Re: Gutted

Alan Hope <not.alan.hope@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

boots goes:

Alan Hope <not.alan.hope@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
boots goes:

Shakespeare, whatever his real name may have been, was a practical
man. He wrote for the general public of his day. He provided
entertainment that people could enjoy sufficiently to pay money. From
the little I have learned he was more interested in making a living
than in becoming a literary legend. That is what I meant by his being
a practical man; he was writing for a practical purpose, with the
near-term goal of making a living. He might have dug ditches too for
all I know, or tilted windmills, but what I learned leads me to
believe that he was an insightful person going about the business of
life in a practical way by practicing the craft of stringing words
together and selling the result.

This really is the most ghastly pseudo-democratic reductiveness.

Speaking to dead people is a symptom; seek help, fuckwittedness may
not always be terminal.

Oh for Christ's sake, pull yourself together. You're swanning around
like a lovesick swain.

It's all about you is it?

Shakespeare was indeed an actor-manager running a theatre, but anyone
who thinks his only concern was to put on plays for the groundlings
obviously hasn't the first idea what makes his work remarkable.

You habitually read to your expectations. "near-term goal" innit,
sans consideration of long-term goals one would write "goal" and be
done.

It's a truism of the utmost banality to say his near-term goal was to
make a living. It simply doesn't say anything worth hearing.

Nothing quite as "profound" as EOE or WOD huh? Go read some Koontz ya
fuckwit, you deserve it.

I have
no idea whether he was concerned with becoming a literary legend, so I
find it hard to exclude the possibility as you seem to do so readily.

Nowhere did I say he had no concern with greatness or with doing well
enough at his work to cause himself to grow through it. It seems
clear though that he put first things first, had he not we might've
gotten his first few works before starvation took the rest.

"He was more interested in making a living than ...".

And no, he might well have opted to write works that were more in
keeping with what everyone else was doing. He might have chosen to be
a hack. He clearly didn't.

You have written "a truism of the utmost banality". As punishment,
you may go hang yourself.

In any event, he was certainly concerned with doing more than putting
on saleable plays,

That's conjecture. You are assuming (no blame, I assume it too) that
what he put into his plays was put there through intent, effort, and
skill. It is possible that we are both mistaken and he was simply a
one in a billion mutant of enormous unrealized potential, slapping out
what he considered quick-and-dirties.

No, that's not at all possible.

You have gone beyond banality through arrogance to absolute supidity.

and all the evidence for that is in the work. He
was doing what all literary legends do, which is producing work far
beyond the level "required" by the demands of the market.

Producing work that consistently exceeds expectations is not
sufficient in itself to become a "literary legend", it's not even
sufficient to avoid starvation.

You think the two things are linked in some way?

Write more clearly, Hope. It's not clear which "two things" you
consider unrelated. I'll try and bring it down to your moronic level:

1) producing work
2) expectations of work quality
3) work that exceeds expectations
4) consistency
5) becoming a literary legend
6) avoiding starvation

"The two" then, being which two?

Of course not.

Again your clarity of expression sucks major ass, Hope. "Of course
not" what, fuckwit? Of course I do not think that? Of course they
are not linked? Retard.

And I
didn't say anything about expectations.

Goodie for you. Of course no doubt a publisher's expectations aka
requirements are unrelated to what is published, clearly true given
the contents of today's bookshelves.

Assuming that all one needs to do is
produce superior work is naive and belies the existence of all those
who gave rise over the millenia to the term "starving artist".

Nonsense.

Hope's operating instructions for cleaning and operating a high speed
food processor would probably generate thousands of wrongful damage
lawsuits. Point out what you are pointing out before you say it is
nonsense, otherwise the reader will be too busy pointing at you and
laughing to give your probably-nonsensical proposition the
consideration it might unexpectedly deserve.

He clearly wrote the brilliant and unsurpassed texts we now
know. That's not in dispute.

The brilliant part is not in dispute, the "unsurpassed" portion could
be disputed endlessly.

He also seems to have done so in a way
that allowed him to make a living and see his plays produced. All the
better.

His plays seem to have been produced, and he appears not to have
starved prior to their production, yes.

But that's incidental. Had he made no money he would most
likely have changed his tack and written more commercially-attractive
works, in which case we should not have any knowledge of the name of
Shakespeare.

Why do you assume that Shakespeare hatched from the egg fully formed?
Certainly his surviving works are those of a master of the craft, but
most writers create "early works" and then do the "changed his tack"
thingy more than once before they are published at all, nevermind
creating works that survive for hundreds of years. Naif.

It's not very likely he'd have become a starving artist
slaving in a garret over his undiscovered masterpiece,

It's extremely likely that if he had no other means of support he was
in fact a "starving artist" until his craft developed to the point of
making his work worth publishing.

as that species
was still to be invented by the Romantics.

Your lofty disdain for all things insufficiently material to be
flushed down a toilet closes you eyes to what may in fact be the most
significant portion of reality.

That's a lofty concern, and not at all practical. There are those,
perhaps you're even one, who say Shakespeare would be writing soaps
were he alive today, or Hollywood movies, or whatever.

"perhaps" innit.

There's simply
no reason to think so. Anyone whose aims in writing are what his
evidently were would take on such work for money, perhaps, if in dire
straits, but would have no affinity with the work.

That's rather similar to my cynical comments: he'd starve at writing
skits. Might do well enough to get by at technical writing, that's
not a tough business to earn money in, though it'll drive you nuts in
short order.

You don't get to be the greatest literary figure in the history of the
English speaking world by accident, thanks to some side-effects of
what you happened to be churning out for your troupe of mummers.

That again is conjecture, reasonable enough and based on some
evidence, but not necessarily true. Given sufficient intelligence and
talent, masterpieces can and do come about as side-products.

No they don't.

Wakeup call Hope, you have not seen everything and done everything,
yet your arrogance induces you to consistenly make horse*** claims
about what is and is not possible. When a little boy puts his hands
over his ears and screams "NO NO NO NO" it doesn't change the facts,
it simply allows the little *** to comfort himself.

We don't
see it much today, but I suspect that if I was to pore over
art-history books for a few hours (nope, won't happen) some examples
could be found.

Don't waste your time, because you're wrong.

I won't waste my time because it would be fruitless to present visual
evidence to the blind.

The limit of genius is unknown Hope, and to assume it
can be determined by measuring the past is assumption.

No, it's induction.

Keep your motor running Hope, so far you're going nowhere so you might
choose also to put it in gear. Was Man created or did Man evolve?

You
only get to be a genius by doing what you do deliberately, regardless
of the gains to be had, and come what may.

You only get to be a genius by being one, Hope. You can deliberate
and intentionalize and will yourself into a position where you have
almost maximized your potential, but being a genius is like having red
hair, you have it or you don't, and dye-jobs need not apply.

You cannot become a genius by willing it, but your works of genius
will not produce themselves.

Another "trusim of utmost banality" or what the fuckever you called
it.

Not everything a genius does is a work of
genius. Mozart wrote some tripe. Bach didn't, as far as I can see, but
two thirds of his output is lost to us forever.

I'd wash my hands of you Hope, but although you are damaged almost
beyond repair you may yet manage to salvage the pitiful remains of
your soul. You are published in some magazine, so you puff yourself
up into a grand expert of all things. I've been published in a few
technical books of no great merit, but at least I retain sufficient
perspective to recognize that as far as real writing goes I've done
nothing to date. You do not have that perspective. You're busy
paying your bills and pretending that you are sufficient. Unrealized
genius is worse than fulfilled idiocy.

Show me your profound novels Hope, and earn the respect you attempt to
pull over yourself through feats of legerdemain. I have read your
blogs, I have read your posts, you are nothing more than a
self-defeated little boy who makes pretenses about what he would have
done if only he could have done it. You didn't. You don't have the
balls for it, you ***.

Haddad has offered me more useful and concrete advice about actual
writing and publication that you have posted here in all the time
since I came back to the dead husk of mw. Go ahead fucktard, get
angry at me. Get very, very angry. Hate me with every molecule of
your remaining withered blackened soul. Then pour it out onto a
written page where it can do you some good, pissant.

--
Subtlety written subtly can be subtly edited away.
.