Forum / Any manifestos you'd like to share?
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James Lloyd DavisDec 28, 04:24pmNew years kitsch always brings out the list makers and manic resolvers. Nothing wrong with that, but some people tend to groan over the idea.
For those who so indulge, we offer up this public space... However, be aware that we offer no guarantee that posters here will not be vilified, ridiculed, etc. for going public with any public confessions of flaws. Desire for self-improvement is considered cliche in some circles, fodder for sit-com filler material.
If you want to earn respect for your compulsions, be brave, think big, dream large and hold them to your chest like a royal flush. Remember that the best ideas, the best hopes are best kept quiet until the dreamer has the strength and courage to face criticism.
Happy New Year and may the coming year be the one in which all the scoffers get raptured into the Fox channel universe.
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Frankie SaxxDec 28, 05:23pm
I manifest erratically.
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James Lloyd DavisDec 28, 07:36pm
In the freight business, erratic manifests often generate free astray parcels, but confusion is always in fashion in the literary world.
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DolemiteDec 28, 07:48pmDon't know about manifestos, but my New Year's resolution is to cut down from five chickens a day to about two or three.
Five is just nasty, if you think about it, and afterwards they're not good for much...
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Marcus SpehDec 28, 07:53pmThis seems to fit the bill: William H Gass interviewed by Fictionaut member Greg Gerke for the current issue of Tin House:
«As an artist, Gass is dedicated to the most basic elements of language: words and sentences—the bones, blood, and flesh of writing. Every sentence tells a story and he has made it his duty to construct each with great attention to its poetic and rhythmic qualities, with such alliterative gambits as “Why should another’s body be so beautiful its absence is as painful as the presence of your own?” from The Tunnel, and these crisp bits of economy from the essay “The Soul Inside the Sentence”: “Words are with us everywhere. In our erotic secrecies, in our sleep. We’re often no more aware of them than our own spit, although we use them oftener than legs.”»
Well put Greg! Though personally, I'm split with regard to Gass' quality as a novelist. He seems to be a bit of a loose baggy monster and in this interview he is all over the place — as if he'd gorged himself (mostly) on European thought and had needed to take a dump. Or perhaps this is just what you do at 88 years of age. I've got the Tunnel complete with his (marvelous—the man's got a voice too!) reading but like Wallace's "Infinite Jest" it has remained unread and un-listened to so far.
I think I just can't get with writers who view writing largely as a game of words, who have a dark outlook on life (the interview is titled "Many-layered anger") and who seem to prefer Plato to people ...I prefer Gass' sometime buddy and long time enemy, John Gardner. But see for yourself:
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Frankie SaxxDec 28, 07:57pm
@James
I sometimes go astray but I always manage to find my way home.
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James Lloyd DavisDec 28, 08:27pm
Frankie, my sainted mother often threatened to pin my address to the back of my shirt...
"If lost, please return to Mason Creek Road, the house with the grey shingles."I really liked to wander about freely on my way home from school. It's not that I was lost, but I'd get pretty far away in the time I was supposed to be home.
I always got back, much to my mother's relief and my sister's chagrin.
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James Lloyd DavisDec 28, 08:30pm
Marcus, I'd be much pleased if, at the age of 88, I could still write a grocery list, much less a novel. That gives me 22 years to make the grade. Time's wasting.
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Marcus SpehDec 28, 08:45pm
Let's not waste it. I've got another 40 until that time and I intend to make good use of it.
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stephen hastings-kingDec 28, 09:28pmLovely Gass interview, Marcus. Thanks for the tip.
When I see the word manifest, I reach for my Gang Starr: -
Marcus SpehDec 28, 10:58pm
I got another manifesto for y'all. From Henry James' preface to the New York Edition of Potrait of a Lady: a manifesto if I ever saw one...
"The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a million – a number of possible windows not to be reckoned, rather; every one of which has been pierced, or is still pierceable, in its vast front, by the need of the individual vision and by the pressure of the individual will. These apertures, of dissimilar shape and size, hang so, all together, over the human scene that we might have expected of them a greater sameness of report than we find. They are but windows at the best, mere holes in a dead wall, disconnected, perched aloft; they are not hinged doors opening straight upon life. But they have this mark of their own that at each of them stands a figure with a pair of eyes, or at least with a field-glass, which forms, again and again, for observation, a unique instrument, insuring to the person making use of it an impression distinct from every other. He and his neighbours are watching the same show, but one seeing more where the other sees less, one seeing black where the other sees white, one seeing big where the other sees small, one seeing coarse where the other sees fine. And so on, and so on; there is fortunately no saying on what, for the particular pair of eyes, the window may not open; ‘fortunately’ by reason, precisely, of this incalculability of range. The spreading field, the human scene, is the ‘choice of subject’; the pierced aperture, either broad or balconied or slit-like and low-browed, is the ‘literary form’; but they are, singly or together, as nothing without the posted presence of the watcher – without, in other words, the consciousness of the artist. Tell me what the artist is, and I will tell you of what he has been conscious. Thereby I shall express to you at once his boundless freedom and his ‘moral’ reference."
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Frankie SaxxDec 28, 11:16pm
@James
I carry a small compass and a paper map make a trail of digital breadcrumbs when I wander strange cities. I take a photos of intersections and street signs in the hope that, should I become disoriented and confused, I will be able to follow my own footprints home.
I am young enough that people look at me strangely and suggest I get a phone with GPS.
They miss the point.
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James Lloyd DavisDec 29, 12:41am
Frankie, a GPS will never give you the sense of direction you can find in a map. Always loved maps. When I was twelve, I had all the nautical charts for the Chesapeake Bay.
It helps if you don't really care where you're going. I think the only time I ever got lost was in Japan, took what I thought was the local train to Kamakura, wound up in Nagoya, but had a wonderful time anyway.
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James Lloyd DavisDec 29, 12:44am
Stephen, you have broad tastes in la musica.
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James Lloyd DavisDec 29, 12:49am
Marcus, so many doors, so little time. The reward for living in the utter provincial boondocks as I do is the gift of time.
If I lived in a fine city, I'd never write a word.
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stephen hastings-kingDec 29, 05:28am
Everything I do is shaped by Italo Calvino's notion of lightness.
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DolemiteDec 29, 05:35am
Everything I do is shaped by
rabbits
nibbling
in the night.
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Frankie SaxxDec 29, 01:15pm
If I could manifest toes, I could climb the walls like a gecko. Or Summer Glau.
In some ways, this ability would make my life easier. If I locked myself out and forgot the door code, I could just scale the brick wall of the apartment complex three stories and climb in through the bedroom window left ajar, or if small children lost a Frisbee on the roof, I could retrieve it. Even in small ways, like getting the spare bedding from the the top shelf in the closet without fetching a stool.
I wouldn't tell you guys if I could do this, though, because it would probably weird you out. I would be afraid that you'd call me "Frankie the Freak" behind my back. I would be ashamed of my manifest toes.
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James Lloyd DavisDec 29, 01:38pm
Frankie, there are people here who mock everyone here at one time or another. But they are seldom forthright, mumble cynicisms in the shadows and tattle back and forth behind the scenes, in the bushes and in email. They are hardly worth anyone's concern, but that's their motivation, a profound lack of self esteem, manifest in their denigration of others.
But, yes, if you possessed gecko toes, it would probably be a good idea to keep it under wraps.
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Frankie SaxxDec 29, 04:19pm
James, I am disappointed to hear that in the back alleys and hidden byways of Fictionaut, places not on my map, that unhappiness and dissatisfaction are manifest.
In the sunlight and open squares, I have always found the people here to be pleasant and supportive, with allowance made for everyone to have a bad day now and again. My reluctance to make public any hypothetical manifest toes would be a result of my own weakness and self-doubt, and not because any Fictionauts have ever seemed disinclined welcome them.
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James Lloyd DavisDec 29, 05:33pm
This mixes well with the critical concepts of fiction that Marcus is expositing... the mix of darkness and light, the duality of concepts that flavor novels and prose generally.
It's healthy to minimize the probablility of darkness in the shadows, but more realistic to know that they exist.
"Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."
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James Lloyd DavisDec 29, 05:34pm
Good advice generally.
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RW SpryszakDec 29, 08:42pmI'm going to drink more beer.
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Frankie SaxxDec 29, 11:33pm
RW, I'm going to brew more beer.
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Frankie SaxxDec 29, 11:40pm
James, it has always been my considered opinion that most of the things found in shadows are there because they are not frightening in the light, only sad or laughable. And they're all of 'em susceptible to a good solid kick in the 'nads.
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Gessy AlvarezJan 01, 05:33pmI wrote one last year ( http://letrascaseras.tumblr.com/post/16334024226/a-manifesto-i-wrote-on-the-train-ride-from-dc-by-gessy). And another this year (http://gessyalvarez.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/a-new-manifesto-to-soothe-my-restless-animus/).
Arrogant, yes, but also cheeky. I find I need both in equal measure if I want to continue on this writing quest.
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Sam RasnakeJan 01, 06:04pmMine is/will be to read more, write less.
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Gary HardawayJan 02, 12:44amI aspire to become a minor poet. No deadline set, so it serves year to year.
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James Lloyd DavisJan 02, 01:56am
My only aspiration for 2013 is that it is not my expiration date... If that's possible, so's everything else.
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DolemiteJan 02, 02:17am
"not my expiration date.."
Check the label on your collar.
(then watch "The World's Fastest Indian")
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Gloria GarfunkelJan 02, 03:36pmI spent thirty years as a therapist every single day, either practicing or reading or preparing materials. I became a master. Now I don't want it at all or as a small sideline. Instead, I want to do the same with writing, doing it every day, either write, edit, read, comment, send out stories, something towards building my later life identity as a writer. I'm committed.
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Gloria GarfunkelJan 02, 07:09pm
And my two guiding principles as a writer are Risk and Revision.
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