Pierre Bezukhov is condemned to be executed by firing squad –

In book four of War And Peace –

As a result of:

‘…the system, the concatenation of circumstances…’

A process we associate with Kafka.

Tolstoy presents the episode as an uncanny comedy.

A mode also found in Kafka.

Not least in The Trial.

So uncertainly amusing is the sequence in War that we fail to notice that Pierre benefits from a boy’s own adventure resolution.

He was shunted into the firing line by an arbitrary turn of fate.

But was delivered from it via an equally random zigzagging.

All of it supports Tolstoy’s thesis –

Made explicit in the intercalary chapters –

That human affairs are governed by destiny’s whimsy.

Kafka would turn the process on its head.

Have K put down due to a bureaucratic mix-up.

Rather than delivered from same by same.

Kafka was a fan of Tolstoy.

It’s not impossible, then, that he was inspired by the episode.

So much so that he developed an entire genre out of it.

Treated it as a mission statement.

So, realised its full potential.

Became its genetic offshoot.

In the genealogy of novels.

Though the procedure applies to all art.

Each work bifurcates off a facet of a predecessor.

Explores every inflection of its node.

Determinism decreed that nature should proceed by means of zoom and enhance.

Art, also, it seems.

Requiring a new categorical imperative:

Act as if the maxim of aspects of a predecessor’s work should become –

Through your actions –

A new genre.

RESOLVE TO EVOLVE

In the pushmi–pullyu experiment called evolution, a single attribute in one organism is –

Via natural selection –

Pushed to the limits of its potential.

In an eternal tug-of-more between organism and environment.

To perpetuate being in a changing biosphere.

As if the blind matchmaker said:

Okay, these paired attributes aren’t doing the business any longer.

So, maybe if we couple this with that?

In art, every work is directly descended from an earlier exemplar.

The uninterrupted chain runs all the way back to the earliest expression.

A palm print on a cave wall.

Or bowerbird’s installation?

MAKE IT NEW, BLAST IT!

A revolutionary turn takes aspects of an existing work –

Occasionally, just one –

Itself regarded as a revolutionary bend –

And nodes off it.

The latter realises the plastic potential of the former.

Via elongation.

Or eruption.

The morphological stew is eked out with locally-sourced additives.

Often, a revolutionary work concentrates extant material.

Saucily reduces it to intensify flavour, savour.

Is not so much concoction as decoction.

Montaigne – Nietzsche.

Tolstoy – Kafka.

SHOW BY EXAMPLE

Wagner dabbled in genre at the beginning of his career.

Italian/French/German.

Proved he could hack it with the worst of them.

Then, decided he was heir to Shakespeare and Beethoven.

So, set about fusing both.

Dramatically, he concentrated Aristotelian unities into single, act-long scenes.

Musically, he propelled tonality as far as it could go.

Further.

Till it broke.

This inspired others to pursue his example.

Some did so reverently.

Internally.

By exploring the Tristan and Isolde sound world.

Genre-ing it.

Bruckner/Debussy/Mahler.

Others did so irreverently.

Externally.

Accepting the challenge of its challenge.

Spun a new musical sensibility out of it.

Schönberg/Berg/Webern.

In literature, Joyce fixated on the proto post-modern experiments of Cervantes, Sterne.

Blended them with what was going on in music –

(Wagner again -)

And fine art –

Picasso/Braque/Duchamp –

And gave us literary modernism.

Or cubist literature.

This inspired its own phylogenic branchings.

Beckett/O’Brien/Burroughs.

Knights arrogant on an avant la lettre avant garde quest to f the ineffable.

PINTER PAUSED

Kafka, too, was branch-lined.

By Beckett, a bit.

And Pinter, patently.

The latter is as unthinkable without K as Tarantino would be without Scorsese.

All hacked paths to terra recently cognito.

Twin-towned them with local influences.

Until they seemed original.

Godot is Kafka plus Laurel and Hardy.

And the Pinteresque?

The OED suggests:

‘…having a sense of menace’.

But that’s incorporated in the Kafkaesque.

A modest proposal?

For the Pinteresque take:

One part Kafka –

One part Beckett –

One part Chandler –

And pause.

STARDUST MASH-UPS

The Jam would be unthinkable without The Who.

The song Sensation/I’m Free from Tommy is their template.

Woody Allen is – self-ownedly – a soup of the Marx Bros and Bergman.

Each subsequent superhero is a single attribute of the original propelled to the limit.

As Superman was Doc Savage, only more so.

And Savage, surely, Herakles summoned to the twentieth century.

SELF-REDUCE

Some creators node-off themselves.

Nietzsche was inspired by Heraclitus/Montaigne/Rousseau/et al.

But, after Untimely Meditations, no one so much as himself.

Each subsequent lightning storm alighted on a particular aspect of the last.

Lit it up.

The next illuminated an element in that.

Right up to The Will To Power.

A reduction concentrated as a stock cube.

Portrait –

Ulysses –

Finnegans Wake –

Each novel turn takes aspects of Joyce’s last and chases them to the edge of coherence.

MIMESIS IS BETTER THAN YOURS

Some believe that we should read a work in its original language.

As if language were where meaning lived.

It’s where originality resides.

All that it amounts to.

That is, familiar sentiment repeated in an unfamiliar argot.

Mimesis + Personality = Originality.

We experience identical phenomena.

Have done since dawn.

All that’s changed is the patois used to project same.

I HATE MIMESIS TO PIECES

Imitate/repeat/allude/confuse/reinterpret/refute/affirm/extend/project –

These action words lead all the way back to the first gesture.

Itself imitative of nature.

Derived from it.

An imperfect reflection of it.

IRONY ON TRANSFER

Today t-shirts bear images that mimic the way iron-on transfers filigreed after a few washes.

There was a time when this wasn’t fashionable.

When it signalled it was time to sling a shirt.

Not put it on.

Originality –

Its importance –

Arose as a consequence of the realisation of the impossibility of faithful reproduction.

We cannot achieve flawless imitation.

Okay –

Idealize this inability.

Deify failure.

ROOM FOR THE ELEPHANT

Encountering an elephant for the first time may provoke doubts about the Theory of Evolution.

That magnificent brute developed from an amoeba…?

However, if we take the time to unpack the process –

Each phase –

In the correct sequence –

Using the language of science –

Its framings/namings –

Metaphors and similes –

The progression will seem as plain as the trunk on its face.

Similarly, asked to jump from Thales to Wittgenstein, we may disappear into a ditch.

Get stuck in a fly-bottle.

But if we troubled to map every step –

Step-by-step –

The conclusion would seem tenable.

Inevitable.

ADAM NAMES THE ANIMALS

Marx called the Ancient world:

‘…the social childhood of mankind.’

Ancient Greece was its sandbox.

Where every idea that has preoccupied us since was titled.

Toyed with.

Tested.

It seemed to be the first occasion a concentration of invention accumulated, too.

In a particular geographical region.

Over a comparatively short time-frame.

A hothousing that would be repeated during the Renaissance.

The Enlightenment.

Et cetera.

We’ve always fabricated, of course.

But slowly.

Sporadically.

Over vast distances.

Egypt.

China.

GAME THEORY

Next time you come across a new theory –

This one –

See if you can’t winkle its Ancient Greek antecedent.

Evolution –

Existentialism –

Even quantum theory –

They’re all there.

Albeit in crude forms.

That didn’t exhaust their potentials.

Atomism is the most obvious.

Though some insist the ancient theory is unrelated to the modern.

That the claim that matter is composed of tiny, indivisible particles –

Not visible to the naked eye –

Is not the same as the claim that matter is composed of tiny, indivisible particles –

Not visible to the naked eye.

The law cautions that any vehicle that a sensible child might call a car is taxable.

Would this child regard the ancient and modern atomic theories as wholly distinct?

Consider the question taxing, even?

Leucippus and Democritus couldn’t have known that they were right, of course.

Without microscopes, Hadron colliders, etc.

Had no means of demonstrating that they were.

Nevertheless, they were there/thereabouts.

In the sense that modern physicists are, at least.

FOREFATHERS’ FATHERS

Did the Ancient Greeks have their Ancient Greeks?

Forebears we never credit because they forgot to carve their intuitions down?

Prevent what they’d chiselled away from deconstructing into dust?

Simply forgot to have a literature?

FOOTNOTES TO FOOTNOTES

It’s possible that everything that can be said has been said.

Was said millennia ago.

Footnotes to Plato is how Whitehead dismissed later Western philosophy.

Though the footprints lead further back.

As far as Thales, at least.

Whitehead might have added that ideas not named by the Pre-Socratics appear in Eastern philosophies and religions.

Nevertheless, from whatever timespace you start, what follows is all zoom and enhance.

Extend or telescope.

EMPHASIS – YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT EMPHASIS

Emphasis.

It’s all about emphasis.

There are new emphases.

Stronger.

Longer.

Stranger.

For all invention?

Probably.

Surely not?

Abstraction, say –

That was an entirely new turn in art?

Yes.

If you ignore the prints palmed-off by our cave-dwelling ancestors.

36,000 years ago.

That everything we say/sketch/shape –

To a greater or lesser extent –

Is abstracted from nature.

An expression of our experience of it.

CORE! HIGH ON A HILL WAS A LONELY POTSHERD

Every original work relies on a direct antecedent.

Reclines on one.

A predecessor as foundational as a single stratum of rock that helps constitute a hill.

Similarly, true originality –

Self-caused –

Supporting –

Is no more likely than a cliff layer that doesn’t lean on –

Assume the topographical personality of –

The one directly under it.

Its uniqueness consists in it being studded with flora and fauna peculiar to its age.

MOUNTAIN LANGUAGE: THE MONOLOGUE THAT’S REALLY A DIALOGUE

Plato couldn’t have existed without Thales.

Aristotle without Plato.

And so on up to the now.

Thesis –

Antithesis –

Synthesis –

Negation of the negation –

Flat contradiction –

Each new philosophy converses with the previous one.

In a dialogue that –

UnPinteresquely –

Believes itself to be a monologue.

But is its forebear.

Distinguished by local colouration.

THE METAPHOR OF THE MATTER

Select your analogue.

Writing is like…

Sculpture?

First, quarry the stone.

A solid slab of source.

Then, saw/chip/chisel/drill/file/polish.

Sometimes, the uncut stuff demands a passage of time –

Alteration in circumstance –

Before seeming workable.

The core of Carrara that birthed David defied artists for half a century before Michelangelo cracked it.

Bandellini had already wrestled it and lost.

(Michelangelo cut-in on him on a statue of Hercules too.)

So it is with original source material.

To dub an innovation born out of an old one original is analogous to calling each chip off a sculpture an original work.

True.

But inconsequential.

IT GAINS A LOT IN MISTRANSLATION

If one paid attention to all that had gone before –

All that Aristotle, say, said –

Entirely –

One might agree with him implicitly.

Consequently, feel no need to do anything.

Inattention occasions confusion.

Confusion doubt.

Doubt inspires mission.

Action.

BLIND TIRESI-JOYCE

Joyce is dictating Finnegans Wake to Beckett.

There is a knock at the door that the younger man doesn’t hear.

Joyce says, ‘Come in!’.

Beckett jots this down.

Later, he reads back what was transcribed.

‘What’s that “Come in!”?’ Joyce asks.

‘You said that,’ Beckett insists.

Joyce thinks for a moment.

‘Let it stand!’

UNRELIABLE READER

A commonplace:

Great writers are great readers.

Does this mean they’re careful readers?

Precisely no.

Reading is misunderstanding as often as understanding.

A filtering through faculties reliable as a fictional fallible narrator.

READING THE BOOK OF HIMSELF

Is there a good writer who hasn’t read other works?

Watched others work?

Listened to them talk?

A good writer is a good reader.

Watcher.

Listener.

What does that amount to?

Good sentence structure.

An auction of stolen treasures.

In a house where provenance is never mentioned.

MADE WISE THROUGH INCOMPREHENSION

Original thought may be the product of misunderstanding.

Derived from misreading.

This inspires an interpretation not previously considered.

A mistaking of the original intention of the author.

A misinterpretation that occasions a new conclusion.

What motivates this?

An attempt to redeem effort invested.

I read that.

Did not understand it as I had been instructed to.

Must justify time expended by inducing a new interpretation.

(As the author did before you.)

Kant said that, sometimes, it’s necessary to understand a thinker better than they understand themself.

This is what every originator does.

Understands a previous originator better than they understood themself.

Misunderstands them.

If doing so is constructive.

IGNORANCE IS THIS

If we knew everything, we’d realise that wholly original thought is impossible.

We don’t.

So, we don’t.

Instead, we recreate what exists.

Albeit, in a different place.

Using a different voice.

Originality is the triumph of ignorance.

Its revenge.

You don’t know enough?

Heroise your unknowing, then.

RUSH TO MISJUDGEMENT

The thrill experienced on believing one has broken open a new seam of thought:

The quickening a robber feels on breaking into a house.

Is it occupied?

What will I find in it?

Will I get away with it?

What will it bring me?

Such considerations infuse the crook with adrenalin.

Compel them to empty bladder, bowels.

Conscience, too.

As if to free-up space.

I’VE SEEN THINGS YOU PEOPLE WOULDN’T BELIEVE AND I CAN’T REMEMBER

As we age, our faculties fade.

Hard of hearing/seeing/acting, our emulative skills soften.

Our memory, too.

We know of.

But not what, precisely.

Everything dulls, but the will to originate.

What results from our efforts seems new because poorly recalled.

Realised.

Originality?

French for bad memory.

COATED IN MANY COLOURS

A new work is an old one dragged-up in the latest author’s motley.

Personality.

Character.

IMPERFECT RENDITION

A new work aims to incorporate/reflect/echo all that one has experienced to date.

An impossible task.

Fortunately, the less perfect the copy, the more original it seems.

WIPE THAT SWIPE

Artist Wally Wood said:

‘Never draw anything you can copy; never copy anything you can trace; never trace anything you can cut out and paste up.’

Something is lost after a pastiche is passed to a printer.

And after each successive printing.

A generation of detail.

Fortunately, the loss registers as a gain.

Makes the result seem new for being untrue.

EPIMETHEUS UNBOUND

Writing is a Frankenstein’s monster of all that the writer has experienced.

Reading them, we ingest a whiff off their heroes’ winding sheets.

PRIMA NOTE

Reading and writing are mutually antagonistic pastimes.

Even when one writes from one’s own experience one finds –

If one reads enough –

That someone else got there first.

Something Happened is a novel I’d have written had I Heller’s talent.

I didn’t/haven’t.

Consequently, nothing happened.

GENERATING GENRE

All fear being caught coining a cliché.

But few would mind being cited as the originator of a phrase that becomes one.

What is a cliche?

An expression that proves useful.

Persists in doing so.

A tool.

A hammer is a cliché.

A scalpel.

By cliché we usually understand a phrase.

Few fume over cliched ideas.

Dub them homages, at first.

Then, if they hang around, genres.

Genre is cliché extended beyond a single phrase or image.

A concession that originality is impossible.

A phylum in stasis.

No longer troubled by natural selection.

Free to play in its biosphere unaltered.

Or incorporate amendments so minor that paradigm displacement is unnecessary.

It responds to others in its cohort more than its environment.

Having conquered its locale, it bows before nothing.

Rather, bends everything towards itself.

Self-absorbed, it maps its full potential.

BY THE VERY KUHNING OF THE SCENE

When there seems nowhere left to go, a mode is exhausted.

A new paradigm emerges.

Is explored.

Overworked.

Occasions another branching.

Genre.

Genreists explore existing mansions.

Discover they have more rooms than imagined.

More room.

Nevertheless, the revolutionary tires of them all.

Breaks out.

Builds their own house on the hill.

COLD CODA

LOOK FOR ME UNDER YOUR BOOT-SOLES

It’s a writer’s duty to track down earlier groundbreakers.

Tread their terroir.

Determine how deeply they dug.

Dropped their shafts.

Panhandle all that they unearthed.

If it seems that a seam wasn’t exhausted –

A claim left unclaimed –

They’re entitled to exploit it.