tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5375681131276548542.post730651712977497054..comments2024-02-27T10:53:04.581+01:00Comments on paperpools: Philip K. DickHelen DeWitthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07619602559096610012noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5375681131276548542.post-58814586040270545732007-08-19T15:14:00.000+00:002007-08-19T15:14:00.000+00:00I think people have a very distorted view of produ...I think people have a very distorted view of productivity, it is some pitiful hangover from modernism I suppose to think that better and more valuable writing drips from the pen only in very meager amounts. My comical confession: whenever I find myself disheartened about whether I am actually going to be capable of doing a fair bit of writing in a tight time frame, I think about how many pages of Bleak House Dickens wrote every month, or really any of those nineteenth-century novelists, and I buckle down fairly happily thinking "if you can tap into the right state of mind, there is absolutely no reason that you can't easily write 30,000 in a month." Then again, the challenge is figuring out what to do with those pages once you have them.<BR/><BR/>I have no desire to single out Gopnik in particular, but I fear that almost all of what's published as criticism in fairly mainstream publications is just full of commonplace ideas phrased slightly more stylishly than average! I don't see the point, really, of writing this kind of criticism--there is a low proportion of <I>thinking</I> and a high proportion of (what would I call it?) hat-doffing to the perceived obligations of the form. Even with more conventional book reviews, I hate having to write the part where you say what the novel is (as it were) "about": I find it much more useful to see several well-selected passages and make a decision about whether I am going to read the book on the basis of the prose style, it is perfectly reasonable for non-fiction to give an account of what's in the book but I do not see why I need to hear plot summary of a novel, if you've got a thousand words only they can be spent more wisely!<BR/><BR/>All right, that's my Sunday-morning rant...Jenny Davidsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02295436498255927522noreply@blogger.com