Commonplace 237 George & Dorothy Parker.
With paintings by Gwen John (1876-1939)
It's funny how the mind wanders round. Apropos the impending inauguration of the dire and egregious creature that is Donald Trump as the next US President, I was reminded of this line from Dorothy Parker:
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
How true, how true... more of Ms Parker anon.
We know George's writing has always been a guilty pleasure for a sophisticated elite who likes to feel it has a special understanding not just of the work, but of the man. Virginia Woolf and George Orwell were fans, and did their best to spread the word about George's talents, but I bet they secretly hoped to keep him a private passion, free from the common or garden reader's trivial gaze.
George particularly appeals to those who think the suffering endured by a creator is meaningful and produces quality work. This rose-tinted view of pain is wrong, of course, but that is another post entirely. Successive religions make suffering out to be educational, even enlightening, and some go so far as to lie and say there will be a massive gift at the end of it (only you have to die to claim it). Anyone who has ever done any actual suffering will tell you, the only thing suffering teaches is to avoid it forevermore. In fact, to make others suffer before you suffer yourself is the reason behind many human conflicts, is it not, Israel?
George liked to peddle this notion that he was a martyr to any number of antagonists, corporeal and imagined, from prying neighbours to uncooperative wives; from poverty to smelly dustbins under the stairs put their to piss him off. Many of these situations were nothing more than self-inflicted wounds brought about by an intolerant nature and a lack of social skills. But, by claiming that because he had suffered he needed sympathy in order to deliver the best he had to offer, he manipulated those who gave him support and disarmed them from treating him to an honest evaluation of his personality and his talents. In his early days as an author, he made mileage out of the fact that he was financially strapped, but soon gave that up, presumably because he feared someone would blow the lid on his fake persona of writer who had walked the walk of poverty, And then there was the need to avoid any scrutiny of his origins in case someone unearthed some of the unsavoury truth about his thieving ways and his prison term.
Suffering tends to quench creativity - few, in their hour of torment, reach for a pen or a pencil, thinking, 'I must get this down before it passes'. It is generally afterwards, that the sufferer might feel moved to record their experience, but in the moment, not so much. When the likes of Edvard Munch recorded his loved ones' death scenes with his paintbrush, or when war photographers see a victim of napalm through a lens and forget to help, there is something deeply voyeuristic and unsettling about it - which may be Munch's point, of course, and Nick Ut's.
George never really suffered the sort of loss that makes life intolerable - though no-one could deny being sent down from Owens College and the subsequent prison sentence, catching syphilis, and the disappointment of not being taken up as the natural successor to Charles Dickens, took the edge of his personal happiness. But apart from the deaths of his father and brother, William, real emotional pain eluded him. But, George knew, if he could capitalise on the guilt/gullibility of an audience who freely gave of the sympathy he so deeply craved, then these folk would overlook the deathly pessimism, the misogyny, the self pity, the (at times) dreary subject matter of the novels, the snobbery and misanthropy of it all. They might even conclude he was a middling writer only because the suffering got in the way of the genius.
His hope was that the empathic reader would be able to freely offer him some creative leeway; cut him some creative slack. If the works were below par, well, he was a martyr to the whatevers, so it wasn't really his fault if some of his books are almost unreadable to the average reader - being inaccessible could pass as an advantage in a world of snobs. Modern writers such as Will Self have a similar bent towards elitism in their writing, making a virtue of an inability to write plain prose for the Everyman. It's a conceit that sets out to pose as a superior intellect, which is also a Gissing stratagem. Still, literature has room for all abilities and kinds of writing, as I am proving.
One person who saw through it all and made light of the Gissing literary legend was Ms Dorothy Parker, for it was she who wrote:
They say I don't know what I'm missing.
The
sweeter the apple, the blacker the core. Scratch a lover and find a foe!
 |
| Dorothy Parker 1893-1967 |
With paintings by Gwen John (1876-1939)
It's funny how the mind wanders round. Apropos the impending inauguration of the dire and egregious creature that is Donald Trump as the next US President, I was reminded of this line from Dorothy Parker:
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
How true, how true... more of Ms Parker anon.
We know George's writing has always been a guilty pleasure for a sophisticated elite who likes to feel it has a special understanding not just of the work, but of the man. Virginia Woolf and George Orwell were fans, and did their best to spread the word about George's talents, but I bet they secretly hoped to keep him a private passion, free from the common or garden reader's trivial gaze.
George particularly appeals to those who think the suffering endured by a creator is meaningful and produces quality work. This rose-tinted view of pain is wrong, of course, but that is another post entirely. Successive religions make suffering out to be educational, even enlightening, and some go so far as to lie and say there will be a massive gift at the end of it (only you have to die to claim it). Anyone who has ever done any actual suffering will tell you, the only thing suffering teaches is to avoid it forevermore. In fact, to make others suffer before you suffer yourself is the reason behind many human conflicts, is it not, Israel?
George liked to peddle this notion that he was a martyr to any number of antagonists, corporeal and imagined, from prying neighbours to uncooperative wives; from poverty to smelly dustbins under the stairs put their to piss him off. Many of these situations were nothing more than self-inflicted wounds brought about by an intolerant nature and a lack of social skills. But, by claiming that because he had suffered he needed sympathy in order to deliver the best he had to offer, he manipulated those who gave him support and disarmed them from treating him to an honest evaluation of his personality and his talents. In his early days as an author, he made mileage out of the fact that he was financially strapped, but soon gave that up, presumably because he feared someone would blow the lid on his fake persona of writer who had walked the walk of poverty, And then there was the need to avoid any scrutiny of his origins in case someone unearthed some of the unsavoury truth about his thieving ways and his prison term.
 |
| Woman with Cat |
Suffering tends to quench creativity - few, in their hour of torment, reach for a pen or a pencil, thinking, 'I must get this down before it passes'. It is generally afterwards, that the sufferer might feel moved to record their experience, but in the moment, not so much. When the likes of Edvard Munch recorded his loved ones' death scenes with his paintbrush, or when war photographers see a victim of napalm through a lens and forget to help, there is something deeply voyeuristic and unsettling about it - which may be Munch's point, of course, and Nick Ut's.
George never really suffered the sort of loss that makes life intolerable - though no-one could deny being sent down from Owens College and the subsequent prison sentence, catching syphilis, and the disappointment of not being taken up as the natural successor to Charles Dickens, took the edge of his personal happiness. But apart from the deaths of his father and brother, William, real emotional pain eluded him. But, George knew, if he could capitalise on the guilt/gullibility of an audience who freely gave of the sympathy he so deeply craved, then these folk would overlook the deathly pessimism, the misogyny, the self pity, the (at times) dreary subject matter of the novels, the snobbery and misanthropy of it all. They might even conclude he was a middling writer only because the suffering got in the way of the genius.
 |
| The Nun c 1915-21 |
When I admit neglect of Gissing,
Until their arguments are subtler,
I think I'll stick to Samuel Butler.
Had they met, it's reasonable to suggest Ms Parker would have knocked some sense into George. She had a way with words when it came to castigating bullshitters and demolished all forms of hypocrisy and self-pitying cant with one line from her pen. He would have hated her, for being the better writer, a more honest human being, and a woman who was smarter than any man she ever met.
Let's have a look at some of her words of wisdom.
I don't care what is written about me so long
as it isn't true.
I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a
good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's
too adorable, I'd rather have money.
You think you're frightening me with your hell,
don't you? You think your hell is worse than mine.
When I was young and bold and strong,
The right was right, the wrong was wrong.
With plume on high and flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
But now I’m old - and good and bad,
Are woven in a crazy plaid.
I sit and say the world is so,
And wise is s/he who lets it go.
The right was right, the wrong was wrong.
With plume on high and flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
But now I’m old - and good and bad,
Are woven in a crazy plaid.
I sit and say the world is so,
And wise is s/he who lets it go.
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
a medley of extemporanea,
And love is a thing that can never go wrong,
and I am Marie of Romania.
And love is a thing that can never go wrong,
and I am Marie of Romania.
The two most beautiful words in the English
language are 'cheque enclosed’.
 |
| The Convalescent 1918/19 |
It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the
messes.
Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially,
can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only
irritation.
Writing is the art of applying the ass to the
seat.
There's life for you. Spend the best years of
your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George
Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.
Of course I talk to myself. I like a good
speaker, and I appreciate an intelligent audience.
If you're going to write, don't pretend to
write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's
the best you can do that kills you.
And, finally...
Once, when I was young and true.
Someone left me sad -
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.
Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.
Marianne aka Nell would have liked that one.
Have a look at
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