An excess of sincerity
It's the problem that I'm trying very hard not to think about, but it's there, nonetheless. We all have an unspoken background level of dread and uncertainty in our lives now, all the more worrying for how quickly it came upon us. There we were, minding our own business, living our usual lives and before you know it this happens. I speak, of course of, the very real, very genuine worry that, as the country sails towards its second week of lockdown, there are people out there right now writing poems, stories and, God help us all, state-of-the-nation novels about it, and, even more worryingly, some of them might be good.
Don't act like it's not crossed your mind. There are tens of thousands of things with titles like "The Plague Pages" being written as we speak. Someone's writing a state-of-the-nation novel about it, someone's writing a "Corona" of sonnets, I'm prepared to bet my mortgage that there a dozen takes on pandemic-as-planet's-revenge being written at this precise second: it's inescapable, it's inevitable and my main problem with it is that it's something that I wouldn't be able to do with a straight face.
For, you see, in order to write something like that, one has to truly believe that they're doing good work. Belief is the one thing that can't be faked in writing, and these people, writing their Lockdown Lullabies and Intubation Odes will believe firmly in what they're doing. Others will have dismissed the idea as hackneyed or obvious, and will continue to think so right up to the point that a bidding war erupts for a young novelist's "Love in the time of Corona", or until "Covid Diaries" wins the sodding Forward prize. At that point they'll curse themselves for doing so, and wonder why they couldn't.
This is, I fully understand, something of a niche concern at a time like this. But it's there, nonetheless.
The problem, as I see it, is one of sincerity. Sincerity is amazing, it's tangible, it's real, it's something which can link a writer to a reader, and it's something which I, personally would never be able to muster on this particular topic, I don't have any experience of it (and, with a bit of luck, this will continue to be the case), and even if I did, I'd be too acutely aware that a whole bunch of others are beavering away on the same topic. Unless you've got something new to say, best to leave it, is how I tend to feel about this sort of thing. Camus already wrote La Peste guys, why not leave it at that?
Call it the editor's curse, in another life I helped edit a poetry magazine, and I had to wade through so many heartfelt, earnest (and almost uniformly terrible) submissions that it got to a point that I found that I couldn't read anything unless it was wrapped in allusiveness, unless it was "difficult", purely as an antidote to the sheer volume of earnest emoting. I lost the joy of direct simplicity (or, rather, had it beaten out of me by a tonne of joyless simplicity). Direct clarity was something which didn't sit well with me as a reader, and as a result I shied away from it in my writing life, the baby was very much thrown out with the bathwater, But as I took joy in the linguistically innovative, I forgot that I could enjoy other things, too
It's a nonsensical position to take, as anyone who's ever read any Lee Harwood would know, but I never claimed to be particularly sensible. I think of it as the writing equivalent of being the obsessive teenage music nerd wo dismisses all chart music as rubbish, not realising that they're painting themselves into a corner, and that a fairly sizeable climb-down is just around the corner.
(Reader, yes, of course that was me, too. And years of sneering at the music girls chose to dance to meant I didn't get to dance with girls. It's a crude lesson, but an effective one).
The problem is not sincerity, it's an excess of it. The problem is bad writing, it's failing to temper one's treatment of the subject with context and nuance. It's believing without questioning. It's failing to search one's motives, to know precisely why you're writing what you are. Perhaps I was wrong about belief being the one thing that can't be faked, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it's Purpose.
Because whilst there are undoubtedly a gazillion awful poems currently being written about our present reality, the truth is there will be some good ones, too, and I look forward to reading them without rolling my eyes.
Don't act like it's not crossed your mind. There are tens of thousands of things with titles like "The Plague Pages" being written as we speak. Someone's writing a state-of-the-nation novel about it, someone's writing a "Corona" of sonnets, I'm prepared to bet my mortgage that there a dozen takes on pandemic-as-planet's-revenge being written at this precise second: it's inescapable, it's inevitable and my main problem with it is that it's something that I wouldn't be able to do with a straight face.
For, you see, in order to write something like that, one has to truly believe that they're doing good work. Belief is the one thing that can't be faked in writing, and these people, writing their Lockdown Lullabies and Intubation Odes will believe firmly in what they're doing. Others will have dismissed the idea as hackneyed or obvious, and will continue to think so right up to the point that a bidding war erupts for a young novelist's "Love in the time of Corona", or until "Covid Diaries" wins the sodding Forward prize. At that point they'll curse themselves for doing so, and wonder why they couldn't.
This is, I fully understand, something of a niche concern at a time like this. But it's there, nonetheless.
The problem, as I see it, is one of sincerity. Sincerity is amazing, it's tangible, it's real, it's something which can link a writer to a reader, and it's something which I, personally would never be able to muster on this particular topic, I don't have any experience of it (and, with a bit of luck, this will continue to be the case), and even if I did, I'd be too acutely aware that a whole bunch of others are beavering away on the same topic. Unless you've got something new to say, best to leave it, is how I tend to feel about this sort of thing. Camus already wrote La Peste guys, why not leave it at that?
Call it the editor's curse, in another life I helped edit a poetry magazine, and I had to wade through so many heartfelt, earnest (and almost uniformly terrible) submissions that it got to a point that I found that I couldn't read anything unless it was wrapped in allusiveness, unless it was "difficult", purely as an antidote to the sheer volume of earnest emoting. I lost the joy of direct simplicity (or, rather, had it beaten out of me by a tonne of joyless simplicity). Direct clarity was something which didn't sit well with me as a reader, and as a result I shied away from it in my writing life, the baby was very much thrown out with the bathwater, But as I took joy in the linguistically innovative, I forgot that I could enjoy other things, too
It's a nonsensical position to take, as anyone who's ever read any Lee Harwood would know, but I never claimed to be particularly sensible. I think of it as the writing equivalent of being the obsessive teenage music nerd wo dismisses all chart music as rubbish, not realising that they're painting themselves into a corner, and that a fairly sizeable climb-down is just around the corner.
(Reader, yes, of course that was me, too. And years of sneering at the music girls chose to dance to meant I didn't get to dance with girls. It's a crude lesson, but an effective one).
The problem is not sincerity, it's an excess of it. The problem is bad writing, it's failing to temper one's treatment of the subject with context and nuance. It's believing without questioning. It's failing to search one's motives, to know precisely why you're writing what you are. Perhaps I was wrong about belief being the one thing that can't be faked, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it's Purpose.
Because whilst there are undoubtedly a gazillion awful poems currently being written about our present reality, the truth is there will be some good ones, too, and I look forward to reading them without rolling my eyes.
posted by Matt | 12:47 AM
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