Environmental Impact of Fiction

A potentially golden gimmick for ‘getting the book out’ (helpful only after said book’s written; in the course of writing itself, what I’m about to propose will probably serve only as another distraction):

Carbon-footprinting of the novel-making process.

In other words, a careful attempt to tabulate the environmental impact of writing an extended work of fiction.

Rules:

1. Daily record-keeping is a must. The task of keeping track of every little expenditure of energy otherwise appears too massive to undertake. But if kept up with, in the manner of a shopkeeper balancing the books at night, it should prove feasible.

2. Details count. The actual calculation of the overall carbon-footprint will undoubtedly have to be outsourced, to a company armed with the appropriate data. Do you know how much impact an ink-printed page entails, compared to a laser-printed page? Or either, compared to a photocopy? No. But eventually, once you’ve found someone who does know, these details will matter, if only up to some reasonable point.

3. Routinization of writing practice will make record-keeping easier. (So, another reason to develop a habit of composition).

4. Categorize the various ‘inputs’ of the novel-writing-process. Raw Consumption, obviously: paper, pens/pencils, ink cartridges, books purchased specifically for research purposes or writerly instruction. Secondary Consumption: clock run-time of computer during typing sessions (likely a bot exists that can do this automatically); track road-mileage of car trips to libraries, field sites, cafes, etc; record, particularly for anecdotal appeal, cups of coffee/tea consumed during composition.

Approach a publisher, not only with a manuscript, but also data of these kinds in hand. It’s golden marketing angle. Think author interviews, think magazine pieces, think special front-of-the-store displays (constructed of 100% recycled cardboard, of course!).

Along the way, you may even come upon ways of reducing your own impact. Hurray!

Rhizome

So. A rhizome. Not the rhizome, but some rhizome. Some rhizome, photographed somewhere. Some picture lifted without qualm from some website whose creator doubtless will never discover the reproduction of her content, here. Although, “without qualm” isn’t quite right, for I do feel some kind of inner stirring, staring at this image. Only the disturbance has nothing to do with any copyright infraction, but rather, with the wrenching, almost pornographic, power of the picture itself. To look at a rhizome is to look at something which ought not to exist.

Deleuze doubtless discusses, somewhere in A Thousand Plateaus, this sense of repugnance, this subconscious aversion to the very form of the rhizome, which echoes, I imagine, the sort of attenuated power to disturb which we moderns can only just detect in the ancient myths of multi-animal hybrids: the sphinx, the minotaur, Skylla, etc. Such at least is my own, initial, impression. An impression, too, of an estatic vegetable sexuality, which typically we do not find ourselves confronted with when regarding plant life. “Flora’s a freak!” might be a fitting caption.

Nostalgia, Sexuality, Desire

  How do we recognize ourselves in the world around us, and in what ways do we strive to be recognized? Such questions point to an under-examined link between sexual and nostalgic desire. The second of these, the experience of longing for the past, has certainly received less discussion as an offshoot of the human search for recognition. Probably this is because of the stigma of failure inseparable from true nostalgic interludes. Nostalgia, after all, is simply a name for the present’s inadequacy in the face of the past. This air of failure, of falling short, relates to the search for recognition in a number of ways. It may, for example, stem from a deficit of recognition in one’s current circumstances, as compared to the recognition one received (or perceived oneself to receive) in the past. Alternatively, it may be bound up with the knowledge that one’s past is, by and large, private territory, closed-off terrain, which no one else can ever populate. On this second account, the increase of nostalgic sentiment with age simply tracks the increase of the stock of personal experiences which must forever remain more or less closed to others.  Nostalgia swells because of the mounting defecit of interpersonal recognition of personal history. Clearly this applies to both the desire to be recognized, and the attempt to recognize oneself; as the surrounding world changes, the material imprint of experiences I regard as constitutive of myself fades, until I arrive at circumstances where I am not, and where I never was.

       Sexuality interests me here only insofar as it connects with nostalgia. I don’t mean sexual nostalgia, though the experience of longing for a past partner is certainly common enough. The point, rather, is to ask whether sexual acts, of whatever kind, should be regarded as attempts to impose one’s entire past on another, to alleviate in an instant or an evening the debt which one’s present owes one’s past. If this is the case, we should think about the intersection of nostalgia and violence implied thereby. Not the violence of physical penetration (or equally, of non-penetrative sexual excitation), but the violence of this attempt to transgress the boundaries of normal interpersonal recognition, to exceed the typical level of understanding that exists between two people. Nostalgia, then, would include among its characteristics an overpowering instinct to impose on others a total and exhaustive familiarity with our own “selves.”

     Nostalgia, if too often indulged in, can give rise to fascistic behaviors. History appears to bear this out Here again, the parallel to sexuality is apparent. In this light, the old lament, “you can’t repeat the past,” should perhaps be refigured as an ethical imperative: You can’t repeat the past, and more importantly, you must not try to.

Development and its Discontents

        Communities: revival and regression.

        In the past three weeks, due no doubt to my increased attentiveness to such things, I’ve encountered three different ‘outside media’ mentions of my region, northeastern Ohio. Each touched upon the area’s current economic plight. The first, from the Brookings Institute’s Reflections on Regionalism, discusses Cleveland as a prime case of a large city denied any possibility of expansion by the fact that all its bordering suburbs are incorporated, and as such, cannot be annexed (to read the intro, click here). The second, from the New York Times, includes a photo of an ethanol fuel plant under construction in Ohio. The third, in Germany’s Der Spiegel, was the most surprising of all; incorporated into the title story on the U.S. mortgage crisis was a two-page profile of Cleveland as one of the hardest-hit American cities, with something like a 10% foreclosure rate.

      I don’t want to catalogue the connections I myself see between these three pieces. Rather, I wonder whether anyone can cite other recent examples of national/international media coverage of development issues facing dear old Ohio.

Preliminaries

A bit solipsistic, beginning a new blog. Or, better, beginning to blog. Certainly I’m convinced of my competence to write about, to ruminate on, a fair number of topics; otherwise I wouldn’t undertake to blog in the first place. Blogging itself, however, is hardly one of these areas of familiarity.

Best then to cut the stream of consciousness short and outline a few aims I have in mind for this venue. First, I’m looking for a forum to discuss writing: my own, and that of others. Second, I hope to test out here certain ideas related to my current fictional projects, both the more and the less ambitious ones. I’m currently working on a novel which has driven me to reflect quite a bit on the meaning of the Midwest for America, both historically and in the present day; I invite anyone interested in these issues to comment and to share his/her own views. (This topic of interest provides, incidentally the inspiration for my banner). Finally, I may touch on foreign policy issues here, though more in the mode of the gentle bon mot than the expurgatory rant.

Auch wuerde ich gern ein bischen auf Deutsch schreiben und ich bitte um Kommentieren darauf.  Allerdings bin ich ein Englisch-Muttersprachler.

 Oh, finally: in hopes of spurring book-related discussion, I will post whatever I’m currently reading as a picture accompanying each entry. Although I am currently a student, most of these books will be works which I’m reading on my own. I tend to be somewhat programmatic in my reading; however, in qualification, I should note that the program of the moment is almost always open to change.