The British novelist Muriel Spark (author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie among many others) is said to have revised her work very sparingly, if at all.
I wonder if deeper writers have always felt with the intensity that I do today how common it is that writers "are engaged in trying to justify themselves" -- probably. Which makes the determination to go deeper all the more impressive. There are economic and social pressures to skirt this path.
One of the defining moments of my career (for me) was laboring over an epic play about a politically conservative American family (loosely modeled on the Buckleys) and realizing, when I read it over after finishing it in 2009, that I was clearly just trying to win a Pulitzer. I threw it away. I just checked my Amazon order history and see that I purchased Deceit, Desire, and the Novel in April 2009...
A very interesting coincidence of dates... Did you throw it away throw it away!?? I hate wasting material and have trouble imagining myself doing that, though have effectively destroyed several failed novels/short stories simply by letting them languish on the hard drives of old laptops. At some level I can't imagine a writer not wanting to win a Pulitzer, at least notionally, though I take your point to be that if caving to the economic and social pressures is the way to do it, it's just not worth it.
Girard seems to situate the moment at which self-justification came for literature in the 18th century, with Rousseau: "Romanticism is a literature of the self and for the self. With Rousseau and the first romantics, love and passion were no longer treated for their own sake; these literary themes were called upon to glorify and justify a self perpetuation threaten with anonymity and disintegration in the new democratic society" (Pride and Passion in the Contemporary Novel, 1959).
Actually reading that passage now, it strikes me that I dream of a literature in which love and passion are treated for their own sake...
I threw it away literally (the printed copy) and deleted it from my hard drive. I regret it -- it would be interesting to look at it from my perspective today. It would be especially interesting to see if there were some deeper themes struggling to push through the Pulitzer-y tropes that made me feel so ashamed.
Girard's "to glorify and justify a self perpetually threatened with anonymity and disintegration in the new democratic society" is quite the turn of phrase. Wow.
Yes it really is too bad you threw it away, in one sense, though maybe a watershed moment has to involve a decisive, irreversible act like that.
Agree about that turn of phrase. That 1959 essay is one of my favorite Girard essays because he already had the concept of mimetic desire but was still interested in contemporary literature. He has a review of Nathalie Sarraute from one or two years later that has the same flavor.
Sometimes I think I’m too proud of how embarrassed I am of my first drafts.
That “will not stand self-examination” interview with James Williams is one of my very favorite bits from Girard. It’s as marvelous as it is painful to experience. That idea is the basis of a very long piece I wrote on Girard and Bob Dylan (did a condensed version of it as Novitate). Dylan’s constantly writing the second draft…and fifth, and sixth…and because he found early success, it’s all out in the open.
Re "too proud of how embarrassed I am"--that's funny and a good point. Am I right in thinking you mean that, if we assume w Girard that passing through a somewhat clumsy first draft is the royal road to a great revision, the badness of the draft, instead of being proof of mediocrity, now (from this counter-intuitive angle) becomes a herald of greatness and so, perversely, could be a source of self-satisfaction? This might require its own petition in the writer's litany of humility... (from the desire of being esteemed for my unusually bad first drafts etc...)
I like the interview with Williams too. Did you post/publish the essay on Dylan? If so could I trouble you for a link to your preferred version of it?
Ha! You revealed to me what my joke is searching for: “the writer’s litany of humility.” Yes, exactly! “See how far I’ve come…but look close…don’t you see the (muriel) spark of genius?” We (I) invent so many routes to gratify our (my) vanity.
Jun 10·edited Jun 10Liked by Trevor Cribben Merrill
Muriel Spark was such a badass. I try to mentally channel her moxie. She wrote novels like other people do the crossword puzzle: as a stimulating and enjoyable mental exercise, soon to be tossed aside and forgotten.
But I agree that this is not advisable for most novelists, and that critical feedback is essential. I find that, as I'm writing a first draft, real-time feedback functions like the side mirrors on a car (a metaphor that comes to mind after teaching my son to drive). It's additional information that helps you keep the wheel straight, showing you ditches that you wouldn't otherwise see. After you've got a complete draft -- like a, er, patient etherized upon a table -- the more serious work begins. Great essay.
Yes, Spark was a rare bird. Though her sprezzatura was surely, shall we say, studied... (The archives, it seems, show she did more revising than she let on in BBC interviews).
I'm torn on the question of feedback really. It certainly has a bourgeois air about it, whereas the idea of dashing off little masterpieces in a few weeks is much more stylish, aristocratic. But it really does seem that the writers we still read were geniuses of revision. I was even just reading that Wharton, at the very height of her powers, with a couple of future classics already to her credit, spent months revising The Age of Innocence (and if you look at the manuscript pages of that novel, she was almost as bad a cutter and paster as Proust was)
Yes, the two are distinct, but first cousins. Spark wrote Brodie really fast--less than two months. Worth noting though, that it is, I think, 5000 words shorter than Gatsby, which is already close to novella length.
I wonder if deeper writers have always felt with the intensity that I do today how common it is that writers "are engaged in trying to justify themselves" -- probably. Which makes the determination to go deeper all the more impressive. There are economic and social pressures to skirt this path.
One of the defining moments of my career (for me) was laboring over an epic play about a politically conservative American family (loosely modeled on the Buckleys) and realizing, when I read it over after finishing it in 2009, that I was clearly just trying to win a Pulitzer. I threw it away. I just checked my Amazon order history and see that I purchased Deceit, Desire, and the Novel in April 2009...
A very interesting coincidence of dates... Did you throw it away throw it away!?? I hate wasting material and have trouble imagining myself doing that, though have effectively destroyed several failed novels/short stories simply by letting them languish on the hard drives of old laptops. At some level I can't imagine a writer not wanting to win a Pulitzer, at least notionally, though I take your point to be that if caving to the economic and social pressures is the way to do it, it's just not worth it.
Girard seems to situate the moment at which self-justification came for literature in the 18th century, with Rousseau: "Romanticism is a literature of the self and for the self. With Rousseau and the first romantics, love and passion were no longer treated for their own sake; these literary themes were called upon to glorify and justify a self perpetuation threaten with anonymity and disintegration in the new democratic society" (Pride and Passion in the Contemporary Novel, 1959).
Actually reading that passage now, it strikes me that I dream of a literature in which love and passion are treated for their own sake...
I threw it away literally (the printed copy) and deleted it from my hard drive. I regret it -- it would be interesting to look at it from my perspective today. It would be especially interesting to see if there were some deeper themes struggling to push through the Pulitzer-y tropes that made me feel so ashamed.
Girard's "to glorify and justify a self perpetually threatened with anonymity and disintegration in the new democratic society" is quite the turn of phrase. Wow.
Yes it really is too bad you threw it away, in one sense, though maybe a watershed moment has to involve a decisive, irreversible act like that.
Agree about that turn of phrase. That 1959 essay is one of my favorite Girard essays because he already had the concept of mimetic desire but was still interested in contemporary literature. He has a review of Nathalie Sarraute from one or two years later that has the same flavor.
Sometimes I think I’m too proud of how embarrassed I am of my first drafts.
That “will not stand self-examination” interview with James Williams is one of my very favorite bits from Girard. It’s as marvelous as it is painful to experience. That idea is the basis of a very long piece I wrote on Girard and Bob Dylan (did a condensed version of it as Novitate). Dylan’s constantly writing the second draft…and fifth, and sixth…and because he found early success, it’s all out in the open.
Re "too proud of how embarrassed I am"--that's funny and a good point. Am I right in thinking you mean that, if we assume w Girard that passing through a somewhat clumsy first draft is the royal road to a great revision, the badness of the draft, instead of being proof of mediocrity, now (from this counter-intuitive angle) becomes a herald of greatness and so, perversely, could be a source of self-satisfaction? This might require its own petition in the writer's litany of humility... (from the desire of being esteemed for my unusually bad first drafts etc...)
I like the interview with Williams too. Did you post/publish the essay on Dylan? If so could I trouble you for a link to your preferred version of it?
Ha! You revealed to me what my joke is searching for: “the writer’s litany of humility.” Yes, exactly! “See how far I’ve come…but look close…don’t you see the (muriel) spark of genius?” We (I) invent so many routes to gratify our (my) vanity.
Can you trouble me for my essay? Well yes, yes, you can, and now you’ve made my day twice. https://lonrivers.com/nonfiction-1
Thank you for the link!
Muriel Spark was such a badass. I try to mentally channel her moxie. She wrote novels like other people do the crossword puzzle: as a stimulating and enjoyable mental exercise, soon to be tossed aside and forgotten.
But I agree that this is not advisable for most novelists, and that critical feedback is essential. I find that, as I'm writing a first draft, real-time feedback functions like the side mirrors on a car (a metaphor that comes to mind after teaching my son to drive). It's additional information that helps you keep the wheel straight, showing you ditches that you wouldn't otherwise see. After you've got a complete draft -- like a, er, patient etherized upon a table -- the more serious work begins. Great essay.
Thank you!
Yes, Spark was a rare bird. Though her sprezzatura was surely, shall we say, studied... (The archives, it seems, show she did more revising than she let on in BBC interviews).
I'm torn on the question of feedback really. It certainly has a bourgeois air about it, whereas the idea of dashing off little masterpieces in a few weeks is much more stylish, aristocratic. But it really does seem that the writers we still read were geniuses of revision. I was even just reading that Wharton, at the very height of her powers, with a couple of future classics already to her credit, spent months revising The Age of Innocence (and if you look at the manuscript pages of that novel, she was almost as bad a cutter and paster as Proust was)
Gotta admit I’m w/ Muriel here, Trevor!
I couldn't find a way to work in Stendhal, but he's another terrifying case--he dictated The Charterhouse of Parma in fifty seven days.
WOW - I will say, I'd argue there's a distinction to be made between linearity and speed. I compose linearly but also...slowly.
Yes, the two are distinct, but first cousins. Spark wrote Brodie really fast--less than two months. Worth noting though, that it is, I think, 5000 words shorter than Gatsby, which is already close to novella length.