Year by Year, Month by Month, Day by Day, Thought by Thought
Stray thoughts on writing, reading, and the anxiety of influence. PLUS: Discontent Dispatch is now Smith's Notes.
If you have a background in English lit, you already know the thesis of Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence. Bloom’s view was that poets, as an essential part of their creative process, deliberately misinterpret their forebears as a way of creating space for themselves. Thus, for a writer, the sum of a literary tradition is a vast puzzle with one missing piece: him-, her-, or themself. The trick to great writing, then, is as simple as shaping oneself to fill the gap.
Of course, that’s not so easy in practice. Literary progenitors may be, as T.S. Eliot observed in a famous thesis of his own, the knowledge one needs to fashion oneself into a writer. But there are many obstacles to attaining that knowledge, starting with volume. That is, there’s a lot to know, and the question of what to do with all that knowledge – those pieces of stinking literary compost, so to speak – quickly becomes irreducibly complex.
Reading is important for a writer, as greats from Eliot to Cormac McCarthy (“Practical advice, I believe, would be to read. You have to know what’s been done. And you have to understand it.”) to William Faulkner (“Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.”) to Roberto Bolaño (“Reading is more important than writing.”) have long been pointing out. But it’s also easy. Much easier, to be sure, than finding that space where you fit – if you fit, that is, since the gap you’re searching for might not even exist. And much, much easier than putting in the work of actually writing.
I’ve taken two lessons from this. The first is that influence is a tool, and if you want to write, you have to learn how to wield it. The writer must choose where to focus their attention, reading-wise. This maybe sounds obvious, but it’s something I struggle with – I’m one of those who wants to read it all. Luckily, everyone, regardless of skill, genre, or ambition, deals with some version of this problem. Even hacks.
The other lesson, I think, was best expressed by Leonard Cohen: “Steer Your Way.” I often return to this song,1 a late composition of characteristic depth, as a kind of guiding light when I’m feeling stuck. Its core structuring device distills a great truth with elegance and simplicity:
Steer your way…
…year by year, month by month, day by day, thought by thought.
In “Steer Your Way,” once-reliable portals into the sacred become first clouded, then blocked; thus, the only way forward is to maintain one’s integrity from moment to moment. That’s as true for creative ambitions as for anything else, and as true for the modest goals of a genre writer as for the grand ambitions of an Eliot, a McCarthy, a Faulkner, a Bolaño, or a Leonard Cohen. The only real difference is one of degree.
I don’t know if I should tell you that I recently started a new fiction project, one I didn’t expect or foresee. Instead of starting a novel I’d been outlining for months (or, I should add, finishing pieces I promised for this space), I dove, on a whim, into something completely different. I do know that I shouldn’t say more at this point, so I won’t – just that this story, or whatever it is, is a clear product of my own schizophrenic reading. Call it one of the mysteries of influence.
You may have noticed that the name and URL of this publication have changed. The main reason is that “Discontent Dispatch” had developed a terminal case of Be Sharps syndrome: “witty at first, but less funny each time you hear it.” I initially liked the name, both as a play on “content” and as an expression of what I thought this space would be. Then I saw it every day for two years. After that, I liked it a lot less.
I tossed around a few ideas for alternatives; after a while, I came to prefer “Smith’s Notes.” It seemed like a better fit for the writing I’ve actually been doing here, as opposed to a fantasy of what I might have done. There’s still a risk I won’t like it in two years – there’s always a risk a joke will stop being funny when you hear it every day – but I’m confident in its long-term prospects.
For now, the visual style will stay roughly the same. I experimented with a few different design palettes, but couldn’t come up with anything I liked. (The less said about my attempts at creating a new logo, the better.) I’m no designer – but if you are and you’re willing to help me out (for, alas, “exposure”) I’d be eternally grateful.
Okay, it was originally published as a poem in the New Yorker, but it works best as a song.