glahnstack 9

artistic duty

One of the worst things as a reader is coming to a conclusion of a novel and the writer has became too aware. He has re-written the final passage many many times. You can smell it in the words. The "prose" is immaculate. Every word in its correct place. But that isn't enough. The writer attempts to go into the great beyond. Writing is too lowly. He wants to appeal to some strange creature known as Art.

I'm left looking not at the world but the creator (this is where religion fails, also). And all his love is gone in attempt to woo this creature. He tries to believe the cult he has joined is being frank with him and this debasement is worth it. The cult demands their bard kneel to his queen. They want to see him defile himself, lose all potency, ruin all that was lovely in him to pursue their ephemeral praise.

In his groveling attempt to appeal to his goddess I begin to see the writer behind the words for the first time. I feel for him.

I begin to smell his adrenal glands. His groin and armpits are dripping cold. I see the anxiety on his face and hear his stomach churning up foul gases. All of his characters disappear. The story stops. Landscapes disgraced. Feelings dissolved.

I'm left with him alone and this psychosis known as Art has spooked all the confidence out of him. I feel for him but I’m also revolted.

Like in the Westerns (ewwww genre, get get lowly scum) this is his showdown at noon and he is stricken with sheer panic. He fiddles with his sentences over and over until they are like trembling hands. He changes the cadence until it seems completely unnatural in its perfection, so clumsy trying to be "smooth" that he is near to falling down.

All the imagination from the preceding chapters is dead. The words are discordant to a degree that I can no longer even read them. In their place a spotlight shines directly into the author’s sweating face with a mental bubble saying, "That was really good wasn't it! Look at this! Watch me shine."

A cowardly braggart.

Meanwhile, the Psychosis Goddess Art stands there gun smoking. Her quickdraw is immaculate. She has hit him right between the eyes. So much for his groveling.

I guess this is aesthetics. Beauty and more beauty. Beauty beyond measure. Get out of here, ugly. It is our artistic duty to remove you from the premises. We can't have you inside to see how superficial all this beauty has made us. Get get get! We have a literary reading in an hour and your heathen ass isn't invited.

Sam Weller side-eyes us and winks when he gets our attention outside the venue.

Dickens himself is a tricky devil who winks at us all the way through. He rarely gets distracted, never shows insecurity to his audience, and would never think of groveling to Art. So this is not to say I want the author to hide away completely. When they do I can still enjoy their work, of coarse. Very much so (I wish more would hide away honestly). But soon I discover something is still blatantly absent which my psyche demands.

It is a personality thing. Some have one. Some do not. Some have an awful one. Some, like Dickens, have a profound one. He's a tricky devil who is always winking at us but seldom at Art. He never dishonors or lowers himself to Goddess Psychosis but wishes to delight us (how dare he?). His winks are like from a lover as we traverse the story. He elbows us mischievously in the ribs. Just enough that it does not hurt too much.

Dickens' heir John Cowper Powys is more a brother than an impish lover. You feel something darker in Powys. More aloof but comfortably unusual near the stove cooking his breakfast. You feel him having intrusive thoughts about taking his stick and crushing our heads in but he dispels those thoughts and pats us on the shoulder and says, look at that! And you are compelled to go out adventuring with him on a walk to see what he sees.

Dickens I suspect had his own intrusive thoughts but he never sits down with us to make them known in ghastly detail like Powys. Powys could tell us some horrible crime he fantasized about committing and still, somehow, remain harmless and good. He feels extraordinarily familiar to me. Even greater than familial blood. But, also, he keeps me at arm's length. You can never get too close to Powys.

Nothing is more true now than when he said we need more Rabelais. What are known as the "Pagans, Heathen, Egoists, Hedonists, and Virtuosos." Truth screaming from our chests and navels. Beauty with broken arms.

Less artistic duty and more excrement and love.