Quote:
Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
[...]This is my way of telling you (in a way that I hope seems friendly rather than shrill) that arguing over the possibility of a writer's being a perfectionist isn't fun for me.
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Acknowledged. It can be very easy to let statements sit as they come out, without remembering to qualify them with "what works for me". That is something that should probably prefix all posts to discussions like this, but it is worth emphasising when statements come out as if they were inarguable fact (as they have a tendency to do when I feel strongly on a subject).
The strength of my reaction to our discussion on dissatisfaction and perfectionism (I see the latter leading to the former) doesn't stem from my writing so much as it does from experience elsewhere. I have not met many people that can keep dissatisfaction with some particular thing in perspective. Too often it carries over into a dissatisfaction with other things, sometimes with life in general - in various forms, but particularly as frustration, anger and sadness - and that can be very destructive.
Another proviso to insert in here is to wonder how much my own reactions colour, perhaps unfairly, my view other others in this regard. If something is frustrating me as I sit here at the computer then I have (as just one example) a tendency to yell at the dogs for licking too loudly. Perhaps not everyone lets things carry over so irrationally, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.
I certainly didn't mean to suggest that perfectionism somehow equated to self-importance. It seems to me that what Zadie was saying in that last rule was: a writer seeking perfection, while knowing it cannot be achieved, will never be satisfied and that will lead to sadness. If a person can break that final link (dissatisfaction == sadness) then my reactions (and Zadie's conclusion) are not applicable.
My perspective on it is to accept that final link as something I cannot change, so (since I'm doing this for fun, not to be unhappy) I break the first one - I don't seek perfection. This could be an excuse for mediocrity, but it doesn't have to be. The search for improvement doesn't have to be a search for perfection, and it doesn't have to mean dissatisfaction with less.
My reaction is not intended to deny that some people will seek perfection, or denigrate those that do. Robert Browning said that, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"* Which seems to describes exactly that. But I worry about those that do - because my own reactions lead me to think this may be a way an unhappy life.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
Your analogy about red within a sunset seems inapplicable to me (personally and objectively) because, as an experience, a novel is analogous to the sunset itself and not the color red within it. One's perspective on the entire sunset changes in the sense that the sunset is a primary experience, as is the gestalt of a novel. One's sense of a character in a scene, or of a paragraph within a narrative, is more applicable to one's perception of a specific shade of red within the sunset.
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You get it right when you say "as an experience, a novel is analogous to the sunset". It was a reaction to you saying "The work itself doesn't change." The static text of the novel are just so many words scattered on the page, so many wavelengths shining out of the sky. It is the reading experience that is the novel, and that always changes even when the words remain the same. (Or that was the gist. Don't look closely, I'm not sure the analogy is up to close scrutiny.
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* Other lines from Robert Browning's piece, "Andrea del Sarto" (The Faultless Painter), also seem applicable to this discussion, like: "I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. I regret little, I would change still less. Since there my past life lies, why alter it?" Even the subject, an artist criticised for lack of ambition, seems relevant.