Random
Literature as a Two-Way Conversation
After we posted about reading Alexander Chee’s blog Koreanish as though it were a book whose ending hasn’t yet been written, Chee tried to read Koreanish as though it were a book whose ending hasn’t yet been written, and he was surprised that what he found was different from what he thought he would find. An excerpt:
“What struck me, in other words, is that Koreanish the blog, is, if read narratively, something of a dystopic novel, in which a writer is living inside a country that is blind to its own destruction, a destruction it pursues relentlessly, to his increasing dismay.” (Read the rest at Koreanish.)
It’s a strange feeling to read a blog as a book whose ending hasn’t yet been written, then to have your note about reading the blog as a book whose ending hasn’t yet been written become part of the fabric of the book the blog has become, and in so doing to influence the future trajectory of the blog-as-book, which means the ending of the book you’re reading and about whose ending you are curious has now been influenced by you the reader as you act upon the writer by responding to what he has already written but has not yet finished.
If this seems newfangled and Back to the Future-ish (I briefly worried about the possibility of erasing my own existence, but, fortunately, time is only moving in one direction, for now), maybe it’s not. It seems likely to me that writers who serialized their novels in magazines or newspapers before they appeared in book forms (Dickens, for example, or Dostoevsky), and their readers, might well have been candidates for similar experiences. Ditto writers whose books appear in successive volumes over time, before they are complete — Cervantes, Proust, more recently Murakami. Or writers of trilogies or quartets — Updike, or Justin Cronin’s, which is one volume in progress.
This would be a useful subject for inquiry, I’d think — how does the reception of an in-progress book by its readership impact the future trajectory of that work. And then, of course, we’re soon thinking about the entire arc of a writer’s career, where these matters likely influence future work more often than we purists might imagine. Almost all the time, would be my guess, even if your name is Thomas Pynchon or Cormac McCarthy. Even Salinger’s great long silence seems a function of his response to the audience’s response to his work.
Maybe literature is more of a two-way conversation than we would prefer to imagine.
Without the Dialogue a person’s work can become a self-sustaining system. Isolated. Pure subjective idealism, which, I SWEAR TO GOD, or Whatever, is Death. Night of the Dying Alive, etc. I’ll shoot for a real response later. The end of the book is the end of nothing, though, I’ll say that. Joyce, I swear… that was the end of that. A real writer would be (seriously) immortal, but as it is one can only pray against misunderstanding.
Until our consciousnesses are transferred to the “bots” of course, whatever other utopian delusions…
http://www.weshoppingnow.com
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)
while you raise a really significant question (just how private or public the relationship of the writer to the work is), I disagree about the self-sustaining system. Fiction is so barraged by outside influences that the work can’t be isolated, only the writer can be while writing. The “parent-child relationship of an author to their work” metaphor only frees the writer of one expectation. (or two if they’re expecting copy_editing) The work, like the child, is certainly on its own merit, much as the writer / parent would hope otherwise. And, as a writer, the hope for immortality died when it took Hawthorne 60+ pages to say “I found the scarlet letter in the attic.”
(and that’s all that required reading will ask of analysis of works, nevermind Lit-History, or even the more driving question of who the author was…)