Writing, and what is it......?

'Take Two' on a preoccupation that won't diminish:

Writing, that language on paper, screen and as 'sky-writing,' has fascinated me all my life. At about age four or five I lay on a couch pretending to read a book. Why? To be grownup. I was visiting a playmate's house. I remember a couple of titles of novels in my parents bookcase when I was about ten. This Gun For Hire, and The Sunken Fleet, yet I never saw either parent read a book. My mother was a letter writer. On the beach she wrote a letter to her brother in the country, 200 miles away. I asked her if I could get there if I walked down the beach. That got put in her letter.

During a lonely period as an adult I joined The Letter Exchange located across the Bay from San Francisco. I wrote hundreds of letters using a tiny Canon typewriter on my lap. The replies filled several large cardboard boxes. That was before email and message boards so I wonder if The Letter Exchange still exists?

In spite of those experiences of voluminous writing I'm still not certain about just what is writing. Here's the opinion of just one Linguist and London University professor of English and Drama, Jacqueline Rose in her book on Sylvia Plath, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. About ten times I've brought up the subject of this book, on writer's message boards for example, and some of the ideas contained therein, but apparently it reads as double-dutch. Here's the list I made from references to writing and language sprinkled throughout her book.

1. Language is anti-phobic

2. All writing is fantasy

3. All Language is metaphor

4. Writing is violence

5. All writing is unstable as to meaning

6. Writing is aggression

I've pasted this list on a folded piece of bond paper glued to the inside cover of Rose's book. Inside the fold I printed AOL's Webster's Dictionary definition of 'Deconstruction,' because number 5 above seems included in the definition:

Main Entry: de·con·struc·tion
Pronunciation: "dE-k&n-'str&k-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology: French déconstruction, from dé- de- + construction
Date: 1973
: a method of literary criticism that assumes language refers only to itself rather than to an extratextual reality, that asserts multiple conflicting interpretations of a text, and that bases such interpretations on the philosophical, political, or social implications of the use of language in the text rather than on the author's intention
- de·con·struc·tion·ist /-sh&-nist/ noun

One of many reasons the English, Linguistics, and Drama professor went into this stringent examination of the properties of language and writing is that of the five major biographies of Sylvia Plath, written since Plath's suicide, no two agree about anything; each biographer views what is known, and a great deal is known because Plath herself told us a lot, in a far different light.

My thesis is that familiarity with some of these ideas about writing and language will be helpful in reading blogs and message boards. However, I have to admit that in spite of my labor in trying over a long period of time to assimilate the comfort of these 'truths' I still scratch my head in confusion over being misunderstood in my writing, and puzzld quite often by the writing of others. Let me give a far-out, extreme example: a message board poster of practiced, insulting, barbaric, pornographic assaults on everything he's ever read of mine, simply made me furious at first, but his continuing in that vein for years has finally convinced me, paradoxically, that what he really wants is for me to take care of him, end his unhappiness, provide a roof and food for him, and testimonials written by me that he can deliver to prospective employers. But then, that's just my "interpretation," and as Rose, and Deconstruction states, all writing is open to multiple interpretations. Ha!

Some hundreds of years ago when writing letters became commonplace, it is very noticeable how the writer strived to be polite, deferential, charming, and even flattering. In those days, perhaps, letter writers instinctively knew that writing was an intrusion, a bother, something that required time, energy, and education. I'm thinking of studying up on the letter writing style of one of those, say 1700's letter writers, and address you as 'My Lords and Ladies.'

Barry