Keeping it together

It is great to get feedback from the really smart people like Ray and AKMA. It’s a thin line I’m trying to walk with this writing project, between excessive mind-numbing depth and dilettantism. AKMA’s comment made me step back for a moment. I need to do more research (so what else is new). I think I’ll try to go on with the slant I had in mind on the positioning of the author at the dawn of the novel in the next day or so, but I suspect it will need to be heavily revised once I get a few more things together.

However, the delay in writing about the novel has been a good thing in some ways. I did some interesting sleep-writing last night, and it occurred to me why the emergence of the novel is such an important part of my overarching argument (which is difficult to express concisely). In many ways, the duo of Bourke-White and Caldwell is similar in approach to Samuel Richardson— Lange and Taylor are similar to Defoe— and Evans and Agee are analogous to Fielding. Clear as mud? It has to do with their approaches to what constitutes effective evidence for representation. This is a long road to take to get to the 1930s, but it’s getting clearer in my head. This pilgrim is actually making progress.

Or, as another way of expressing it— it’s the battle of the lumpers and splitters. Allegory lumps, the novel splits. Natural history lumps, romanticism splits. The entertainment (and advertising) industry lumps, and the social documentary workers of the 1930s split. That’s another simplistic reduction. There are so many things going on that it’s difficult to write. It will take so much background to establish the pattern effectively that I think I’m looking at a full two chapters to get to 1890. It’s going to be a long trip, folks.

I just wish I could manage a better mood to make it through. The comments on the fragments thus far have really helped. Thank you. I love writing in an open environment. Closets make me very nervous. I’ve got intense issues with silences, and with secrecy. They have never worked out well for me. The dice roll when I’m out of the room, and I lose. In so many ways, having a space like this is a dream come true for me. No one has to show up if they don’t want to. There is no obligation. There’s a random flow of strangers, of course, looking for nudes of one sort or another. There are more than a few I’m sure, who just glance at the pictures and skim. But when I get deep comments on issues of importance, it makes it all worthwhile.

But of course, even the slightest evidence that someone cares to read what I say helps me keep it together. It makes me want to write more. As long as I’m talking, I feel like the insanity will stay away. Yes, I know, that’s dangerously delusional in itself. I’m scared of that though.

I watched a screener copy of One Hour Photo today. It hit just a little too close. I used to be one of those guys, watching other people’s lives scroll by on the screen and coming home to my empty apartment. That’s when I decided to come back to school, to try to find some kind of better life somewhere. I never want to turn into “Sy, the Photo Guy”.