Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
This thread is a disaster because everyone seems to be talking about something different.
|
That's because the OP conflated of the necessity of defining the word
author (according to strikingly odd criteria) with determining which authors are worth reading, which in turn has split the coherence of the thread, creating further topical instability.
A friend of mine has disassociative identity disorder. He is also a musician who likes to experiment with quarter tones. He tells me that split personalities are like quarter tones between semitones: Once splitting has occurred, the structure becomes unstable and is likely to split again.
Even the vibrations of a string continue to divide into smaller and smaller vibrations, creating denser harmonics.
The integrity of this thread was cracked from inception. Therefore the crosstalk; therefore the sound of each of us enclosed in our pocket of comprehension, making sense that doesn't connect with the sense of the rest.
Quote:
|
For me, as I said before, the first criterion is, if you make money doing it, you can use the label. (And please don't tell me there are famous authors who are exceptions; OF COURSE there are exceptions.)
|
Doctor Johnson would agree with you, but I don't. Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins were writers of the most profound sort and never made any money at all. They're not exceptions; in fact, they're models. So in their way are the greatest experimental academics.
Look at Charles Baudelaire, Percy Shelley and Raymond Roussel. They were born into money, squandered their fortunes while writing and then couldn't support themselves. Proust wasn't far behind. Wallace Stevens had to be a lawyer. William Carlos Williams was a doctor. Many of our greatest writers had to do something else their whole lives to make a living. The great challenge is always finding the time, the will and the energy to write. Sometimes the hunger to write, the fugitive quest for stray hours, actually fuels the work.