And so I'm rereading all this stuff I've written over the last several years tonight - sharing many pieces with a former student of mine and I'm struck by how much I love what I had to say. And then I'm struck by how much I don't recognize who's saying this stuff.
It's really weird to enjoy one's own writing. Well let me rephrase. I have a hard time admitting that I enjoy my own stuff. It feels ego-driven and pushes hard against a very sincere desire I have to be humble. Somewhere in between those two is my desire to appear humble. But that's a whole other conundrum.
So I'm reading old short-stories - these uber pomo pieces that have no soul, but lots of heart. I'm happy I wrote them, even though I can't imagine writing them today. Well, not exactly. I've always been drawn to the post-modern form of story writing. Most of this has to do with one interview about 13 years ago when DFW mentioned Donald Barthelme's story "The Balloon." So I immediately went out and got a copy of Barthelme and started reading. That led to Barth. That led to Pynchon. Then to Gaddis - who I still haven't finished and Delillo - who I've read a ton of books by - always from start to finish.
When I had to take Comps in my M.A. program one of my fields was Literary Theory and the topic I wanted to write about was the nature of the author. Being a good student I had read my Barthes and Foucault and Derrida and I knew that the author's head wasn't something I had access to. However, I argued that the authors who most tried to prove this point ended up being the authors who were easiest to recognize. I mean I know Beckett by smell. I can taste a sentence by Derrida. Essentially, what I was saying is the more you try to disappear, the more you appear. Which, and I didn't get this at the time, is exactly the point the people I thought I was arguing with were making. At least I think.
So what I noticed today, rereading short stories and essays that I wrote is that I didn't always recognize "me" in the piece. At times I was dumbfounded - what the hell does this mean? At other times I was in awe of a particular sentence - oh that's nice - I can't believe I wrote that.
What's so strange is the absence I felt when reading. I know the words didn't come from the ether - I wrote them. But I wrote them at a particular time, under certain circumstances, while dealing with particular issues. And I don't always remember what they were. What we have, at the end of the day, is text. And text, words, gestures, figures are beautiful - the saving grace. Without them we not only lose the past, we lose the present, and hence the future.
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