From chapter 2 of Billy Budd:
“And here it be submitted that, apparently going to corraborate the doctrine of man’s fall, a doctrine now popularly ignored, it is observable that where certain virtues pristine and unadulterate peculiarly characterize anybody in the external uniform of civilization, they will upon scrutiny seem not to be derived from custom or convention, but rather to be out of keeping with these, as if indeed exceptionally transmitted from a period prior to Cain’s city and citified man. The character marked by such qualities has to an unvitiated taste an untampered-with flavor like that of berries, while the man thoroughly civilized even in a fair specimen of the breed has to the same moral palate a questionable smack as of a compounded wine.”
… Really, Melville?
“The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.”
My brain still performs a melodramatic little swoon (replete with arm draped over brow and Victorian-era couch in readiness underneath) when faced with the idea that someone, somewhere, chose something I wrote out of a collection of others. It gives me hope that I’ll get more words between the covers of a book, like in Bianca’s hoodie pocket above.
(Do those books have my words in them? Oh, no, no. That’s a couple of Hemingways and a Ginsberg, freshly purchased from a stall at our local farmer’s market.)
I’ve updated the Published Works page, as if to prove it to myself.
With a dreamy sort of inspiration I decided to create a new blog, one that doesn’t try to find new ways to say “decadent” and “tasty”. This is meant to be a dumping ground of me, whenever I’m electrified by or irritated with something. I’m supposed to grow, here.
And I keep running into the nothing-to-say wall. Nothing to Tweet. No status to update. No photo I feel like Photoshopping. No quotations.
It’s pissing me off to no end. It’s a dry season, or the straw is making that chuckling noise at the bottom of the cup, or some other weak-assed metaphor for being creatively numb. I’m leafing through old paperbacks in my bookcases. I look over novels I haven’t finished, wipe off the dirty streaks without adding much. I’m not compelled to write comments on other people’s stuff.
I need to write.
Right now it’s a goddamn chore.
