
But today the Doubt comes.
The writer is at his desk. His
coffee is beside his computer mouse, where it steams and waits, like a
companion. The writer drinks the one cup of black coffee every morning. He
acknowledges that without it he would find the beginning difficult, yet it is
his habit to glance down at his steaming, waiting companion once or twice
before taking a sip, as though it was a temptation. This is his only stimulant,
for—read no pride in it—he does not smoke. Though perhaps one may count the modest
library of classics next to his desk: a glance in its direction enlivens him. As
for counter-stimulants, this is easy: when he does not want to be disturbed by
his wife of children, he hangs a sock on his office doorknob. But the writer
does not often need to use the sock. Only once, in fact, when he wanted to be
sure to get a thought down—a thought which turned into a story and which this
morning, just now, he has discovered is missing from his computer files. Perhaps
it was never saved in the first place. Not to worry. He drinks his coffee, sets
his fingers on the keyboard. The writer is
perfect.
The writer produces something
every day on principle. The writer has not produced
anything of significance yet, but the writer knows that if it will come then it
will come and does not bite his nails over it. He has a realistic sense of his
work’s value: to him, it is the most important thing he can do, but he knows
that politicians, engineers, school teachers, and so on, have equally important
work. The writer has no illusions that beauty, or at least beauty alone, will
save the world. He is not taken in with his colleagues’ talk of art being
“essential”; his stoic soul knows that nothing can be essential, not in the way
that they hope. He thought differently once, to be sure, in those years he had
tried to create those “problem characters.” But it had only led to
suffering—such suffering that whenever the writer remembers this past, he is
only glad to be out of it. Too much a mess of cravings and confusions,
youth—this will come of the habit of making a project of everything, even the
self. His flat in Berlin had been a romance: a mansard room of hardwood
floorboards and windows that peeked above housetops, with the Berliner Dom just
visible in the east. Here he had committed himself to “the Task.” His
philosophy was this: certain moments, as soon as they are born, have
difficulty; they struggle, they are the delicate runts of time’s litter and
must be saved. Moments of insight, of joy, of Weltschmerz: it is to catch these, to bottle-feed them, that
artists were invented. He would be one; he would be an artist. His characters
would recall forgotten truths, rare exhilarations buried by the quotidian, and
thereby fix the muddles they had made of their lives. But that was not all. Perhaps
something analogous would happen to his readers. Perhaps by being a saviour of
moments, he would be a saviour of more than moments... Ah, but precisely here
the Doubt had come upon him—indeed, for a time, overcame him. The suffering
began. Two years it lasted, during which nothing he wrote was good enough and only
condemned him from the page. The project, quite simply, was too great, and
weighed down by its immensity he could never quite gain leverage over his
despair, could never get an objective glimpse of it. Everything became a
searching for a way out, and so one day the Bhagavad Gita said to him, “You
have the right to work, but for the work’s sake only. You have no right to the
fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in
working”—and he was cured. He saw himself for what he was: mood-dependent,
unable to say from one day to the next whether the world was headed towards
universal salvation or whether it was merely composed of bog and things sinking
down into bog. What needless drama! Anyway, he had no need for it. He craved
peace and the benefits of complacency. To produce without hope or despair,
without commitment: this was the way, and the writer has stuck to it ever
since. He is thirty seven years old now; he has lived eight years in this
suburban house; he has great fondness for his wife and three kids. Yes, he has
achieved balance, rhythm, the necessary quietude of soul, and the Doubt comes
seldom. Today is an exception. The writer is perfect.
The writer pauses to look at the
dimples of shadow made upon his coffee mug by the sunlight. No words written
and already it is empty. But, as we’ve said, the writer drinks only one cup a
day. The writer is perfect.
The writer has learned to discern
the various guises that the Doubt takes on, even when the Doubt is crafty—such
as a certain period during which the Doubt did not appear and he began to
wonder whether that was a bad sign, until he realized that that itself was the
Doubt. Today it is the spectre of his lost word document, the one he had put
the sock on the doorknob in order to write. Could it have been his
breakthrough? Is his chance gone? Is it over for him? These are the thoughts
that the writer, one by one, dismisses from his mind. The Doubt is tempting him
to look upon his life, his own life, instead of the lives of his characters. It
is tempting him to characterize himself as though he
were in a story—and worse, as though his life, in its entirety, were a problem.
Just what he has taught himself not to do. There is only darkness in this
direction; only an endless muddle. The writer takes a breath. He returns to what
he believes, namely, that everything may be boiled down to this: a
character and his problem. They are two things, not one. People are perfect;
circumstances are not. There is, in the difference between them, the writer’s
salvation: all clarity is achieved in achieving the separation of the character
from the problem. No, there need be no "quiet desperation" in the writer’s life,
no spiritual condition at all. There need only be this: the writer and his
problem. What is the problem? The Doubt. What is the Doubt? The thought that
there might be something more than the writer and his problem. And so there it
is, the solution already. He thinks to himself, in the whelming joy of
conquest: I am glad to have had my chaotic youth, and even my Doubt, for it all
gives me something to write about. The thought gives him further momentum. Such a thought has power, for in it all of
life, even the Doubt, is subsumed: it turns reality on its hinge, and suddenly
there is nothing in life that cannot be written about. The writer’s life is
again organized. He may create characters and their problems. He types a word.
He types another word. His excitement mounts. Perfect.
The writer hears a knocking on
the door. That’s his wife, wanting something. He listens. Okay, he thinks, and
gets up. But then he frowns. He reaches down and he removes one of his socks.
Yes, people are perfect, circumstances are not. There is only the writer and
his problem. He opens the door; he glances apologetically at his wife. Her face
is distressed. He slips the sock over the doorknob and closes it again. There. The
Doubt is again conquered. He will keep to his work. He will write a little every
day, without investment in the outcome. So long as he’s writing. And he is.
Look, even now. Does not matter what about: he is writing! The writer is perfect.
The last paragraph is jarring! Is it a case of the one fundamental presupposition, hoe er laudable, getting exposed?
ReplyDeleteThe piece was entertaining as well as illumining.
Meant to say "however laudable"
DeleteI was hoping that the narrator’s omniscience would set up the exposure somewhat, since he seems not to be operating on the writer’s principle. If the writer is perfect, it is only in relation to certain questions; on the whole, there seems to be a weakness of nerve about him, and my thought was that it was this weakness that led the writer to formulate the principle in the first place. It’s a case of confusing the big things by solving the small things. Though I do feel sorry for the guy.
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