These odd comments make me wonder how many people with internet access are insane or, at least, suffer from severe personality disorders. Of my readers past & present: one is bipolar manic-depressive; one has ‘borderline’ personality disorder; another was institutionalised for a few months as a youth; another has occasional psychotic breakdowns; others, who i don’t know in real life, seem insane or nearly so.
So, i’d like to ask: how many of you have pyschological problems?
Or perhaps your commentators are just truly gifted, like you, elderberry.
i must admit to being gifted, but alas not in writing or blogging. My gifts are to do with skiving work, getting in late almost every day without being sacked, surfing the net all day without anyone noticing, etc.
While these are not gifts in the Toasted Lloyd Great Writer sense, and i cannot claim that i am a great spiritual man like Toasted Lloyd, whose every word is like a thunderbolt striking us lesser mortals dumb with astonishment, they are nonetheless gifts.
But if you lack the gifts of the great artist, such as Lloyd, how could you have understood the suffering of the gifted ones, which you explained so eloquently in your earlier post? Surely only the truly gifted could have such intimate knowledge of the suffering that results “when the gifted man is forced to live in a world opposed to his central energy, a world that simply will not admit of such energies, or at best derides them.”
An interesting point. My earlier post wasn’t about me; it was about a fellow blogger who has real comic/satirical gifts and isn’t reconciled, as i am, to writing for the sake of the writing. It’s possible that since he has real gifts it’s harder for him to shrug constant rejection away; as a much lesser writer i find it easy to accept that a very small number of people like my stuff and it’ll probably never be otherwise.
i do think it’s possible to speculate about, to imaginatively inhabit, another person’s situation; not with their degree of detail, texture, nuance, but i think it is possible. i am not a great artist; i’m not even a minor artist – i see myself as an oddbod who happens to have fairly good English, as a result of reading a lot, and i write things from time to time; many people write things, my mother, for example, writes shopping lists. i see myself as a ‘writer’ in this sense, as someone who writes things – certainly not as a Writer in the Nietzsche or Proust sense.
At the most, if i was born 30 years ago i could have been a quite good literary critic. i do, however, feel a certain outrage when i consider the really good blogs out there and compare it to the shite in bookstores and newspapers.
Are you perchance engaging in false modesty regarding your skills as a writer?
It is I can understand a conventionally tasteful tactic, to downplay the awareness of ones gifts. And compared to an opposing Mozartesque “look upon my glory and despair” approach, I can agree that it is somewhat more attractive…
but is it honest?
One need not strike a pose of arrogance in order to shun a pose of unwarranted humility, i think.
Um, no, this is what i really think. i must confess, when i was in the heat of writing my novel & short stories in 2002-04 i thought i was a good writer, but i’ve made the ‘reality adjustment’ over time, had to, so many people are just indifferent to my stuff. If anyone’ll read my words in a hundred years’ time it’ll be purely out of historical interest, they have no lasting merit.
Furthermore, i don’t see anything wrong with transience, with writing de jour, for the moment only. The art of impermanence, if you like, sculpting with snow.
I’ve seen Elberry shuffling around the city centre on a lunchtime – munching pies, mumbling to himself, twitching bird-like in response to unseen stimuli, unheard sounds.
He scurries around like a small fox, paperback in hand, furtive and alert.
You can tell three things immediately:
1. He’s definitely not a chav
2. He has psychological problems
3. He dresses like Derren Brown/Jonathan Ross
I’m not a psychiatrist, I admit. But Elberry doesn’t exactly hide his craziness.
People who are nuts go around thinking they’re perfectly and never question their own sanity.
People who are nuts go around thinking they’re perfectly sane and never question their own sanity.
Well, I think you’re a great writer, and this is definitely one of my favourite blogs…
and i dont say that to flatter you just because I know you and because you let me put comments here…
or because Im fishing for gratitude..
or because I feel you need encouragement and affirmation, because I don’t.
Though I can accept of course that greatness like beauty can be in the eye of the beholder, that it has different natures and comes in different degrees.
Nietzsche and Proust were very good at writing like Nietzsche and Proust; but would they have been good at writing like somebody else?
I wonder if they would want other writers to compare themselves to them?
Might they instead have thought – stop trying to be me. Im best at being me. Be yourself.
i think you have it right there, Jonathan – the thing is to write as only you can. Milton couldn’t have written like Shakespeare not could Shakespeare have written like Milton; at best, they could have imitated the other, but that’s all.
And it is pleasing to please others, so thanks, Jonathan!
Insane is such a strong word
many people can tell your insane but their interpretation may
differ from the Stereo typical Human existence
ex. a normal some one who believes in a common religion (Christianity)
may have people from an abnormal Cult may call them insane.
So it really Depends on the higher Amount of unconscious
minds or Conscious minds Who have Control over The Given Area that you have been accused from
from time to time i believed
i had lost my mind…
simply i had a nervous Breakdown
but I’m am only a teen So help is quite scarce when no one
believes you….