Am I a writer?

Last Wednesday morning before U.S History, several of my pupils were carrying on about the most recent Nicholas Sparks novel. As always trying to appear as respectable as possible in front of my students, I disinterestedly made my way to their desks to determine if they would make any comments that might lend themselves to an education quip. Student One remarked, I love Nicholas Sparks. Noticing my approach, I mean I love his writing. I don’t really know much about him. Good, I said. Most writers are jerks. They are self-centered and rarely live up to the wisdom they attempt to deliver. In comes Student Two. Well Mr. F, are you a jerk? Sometimes I am. However your question is untimely as I am not a writer, but someone who merely wishes to be a writer, a career even less lucrative, with equal potential for self-destruction and a greater degree of anonymity. 

Dialogue: in media res

#1: “Did you read that article where Rachel Zucker actually got poets to articulate what KIND of poetry they write?”

#2: “I did, though as a poet, I don’t think I could do that.”

#1: “It’s really hard right? But their responses are so interesting.” 

#2: “Interesting or not, I don’t believe in the question. It forces the poet to limit the actual presentness of their work by limiting it through conceptualization.”

#1: “Agreed.”

OTR: “Whoa whoa, wait a second #1, why would you agree with that?”

#1: “Well, because it’s true - one of the facets of contemporary poetics is its ability to reach such a wide audience - the freedom of interpretation corresponds to the freedom of educated, intellectual thought. The poet is merely the conduit by which meaning is expressed. As soon as he or she tries to define that meaning, it becomes tainted, biased, impure.”

OTR: “That’s bullshit! You’re giving me a relativistic justification for something that clearly requires authorship. Words do no simply materialize, they’re a force of intention, a mode of communicable transparency for what a personsees, not what all people see.”

#1: “You make a good point, but you need to read up on your Barthes. The author is dead. Has been for a while.”

OTR: “I’m well aware of my Barthes. I’m also well aware of the difference between the author who purposefully negates ‘self’ in order to vicariously supplant the ‘self’ of another. ‘True empathy be damned, your pain is a vehicle for the “artistic” expression of pain I’ve never felt, nor do I have any intention of feeling it, so there’s no sense in telling my own story. I’m just an author, it’s not like I have to stand by my work, or stand by my beliefs - I’ve recreated and brought to attention someone else’s suffering in an artistic way - how is that a bad thing?’ Why? Because you’re an emotional pirate. Because you’ve finagled the system of literary thought into accepting an unregulated, depersonalized, motive-less, changeless amoeba of decentralized argumentation. You’re well enough informed of certain theoretical techniques (Deconstructionism, or rather, post-structuralism) and expressions, that you yourself are capable of parroting them back to people who’ve clearly never read or never challenged those ideas. Or, if they did, they gave up at some point because it was too difficult. And, because I stand for something I believe in, you could very well accuse me of venturing upon my own self-imposed martyrdom and discredit me to all those people who’d stop at your word rather than trying to understand mine. Such an intensity of opinion would seem to connote that as the case, would it not? I’m just putting myself on a pedestal because I know you’ll try to strike me down using the very same complacency of argument that’s allowed us to recede this far. Don’t flatter yourself. This is not a martyrdom because you’re nowhere close to silencing me. I am your greatest fear because I am what you’re not - I am the artist in control of his art. I am the artist born out of contemporary vogue into a world that’s satisfied by and with its own self-righteousness, and I’m not buying it. That world is fake. That world is broken. I’m here to fix it. I’m here to show you how it’s done. I am the mirror that reminds you of your humanity, not some other person’s humanity, your humanity. I don’t know you, but you know me. Because I am You, and I’m unafraid to show it.”

………Silence……….

#1: “Wow… You’re an ass.”

#2: “Agreed.”