Three dialogues on literature

By Pablo D'Stair

Number Three:

Nigel P. Bird and Pablo D'Stair

[Part 3]

NOTE: This dialogue is presented over the next four weeks in a style of "progressive fragments." The exact order of inquiry and response as presented is not the order of inquiry and response as it happened between the two dialogue partners. Therefore, 'Statements' and 'Responses' from one week may not be directly addressed by both parties until subsequent weeks. It is the hope of both parties that the spaces between these responses allow readers the time and opportunity to more fully and experientially engage with the propositions, for themselves, rather than looking at the dialogue as a closed circuit.

PABLO D'STAIR : Of course I respect that things were not always how they are now-in terms of ease of printing, -but even when it was more of an upfront investment to produce any size print-run of a journal or a book, I don't get past the notion of the artist/publisher not just making up costs. 'Where does the paper come from?' you asked earlier, of course a fair question, 'Where the ink, the binding?'-it comes from someplace, yes it does, and there is cost associated. I see no logical way out of, then, that it makes sense for an interested party (a reader) to pay out those costs, per unit, if they want the physical book.

But, even when costs were higher, it's unavoidably true that the desire to have the work bound is that of the artist, the desire to present it that way is the artist's desire, the desire to have someone else read it is artist's desire-the desire though, to have someone "own" it...that gets off the track and the desire to get a stitch of profit, not just per unit (per reader) cost back...well, that's...iffy.

Ebook

Now, with ebooks I have to be a bit more pointed. There is wondrous good in the way material can be made available electronically, so many obstacles that in previous eras rightly stopped up authors' ability to expose their work to audience are simply gone. And the current ebook/e-reader situation is a bold leap ahead from just being able to share files over the computer, but bold in the sense that readers, in general, have what to them is a palatable way-even becoming a preferable way-of receiving and reading material.

I guess my question is: Don't you think there is something odd about writers trying to make the new technologies and modes of getting work out there conform to an old paradigm? Before, costs were something authors/small presses had to contend with (I, for one, always just wished there were no, or lower, costs to allow ease in getting work out)-now, they seem to be something authors/ small presses want to control and even set for themselves as obstacle to getting their work read.

NIGEL BIRD: It is strange, but understandable. The new technology is upon us like the eye-lid in a blink. The world's moving so quickly and yet we have narrow experiences to use as our foundation.

I asked the question at Sea Minor (my blog) one time, even mentioned your good self as a real pioneer in the area.

It was about Free Book Syndrome. Almost everyone is giving their book away for free just now. It's part of the current model. It's not based upon a philosophy, it's just been proved to help the sale of some books afterwards.

My question was that if all books are given away at some point, why on earth would anyone pay for one? Payment wouldn't make sense. And if no one paid for books, why would people write them? They'd take their skills to films and theatres and tree-book publishers and advertising agencies and editors etc, wouldn't they? All but the hard core.

And there'd be talented authors out there needing to put all their energy into the day job rather than their writing and that seems a shame. I know that by the time I've done my teaching day and looked after my own children, there's sod all left in the tank when I finally set to the work I actually love to do. That's really sad. I want to make a living at writing (alongside a less stressful, emotionally demanding day job) so that I can get to be even better at it. Write to the best of my ability.

Parameters

NB: I think I'm now in the habit of thinking within certain parameters. That's limiting to some degree, but it helps me. When ideas come, I sift through them and let them play until working out if it's something I'd like to write or something anyone might like to read.

As much as anything, I see myself as an artist first and a craftsman second.

The art depends on the level of craft.

So, if you'll excuse another tangent, let's take furniture.

It's no accident that the best known designers have usually been limited to one particular range of items. Chairs or tables or wardrobes. Jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none isn't where they got to. They honed their skills over and over so that they reached their maximum potential.

To that end, I've read little outside of the crime and noir genres you mention, though the writers I have come to know tend to flirt with horror so I read that, too. I want to be the best I can be. I need the skills for the craft to get the best out of myself. Ploughing a limited number of furrows helps me a lot, there.

There's the resurgence in the art world of the factory - ideas people passing on their concepts and getting other skilled artists to put things together. I'm not sure that happens with writing and I'm not sure I'd ever want to be doing that. 'Hey, Pablo. I want you to write about this girl who drowns in the sea, but the thing is...and she looks like...and....no, you've got that wrong, start again...'. No.

Thoughts

PD: You touch on a lot here very near to my thoughts, all the time. I want to start with the idea of 'the factory,' which I don't think ever went away long enough to warrant the term 'resurgence' and which I think has gone through enough iterations (since the Renaissance and prior) that 'collaborative projects' from the written word to film to theatre etc. have worked it out of the 'boss man/worker bee' mode you sort of describe.

Still, the personal beauty to me of literature is that it, almost by definition, is meant to be Auteur (I mean, that's the French word for "author" after all, but has taken on the art meaning of 'work with a sole mind, a single originator').

Literature is necessarily solitary for me and some of what you say seems akin to that. But, you also admit the idea of 'perceived/possible audience' being in your thoughts even at the impetus, even while culling through ideas. 'What would someone want to read?' And this naturally extends to the question of the implicit collaboration that goes in to 'finding that out,' 'creating something,' and getting it to this 'intended audience.'

I wonder your thoughts on the distinction between writing as solitary and publishing as collaborative-or do you see writing as always collaborative and the 'publisher-cum-audience' as a part of the collaboration from the get?

Then, the analogy of the furniture craftsman, which I hear versions of a lot. I get it, in many ways, but yet don't.

Even in the manner you set the analogy up, I don't think the perceived value of 'this bureau' over 'that,' at the master craft level, is quite apropos.

The notion of 'master,' as in someone who can, with great meticulous workings and material create a piece of singular complexity for specialized appreciation, is something, yes-but there, the more 'masterful' the artist, the smaller the audience even intended to appreciate.

Attractive

Then there is 'master' in the sense of someone who can throw down, in any circumstances, knock out a bureau that will be attractive, do its job for generations but have less specialised bells and whistles.

It might be well and good that some writer meticulously works on every sentence in a manuscript for thirty years and, I don't know, does boatloads of research on the length of city streets and counts out the words between this moment and that into a curious mathematical expression of the philosophical thrust of the work-a masterpiece, haha, of great craft. but isn't one of the truths of literature (genre and/or non genre) and music and painting and the like that if someone 'has it,' has something to express, then the craft and learning and rules and refinement are put on one side? I've never understood the idea of 'honing a craft' other than a writer writes because a writer writes.

NB: I can't elaborate too much. An artist expresses. A good artist with knowledge of craft and materials usually expresses better.

A child in a classroom with a box of chalks produces art and it can be good, too. We don't often go to galleries to look at those pictures, though, unless we're either the parents or the subject of a spoof. Everyone is an artist, some artists are better than others, some are luckier.

Put a child at a piano, you get music. Teach them to play and you get tunes. Allow them to experiment and you get compositions. Allow that to grow, let the child experiment and listen to other music, draw upon influence and understand tone and rhythm, structure and spirit and they'll produce work that more will enjoy or give a chance to.

Auteurs, yes, I've heard the theory. Studied it a little, especially in relation to cinema. But where would the director have been without the camera-work, the lighting, the sets, the actors, the writers? Auteurs, as often as not, were those who had the least will to bend their ideas and were more blinkered than the rest.

Technology

Hitchcock, said. How much did he owe to the silent movies, his own experience, the technology available, the innovators, the influence of German cinema at the time (which wasn't mainstream until it moved to America). I love most of his films, but he had a lot of people to be grateful to.

Beefheart again. You'll know of him composing music and locking away his band to eat soya beans until they'd mastered the Trout Mask epic. It's an auteur's work.

A piece of genius. But let's never forget the role of the others. Who's to say what happened in there? The subtle influences of people on each other. And let's not forget that Beefheart happened to be a mimic of the highest quality. And those paintings I love, as do many others - they could have been painted by a five year-old, only they weren't.

Peter Greenway, an auteur of sorts. Those beautifully framed pictures in the style of Vermeer. Individual and unusual, perhaps, but to me they're dull as dish-water.

The auteur is probably a bully who got to write history because people kept asking them what the history was. Some of their work is great. Some of its bollocks and self-indulgent claptrap about themselves. Take your pick.

For me, the art I enjoy is the art I can engage with; the pieces I can feel something about or experience something from of that makes me think. It's the same with stories. The books I like make me feel something. What I want from my work is that it moves the reader in some way.

That's the way I see it.