Posthuman Blues

I think of myself as a "writer," but I've always felt equally comfortable drawing; creatively, I fail to perceive a tangible distinction between the two. William Burroughs, with his shotgun paintings and collage notebooks, felt pretty much the same way. Burroughs' visual legacy was an extension of his prose. Critics who complained that his art was contrived or sophomoric totally missed the point. Just as all of his texts comprised one composite book, his paintings and cut-ups complimented and augmented his writing. Burroughs' goal was to extricate himself from tedious normality; the medium that he used to pursue this was completely irrelevant. Technical proficiency was likewise immaterial.

If someone has something to express, I don't think formal training is necessarily an advantage. For some it might be an active disadvantage -- witness my aborted journals, which while perfectly readable and critically polished, were too linear to do more than suggest what was occurring in my brain at the time.

Writing fiction is different. For me, fiction is more revelatory and honest than the most unsparing diatribe. Rudy Rucker, an author I admire in many respects, dubs his personal technique "transrealism"; he intentionally models characters after friends and family. It works for Rucker but it doesn't work for me, as much as I wish it did. My biggest failures are stories that try too hard to incorporate aspects of the real world. Coming from an ever-aspiring science fiction writer, this sounds dangerously like a confession of failure. Science fiction is, after all, a well-equipped vehicle for satire, and it's no accident that the most well-known SF titles -- "1984" and "Brave New World" -- are dystopian send-ups of real-life technosocial trends.

But the subconscious moves with its own surreal logic. In time, it can be trusted, or at least appreciated from a careful distance. A fiction writer's job is to develop a working relationship with the irrational.