Self-Deprecation + Blogging?

I've convinced a few people I know to take a look at this book blog of mine, and some short stories I've written, and "self-deprecation" came up more than once. I apparently think more meanly of my (slender?) skills in fiction writing than do my friends and family... not that I don't value their opinions.... That said, I won't be posting my prose here in the foreseeable future.

Self-deprecation can be tolerable if drenched in irony - and through this exercise, I've (again) discovered that conversely, if coming from a place of true uncertainly, self-deprecation can be uncomfortable( and ANNOYING!) to endure.

There is, unfortunately, little affliction of false modesty when I say I'm daunted by (and in awe of) the work and my readings of great novelists. I don't write these things with any latent assurance that I may one day accomplish that which now seems so beyond what I know of my talents. Perhaps this has been my learning to keep these doubts to myself.

I will have been blogging here for four months by late June and am still grappling with and groping for the right tone. The issue is, as things now stand, I have no other outlet to express or exorcise my thoughts, feelings, fears, and opinions about the things I read and write.

This passage from Nabokov's "Good Readers and Good Writers" (Lectures on Literature) better articulates one aspect of my fear of insipidity (it has many facets):

Time and space, the colors of the seasons, the movements of muscles and minds, all these are for writers of genius (as far as we can guess and I trust we guess right) not traditional notions which may be borrowed from the circulating library of public truths but a series of unique surprises which master artists have learned to express in their own unique way. To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction. The various combinations these minor authors are able to produce within these set limits may be quite amusing in a mild ephemeral way because minor readers like to recognize their own ideas in a pleasing disguise. But the real writer, the fellow who sends planets spinning and models a man asleep and eagerly tampers with the sleeper’s rib, that kind of author has no given values at his disposal: he must create them himself. The art of writing is a very futile business if it does not imply first of all the art of seeing the world as the potentiality of fiction.

That covers what could excite or sedate upon a macro-reading... Then there is the matter of writing WELL. This from a girl who feels her writing hasn't matured since she was 17 years old, when it was still novel and impressive.

I'll be back to writing about reading in no time.... so ignore my venting. No comments on this one because I don't really want to know what anyone thinks of this rant - in all its sincere, more than likely inappropriate disclosure.

Unrelated: I may be developing something of an affinity for Yates' work.

!!!

Forgive me, blog, for I have lapsed. It has been sixteen days since my last post, but presently I will be back with MANY things to say about Revolutionary Road, Max Jamison and all I've read during the last two and a half weeks.

=)

On D.G. Myers on J.V. Cunnigham + Commonplaces

I've been blog-stalking A Commonplace Blog for a couple of months now. Its author, D.G. Myers, - 'a critic and literary historian at Texas A&M University' -never fails to provide stimulating commentary on all things *literary* - and the inspiration I find there is invaluable, as evidenced by my almost physical response to the post found HERE; below is the comment I left:

You've given me enough fuel to last a LONG while. Thank You! Pithy, poignant - near heroic couplets in substance and brevity.

"The assumption of translation is that things can be said in several ways and that the ways can be compared." <-- I've spent the last week or so vacillating between the English and French versions of Bouillier's The Mystery Guest and am miserable (it's all documented on my blog).... this is timely.

"The purpose of the plain style is to persuade, of the pretty style to charm, of the grand style to move or bend." <-- I'm drawn to dandyism in literature, so it's definitely the charming, pretty style for me.

"An accumulation of bad habits marks the colloquial style." & "In modern literature we witness a widespread need for anti-formality which often takes the form of vandalism. It goes by the rubric Make It New." <-- These are the reasons I've disliked many of the books I've recently read.

"When style is overpowering it takes us over. We think we have said what we have heard." <-- Montaigne is the master of this plain, persuasive style. You'd think you'd come up with some of the self-realizations he documented. And these notes of yours, of Cunningham's, I find myself nodding in agreement and gasping in epiphany as I read them.

"How difficult it is to write in praise!" <-- I started my own commonplace blog last week (this blog has been my inspiration) and already I feel I'm being too negative, finding fault with everything, being a literary *hater* (lol) - but it's much easier for me to identify and criticize the source of my dissatisfaction in what I read... which is strange because there's so much pleasure to be had in a book. What a teacher Cunningham must have been!

It may seem like I slathered the praise on a bit too thickly, but my appreciation is genuine. I loved being a student, learning from amazing and insightful people... and not being in an academic setting at 22, and for over a year, hurts more than I am comfortable admitting. I plan to be back in school by next year, and in the mean time this blog has been a source of motivation.

From A Commonplace blog:

"Commonplace book
orig. A book in which ‘commonplaces’ or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement.
1578 COOPER Thesaurus A studious yong man ... may gather to himselfe good furniture both of words and approved phrases ... and to make to his use as it were a common place booke. 1642 FULLER Holy & Prof. St. A Common-place-book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field.

OED"

Immediately after reading the above for the first time, I knew I'd found a place on the internet to relax and stay a while. I'd been amassing 'commonplace books' for years without knowing what to call them. Now, with a commonplace blog of my own, I feel I am actively doing my part to stay sharp (and hopefully grow sharper by the day!) in preparation for my return to school and for my life as a reader and writer.

That's all for now. More on The Mystery Guest & Death in Venice coming up.