in no other age can so many people have
harbored such intense ambitions to
become writers the longing one day to
turn out a book probably a novel or less
likely an autobiography lies close to
the center of contemporary aspirations
this is at one level a hugely welcome
development a consequence of widespread
literacy higher educational standards
and a proper focus on the power of books
to change lives but looked at from
another angle it may also improve it be
the result of something more de sultry
an epidemic of isolation and loneliness
the army of literary agents scouts
editors and writing coaches testifies
not only to our love of literature but
also less intentionally to an
unaddressed groundswell of painful
solitude reasons for wanting to write a
multiple of course but the structurally
simplest option may also be the most
pervasive we write because there is no
one in the vicinity who will listen we
start a long to set down our memories
and emotions on a page and to send them
out into the wider world because our
friends can’t be bothered to hear us
because our partners are preoccupied and
because it’s been agonizingly long since
anyone gave us an uninterrupted stretch
of time in which we could be attended to
with respect and attention in short
because we’re very lonely writing for
all that it might begin with experiences
of joy or disinterested intellectual
fascination also owes its origins to
despair shame and a lack of someone to
cry with it’s when we’ve screamed a long
time for help and no one came that we
may begin quietly to burn to write a
novel instead writing can be the
presenting solution to a more poignant
ambition beneath to be heard to be held
to be respected to have our feelings
interpret
and soothed to be known and appreciated
the French writer Gustave Flaubert put
it at its simplest if he’d been happy in
love at 18 he wrote he would never have
wanted to become a writer at the start
of the West’s journey into
self-awareness we meet the figure of
Socrates who puts forward a striking
proposition writing is not what
thoughtful people should ideally be
doing with that time he suggests for
Socrates writing is a pale imitation of
and replacement for our true vocation
which is that of talking to our fellow
human beings in the flesh in real time
often with a glass of wine on the table
or while walking to the harbor or doing
some exercise in the gym talking about
what really matters the birth of
literature is in a Socratic worldview
simply a symptom of social isolation and
an indictment of our community even if
we find literature the finest of
substitutes infinitely better than
anything else yet invented it still pays
to recognize that substitute is what it
might primarily be that writing is in
certain ways an act of very polite and
artful revenge on a world too busy to
listen and that we would never develop
such fierce bookish ambitions if we had
not first been let down by those we
needed so much to rely upon a slightly
more conscious awareness of writing as
compensation may lend us energy to
acknowledge our unrequited ache for more
visceral forms of contact
whatever the satisfactions of writing
alone in bed we should perhaps not see
so easily to give up on the ecstasy’s of
mutual understanding and sympathy it’s
far from easy to write a decent novel it
may be even harder yet ultimately more
rewarding to learn to locate a circle of
true friends a better world might from
this perspective be one in which we
wanted a little less ardently to be
writers because we had collectively
grown ever so slightly better listening
and may
King ourselves heard literature’s loss
might in the end be humanities gain
thank you for watching please subscribe
to our channel and click the bell icon
to turn on notifications our book what
is culture for helps us find compassion hope and perspective in the arts
harbored such intense ambitions to
become writers the longing one day to
turn out a book probably a novel or less
likely an autobiography lies close to
the center of contemporary aspirations
this is at one level a hugely welcome
development a consequence of widespread
literacy higher educational standards
and a proper focus on the power of books
to change lives but looked at from
another angle it may also improve it be
the result of something more de sultry
an epidemic of isolation and loneliness
the army of literary agents scouts
editors and writing coaches testifies
not only to our love of literature but
also less intentionally to an
unaddressed groundswell of painful
solitude reasons for wanting to write a
multiple of course but the structurally
simplest option may also be the most
pervasive we write because there is no
one in the vicinity who will listen we
start a long to set down our memories
and emotions on a page and to send them
out into the wider world because our
friends can’t be bothered to hear us
because our partners are preoccupied and
because it’s been agonizingly long since
anyone gave us an uninterrupted stretch
of time in which we could be attended to
with respect and attention in short
because we’re very lonely writing for
all that it might begin with experiences
of joy or disinterested intellectual
fascination also owes its origins to
despair shame and a lack of someone to
cry with it’s when we’ve screamed a long
time for help and no one came that we
may begin quietly to burn to write a
novel instead writing can be the
presenting solution to a more poignant
ambition beneath to be heard to be held
to be respected to have our feelings
interpret
and soothed to be known and appreciated
the French writer Gustave Flaubert put
it at its simplest if he’d been happy in
love at 18 he wrote he would never have
wanted to become a writer at the start
of the West’s journey into
self-awareness we meet the figure of
Socrates who puts forward a striking
proposition writing is not what
thoughtful people should ideally be
doing with that time he suggests for
Socrates writing is a pale imitation of
and replacement for our true vocation
which is that of talking to our fellow
human beings in the flesh in real time
often with a glass of wine on the table
or while walking to the harbor or doing
some exercise in the gym talking about
what really matters the birth of
literature is in a Socratic worldview
simply a symptom of social isolation and
an indictment of our community even if
we find literature the finest of
substitutes infinitely better than
anything else yet invented it still pays
to recognize that substitute is what it
might primarily be that writing is in
certain ways an act of very polite and
artful revenge on a world too busy to
listen and that we would never develop
such fierce bookish ambitions if we had
not first been let down by those we
needed so much to rely upon a slightly
more conscious awareness of writing as
compensation may lend us energy to
acknowledge our unrequited ache for more
visceral forms of contact
whatever the satisfactions of writing
alone in bed we should perhaps not see
so easily to give up on the ecstasy’s of
mutual understanding and sympathy it’s
far from easy to write a decent novel it
may be even harder yet ultimately more
rewarding to learn to locate a circle of
true friends a better world might from
this perspective be one in which we
wanted a little less ardently to be
writers because we had collectively
grown ever so slightly better listening
and may
King ourselves heard literature’s loss
might in the end be humanities gain
thank you for watching please subscribe
to our channel and click the bell icon
to turn on notifications our book what
is culture for helps us find compassion hope and perspective in the arts
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