Some time ago I co-hosted a weekly radio programme called LitBits with my friend, the literary journalist James Kidd. Lit Bits aired on Resonance FM (a London arts station), and was also a podcast. Half an hour or so on literature and food, or literature and architecture, or literature and pop music, or literature and endings, or literature and hair (that was a good one), or literature and any number of other things. I’ll be back soon to you with a regular text-based Substack, but for now here is an episode from 2019, when James and I met to talk about books and failure.
I feel a tid bit chary touching on this, as if I'd expose my poor taste, and yet. You spoke of Gibson’s So Early in the Morning as obviously very not good, but I wonder about the poem's qualities vis-à-vis O'Hara's At Joan's. Perhaps that they both begin at three o'clock lends them to the comparison. I did like the latter better than the former, but to me it seems to rest on the subject matter, as I sympathize with the anxiety over artistic output, a sentiment made salient by the topic of the podcast episode. Perhaps I'm indeed missing something, but they both seemed somewhat prosaic to me, the one about the poet sitting and feeling sorry for himself not obviously better than the one about the insomniac playing a duet with an owl. It might also be that prefacing a reading with “it's terribly bad” sets expectations low and renders the fact potentially only surprisingly good. My point is not so much to compare the merits of the two with each other, but muse about whether the quality of literature is always obvious. The perception of how a piece is perceived by others, by society, certainly plays a role how any one takes it, if only by affecting the attention invests in it. Had the two poems been presented in the episode the other way around, perhaps I'd have seen the one as an uninspired poem that indulges in its lack of having anything to say, the other a refreshingly playful poem about the emergent connection nocturnal nature makes with nocturnal humans through the means of music. I don't know.
And yet, when I read something great I feel “this is great.”
I certainly commiserate with the one (not) writing the book about D. H. Lawrence. His seems to me indeed not a problem of a writing block, but the very opposite, when one feels compelled to write about too many things. The problem not of what to write but what to write first. How did that Shelly quote go, that one does not decide to write a poem? I only partially agree with that notion, but it seems relevant on this case. Inspiration, as it were, descends, and one feels compelled to write a certain piece. One does not will it, it happens to them. Nonetheless, with any mind on finishing what one begins, it's irresponsible to heed subsequent calls off the track. A book is a long project that demands asinine (I wish it meant "obdurate" rather than "foolish") determination that stands fast against vagarious urges. If you look into what you set to do, two books, you indeed become petrified like Buridan's donkey or like outstretched Foster Wallace. I guess one would have to flip a coin.
I feel a tid bit chary touching on this, as if I'd expose my poor taste, and yet. You spoke of Gibson’s So Early in the Morning as obviously very not good, but I wonder about the poem's qualities vis-à-vis O'Hara's At Joan's. Perhaps that they both begin at three o'clock lends them to the comparison. I did like the latter better than the former, but to me it seems to rest on the subject matter, as I sympathize with the anxiety over artistic output, a sentiment made salient by the topic of the podcast episode. Perhaps I'm indeed missing something, but they both seemed somewhat prosaic to me, the one about the poet sitting and feeling sorry for himself not obviously better than the one about the insomniac playing a duet with an owl. It might also be that prefacing a reading with “it's terribly bad” sets expectations low and renders the fact potentially only surprisingly good. My point is not so much to compare the merits of the two with each other, but muse about whether the quality of literature is always obvious. The perception of how a piece is perceived by others, by society, certainly plays a role how any one takes it, if only by affecting the attention invests in it. Had the two poems been presented in the episode the other way around, perhaps I'd have seen the one as an uninspired poem that indulges in its lack of having anything to say, the other a refreshingly playful poem about the emergent connection nocturnal nature makes with nocturnal humans through the means of music. I don't know.
And yet, when I read something great I feel “this is great.”
I certainly commiserate with the one (not) writing the book about D. H. Lawrence. His seems to me indeed not a problem of a writing block, but the very opposite, when one feels compelled to write about too many things. The problem not of what to write but what to write first. How did that Shelly quote go, that one does not decide to write a poem? I only partially agree with that notion, but it seems relevant on this case. Inspiration, as it were, descends, and one feels compelled to write a certain piece. One does not will it, it happens to them. Nonetheless, with any mind on finishing what one begins, it's irresponsible to heed subsequent calls off the track. A book is a long project that demands asinine (I wish it meant "obdurate" rather than "foolish") determination that stands fast against vagarious urges. If you look into what you set to do, two books, you indeed become petrified like Buridan's donkey or like outstretched Foster Wallace. I guess one would have to flip a coin.
Interesting conversation, thank you.