agreed to call “life.”
What I am rightly afraid of is those seductions—social, financial, even intellectual—which persuade me to speak like a writer, act like a writer, teach like a writer, even write like a writer, at the very moment when I am not being one. Once the public personality begins, however humbly—I think of it as a paper costume inside which one squirms like a child, mindful that rain melts, paper tears, but still rather proud of the accordion pleats on one’s forehead—the problem is how to go about one’s real business, assuming one knows what that is. Lately, I’ve concluded that there’s less gap than one would think, between those who clench up on some island, and those who antick the public halls—each is a posture, and the expense of spirit, to say nothing of ego, is the shame. Here in America many still envy the European artist, whose role in society appears more fixed, and it is certainly true that under our curious freedom, where class roles are not admitted, one no sooner strikes a match than an attitude flames. Perhaps it’s merely easier in one’s own country to see how people play the fool. But surely, of all our artists, our writers seem least able to move without a sociological creaking. After all, America does have so much paper.
Monday, the 3rd
“Neither the ardent promises of your best friends, nor the offers of service by the powerful ought to make you believe that there is anything in what they say, as to results.”
If ever I hanker after a coterie I’ve only to imagine how it would have been to have been born into one—a Southerner say, or a trueblue baby daughter of the Little Aorta Review . That way one might manage it, the way one bears up to one’s nose. Now and then one misses the support, of course, as of any uniform. But my thoughts no sooner go into committee than they want out again, like improperly trained dogs. Is it an oddity that those who don’t scorn the influence cabals often look down on those who teach? Much needless worry has been expended over the possible destruction of writers by teaching. If a man is sucked into scholasticism, or silenced, it seems more likely that his stamina for that aloneness which should be part of his gifts has never been strong. Teaching is hard. But every man spends part of his life-energy away from his most personal work. Fashionably considered, the university is not a part of going “life” at all, as against the pursuit of homosexuality in Algiers, or strong drink in Connecticut. But I find it impossible to exclude from at least tentative reality any place where so many people are.
Nothing’s been said on what the university can do for the writer, apart from boarding him. It should never be his atelier—that sort of thing practiced anywhere, at parties or on podiums, gets into the work well beyond its due. What he represents is a unique approach to literature—the artist’s—and this is all he should teach. He can teach that there are no permanent rules, else literature would die, that the best work abides by the “form” only enough to leave it, that one observes the inner discipline of a book, watches how its ideas dance within the framework of its times. He is careful to lean lightly, if at all, on the personal life of the author, and in the presence of good or great work he never forgets to elaborate on the wonder of it—the best place to be lavish with detail.
At first, it’s tough to teach without the convenience of the small arbitraries; later, the very arbitrariness of the attitude itself stiffens the spine. The risks to the republic are obvious, which may be why even the braver universities prefer to keep only one of him at a time; the danger to him is that he may act like a poet instead of being one, which can happen anywhere.
Meanwhile, even in a sloppy age some of the young are severe enough to be made happy in the sight of a discipline going on somewhere, even if the pursuit of it is so
What I am rightly afraid of is those seductions—social, financial, even intellectual—which persuade me to speak like a writer, act like a writer, teach like a writer, even write like a writer, at the very moment when I am not being one. Once the public personality begins, however humbly—I think of it as a paper costume inside which one squirms like a child, mindful that rain melts, paper tears, but still rather proud of the accordion pleats on one’s forehead—the problem is how to go about one’s real business, assuming one knows what that is. Lately, I’ve concluded that there’s less gap than one would think, between those who clench up on some island, and those who antick the public halls—each is a posture, and the expense of spirit, to say nothing of ego, is the shame. Here in America many still envy the European artist, whose role in society appears more fixed, and it is certainly true that under our curious freedom, where class roles are not admitted, one no sooner strikes a match than an attitude flames. Perhaps it’s merely easier in one’s own country to see how people play the fool. But surely, of all our artists, our writers seem least able to move without a sociological creaking. After all, America does have so much paper.
Monday, the 3rd
“Neither the ardent promises of your best friends, nor the offers of service by the powerful ought to make you believe that there is anything in what they say, as to results.”
If ever I hanker after a coterie I’ve only to imagine how it would have been to have been born into one—a Southerner say, or a trueblue baby daughter of the Little Aorta Review . That way one might manage it, the way one bears up to one’s nose. Now and then one misses the support, of course, as of any uniform. But my thoughts no sooner go into committee than they want out again, like improperly trained dogs. Is it an oddity that those who don’t scorn the influence cabals often look down on those who teach? Much needless worry has been expended over the possible destruction of writers by teaching. If a man is sucked into scholasticism, or silenced, it seems more likely that his stamina for that aloneness which should be part of his gifts has never been strong. Teaching is hard. But every man spends part of his life-energy away from his most personal work. Fashionably considered, the university is not a part of going “life” at all, as against the pursuit of homosexuality in Algiers, or strong drink in Connecticut. But I find it impossible to exclude from at least tentative reality any place where so many people are.
Nothing’s been said on what the university can do for the writer, apart from boarding him. It should never be his atelier—that sort of thing practiced anywhere, at parties or on podiums, gets into the work well beyond its due. What he represents is a unique approach to literature—the artist’s—and this is all he should teach. He can teach that there are no permanent rules, else literature would die, that the best work abides by the “form” only enough to leave it, that one observes the inner discipline of a book, watches how its ideas dance within the framework of its times. He is careful to lean lightly, if at all, on the personal life of the author, and in the presence of good or great work he never forgets to elaborate on the wonder of it—the best place to be lavish with detail.
At first, it’s tough to teach without the convenience of the small arbitraries; later, the very arbitrariness of the attitude itself stiffens the spine. The risks to the republic are obvious, which may be why even the braver universities prefer to keep only one of him at a time; the danger to him is that he may act like a poet instead of being one, which can happen anywhere.
Meanwhile, even in a sloppy age some of the young are severe enough to be made happy in the sight of a discipline going on somewhere, even if the pursuit of it is so
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