stuff

Audience and The New Novel.

“I get a little nervous if I find myself within earshot of sombre discussions about “formal innovation” in fiction writing. Too often “experimentation” is a licence to be careless, silly or
imitative in the writing. Even worse, a licence to try to brutalise or alienate the reader. Too often such writing gives us no news of the world, or else describes a desert landscape and that’s all—a few dunes and lizards here and there, but no people; a place uninhabited by anything recognisably human, a place of interest only to a few scientific specialists.” – Raymond Carver

overview
The Nouveau Roman, or New Novel was an ultra-realist 1950’s French literary movement concerned with progression within the literary realm through a systematic removal, subversion or overturning of several ‘Obsolete notions’ (Robbe-Grillet, 1956) advocated by the literary establishment of the period. The obsolete notions; story, character, commitment, form and content were subordinated to the dominant themes of pure surface (Nothing behind the text), subjectivity (Reader interpretation), and a focus on objects.

 

The New Novel defines a purely mental landscape, divorced from outside world in a post-existentialist fashion through the use a pure language which is unambiguous in intent. The result of Plot being replaced with puzzle, character with object, and depth with an essentially meaningless surface text is an inscrutably honest literary genre which delves deep into the human psyche and serves as an insightful study of Modern Man with a drive to affect real change in the real world.

The new novel utilises a sophisticated method of communication through omission, it is therefore difficult to totally quantify and is best studied through the appearance and omission of common socio-politico and literary themes within the works. in short; The New Novel and  The Novel, or Balzacian novel, parallel and diverge from each other in an endlessly complex network of signifiers. To compare the two side by side would shed light upon only minor angles of interest within the New Novel, viz. The New Novel requires new eyes and new criticism, and perhaps a new audience “New Novel, New man” (Robbe-Grillet, 1961) if it is to be understood and studied correctly.

 

Discussion within this essay will take place through contrasting the difference in regards to audience that result from the New Novel as a concept as outlined in the collection of essays “For a New Novel”, penned by the movements’ spokesman Alain Robbe-grillet against themes long established as bendable but irremovable which have dominated the literary sphere since the 19^th century.

Discussion
The New Novel has manifest socialistic implications and can be understood to be a novel for the thinking public of the future, irrespective of class (Robbe-Grillet, 1956). This Nietzschean ideological bent of writing for a future audience becomes apparent in the following ways:

Through subjectivism and the consequent renunciation of meaning follows renunciation of ownership (Hirsch, 1979): through this we can draw conclusions as to ideology behind the novel: The New Novel can be understood to be a stick in the wheel of the “circuit of ownership” (Foucault, 1969) and can therefore be understood to have an implicit allegiance to socialist theory and the political left. Furthermore the New Novel is a wholly Godless affair, which accounts in part for the clinical, dehumanized tone employed when depicting objects and characters (Robbe-Grillet, 1956). Furthermore, the depiction of objects in greater measure than humans can be understood as being a deliberate and considered anti-bourgeois reflex (Weightman, 1962), the New Novel can therefore be understood to be aimed at a godless, leftist, intellectual audience.

 

All concepts attached to the New Novel are born from the question “Does life have purpose, if so what is it?” (Robbe-Grillet, 1956), what follows is Robbe-Grillet’s opinion of character as an obsolete notion “The novel of characters belongs entirely to the past” and furthermore, on a socialistic bent “It describes a period: that which marked the apogee of the individual” (Robbe-Grillet, 1956). This is consistent with Raymond Carver’s opinion that “It’s possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman’s earring—with immense, even startling power.” (Carver, 1969). The New Novel certainly conforms to these stipulations, but does it endow that of which it speaks with the “Immense, even startling power” of which Carver is talking? Are they on the same page? This is a question to be answered at a later stage for the following excerpt (taken from Robbe-Grillet’s “Jealousy”) is, in its isolation, insufficient to answer it, and is being hereby included solely as an impression of how this literature reads; critical interrogation will come later:

 

“To the right, this part of the veranda adjoins the end of the living room. But it is always outdoors, in front of the southern facade – with a view over the entire valley –that the morning meal is served. On the coffee table near the single chair brought here by the boy , the coffee pot and the cup are already arranged. ”

 

Regarding composition the text gives equal focus to a reality seen by a seemingly arbitrarily placed human eye, a mise en scene, rather than focusing on a human protagonist. It does this in fashion akin to that of socialist-realism. This is due to Robbe-Grillet’s conceptual stance that “The exclusive cult of the “human” has given way to a larger consciousness, one that is less anthropocentric ”, which raises the question, can this concept engage an audience, and or is the New Novel even concerned with audience?

To illustrate the extent to which character is typically present (or absent) within The New Novel is another extract from Robbe-Grillet’s “Jealousy” :

 

“But from the far side of the bedroom the eye carries over the balustrade and only touches ground much further away, on the opposite slope of the little valley, among the banana trees of the plantation. The sun cannot be seen between their thick clusters of wide green leaves…”

 

In this instance the extent of character is the “Eye” which “Carries over the balustrade and only touches ground much further away…” Observing reality in much the same way any person might. Whilst this has resonance with the human condition, it fails to fully engage the reader. This could be due to a problem concerning authorship and subjectivism what Hirsch calls “Cognitive atheism” –a blindness of faith in an ultimately illusory subjectivism.

 

Hirsch Jr argued that subjectivism is a fundamentally flawed concept. To follow Hirsch’s argument that “A text cannot be interpreted from a perspective different form the original authors’ and that “Meaning is understood from the perspective that lends existence meaning” and that “It is impossible to distort something that cannot even exist by means of an alien perspective” (Hirsh, 1974) that conceptual basis of subjectivism, upon which the New Novel is founded  is called into question.

 

This opinion affects profound damage upon the conceptual tenets of The New Novel, reducing it to that of a progression in literature, not fundamental invention or newness. The result: the point from which the story in the New Novel is supposed to emerge is lost and replaced by the authors story – categorically that of “Nothing” (Robbe-Grillet, 1956), and further, owing to the impossibility of subjectivism; That the author is always present and maintains ownership over the text in turn runs counter to the socialistic undertow of the New Novel and raises the questions, is the New Novel a needlessly inaccessible genre, an inefficient communicator flawed at base in its attempt toward a new literary and ultimately socio-political order, and who wants to read a novel which is categorically about nothing?
This is the first demonstration of the gap between the New Novel and the Novel narrowing to that of an abstraction or a progression within literature, not a fundamentally new one. And if it is not fundamentally new, then surely it is either A. bound to the same laws from which it refuses to be governed, or B. arguing an impotent case.

From the above we can infer that The New Novel can be roughly defined as an experiment in narration, for it is in the narration that the genres concept is situated. For example in Robbe-Grillet’s the Voyeur, the first person narrative is pushed to a new distance comparable to that of a video camera which glitches, back and forth as the human memory retraces itself. In this text the “eye” interacts with its surroundings without feeling or critical reflection. Thus the question “from where is the resonance between text and reader supposed to be occurring? Is this even a concern of the New Novel? If not, is this to its detriment?”.

 

Resonance, or for want of a better word “the hook” when reading a New Novel supposedly exists in the mystery between the events which occur, that is to say “The drama exists in the form of mystery, of a piecing together of events”. Robbe-Grillet regarded his work as detective fiction, and it is in this puzzle-like quality that evokes the total subjectivity and consequent ‘birth of the reader”, which is central to the New Novel, momentarily discounting Hirsch’s opinion, does this work?
To elucidate, the following potentially insightful sentence from The Voyeur is to be considered:

 

“There had been the word “soup” at the end of a rather short sentence; perhaps the words come home as well. It must have been something “…like come home in time for soup” … …it was just a figure of speech, probably: it had been several generations since the fishermen took soup at lunchtime”

 

Is followed directly by the less insightful, dramatically destructive:

 

“The woman seized the two men’s empty glasses, plunged them into the sink, washed them quickly, rinsed them under the tap, and set them upside down on the draining board.”

 

This essentially banal observation and seeming lack of relation between the sequential sentences is, owing to its frequency within the text, likely to have a disengaging effect on an audience. The seemingly arbitrary and careless compositional style rails against reception theory (QUOTE) and is a concrete problem inherent in the genre; that of a lack of consideration for audience.

 

This total insensitivity to drama affects a peculiar and particular interpretation of the texts, that of a cumulative diminishing value of the text as a whole, that is to say, since the sentences within the paragraphs have no relation of meaning, and it is the reader who is to reconcile these sentences within these paragraphs, the sentences become increasingly distant, often to the point of immaterial. This immaterial acts as a catalyst for more immaterial, increasing the spaces between the “Hooks” and ultimately disengaging the reader. This is the most destructive force at work in regards to audience when reading New Novels.

 

To summarize, the two fundamental flaws of the New Novel regarding audience are thus:
its focus on objects in place of people, and its lack of dramatic structure. Both of these problems affect resonance between text and reader: it is hard to engage an audience through essentially weak and uninteresting signifiers (geometry, etc), and is potentially impossible to engage an audience should these foreign signifiers not be structured in anything but a dramatically rapt manner.

Lack of ordering of intensity of events, coupled with Robbe-Grillet’s only showing, without the author behind the text telling the reader, what the story is, the work as a whole declines in value. Without expectations to conform, lampoon or subvert, that is through the non-use or absence of expectations, the audience is disengaged from the text.

It is in their combination that The New Novel falls down, as Raymond carver notes “It’s possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman’s earring—with immense, even startling power.” (Carver, 1969) That is to say, signifiers can be dehumanised and powerful. Furthermore, as illustrated by Kafka’s dramatically coherent texts,  it is possible to subvert dramatic structure to degrees and removals. But to stress, it is in their combination that a text becomes wearisome for an audience, and this surely diminishes the value of what is otherwise a high, pioneering genre with many upright elements.

If The New Novel is to be viewed as a movement in literature with an entirely socialistic thrust then it has not been as successful as it otherwise could have been. this could be due to either; Literary history, the prominence of the balzacian novel and the consequent expectations an audience has of literature, and or that the new novel is simply neutered literature, inherently incapable of registering affects in a reader. But this is only a potential contradiction, since the New Novel is expressly “saying nothing” (Robbe-Grillet, 1956). Either way, this still stands up as criticism.

problems with subjectivism

Barthes . Structural analysis of narrative… the semiology, or the science of signification.
Socialistic: Through renunciation of meaning comes renunciation of ownership: the New Novel is a stick in the wheel of the “circuit of ownership” (Foucalt) and can therefore be understood to have an implicit allegiance to socialist theory and the political left. Further investigation unearths more socialistic readings, the dehumanized tone employed when depicting objects “village Nestled” can be understood as a deliberate and considered anti-bourgeious reflex.
There is a further complication at the root of the New Novel, that of authorship or subjectivism.
Hirsch Jr argues this subjectivism or “cognitive atheism” (E.D. Hirsch Jr, 1976) is impossible and that
“it is impossible to distort something that cannot even exist by means of an alien perspective”
“A text cannot be interpreted from a perspective different form the original authors. Meaning is understood from the perspective that lends existence meaning. Any other procedure is not interpretation but authorship” that is to say the New Novel is conceptually inconsistent and fails in its attempt at subjectivism, that renunciation of ownership and consequent meaning is an impossible quest. The affect this has on the New Novel as a movement is profoundly damaging, reducing it to that of progression, not fundamental invention or newness: the gap between the New Novel and the Novel is reduced to that of abstraction and progression – it can be regarded as the Progressive Novel but not a fundamentally new one. This runs counter to the socialistic undertow of the New Novel.
The New Novel can therefore be viewed as an attempt toward a new socio-political order

bear grillet

On 8 January 2011 19:42, X wrote:

“I have nothing to say” (Robbe-Grillet)

 

the nouveau roman advocates subjectivism, that is that the reades interpretation of the texts will serve as their meaning. There are many socialistic aspects to the genre, despite it being expressly apolitical. “Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people” (Lenin, 1905). There is an implicit marxist thrust within the New Novel: the complete absence of “an omniscient, omnipresent narrator (A God) ” (Grillet, 1956); of objects replacing man as the central aspect of the novel; through its use of pure unambiguous language. The New Novel can be read by anyone who can read – it runs totally counter to the impenetrability and elitism of Joycian irony that is afforded to the many. The New Novel is perhaps the most modest branch of literature, grand in its interpretations but to its discredit, slippery through its renunciation of inherent meaning.

 

the New Novel overturns the archaic Bourgeious order within literature in much the same way as Marx argued for within socio-politics through a reasoning remeniscent of Marx’s dialectic (ILLUSTRATE), and in many ways mirrored Marx’s vision of revolution, only on a small scale and within literature: The New Novel was an intellectual uprising aimed at democratizing the climate within literature and dimishing the sway of the critics and their 19th century opinions of what constitutes a good/valuable novel/lit.

 

nietzche/overman

 

grillets major concern is “does life have meaning?” (grillet) Grillet is putting stock in tomorrow, the nouveau roman has its stock in tomorrow, in a nietzchean over-man. A human capable of apprectiating the text as it is, liberated from bourgeious constraints in both life and literature.

 

Thus the question, why is the Balzacian novel prominent. Is it a bourgeouis trapping, or is it fundamentally the most valuable combination of form and content which constitutes The Novel?

Aristotle/freud/jung

is the Nouveau Roman fundamentally flawed, bound by its alligence to neutering rules to be a wearisome quantity in its realisation?

nouveau roman has a unique philosophy and approach to writing which must be understood prior to reading the texts in order to increase satisfaction when reading them. Sartrean Existentialism, Nietzchean Nihilism, and Marxist theory serve as a basis for the concept of the New Novel. barthes death of the authour.

cannot connect to the text. the narration is to distant.

in Grillets the Voyeur, narration is first person. Nouveau Roman was can be roughly  defined as an experiment in narration, for it is in the narration that the genres concept is situated, for example in Grillets the Voyeur, the first person narrative is pushed to a new distance comparable to that of a glitching video camera, this “eye” interacts with its surroundings without feeling or critical reflection. It is in the events which occur that the drama exists in the form of mystery, of a piecing together of events. Robbe-Grillet regarded his work as detective fiction, and it is in this puzzle-like quality that evokes the total subjectivity, the “birth of the reader”, which is central to the Nouveau Roman. (BLOW UP) therefore reading the Nouveua Roman, is more a question than an answer.

Rejection of the bourgeiousie.

the Nouveua Roman

1. overview of Le Nouveau Roman – its literary, and potentially historical context, word count permitting.

is not a theory, but an exploration.

The Nouveau Roman, or New Novel was an ultra-realist 1950’s french literary movement concerned with progression within the literary realm through a systematic removal, subversion or overturning of several ‘obsolete notions’ (grillet) advocated by the literary establishment of the period. The obsolete notions; plot, character and depth were subordinated to the dominant themes of pure surface (Nothing behind the text), subjectivity (Reader interpretation), and a focus on objects which charachterise the Nouveau Roman.

The result of Plot being replaced with puzzle, charchter with object, and depth with an essentially meaningless surface text is an inscrutably honesty literary genre which delves deep into the human psyche and serves as an insightful study of Modern Man. The language employed is pure and unambiguous in its intent (GRILLET). It reads as a purely mental landscape, divorced from outside world in a post existentialist fashion.

but the New Novel is not The Novel, they are independent of one another. to compare them side by side would shed light upon only minor angles of interest within the New Novel, the New Novel requires new eyes and new criticism, and perhaps a new audience if it is to be understood and studied correctly. A new audience one of Robbe-Grillets main concerns when outlining the movement (QUOTE).

The Nouveau Roman is difficult to quantify and can only be studied through the appearance and ommission of common themes within the works. Through its onus on reader interpretation, its total absence (not expressly anti-) of a bourgeouis world view and its use of everyday language the Nouveau Roman can be understood to be implicitly socialistic, that is to say, a novel for the thinking public, irrespective of class.

2. Nouveau Roman and Death of the Author (R.Grillet being a mere instrument in the creation of his open texts “i have nothing to say” (R.Grillet)): Birth of the Reader. Which leads to Grillets big question “does life have meaning?” Grillet argues against “ready made ideas in literature and life” but unfortunately fails to offer a form of literature accessible enough to catalyse this change.

the two fundamental flaws of the New Novel regarding audience are thus:
its focus on objects in place of people. This affects resonance between text and reader: it is hard to engage an audience through essentialy uninteresting signifiers (geometry, etc).
its lack of ordering of intensity of events, this coupled with Robbe-Grillet only shows, without the author behind the text telling the reader, what and what the story is, the work as a whole declines in value. Without expectations to conform, lampoon or subvert, that is the absence of expectations, the audience is disengaged from the text. This total insensitivity to drama affects a particular interpretation of his works, that of cumulative diminishing value of the text as a whole, that is to say, since the sentences within the paragraphs have no relation of meaning, and it is the reader who is to reconcile these sentences within these paragraphs, the sentences become increasingly distant, often to the point of immaterial. and it is this that is the most destructive force at work when reading Nouveau Roman texts. (CARVER quote “feeling for drama”) for instance

which leads to a potential contradiction. If The New Novel is to be viewed as a movement in literature with an entirely socialistic thrust then the it has not been as succesful as it otherwise could have been. this could be due to either; Literary history, the prominence of the balzacian novel and the consequent expectations an audience has of literature, and or that the new novel is simply neutered literature, inherently incapable of registering affects in a reader. but this is only a potential contradiction, since the New Novel is expressly “saying nothing”. Either way, this still stands up as criticism.

3. modernist rejection of the bourgeois – socialistic, idealistic (admirable) – which an implicit characteristic of Nouveau Roman.

4. birth of the reader: is this really a novel? this is dependent on interpretation, to look at this in a literary context.

The New Novel is precisley that, that is to say it is not the novel: Two separate things with parallels as for instance a car and a train have parallels. Still the New Novel progresses a number of literary concepts, often to their zenith

but this is not strictly true. Grillets understanding of The New Novel was an occasionally ignorant and often generous one. take for instance

5. contrast with relevant literature (sartre, camus, beckett, perec, barthes, balzac, etc), analysing the effects of “several obsolete notions” (character, plot, depth).

Robbe-Grillet was writing for tomorrows audience, a Nietzchean concept

6. Nouveau Roman is inefficient literature, viz. artistically sound but too tedious, abstract and concpetual (50s intellectual) to engage a wide readership (socialism (modernist goal?(is this right or wrong? i believe modernist architecture was concerned with this?(grillet is quite faux architechtural/ geometrical)))) which ,if the quadruple-brackets are sound, runs counter to this interpretation of the Nouveau Roman and its potential thrust/value

whether, culture, the literary gatekeepers, taste, etc the New Novel doesn’t work. It is tedious, intellectual, dead. it fails to capitalise on the majority of the strengths particular to the medium of writing; the communication of ideas.

is too clinical. The New Novel is too insular, oblivious to its failings and contradiction.

Nouveua Roman

“The world is neither significant or absurd. It is, quite simply. That, in any case, is the most remarkable thing about it. ” (Robbe-Grillet)

overview:

Grillet expressly state “I have nothing to say”, that is to say he is a “dead author”. This opens his texts entirely to interpretation. The Nouveua Roman could be understood to function in an almost converse fashion to that of the traditional novel

to analyse the “new novel” in context with literature, it shares minor resonance with Sartrean existentialism, a pure surface found in Frisch or Camus, the ambiguity of Beckett

grillet would like to have his audience believe that he himself is simply an instrument in the creation of a text.

thus, is it a novel? is it a novel to some and not to others? is it something else?

to contrast it alongside comprable literature. both share, as is essential, the linguistic/textual constraints of for and content, which define it as writing.

New Novel simply refutes the vast literary tradition (“on several obsolete notions”), which results in quantities of writing which are different.

whether, culture, the literary gatekeepers, taste, etc the New Novel doesn’t work. It is tedious, intellectual, dead. it fails to capitalise on the majority of the strengths particular to the medium of writing; the communication of ideas.

grillets work, prose poem, novel, verbal picture,

fuckign boring.

through rejecting the principles

AUDIENCE:

very of the time: it is entirely audeience based. 100% reader interpretation.

quickpresspost is a shit

Brewer M Clear window Today 14:53 no alot of fuckers are online yes lets make it snappy afternoon bruno hello how did it feel to be shortlisted for the bp portrait award ? um haha i dont know i cant think of anything it was amazing a real shock id just graduated from college you took the words right out of my mouth what are your main influences as an artist/photographer ? functionality elaborate? what medium do you most like to work in? i take influence from well orchestrated something things i like to use cheap digital cameras haha yes why? with a cheap printer in an expensive book i like to use cheap digital cameras because the poor quailty of the image compliments the subject matter the poor light haha the atmosphere is non existent what subject matter do you “focus” on ? beautiful woman beautiful structure no that si interesting another beautiful … i like to concentrate on the way in which the himan being interacts with its surroundings (3 is the magic no. in interviews) to highlight our menial daily activitys beautiful light what are you working on now ? now i am making plans for photo sculptures and painting sculptures because i expect these to sell haha . you have a show coming up in london yes i have a small show in the 55dsl show and then shop not show what will you be exhibiting at these shows? and then i have a solo show in the vidmook gallery which i am preparing for now what is the thrust of this exhibition? and title? i will be showing new photographs and these sculptures sounds good hang on a sec ill catch up ill probably call it catch up “catch up” you speak of how people interact with their surroundings, how do you find it, spending half your time between dorset and half between london ? and i am trying to give the public novilty items seeing as they are so obsessed with novelty? i was looking at the top 10 album chart talking of surroundings, how do you find it spending half your life in london and half in dorset? the other day and didnt realise that people actually bought the n dubz album haha 1000′s and most products that move quickly from the shelves are very novel, like the toilet paper with flags on that you said haha stupid naivity very young dorset would never sell i think that the people in dorset and london are really diffo from eachother ? their activitiesdiffer greatly and their views. down here right wing both sides of the coin inspire your art city and country? yes the country is full of strength and the city is weak haha listen to werner herzog on the jungle i will do city is … and i like delivering indian food because you can see into peoples houses and deal with the public and be momentarely welcomed through their gate you wanna get a dictaphone mate use your cunt or my cunt liek eveyone else you’re a big advocate of the waxed jacke t? becca got a freee dictaphone with her mac you’re a big advocate of the waxed jacket? not atall cunt well you’re a big advocate of the waxed jacke t? they were made for drizzle and they can take on wolves the monotonous everlasting drizzle but they are very cold not a nporthumbria but they have a killing pocket whichyou have witha lining they are functional? good design ? wellnot in london yes good design for the new forest why not in london ? there are much better coats notepads/cameras etc yeah well they are no good for hanging cameras on the shoulder because they slip off ok do you take yours with you everywhere you go ? camera? waxed jacket haha yeah can we just talk about waxed jackets for a bit please yeah and how good they are wax jackets are amazing which is your favourite fuckng right wicked your steed? my one do you take it up the juncton and intot the woods hang on its being retreived by my assistant call it a barbour no call it no call it we should fuck in them zip the zips together i might fuck in it and have a big fuck woman love the smell a big fuck in ldn fields ha i love the smell of … you took your wax jacket to poland mine is called stroller (reverese everything ) stroker more liek what does barbour the brand mean to you ? (be nice) stroller are sorting me out with free hunting knives haha do you need a durable jacket when taking phtotgraphs in all conditions yes, its nice and you do nice and i go in it and get out of my car hah why am i ding this? (somones talking to e and they arent you) / shit thanks brewer thats ok – im got to bastardize that into a false abrbour advertorial where you talk abotu skiing in switzerland and robins and xmas and then jackets jackets jackets its a rouse

you

You Can Take The Northumbria Out Of The Country, But You Can’t Take The Country Out Of The Northumbria.

why must it double space everything.

Self: The other day

I recall that accident

I wrote about it

the other day:

A person shaped dent

in the front window

of a stationary bus.

The panorama:

A metallic generator,

botched together vendors,

hospital nylons, come apart papers

and a shallow sleep of crowd

up to the railings

some eat fried chicken

chips, all watch

as if it were a car on fire

or a blockbuster,

the helicopter just for show,

which it isn’t.

and things look terrible up close

but from a distance -

blocks that comprise the mural

go unturned, unnoticed

I’m slow deciding do I lock-step

or make like a tree?

We’d all been hit by Monday morning.

(I’m outside the generator,

on the roundabout,

just walked out the underpass,

looking at the walls,

at the advertising.)

fuckking wordpress

Writing

“The world is neither meaningful, nor absurd. It quite simply is, and that, in any case, is what is so remarkable about it.” – Alain Robbe-Grillet

Contents

1.    What is writing?
2.    What should writing do?
3.    How can this be achieved?
4.    Conclusion/polemic
5.    Postscript

1.0

Q. “What should writing do?”
A. “Writing should communicate, that is the function of writing.“

Writing can be split into two categories:

•      Form: The shape the writing takes, viz. the navigation into the content.
Common vernacular: “Form” accounts for the aesthetic or style of an amount of writing. It is “The way in which”.

•      Content: The purpose of a quantity of writing.
Common vernacular: “Content” is the subject matter of an amount of writing. It is the “Things spoken about”.

1.1

Intelligible writing is necessarily the marriage of Form with Content. Owing to the linear nature of writing, “Form” and “Content” are two mutually dependent hemispheres.
•    Form and content may overlap.
•    Form and content may be synergic.
•    Writing and any meaning contained therein, is osmotic.

2.0

Writing can be viewed as a kind of qualitative speculative mathematics. Owing to the written words historical impact, relation with fact, a sum of written words can, if written correctly, has the potential to partially illume the otherwise incomprehensible, viz. writing has the potential to evoke the “super-conscious” (COLIN WILSON REFERENCE) in both the writer and reader.

2.1

The written word

Pros              Cons
Potential to evoke the super-conscious
Floating/flexible aspect of language    Inability to concretely say everything
Floating/flexible aspect of language

3.0

The Process

1.     Spark: Content generation (straightforward word combinations which relate directly to reality) to be committed concurrent with or after the duration being documented.
2.     First edit: dependent on the writer’s inclination may process the quantity through one or several creative techniques, adding or subtracting.
3.     Second edit: omission, restructure.
4.     Final edit: title/format/proof/end.

3.1

In short:
1.     Generate content.
2.     Process content/rebirth.
3.     Omission/ restructure.
4.     Title/proof/end.

3.2

In practise:

1.     It was a very bright sunny day and three men were up the cliff and the first man said “Isn’t this nice” or “This isn’t nice” and threw a rock into the thick far into the bushes and second and third man nodded and then the first man sat down in a heap and said “I feel sick”.

2.     It was a cold sunny day and three men were sat the bus-stop opposite the Fish and chip shop on the main road and the first man said “fuck it” or “fuck off” and stared into the chip shop, into the thick glass, into the images on the wall of fish and chips and second and third man stared opposite directions and then the first man pushed the second man and said “don’t you listen to me?” or “won’t you?”.

3.     Saturday: Cold and sunny, daytime, three men, sat at the bus-stop, opposite the fish and chip shop, on the main road
-First man: “Fuck it” or “Fuck off” (stares into the distance, into the chip shop,
The Second and Third man stare opposite directions outward, neutral, then First man shoves Second man, almost knocking him of bench.
-First man: “don’t you listen to me?” or “won’t you?”.

4.

Three People

Saturday: Sunny, cold, daytime, three men, huddled in thick coats, sat at a bus stop, opposite The Chip Shop, on a main road.
First Man sat on the rightmost part of bus stop bench, staring into distance, occasionally into the chip shop.
Second Man, Third Man sat to the left of First Man, tense, staring almost opposite directions.
Silence.
First Man
(Under his breath)
“Fuck it” or “Fuck off”
First Man
(Aggressively)
“Don’t you listen to me?” or “Won’t you?”.
First man shoves Second man, almost knocking Third man of the bus-stop bench.
“Well?”
Silence.

4.0
Toward
Eleven Tenets.
1.       The writer must make the task of completing new writing as simple as possible for him/herself. (productivity)
2.       The surface text must be as easy to navigate as possible Writing should be as clear as possible. Surplus is surplus.
3.       When generating content all content must be totally factual and linear (inscrutable/ honesty/ relevance/ authenticity)
4.       Conscious and subconscious life is relevant material but are generally to be kept separate.
5.       In the second stage of editing, Freudian or other techniques of creativity (condensation, chance, substitution, association etc) are encouraged.
6.       All results realised by techniques of creativity are to be removed or masked until consistent with the rest of the text, Viz. they are to be totally undetectable.
7.       In the third stage of editing erasure, omission and restructuring (writing is bound to omission, erasure follows from omission) are encouraged.
8.       (always use the common) Words from the dictionary and common vernacular are the only acceptable words to be included in the final stage of editing (timelessness/ communication). There are a handful of exceptions, see tenet 9.
9.       All finished artefacts must be consistent with themselves alone. Each artefact is a discourse in itself which may or may not correspond to the writers output as a whole.
10.   Writing must play to the strengths of its medium, that is bias and communication (slant and clarity)
11.   All eleven tenets exist to be observed until broken.

5.0
post script
Good writing isn’t something you can put it into a schemata – its too chaotic, too dense, too esoteric to formalise and measure – its time wasting; Criticism and processes will always be periphery and external to the reasons as to why a good finished product is good. Writing is inherently imperfect: not only are there multiple ways to write the same sentence, coupled with multiple interpretations of that sentence, the list to which one single sentence could stretch is limitless to the vulgar. Therefore the good writer has to place belief in their nose.

A successful quantity of literature is fleeting and each creative venture comparable to betting on a horse – you can only get better at limiting failure.

Writing is delicate, I’m not about brashness very often, I prefer to speak regularly rather than whisper or shout. I am concerned with the implicit, the subtext, and the nuance. Regarding audience, I suppose the idea of my work resonating with people is more side-effect than intention – I write for myself, in short, I find the act of writing cathartic.
If pressed, The overboard phraseology I’d use to define my work, which for no small reason isn’t dissimilar to Carver’s or Chekov’s is “id like to capture the moments of unadulterated existence as honestly and succinctly as possible, moments when life is fuller or more real than it usual”. This is the state I am in the market of translating.
Writing for me is glints of brilliance. Stories are but literary pastorals in which gems are to be deposited. Writing requires these gems, these hinges of communication, without them the writing is “doing nothing”. I try to leave my work loose so others might pick up what I didn’t consciously mean. That isn’t to say my craft is careless or automatic: my craft is quite the opposite.

Ill finish with one total certainty: the one thing bound to cause literary cot death, abortion or drinking alone in its bedroom is an unbending allegiance with ones dogma.

IN THE KNO

WHY THE BARBOUR IS SUDDENLY SO ROCK ‘N’ ROLL/// KAREN WHEELER /// DAILY MAIL.

J. G. Mallard

James Graham Mallard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His best-known books are Bread (1973), adapted into a film by David Cronenberg, and the semi-autobiographical The Wind From Nowhere (1984), made into a film by Steven Spielberg,[1] based on Mallard’s Adolescence spent between Clapton Pond and his internment by the Vietnamese Army during the Second World War.

The literary distinctiveness of his work has given rise to the adjective “Mallardian”, defined by the Collins English Dictionary as “resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Mallard’s novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made ponds and the use of too many words with a particular focus on ducks.”[2]

Mallard was diagnosed with leg cancer in June 2006, from which he died in London in April 2009.[3]