Breyten Breytenbach: Writing as a Sense Organ
Heather Hartley: While you were in prison, you said, “writing becomes a sense organ.” How do you mean this?
Breyten Breytenbach: In prison particularly [this is the case], and I’m sure it’s probably the same if one were to find oneself in any situation of isolation. Imagine that you get lost in the high mountains or you’re sick and in hospital for a long period or that you’re going to a monastery. I think that if writing is your bent, it becomes a sense organ through which you experience or try to understand the world … I think it becomes an essential medium to access the world around you, your immediate environment and also the interaction between this, memories and imagination. It’s also a way of accessing your self.
I hadn’t been aware of the extent to which writing becomes an inevitability, becomes an actual necessity. It’s nearly as if something doesn’t really exist until I can shape it in writing or think it in writing and it’s in this way that I compare it to a sense organ. I think one becomes dependent on it in the same way as you look and listen to and interpret what you hear and what you see. In writing, which is obviously a quiet activity, [although] I’m not sure it’s a natural one, I think it does become a sense organ, yes. Probably a kind of aggregate of the others … but then perhaps none of the sense organs exist by themselves.
Must We Burn Austeniana?
Hi, I’m Amy McDaniel, and this is my first post! In my HTMLGiant audition tape (no longer extant), I staged an argument with someone about Jane Austen. Since it got me this far, I thought I’d start with her.
There are lots of people I like who don’t like Jane Austen, and they can be annoying about it, but the real trouble is the people, of whom there are at least 12, who like Jane Austen for weird reasons and then write their own sequels, like Mr. Darcy’s Diary: A Novel, The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy: A Novel, Darcy and Elizabeth: Nights and Days at Pemberley. (If only it were 120 Nights of Pemberley.) The name for this particularly legitimized fan-fiction is Austeniana, a word perhaps even uglier than the thing it means. This has all already been much-bemoaned by right-thinking thinkers. But I want to think harder than they did. READ MORE >
What’s New, Joshua Cohen?
Well, since you asked. There’s new fiction (“Mark the Sun”) at The Brooklyn Rail plus a, uh, “non”fiction piece at n+1: “Famous Infamous Jews.”
Brief Eulogy For Federman
I am rereading Malone Dies
just to mock death a little
and boost my cancerous spirit.I shall soon be quite dead at last
Malone tells us at the beginning
of his story.What a superb opening
what a fabulous sentence.With such a sentence
Malone announces his death
and at the same time delays it.
–from Federman’s blog
Raymond Federman switched tenses last week. And now I really regret not having corresponded with him in time.
I would have liked to tell him how much he inspired my work, how much I admired his imagination, and how much I believe he contributed to the field of experimental literature.
I would have liked to tell him about my experience of reading his collection of postmodern essays, Critifiction, from cover to cover in one sitting at Brennan’s coffeeshop in Columbus, Ohio — how I had only intended to flip through the book while waiting for the #2 bus, but quickly found myself locked into his consciousness — how I needed to read that particular book at that particular time — how it gave me confidence and helped me to form thoughts that I struggled to form on my own — how it made me feel connected at a time when I felt supremely alienated by a creative writing program hellbent on perpetuating conventional realism and marginalizing anyone who attempted otherwise, as if I was not alone in my desire to create unorthodox wordmagic.
I would have also liked to tell him about my experiences reading his fiction…
Sam Lipsyte on WTF. (Updated a little.)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up0IP9fQu9Q
Marc Maron, a pretty damn funny comedian and former Air America broadcaster, has moved his ranty, neurotic brilliance to a podcast called WTF.
Most of the time, he spends the “interview” portion of the podcast talking to fellow comedians, but a recent episode featured a writer I assume is beloved by Giant readers: Sam Lipsyte.
A couple of highlights. Maron at one point says: “I’ve asked you, when you’ve started novels, what it’s about, you’re like ‘I don’t know, I’m working around these two sentences.'”
And discussing Lipsyte’s lack of a website, and FSG’s suggestions that Lipsyte get a little more online savvy to help sell a few books, Sam says: “They can’t order you to tweet. It’s not that kind of society yet.”
An in-depth, craft-based writing discussion? Nah. Who the hell wants that all the time. Instead its two friends talking and making each other laugh. Sam also reads from his upcoming novel, The Ask. It’s worth it for that alone. READ MORE >
Mark Leidner is funny
from his Trembyle blog:
His chapbook Night of 1,000 Murders is really smart and good, too.
He also wrote this really good story ‘Snow‘. And these poems. And stuff.
I like Mark.
10 part lecture by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Beginning with Part 2, as Part 1 is a very long introduction to his work. Overall it’s kind of slow going as he requires a translator, but still interesting and worthwhile if you have the time. Parts 3-10 available thru links thereafter.
See also: this documentary by Luc Lagier on Last Year at Marienbad, directed by Alain Resnais, and cowritten by Robbe-Grillet (available now from Criterion).
Shoplifting from American Apparel: A Review
Getting a head in life
In writing about Shoplifting from American Apparel, I will try very hard not to say if it’s good or bad. I will also not align myself as a fan or dissenter of Tao Lin, or participate in the murky controversies over what people think about him — controversies which both propel his fame while compromising it. That kind of discourse is inflated and not interesting to me. I will admit I’m ambivalent about writing a review of this book, as it already has had its ample share of attention — I just wanted to write about some formal things I thought about while reading the book. (I am writing this review without the book in hand, and cannot check facts, and I read the book briskly, so this may be a compromised account.)
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October 3rd, 2009 / 11:45 am
October 3rd, 2009 / 11:45 am