Reprise # 5 I believe that writing, the activity itself, if you are faithful to it and dont cheat with it, allows you to transcend your own moral limitations. For instance, Faulkner was in so many ways a man of his time and place and the strains of racism ran through his blood in the normal hours of his day, the non-writing hours. Yet Go Down, Moses, Light in August, Absalom! Absalom!, The Unvanquished, and the stories, too, are prose incendiary bombs aimed at the awful thing itself, at all the barriers to individual dignity, especially the ones involving color. Giving yourself over to the work totally, being in the work and feeling your way through to the surprises, you become much more forbearing, much wiser, much more your truest self, than you ever are in daily living. And in this sense at least there is a moral universe. You partake of it; you can even embody it, in the sentences and phrases that come. And when its going as it does in those passes, when it truly takes you with it, you have all of the compassion and the boundless intelligence of an angel. Trust the surprises; they are your deepest nature coming forth.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 02:32:50 +0000
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