Free Your Imagination!

I had no idea who was Michel Butor when I saw the title Coat Hangers And Ex-Boyfriends’ New Girlfriends’ Parties: On Translating Michel Butor’s Essays On The Novel. The last four words caused me to click on the link. I may try to hunt down his novels, but I will certainly find this collection of essays. I think Butor long ago hit upon something I thought long ago was my own idea.

I perked up when I got to this passage:

If we see the world as a constellation of networks, Butor’s language is not a stylistic choice for style’s sake but the necessary form for the complexity of our multi-related existence:

“A network of times, places and persons: what we have is a grammar. We will need to summon to our aid all the resources of language. That short sentence our past teachers advocated for, ‘light and scantily-clad’ [1], will no longer be enough. As soon as we venture off the beaten track, we will have to specify the ‘conjunction’ between two consecutive clauses. We cannot leave it implied. The short sentences will therefore gather into long sentences when necessary, which will allow us, in the manner of some great writers of the past, to use the full, wonderful array of forms our grammar offers.”

Long ago, when I was in college, so the Dark Ages, I had a conversation with TJ about relationships, about how we were all connected with one another. She criticized me, or, at least, agreed what I said was only in the most tenuous ways. I seem to feeling that she was trying to bind me closer to her - to keep me away from any relationships with her. That is certainly my opinion on this date and at this time. Back then, since I thought her smarter than me, I backed off my idea until my depression issues had me cutting myself off from everyone else. I recognize similarities between my old ideas and M. Butor. 

Too bad I found this out at this late date. Ignorance.... Here is the weakness of self-education - not always knowing where to go for that self-education. The novel is a form, a tool for expression. Knowing as much as possible how to use that tool facilitates the expression.

Which brings me back to Butor. Back in high school I had a tendency to write long, involved sentences. My English teacher, Stephanie R gave me hell about packing too many ideas in my sentences. Thing was there were too many ideas in my head, too many connections, that came out of my pen onto the page. Reading Somerset Maugham and William Faulkner did not help my syntax (thankfully, my finding Jose Saramago was far in the future) and my writing concisely did not come to fruition until my law school review editor said I wrote very good sentences that were just too involved for good legal. I set down to re-read Hemingway and Dashiell Hammett to learn a more concise style. That turned the trick although I felt I had all the style of Theodore Dreiser. Reading the piece on Butor, I found this:

Butor does away with conciseness, he does not limit himself, I feel a hunger for more in his writing. Even when he writes a sentence as simple as, “We only experience the flow, the march of time in samples”, Butor cannot do with a single noun. It is not the flow of time; it is not the march of time: it is the flow, the march of time. It is as if he is thinking as he writes, adjusting, refining: he is a musician tuning his instrument as he plays.

And, yes, the sentences criticized by my teacher and my editor were written as I was thinking. When I write here, I have in mind what I want to say. Other time, other places, I am trying to narrate events and I fight to limit all the ideas and associations sticking to my narrative.

Anyway, read the article, read all you can and experiment. If you understand to write in whatever gets across the story, then I have done my job with this post. 

Happy Independence Day!

sch 7/4/22