some of susan sontag's stuff about self was just in the NYT, apparently my only source of good literature these days:
Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptacle for one’s private, secret thoughts — like a confidante who is deaf, dumb and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself. The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather — in many cases — offers an alternative to it.
There is often a contradiction between the meaning of our actions toward a person and what we say we feel toward that person in a journal. But this does not mean that what we do is shallow, and only what we confess to ourselves is deep. Confessions, I mean sincere confessions of course, can be more shallow than actions. I am thinking now of what I read today (when I went up to 122 Bd. St-G to check for her mail) in H’s journal about me — that curt, unfair, uncharitable assessment of me which concludes by her saying that she really doesn’t like me but my passion for her is acceptable and opportune. God knows it hurts, and I feel indignant and humiliated. We rarely do know what people think of us (or, rather, think they think of us)... Do I feel guilty about reading what was not intended for my eyes? No. One of the main (social) functions of a journal or diary is precisely to be read furtively by other people, the people (like parents + lovers) about whom one has been cruelly honest only in the journal. Will H. ever read this?
i enjoyed reading
the diary of a young girl,
zlata's diary, et al in my supposedly-angsty early teens. but i always wondered whether these girls -- and other diarists -- knew that what they were writing would someday become fodder for the masses. (and it
is fodder -- look how people gobble up the unutterably dry prose of franz kafka, for instance, to find the rare gem! everyone's a voyeur.) how embarrassing it might have been for anne frank to find out that her nascent love affair with peter van pels was being discussed in umpteen sixth-standard classrooms... or how flattering. who knows? perhaps everyone's an exhibitionist -- else how could you explain the burgeoning autobiographical genre section in any self-respecting bookstore?
me, i always wanted my real thoughts (defined separately from random public blog entries, which are thoughtfully composed but never as significant) to be kept as intensely private as possible. i always let on that my diaries existed, and have even shared snippets of them with certain people. but noone gets the whole thing. some things i don't even write down!
are diaries really supposed to be read, though? (especially if they're on paper, in one of those little archies autographbooks/diaries/journals that come with a lock and key?) and by whom: just anyone or only those people who matter?
in fact, let's assume for a second that it's only you reading your own work. if so, then why say in writing what you can safely say to yourself in your head and never have found out by anyone else? or write -- and then destroy it! why the big need for florid philosophizing and dark revelations, if you know there might be people who want to read (and possibly publish) your innermost thoughts? god, even love letters get published, and sonnets that possibly reveal homoerotic tendencies in their famous authors... it's quite terrifying, even if some of these people are talented and their works a good addition to the english canon!
(i'll allow that you might want to re-read your words... but gosh, i hardly do; in fact, i mostly cringe when i go back to old writing!)
also, if you address yourself to a fictional reader, are you not supposing the presence of an "other" at the receiving end of all your ponderings? is it not you inflicting your mental wanderings on some inanimate object that's compelled to "listen" to your issues, even if without offering advice?
is there such a thing as totally private writing, just for the self?
(all this is not to deny that by purging your writing -- deleting email, tearing up a diary, erasing a word document -- or by not writing at all, you are erasing (or never creating) a most honest record of your thoughts, reactions, and feelings... it's just to consider that perhaps if you write at all, you inevitably risk being read. or perhaps you anticipate it. whatever happened to wanting privacy? hello, facebook "notes" and status updates and mini-feeds...)
i wonder what susan sontag would have had to say about blogs. essentially public journals that can be uncomfortably intimate -- often without meaning to be or knowing that they are, often with the precise intention of being so.
The coming of the orgasm has changed my life. I am liberated, but that’s not the way to say it. More important: it has narrowed me, it has closed off possibilities, it has made the alternatives clear and sharp. I am no longer unlimited, i.e. nothing.
Sexuality is the paradigm. Before, my sexuality was horizontal, an infinite line capable of being infinitely subdivided. Now it is vertical; it is up and over, or nothing.
. . .
The orgasm focuses. I lust to write. The coming of the orgasm is not the salvation but, more, the birth of my ego. I cannot write until I find my ego. The only kind of writer I could be is the kind who exposes himself.. . .To write is to spend oneself, to gamble oneself. But up to now I have not even liked the sound of my own name. To write, I must love my name. The writer is in love with himself. . .and makes his books out of that meeting and that violence.
uhmm. writing like creation of self. writing like exploring sexuality. interesting. personally, i continue to write, but i would like the satisfaction that i get to keep to myself all the things i really want to; for the rest... well, you can post in the comments section, so quite evidently you're privy to it!
Labels: English Major Syndrome, Me Me Me Me Me, Meta, NYT
