However, I'm back, because writing in my spare time is more productive than half the other things I get up to, and reading (and re-reading) some very high-quality writing recently has reminded me that I need to get back in practice lest I turn into some kind of History-monster who can only write in academicese.
Re-reading Orwell, in particular, has reminded me of a peculiar fact about my writing influences: namely, that my favourite twentieth century essayists - Orwell on the one hand, and on the other Chesterton and Thurber - have diametrically opposed styles of writing, and indeed mental approaches to life.
Orwell's approach is closer to my academic predilection: disciplined, restrained, politically reflective. But Chesterton and Thurber (whose 'The Secret life of James Thurber' appears to be behind a New Yorker paywall these days, sadly) have a witty, anarchic bent that tempers insight with humour. All of them are more or less defined by their cultivation of personas of self-conscious moderation; yet the way they communicate themselves as authors is sharply different.
Since I have detected a distinct lack of anarchy in my writing of late, I decided to do something about it.
Characters upon the keyboard (part I):
Much of my thesis-life, I thought, was spent in the presence of a sole, brave companion - like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (I'll let you figure out who is who) we spent our outstretched days and evenings tilting at academic windmills. I refer, of course, to my keyboard. But of late I have come to realise that in fact I am consorting with not one companion, but many: the keyboard is as replete with human characters as any grimy proto-industrial village, and it would be frankly unchivalrous to go on treating them as an amoebic mass of dots and squiggles (which is quite how one perceives them after the twelfth hour of trying to write about the anachronistic and teleological implications of conceiving expressions of national solidarity as 'collective identity'). They richly deserve their own photographic portraits, starchy black-and-white poses and all; fully aware of this pressing need, I have given them nothing of the sort. Blotchy, candid street-caricatures it is!() - Parentheses, like the slightly musty-smelling great-uncle of the keyboard, make us realise that the distraction is often much more interesting than the thing to which we are supposed to be paying attention. They are essentially apolitical - they just want to be left to take their damp-socked country walks in peace - but there's a reason they resemble that archaic symbol of the English, the Yeoman's longbow: they can pack a punch if you are so foolish as to try to deny them their liberties. The natural enemy of the square bracket (and unable to comprehend the elaborate squiggly-bracket), they prefer the company of numbers, who are at least quiet and don't mind the odd set of boot-prints meandering across the azalea patch.
[] - The square bracket is the fascist of the keyboard. All hard lines and edges, it insists in butting its head into your business, and never lets you explain yourself in your own words. Instead, it paraphrases, usually with the subtlety of a jackboot to the groin. Don't worry, citizen, the square bracket removes the horrid inconvenience of letting the longwinded bewilder you with their subtleties - there's a reason why it superimposes itself on the baroque squiggly-bracket - and instead frees you to gratefully receive the author's doubleplusgood version.
{} - The squiggly bracket is the unmotivated child-prodigy on drugs. Obsessively expressive, you'd almost think it was drawn freehand, except that then it'd be all wonky and it never quite turns out right when you do it and WHY WON'T THE CURVES BE THE SAME SHAPE? And yet it effortlessly embraces mathematical expressions while doodling intricate airships left-handed on the mahogany desk with a protractor. Scritch, scritch. Rendered slightly less aggravating by the knowledge that no-one in the real world has a job for him.
@ - The millennial child of the keyboard. Deeply ironic that it should coexist with number 2, because it is all about #1 (Oh wait, it's between them. Of course. Part of the in-crowd, eh?). Once, when it was just a weird little glint in it's daddy's eye, it resembled a cheap pair of fluffy handcuffs, occasionally brought out for a bit of obscenity, but otherwise stuffed in a box under the bed. Then, some idiot got careless with the protection, and suddenly it was all over everyone's email like a rash, spreading into inefficient text-speak for the terminally lazy (it saves one character and not a single button-press, you idiots), before finally confirming its delinquency by getting into 'tagging' (at least it's not hash).
^ - The caret (caretus superior) is the grumpy old codger of the keyboard. Doesn't really understand that he has long since made redundant by the medium (have you ever actually used this to insert something above the line of text?). Emotionally incomprehensible to the younger generation, who seem to misread his raised eyebrows as senile bliss, but they keep him alive so they don't end up feeding his cats.
More of our brave companions may follow in future weeks.
