'Of course, our own ideas of ourselves are more often than not laced with pure imagination.' That's the interesting thing about writers' claims to write for themselves -- which selves?
I think I'm always doing something between writing for the past version of myself who would have wanted to read what I'm writing, and writing for some unknowable reader in the unknowable future. I don't like to imagine an 'ideal' reader because I don't want to close off my work to people I wouldn't imagine reading it -- it would be more gratifying to be read by someone unexpected than to be read by whoever I might envision at the moment of writing.
I always wonder what people in the past would think of current responses to their life and work. People are always saying so-and-so would be rolling in their grave, or would be proud, or whatever, but that seems so presumptuous. We don't know what the past would think of us any more than we know what the future will think of us (and I think the same thing about claims that anybody in the present will inevitably be proven to be on the wrong or the right side of history).
'Of course, our own ideas of ourselves are more often than not laced with pure imagination.' That's the interesting thing about writers' claims to write for themselves -- which selves?
I think I'm always doing something between writing for the past version of myself who would have wanted to read what I'm writing, and writing for some unknowable reader in the unknowable future. I don't like to imagine an 'ideal' reader because I don't want to close off my work to people I wouldn't imagine reading it -- it would be more gratifying to be read by someone unexpected than to be read by whoever I might envision at the moment of writing.
I always wonder what people in the past would think of current responses to their life and work. People are always saying so-and-so would be rolling in their grave, or would be proud, or whatever, but that seems so presumptuous. We don't know what the past would think of us any more than we know what the future will think of us (and I think the same thing about claims that anybody in the present will inevitably be proven to be on the wrong or the right side of history).
"the terror angel on the front porch of the sun."
-Gorgeous.