My Way_ Speeches and Poems - Charles Bernstein

WHAT'S ART GOT TO DO WITH IT? 47
journals that enforce mood and tone control as if a loose sentence were a
case of intemperance or the conventions of grammar and style were hieratic
laws not matters of agreement and disagreement.
It is always fair to ask of a mode of writing-what interests does it
serve, Are there studies that demonstrate that the currently enforced dissertation
styles make better teachers? Do they increase interest on the part
of readers in their subjects? Are they the only way to encourage the depth
of detailed knowledge of a particular subject or period that remains one
of the overriding values of scholarship? Are they more a rite of initiation
into a profession than a mark of an active engagement with a culture?
Is prose justified? Or aren't you the kind that tells? That's no prose that's
my default. Default is in our sorrow not our swells.
I am writing this with a fountain pen on a yellow legal pad, lying down
on a couch, the pad propped up by my knee. I resist sitting down at a
machine on a desk; I want to write from a more comfortable position. I
enjoy writing more this way.
Does not knowing the relevance of this factor argue that I should leave
it out? What kind of writing results from suppressing all the elements that
can't be justified? My most fruitful thoughts at first seem unfounded,
foundering; if not elusive, then wildly speculative. I like to follow the
course of such thoughts even as I am taken to more and more improbable
conclusions. In my court of writing, I have loose rules of evidence. If a
phrase occurs to me and I don't see the pertinence, I know better than to
abandon course. Perhaps some useful turning is at hand. Rather than discount
what may not at first appear to fit my theme, and risk losing a new
and more resonant address, I hold a thought relevant until proven otherwise,
give the benefit to what I doubt, pursuing a flicker in preference to
reiterating what I already knew.
The shortest distance between two points is a digression. I hold for a
wandering thought just that I may stumble upon something worthy of
report.
Montaigne is the most typical writer in all of Western prose.
The idea is to put the shoe on the other foot-evaluate the evaluators, historicize
the historicizers, decode the decoders, critique the critics, rebuke
the rebukers, debunk the debunkers, categorize the categorizers,
schmooze the schmoozers, level the levellers, revel with the revellers.
Put the shoe on the other foot and tear it.
"There's a lot of anger there, Charles. You really need to work it out."
"You've got a million crackpot theories, I only wish one of them would