WRITING & REDEMPTION

…better far write twaddle or anything, anything than nothing at all.”
-- Katherine Mansfield, Journal, 1922

“Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potboiler.”
-- Raymond Chandler, Notebooks, 1977

“All writing is garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try to put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs.”
-- Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings, 1976

“Writing is a cop-out. An excuse to live perpetually in fantasy land, where you can create, direct and watch the products of your own head. Very selfish.”
-- Monica Dickens, 1976


Dear Readers:

Two of you brought my attention to the fact that Delwin Biaggio didn’t dismember the body. While the person you may be talking about didn't inflict this final indignity, not so in the case of Delwin Biaggio's fictive persona. You see, my dear friend Les, there is no such person as Biaggio. Delwin is a fictitious character, as is Nancy in the dissertation story. Whatever I, the author, have them do is the “truth” of the story, but it has no obligation to be faithful to any non-fictional history or reality.

The dismemberment angle, while it may seem unpleasant to some, is simply a story device, as in a Stephen King tale, to engage the reader. While some don’t relish, or welcome this kind of engagement, there are others, like R.J., for instance, that like gore, horror, and other weirdness, like H. P. Lovecraft, Charles Bukowski, Thomas Harris, Antonin Artaud, or Patricia Cornwell.

To the second anonymous commentator, aside from the allowance to take poetic license with a made-up character, I’m not clear on what I don’t understand because "I’m a man," his illness? Will he always be ill? Can he get better, see the light? Is he, or anyone, beyond redemption? Should being a woman, or a man, preclude one from striving to transcend gender, and even if this is an impossibility shouldn’t we pretend to a higher awareness? Should I assume there are things you “can’t notice” because you’re (not your) a woman?

As Les commented, it is a sad story, murder most foul; but as close as they may seem, that’s not the story I’m telling, and it’s not a story that most of the 10,198 readers who have hit this blog would know.

I know my stories, like the Nancy tale, are sometimes sexist, sensational, and gruesome, and I’m not sure why. I suppose I could blame my baser preoccupations on environment, or upbringing, but I think that’s a cop out. We all have our cross to bear, and how we carry that weight, no matter what that historical baggage and dysfunctional freight might be, determines how we are thought of, as well as why we are loved and who loves us.

I think that a person, namely me, can try to be kind, sensitive, generous, and understanding, in spite of sometimes backsliding into bastard mode. For me, personal integrity is an existential struggle, a constant effort to be a good person in a world of moral imperfection, a world that only those rare few more saintly than we/I, can rise above.

As for the material on this blog, it’s all over the place. Why, because I’m trying to make it interesting: sometimes titillating, sometimes informational, sometimes profane, sometimes sad, sometimes outrageous. I often envy those who couldn’t say the things I do, they who would never risk offending others. In another life I would want to be the one described as not having a “bad bone in his body,” one that never lies, and one that everyone likes and never generates a discouraging word or adverse comment, but alas, that’s not me.

Sincerely – Ydnar Reisset

PS: My prodigal daughter is moving back in with me tomorrow.