Posted By BillHeise on October 15, 2010

One of the most consistent things I’ve done on my blog is to write each week about What I’m Listening to This Week. No one cares what I’m listening to this (or any) week, but I continue to do it because it’s fun, and blogging should be fun.

On the other hand, I started to feel earlier this year that it was a little self-indulgent. I wrote about the narcissistic element of lyrics, using Elton John’s lyrics as my example. Elton said he could understand but which no one else could. So I decided to contrast the private expression of lyrics with the more public expression of literature. The public expression has an added dimension which (I said) was a less secure form expression than a personal vision alone. But such an expression was not without its rewards. In my discussion of the personal experience of J. L. Carr’s Month in the Country, I noted the personal vision, but I also noted the attempt of the personal vision to a deeper sense of history through art.

In attempting to work in the public sphere, however, I quickly encountered a problem. I wasn’t enjoying writing about literature. This is not to say that I wasn’t writing literature. I was. And moreover, writing actual literature remains (by far) my favorite activity of my busy day. But that activity can only last so long before my brain runs out of what people greater than myself have called ‘gas.’

My Quantum Brain

I wake up and write booka until my brain gives out. But my mental processes proceed in stages. I liken the post-stroke process to the quantized energies of electrons as they orbit the nucleus of an atom. (I know. How dorky am I?).

When I first wake up, my brain is full of energy, and I use that energy to write books. But since I have less energy than most people do, my brain gives out. And, unlike people who have not had a stroke, my brain gives out right away. I will be writing a passage and clicking along just fine, and in the middle of a sentence it will give way to a lower-energy level.

After my brain gives out at the book-writing level, I descend to a lower-velocity orbit and begin working on the weekly blog post. And after that runs out I go upstairs and either take a nap or watch a movie (today’s movie is Bandolero, starring James Stewart and Raquel Welch). Then I’m spent. Because I’ve had a stroke, my day is more organized now than it used to be (and frankly more organized than I’d like it to be). But it is what it is.

Back to My Original Point

The reason I wasn’t enjoying writing in public was not that I was no longer in graduate school. Writing critical 100 reviews turned out to be like writing 100 book reports, and I had no desire to do that. Moreover, I expected my audience to be hostile. This is based on my long experience in graduate school, and not on any experience I’ve had on my blog. In fact, it’s easier to ignore my positions than it is to engage them, and this is what most people in fact do. It is this that gives rise to my feeling that we need someone in the blogosphere world to mediate the world of public interaction.

This is a position that was prepared for me as a graduate student. I had been in graduate school during the 80s and 90s. During that time, critics were getting off their position of airy superiority, because they recognized that no one in the world had an unassailable position. So they decided that ‘theory’ should encounter, not only ‘theory,’ but ‘praxis.’ That was a good idea on its surface, but it got my fellow academics involved with some Marxist schools of thought, which, though better than the alternatives, were not as complete as my academic colleagues thought they were.

I don’t have anything against Marx, but I explained my belief that they nevertheless made an error here and offered a better solution (though not a perfect one) here.

But more importantly, I had made my peace with my graduate school experience, and I didn’t want to dredge up bad memories on my fun blog. So I suspended my weekly posts on What I Am Reading This Week but kept up with the private What I’m Listening to This Week. I continued to read, though, as I tried to figure out what to do with What I Am Reading This Week. After all, I know a lot about literature, I when I want to think about something, I read about it.

What I Decided

I decided that my formal posture towards literature—derived from one of my favorite teachers Dr. Rose Marie Burwell—was too much work and reminded me too much of writing a dry book report. So I decided to write to write more loosely than perhaps Dr. Burwell would appreciate. Que cera.

So for the next six weeks, at least, I’ll offer you something (every Friday if I can maintain a schedule (which you know I can’t)) in the way of what I’m reading this week, though in all honesty, what I’ll been reading for the next six weeks reflects what I was reading four or five months ago. What I’m actually reading this week is The Portable Beat Reader. Don’t worry, fellow beats and hippies, I’ll get there eventually.

The first area I will attempt to assay is the works in line with James Joyce, which I think are some of the most complex works ever written, and certainly the most obscure. But, due to their complexity, they are also some of the most rewarding. They have shaped me in so many ways that I cannot even count them.

The works that I have chosen are all works that I have not read, which means that I won’t be able to write about the works of Samuel Beckett, since I have read most (not all) of his major works. Instead, I’ve decided to focus on these works:

• Ronald Firbank’s Valmouth
• Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky
• Lawrence Norfolk’s Lempriere’s Dictionary

But since the The Anxiety of Influence requires us (as authors) to break out of traditions, I wanted to write on some American traditions of literature which are ignored or co-opted with a (significant) change of purpose in the work of James Joyce. So I will start out with these:

• Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man
• Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio
• James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice

This week, I decided to write this explanation of my motives instead, and my brain has dropped into a lower-energy-state, so I will get back with my work on Firbank’s novel tomorrow. But right now, it’s time for some Raquel.

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