Fail better. What a strange business we are in, we writers, we critics, we readers! Writing failures, reading failures, studying failures, reviewing them. Imagine a science institute that spent its time on the inventions that never actually do what they say on the tin, like diet pills, or hair restorers or Icarus's wings. Yet it is literature in its imperfect aspect that I find most beautiful and most human. That writing and reading should be such difficult arts reminds us of how frequently our own subjectivity fails us. We do not know people as we think we know them. The world is not only as we say it is. "Without failure, no ethics," said Simone de Beauvoir. And I believe that.
I'm still doubtful, but I'm now reminded that so is everyone else, some of the goddamn time.
(This is me, flashing my white teeth.)
4 comments:
Oh, and this: "To speak personally, the very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life."
Is also very good.
'Tis a refreshing essay.
I printed the essay out to fully read, word for word, what Smith was saying (I find I have trouble reading the computer screen for that long (ok, the trouble is usually two-legged and calls me mom)), and I found that agreed with her on many of the things she said, esp. about the personality/style aspect of writing.
Mmm, I should do that too...
This essay reminded me of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird.
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