Where My Head At.

I don’t have writer’s block. (I’m not convinced such a thing exists.) What I have is thinker’s block.

Which is not to say that I’m much of a thinker, or that I think deeply even at the best of times. But I’ve got nothing now, and have had for the past several weeks. I’ve attempted numerous times to begin a certain Big Serious Literary Argument, but have been paralyzed by doubts that I’ve really done enough research to convince even myself. I don’t necessarily want to be William Gerhardie (not-particularly-famous midcentury writer whose magnum opus on European History, some forty years in the making, had to be published posthumously because he could not be convinced he had thoroughly covered his subject; it’s on my shelves, unread except for the introduction), but making grandoise claims about a critically neglected genre of literature after only three or four years of haphazard investigation also seems imprudent. Not to mention that every time I try to corrall my thinking on the subject, it slips through my fingers like water.

I’d quote Hamlet here (the “stale, flat and unprofitable” bit) if it hadn’t become a cliché to do so by the early nineteenth century. Is there anything new I can add to the centuries-old dialogue of humanity? (I’m not, oddly, concerned that the centuries-old dialogue of humanity will be cut short in the next few years, either by rising barbarism or nuclear annihilation; perhaps I’m so cynical that even these fears seem risible simply because they’ve been feared before. And let me stop to note: Risible? Really? I can’t pull a less pompous word out of my ass than fucking risible? Well, at least Latin scholars will know what I mean.)

But enough linguistic grandstanding. Maybe a Princess Bride quote will serve better: “Friendless! Brainless! Helpless! Hopless!” (Though even a quick Google search to make sure I got the order right shows that I’m certainly not the first to woe-is-me apply it to themselves.) Fezzick has always seemed the most sympathetic character in the movie to me, particularly as I’ve, ah, filled out in the last ten years.

And how much work even this self-indulgent scrap was! (Took about an hour.) I’ll never be able to produce anything that anyone would want to read, let alone be convinced by.

(And perhaps I’ve been spending too much time online recently, reading the comments sections of articles and posts, but it increasingly seems that persuasive writing, as they called it in Comp 101, is a fool’s errand. No one is convinced, and then they yell at you for having an opinion that differs from theirs. And trying to anticipate every possible argument, up to and including “This is stupid. Why would anyone write about this? will certainly drive you mad.)

Okay. Next post, after all this whining, better be funny, interesting, or at least have some kind of point, however ill-considered and poorly-expressed.