Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art. However much the writer might long to be, in his work, simple, honest, and straightforward, these virtues are no longer available to him. He discovers that in being simple, honest, and straightforward, nothing much happens: he speaks the speakable, whereas what we are looking for is the as-yet unspeakable, the as-yet unspoken.
* * *
... the writer ... taken to be the work's way of getting itself written, a sort of lightning rod for an accumulation of atmospheric disturbances ...
Both from a Barthelme essay called "Not-Knowing" that Lachlan T sent through. In that second one, DB's not necessarily endorsing that view of the relationship between writer and work ... he brings it up in the course of discussing the essential mystery of how the parts of any work of art come to combine; and the link attached to that evocative phrase 'atmospheric disturbances' is mine - an after-the-fact recognition of the source of the title to Rivka Galchen's elegantly elusive novel from a few years back.
The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.
* * *
... the writer ... taken to be the work's way of getting itself written, a sort of lightning rod for an accumulation of atmospheric disturbances ...
Both from a Barthelme essay called "Not-Knowing" that Lachlan T sent through. In that second one, DB's not necessarily endorsing that view of the relationship between writer and work ... he brings it up in the course of discussing the essential mystery of how the parts of any work of art come to combine; and the link attached to that evocative phrase 'atmospheric disturbances' is mine - an after-the-fact recognition of the source of the title to Rivka Galchen's elegantly elusive novel from a few years back.
The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.
