I have commented several times on the patterns in my reading and writing. These were not chosen but rather emerged over time. Only gradually did I become reflexive about them. Now I wonder if they are forces for good or ill.
I remember little of the detail of what I read, though I can generally recall which book to return to for what ends (finding it is quite another matter). Over time I have become less reliant on having relevant books open in front of me when I write: I am more confident now – probably belatedly – in my own reasoning and ability to construct an argument without constant references to others. This does not mean I haven’t learned from others of course. In fact, I constantly absorb and file as I read; and I read continuously.
All this sounds vaguely positive and okay. But there is another pattern to my relationship with my laptop (I must have abandoned biro and notebook sometime in the late 1970s). I think as I write. I still use a notebook, but now only to sketch on a couple of pages an outline or structure for a book, chapter or paper. From this point on I just start writing, which means that I construct my argument as part of the process of writing it down. I write my thinking. Possibly this tendency has been confirmed and reinforced by my lately acquired predilection for blogging.
In two respects it gets worse. First, although I have a few false starts and delete the odd sentence, even the occasional paragraph, my first ‘draft’ becomes/is the final version. And second, when I have completed it I immediately lose interest in it and want to move on to the next project. It is only with reluctance, and sometimes even with a hint or irritation, that I return to a manuscript at the behest, or demand, of publishers, editors or reviewers.
While it is true that I have published my share of manuscripts, I ought perhaps to take a moment to reflect on the processes that deliver them. It is true I’m sure that they could and would have been improved had my commitment to their refinement been greater or my eagerness to move on less intemperate. Possibly too I could have saved publishers, editors and reviewers time and endeavour. But having just read Ray Monk’s biography of Wittgenstein, I have another reason to reflect. It is clear that Ludwig was a man possessed, and that his existential angst was part and parcel of the extraordinary intensity he brought to his thinking and writing (if not to publication). I of course have no pretensions to Wittgenstein-like import. But here’s a question or two.
If I was as committed/obsessed as Wittgenstein, and, at least since retirement, less motivated by the notion of publishing my thoughts, would I leave a more telling, imaginative legacy? (Wasn’t it US ethnomethodologist and conversation analyst, Harvey Sacks, who left behind more – and more influential – notes penned by his students than he did published work?) Maybe less is good? It obviously can be; and it is a point worth emphasising in the emergency of crass metrics presently characterising neoliberal academia.
What Wittgenstein did too was make copious notes, and I mean copious, witness his posthumously published notebooks. He repeatedly isolated himself, for example in specially built ‘hut’ outside Bergen in Norway, to walk and to think; and when he thought, he jotted it down in his own concise and inimitable style. Should I think more, make more notes and contemplate more before aiming at a publishable manuscript? Almost certainly, I imagine!
Wittgenstein also shared his thoughts with the favoured few (actually, the very few) whom he thought capable of understanding them, and even occasionally listened to their responses. I rarely share my thoughts en route to print. As I’ve said, this is not because I feel I have nothing more to learn from like-minded experts and consociates, rather it’s a habit deriving, I suspect, from a mix of being an only child and early childhood shyness. I’m actually not even good at talking through ideas before they’re in print. It’s a tricky habit to break in my 70s even if I was inclined to do so. So it’s a matter here of ‘whatifery’. ‘What if’ I had been possessed of a Wittgensteinian intensity? It was an intensity he suffered for; he was a tormented soul. What if I had shared emerging thoughts and benefitted from critical dialogue along the way? Who knows.
I am contented enough with a ‘method’ that has sufficed for me, for all that I wouldn’t commend it; people are different. What I can say is that I derive considerable pleasure from indulging in what I have dubbed café society and bar society. Thinking/writing after my own eccentric fashion, a solitary being in a – preferably buzzing and noisy – public space. I am on my own (just a hint of Wittgenstein outside Bergen) in a communal setting (just a hint of Sartre and de Beauvoir in Paris). And I can’t imagine putting an end to this form of hedonism yet awhile, if ever.
I do however have a notebook with me in a café in Dorking, and am now turning away briefly from my laptop to make a few notes on the concept of ‘convention’ (thinking of Wittgenstein and Lewis in particular). I can’t quite bring myself to turn the laptop off however. Maybe next visit.