Reflection, Submersion, Submission
A pause to consider
People like us who don’t have a huge following and live in the comfort of our obscurity rarely get the chance to publicly discuss our work with anyone. There are no moments available to be able to reflect on what it is we’re doing, and so one’s oeuvre (a French word meaning all the stuff you’ve done) really just lives in our head, and begging people to help you let it out of its cage usually amounts to just that - begging. And the idea that you might sit around a table with a bunch of other writers and discuss theory or impetus is usually as boring as it sounds, except when such a gathering erupts into an argument about comparative ideology, gaining nothing.
With the advent of Substack and other self-bloviating venues this urge can find a remedy. And that’s what this is, which is a way of saying bail now before it is too late.
To begin with, my stuff is weird. I’ll agree to that assessment right off the bat. My fiction doesn’t come off like I talk when, for example, I’m lighting up a cigar or playing the horses (two activities that fill my moments of diversion and often run afoul of what one might expect from somebody who writes weird stuff). I’ve had readers tell me they just don’t get it, or that they find it difficult going. I can’t argue against this appraisal. Even in my own head my answer to them would be a contradiction. On the one hand I would like them to go along with it, accepting the absurd situations I invent as they come up and not try to finesse any hidden meanings in it. But on the other hand I’m sitting here with my own understanding that a lot of the material I come up with is a continuing conversation between Camus, Wittgenstein, André Breton, and Bozo the Clown. I won’t deny the biggest influences in my world are David Lynch, Garcia-Marquez, and Robert Walser. Admittedly not one’s everyday super heroes. I write what I like to read. What else can I say?
So my urge to say “there’s nothing intellectual going on here” kind of rubs hard against my urge to say “there’s more here than meets the eye.” And this is the point at which a writer hopes to eventually have a scholar or two explain it on their behalf. But there’s that obscurity thing again…
I plant references to other work, moving some pieces around as I go. The heavily literate eye would see twisted reminiscences from the likes of Gogol’s Dead Souls, or Galdós’ Fortunata y Jacinta in this or that scene. I like to think I treat my readers like adults. I don’t like the smooth, oft-times commercial, expected fiction that becomes heavily-touted and widely read work. Like a lot of other people I started off with Kafka but then moved on to Boris Vian and Dazai Osamu. Call it a natural progression in the bowels of my happily warped brain.
Then there’s the method. I’ve mentioned it before and I make no apologies. 98% of the time my first drafts are done by hand, with a fountain pen, in one of those old-fashioned high school composition books (like we had in school), and a good dose of mind-altering chemistry. For this I tip my hat to Huxley and Michaux. I’ve given my argument for this method in an earlier post here, but let it suffice to say that it isn’t all that strange and follows in the footsteps of an established tradition, such as it is. Of course all later drafts and editing is done clean and sober because, as you might expect, sometimes what comes out on the first try is either perfect nonsense or completely unintelligible. But, as I’ve done this for years now, I’ve learned that when I’ve stepped outside of myself things happen that my everyday head would never allow me to say. This is why, I suppose, I have had people tell me I’m not like my fiction. Well… considering my taste in entertainment… maybe.
And if you’ve gotten this far I hope that this has sparked the kernel of need in your own head to put your own version down on paper. I have found that the occasional review of what the hell it is I think I’m doing with my life is helpful. Feel free to spill the beans. I’ll read it.
Just like you, the writing is going to happen whether anybody reads it or not. I’ve been lucky to have found some willing venues. At this point the tsunami of rejections I’ve faced pale in comparison to the handful of successes I’ve had. In time, if you’re new at this, in the course of the trials of submission and rejection, you too will get from “they hate me, I’m lousy” to “they’re really stupid.” Though I’ve found that writers who start at the “they’re really stupid” aren’t willing to learn one damn thing about themselves. As I’ve mentioned in other places, I’m happy that editors have turned down work here and there. They’ve saved me a lot of embarrassment.
And, just to clarify, no edibles were harmed in the making of this essay.
By the way, I started posting on my old bloggy blog. Gonna vent at the world and eventually wind up on some watchlist. In case I totally disappear, that's what happened.
https://beearl.blogspot.com/2025/02/quid-pro-quo-i-tell-you-things-you-tell.html
Taking up your invitation :-) - Firstly I think 'weird writing' deserves a caveat at the very least; at best perhaps, it deserves a different descriptor. Literary craft, over the last fifteen years at least, seems to have been pretty much sidelined for more pedestrian, predictable, formulaic, - to the innocuous and in some cases, offensively bland - at least to those unafraid of a critical reading, even if one still keeps such opinions to oneself. 'Weird' is reductive and almost self-maligning, as if admitting to it being something far less than it actually is. It removes agency from the artistic voice and mind which created it - and it does a serious disservice to the craft too. When I say that if anyone feels their writing is weird, the caveat it deserves at the very least, is that it means it is not within the standardised expectations of the mainstream. What it should mean is that the work is fearlessly explorative and delves into the depth of language, not only as a form of expression, by which all manner of storytelling should be possible, but also in terms of form and craft. Kundera wrote in his treatise on the art of the novel that the novel can be anything since only a novel can discover what it truly is. This is the artistic liberty we are driven to explore - I hope at least. I'm likely to be verbally slain by some for this: I do subscribe to the idea that not all can be taught in the art and skill of writing - like any other art form, some are born to it in deeper ways than those who strive to become a writer by methods, courses and a host of how-to subscriptions. There are still those original minds who were called to this craft, who never sought it out, who never chose it on a given day, or mood and for whom, as hard to stomach as this life apprenticeship to the art of language can be, we are nothing without it.
When we take literary craft and storytelling to a space / landscape, sculpted by imaginative ideas or original, or even critical thinking, there should not be the necessity to defend it as 'different'. I think we agree that across all artistic disciplines, conformity kills. We should not feel the need to feel defensive of our approach, our internal dialogues with other works, or the ways in which we treat our readers to the feast from which we draw conversations, commentaries or allusions. All serious artists delves into the nature of other work; this is not to plagiarise but an exploration that is the lifeblood of literary and artistic legacy. And for me, Bob, converse away, for your work is richer and ever more inviting and exciting a read, than most of what finds its way onto bookshop shelves, prize-winners and the bestseller lists. If you recall even Eliot, to his critics, most often retorted, in response to critiques of his 'obfustications' and difficult work, 'it's all on the page' ...