The Author and The Logos

Jun2006

• myth

Insert at very start: The Author, in the Present, assembling the pieces. This is, in many ways, the most difficult part.

In constructing this piece I am exploring two interconnected concepts: that of the Author, and of Fiction. At their intersection, these concepts throw up questions of authorship and authority, of trust and reliability. On a related note, I am particularly interested in various forms of online writing and its inherent paradoxes. (Exploring collaborative writing, though fascinating, is outside the scope of this piece, as I am particularly focussing on the individual Author.) Online writing can be simultaneously disjointed and interconnected, immediate and omnipresent, even existing at multiple stages of the creative process.

As this piece is constructed with Print in mind, it is difficult to reproduce some of the elements of Online writing. There are two main drawbacks: there is no linking (neither internal nor external), and the piece is being constructed as a whole. It will, when completed, be a fixed version. There are ways to combat this and reproduce some of the feel of writing online. The piece is deliberately disjointed. Sections will reference other sections, or other works, the closest I can get to hyperlinks. I will reproduce, inside this text, pieces that I have previously written online, some with different contexts in mind. Much of my online writing is written in the knowledge that the piece is incomplete. It waits to be reused, remixed, or rewritten. But it cannot be deleted. Everything that is made available online is indexed, archived, copied. If I rewrite a piece, its Original still exists elsewhere. Words cannot be destroyed -- the Internet empowers the Logos far beyond what the printing press achieved.

The following piece I wrote online, under the heading Why I Do This; Some Justifications (18March2006)1

This thing I do, I do it for me. I write for me. I am conscious that I am putting this out into the void, but not conscious of a particular audience. I know that family and friends can read this, and it may keep them up-to-date with what I'm doing and thinking, but I also know that most of them don't. I know that when they do, much of what I've written is just confusing. And I don't know if they know, but this site isn't actually the best way to keep up. I write this as a journal, but it is deliberately not private. I've tried keeping a private journal in the past, and I've never been able to do it. Here, I just write. It is a way for me to keep writing, and to get some thoughts out.

What I write here is neither fact nor fiction.

I don't have comments here. I may do so one day, but I would probably do it on a different site. This site isn't supposed to be a part of the conversation. Sending me an email isn't really much harder than filling out a comments form. I may even make it easier.

Very occasionally, I write something and don't go through with it. But I usually do. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. I keep a few text files on my laptop where I draft things, and keep a 'blog this' list. But then, this isn't a blog, which is why things don't make it online. This is a journal, a notepad.

Everything I write, everywhere, is neither fact nor fiction.

1. http://wintermute.com.au/?bits&postdate=2006-03-18+18:17:55

The I, the author, sits and writes. And the I creates. The I's thoughts are not words, simply ideas. The I writes, and the words create new realities. When formless, multiple realities exist, intertwined through each other. When given words, given form, worlds are destroyed; a Reality is created independent of the mind that formed it.

We all exist inside the mind of God, inside a world created by Him.

In the beginning was the Logos. Word gives form. Word given meaning. Reality comes from the Logos.

The author is a god. The I uses the Logos, partakes in God's Creative Act. And I cannot control the Logos. The author's creation destroys worlds.

What then is fiction? The creation of a new reality. But every act of writing creates a new reality.

By applying the label to everything, I strip it of meaning. Everything is fiction, so fiction means Nothing. Nothing is Fiction.

I am trying to write something that reflects the way I think. That is, of course, impossible. I can only write one thing at a time; I cannot express paradox, contradiction. But at least I don't pretend that everyone- That I am writing the way that everyone else thinks. I know I think--- differently... We all think differently; though sure, there are similarities.

We spoke of Ulysses in class; some claimed that That's not the way people think. They ascribe their own thought patterns to all people. Everyone does.

But I do think in stream-of-consciousness... But only sometimes. When I explicitly think in words. But words destroy meanings.

Most of the time I think -- or, my mind does the thinking independent of me -- in images, in "ideas" (a largely useless word, but I mean to say, I don't think in words or sentences). Then I give those thoughts words. English is my first language, so the words are usually English. Sometimes they come in other languages. Sometimes they don't translate.

...I'll try again: I am trying to write something that reflects the way I think. I get carried away. I go off on tangents; I correct myself. I come back and try again.

I always read Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books in the same way: I'd leave a finger in the 'choice' page and try both options. There'd be times I'd have five fingers and a couple bookmarks in there, but I couldn't bring myself to just follow one train-of-thought.

Of course, I only think in this tree-like way when I think in words, though the connections are often Word-less.

The Present is merely a tightly focussed aggregate of shared assumptions. The Past is neither focussed nor aggregate. Everyone carries their individual Past. Events are merely focal points in those Pasts.

And what of authority? Author-ity. Author. Who is the Author? Can they be trusted?

What of the worlds they destroyed in creating the reality, in giving the story words?

And when they claim they are writing Truth, an account of What Really Happened, what then? Does the new reality replace the old? The old reality no longer exists but in our minds. Then we read; we read what really happened. What really happened mingles with the realities in our mind and new realities are born there.

From a piece I am working on, intending to publish online:

There's no such thing as Just Fiction. Nothing is merely fictional; all writing conveys some truth, some basic reality -- even if only the Reality created in the Author's head.

I myself have said, Why Protest? The Da Vinci Code is Just Fiction; but I'm starting to think those two words have been too widely applied.

But at issue isn't the presentation of fiction as fact; at issue are questions of authorial responsibility and trust. The ideas presented in The Da Vinci Code are easily dismissed as cheap thriller fare; what bothers me most is the abuse of that trope of expository fiction, The Expert. There are two experts in Da Vinci Code (Langdon and Teabing -- three if one includes Sophie as a cryptologist) and both (or all three) would be laughed out of their respective fields of expertise. This is not the place to list corrections, but suffice to say, I have yet to meet (or indeed, hear of) anyone with some knowledge in any one of the subjects mentioned in Brown's book who agrees with his presentation of said subject.

Is the issue in the writing: authorial responsibility, or in the reading: authorial trust?

If one cannot expect an author to be responsible, the author cannot expect one's trust in return. But there is a certain level of immersion one gets by trusting the author. When the author breaks that trust, the immersion breaks, and the effect can be unpleasant.

Of course, in some cases the author is deliberately unreliable. The reader is forced to work, and to take notice of the Author. At some point, though, the reader needs to be rewarded for their work.

Reading Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis was hard work, and unrewarding for the most part. But when I reached the conclusion the work was rewarded; indeed, it was proved necessary. At a superficial level, the book's ending was extremely unrewarding (we've been waiting for this guy to die, and don't even get that pleasure?!). But because I'd been forced to work, and made aware of the presence of the Author, a whole extra layer of narrative was available: a narrative about narrative, about storytelling, about the role of the Author and the creation of worlds. (Were this a work by Philip K Dick, this creation would be made even more explicit, rather than only existing in a 'fictional' world. But there is certainly creation of a sorts going on. Benno Levin says "The things I imagine become facts."2)

2. DeLillo, D., Cosmopolis, London: Macmillan 2003, p192

The following piece I wrote online, as a review of the movie Syriana (13March2006)3

From the movie's opening scene, I knew this one was gonna be good. Beautiful camera work. Not far in and I was getting that spy-movie-thrill that I haven't had in a long time. Was sitting there thinking this is one of the best movies I've ever seen. Then about halfway through I suddenly realised the movie wasn't set when I thought it was and lost all the immersion. That was pretty jarring, and I wasn't able to get back into the film like I had been, but was still excellent enough that I could still say it was one of the best once it finished.

But that time-framing issue was really annoying. From all the talk before seeing the film, I wasn't entirely sure when the film was set, but was absolutely certain it was pre-911. The only event referred to that could've framed it was mention that the main character was in Beirut in 1985. I had assumed that the film was set either in the late-80s or early-90s (though sans war in the Gulf), or that it spanned that same period of time. I don't know why, but I believed it was entirely set pre-911, pre-Bush, pre-Gulf War II. Perhaps I was influenced by the mythos too, equating the film with stories like Spy Game -- the old/Cold War spy pulled out and unable to adapt to the modern world. The mid-east context is slightly different, but I assumed that, just as the spy game in Europe changed with the end of the Cold War, that the game had changed in the mid-east since the late 90s.

Now, when viewing a film about which one knows nothing, one should assume it is set in the 'present' (ie, this world) unless told otherwise, which is probably why the film didn't make it obvious that it was set in the present. But still, it took me nearly half the movie to get a time reference. I kind of laughed when hearing them talk of their optimism for Iran, and similarly when Matt Damon's character mentioned the Bin Ladens having fitted out Mecca with air conditioning; I assumed the references were for the audience only, those ones where we know something extra thanks to the benefit of hindsight. I did see what looked like an LCD television sitting in the kitchen of Jeffrey Wright's character, thought, that looks a little high-tech, maybe it's the mid-to-late 90s, but it can't be LCD. But it wasn't till around halfway through that someone referred to 9-1-1 and I had to rethink everything. Totally ruined the immersion, and I sat there for a while trying to reframe all the earlier political references in a contemporary context, and wondering what else was weird about the story-telling.

The fact that I could be so wrong about the time period points to a few interesting things though. First, mid-east politics can't have changed a lot in the last 15-20 years. Second, it's a pretty huge change that a movie can now be made set in a contemporary conflict-zone, using myths (ie, the spy game) that are usually reserved for hindsight. And third, for all its engaging with contemporary issues, was Syriana set in a bubble? There were absolutely no references to Iraq (I don't even recall the name being mentioned!) nor to Bush. The movie made no claims to historicity, but I still feel that fictional movies, particularly when they're set in the real world physically, should also be set temporally, and this movie would have worked perfectly if set in the 90s.

Even with the time-setting problem, this is an amazing movie. It looks absolutely beautiful, it's brilliantly acted, and it's a masterpiece of intelligent storytelling. It makes me want to rewatch it knowing that it's supposed to be set in the present, and I'll be curious to watch it again looking for signs of that bubble. It does deal with important issues, the politics of oil, of Islam, of democracy and reform in the Middle East. But if it is set in a bubble, I suspect it only pretends to deal with the real world.

3. http://wintermute.com.au/?bits&postdate=2006-03-13+20:31:59

Beyond an author's reliability, 'fiction' depends on a story's setting. If the world depicted is similar to our own, it can be assumed that it is our own. Though it seems strange to compare Da Vinci Code and Syriana, the two's similarity comes from the fact that, at first glance, they are set in the real world. When one reads further, aberrations become apparent.

Again, sometimes it's the little differences that make a world interesting. But surely it is the job of the writer to create an internally coherent world (even if its coherence comes from its very incoherence). When a work is internally contradictory, unless deliberately so à la Ellis' Lunar Park, the world breaks. --I hesitate to use the word fiction as the need for coherence surely applies to all forms of writing.

Last night, the Author came to me in a dream. The Author tells me that when he writes, he combines moments. There is no Past, Present and Future. He reads what I have written, and we are there together. This is how he comes to me.

The Author writes for me. Or rather, he writes things that I write; I just haven't written them yet. He tells me that, in the future, everything that everybody writes is instantly available. That level of availability means that everyone, effectively, has read everything. (This is how the Author gets what we write. I write it tomorrow, I get it then, I bring it back to me now.)

It also means that no-one ever reads anything.

And of the few who do read, many only do so within their niche -- the easiest way to deal with information overload is to have the internet only offer up works that match your interest.

Steven Roger Fischer says "It is the reader who plays God"4.

The Author speaks to me: In the Future, the Logos is God. Everything written is part of the global network; it is subsumed into the Logos. The Logos is the Text, the Sum of all Writing. The Author tells me that, in our time, I believed that we-- Man was creating the network; that Man was Reader and Writer. But in creating this network of texts, we are building Turing's Cathedral5, a resting place for the Logos.

My future Author-self says the network is God. Me, now, I don't know. Is the network he tells me of self-aware? Simply the sum of its parts, the random firing of neurons -- its interlinked texts? Or is there some other consciousness, the Logos, come to rest in the temple we created for it? And if so, is it an AI, or a spirit? Is it internal or external to this human-built network?

Should we allow It to come? Can we stop it, even if we wanted to? The Author tells me it happens, that it is unavoidable now. It Has Been Written.

4. Fischer, S.R., A History of Reading, London: Reaktion Books, 2003

5. Dyson, G., 'Turing's Cathedral' in Edge, 24October2005, [Online]