04-19-2014, 05:51 AM
There is no text. There is no reader. There are only the author and the struggles with the limitations of his or her authority in a seemingly impossible situation. Only seemingly, because if the situation was hopeless there would be no question of success or failure. No question of possibility. The text only exists for the realm of the reader. For the author there is only the struggle, the work.
The reader is incidental to the author, as the author is but occasional for the reader. The reader has only the text to criticize; not the work. While the writer is not the text, the author is bound to the work. And no one can judge the work, not even the author. The work is always struggle. It is always more important than the completed text, it is always more important than the reader.
The author only exists in the process of work. There are no established authors, only celebrities. A celebrated author is better off dead unless it affects his or her work in a negative capacity. One of the problems an author has is the effect of the reader. The judgment of the reader is as useless to an author's work as a criminal jury that decides whether he lives or dies. If he dies, that's that; if he survives, that means little more than that he can continue work. To judge a text by its merit, in the sense of whether it is good or bad, is of no qualitative difference from judging whether someone should live or die. If critics and writers, and critics that are writers, read the text of another there is competition where merit is concerned. In work there is no merit; if competition affects the writer it is a competition with other writers, living and dead, in relation to himself, not with readers and not with critics. The critic's job is to define the merit, in any or all of its attributes, of the text, for themselves and for other readers; never for the author. The author that takes the advice or uses the influence of a critic directly is moving closer to failure. Though people read to and with each other, and though a writer may read from his text to others; an author works alone, and a reader experiences the text alone. The experience, in its limited way, of the reader with the work of the author is a positive bonus; while the experience of the reader with him and his text is a mere distraction for the writer.
The author is never wrong. As a writer, as a human being, as an artist, he may flounder: As an author he is always completely authoritative and individual. The text, the "product" of the work, may stand or fall with his decisions and only through his decisions. The merit of the text is only important to the writer on occasions and to degrees. A writer that attempts to authenticate merit, even through work, will, on most occasions, be a very poor writer. Entertainment is a poor substitute for substance. Given a particular context, anyone can entertain someone else. Anything can be entertaining. Anything can be finely produced and useful. But entertainment, fine production, usefulness: these qualities are incidental to an author. An author's only real preoccupation is the struggle through his limitations. He is at once total authority and limited participant in the struggle. The struggle goes on all around him, every day, every moment. His only responsibility, as author, is in his authority.
Writers are not generous people. While there are generous people: people that read, people that write; a true author is only generous and only accepts generosity in advancement of his work. While writers have times when they are not working, and have friends and immediate, often indispensable social relationships, an author has no friends and has no social obligations other than what is indivisible from his work. Working, an author's responsibilities to others and to his own well-being are incidental. Society is always wrong; and while the writer may be wrong, he suffers more because of it, and that is because he is in that position, and it is his fault. Society is always wrong. Both success and failure are bitter reminders to the author that he, even in his work, is functioning within a society that is always wrong. Whatever he does, he is working with and for the elements of something that is wrong. Whether the "products" of his work are celebrated, disparaged or ignored, the "products" of his work are always the shameful defeat of his efforts. Failure is as important, and bitterness, as are incentives of success to continue work. Success is as negative as failure. Acclaim and disparagement, hostile and friendly criticism: all these things are as negative and as incidental as the attention paid to merit. Merit is an incidental success.
Positive creativity is aggressive, is offensive. Offensive in the sense of sport and war. More creative than destructive, it works to fill its own substance, to achieve its own existence, its own reality. Procreative. Works to produce its presence. To rewire, reconfigure the conditions in which it becomes present, in which it progresses. It dismantles itself in its own aggressive realm. It is creative work so it has no need to negatively attack; if it attacks anything outside itself and its immediate environment, it only does so to include or possibly augment, not to diminish, within its own realm. Work that doesn't include or augment what it attacks is in most cases a reactionary and destructive means for the worker to continue work despite the failure or absence of creative substance: It often becomes little more than a petty tinkering with mechanical devices kept warm through the patently observed defects of others. A creative writer is nothing but a skilled worker; skilled in intelligence instead of with the hands. Fine, entertaining, even enlightening and thought-provoking texts can be produced by intellectually skilled workers. Though no matter with what ease or with what intense labor a text is produced, intelligence and skill are as incidental as popular success and merit. The substance of true positive creativity is intangible, it's something you can experience but it's not something you can respond to or about without embarking on intense creative work yourself. It is something beyond practical use or enjoyment, beyond mere aesthetic enrichment, it is a consummation of shared spiritual reality. Grander than the author, than the reader, than the arbitrary condition of the product, the arbitrary conditions of the society or societies the inclusive, positively aggressive creativity carries above and below it . . . is the spirit, the energy that explodes through the intangible substance created and sustained through work. The reader can read, and possibly create as well. There is no text, there are no readers without the author. And the author is only what he is as he is doing it. As he is working.
The substance and the spirit are only available to the author as he is struggling. Success and failure become incidental. The work is all or nothing.
The reader is incidental to the author, as the author is but occasional for the reader. The reader has only the text to criticize; not the work. While the writer is not the text, the author is bound to the work. And no one can judge the work, not even the author. The work is always struggle. It is always more important than the completed text, it is always more important than the reader.
The author only exists in the process of work. There are no established authors, only celebrities. A celebrated author is better off dead unless it affects his or her work in a negative capacity. One of the problems an author has is the effect of the reader. The judgment of the reader is as useless to an author's work as a criminal jury that decides whether he lives or dies. If he dies, that's that; if he survives, that means little more than that he can continue work. To judge a text by its merit, in the sense of whether it is good or bad, is of no qualitative difference from judging whether someone should live or die. If critics and writers, and critics that are writers, read the text of another there is competition where merit is concerned. In work there is no merit; if competition affects the writer it is a competition with other writers, living and dead, in relation to himself, not with readers and not with critics. The critic's job is to define the merit, in any or all of its attributes, of the text, for themselves and for other readers; never for the author. The author that takes the advice or uses the influence of a critic directly is moving closer to failure. Though people read to and with each other, and though a writer may read from his text to others; an author works alone, and a reader experiences the text alone. The experience, in its limited way, of the reader with the work of the author is a positive bonus; while the experience of the reader with him and his text is a mere distraction for the writer.
The author is never wrong. As a writer, as a human being, as an artist, he may flounder: As an author he is always completely authoritative and individual. The text, the "product" of the work, may stand or fall with his decisions and only through his decisions. The merit of the text is only important to the writer on occasions and to degrees. A writer that attempts to authenticate merit, even through work, will, on most occasions, be a very poor writer. Entertainment is a poor substitute for substance. Given a particular context, anyone can entertain someone else. Anything can be entertaining. Anything can be finely produced and useful. But entertainment, fine production, usefulness: these qualities are incidental to an author. An author's only real preoccupation is the struggle through his limitations. He is at once total authority and limited participant in the struggle. The struggle goes on all around him, every day, every moment. His only responsibility, as author, is in his authority.
Writers are not generous people. While there are generous people: people that read, people that write; a true author is only generous and only accepts generosity in advancement of his work. While writers have times when they are not working, and have friends and immediate, often indispensable social relationships, an author has no friends and has no social obligations other than what is indivisible from his work. Working, an author's responsibilities to others and to his own well-being are incidental. Society is always wrong; and while the writer may be wrong, he suffers more because of it, and that is because he is in that position, and it is his fault. Society is always wrong. Both success and failure are bitter reminders to the author that he, even in his work, is functioning within a society that is always wrong. Whatever he does, he is working with and for the elements of something that is wrong. Whether the "products" of his work are celebrated, disparaged or ignored, the "products" of his work are always the shameful defeat of his efforts. Failure is as important, and bitterness, as are incentives of success to continue work. Success is as negative as failure. Acclaim and disparagement, hostile and friendly criticism: all these things are as negative and as incidental as the attention paid to merit. Merit is an incidental success.
Positive creativity is aggressive, is offensive. Offensive in the sense of sport and war. More creative than destructive, it works to fill its own substance, to achieve its own existence, its own reality. Procreative. Works to produce its presence. To rewire, reconfigure the conditions in which it becomes present, in which it progresses. It dismantles itself in its own aggressive realm. It is creative work so it has no need to negatively attack; if it attacks anything outside itself and its immediate environment, it only does so to include or possibly augment, not to diminish, within its own realm. Work that doesn't include or augment what it attacks is in most cases a reactionary and destructive means for the worker to continue work despite the failure or absence of creative substance: It often becomes little more than a petty tinkering with mechanical devices kept warm through the patently observed defects of others. A creative writer is nothing but a skilled worker; skilled in intelligence instead of with the hands. Fine, entertaining, even enlightening and thought-provoking texts can be produced by intellectually skilled workers. Though no matter with what ease or with what intense labor a text is produced, intelligence and skill are as incidental as popular success and merit. The substance of true positive creativity is intangible, it's something you can experience but it's not something you can respond to or about without embarking on intense creative work yourself. It is something beyond practical use or enjoyment, beyond mere aesthetic enrichment, it is a consummation of shared spiritual reality. Grander than the author, than the reader, than the arbitrary condition of the product, the arbitrary conditions of the society or societies the inclusive, positively aggressive creativity carries above and below it . . . is the spirit, the energy that explodes through the intangible substance created and sustained through work. The reader can read, and possibly create as well. There is no text, there are no readers without the author. And the author is only what he is as he is doing it. As he is working.
The substance and the spirit are only available to the author as he is struggling. Success and failure become incidental. The work is all or nothing.
