I am curious as to what "living the literary life" means to members who might care, or do care, about living it themselves. I have some thoughts on this I will return to later, but I am curious as to what the regulars, or even the not so regulars, think about this aspect towards creativity and end product.
Anyone?
Literary life as in the life of a writer, or the life of a critic?
... or the life of a life-long student or lover of literature?Originally Posted by JBI
"The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the sh1t the more I am grateful to him..."
-- Harold Pinter on Samuel Beckett
(a critic)
Like JBI, I have some questions as to what you are speaking of. I am a bibliophile... a passionate lover of literature... but don't consider myself a writer at all. Taking your question on creativity over into my own field of the visual arts I will say that a great majority of the notions of what the artist's life is like is like is no more than stereotypes. Artists come from all walks of life. They earn their keep in all manners. They can be found all across the political spectrum. The only common thread that runs throughout us all is a passionate need to make art. Pablo Picasso is the "author" of a great many of the most insightful aphorisms related to the artist's life:
We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.
Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.
Good artists copy. Great artists steal.
Every child is an artist. It's a challenge to remain an artist when you grow up.
It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.
The quality of a painter depends on the amount of the past he carries with him.
A painter is a man who paints what he sells. An artist, however, is a man who sells what he paints.
When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.
The first of these is the most insightful... or has certainly been so for me. It challenges the notion of the artist as some moonstruck visionary who only creates when touched by the muses, and recognizes that artists may indeed be touched by inspiration... but the largest part of the labor of creation is undertaken day after day... like any other job.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Why do you assume we need a qualification between the two? A critic, especially in the modern era, is rarely separate from the profession of creative writing itself, though in luke's case that might be different, as professional art critics develop chest pains the minute MOMA gets gas.(and luke will jump on me about that, I'm sure)...
As mentioned, I do have some thinking aloud on this, but I have to go google televisions and reluctantly price one. I hate tv, but love movies, and even without the digital switch, can't do Netflix and get my DVD player hooked up without a new television, alas, but I will leave with this thought, for now.
I always had romantic notions about it from when I was JBI's age (assuming he is about my age now as when I was an undergrad in 82). I thought the very power of my work would land me the right perfectly urbane husband with similar humanistic leanings, and that maybe I could even try to raise a baby thereby, despite my limbs, and that travel would come my way and be manageable simply because it was my right, and that my age now would have enveloped me in the perfect aesthete's bauble.
Compared to what my life really is (public housing, disability benefits, and containment challenges minus Depends because they are too difficult for me to handle...) was it worth all this cost, and so much of my idealism scattered over many lengths of football fields?
Mmm. I dunno. I will run on more later.
You need to read Leopardi, I think he is right up your alley:
From A Silvia
My sweet hopes died also
little by little: to me too
Fate has denied those years.
Oh, how you’ve passed me by,
dear friend of my new life,
my saddened hope!
Is this the world, the dreams,
the loves, events, delights,
we spoke about so much together?
Is this our human life?
At the advance of Truth
you fell, unhappy one,
and from the distance,
with your hand you pointed
towards death’s coldness and the silent grave.
Note, in terms of translation, maybe 3/10, but I used it because it is in the public domain, and I don't have an English copy of the Canti on me.
I had prospects of being some sort of successful writer when I was about 11-17 or so. I guess I cowered, and decided it would be safer to be a critic - less risk required. I think I made the correct choice, as I am a poet kind of guy, and even if I was successful, I would still be starving.
Last edited by JBI; 11-10-2008 at 12:40 AM.
A painter is a man who paints what he sells. An artist, however, is a man who sells what he paints.
Oh, I like that one.
I have an extremely clichéd imaginary image of the ‘literary life’. You know it is all about loafing around on over-sized divans, wearing comfy loose-fitting clothes and sipping absinthe. I'm sure it will be like this in after a few more years of study anyway, don't shatter my illusions please.
Hey, I'm still studying and I'm already doing that!My divan is not over-sized though...
Et l'unique cordeau des trompettes marines
Apollinaire, Le chantre
Hey, yes you have made my day!Hey, I'm still studying and I'm already doing that!
Must say I have a few lost illusions of the artist's life. I still haven't managed that garret in Paris... right on the Seine. I've yet to get around to purchasing a beret. My wife has this thing about nude models strolling around the live-in-studio... in fact, after a year in New York living in my studio I found that it wasn't for me either. I do have lots of black clothing, however... the artist's obligatory "uniform" you know.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
I cannot post it as funny as I heard it, but the word is that George Plimpton was drunk on absinthe when he and his fellows started The Paris Review. Remarkable that it still remains one of the premier literary journals in this still fresh century.
Has anyone here ever had absinthe? Spot on Neely!
Last edited by Jozanny; 11-11-2008 at 12:14 AM. Reason: typo
That's an interesting topic; I too am interested in the opinion of those here.
As to living the literary life, I believe that is split into two, perhaps three: writing, reading, and maybe critiquing and editing.
I suppose I am a writer, but I'm not really comfortable saying that because I'm only seventeen, and I too have ideas of rather high standards (Tolkien, Dostoevsky, Sayers, etc.) to match up to. So perhaps I'm a writer apprentice, because I certainly do study their styles
I definitely am a reader, though in interests of both age and modestyI don't think I fully understand what that means...YET. I read not necessarily a lot but I generally pick one book at a time and read it through (unless it is interminably long like Les Miserables and goes into a so-far seemingly pointless digression onto the effects and repercussions and even meaning of Waterloo) and go through to the next one.
As to critiquing and editing, it seems like I do a lot of that on my own work. I've helped out a few friends but I would like to continue "practicing" in this aspect, especially because I will have to do a lot of that as a professor, which is my career goal
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
andave: I get this, when you say *only* seventeen. I did not really prove anything to myself until by chance I hit the minor leagues as a disability reporter. I had been publishing for years, mind, before that, in the independent and little presses, but after a while, literary journal affirmation wears a bit thin, even when I appeared with Jayne Anne Phillips in Oxford Magazine. (If you Google Machine Dreams you can find something out about Phillips, but my admiration for her nearly has a homo-erotic enthusiasm to it... did I just say that?I suppose I am a writer, but I'm not really comfortable saying that because I'm only seventeen, and I too have ideas of rather high standards (Tolkien, Dostoevsky, Sayers, etc.) to match up to. So perhaps I'm a writer apprentice, because I certainly do study their styles) Alas, I will always have deviance for solace, but my point was, and is, that even though I have slowed down, to my detriment, since 06, I can and do believe in myself because I broke ground by getting my byline in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
That is the big leagues, and I can and will do it again, barring a medical issue doesn't bring me down first.
Young writers like yourself seem to go one of two ways. They make a big splash and get stuck there, or they toil on like a good soldier until they find the appropriate multi-cultural niche. It takes discipline, a willingness to get hurt (some people will take your efforts and shred them, trust me), and the biggest thing, is persistence. You have to keep getting rejected.
I veered off a little here, but ought to content myself in the role of Mother Goose who has a few nuggets of wisdom to leave in the basket. Last one, for now: live. Don't beat yourself for taking chances which may end up being mistakes. I do that too often to myself.
I have had it once when someone brought it from a trip abroad (very good). Can't get hold of it here that much at all, barring dodgy online sites and the like, it seems that I have to make do with beer, at least for a while.I cannot post it as funny as I heard it, but the word is that George Plimpton was drunk on absinthe when he and his fellows started The Paris Review. Remarkable that it still remains one of the premier literary journals in this still fresh century.
Has anyone here ever had absinthe? Spot on Neely!
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