Against Clarity: Why Convoluted Writing Matters
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- Опубликовано: 17 окт 2024
- A meditation on the beauties of 'convoluted' prose and poetry.
Sherds Podcast:
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Bibliography:
'Why I Write' (1946) by George Orwell
'Against Neo-Passéism' in Neo-Decadence: 12 Manifestos (2021) ed. Justin Isis
The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters: Aspects of English Literary Life Since 1800 (1969) by John Gross
A Glastonbury Romance (1932) by John Cowper Powys
Under the Volcano (1947)
Mountain Language (2009) & Journey Across Breath (2012)
Reading by Stephen Watts:
vimeo.com/2041...
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Looks like I’m due my annual rewatch every sherds video
Ah so touched that you find them worth re-watching! Appreciate it!
Revisiting your videos again and again. They are multilayered and full of amazing multidisciplinar connections. Thank you!!!
I’m reading “the inmates” by Powys, and I must say, it’s a fantastic novel; the way he jumps from each inmates mind, and conveys thoughts and insights in diamond-like sharpened language really conveys the respect he held for people thinking differently. Underrated and misjudged classic.
I found David Foster Wallace’s work, particularly his magnum opus, Infinite Jest, and his unfinished novel, The Pale King, to be a compelling argument for the merits of convolution. His prose is convoluted to an extreme, burying the reader under foreign words and footnotes, forcing them to trudge through rigorous description and outlandish characters. But the reader who preserves and continues to read regardless will find lovely gems of humanity in his prose, flourishes of beauty for the struggler. Take, for example, this sentence, which is sandwiched in a massive paragraph describing the working routine of the IRS in Peoria, Illinois: “Every love story is a ghost story.” He rewards his reader with understanding and love, and really, what more could we ask from a book?
The section where you are walking along staring with the request to have books that split your head and leave you to bleed out on the ground….that’s about as clear as it gets. Cards laid on the table of transcendence! Wow
This is refreshing bookish content.
Thank you! It's great to hear that.
Your videos are wonderful. Where I feel we share certain sensibilities; we sadly don't share your analytical ability and your precision in describing why these aspects of prose and structure are effective and what they achieve in the untangling of the readers mind. Luckily for me I can refer people to your videos, I've made many watch your "tyranny of plot" and I now suspect I will make many watch this. Thanks for the work you do!
Thank you for this lovely comment, and for sharing my videos with others. I very much appreciate it. I've been admiring your incredible library - well, admiration tinged with a little envy, in all honesty ;)
Sherds is a highly evolved human being.
Awesome. I love this video.
Thanks so much for saying so. Glad to hear it.
Sam, Twoje filmy są absolutnie fantastyczne!!! Bardzo nastrojowe, piękne, mądre, cudownie się Ciebie słucha i ogląda. Dziękuje bardzo za tę duchową ucztę 😍
Dziękuję bardzo za miły komentarz, Ania. Twoje słowa są miodem na moje serce! :)
Great content as always 🍻
Thanks so much!
Another great video! Thanks as always for your perspective and great reading recommendations.
Thanks so much. It's my pleasure.
What an outstanding content.
Thanks so much!
Just about anything by Stephane Mallarmé has its convolutions, though his prose works can be particularly effective. One must read Mallarmé slowly, but it is worth it.
Such a wonderful video ! What you are doing here is no less than literary activism. Was very educative for me to see this whole thing twice ...It helped me to see how compelling and seductive convolution can be in fiction. Thank you !
Thank you so much, Priyanka. Coming from a real activist, that's a great compliment. Thanks for being so supportive of everything I make. :)
wow, the reading by Watts left chills in my bones.
also great video overall. bravo!
Glad it had a similar impact on you. Thanks ever so much!
Wonderful video!!! Really opened my eyes to some new literature. And to new ideas. Interesting as always. Much love! Looking forward to the next one.
Thanks ever so much! Very glad to hear that.
Literally one of the best videos I've seen on RUclips. I love this channel so much. I just ordered like Porius and A Glastonbury Romance by Powys, as those excerpts you read from the latter were breathtaking.
Thanks so much for these kind words! Very glad to pass on the Powys bug. I hope he resonates with you as much as he does with me.
The most impressive example of purposefully and effective convoluted writing I’ve read very recently is America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots. I also think of Juan Carlos Onetti, especially in La vida breve. Another author of a 1000-page book which nobody reads (Celia se pudre) is Héctor Rojas Herazo, my favorite Colombian writer by far. His prose is poetry bursting at the seams of plot, disfiguring facts, characters, and enchanting the willing reader. I dream he’ll be translated to English someday.
Thanks for these recommendations. I will keep my ear to the ground about a possible translation of Héctor Rojas Herazo. As for the Cactus Boots, it's only a matter of time before I pick up a copy. I'm currently reading my first corona/samizdat book, Oskar Submerges, and loving every minute of it.
@@SherdsTube Rojas Herazo’s books are hard to find even here, in his country. I’m always trying to do something for his work, with what little influence I have. However, I remembered another beautiful example of great convoluted writing, and this one does have an English translation: No Variations, by Luis Chitarroni.
About Corona/Samizdat books, I’m looking forward to reading more of them. It is pretty much impossible for us here in Colombia to buy books in euros, because of the exchange rate, but Rick Harsch is a generous soul and always finds a way.
Again, I'm feeling inspired by your video. Thanks
Thanks so much for saying so!
Enjoyed this, as the choir to whom you preach. I'll keep bookmarked in order to preach to others. I hope you do do more John Cowper Powys; I was much struck by Glastonbury and have several others of his three-quarter finished, including Porius.
Thanks so much. Yes, I would really like to cover Powys more in future. I think I'd really like to film the UK if I do, so it might be a little while. I think 'Wolf Solent' is probably my favourite Powys so far. Perhaps I'll cover that at some point.
wow, i love your stuff. thanks
Very glad to hear that. More coming soon!
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, Thomas Mann, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, Martin Heidagger, Stanley Louis Cavell, Thomas Pynchon, Pierre Guyotat, Quevedo, Gongorra, Ezra Weston Loomis Pound, John Banville, Claude Simon, David Foster Wallace, Philip Kindred Dick, Robert Musil, Immanuel Kant, Alain Badiou, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, William Fualkner, Maurice Blanchot, Karl Marx, Höldrelin, Arno Schmidt, Jean-François Tarnowski, Georges Bataille, Pierre Klossowski, Them Naqui Donatien Aphonse François de Sade, René Thom, Alexander Grothendieck, Barth, Barthelme, Gass, Eggers, Bolaño, Machado de Assis, Djuna Barnes, Hermann Broch, Alfred Döblin, Marcel Proust, John Milton, Saharon Shelah. And you?
Y E S
THIS IS SO ENCOURAGING
I was smiling like an idiot throughout this video because of the articulation of thoughts I've had for ages. Language is one of the main reasons I come to literature - I do not want to read a book and read "the house is green/the sky is blue" but apparently this is a requirement of books for so many people and it is just something I am incapable of enjoying (unless the writer really nails that plain prose - which is rare). A medium in which language is its main tool is necessary to use that main tool as much as possible and as interestingly and maximally as possible, preferences are fine but to try and box off all long winded writing as "pretentious" is both artless and extremely frustrating to me, especially as I am a writer and it is often thoughtlessly doled out as closed-minded hard writing advice for young writers who will end up needlessly neutering their styles in light of some nebulous "objective" standard. Thanks so much for this video.
Great as always, Sherd.
I think Hermann Broch’s Death of Virgil would appeal to you. He himself referred to it as a ”mess of a word salad”, but there is not much else quite like it.
I find his other large work Sleepwalkers better and more important, but Death of Virgil is very much worth reading.
Thanks so much! You can call me Sam, by the way ;). Yes, these two books have been waiting on my bookshelves with incredible patience for more than 10 years. It's about time I gave them some attention.
Will do! Broch has pretty fallen under Thomas Mann’s shadow. I try to give him some spotlight :)
Another cool, very convoluted, novel is Nightwood by Djuna Barnes.
Oh, Death of Virgil is astounding and the translation of Jean Starr Untermeyer kind of a miracle.
Cormac McCarthy has a way of writing convoluted prose, often times with a scarcity of words. For me, his writing always seems to have sentences constructed with words so well chosen that, despite their brevity, an unspoken, unwritten chorus of what might have been comes flinging forth from the page. It’s the scarcity of words that leaves the reader alone in their own coiling cavern of emotion.
Yes, that was certainly my experience of later work, for sure. I also like the Old Testament grandeur of his earlier style.
Thanks for the video. I'll be honest, I'm not that interested in prose this crazy for the most part BUT I do believe the ongoing obsession with the simplest prose possible is damaging. A painting can be strange and beautiful without being pretentious, why shouldn't the same apply to writing? There are instances where clarity should be prioritized, as in Government announcements and news articles, but a book doesn't need to appeal (nor necessarily be accessible) to the widest audience possible to have merit. Finally, while I might not enjoy extemely convoluted writing, I might enjoy an author whose own writing was inspired in some way by such works. I don't even read poetry (convoluted or not) but I can feel its influence on dozens of authors I've enjoyed.
Maybe Joyce does have a place here. I havent read Ulysses but some parts in "Portrait of the artist as a young man" definitely seems to play with language in a non "logical" (however "emotional" and atmosphere-focused) way. The portrait of ones inner, non-transparent thoughts. Especially in the last chapter.
Joyce would certainly have a place somewhere in there. 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' has that wonderful moulding of the linguistic complexity to the development of the protagonist's consciousness, doesn't it? My choices were not necessarily purely representative. I wanted to give a spot to Powys and Watts as I don't see people talking about them very much.
@@SherdsTube 100 % agreed. Amazing video as always man.
@@kasianfranmitja5298 Thanks so much!
The stuart A. staples of BookTube.
I don't know who needs to hear this video but...wait yes I do it's all of book-internet. I also wonder how some of this dovetails with the tendency to critique certain types of academic writing along the lines of "charlatanism," "obscurantism" and so on.
I am currently reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and while I don't find his convoluted style particularly enjoyable, there was one instance where it produced a humourous effect, when, towards the end of the foreword, he admitted, in a sentence which, like many others in that book, stretched over six or seven lines and had to be read with attention to be understood, that, while he thinks his arguments can't be repudiated, he might not be comprehended.
This tickled me. :)
I'm curious if you've read any Michael Cisco. Among his influences are Bruno Schulz, who immediately comes to mind when I see the word 'convoluted writing', and I know you've featured his work on the channel/podcast before.
I have a number of Michael Cisco books waiting patiently on my shelf. Will hopefully give them some attention this year.
@@SherdsTube That's great to hear and thanks for the quick reply! I've got some Dambudzo Marechera and Andrzej Stasiuk hopefully lined up for 2022 thanks to this channel/podcast - I'm really grateful for the hidden gems you shine a light on.
Neo-decadence? Yes please!
You don't think there's poetry in "Was that was that was?" I dare say that if you were from the North you would do, but then if you were you probably wouldn't have this podcast. I'd say it depends whether there's music in it. In any case keep up the good work.
Clarice Lispector
Samuel R. Delaney - Dhalgren
A wonderful book. We discussed it on the podcast a little while ago: www.holdfastnetwork.com/sherdspodcast/10/4/2020/28-dhalgren-by-samuel-r-delany
Far from vertiginous, the Powys example seems a bit dry and abstracted to me, especially at its conceptual heights. The language of “living organisms” and “astronomical universe” (much less the “deepest” and “uttermost” such-and-such) seem just as dead in their evocative power as “First Cause.” These phrases and modifiers seem canned and flat, perhaps purposefully so - as flat as the Brandon station.
If you want true “welling” and convolution, start with Melville.
Fair points. I quite like the way it feels like a warped, metaphysical opening to a bland Victorian novel. I still think he's fantastic when considered on a larger scale.
Very familiar with Melville. Thanks.
@@SherdsTube Didn’t mean to imply that you didn’t know Melville. But for me, his work exemplifies what a virtually overflowing style can produce.
Also, I broke my rule of not giving compliments where compliments are due. I am really enjoying your channel, which I just started watching. And I, too, would rather my art be maximalist than minimalist. Thanks for your thoughts!
Sorry, I realise I sounded a little prickly. Melville is, indeed, a glorious example of this. I wanted to give some time to writers that receive a little less attention. I hope this hasn't put you off Powys entirely - I really think he's worth exploring.
Thanks very much for those kind words!
I think that first excerpt serves only to undercut the argument, with which I agree. It's bloated with redundancies and tone deaf, arrhythmic word combinations.
@@MichaelSlovin Sorry you feel that way. I disagree. I think it strikes a good keynote and hints at the scale of the novel.
Baroque is, somewhat, part of it? Then, Thomas Browne and Burton of the Anatomy.
Yes! I even considered quoting Sebald on Thomas Browne - he discusses Browne's prose in similar terms. Didn't want to cover the same material, though.
@@SherdsTube Sebald wrote a brilliant introduction to the English translation of The Tanners by Robert Walser; to anyone who is a sucker for convolution, a stroll in Walser's company is no less invigorating than a dram of mezcal with Lowry.
@@MaximTendu @SherdsTube What do you guys think about Mardi? even fans of Melville often call it unreadable.
@@AleksandarBloom It's been on my to-read list for a long time. I only have a digital copy (uploaded by Project Gutenberg) but it looks too bulky to be read on a screen. Truth be told, it scares me a little.
"She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s - and I own a big building there - it’s no - I shouldn’t talk about this but that’s OK I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it’s the finest city in the world - sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I lost billions of dollars, billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, ‘What do you think you lost?’ I said, ‘Probably two, three billion. That’s OK, I don’t care.’ They say, ‘You think you’d do it again?’ And that’s the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don’t know if you know. Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horribly. Andrew Jackson they say was the worst of all, that he was treated worse than any other president. I said, ‘Do that study again, because I think there’s nobody close to Trump.’ I even got shot! And who the hell knows where that came from, right?"
nah
Thank you. Please come again.
Convoluted writing is not beautiful, it's poppycock. It's word salad shot upon the page in an incomprehensible mess of mixed vocabulary. Maybe that crap works in poetry (which is probably why people don't read much poetry), but stories can be very complex/deeply poignant, without being convoluted, and still have clarity as well as meaning. These people are just turning off their brain and shitting out words. If someone did this live, I would ask them if they could recite what the hell they just said. Passing stuff like this off as "art" is an insult to intelligence.
#LFLR
"VBW"