Ah, but when dealing with (genre' writing, as with any other, I think
we come back to Sturgeon's law etc. Within the genre or form does this
work work for me ( now reading, as audience). Of course, I believe that
my sense of what it good (say Delany, Le Guin, Banks, to mention just a
few, in SF) is 'correct.' But I agree, that most writers in any field
actually care about what they are writing, & are engaged.
But if as writer, I can only do what I can feel 'right' doing, as
audience I can still decide whether or not to consider some other
author's practice worth my attention. If writing is (if art is) in one
sense a way of saying Pay Attention, only some of it gets me to do so
(& another 'some' will get to other audiences)....
Doug
On 19-Feb-05, at 5:39 PM, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
> I agree too with fuck the audience. Though I don't know about the
> distinction as
> you draw it here between pandering to an audience and writing
> legitimately for
> one, because it's often seemed to me, in practice, that various
> people, for
> instance, poets may say that genre writers of westerns 'pander' to a
> market for
> even considering the constraints of genre, and yet those genre writers
> I've
> known have all written out of their legitimate imaginations and
> preoccupations,
> trying to tell a real story within the constraints of the form. So I'm
> a bit reluctant
> on this one, it seems in some sense the way one takes all the light
> for oneself
> while allowing the others only illegitimate shadows. There is no way
> to know
> from outside whether the one writing the story is intensely engaged,
> imaginatively engaged. If everything that is is holy, and it seems to
> me it is, then
> better to act out of that belief and measure one's own heart not
> everyone else's.
>
> best,
>
> Rebecca
>
> ---- Original message ----
>> Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 09:20:23 +1100
>> From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: Audience
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> Hi Doug
>>
>> On 20/2/05 3:31 AM, "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>>
>>> But this leads back to how much you trust an audience, or what kind
>>> of
>>> writing (& its audience) you find yourself exploring. Alison has a
>>> very
>>> different audience for her fantasy trilogy than for her poetry,
>>> although in a few cases, me for instance, they overlap. And I suspect
>>> she approaches the concept of audience & what kind of writing she
>>> attempts for each in different ways as she takes up one or the other
>>> (n0ot necessarily consciously).
>>
>> Quite consciously: I'm very aware that the fantasy series is _for_ an
>> audience, and that I want that audience to be wide. This is (I
>> realised
>> with a certain surprise when I started writing this series) the first
>> time
>> the idea this has entered my thoughts in this way. I haven't found it
>> diminishing; the reverse, rather, since it throws my other work into
>> sharp
>> relief. Its primary effect (and I expect this sounds ridiculously
>> banal) is
>> to make me increasingly aware of getting my grammar right, so
>> whatever I
>> write is absolutely clear. Getting pronouns/nouns invisibly
>> unambiguous
>> when, for example, I had three male characters in the same scene,
>> nearly
>> drove me mad in the last book. Also, there are places - extreme sexual
>> violence, say - where I will not go.
>>
>> This kind of links up with what Richard was saying, about what it
>> means to
>> write for an audience. I spent a couple of hours with Josh the other
>> night
>> going through a short story he had written (my kids are very
>> demanding in
>> employing us as a on-site creative writing teachers). I only ever ask
>> questions about what he meant, and talk about the grammar: if he gets
>> the
>> grammar right, other people will be able to read and understand it,
>> which is
>> what he wants. The process of getting him to understand that, to be
>> precise
>> and to read every word, since people don't usually have ESP, is
>> actually
>> quite interesting. The rest is up to him.
>>
>> On the other hand, my audience is always myself, even with the fantasy
>> series, when it's me at around 17; I write the kinds of things, I
>> suspect
>> without exception, that I like to read. I write poetry (when I do)
>> for
>> reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, and I can't imagine
>> concretely who
>> might read it, apart from a few friends; the best metaphor I know for
>> that
>> is Celan's "message in a bottle". Most of the time I don't think
>> about
>> audience at all, since it's impossible to know what it is.
>>
>> I remember working on an experimental theatre piece with a performer
>> when
>> the director raised the question and my collaborator looked up with a
>> very
>> dark expression and said, Fuck the audience. In many circumstances,
>> that
>> attitude is the only way to respect the audience. I have always been
>> troubled by the pandering to an audience, to the idea that an
>> audience means
>> that work ought to be shaped in certain standardised ways. You get
>> that in
>> extreme ways in the film industry. These are actually formal
>> questions,
>> although they're usually disguised as "market" expectations, and
>> usually
>> they're pretty fatal to any art.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> A
>>
>> Alison Croggon
>>
>> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>> Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
>> Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
>
>
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 Canada
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
Reserved books. Reserved land. Reserved flight.
And still property is theft.
Phyllis Webb
|