A.S. Byatt is my new favourite author maybe

[handslive]

I just finished reading Possession (around 10am actually). Holy freaking cow. Reading it has been like doing a headlong immersion dip in imagery. Or something. I'm just amazed right now, in the old sense of the word and in the modern sense of the word.

I'm going to have to do a lot of thinking about some of the stuff in this book to do with poetry and writing poetry. I definitely want my own copy of it (and puppytown would probably like her copy back).

I'm also thinking a little about the nature of "journals", who they get written for, who reads them, why, what makes them up. I was quite taken with Ellen Ash's writing in the book about the private nature of diaries which touched a bit for me since I've been reading Pepys' Diary which is, for me anyway, a very interesting little blog exercise (although 10 years! might be a long time to follow a blog) and was never meant for any actual audience or reader, except maybe himself. And there's a marvelous little excerpt in Possession from another character, Sabine, about using the diary as her writing journal, her reasons why, who she think her audience is or ought to be, what she can say or do within the journal while writing it.

And I wonder if anyone has kept track of how blogs have developed. And where they'll go, how they'll change with time. How they'll come to be seen, in terms of property, when someone dies while keeping one. How different they are from private journals in Victorian times since they often have a half-acknowledged or even fully-engaged audience with feedback and corrections and changes to format, content, provider. Will anyone in the future want to publish a manuscript of the collected journal entries of Neil Gaiman, for example? Or Terry Pratchett, who has been a long time contributor to some Usenet groups, including his own alt.fan group.

Oh, and the power of naming, something I've often felt. The ability of a word or set of words to convey more as a name than it can by itself. I sometimes think that's the real power of writing and poetry especially. To give us words for ourselves and our experiences, to add to our ability to communicate by giving us more meaning than we would have with just the syntax and structure of the phrases. No wonder writing was like a kind of magic, no wonder we valued our storytellers and singers, the actors moving in the flickering light and giving breath to the words. To name something and give it breadth in doing so, instead of constriction and limitation. What a difficult, joyous thing.

Comments

See??

[purplejavatroll.livejournal.com]

Didn't I say it was great? You're right, we need to own our own copy. I will buy one tonight at Indigo.

pjt

Re: See??

[puppytown.livejournal.com]

Yay! Love that book.

Wouldn't you rather buy it at Audrey's or Greenwoods, though?

I just bought The Biographer's Tale and am fairly weeing in anticipation. Also, can't find the damned Mating anywhere. May have to order it.

Re: See??

[purplejavatroll.livejournal.com]

A good point. No sooner had I posted that than I thought that myself. Gods, but I'm slow somedays. After all, I'm going to have to order the others, anyway, and I always do that at Greenwoods, since they only have Possession and her new one. I ordered the most recent John Crowley one there last week, too, which I'm quite looking forward to.

pjt

Re: online diaries

[puppytown.livejournal.com]

There is much much meta-talk about where diaries/journals are going and came from. Diarist.net is a good place to start, especially their references page. Diane Patterson's famous essay is a good read.

The online journaling community has a con, of course. This year in Austin!

The 'blog phenomenon is newer and these guys are less accommodating of that new form. Regardless, it's all "personal publishing" and the audience interaction and contract is a very hot topic.

Re: online diaries

[puppytown.livejournal.com]

See also: journaling and speculative fiction.

Do you ever read the stuff at Strange Horizons? I keep thinking that I'll choose a short story from there for Book Club.

Re: online diaries

[handslive.livejournal.com]

Hadn't, although I've heard about them because some of their authors have also published in F&SF (and you get to see 'previously published in...' in the bio sometimes).

And interestingly, my little shopping cart story is identified as horror plot 5-a on their horror plot-lines we see too often (http://www.strangehorizons.com/guidelines/fiction-common-horror.shtml) page.

But I might think about sending them some fiction or poetry anyway sometime (if I write anything worth submitting). They look very low stress as far as submissions go. :-)