Sustineo octopodem
Friday I received a book from Amazon, Writing Fast by Jeff Bollow, which (despite the appalling hype on the cover) contains some very sensible advice on how to handle both drafting and rewriting. Some of the techniques in the fourth section may just be the tonic I need to help me grapple with the massive revision of the Octopus now barely underway.
Which is not to say that the rest of the book is not salted with useful things. In Chapter 4, Bollow goes on about the importance of capturing your idea (by which, in the case of fiction, he means the theme) clearly and accurately, and expressing it in a single sentence. Anything longer is too unwieldy for the mind to focus upon, and without that focus (particularly in revision), the work will use its unity. There are of course other ways to find the focus of a work, but for strongly thematic or didactic works (including most non-fiction), Bollow’s method strikes me as a good one.
Of course I put down the book at that point and tried to come up with a suitable one-sentence Leitmotiv for the Magnificent Octopus. Bollow offers as an example a sixteen-word sentence taken from the screenplay of The Shawshank Redemption, which he takes as expressing the theme of that film. I did not want my sentence to run longer than that, but in the end I had to settle for twenty-three words, though conveniently divided into three clauses.
Here is what I have got:
Without truth there is no power;
with truth there is no weakness;
but the use of truth is the hardest truth to learn.
By a happy chance, the clauses of that sentence could individually serve as epigraphs to the three intended volumes of the Octopus. Unhappier, of course, is the fact that thus baldly stated, the ‘theme’ sounds like New Age drivel; but then most ‘themes’ do. Of course I do not literally mean that truth, or knowledge of the truth, cannot coexist with weakness: sometimes the truth is that we are weak, and it is then our duty to recognize it. I do mean that our weakness must be truly recognized to be overcome, and our strength is no strength if we do not know its capacity and its bounds. (I almost wrote limits, but that misses the mark. I mean that a bull is very strong, and so is the span of a bridge, but they are strong in different ways and one kind of strength is no substitute for the other. They exist within separate bounds, but that does not place any limit on how much strength of its kind a bull or a bridge may have.)
Philippians 4:13 is an oft-quoted ‘bit’ which sounds just as spacey and fatuous when quoted out of context: ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’ Of course this is not literally true, unless you recognize the subordinate clause as exerting a very significant restriction. If Christ is, as St. John maintains, identical with the Logos that was the agent of the Divine will in the creation of the universe, then you could say all things are ‘strengthened’ by Christ. The muscles of the bull and the metal of the bridge have each their kind of strength because nature as a whole follows the laws it does: and if nature was designed by God, so were the potential properties of the things we find within it. I happen to be male, and Christ will not strengthen me to bear children in my body; I am a creature of flesh and blood, and Christ will not strengthen me to survive without oxygen, for such things do not fit in this world that God has created. And while Christ may strengthen me to lift great weights, he will not strengthen me to lift up a five-ton block of marble without the aid of machines, because he has already strengthened the earth to attract it more powerfully than my muscles can overcome.
If the friends of the Christian church can have the understanding to take Philippians 4:13 in the way that it was undoubtedly intended, instead of as a licence for infinite wishful thinking (which some moderns seem distressingly eager to do), I hope that my friends can take my own poor generalization as I mean it, without thinking that I am an utter fool. As for what our respective enemies think, I do not care a fig, for I have not a fig to spare. If I should rise to the dignity of being thought a fool for no better reasons than those for which Christ and St. Paul are sometimes thought fools, I shall have been honoured more than I ought ever to hope.
By the way, I have often prayed for strength before, but during Mass yesterday (I went on Saturday because our bishop was formally installing the new parish priest that day) it occurred to me that there are trials that strength alone cannot overcome, and so I prayed for lightness of spirit instead. Perhaps that will be more helpful, if granted.
Which is not to say that the rest of the book is not salted with useful things. In Chapter 4, Bollow goes on about the importance of capturing your idea (by which, in the case of fiction, he means the theme) clearly and accurately, and expressing it in a single sentence. Anything longer is too unwieldy for the mind to focus upon, and without that focus (particularly in revision), the work will use its unity. There are of course other ways to find the focus of a work, but for strongly thematic or didactic works (including most non-fiction), Bollow’s method strikes me as a good one.
Of course I put down the book at that point and tried to come up with a suitable one-sentence Leitmotiv for the Magnificent Octopus. Bollow offers as an example a sixteen-word sentence taken from the screenplay of The Shawshank Redemption, which he takes as expressing the theme of that film. I did not want my sentence to run longer than that, but in the end I had to settle for twenty-three words, though conveniently divided into three clauses.
Here is what I have got:
Without truth there is no power;
with truth there is no weakness;
but the use of truth is the hardest truth to learn.
By a happy chance, the clauses of that sentence could individually serve as epigraphs to the three intended volumes of the Octopus. Unhappier, of course, is the fact that thus baldly stated, the ‘theme’ sounds like New Age drivel; but then most ‘themes’ do. Of course I do not literally mean that truth, or knowledge of the truth, cannot coexist with weakness: sometimes the truth is that we are weak, and it is then our duty to recognize it. I do mean that our weakness must be truly recognized to be overcome, and our strength is no strength if we do not know its capacity and its bounds. (I almost wrote limits, but that misses the mark. I mean that a bull is very strong, and so is the span of a bridge, but they are strong in different ways and one kind of strength is no substitute for the other. They exist within separate bounds, but that does not place any limit on how much strength of its kind a bull or a bridge may have.)
Philippians 4:13 is an oft-quoted ‘bit’ which sounds just as spacey and fatuous when quoted out of context: ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’ Of course this is not literally true, unless you recognize the subordinate clause as exerting a very significant restriction. If Christ is, as St. John maintains, identical with the Logos that was the agent of the Divine will in the creation of the universe, then you could say all things are ‘strengthened’ by Christ. The muscles of the bull and the metal of the bridge have each their kind of strength because nature as a whole follows the laws it does: and if nature was designed by God, so were the potential properties of the things we find within it. I happen to be male, and Christ will not strengthen me to bear children in my body; I am a creature of flesh and blood, and Christ will not strengthen me to survive without oxygen, for such things do not fit in this world that God has created. And while Christ may strengthen me to lift great weights, he will not strengthen me to lift up a five-ton block of marble without the aid of machines, because he has already strengthened the earth to attract it more powerfully than my muscles can overcome.
If the friends of the Christian church can have the understanding to take Philippians 4:13 in the way that it was undoubtedly intended, instead of as a licence for infinite wishful thinking (which some moderns seem distressingly eager to do), I hope that my friends can take my own poor generalization as I mean it, without thinking that I am an utter fool. As for what our respective enemies think, I do not care a fig, for I have not a fig to spare. If I should rise to the dignity of being thought a fool for no better reasons than those for which Christ and St. Paul are sometimes thought fools, I shall have been honoured more than I ought ever to hope.
By the way, I have often prayed for strength before, but during Mass yesterday (I went on Saturday because our bishop was formally installing the new parish priest that day) it occurred to me that there are trials that strength alone cannot overcome, and so I prayed for lightness of spirit instead. Perhaps that will be more helpful, if granted.