Sunday 29 April 2007

What's to shout about?

I have just been on a quick trawl through blogland and come back feeling vaguely depressed. So many voices out there, saying so many different things, and yet in the end, all is silence. How can that be though, when silence is so very precisely what it's not? And what is silence after all, if not the echo that follows when somebody has opened his mouth and found that no-one‘s listening?

Communication is what it’s supposed to be about and suddenly, it seems everybody’s doing it. Communicating, that is: to greater, or lesser effect. Some have only to open their mouths and say the first thing which comes, for the whole world to seem to be listening. Others scream and shout in vain, and might do so until doomsday, for all the response it’s ever going to get. The trick seems to be to find the one spot in which to feel at home and settle comfortably in it, whether anyone’s listening or not.

Take me for example. Not because there’s any reason on earth why you should do – but simply because I am here and this is my particular spot. I wrote a piece about Henry James the other day. Full of hope I was, that somebody, somewhere , would write back to say Yes, yes, that’s right, I love him too. Books have been written on him, after all. Millions of words have been expended, so he must be a person who counts. Again though, only the echo of silence. Except for the one person who wrote in to say how much she disliked him, and to complain of his failure of ‘narrative grip’ . Now I’m not at all sure I know what narrative grip is – but it does seem as if Henry James, as a subject, is out.

It was the same thing when I wrote about Virginia Woolf and Dante, and not a murmur from anywhere did they evoke. Am I to conclude that the whole world has somehow moved on from people like Virginia Woolf and Dante – or was I simply shouting from the wrong treetop in the wrong place? Either way, it doesn’t seem to matter very much. Blogland is only a microcosm of the whole after all – and this particular blogspot only a microcosm of that. But since someone, somewhere must be talking about and listening to something, the trick (again) seems to be find out what it is.

Is it Kate Middleton, I wondered yesterday, when I saw a Mirror headline saying that she “blamed Charles” for the breakup? Was Charles responsible for the breakup of Kate’s relationship with William? And if he was, was he right – and if right, does anyone really care? Well, Kate cares, of course; and so, I daresay does William himself. Kate’s friends care, and Kate’s mother, and most of the readers of Hello. The same people, I’m sure, who care whether Richard Gere should go to court in India or not, over that rather foolish public kiss. What was Richard Gere doing grabbing Shilpa Shetty in public like that – and what, in the general scheme of things, does it matter anyway, whatever it was?

It might on the other hand be the question of Prince Harry that people are minding about today. Should he go to Iraq or shouldn’t he? The Queen says he should, the military top brass seem to disagree. Would one receive a spate of comments if one expressed an opinion, blogwise, on the future of Prince Harry’s army career, I wonder? Probably – but again, what’s to shout about? In the end he’ll go or he won’t go: it’s as simple, and finally un-newsworthy, as that.

Iraq itself remains intensely shoutable-about, sad to say. But after the war has been argued over, and won, and lost, and then won and lost all over again in an entirely unforeseeable way… after Saddam has been toppled, and shamed, and then achieved a kind of glory after all right at the moment of dying… after the shouting has been shrill, and then sombre, then shrill and sombre again, and still the brave young men die out there for no conceivable end………. the only question which seems left to ask is: should they stay, or should they come home? Sooner or later they will have to be brought home of course. It would seem better that it should happen now, while some at least of them are still alive.

It is not my intention to be flippant about Iraq though, for I care about it deeply, and always did. But then it’s not my place to talk about it either, since I am neither the Prime Minister, nor the Defence Secretary, nor even Bryan Appleyard. So the search is still on, for me, to find the thing that is mine to talk about. Better to stick to Henry James, perhaps? Or better still, find something really meaningful to shout about. On the whole, I think that one can only say the thing which comes, and go on hoping for the best.

For me, the next thing which comes will probably be the loneliness of the long-distance blogger. That, and the difficulties experienced by the first-person narrator, in fiction. Not mainstream blogging subjects either, I concede it. Especially since I’ll be taking people like Emily Bronte, and Evelyn Waugh, and Scott Fitzgerald as my models, not one of whom seems likely to raise much of a shout. There’s a good deal of re-reading to be done before I can attain to it, anyway; I shall have to go through Wuthering Heights again, for a start. So there’s still time to reconsider my position, and find something else that works.

But what is blogging if not an exploration of the art of the possible? One says the only thing one can, and if no more than one person listens, has it not at any rate still been said? There’s a whole world of blogging out there; and Harry will, or will not go to Iraq. The world will still turn, and sometime the brave and battered troops will actually come home. And when all has been said and done, and written about, and said and written about again - it’s still going to be pretty much as I said about it at the outset: what’s to shout about?

(Just a thought, that's all.)

14 comments:

Catherine said...

Blogland reflects the real world I think Beatrice. Some are rich and famous, some are obscure. There is little sense in it. You could say it was a metaphor for life perhaps?

I Beatrice said...

Quite so Marianne. I guess it was just that I felt like shouting, and that was all that came.

Mopsa said...

Keep shouting. That's all we can do. But far better than keeping schtum.

I Beatrice said...

Thank you Mopsa. Shall visit you on your own site now that I know you're there.

Bryan Appleyard said...

Nor EVEN Bryan Appleyard!

I Beatrice said...

To Bryan Appleyard who came in all state to visit my blog: I have a simple mind, Bryan, and am not sure I take your point. But my reference to you was made in all humility and esteem, I do assure you!

(I was unable to post this reply on your own site for some reason.)

Bryan Appleyard said...

Just a joke impying that a rate myself above the PM etc, which I don't

I Beatrice said...

And there was I thinking I'd placed you rather high!
Oh well, as I said, I'm a simple soul.

Chris at 'Chrissie's Kitchen' said...

Oh dear, that I should be the one to coin 'narrative grip', Beatrice!

(Just teasing)

But I take your point entirely - perhaps, figuratively, one may imagine Edvard Munch's 'The Scream', as being a cry into the wilderness. I bought my husband a T-shirt in America a few years ago. I couldn't resist. It had written on it, 'If a man speaks in the forest and there's no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?'

Catherine said...

Definitely, Lizzie. A man's place is in the wrong at all times.

I Beatrice said...

Yes Lizzie - it was rotten of me to do that, I know.

I guess I felt that HJ has about as much narrative grip as he requires for his purposes......... Rather as Mozart thought he had, when the Austrian Emperor compained of his having produced 'too many notes'.

And yes, I guess the man would still be wrong in the forest without a woman in sight, poor thing!

Chris at 'Chrissie's Kitchen' said...

Just thought I'd let you know, Beatrice, that a dinner guest was totally 'on your side' vis a vis' H.J. - at least so far as his later published works were concerned. He( guest), said that H.J. had a 'secretary', or some such, who wrote down his (H.J.'s) words as spoken so he was not able to wrestle with them so much! See what you have begun!! Marvellous, I think.

I Beatrice said...

I'm thrilled to hear that Lizzie - I had begun to think there weren't any of my sort left! It was generous of you to tell me, too - after the narrative grip thing!

(I sometimes think I don't keep a firm enough hold on n/g myself! It's a difficult thing to achieve, in the 1000-word twice-weekly blog...)

HJ did emply a typist when he could no longer write his books himself in longhand. And his three last great works do reflect the change - deplorably so,in the eyes of many people. Though not in mine - he can be as diffuse as he likes, and I'll still adore him.

(Do go to Portrait of a Lady, by the way - and see if you don't fall in love with Ralph Touchett?)

Livvy U. said...

The following are all true:
Portrait of a Lady was my favourite book of all time as a teenager and beyond. I've read it at least twice, and have a lovely, small old copy with a dark blue hardcover and thin pages. I remember carrying it all over Italy with me on my first visit there, aged 16. I've not read it in a long time, but do sometimes return to it just to read that first stunning opening page about afternoon tea.

Virginia Woolf - more influence upon me than I can say. Her suicide note makes me weep every time. Her beautiful photographic portrait in profile graced one of my diary covers. I read her novels, her diaries, what other people said of her. Went to Sissinghurst. Kept an old postcard of the writing tower there for years because of its associations with her. My mother Esme, also an actress, compiled a show about her with excerpts from her work.

Dante - that first line. I read Dante in Italian, also at 16, as part of my Italian A Level. My teacher was in love with the classics, and passed the same on to me. Again I've not been there for years, but the associations, the images, live on. Finding oneself in the middle of a wood in the middle of one's life... (paraphrasing/remembering like crazy) These things don't leave.

I have only a small, loyal band of readers for my blog. But I do it to speak, to 'find my voice', to practise writing so that in some small way I can reflect and continue the traditions that these voices taught me.
Livvy