Directory of Lost Causes

From an e-mail to Justin Isis:

I sometimes think I'd like to write a very thorough behind-the-scenes look at writing. I just feel like the whole thing is sickeningly wrong.

I don't know why it is that I sometimes suddenly take a liking to a particular writer. I don't think you can really work out a pattern. And yet, more often than not, I find that those writers I happen to like turn out to be those more than usually shat on by critics and the world at large. I do not do this on purpose. It makes me feel a kind of rage, and I get this feeling like, "So that's why I've never got anywhere in life! The world is full of cunts* that I'd like to kill." Just today I was thinking about how I'd like to kill lots of people, and how I'm tired of being nice to people. In a way perhaps it's related to your wall idea of... [Lots of writing about stuff that happened at the weekend.]

Anyway, I've gone off the track a bit.

I've been looking up stuff about Carson McCullers:

http://books.google.com/books?id=15v9sJJQYwgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#PPA1,M1

There are bits like this:

John Brown, one of her first editors in the 1940s... seems to wonder what could possibly prompt a full-length biography of Carson McCullers: "Granted, there are some fine texts, but, even so, she was not really much of a writer."

Apart from anything else, this doesn't even make sense. How can someone who's not much of a writer produce some fine texts? It makes me think there's some kind of unspoken agenda here. What would have made her much of a writer? Going to Harvard? Being friends with Edmund Wilson? Being a man? What? I really don't get it. And yet, whatever this hidden agenda is, it seems to crop up in all sorts of ways, just to ruin life on earth. I can sense it in a wordless way.

And then Arthur Miller says, "Moving, yes, but a minor author. And broken by illness at such a young age."

What kind of fucking non-sequitur is that? The kind that is hiding some portion of Miller's thought. But what? What is he trying to divert attention from by mentioning her illness and early death? What, is he saying she was irresponsible? A freak? The implication, of course, is that he is a major writer (rather than just a dried up old cunt) and is therefore in a position to judge who is major and minor, who has acheived the same kind of 'importance' as him, and who hasn't. And he's so important he can titter at McCullers's grave like this, using her very death as an insult against her (adding INSULT TO DEATH, let alone insult to injury), then get back to necking Monroe while he taps something out on his typewriter with his left hand, being, as he is, the accountant of important social problems.

So, these and other reasons lead me to feel like evil always triumphs.

Oh yeah, and it's typical that a writer would be shat on by her very own editor, like Carson was by that John Brown fellow.

[*Note to American readers. I've heard that in the States, as a slang phrase, this usually refers to women. I'm not referring to women when I used this word, but to bastards, though I suppose that may include women.]

I forgot to write in the e-mail that I appreciate Graham Greene's take on Carson McCullers. Of Greene, I've only read Brighton Rock. Overall, I liked it, although it took me ages to finish. Anyway, here's what Greene said:

Miss McCullers and perhaps Mr. Faulkner are the only writers since the death of D. H. Lawrence with an original poetic sensibility. I prefer Miss McCullers to Mr. Faulkner because she writes more clearly; I prefer her to D. H. Lawrence because she has no message.

Good old Greene.