Friday, January 04, 2013

Inappropriate writing

My last post, the Josipovici excerpt, occurred to me last night. I read the story last night—actually, I read it over two nights, though it is not a long story, not at all (it is a short story)—but I read the passage last night, and it immediately spoke to me as relevant. I wanted to share it, though few would know why, though I'm not prepared to say why, not wanting to, not sure why. But I finished the story, then soon went to sleep, feeling I would type out the passage this morning and publish it. Thinking this, feeling this, felt like a distancing, itself a literature, not true, if not necessarily false. Calculating that I would share a particular passage in twelve hours time, not immediately. Though even immediately would not have been immediate. I'd have had to risen from bed, walked downstairs, sat down, propped up the book so that it would not close, and type out each word, accurately, carefully, being sure to preserve non-American spellings in the face of overly helpful auto-corrections. Distance. Time. Sleeping on it, going about my morning, taking care of errands, breakfast, cleanup, dressing, school drop-off, return. Then sitting down, propping up the book, typing. Publish. Distance. Literature. Writing, even if not my own. Not my own. My own being so inadequate, I hide behind another's. And even these words of my own, especially these words, like all of the others. Distance. Flatness. Words. Selection. Editing. Writing. Inappropriate? Why?

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