Living the literary life?

[JBI]

Everyone who reads is somewhat a critic. The title critic though is just reserved for people who get paid for it, and do it in a more scholarly manner.

[librarius_qui]

I don't really think there is such a thing as the "literary life." There is simply just life. Literature happens to be a major part of my life. My writing also happens to be a part of my life (though, not as big a priority as I should make it), but I see it as something between a hobby, passion, and extra I choose my own hours part-time job. I would give up both literature and my writing for other parts of my life in a heartbeat.

Want to write? Then write. Want to publish? Then publish. Learn the markets. Send your stuff out. Prepare to get rejected, and maybe you'll also get published once in awhile too.

You know? ... It's definitely NOT a hobby! So, perhaps you aren't a writer. You're something else, and maybe, in the future, because of some literary production, you'll (by others) be considered a writer, but writing for a writer ISN'T a hobby. It's his profession in life.

"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." - Pablo Picasso

Yes when my fellow artist friends and I get together we talk about women... and our wives... and politics... and our jobs... and art, art, art. Seriously, I think I do quite well at keeping my efforts as an artist moving forward... but I probably should give credit where it's due: having a large rent due each month for a studio space that I share with 3 other artists I find it quite impossible to justify that expense without making every possible effort to put it to its proper use.

I quite ... understand the similarities between a painter and a writer, 'Guild, but the question did not ask about an artist's life, but about a literary life. It doesn't ask about a writer's life either, so, each one of us here are pulling it to his own side, and experience. Therefore, maybe a critic and a journalist will have more voice here than a painter ... (?) I don't know. But painting, and visual arts, even being (as much as any other art) art, don't have that lot to do with the life related to literature, because literature involves writing.

I love your comments, though. They're very genuine, as an artist's view. A professional one's.

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?

"I'm curious on what living a literary life means" ... So am I.

At this point, I think that anyone who READS (even newspaper chronicles!) lives a literary life! ...

But honestly, I've taken the question more to those who produce literature (as a profession).

So, when I see writers, I see professors (John LeCarré, Ronald Tolkien), I see common office workers (Joaquim Machado de Assis, Cesario Verde), I see journalists (Luis Fernando Verissimo), and I see critics (who are journalists, in a way ... let me quote Umberto Eco, Jorge Borges, Jose Saramago), and I see ... opportunists (Paulo Coelho, J. K. Rowling ...). Besides people from rich families, who could live of doing nothing, and happened to have an inclination to writing (like, maybe, Jorge Amado).

Polititians who wrote/write, usually consider their other career more important than writing ... Some didn't consider writing a career at all, but a pastime, and history made them writers, because they simply wrote meaningful stuff (to a generation, to humanity), during their life. (Hemingway ... And maybe Jorge Amado.)

And there are the theatre guys, who ... possibly thought that their lives weren't only about writing, but that writing was a part of their art. This also happens with some poets. Most of these don't make any difference between the arts, but consider all of them a whole and single thing. Not my case, 'cause I'm neither in theatre, nor in poetry. I write, and that's all. (What I consider art, and work, in my life, is the writing part, even though I do produce some visual arts, and some music, but I have to say that I have no skill in these. They're mere plaything ... hobby. Not professional part of my life. However I don't live of this, writing is my profession. I have more than one profession. Main are bookman (the one I live from, or take money out of) & writer. And I'm also a Classicist, informally studying to consider myself a philologist, someday ...)

I don't think a person who loves books would be counted in this "literary life", once everyone (average "civilized" (. . .)* human being) reads, and likes well doing it.

(*Please, take note on the spaced dots to the word in quotation marks. Possibly that's another discussion.)

[kasie]

"I'm curious on what living a literary life means" ... So am I.

At this point, I think that anyone who READS (even newspaper chronicles!) lives a literary life! ...

But honestly, I've taken the question more to those who produce literature (as a profession).....

I don't think a person who loves books would be counted in this "literary life", once everyone (average "civilized" (. . .)* human being) reads, and likes well doing it.

(*Please, take note on the spaced dots to the word in quotation marks. Possibly that's another discussion.)

I think you've come the closest yet to replying to the OP's question, lib qu, TT or whoever you are today .

However, don't forget that producers also need consumers! The readers are an essential part of a Literary Life. If you you write for publication, then your readers become part of your literary life, don't they?

And perhaps it is unwise to assume that because people can read they actually enjoy doing so or know how to do it properly (ie critically) - as you say, a possible new thread!

(I didn't know John le Carre was a professor, I thought he was a sometime teacher/Civil Servant in the Foreign Office?)

[Tallon]

One could also wonder if they were living a life that could be made into literature. I definitely am not so far .

[LitNetIsGreat]

One could also wonder if they were living a life that could be made into literature. I definitely am not so far .

Which brings us full circle to Wilde.

[Jozanny]

You know? ... It's definitely NOT a hobby! So, perhaps you aren't a writer. You're something else, and maybe, in the future, because of some literary production, you'll (by others) be considered a writer, but writing for a writer ISN'T a hobby. It's his profession in life.

Yes and no librarius. Few, in the modern era, get to make writing a profession. When I started submitting poetry in university, I was in a different place than when I started earning money as a freelancer in 1999, just as I am in a different place today. Writing is a hobby for many fools; it is a mission for even fewer fools who are willing to pay the cost to be the real thing, which doesn't mean that Drkshadow isn't a real writer. He's young, number one, and being young takes time, becoming sure of your voice, your footing, your genre. I'd say the same about JBI, that maybe he boxes himself in with his notions of a critic's role.

One could also wonder if they were living a life that could be made into literature. I definitely am not so far .

Any life can be made into literature. I have recently been thinking about turning my bowel accidents into a dark comedy, and some writers are actually facile in the scatological mode. Pynchon, for instance, in that famous passage in Gravity's Rainbow, where Slothrop journeys through a toilet bowl, or the new movie, Slumdog Millionaire, which is being praised left and right for the hope and optimism it inspires with its main character covered in feces frow a sewer. There isn't a moment, instance, event, or episode which doesn't have a conceptual framework to offer, in the right hands, with the right vision.

[Drkshadow03]

[QUOTE=Jozanny;643021]Yes and no librarius. Few, in the modern era, get to make writing a profession. When I started submitting poetry in university, I was in a different place than when I started earning money as a freelancer in 1999, just as I am in a different place today. Writing is a hobby for many fools; it is a mission for even fewer fools who are willing to pay the cost to be the real thing, which doesn't mean that Drkshadow isn't a real writer. He's young, number one, and being young takes time, becoming sure of your voice, your footing, your genre. I'd say the same about JBI, that maybe he boxes himself in with his notions of a critic's role.

Listen everyone, I'm trying not to get in the usual stressful back and forths around here because I've been sick with mono and I'm only now just recovering somewhat (hence why I really haven't posted in the last couple of weeks). But I also thought I would share a couple of thoughts on what I think is an interesting topic.

If you read the statement I made in its original context, libarius, I said I consider my writing something in between a hobby, another job, and a passion. NOT ONLY a hobby. Writing is a lot of work. Having a genuine writing career is a lot of work. Until I have an actual career, it's still fundamentally a hobby as far as I'm concerned in all practical senses of the word. Keep in mind I have had my fiction, poetry, criticism, and non-fiction published and have even been paid for it, but selling a few pieces to small press markets that most people have never heard of for peanuts does not a writing career make.

Jozanny is correct about everything she just said. I also had to put the fiction writing aside for Grad School, which was playing into my comments a bit.

[stlukesguild]

I wouldn't want to suggest that only those who make writing (or whatever art) their profession... their source of income... can be thought of as living the "literary life". That would immediately negate Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser and Dante and T.S. Eliot and just about anyone else who did not earn their keep through writing... and while living from one's labor as a writer may be the ideal, it also may not be reality for many, and to suggest otherwise... to suggest that one approach to the "literary life" is superior to another may itself be rather insulting. Turning to Sir Walter Raleigh... or even Christopher Marlowe... or Michel de Montaigne.... one suspects that to call writing something of a "hobby" for them (or something between a hobby a job and a passion) may not have been far from the mark... yet how many here have achieved something of equal literary merit? Again... my argument has been for the notion that what we call the "literary life" is different for each of us.

[Jozanny]

The word I was looking for earlier, in my reply to librarius, was vocation.

Writing can be both, a vocation and a profession. The same can be said of art; luke might be surprised to learn my mother went to art school and caught some critical attention, but she never applied herself, and as I'm her daughter, I have the same issues with discipline, as even in my current state of prisoner in this hated studio, I should be readusting, tying my submission deadlines around Tim's laid back pacing, so he can mail my hard copy, as needed, or until I learn how not to kill myself getting into this huge Jazzy loaner. I am a little miffed because I was already to go for the Boa Poetry Book Prize when my chair died last week, and sending it now would be too close to the deadline, so I have to void the check, package my manuscript now for a later date and try to get Tim to obey me without upsetting him, as he is the only idiot I have to help me right now (indeed, he pushed back on Monday, telling me he wasn't retarded, but I'll believe that when the trains run on time)...

Drk, sorry to hear about the mono. Your astute points have been missed; feel better.

[librarius_qui]

my argument has been for the notion that what we call the "literary life" is different for each of us.

the "literary life" is different

different

Difference.

This is a key word, in my understanding, to an artist. An artist is different from all others. Even from his masters.

I agree with you, 'Guild. I have been speaking what the literary life is ... to me. This is a rather interesting & clever remark by you!

Thanks for bringing it to us

[Jozanny]

I just got an email from my poet friend Robert Thomas, and I thought I'd mention it because he wrote me because he saw my posts here at LitNet. I was immediately embarrassed, and told him this isn't Speakeasy, but I stay for the debates, and that if he does register, he'd have to put up with me. Whether that is Sche and Logos gain, can't say. He's normal, affable and kind, to my bitterness, emotional pain and distemper, and yet he's fond of me, and I actually enjoy his poetry.

But what goes around comes, as they say...