{"id":7330,"date":"2010-04-17T13:07:15","date_gmt":"2010-04-17T17:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7330"},"modified":"2010-04-17T13:08:25","modified_gmt":"2010-04-17T17:08:25","slug":"the-face-of-the-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/the-face-of-the-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Face of the Writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Just found this<\/a> at Jesse Kornbluth’s Head Butler<\/em> site.<\/p>\n

The subject of the post was James Frey, author of the Million Little Pieces<\/em> bogus memoir of a few years ago; I liked what it said about writers and writing, and liked the Orwell quote very much:<\/p>\n

Contrary to what Frey, his publisher, Larry King and Oprah believe, writing is not a career. For some writers\u00a0 — for the writers who, I like to think, will endure — it’s a calling. Those who write especially well are like priests. It follows that books are sacred texts, and that the best ones — even the best novels — faithfully deliver what the writer believes is the truth.<\/p>\n

That is why we have favorite writers, just as we have favorite musicians; their works “speak” to us. And it is why we have very definite ideas who they are. George Orwell ends his essay on Charles Dickens by addressing this:<\/p>\n

When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer. I feel this very strongly with Swift, with Defoe, with Fielding, Stendhal, Thackeray, Flaubert, though in several cases I do not know what these people looked like and do not want to know. What one sees is the face that the writer ought to have. Well, in the case of Dickens I see a face that is not quite the face of Dickens’s photographs, though it resembles it. It is the face of a man of about forty, with a small beard and a high colour. He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity. It is the face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry — in other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

In a conversation with The Younger Sister last weekend, at one point she interrupted the story of her everyday life which she was sharing. You always do this<\/em>, she said, You get us talking about all the stuff we’ve been up to and never tell us what’s going on with <\/em>you.<\/p>\n

Well, I told her, the problem is that my<\/em> everyday life feels so humdrum — so beige<\/em> — compared to the everyday lives of other people I know, in real or virtual life.<\/p>\n

It’s hard for me to talk about programming (database development, Web development, hardware and software debugging) with anyone who doesn’t also spend their work days doing it, so “How’s work?” is more or less out as a topic. (Exceptions allowed for occasional encounters with humans<\/em> in serious need of debugging, if you get my drift.)<\/p>\n

At home, well, we watch a lot of TV. We interact with each other and with The Pooch. We read. And I write, of course.<\/p>\n

Some of all this makes its way into my online presence. But most of what you see here (and in my comments at your own sites), although it’s really “me,” simply reports things going on between my ears, and things going on elsewhere online and between other people’s ears. And in return, I recognize, nearly all of what I read elsewhere will (must<\/em>) be filtered in some way.<\/p>\n

Not deliberately misrepresented; just not the whole picture, y’know?<\/p>\n

What do you think about the “I” represented in blog posts (your own or others’) — especially the “I” who averages out over many posts — versus the “I” of everyday life? Would Dickens have recognized himself in Orwell’s generously angry-laughing “Dickens”? Do you think you’d be surprised at the face (not just the features, but the characteristic expression: the sense<\/em> of your face) which readers assemble in their heads when they think of “you”?<\/p>\n

And does it matter?<\/p>\n

_________________________<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. This post was triggered, as I said, by Kornbluth’s essay at Head Butler<\/em>. It was the first time I’d visited there, having run across it while tracking something else down; I recommend it highly, based on my quick dash through its contents. You might want to start with his “What’s Head Butler?<\/a>” page to decide if you, too, would like to give it a go.<\/li>\n
  2. I’d also like to recommend a blog called YesterYear Once More: Life as it was reported back then<\/em>, where — among all its posts tagged “Charles Dickens”<\/a> — I found the image at the top of this RAMH<\/em> post. As with Head Butler<\/em>, this was my first visit there. And I can see it, too, would be a good time sink when I’m in the mood for one. Each post (going back to mid-December 2008) consists of a scan or transcription of a newspaper article, book, or other print source from (as far as I can tell) the 19th and early 20th centuries.<\/li>\n
  3. Finally, on the subject of “What does Writer X look like to you, as you imagine him\/her?,” you might be entertained by Froog’s occasionally updated “Cast List<\/a>” project of matching up photos of celebrities with those who comment at his two sites, as Froog imagines their personas and regardless of what he may already know of their appearance. What fun — casting an imaginary movie about your blog’s real readers!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Just found this at Jesse Kornbluth’s Head Butler site. The subject of the post was James Frey, author of the Million Little Pieces bogus memoir of a few years ago; I liked what it said about writers and writing, and liked the Orwell quote very much: Contrary to what Frey, his publisher, Larry King and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,15,247,426,37,5,36],"tags":[1746,1747,1748,1749,1750],"class_list":{"0":"post-7330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-family","8":"category-ruminations","9":"category-celebrities","10":"category-onlineworld","11":"category-06_writing","12":"category-reading","13":"tag-jesse-kornbluth","14":"tag-real-vs-online","15":"tag-james-frey","16":"tag-george-orwell","17":"tag-charles-dickens","18":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1Ue","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7330"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7335,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7330\/revisions\/7335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}