Mauve
The other day, A S Byatt popped up on the radio and said this:
"I think it's true that if anybody in a house is living inside a book, this is impoverishing for the other people in the house."
My immediate response was to agree: 'Yes, Antonia, you've hit the nail on the head. Writers are terrible people to be around. We suck the life out of everything around us, digesting it to suit our own ends, spitting out any scraps we don't like. We're human black holes, draining energy from every bit of the universe we touch.'
But then I got angry at what I perceived as a note of pomposity in her words. Isn't the flagellation in her statement, I wondered, actually self-congratulatory? Isn't it a perverse way of saying, 'Look at me: the long-suffering, much-maligned Artist. Aren't I complex? Aren't I profound? Aren't I powerful and influential?'
Okay, it may well be true that writers sometimes get so caught up in their work that they can't give as much of themselves as they'd like to those around them. But then, doesn't that apply to any person who has a job that takes up a great deal of time and/or effort? If you took the word 'book' out of Byatt's statement, and replaced it with 'campaign to reduce AIDS in Africa', wouldn't it still be true? Or how about 'complicated legal case'? Or 'plan to minimise waiting times for major surgery'?
Most authors love to spread the idea that what they do is extremely difficult and really rather important, but maybe that's because they spend so much time doing almost nothing at all. Where's that sheet of blank paper? I've got two hours of staring to do.
"I think it's true that if anybody in a house is living inside a book, this is impoverishing for the other people in the house."
My immediate response was to agree: 'Yes, Antonia, you've hit the nail on the head. Writers are terrible people to be around. We suck the life out of everything around us, digesting it to suit our own ends, spitting out any scraps we don't like. We're human black holes, draining energy from every bit of the universe we touch.'
But then I got angry at what I perceived as a note of pomposity in her words. Isn't the flagellation in her statement, I wondered, actually self-congratulatory? Isn't it a perverse way of saying, 'Look at me: the long-suffering, much-maligned Artist. Aren't I complex? Aren't I profound? Aren't I powerful and influential?'
Okay, it may well be true that writers sometimes get so caught up in their work that they can't give as much of themselves as they'd like to those around them. But then, doesn't that apply to any person who has a job that takes up a great deal of time and/or effort? If you took the word 'book' out of Byatt's statement, and replaced it with 'campaign to reduce AIDS in Africa', wouldn't it still be true? Or how about 'complicated legal case'? Or 'plan to minimise waiting times for major surgery'?
Most authors love to spread the idea that what they do is extremely difficult and really rather important, but maybe that's because they spend so much time doing almost nothing at all. Where's that sheet of blank paper? I've got two hours of staring to do.
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