Reading: Into the Labyrinth
Atwood, Margret (2003), NEGOTIATING WITH THE DEAD, New York: Anchor
PP. xiii-xxvii, Introduction: Into the Labyrinth
Notes, in chronological order.
This exert contains Introduction to NEGOTIATING WITH THE DEAD by Margret Atwood, titled Into the Labyrinth. This book is a collection of six lectures the Canadian Author gave at the University of Cambridge about writing. The writing 'examines the metaphors that writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain - or excuse! - their activities.'
It starts with some quotes, of which this on I liked in particular as it puts into words how it may feel when you approach a creative endeavour;
"Finding yourself in a hole, at the bottom of a hole, in almost total solitude, and discovering that only writing can save you. To be without the slightest subject for a book, the slightest idea for a book, is to find yourself, once again, before a book A vast emptiness. A possible book Before nothing. Before something like living, naked writing, like something terrible, terrible to overcome." - Marguerite Duras, Writing, 1993
This lead me to reflect on the ideas I have for my practice, how I might approach working as a bookbinder from the outside in, instead of designing based on the content. I will need to adopt this mindset of a writer, whether words are involved or not. Already, as a creative, I understand the mindset that Duras writes about. Now it is about mixing the experience of writing with design and the craft of bookbinding, and to see how this alters the mindset.
On the notion of writing as a useful addition to society Atwood says; "It was like finding yourself in a great library as a young writer, and gazing around at the thousands of books in it, and wondering if you really have anything of value to add." This is something I'm sure most creatives experience, if applied as a metaphor to creating in any format, especially these days with having access to everything and anything, and being bombarded by media. In the constant consumption flow of living in the current climate, the feeling that creating is perhaps unnecessary or pointless, is a common occurrence.
On the way in which we might create, she says; "we steal the shiny bits, and build them into the structures of our own disorderly nests." I liked this analogy as it romanticises the common inner battle of creatives where they suffer from unoriginality or reproduction that sneaks into practice, thereby dulling that concern!
The musings of a writer Atwood references about creating; "Was it nothing more than a fear of silence, of boredom, which the merely reiterative rattle of the type writer's keys was enough to allay?"
And Reena; "I wonder where it all comes from?"
Atwood then shares a list of possible motives of writing, or one could reimagine some as motives for creating;
"To record the world as it is.
To set down the past before it is all forgotten.
To excavate the past because it has been forgotten.
To satisfy my desire for revenge.
Because I knew I had to keep writing or else I would die.
Because to write is to take risks, and it is only by taking risks that we know we are alive.
To produce order out of chaos.
To delight and instruct (not often found after the early twentieth century, or not in that form).
To please myself.
To express myself.
To express myself beautifully.
To create a perfect work of art.
To reward the virtuous and punish the guilty; or - the Marquis de Sade defense, used by ironists - vice versa.
To hold a mirror up to Nature.
To hold a mirror up to the reader.
To paint a portrait of society and its ills.
To express the unexpressed life of the masses.
To name the hitherto unnamed.
To defend the human spirit, and human integrity and honor.
To thumb my nose at Death.
To make money so my children could have shoes.
To make money so I could sneer at those who formerly sneered at me.
To show the bastards.
Because to create is human.
Because to create is Godlike.
Because I hated the idea of having a job.
To say a new word.
To make a new thing.
To create a national consciousness, or a national conscience.
To justify my failures in school.
To justify my own view of myself and my life, because I couldn't be "a writer" unless I actually did some writing.
To make myself appear more interesting than I actually was.
To attract the love of a beautiful woman.
To attract the love of any woman at all.
To attract the love of a beautiful man.
To rectify the imperfections of my miserable childhood.
To thwart my parents.
To spin a fascinating tale.
To amuse and please the reader.
To amuse and please myself.
To pass the time, even though it would have passed anyway.
Graphomania.
Compulsive logorrhea.
Because I was driven to it by some force outside my control.
Because I was possessed.
Because an angel dictated to me.
Because I fell into the embrace of the Muse.
Because I got pregnant by the Muse and needed to give birth to a book (an interesting piece of cross-dressing, indulged in by male writers of the seventeenth century).
Because I had books instead of children (several twentieth century women).
To serve Art.
To serve the Collective Unconscious.
To serve History.
To justify the ways of God toward man.
To act out antisocial behavior for which I would have been punished in real life.
To master a craft so I could generate texts (a recent entry).
To subvert the establishment.
To demonstrate that whatever is, is right.
To experiment with new forms of perception.
To create a recreational boudoir so the reader could go into it and have fun (translated from a Czech newspaper).
Because the story took hold of me and wouldn't let me go (the Ancient Mariner defense).
To search for understanding of the reader and myself.
To cope with my depression.
For my children.
To make a name that would survive death.
To defend a minority group or oppressed class.
To speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.
To expose appalling wrongs or atrocities.
To record the times through which I have lived.
To bear witness to horrifying events that I have survived.
To speak for the dead.
To celebrate life in all its complexity.
To praise the universe.
To allow for the possibility of hope and redemption.
To give back something of what has been given to me."
Atwood then draws upon her research into how it feels to write, gathering thoughts from various writers. Many liken it to being in some kind of dark separation from society; a labyrinth, cave, tunnel, ocean, etc. and suggested it involved a lot of waiting for things, or ideas, to appear. Whereas some suggest it is being in a state that allows for existing things/ideas to appear.
Virginia Wolf, who keeps coming up in my research as an important person to investigate and research further, says "writing a novel is like walking through a dark room, holding a lantern which lights up what is already in the room anyway."
She concludes; "Possibly, then, writing has to do with darkness, and a desire or perhaps a compulsion to enter it, and, with luck, to illuminate it, and to bring something back our to the light."
She concludes; "Possibly, then, writing has to do with darkness, and a desire or perhaps a compulsion to enter it, and, with luck, to illuminate it, and to bring something back our to the light."