24th
Top Thoughts of 2011
4a) This next thing I’m about to describe is not always funny to me and in fact bothers me, but I’m going to describe it as funny anyway. There are two modes of expression in personal writing that bounce off one another in a sort of disgusting way. The first mode combines clipped, declarative sentences with unexamined depictions of fleeting emotions. It then adds enormous attention to the dissonance between what a character wants and what that character is willing to say he or she wants. (Something like: “I wanted to hail a taxi cab but I was worried what she might think if I said goodbye so abruptly. I stood for a few minutes while she finished a cigarette, and then she hailed a cab herself.”) When I read this writing I feel like I’m actually living the characters’ experiences, but I’m on mood stabilizers.
4b) The second sort of writerly trick is to claim, aggressively, that you’re bored, while at the same time (inadvertently I think) leaving room for the reader to think that you’re very upset. (Something like: “Oh great. Another story about an urban literary type fumbling all over him or herself and getting into degrading situations kind of on purpose. I’m tired of hearing that because it’s fake,” — only meaner.) Maybe the writer really is fed up but I’m not convinced. It’s “funny” (actually sort of upsetting) to me when a piece that centers on emotional detachment and problematization of authenticity (the first mode of expression) provokes a certain type of reader to claim, very loudly and unconvincingly, that the piece neither creates an emotional reaction nor has any meaningful claim to authenticity. The punch line is that both the original mood-stabilized writer and the unhinged respondent probably suffer from the same emotional problems. The topper is that we might have avoided the whole discussion if both people had spent a little more time concentrating on something besides their own strange-loopy feelings.
