t mean to say it isn’t nice to have readers, that there isn’t, even beyond desire, much good and worthwhile that comes from writing being read, but can it actually be supported that an unread work has no value?

I think of myself, of the years I spent fervently, devotedly, consumingly writing work after work, dedicated to the point of near obsession with the art, yet all I would do upon completion would be to print the pages out, bind them, and set them around someplace. I had no desire for an audience—or perhaps just not for an audience beyond one person, though even if I hadn’t had that I would still have written with as much purpose, intensity and imperative—and my work was by no means halfhearted retread of run-of-the-mill ideas or indulgent, self-centered stream of consciousness diary keeping. I would, in moments of arrogance, go so far as saying it was my removal from reading, from influence, from community with other writers that reinforced my drive and my focus to set literature to the page.

And even from what I would call an “evolutionary standpoint”, I didn’t see this need for readers: the body of Literature-We-Know is built atop mountains of literature-we-will-never-know. The amount of unread writing—or read and unremembered writing, read and lost writing—is staggering, is infinitely vaster than the writing that is known, considered. My heart even goes so far as to say that unread writing is absolutely essential to there being writing we read—if all of the writer’s work that never finds audience were to vanish, literature would be gone from the world overnight, but if the canonized body of known work were to be spirited off, the world would scarcely note its disappearance, would replace it, instantly, hardly noting the substitution.

Ah, this might be a bit much—yes, even I think so. To say that Shakespeare’s works no longer existing would not be noticed, that Dostoyevsky’s volumes gone would not leave a catastrophic void—this cannot be, there would be nothing to replace them, they are the razor thin line separating man from beast.

Here, this seems to me a logical place to get at our larger query: Where did these literatures come from?

A moment ago, I used the word “disappear”, but of course this suggests that Shakespeare’s works are vanishing after having manifested themselves—of course this would have an effect, but is it a matter of circumstance, only? That is—if Shakespeare’s work had never been read, would it matter that it had vanished? Perhaps. Perhaps not. If some other work—even not to the scope of Shakespeare, not even necessarily the work of only one other writer—had been noticed in its place, what truly are we suggesting the consequence would have been? Further still, if Shakespeare’s work had never been read, would it have not held value, its own?

No. I recognize I am adrift, I have come away from I set out here to consider. All of these queries are well and good, but they are also pointless, are they not? I find I am hiding in rhetorical abstractions, purposefully setting up questions that have no answers rather than trying to answer questions that, though difficult, are nonetheless tangible and connected to this life.

Because it is too late to wonder “where did it come from”—this is nothing to do with why I react the way I react to the notion that reading is essential to writing.

So let me re-approach the question by way of accepting, by way of unblinkingly admitting that I know it is true, regardless of whether I respond to it pleasantly and welcomingly. Because that is the tension, the queasiness I want to understand—“If I know it is true, why do I find myself at odds with it?”

Perhaps there is a sense of shame in knowing that I write but do not (so much) read—there is a deep seeded disquiet that because I, personally, am not nabbing up books and devouring them, no one should be thought likely to pick up my work to give it a read.

Yes, a kind of tit-for-tat that might not be necessary to keep “writing itself” moving along, but seems only proper to keep “reading and writing” going along. And whether I read every day or only read years ago, it would be absolute fallacy to say that I have ever truly felt the two as separate.

Even still, this idea seems aimed only at other writers—if I want other writers to read me, I should be ashamed of myself for not reading them. Yes. But how if I want people who are not writers to read me? Certainly it is irrelevant to the non-writing readership—from the layman to the scholar—whether or not I read as well as offer them things to read.

Perhaps there is a sense of shame in knowing that I, somewhere in the heart of me, would gladly go unread by the masses if only the “World of Writers” would take me in, if only the scholarly interviewers and dissertation writers would welcome me—perhaps I am trying to remove myself from the masses by not approaching books as they do.

Yes, perhaps it is outright, gaudy arrogance that makes me insist there is no necessity—I can be a writer, no concessions and were I to admit to the necessity of a readership, scholarly or layman, I would have to face up to the fact that I don’t belong to the one and don’t want to belong to the other.

Perhaps there is nothing artful in my recoiling from a simple, humble statement of dependence, of respect, of embracing—perhaps it boils down to something far more earthly, far more human.

I resist readers, resist their necessity, because I am a fearful writer—I want to make claim at being iconoclast on the page, but know this equates to being a thunderclap in my own imagination. I want to imagine the world away, imagine the readers away, construct meaning for myself to mean something in because I know there is a roundabout safety in this—I know the world is there, I am just ignoring it, but were I to reach out to interact with it and find myself the thing that is ignored…no, there would be no safety in that.

Should my admitted lack of reading be taken as reflection on my work, as something that suggests there must be an intrinsic lack of quality?

I still don’t have an answer. But of course I don’t have an answer—not because there isn’t one, but because the answer is not mine to give. Even in this question, which I put to myself, rhetorically to prompt my own skulking along the corridors of my self-doubt, there was a timid dismissal of audience—“Listen to me ask a question and then listen to me answer it.”

And as it relates to myself, I never will know. Unless one can abandon something with faith another will take it up—no requirements, no stipulations—how would one ever know anything? To be able to learn you must be willing not only to ask but to receive reply.

I have resisted the idea of audience as necessity because, no, I am not ready to hear them say they don’t depend on me.