Physicalism in the World of Words

“No ideas but in things”

– William Carlos Williams

A recent letter from the physicalists asked me, “Do you think it’s time for a movement like physicalism in the world of words?” Physicalism, as defined by its proponents, has these five tenets:

• Question art dogma.
• Create visual ideas.
• Refuse to bullshit.
• Delight in creation.
• Emphasize beauty.

The Physicalist Manifesto is a work in progress, but their recent announcement defines the idea, and conversation with them described the details. I imagine their manifesto will read something like the following passage from their recent announcement.

We embrace visual ideas and invention and are fed up with the dense, inaccessible, angst-filled, deep, and ugly art the art education, art institutions and the art market promote. We do not think that one should need a degree in art, art history, or philosophy in order to be able to get or appreciate a work of art. Whether the meaning in a work of art is contained in visual or non-visual ideas, we think that the meaning should be accessible through the physical piece of art itself. We are fed up with looking at ugly- but supposedly very deep and insightful - crap. Out with angst, we say! Back to beauty!

As you can see, the idea they call physicalism developed about visual art. Their question is, does it apply to writing? I think it does.

Question art dogma

The first thing that they’ll teach you about writing is that “writing can’t be taught”. What they mean is that writing comes with practice, through reading and revision, so what they should probably say is “writing teaches itself”. If writing teaches itself, then there is little room for dogma.

The “dogma” that I feel is most in need of questioning is not the authoritarian kind, but rather the common assumptions that have built up around the art of literature. These include:

• A poem can mean anything the audience desires it to mean
• Literature is too obscure, old-fashioned, and esoteric to be relevant to our ordinary lives
• Literature is only writing; writing only occurs in books.
• There’s high-art literature, on one hand, and on the other hand we have other ways to tell stories such as television, movies, etc., and never the twain shall meet.

Refuse to Bullshit

“An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.” : Dwight D. Eisenhower

A lot of the “art of language” is bullshit, as we usually encounter it.

When it comes to new ideas, people struggle behind a jamboree of boring buzzwords, catch phrases, and slogans. None of this language means anything, apparently not even to those who abuse them at the cost of our ability to understand. The abusers are the journalists, the politicians, the scholars, the scientists, the government, the marketers. What is this nonsense! People are sick of default interfaces that don’t jibe.

People: you have a responsibility to yourselves, a right, not to tolerate a bunch of bullshit. People that don’t make sense don’t deserve attention, plain and simple. Either they’ve tried to communicate, and they have failed, or they’re hiding something. Don’t just assume you’re stupid. That’s how they plan to leave you behind. Demand sufficient explanation!

There is a pantheon of bullshit at play against the world of words. What’s a poor physicalist to do?

The stereotype of the writer is bullshit

This point was very well illustrated by a more recent manifesto, entitled “The Cappuccino Writer and the idiocy of contemporary writing“. The Manifesto is a list of grievances against the literary world, particularly against the cultural expectations our culture ahs developed about writing in general.

On inspection there would appear to be fewer problems with contemporary writing than with contemporary visual arts, but both have the problem of being spiritually bankrupt. (Except poetry, which on the whole has the problem of being utterly tedious).

Despite the benefit of centuries of literature the Modern writer still manages to sound less developed, less contemporary and less vital than his dead predecessors. He tries to sound big and brave when in truth he is scared of his own farts.

Post Modernism’s reflex recourse to a stance of invulnerability tourniquets emotion. If you don’t experience life more keenly after reading a piece of writing then that writing is a lamentable failure. If you feel your soul is depleted after reading a piece of writing then you can expect to see that writer on the South Bank Show.

Sometimes a savage truth in the writing leads the reader to feel numbed horror, this is the revealing of iron in the soul from the burning off of the encrustation of complacency. This is good writing. This does not appear on the South Bank Show.

Some notable points:

• There is popular writing known as the blockbuster or airport novel but this is considered trash by the critics. Then there is the writing by pseudo-intellectuals, which is very popular with the critics but considered even worse trash by us.
• The writer can only write what he knows about him/her self. To develop as a writer you must develop as a person.
• Writers who strive to maintain a fashionable stance will always be marred by all the limitations and stiltedness which that fashion is formed from. This applies equally to underground or cult fashion as it does to the middle of the road variety.
• In visual arts any new idea (fashion) is presumed to be original and thereby render all previous forms as defunct and old fashioned. In post modern writing the concrete poem and Finnegans Wake are not presumed to make all other forms of writing redundant so, thankfully the writer is forced to at least attempt to communicate in a semi- recognisable language.
• The probable reason that writers have to communicate in a more accessible manner is because, unlike the visual artist who only needs to pander to a self deceiving elite, the writer is reliant on the general public to buy his or her work. This is one of the most convincing proofs of democracy in action ever encountered.
• What makes great writing great?The first stage of meaning is known as understandability and the willingness of the writer to feel that the reader is not utterly beneath their contempt. The second stage of meaning is actually writing something that is worth understanding. Something is not worth understanding in writing if its not worth understanding in life. This is what makes great writing great.

“The Cappuccino Writer and the idiocy of contemporary writing” personifies these points in the person of “The Cappuccino Writer”, which makes it an enjoyable read.

Create Visual Ideas

I would revise the second point, not to discuss words, but to say “Create Imagery”

Ezra Pound, and the Imagists have already put this idea into practice. Their Imagism is very similar to the ideas of the physicalists. Imagism’s manifesto was an essay written by Exra Pound, entitled A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste. I’m tempted to quote the thing in its entirety here, to show the relevance of Physicalism in the world of Words, since Pound’s text is entirely relevant, but to be brief, I’ll use a summary of the same ideas instead. Frank Stuart Flint wrote what Imagism was about:

• Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective.
• To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
• As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

This sounds like a recipe for Hemingway, doesn’t it? These Imagist ideas have become, by now, a large part of the doctrine that the physicalist would question, and question them they should. Imagism does not, or has not, made for language that is particularly beautiful in every sense of the word, and physicalists emphasize beauty, so they would question Imagist doctrine on those grounds.

How physicalists would differ from imagists remains to be seen. My guess would be that they would differ in terms of subject matter. Imagism doesn’t focus on the subject matter of the writing it suggests, where lyrical beauty is of the most importance.

Emphasize Beauty

The imagists emphasized directness, where they probably felt felt the Romantics had emphasized ornament. Both parties probably preferred to call their emphasis “beauty”. Were they wrong? No, but they did have other agendas.

Too much concern for concision and efficiency might leave your use of language barren, cold, mechanical. Too much concern for lyrical showmanship can obscure, or obliterate, the meaning of your words.

What about subject matter?

A summary of the greatest novels of the 20^th century could show that there has not been much emphasis on the beautiful, in recent literature, particularly where subject matter is concerned. It’s a hunch. I’d have to work pretty hard to defend it, so I’m not certain I should hold close to the idea.

The Surrealist Manifesto provides a critique of modern literature along these lines, that literature could do more to emphasize beauty. The author responds to a passage from Crime and Punnishment.

The small room into which the young man was shown was covered with yellow wallpaper: there were geraniums in the windows, which were covered with muslin curtains; the setting sun cast a harsh light over the entire setting. There was nothing special about the room. The furniture, of yellow wood, was all very old. A sofa with a tall back turned down, an oval table opposite the sofa, a dressing table and a mirror set against the pierglass, some chairs along the walls, two or three etchings of no value portraying some German girls with birds in their hands – such were the furnishings. (Dostoevski, Crime and Punishment)

I am in no mood to admit that the mind is interested in occupying itself with such matters, even fleetingly. It may be argued that this school-boy description has its place, and that at this juncture of the book the author has his reasons for burdening me. Nevertheless he is wasting his time, for I refuse to go into his room. Others’ laziness or fatigue does not interest me. I have too unstable a notion of the continuity of life to equate or compare my moments of depression or weakness with my best moments. When one ceases to feel, I am of the opinion one should keep quiet. And I would like it understood that I am not accusing or condemning lack of originality as such. I am only saying that I do not take particular note of the empty moments of my life, that it may be unworthy for any man to crystallize those which seem to him to be so. I shall, with your permission, ignore the description of that room, and many more like it.

Beauty is more than skin deep.

Arnold Weinstein is a Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. His recent essay, “A Novel Lesson: The Value of the Modernist Gambit” suggests that the modern novel could do more than to be lyrically beautiful, that it could have, and did have a more beautiful purpose.

Weinstein recalls the earliest novels

“from the most ambitious and self-regarding of the bunch – Cervante’s Don Quixote – on to the episodic confections such as Defoe’s Moll Flanders and the more tightly structured psychological investigations seen in Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa or Prevost’s Manon Lescaut, the project at hand seems to be one of retrieval, of grasping the shape of an early life. How can we be surprised that so many of the early novels have personal names as titles?”

He goes on to define the ideal early novel. “The novel is a walking mirror”. Weinstein then argues that the “value of the modernist gambit” does not reside in its ability to act that way, to be a walking mirror that shows people a reflection of their humanity, something to identify with. He says that, by the modern era, with novels like Ulysses and with writers like Proust “the novel was in danger of losing its audience”

Weinstein queries the modern novels,

“Where, one wondered, was that bigger story, that panoramic yet anylitical portrait of society and self, that had heretofore been the great mission of the novel? One would have been forgiven for thinking that [the novel] was dead. Or hijacked by extremists who, whatever mission they may have had, had no love for the public, had no commitment to that old, unquestioned virtue of readability. No author bothered to announce such nefarious intentions, of course, but the result was there, and people voted with their feet and their purses: they found the modernist fare largely unreadable.”

Generally, Weinstein’s point is that the novel ought to have a beautiful purpose. His idea of that purpose is perhaps not the only ideal one, but it is an important consideration nonetheless.

Delight in Creation

Writing isn’t always regarded as a delightful endeavor. All that revision and solitude can be frustrating. High-minded literary ideals, writer’s block, deadlines “these are not delightful. Reading isn’t always regarded as a delightful endeavor, either. Poetry readings are more often described as “stimulating” or “intriguing” than as “delightful”, even if there are cookies.

If literature is to survive in an environment with more attractive cultural delights, it is going to have to stop being so damn stuffy. Remember those childhood bedtime stories? Weren’t they delightful?