Eureka

I didn't put an exclamation mark after "Eureka" because what I have to say does not warrant the dramatic affirmation of such a punctuational point. What I am about to say is merely a wee thought that has occurred to me, and then grown into something that I wish to express on this darling little blog.

Here goes.

My recent 'book lists' (this one is and was my first) share many parallels with poetics. I don't know if you can say that poetics is a more conscious scrabbling for a less-knowable sub-conscious truth (of course the word 'scrabbling' offers connotational derrogatariness that isn't intentional in an ad hominem sort of way), but certainly in many of 'the ways of poetics', one can find oneself believing what one says, being inspired to write, being totally and utterly ready to continue (having asked permission), and yet act in a completely contrary way - which would suggest a difference of opinion between consciousnesses perhaps. I think I'm going to elucidate this in a separate post with particular respect to poetry, 'watch this space'...

But my point is that in buying a book, are we not saying (unless we are 'fetishists' or, to use a term I am perhaps more semantically familiar with, 'objectivists'. 'Collectors' would probably have got the job done without wasting so many words...), "I want to read this book." And yet, why do we buy some and show such limp desire to ever read them? Why does it take us so long to read some of them, after being so excited to buy them? As I write this, I begin to doubt myself, but then I feel empowered again; there is a similarity - a disparity (though not necessarily a necessary one) between the act (of writing poetics/buying a book) and the 'follow up' act (the next creative work/the next book you read) - respectively.

Maybe this all depends on what you intend to do with the book. Maybe it depends on whether you buy a book with the specific intention of reading it within a certain time frame; if you buy it because you want to read it 'sometime' then maybe there's more leeway. But then you can still have more definite biblio-intentions one minute, only to change them then next. And then, sometimes we write poetics when we're trying to write something else, so maybe none of this is that clear cut.

I'd feel a bit of a cheater if I united book-buying and poetics-writing under the banner of 'human changeability' or whatever... Maybe I've just looked at book-buying from an overly writer-centric point of view... But then this is a mostly writing focused blog isn't it?

I think the ratio of questions to answers has grown too large now. Time to

stop.

Always Fascinating

A friend of mine has recently been published over at 'Writers' Billboard'. Julian Holt is and/or was (depending on how far in the future you're reading this. This is 2013 at the moment. Welcome...) the June joint short fiction winner with his piece 'Writer in Residence'. Now, the link is only good for a period of a month or two, apparently, so if it doesn't work you weren't quick enough!

'Writer in Residence' is essentially a meta-narrative, where the question of narrative reliability is surpassed by narrator's culpability. The 'meta-ness' of a story 'like this' is always intriguing to me. Writing above narrative is fun, but it takes an amount of skill to pull it off. A big bank of meta-narrative cliches have built up over time, and even the idea itself can become stale. To overcome these varied stagnant swamps of writing delusion is a tough thing, but I feel Holt has hopped, skipped and jumped over the pitfalls and into all the exciting things a narrative of this type presents to us. The narrator is a self-confessed writer (i.e. professional liar (no, not a politician)) which gives us an immediacy to the truth (or does it?). You're drawn to the process of narrative, as well as multiple character facets and there's no way of judging if it's true or not beyond speculation.

But aside from my ramblings about so-called 'meta-ness', the essential tenets of storydom are very competently mastered. The dual 'tracks' (i.e. the writer writing about the Brusque-Mantels/Derailleurs and then the 'real-life' Kemps/Raleighs) converge pleasantly at the end. And yeah, it makes you think. I felt I had to read it over to get a sense of its full worth and I got more out of it the second time.

And for my end I shall talk about Holt's beginning. My love for language meant I was completely trapped in the honey-sweet stickiness of linguistic longing in the first paragraph. I was hooked, I was 'gotten' - I had to read on. What a journey. Go read it, or else you may have dealings with the very same 'writer in residence'...