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Saturday, August 26, 2006

Somnambulism

This statement of Randall Jarrell's, from his essay, "Poets, Critics, and Readers," made me think of Truman Capote:

The writer cannot afford to question his own essential nature; must have, as Marianne Moore says, 'the courage of his peculiarities.' But often it is this very nature, these very peculiarities - originality always seems peculiarity, to begin with - that critics condemn. There must be about the writer a certain spontaneity or naivete or somnambulistic rightness: he must, in some sense, move unquestioning in the midst of his world - at his question all will disappear.


I think this has something to do with Capote's comment about his education -- I quoted it a couple of posts down. He sensed even very young that he must pursue, unimpeded and unmediated and untaught, his essential writerly nature.

But inside this naivete, this sleepwalking Being, resides perhaps the eventual downfall of some writers as well. Capote's life ended early and pathetically, as did the lives of a good number of other modern writers. I don't want to sugggest that we can account for this shared fate in some general way. We can't. But I wonder if for some writers -- James Agee comes to mind, too -- their inability to do anything other than be inside that unexamined unteachable selfness means that when they start to spiral down, when life hands them the reversals it hands everyone eventually, they have much more trouble righting themselves.