between these lines
There’s a fine line between well written prose and writing that is simply muddled. It’s this muddled writing that you’ll often find stuck to livejournals everywhere, certainly mine can be counted among these. I only mention this because as of late it seems that this line has become blurred. The praise of such muddled work has led to more which in turn has inspired a legion of budding writers to do the same. This becomes a problem when something well written is tossed aside because at initial glance it looks as though it may be muddled, for me this was the case with a novel I’ve been reading entitled ‘the Lover’. It’s a book written by Marguerite Duras, in prose, and upon first glance I decided that it wasn’t for me. However in giving it a chance I soon found that there was more to it then the stringing together of words like “photo” and “despair”. Its language and refusal to use names forces awareness to its status as an example of Ecriture Feminine by creating characters that resist the restrictive roles that Ecriture Feminine struggles against. I could delve more into Ecriture Feminine but that’s really not what livejournal is for. The point is that sometimes there are undercurrents to works that may at first seem muddled, of course there are also those that are just plain muddled.