Recently one of the judges for the Nobel Prize for Literature stated that he saw no chance for any American writers to be considered for the prize. The reason, he said, is that American writers are too "insular."
To be absolutely honest, this writer does not know exactly what he means considering the fact that the last American writer to receive a Nobel Prize for Literature was Toni Morrison; a woman who has made a career about writing exclusively about the lives of black people in America. There is nothing universal, despite what literature professors in Ivy League and Ivy League "wannabe" schools say in Morrison's writing.
But your faithful correspondent is in complete agreement that there is no American writer on the horizon, perhaps barring Joyce Carol Oates*, who deserves to even be nominated for the Prize. And the reason is simply this: contemporary American writers, even the literary ones, just can't write worth a damn. This is not to say that they cannot make themselves understood. But their writing is lacking in style and substance. It all seems to be cleaned up first drafts; the first expression of an idea is used without thought of using other words to make the thought deeper, funnier, sadder, more poignant, etc. But that may be their intention. We live in a world where first thoughts trump pondering and the exhibiting of raw emotion is considered being "real" while taking time to have a second thought is considered artifice.
Be that as it may, this writer blames much of the problem on the computer; specifically, the word processor. The use of a computer is the most artificial form of story telling. It verges on the writer almost becoming an android with the machine. Because of the ease of spell checking and the use of cut and paste features the machine becomes an assistant instead of a tool.
The best literary writing has been done by hand or by type writers. Compared to writing on a computer the use of pen or type writer are slow and messy. And it is the slowness and messiness that improve the writing. The hand writer and type writer have to constantly look over their work to fix spelling and grammatical errors, and in doing so they see how they can make their writing better by changing, adding or removing words, sentences or paragraphs. On a computer, on the other hand, the words are on a screen and with a press of a key all words can be properly spelled, and in some cases the grammar fixed, per style book rules. With a computer the writer depends on the machine to fix the flaws instead of going through pages, reading and re-reading, looking for and marking errors with pencil in preparation for typing up or writing the second draft. It is the reading and re-reading and re-reading again that makes the author ponder his or her story and writing. The computer makes the very act of writing too easy, and easy writing is not often good writing. There is no need to re-read and re-read the writing. The words magically appear on a screen and, in this age of television, what appears on a video screen must be good.
Your faithful correspondent has seen copies of first drafts by famous writers written by hand or on type writers and he has also seen what are called first drafts written by writers on computers. The difference is striking. The first drafts of the manual writers (hand and type writer) are marked up with spelling corrections, phrase, sentences and paragraphs marked out and hand written notes crammed into the margins. The computer based writers, on the other hand, change a word here or there and perhaps add a phrase. The manual writers bled over their work. The computer writers just tweak. The difference, to use a vulgar illustration is like that of a person building an engine for a top fuel rail based on a Chevy big block engine and tuning up the family SUV.
At this point you may be asking the following questions:
"But Lord Nib, how can you say such things? Do not writers in other nations not use computers to write their literature? And you yourself use a computer to write the Bloody Nib. Does that mean that the Bloody Nib is bad writing?"
This writer has the misfortune of being able to read only one language, and that language is English. The problem may hold true for other languages and probably does. Americans, Canadians and the English take to technological advances much faster than do other peoples and in taking to the technologies they sooner become dependent to them. It will soon become a flaw in the writings of non-English writing writers that writing becomes a co-operative effort between man and machine.
And yes, the writing on the Bloody Nib is bad writing. If this writer pounded out the entries on this blog on a typewriter as he once pounded out a monthly magazine on a typewriter the writing would be much better.
At the top of this post are photos of two writers, now deceased and much writers of much different style and substance who, each in his own way, were masters of unique styles that have yet to be matched.
On the left is William Faulkner, a writer of stately and ponderous prose who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. He is, in the photo, working on a Royal desk type writer while wearing a collar and tie.
On the right Mickey Spillaine, the creator of the Mike Hammer novels, among other. Hard boiled, slangy and fast. His attire reflects his writing; casual and muscular. He is working on a Smith-Corona desk machine.
Neither man would have benefited from the use of a computer. In fact, a word processor would have probably ruined their writing because the word processor does not call for the sweat and blood that a type writer does.
There is another thing that has reduced the quality of American writing and that is the falling out of common knowledge of the Bible, Shakespeare and Homer not by the reader, but by the writer. These three sources have been, for centuries, the ground of literature, the sources of themes, phrases and ideas. Since they have fallen out of favor the ground has shifted and keeps shifting. There is no place to stand. And if there is no place to stand the is no place to locate a lever with which to move ideas.
For those who question this writer's presentation of the term "type writer" instead of "typewriter," please know that the original patent for the machine called the machine a "type writer."
And please know that this writer prefers the indented beginning to a paragraph to the current practice of starting the paragraph at the left hand margin.
*Joyce Carol Oates writes her novels longhand and then writes the final draft on an electric type writer.
No comments:
Post a Comment