“There’s a writing self which is not quite your ordinary social self and which you don’t really have access to except at the moment when you’re writing, and certainly in my view, I think of that as my best self,” he said. “To be able to be that person feels good; it feels better than anything else.”
Sunday, May 25, 2008
The Best Self
WOW. A GREAT profile of Salman Rushdie by Patricia Cohen in today's New York Times, which ends with a quote that made me clap my hands in joyful recognition. Which was unfortunate as I was holding a coffee at the time.
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9 comments:
The Best Self or: Why we never leave our apartments.
Heh. Ah, nah. I think the reason why I like the quote so much is that caveat "not QUITE your ordinary social self." I like that because I think it recognizes that you've got to try to reconcile the two.
At my best, I can whip up the social side of my personality to something that's close to what I feel when I'm writing. But not exactly the same. I think when we give in to "just stay in and observe" we shortchange our lives as people -- so the precision in Rushdie's description is good because it recognizes and includes an admirable goal, as well as the ultimate recognition that, yup, on some level we'd rather be living in our created worlds.
On some level?
Uh... For me it's a pathology... I feel like I'm becoming more and more disconnected from the real world...
Did you ever see a French film called Le Magnifique?
I'm turning into that guy, I think.
Well that's not a good thing!
I find I've been starting to take a different tack with the world. It would be so easy to retreat into solipsism and recoil from all the frankly ugly things out there.
But the weird thing is I'm finding that I want to box the cynicism a bit now. Stop using it as a crutch. And in terms of the world, I'm trying to maximize my social interactions so that they're the places I like, the people I like. I don't worry so much about social obligations as "well, do I want to go?" If I do, I do, if I don't, I don't -- and I don't feel guilty about it anymore.
I've gone to a couple weddings this way recently and had a much higher rate of success enjoying them. Parties too.
I think it's part of our job to fight the impulse to retreat, however we can.
Ahh, but I'm not that cynical... Just anxious and cowardly.
:)
'bout twenty years ago, when i was getting started, i was drinking with a producer who worked pretty much exclusively with three writers. We got to talking about different attributes of each of us (i guess our writing selves) and how were were different (past the obvious levels of experience, plotting skills, dialogue etc).
she said I like writer a because he writes with his head, writer b because he writers from his heart and you because you write with your dick.
so it is a "self" -- not sure it's the best one thou...
David Milch calls the state of being while writing "resting transparently in the spirit".
Nice Thread. I suddenly have an entirely different perspective on "Dolly's" writing!
But I missed the Times article so I'm wondering, when Rushdie said, “To be able to be that person feels good; it feels better than anything else.”...
Did the interviewer ask him if it felt better than banging that Bollywood Hottie he married who was half his age?
Uh, no. They dealt with her too.
And yeah, when I read that Dolly quote I thought, "shit. There are worse ways to build a room."
And then I thought of that time when a good friend, female, shook her head at some idea being floated by the group [mostly men] and said, "Would you all stop thinking with your vulvas?"
Heh heh.
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