George Saunders On Writing: Author of New York Times best seller tells all

Lincoln Memorial. Photo by Jeff Kubina [CC BY-SA 2.0]

At the time of writing, George Saunders' novel Lincoln in the Bardo is in its second week on the New York Times' bestseller list. After reading Colson Whitehead's review, I have the novel on my Book Depository wishlist. In an essay in The Guardian last week, Saunders discusses the creative process he adopts when writing. There are a number of small but helpful approaches and I record here the parts that struck a chord with me.

The first and probably the most important lesson is to keep the reader in mind. This should be no surprise, as I tell my students the same thing. But Saunders seems to assess each sentence using a P (positive) and N (negative) meter that he uses like a metaphorical head-up display as he writes. 

As Saunders writes, he asks himself "Where’s the needle?" and accepts:

...the result without whining. Then edit, so as to move the needle into the “P” zone". Enact a repetitive, obsessive, iterative application of preference: watch the needle, adjust the prose, watch the needle, adjust the prose (rinse, lather, repeat), through (sometimes) hundreds of drafts.

The point is that through incrementalism, the story adjusts and the characters are allowed to develop, rather than writing to a strict plan. The essay includes a quaint anecdote from Gerald Stern about writing and producing a story to a plan. It refers to a story of two dogs.

But the respect for the reader is paramount. One has to give the reader what is expected. Not in terms of a predictable plot. That would be silly. But in terms of the process:

A work of fiction can be understood as a three-beat movement: a juggler gathers bowling pins; throws them in the air; catches them.

Saunders uses the example of Romeo pursuing Juliet, rather than deciding it's all too hard and skiving off to Spain (or wherever). Why throw pins in the air if they aren't going to land?

And then when the writer runs into an obstacle, rather than seeing these as a roadblock, see them as an opportunity. Remember to keep the audience in mind as you go through this process:

The reader will sense the impending problem at about the same moment the writer does, and part of what we call artistic satisfaction is the reader’s feeling that just the right cavalry has arrived, at just the right moment.

I have read works (or bits of works) on writing to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stephen King, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Somerset Maugham, George Bernard Shaw, and Cormac McCarthy, and this piece by George Saunders adds another string to the bow.

A key lesson is that letting the process take you where it goes is a good thing. I know this, having experienced it with my PhD thesis. Others just wanted it done. Write a plan, stick to the plan, produce the planned thesis. But is this a product of passion, art, and labour? Not at all. Letting the process happen is key.

Saunders sums this one up best:

Why do I feel this to be a hopeful thing? The way this pattern thrillingly completed itself? It may just be – almost surely is – a feature of the brain, the byproduct of any rigorous, iterative engagement in a thought system.

Creation of an abstract mural. Photo by LaurMG [CC BY-SA 3.0]

Derrida versus the rationalists, and why I might be more postmodern than I thought

Jackson Pollock's Autumn Rhythm (Number 30). Photograph by Matthew Mendoza/CC-BY-SA 2.0

When Jackson Pollock adopted his "action painting" technique, he challenged the dominance of the easel and the brush in Western art. When I was searching for a picture for this post, I found an article by Carl Raschke that linked the ideas of Derrida to Pollock and I liked it. Given that Blue Poles, the most famous (and notorious) piece at the National Gallery of Australia, was, according to the conservative minority who tend to dominate public opinion here, "painted by barefoot drunks", the Raschke's connection between Derrida and Pollock is rather clever.

When looking into the ideas of critical theory recently, I stumbled upon an essay in the New Humanist by Peter Salmon. Tonight I read it for the second time and, as is now my practice, I decided to write up my "essay notes". The main concept is that of deconstruction.

The essay, entitled "Derrida versus the rationalists", tells the story of Derrida's rise from relative obscurity after giving the lecture "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" at Johns Hopkins University in 1966. Salmon says Derrida wanted to "bury" structuralism, and, apparently, it worked. When asked where he was going with this, Derrida replied:

I was wondering myself where I am going. So I would answer you by saying, first, that I am trying, precisely, to put myself at a point where I do not know any longer where I am going.

If I go back to my notes from a recent seminar on ontology and epistemology, and rather than try to explain deconstruction (which I grasp only incompletely), what strikes me is that Derrida argues that we may not be able to know everything. 

The advance of science suggests that as we improve our methods over time, we, as in humans, can know everything. Sure, this might be an eternal quest, like counting the grains of sand on a beach. But if we were to suspend the sand content of a beach at a particular point in time, then, we could, plausibly at least, count all of the grains of sand.

But Derrida asks, in effect, what if we cannot know everything? The essay cites Derrida using terms such as "the structurality of structure" to point out that a structure is "contradictorily coherent" because it "rests on the notion that there is a centre or an organising principle behind it", such as "essence, being, transcendentality, consciousness, God, man" - in effect, some remnant of intelligent design whether we call it God or some such "metaphor".

Now I am intrigued. So to learn a bit more about Derrida, I turn to Alain de Botton's "School of Life":

As I read and write, I like to listen to my favourite composer, John Adams. I learned of Adams from the soundtrack of the game Civilization III. I have since watched Adams conduct the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House for the 2013 premiere of his Saxophone Concerto, and I listen to his works most days.

But in the spirit of new discoveries, I deferred to a colleague's recommendation of Ryuichi Sakamoto. As I perused my music streaming service, I discovered that Sakamoto had written the score for the documentary Derrida. This puzzled me, as there is not meant to be a God (or metaphor or organising principle)! I promptly bought the DVD.

As with Pollock, Sakamoto's work is regarded as deconstructionist. This prompted me to look at Derrida's influence on art, and introduced me to yet another rabbit hole. Drawing on Paul Cézanne's claim to tell Emile Bernard the truth about painting, Derrida wrote The Truth in Painting. Marvellous. 

On the way past the rabbit hole, I noticed Art History Unstuffed, a website created by Jeanne Willette. There is an interesting article about Derrida and The Truth in Painting on the site. I shall return!

Before I decided to buy the DVD of the Derrida documentary, I started to watch a bit of it on Youtube.  In the introduction, Derrida makes the following distinction between "the future" and "l'avenir":

In general, I try and distinguish between what one calls the Future and “l’avenir” [the ‘to come]. The future is that which – tomorrow, later, next century – will be. There is a future which is predictable, programmed, scheduled, foreseeable. But there is a future, l’avenir (to come) which refers to someone who comes whose arrival is totally unexpected. For me, that is the real future. That which is totally unpredictable. The Other who comes without my being able to anticipate their arrival. So if there is a real future, beyond the other known future, it is l’avenir in that it is the coming of the Other when I am completely unable to foresee their arrival.

I realise I know nothing. And I don't mean entirely in the sense of a Socratic paradox. I mean I really feel the inadequacy. I have so many books and have read so many but it means nothing. 

It's counting all those newly-discovered parts of atoms in grains of sand in an ever-expanding universe of beaches. It is implausible that I could ever have the time or ability to know.

It is a personalised experience of Derrida - not only can I not know everything, which is no shock at all, but I cannot even know everything I want to know in the time I have left (even if that happened to be until 2070). This has consequences for so many things.

For instance, my research philosophy or my reading program. What is it I want to know, and how do I prioritise such things? The young Benjamin Franklin was able to devise a plan for his own conduct. Indeed, I am now well into his 13 week program devised in the eighteenth century. But how do we create our own individual plan and purpose? 

I thought I knew, but I most often seem to go against my nature. But wait - what if Derrida is right? What if we cannot ever know, regardless of time or ability? What if my nature is simply my contradictorily coherent organising principle that stops me from seeing the truth?

Whoa. This is getting a bit Stoic. Cato the Elder guides me: What if I embraced fate? The concept of "my fate" is difficult to define. It cannot be true that my fate will happen regardless of what I do. But if by fate I mean all of the external events and things that I cannot control? 

If... God is time, and if my fate is what God wills, then... if I love God I must also love my fate. Or [insert metaphor here] as Derrida might have suggested.

An approach that I keep deferring to is to go where things lead. Today, the whole Derrida train has gone from Jackson Pollock to Ryuichi Sakamoto and back to a documentary on Derrida, and back to Stoicism (where it started this morning). This morning, I wrote:

I need to put more thought into my day.

Yet if I had planned this journey, today's felicity would have escaped me. But did I not put more thought into my day, today? And how can I know?

The New Humanist article closes with a quote from Derrida that sums up today's journey:

For not only am I not sure, as I never am, of being right in taking this step, I am not sure in all clarity what led me to do so. Perhaps because I was beginning to know all too well not indeed where I was going, but where I had not so much arrived as simply stopped.

I might be more postmodern than I thought.

Bertrand Russell's "In Praise of Idleness": Amate dolce far niente? (Do you love doing nothing?), and why you find it hard to do

Dolce far Niente (The Sweetness of Doing Nothing) by John William Godward, 1904 (Public Domain)

Essay Notes: "In Praise of Idleness" by Bertrand Russell

Dolce far Niente: The sweetness of doing nothing, or, The Italian art of piddling about. Why is it so hard for Anglophones? Bertrand Russell provides some of the answers but there is a long history of academic thought to ensure that nobody, especially poor people, can simply do nothing. Think Malthus, Ricardo, Spencer, and the Fair Work Commission.

At first glance, such false consciousness all seems a bit stupid. But John Williams Godward, the artist whose painting adorns the top of this page, killed himself because the world was not large enough for both Pablo Picasso and himself. It would appear, then, that even people who revere the art of piddling about can also be really, really stupid.

Take, for instance, my boss back when I was doing a government traineeship in warehousing at age 18. I worked in hydraulic spare parts. One day, business was slow. I had reordered all the stock, sold everything I could, even worked on the bench to get a few smaller jobs out of the way for the tradesmen. I was bored.

So I got out the mop and bucket. A hydraulics workshop is quite oily, so kerosene is the cleaner of choice. I mopped the entire workshop, re-stacked and re-organised everything. At last, there was nothing to do, and I sat at my desk and twiddled my thumbs and waited for the telephone to ring

So my boss walks over to me and says:

I know you have worked really hard, and I know that you have tried to find everything possible to do, and I know there is nothing else for you to do. But I cannot bear the thought of having to pay for you to sit there and do nothing, so I want you to shuffle papers or something and look busy so I can feel OK about it.

No joke, he actually said that. And in those words, I was awakened to the absolute stupidity of work in its modern guise.

I recalled how everyone around me was judged by how they worked: "He's a good worker". I remember being praised that way myself, and my stupid ego would have me feeling chuffed as I worked harder still.

And then I remember hearing employers say "Give 'em an extra five cents an hour and call 'em a manager, and they'll do the work of three people".

Still, many people work hard their entire lives, but in the few years before they are eligible for the pension, and their body breaks down, they are treated like bludgers as they grovel for the disability pension. It is all beyond comprehension.

Apparently, there is "evidence" that reducing wages for weekend workers will increase jobs. Because teenagers (who work in retail on weekends) getting paid too much is a major driver of unemployment. Never mind false consciousness, this is fake consciousness. Russell picks up on this false economy.

But the big question is, what are we working for? Work has even cornered happiness, so it can't be for that!

Russell echoes Adam Smith in the parable of the pin makers, and Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class (which I am reading at the moment), and of course Karl Marx in opposition to Max Weber and the Protestant work ethic. I lived under this cloud in Queensland.

Then I left conservative Queensland in the late 1990s and moved to Canberra. It was a worker's paradise. No longer was my work based on presenteeism, or simply being at work, but on what I produced and the outcomes I achieved. I love Canberra for giving me the opportunity to escape the conservative stranglehold I had felt since birth.

Recently, however, I have questioned how far this might go, and how we might achieve our own ends only at the expense of others. Clearly, much of the issues Russell mentions is class-related. Yes, Australia has a class system, but unlike the United Kingdom, Australia vehemently pretends that it doesn't have a class system. But there are different global tiers of classes, too.

When I first learnt of Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Workweek, I read critiques of his ideas about outsourcing mundane tasks to poorly paid workers in the developing world. This is indeed a conundrum.  If you are certain that not giving someone in the developing world a job is a good way to reduce global poverty, then fill your boots. Nonetheless, Ferriss' ideas are not necessarily about using other people to achieve our aims in a heartless manner.

The message I hear in Ferriss' work, class issues and the internationale aside, is that we do not need to work so much. There is actually no need for it.

Think of meetings. When I served as an army officer, orders groups (O groups) served an important purpose, and good operators could get important messages through the chain of command quickly, covering all bases.

These days, contemporary organisations see meetings as work. People spend all day in meetings, meetings which take up at least and most often more time than allocated, and then the attendees forget to pass on any of the decisions to the people who actually do the work. Yet those attending the meetings derive some absurd feeling of status and prowess that makes it feel like work.

Don't get me wrong, meetings are a necessary evil, but there is a reason I ask people the question "How many meetings did you achieve today?"

I'd often thought it was a lack of discipline in conducting O groups, but it seems it is more a case of the conundrum of finding things to do with our time that we can classify as work. The coal face is a lonely space these days. There used to be kids and everyone down there.

Children working in coal mines in Pennsylvania. Photograph: Janet Lindenmuth CC BY-SA 2.0

If you live the unexamined life, then work is more important than leisure. As Gary Gutting says:

The point is that engaging in such activities — and sharing them with others — is what makes a good life. Leisure, not work, should be our primary goal.

If you are doing life the wrong way around, it hasn't necessarily been your fault. But once you have read In Praise of Idleness, from then on it is your fault.

Bertrand Russell's essay is an important reminder of how far we have come, without really going anywhere. The trick for most workers is to fight fake consciousness and fake work with fake busy-ness. At least until the Great Leap Forward comes along. But good luck with that - you'd be better off just doing nothing. Dolce far Niente!