The Future of Writing

With National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) giving literary enthusiasts the perfect excuse to lock themselves away and embrace their inner novelist, here’s a thought for the art of writing in the 21^st century. This once simple and straightforward art form is now awash with a cluttering of paraphernalia that feigns to spur on the writer to greater realms of productivity. Only last month did David Nicholls, creator of the beloved One Day which was turned into a film starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, admit that he experimented with an application called Write or Die while crafting his latest novel Us. This tool apparently ‘aims to eliminate writer’s block’ by forcing authors to write a certain number of works within a specified time period or risk losing their previous work—a seemingly torturous atmosphere in which to create art. This is just one example of a plethora of apps and software that claim to summon a writer’s creative spirit one way or another. ZenWriter exemplifies a more kindly approach, taking over the entirety of your computer screen to bolster your focus while also providing soothing background music and the supposedly authentic, metallic tapping sounds of a vintage typewriter for a classic feel. Unfortunately the atmosphere created is a bit more Medal of Honour than Buddhist writing sanctuary.

Perhaps the zenith of writing-inspiring gadgets comes in the form of the Hemingwrite. Described as ‘the Kindle of writing composition’, this ‘distraction-free tool’ is designed in the vein of a classic typewriter but kitted out with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and so enabling users to back-up their masterpieces-in-the-making to the online Cloud. The device aims to revolutionise the way authors approach writing, steering them away from laptops—where the internet can tempt you away with infinite Buzzfeed quizzes and Youtube videos—and instead allowing users to dedicate their optimised powers of concentration to their work of art.

 

As far as I can see, the Hemingwrite will be a hit. I can imagine gangs of bearded hipsters in beenies hats slumped over their Hemingwrites in bohemian cafés and bars in London, New York and beyond, penning—although not quite literally—their post-post-modernist novels. That’s in between checking Twitter and Tumblr on their iPhone 7s for the latest on One Direction and Kim Kardashian’s backside. But perhaps that is just the cynic in me. The self-publishing market appears to be going from strength to strength and this device could well and truly provide the gunpowder for an explosion in self-publishing. Why not?

Yet it does seem rather too ironic that this device is named after an author who wrote in pencil and is known for his defining understated style. What Hemingway would have made of this device we’ll never know, but is this not a rather elaborate solution to a simple problem? Zadie Smith, in her rules for writers, advises simply working ‘on a computer that is disconnected from the internet’. Is that not enough? As well as being dubious about what need there is for such a device, I feel there might be more serious implications unforeseen by its creators. One of the key features of the Hemingwrite is that your work will be supposedly securely stored on the Cloud. Yet it was only recently that naked photos of powerful celebrities were leaked to the world via malicious hackers; is there not a possibility that this could happen with hotly anticipated novels? If so, could the Hemingwrite be bringing the publishing industry ever closer to the situation of the music industry, which continues to struggle with the issue of entire albums being leaked onto the Internet sometimes weeks before their official release date? It is a worrying thought, and it is something bibliophiles should watch with a keen eye in the months leading up to the Hemingwrite’s launch.

“The Blazing World” by Siri Hustvedt

Harriet Burden, the protagonist of Hustvedt’s novel, is a woman with an insatiable thirst for life and knowledge. As the novel proceeds we are made aware of Harry’s erudite, abstruse and astonishing breadth of mind through journals left behind after her death, as well as interviews with people who knew her and worked with her in her art. Further to her shining intelligence, Harry is a woman with a blazing fire in her belly, a woman with a stern and uncompromising attitude to life. Yet it seems that the misogynistic and superficial world in which she finds herself is unable to harness the force that she is, and instead Harry is forced to live out a repressed and confined lifestyle, playing out the social role expected of a woman in the twentieth-century.

 

But deep down, Harriet Burden knows that she is an exceptional artist. She also knows that the sole reason she does not flourish in the contemporary art world is because, as she puts it, she is “old lady artist Harry Burden with two adult children and a grandchild and a bank account”. Yes, she has produced work that has appeared in galleries. Yes, she has even received positive reception of her art in minor art journals. But there are people who have the audacity to suppose that her artistic abilities stem from her husband, a big time art dealer well-known in the artistic spheres. The hideous patriarchs of her life and the chauvinism of her contemporary society stoke up the fire that sits in Harry’s stomach until it becomes a blazing fire that will only be relinquished by some act of revenge, some act of justice. The Blazing World, a title taken from a utopian work by Margaret Cavendish, one of Harry’s foremost heroes, centralises on her act of revenge, her chef d’oeuvre which will expose the misogyny and corruption of the contemporary art world. Harriet Burden creates three pieces of work which will be revealed to the world by three ‘masks’; generally young, attractive males who will claim these works to be their own before Harry reveals the truth. The third of these artists, the true coup of Harriet’s plan, will see an artist named Rune, already an established and recognised force on the art scene, become the mask of the pinnacle third piece of art that will send violent undulations throughout the art world. The revelation that Rune’s work was in fact created by Harriet Burden will place her name in the history books as the woman who exposed and implemented equality into a once superficial and heavily sexist art world.

 

The three works are referred to as a whole as “Maskings”, but this project is later defined as:

 

“a trio that together comprise a single work called Maskings, which has a strong theatrical and narrative component because she [Harriet Burden] insists that it includes the reviews, notices, ads, and commentary the shows have generated, which she refers to as “the proliferations””.

 

In short, then, “Maskings”, Harriet Burden’s masterpiece, is The Blazing World, the book you are reading. Built up of Harry’s personal journals, interviews with her children, reviews of the three different pieces in newspapers and journals, interviews with friends and artists, the various miscellanea of The Blazing World amount to “the proliferations” that Harry was so desperate to include in the work as a whole. The structure of Hustvedt’s novel is complex and is worth spending time with, but I thought it a stroke of genius by the author to have this supposedly fictitious artwork made by a fictitious character actually come to life in Hustvedt’s own art. It drives home the urgency of the novel’s themes and forces us to consider them in relation to our contemporary art world in the twenty-first century.

 

Now I like art as much as the next person and enjoy visiting different cities and seeing new exhibitions. How art gets into those exhibitions, how artists gain their reputations, and essentially how the art world spins is something I have never really contemplated. Hustvedt’s novel forces her readers to open our eyes to these issues and to the establishment that runs the art world. That Hustvedt implies that the art world is plagued by misogyny and superficial values such as a person’s image or reputation is at once disappointing but, I have to admit, not hugely surprising. It is the second novel I have read recently, alongside Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, which suggests that the fast-evolving, open-minded, multi-cultural image many of our contemporaries hold of our modern society is completely awry and delusional. Americanah demonstrates that racism is still rife in the Western world. The Blazing World dissects sexism with relation to the art world. A sad prospect when art should be the tool for broadening and expanding people’s imaginations, prospects, ideas and vision of the world.

 

Hustvedt’s writing is also excellent. Her creation of Harriet Burden is masterful and must have demanded a large amount of research and intelligent discussion with her peers. The result is a fascinating character who intrigues from start to end by engaging readers on more levels to a multi-storey car park. The most important level is probably the personal and emotional connection the reader develops with Harry, a strong empathy that reaps a deep sadness in the latter pages of the novel. Some of the passages in the last fifty pages I thought to be absolutely wonderful in tying up the true tragedy of Harriet’s story. But besides the melancholy that sits at the throat of the novel’s denouement, there is a shining light that bursts through the novel’s darkness, and that is the inextinguishable power of art. My absolute favourite passage of The Blazing World comes in the last pages of the novel when a mystical character named Sweet Autumn Pinkney visits Harry’s study for the last time to view her art:

 

“We walked around and looked at some of the other pieces of art, and then, when we were about to go through the door, I turned around to take one last look at Harry’s artworks, and then I saw their auras blazing out all around them. They were just things a person had made. For the first time, I really had the understanding of why the master taught that there were artists on the higher plane living on Sirius. It was because they had given their spirits and energies into what they made. They must have had a lot of extra energy to give away. Anyway, I swear the whole room was lit by those shivering rainbows.”

 

 Siri Hustvedt

Like any other artistically-inclined human being, I admire this idea that what we create in our lifetime leaves behind a part of our energy, of our character, of our spirit after we die. Although art is a fragile thing which might be lost or destroyed or stolen or misrepresented, art is one of a small number of instruments in life that we have to leave behind a part of our energy, our spirit, of our character in the world. This is, of course, an ancient idea that is explored in works from Homer to Shakespeare and beyond. But it is an eternally important idea that is easily forgotten and is wholly relevant to Hustvedt’s discussion of art.

 

An intriguing protagonist, a complex structure, urgent themes and extremely well-written, The Blazing World is only the second book I have read from this year’s Man Booker Prize long-list. I would, however, be extremely surprised if this one missed out on the short-list and at this moment in time I would not be surprised if Hustvedt’s novel came up trumps and won the accolade. A fantastic book that I would heartily recommend.