Paper Tiger, Burning Bright

Do you worry about writer's block? When Camus had it he rushed to his
then mentor, Andre Gide, who said "you mean you can stop writing yet you
still complain? What's up with you Albert?"

Camus' problem was that he had decided to be a writer. He was, after all, an
existentialist. Why do you write? Did you jump or were you pushed? Who do
you write for? Thomas Love Peacock said that poets are wasters of their own
time and robbers of that of others. Is writing by its very nature a selfish
activity, a solitary sin? With the need for voluntary tutors to help
illiterates, with Africa starving, with the Samaritans understaffed
handling all the young poets that phone in, can locking yourself away
ever be justified?

Some justify their selfishness by emphasising that their sacrifice is for the
benefit of all, because they are society's antennae, the nearest to prophets
and telepaths that this nihilistic age has. These starving artists in their
uniforms from Oxfam charge over the top in a daring raid on reality and
return with their wounds which they invite us to lick. Do they write to
express, confess or merely impress us with their Angst threshold when
they tell us that "lonely clouds make shadows on the wind", that "roses reek
of mortality" and that "life's a sexually transmitted disease"? Others use
philosophy to back themselves up. Wittgenstein thought that language and
reality shared a logical form and that by exploring one mode, the other was
enriched, and that man's instinct was to explore. Chant his name
repeatedly next time the spouse wants to drag you away from your garret.

But let's not dismiss this latterday pretension until we've heard from the
Greats. Plato, in The Republic, said that "Poetry is not to be regarded
seriously as attaining to the truth". Goethe thought that words were
'foppish' and he would have preferred to "speak like nature, altogether in
drawings". Despite these warnings, so many wordsmiths carry on thinking
that they will find something. Tolstoi knew a bit about finding things but
he thought that the only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life
is meaningless. Is this where the path of discovery leads? Wherever it goes,
Shakespeare must have got there first. We know very little about the man
but we do know that at the age 46 he decided to pack it all in. Where does
that leave us?

It leaves many of us sitting at writers' workshops. Hemingway in his Nobel
acceptance speech said that "writing is at its best a lonely life.
Organisations for writers palliate his lonliness but I doubt if they improve
his writing." But we try, don't we? I wonder why. There's no hope for most
of us. One friend told me that writing was her life and she didn't want to
talk about it. Another pointed out that art in general makes us more
observant about the world; that, for instance, people only fully appreciated
sunsets after Turner had painted them. There's something in this, I think.
The observation and analysis necessary for writing can bring details to our
notice and add new perspective. And what holds for sunsets holds for self-
portraits too, I guess.

Writing can also be a refuge from the hurly-burly, a way to distance
ourselves from some unwanted episode, analyse it, make it bearable. In the
jungle we would scream in terror from a tiger. With it behind bars we can
admire its sleek fur, its powerful musculature. Writing provides the cage
but for whom? Us or the tiger?

A survey of famous twentieth century people has shown that writers
resemble each other more so than artists, politicians or any other group do.
They tend to be only children who disliked school, often had a chronic
childhood illness, came from unhappy homes, entered insecure marriages
and were prone to suicide, drink and crashing their cars into trees.
Writers, perhaps through the isolation of their working conditions are
frequently misanthropic, the best of them especially so. Henry James died a
virgin. Tolstoi died wishing he could become one and Marcel Proust... well
we all know about him.

My friends have had less troubled lives but well over half have suggested
that writing is a substitute, the imaginary playmates of childhood
rationalised beyond the fantasy lovers of adolescence into almost
believable characters. As Mauriac said, "A writer is essentially an
inadequate man who doesn't quite resign himself to lonliness". And since so
many inadequate people are attracted to writing it's no surprise that
literature destroys so many of them. If you want to know why there's so
much sick literature around, just look at who writes it.

But don't despair. You can of course become a critic. You lose the thrill of
doing an emotional striptease but if writing is your life you can still
contribute indirectly to upholding the standards of literature. Writers need
all the help they can get. However, a critic has to ensure that he is more
than just a back seat writer, he must at least be widely read. Only a writer
can afford to have a narrow range. I talked to a critic once whose mouth
broke the speed limit while his brain was stuck in reverse and soon
realised that the only way to broaden his mind would be to put his head
through a mangle. The casual critic can indeed palliate loneliness and if
that's what you want them fair enough but if you take writing seriously
then perhaps you should go the whole hog and take heed of Jean Cocteau's
words. "Literature is impossible. We must get out of it. No use trying to get
out of it through more literature; only love and faith allow us to get out of
ourselves."

A society called EXLIT, soon to open a branch near you, exists to help you
through the difficult period of withdrawal. It is too painful to endure alone.
I wish you luck.

(Published in Jennings, issue 7)