Tag Archives: slow writing movement

Pretty Vacant Or Spiky-Haired Situationists?

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Empire, Kitty. “Pretty Vacant Or Spiky-Haired Situationists?” The Observer (The New Review section), 19 November 2017, p. 36.

. . . Were the art school games of canny old hippies behind punk? Sometimes, but perhaps more in theory than practice. An essay in Punk Is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night by fanzine writer Tom Vague retraces McLaren’s appetite for destruction back through the situationists, the lettrists, psychogeography and a tiny late 60s Notting Hill faction called King Mob (a reference to the Gordon Riots of 1780).

Authors Richard Cabut and Andrew Gallix have skin in the game; Cabut is an ex-punk (“In the summer of 1977 I am 17 – perfect”) who became a playwright, while Gallix is at the Sorbonne and edits a free-ranging literary webzine called 3:AM (“whatever it is, we’re against it”). The book’s title (Modernity Killed Every Night) quotes Jacques Vaché, friend to the surrealist André Breton. But Punk Is Dead isn’t end-to-end cultural theory; there’s a lot on clothes. Three strands unfurl — papers, essays and first-person accounts. Cabut and Gallix have included historical documents — such as Penny Rimbaud’s 1977 essay, Banned from the Roxy, newly annotated by the Crass drummer — while Gallix argues that punk started ending when it acquired a name. Jon Savage is here, and Ted Polhemus and Vermorel (again).

As that list attests, punk can be a tiresomely Boy’s Own narrative, to which former Slit Viv Albertine’s 2014 memoir was a potent corrective. With the exception of Judy Nylon’s introduction and the reminiscences of go-go dancer turned drummer Dorothy Max Prior, however, this collection is let down by its dearth of female voices. Perhaps the notion to take away from both books — indeed from punk itself — is the one of endless possibility. As an interview with the punk turned philosopher Simon Critchley attests, punk unleashed ideas. It palpably changed suburban teenage futures, rather than ending them.

Slow Writing Revisited

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Tranter, Rhys. “Andrew Gallix on the Virtues of Writing Slowly.” RhysTranter.com, 28 October 2017:

Since interviewing Michelle Boulous Walker about “slow philosophy” earlier this month, I have been thinking about the way we approach writing within institutional or commercial settings. It seems I am not the only one. Lauren Elkin has posted a link to a piece by Andrew Gallix where he reflects on the benefits of writing at a slower pace:

[B]ack in February, I expressed concern at the accelerating pace of publishing and called (half-jokingly) for the creation of a Slow Writing Movement (SWM), modelled on the Slow Food phenomenon. Word processing probably enables people to write faster than ever, and the internet provides the sometimes dubious means of instant publication.

As a result, what often passes for fiction today would have been considered no more than an early draft only a few years ago. In truth, however, the digital age has simply compounded a problem caused by the increasing hegemony of one school of writing (the Ionic) over another (the Platonic).”

— Andrew Gallix, The Guardian

Sketching a brief history of Ionic vs. Platonic writing, Gallix identifies a social/economic bias that sets the quick work of the “hack” against the slow, patient verse that privilege can afford. But his central point remains crucially relevant in a digital age of around-the-clock productivity: perhaps a Slow Writing Movement can make us stop for a moment to catch our breath?

 

On the Slow Writing Movement

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Eva Orúe, “Slowhand es un artista, pero no (siempre) el que crees,” infoLibre 19 March 2017:

Cierto es que escribir no es lo que era. Trabajar con ordenadores y procesadores de texto permite a los autores juntar palabras más rápido que nunca, e Internet les brinda la oportunidad de publicar de manera instantánea, sin esperar a que un editor dé el plácet a tu texto. Consecuencia de lo cual es, sostiene el escritor Andrew Gallix, que lo que hoy pasa por narrativa publicable, “hace sólo unos años habría sido considerado si acaso como un borrador temprano”. De ahí que su propuesta de crear un Slow Writing Movement (SWM) a imagen (literaria) del fenómeno Slow Food, lanzada medio en serio medio en broma, quizá merezca una nueva oportunidad.

We’re Late…

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Clare Margetson, “The Hay Relay: The End-less Wait is Over,” The Guardian 4 July 2007

I blame Andrew Gallix’s slow writing movement. David Hockney, too. Sparked by his concerns about our non-visual age I’ve taken a leaf out of his book and taken to gazing out of the window a great deal recently. But all these fantastic clouds in the sky are a huge distraction. So, we’re late, we’re late in putting up this post.

Slow-Cooked Books: The Virtues Of Writing Slowly

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This was published in Guardian Books on 3 July 2007:

Slow-Cooked Books: The Virtues of Writing Slowly
In an age of unreflecting haste, there are many good reasons for authors to take their own sweet time.

Responding to an article in these very pages, back in February, I expressed concern at the accelerating pace of publishing and called (half-jokingly) for the creation of a Slow Writing Movement (SWM), modelled on the Slow Food phenomenon. Word processing probably enables people to write faster than ever, and the internet provides the sometimes dubious means of instant publication.

As a result, what often passes for fiction today would have been considered no more than an early draft only a few years ago. In truth, however, the digital age has simply compounded a problem caused by the increasing hegemony of one school of writing (the Ionic) over another (the Platonic).

Platonic writers tend to see their works as imperfect reflections of an unattainable literary ideal. They do not celebrate the birth of a new opus so much as mourn the abortion of all the other versions that could have been. In short (a keyword here), written books are sweet, but those unwritten are sweeter. Authors (and characters) belonging to this lineage have been known to give up writing altogether or contemplate destroying their own works, although they usually settle for spending an awful lot of time producing precious little.

Platonic writers are the antithesis of Grub Street hacks: for them, less is resolutely more. Since publication is, of necessity, an abject compromise with base reality, they agonize over endless revisions (like William H Gass whose novel, The Tunnel, was 30 years in the making) or grace the world with a slim volume of acerbic aphorisms whenever they can be arsed (à la Cioran).

In Plato’s famous dialogue, Socrates argues that the eponymous Ion and his fellow rhapsodes (the slam artists of Ancient Greece) are possessed by the gods whenever they tread the boards. According to this tradition, the artist, in the throes of creation, is under the influence — be it of the Muses, drugs, alcohol, a dream vision or some other variant of divine inspiration. Ionic Man does not speak: he is spoken through (or played upon like Coleridge’s Aeolian harp), hence the cult of “spontaneous prose” in its various guises. The work of art comes as easily as leaves to a tree, appearing fully-formed in a blinding flash of inspiration or in an accretive, free-associative manner as if under dictation. In both cases, logorrhoea beckons.

The Surrealists‘ experiments with automatic writing belong to this school. So do the numerous penis-extension tall tales of binge typing. A driven Kerouac composed On the Road in a three-week, benzedrine-fuelled session after fashioning a scroll manuscript which allowed the all-important free flow of words to go unimpeded. Capote‘s famous quip — “That isn’t writing; it’s typing” — unwittingly captured the histrionic quality of Kerouac’s feat. This is action writing that transforms a sedate, sedentary, haemorrhoid-inducing activity into a heroic performance.

Another prime instance of Ionic braggadocio is the legend according to which Georges Simenon once locked himself in a glass cage to toss off a novel in three days and three nights while spectators gawked. This planned publicity stunt never actually occurred, but it may well have inspired Will Self who, back in 2000, wrote a novella in a London art gallery during a two-week residency: the words were projected live on to a plasma screen behind the desk where he sat. These experiments, and others like National Novel Writing Month, are all interesting enough, but perhaps the time has come to ditch literary hothousing in favour of the Platonics’ “precious little” aesthetics.

Yes, of course, there is a social angle to all this. The Platonics belong to an aristocratic lineage which is at odds with our egalitarian times (how many authors can afford to be so unproductive?), but that should not blind us to what they have to offer. They write as if their lives depended on it. Whereas the Ionics try to merge life and literature into a seamless continuum, the Platonics, spurred on by what Paul Eluard called the “difficult desire to endure”, often sacrifice the present on the altar of posterity. How many works of fiction produced today have any staying power?

Everything comes to those who can wait, so join the Slow Writing Movement — if not now, then when you get round to it.

Join the Slow Writing Movement!

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This article appeared in Shrug Magazine (August 2007)

Join the Slow Writing Movement!

Derangement of the senses is all fine and dandy as long as it is a prelude to recollection in tranquillity.

‘Here’s a lap-top. Here’s the spell check. Now write a book.’ Don’t get me wrong, I love the Brutalists’ gung-ho approach to fiction as much as the next ageing punk. In fact, my dream is to come up one day with a story as perfect as an early Buzzcocks single. The snag, of course, is that writing — even of the gonzo variety — is ill-equipped to capture the adrenaline rush of music. The Brutalists (Tony O’Neill, Adelle Stripe, and Ben Myers) can pull it off because they are talented, but most people who do the DIY punk lit thing fail dismally. Recollection in tranquillity, not derangement of the senses, is the sine qua non of good writing.

As a result of the accelerating pace of both writing and publishing, much of what passes for fiction these days would have been considered no more than an early draft only a few years ago. In truth, however, the digital age has simply compounded a problem caused by the increasing hegemony of one school of writing (the Ionic) over another (the Platonic).

Platonic writers tend to see their works as imperfect reflections of an unattainable literary ideal. They do not celebrate the birth of a new opus so much as mourn the abortion of all the other versions that could have been. In short (a keyword here), written books are sweet, but those unwritten are sweeter. Authors (and characters) belonging to this lineage have been known to give up writing altogether (Rimbaud) or contemplate destroying their own works (Kafka), although they usually settle for spending an awful lot of time producing precious little (Cossery).

Platonic writers are the antithesis of Grub Street hacks: for them, less is resolutely more. Since publication is, of necessity, an abject compromise with base reality, they agonize over endless revisions (like William H. Gass, whose novel, The Tunnel, was 30 years in the making) or grace the world with a slim volume of acerbic aphorisms whenever they can be arsed (à la Cioran).

In Plato’s famous dialogue, Socrates argues that the eponymous Ion and his fellow rhapsodes (the slam artists of Ancient Greece) are possessed by the gods whenever they tread the boards. According to this tradition, the artist, in the throes of creation, is under the influence — be it of the Muses, drugs, alcohol, a dream vision, or some other variant of divine inspiration. Ionic Man does not speak: he is spoken through (or played upon like Coleridge’s Aeolian harp), hence the cult of ‘spontaneous prose’ in its various guises. The work of art comes as easily as leaves to a tree, appearing fully formed in a blinding flash of inspiration or in an accretive, free-associative manner as if under dictation. In both cases, logorrhoea beckons.

The Surrealists’ experiments with automatic writing belong to this school. So do the numerous penis-extension tall tales of binge typing. A driven Kerouac composed On the Road in a three-week, benzedrine-fuelled session after fashioning a scroll manuscript which allowed the all-important free flow of words to go unimpeded. Capote’s famous quip — ‘That isn’t writing; it’s typing’ — unwittingly captured the histrionic quality of Kerouac’s feat. This is action writing that transforms a sedate, sedentary, haemorrhoid-inducing activity into a heroic performance. Legend has it that the author sweated so profusely while typing his masterpiece that he had to change T-shirts several times a day. Perspiration, here, is inspiration made visible, and the connection between the two perfectly illustrates the desire to abolish the distance between literature and life. Ben Myers, whose first novel was also written in record time (six days and nights while facing eviction), explained that ‘There was no heating so I typed quickly’.

Another prime instance of Ionic braggadocio is the legend according to which Georges Simenon once locked himself in a glass cage to toss off a novel in three days and three nights while spectators gawked. This planned publicity stunt never actually occurred, but it may well have inspired Will Self, who, back in 2000, wrote a novella in a London art gallery during a two-week residency: the words were projected live on to a plasma screen behind the desk where he sat. The following year, Robert Olen Butler did something very similar via the internet and three webcams. These experiments, and others like National Novel Writing Month, are all interesting enough, but perhaps the time has come to ditch literary Stakhanovism in favour of the Platonics’ ‘precious little’ aesthetics.

Yes, of course, there is a social angle to all this. The Platonics belong to an aristocratic lineage which is at odds with our egalitarian times (how many authors can afford to be so unproductive?), but that should not blind us to what they have to offer. They write as if their lives (and after-lives) really depended on it. Whereas the Ionics try to merge life and literature into a seamless continuum, the Platonics — spurred on by what Paul Eluard called the ‘difficult desire to endure’ — often sacrifice the present on the altar of posterity. How many works of fiction produced today have any staying power?

Everything comes to those who can wait, so join the Slow Writing Movement — if not now, then when you’re done procrastinating.