Daniel Gordon and the affect of good writing
Daniel Gordon, the editor at Society told me some things about writing.
He said we can belong to any era we wish to. If I as a writer, align more with a writer in my field in 1970's I could possibly keep his writing style as the bar for my own work. Or if I align more with John Steinbeck's sensibility, I could keep that as the bar. Finding one's own voice is about knowing which languages speak strongly with our souls.
Don Delillo's documentary called The Word, The Image and The Gun was a very engaging experience. I learned that we could find a voice even in a time of confusion and distraction, possibly, by looking critically at this confusion instead of justing guarding ourselves from it.
Thinking about the crowds. For Delillo it is the 300 people who all jump up to catch that baseball that has flown over to their side from the field. For me, it might be the roars of patriotism I heard and felt suffocated by at the Wagah Border. A day of bitter anger and heat I can never forget.
The crowd is distinct from the individual. It has a collective mind, which is almost always a very violent and exploited mind. It acts in a uniform manner. I think of DFW's interview where he said that parts of ourselves that are common with the masses are mostly the superficial parts. Noise.
How tragic it would be to limit our lives to the noise. To mimic the same motions. To repeat the same blabber. To not focus on that which is unique and alive in our own minds. Music that resides in the depths of our individual souls.
Now that I think of this idea, I can see the author most important to me are the ones that have a discernible, unique voice. Joan Didion, John Coetzee, David Foster Wallace, Saunders, Carver, Tobias Wolf. A voice that is conscious of itself and finds itself inside the crowds of mediocre writings. The text is distinct from the image.
'If you can recognise yourself in the sentences, you are a writer' I see this as a simple and yet effective way of thinking about my work.
Finding my voice is the project I have in my mind. A personal project.