Sunday, August 14, 2005
6.~~~~~~~~~~
Writing for me frequently includes examining my effort and process of thinking, and not just the conclusions. Another word for this process might be self-questioning—self-doubt and the analyzing of assumptions. This is personal writing, meaning, I write for myself but then with some adjustments hand it over to potential readers--and to myself, to view critically at some later point. I do this not as therapy, any more than overcoming a block would send a fiction writer into therapy, but there is certainly an emotional pressure to write in this way that I don’t try to disguise. Those questions I would share with others, such as this very one, are personal and at the same time public in significance, relating to a culture and time I inhabit with others. If I consider myself a writer among writers who leave no such self-referential traces, then I feel on the defensive, even self-accused. What could be the validity of sharing what I write for myself with others? Further, can I make such writing public and not distort what is “for myself”? I can imagine myself alone when I write, but can I write anything truly for myself alone?
My writing comes up against my own criticism of the self-referential turn of contemporary culture, in the urge to put oneself constantly on stage or in print, and in the therapeutic reflex (the self-esteem movement, for example) upholding our social order. Unless I can find my way clear of this dilemma I should consider not publishing this writing and confine myself to the more conventional critique (which I also do at times).
If I am writing personally then I will openly admit to writing only what engages me, what bothers and obsesses me. There can be only what I myself need in the space between myself and what I put down here. The writing will attempt to trace the path of my thinking as accurately as possible and explore the roots of that in my history and psychology. I will be hunting out problems, dilemmas, dishonesty, attempts to deceive myself. Thoughts of what you the reader might want to find in it do not figure in. As I read it at some later point, however, I may feel I have touched on something I wish to express to others, and I edit it to this end. I negotiate, as consciously as possible, the distance of some imagined reader from myself. Some image of what a reader might understand inevitably appears, and a corresponding image of what I am to do as a writer. These are social roles, the producer and consumer of writing, dependent on each other, just as we find in music and art. The producer typically expects to interest and satisfy at least a certain niche of readers, and so works with some hypothesis of what they would want and need, perhaps an antagonistic stimulus. But where do these images come from, and how accurate could they possibly be?
There is a dilemma here I wish to open up to scrutiny—and not just for my benefit. So right here is where the reader, the other, intrudes; there must be some inkling however submerged that specifically this or that point I wish to make in print should be said to others, and not just to myself. We is found in the I. This is distinct from thinking there are others who want to hear it, that I could find a market for these thoughts; almost the reverse is true, that if I felt my thought was already accepted by others there would be no point in saying it. For all my humility about my intellectual powers, then, certainly I am writing from a moral purpose, and choosing out of all my musings what I would like to correct of the world’s received ideas and behavior.
I don’t oppose writing that lacks the self-conscious perspective of the writer; I simply elaborate a space for what I have found myself doing. As with the strange music I play, its value may be restricted and obscure, understandably making little impact on the world, but even so something can be said for it. It engages a certain discipline, first of all accuracy, awareness and honesty. Moreover it seeks to avoid the intrusion of images of the reader and writer leaning over my shoulder as bothersome phantoms. To write anything in a common language, even a diary entry, assumes other readers of this language, and so intimates at least a common humanity of reader and writer. I must have an appreciation of at least one reader, myself, who does not want to be deceived. The reader images, however, that I seek to banish are those aroused by fear of rejection or by the desire to flatter and attract. So as I adjust my personal writing for others I ask, am I thinking this through or am I seeking to gather and fortify a circle of opinion, of which I am the center?
When I seek to write with clarity and consistency I am more likely to face contradiction, confusion and weakness in my thinking, which I must then acknowledge and record. That is not a drawback, it is exactly what I want to do; there is no adventure and little truth if we plan for comfort. Such self-awareness survives the adjustments I make when I make such writing generally available. Perhaps readers of the current age would like to see vulnerability on the part of the writer; they would see that in me (perhaps “refreshing honesty”) and miss the content of thought. No writer can control what readers will do, but they can state their awareness of the possibility of misreading. For most writers, I imagine, there is an end to vulnerability in the finished product; finished means the mind has come to the end of its work and has achieved closure, until the next work perhaps sees the flaws. In writing we are making an object, and by the time of the last edit we can expect to be in control; at that point we will not genuinely be vulnerable to what is now on the page. We can fully affirm every word of it, for we are thankfully outside the thought we have produced and the vulnerability of ambivalence. Writing personally for the sake of thinking itself, however, it is difficult for me to escape anxiety in this way, and so difficult to complete anything. I can never believe that I have adequately nailed anything down, much less take pride in it. I try not to think of myself as cowardly, but the temptation is there.
I can’t deny that I have an image of a reader after all, one who reads and chooses what to read somewhat as I do. If I write for myself then it would follow that I am my own guide to the reader. As reader I pursue what seems to open a pathway to more questioning, often despite the author’s intentions; the absence of closure allows space for my own thought. If I need the writer to say more and he or she is not there, then I get to speak, to continue the other’s writing. I don’t focus on the person of the writer so much as the person the writer evokes in myself. I may not be able to repeat or summarize the writer’s thought, as I could in school, but my own creativity is set in motion. If on the other hand as writer I were to imagine myself required to motivate a reader, then I would lose my bearings. “Say something interesting; spice up the imagery!” So my guiding image of the reader is one who does not want me to abandon my discipline of writing for my own sake, who wants us both immersed in thought.
The danger of presenting personal writing to others is for the writer to use it to direct the focus onto him or herself as an object of interest to readers, a familiar turn of American culture ever since the New Journalism. By doing this one seeks approval for a specific image of oneself, a diversion. It uses the readers to establish a separation from them, as if daring readers to be as interesting. And further, if writing is presented not as a shared space but as the writer’s own conquest and possession, then there is little reason for the reader’s thought to extend and develop the writer’s. Much autobiography falls into this trite category, playing up to contemporary voyeur-exhibitionist taste.
What is it that we truly need to speak to others? Can we say what we want? Can we write freely? As a test, put it this way: can we say things that would create an image of ourselves that we don’t want others to have? ¶ 7:57 AM
