Writing Tips Cycle II

(October 2015) Today marked the second presentation of the series titled Writing Tips: The Improvisation of a Decalogue, moderated by Maximiliano Tomas. Three prominent writers would discuss how a fictional text is built. The chronicle of the first talk can be read via the following link: https://reuniendoletras.blogspot.com/2015/12/writing-tips-cycle-i.html

, which is why, this time, I will jump straight into commenting on the talk without introducing the basic points already covered in that previous entry.

The guest writer for today's talk—held at the same venue, El Ateneo Grand Splendid—was Noé Jitrik. I had no idea who he was, nor what he had written. I had never heard his name mentioned, nor had I ever read anything by this author. I searched the internet so I wouldn't attend completely ignorant of who he was. The link to his Wikipedia biography is https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/No%C3%A9_Jitrik.

This time I arrived very early, an hour and a bit before it started, but I didn't mind. I had the entire bookstore to browse, so I looked for the shelf that interested my taste, searched, and found a book to buy—which I will review later on. It covers a topic that interests me without dazzling me, perhaps as a way to explore an approach between literature and numbers or mathematics.

Next, I headed to the third floor and found that nothing had been set up or prepared. I began to wonder whether there was going to be a talk at all. I went back downstairs, continued browsing books, and after a while, I looked up and saw them starting to set up the table. I went back up, and an employee was already placing the chairs. Last week's photography exhibition had already been taken down; this time there was nothing, just bare walls. The attendant had already arranged the first three rows, so I sat in one of them to skim through the book I had bought. He walked over and told me, “You can choose,” and indeed, I was the first to arrive with all the chairs at my disposal. Once he placed a couple more rows, I moved to the spot I liked best and stayed there.

A little while later, the employee declared, “That’s enough,” and the chairs ran out. I counted them: a total of 34, which was 13 chairs fewer than the previous talk. He wasn't wrong; this writer indeed had a lower turnout. While all the seats were filled, there was no need for more either. Two or three people were standing, but only because they preferred to, since among all the seated attendees, two or three spots were still open.

While sitting there, bird-eyeing the book I had bought, I observed my surroundings. As time passed, attendees began arriving for the talk—though many, I’d say half, arrived right on the dot at the risk of not finding a seat, though at least everyone found a place at this talk. Many were tourists just strolling and exploring the venue. Many visitors went up to the third floor to take photographs. There is an employee who works on the third floor, not one of those who help with books, but rather handing out and/or selling tickets—tickets for some artist's event—and today she was very busy. The stream of people coming up for their tickets was endless. Although the service was fast (those picking up tickets—presumably won or reserved—only presented their ID to collect them, while those buying them chose their seats and paid), lines of three or four people formed. Some were hesitant, like a couple of women who, upon finding out that floor seating (campo) cost 900 pesos, loudly thought aloud, “With that money we can fill the fridge; let's think about it and come back.”

Half an hour had passed past the scheduled time, and neither the moderator nor, much less, the guest had arrived. At 7:30 PM, half an hour late, they stepped out of the elevator. In the four meters from the elevator to the conference table, the guest writer ran into an attendee he clearly knew; they greeted each other and started a personal conversation right there. And the rest of us... well, thanks, waiting there. They seemed quite comfortable chatting away, seemingly undisturbed by the stares of the waiting attendees—who were waiting, and waiting—until the moderator, using the microphone, finally had to call him over. Only then did he cover the remaining two meters and kick off the day's talk.

The moderator, Maximiliano Tomas, took the floor and introduced the guest, Noé Jitrik, reading the exact bio published on El Ateneo's Facebook page: “Born in Buenos Aires in 1928. Critic, essayist, poet, and fiction writer, he was one of the central members of the magazine Contorno starting in 1953. He worked as a university professor in Argentina and abroad. Between 1974 and 1987 he lived in exile in Mexico, where he continued to publish. Since 1999 he has directed the Historia Crítica de la Literatura Argentina, published in twelve volumes. He has received awards such as the Casa de las Américas, the Platinum Konex, and honorary doctorates from universities in Argentina, Uruguay, and Mexico. Among dozens of theoretical and narrative books, his recent works include Cálculo equivocado, Los lentos tranvías, Amaneceres, Mediodía, and Casa Rosada.”

Here, the guest writer made his first correction: it is not Amaneceres, but rather the book is titled Atardeceres. Now, reading online, that book deals with “childhood memories in a small town in the province of Buenos Aires.” And this—which at first glance might seem casual, innocent, or naive—now that I think about it, might not have been so accidental. A conspiratorial thought, perhaps, but to what end? Right there at the beginning of the talk, the moderator brought up the subject of where the writer was born, mentioning that a strange case exists online because different biographies place his birth in different locations—at least three different places—and he listed them. The writer dispelled any doubt by asserting that he was born “in a small town in the province of Buenos Aires.” Concise and brief, but not much more. Was the error in “Amaneceres-Atardeceres” a coincidence, followed immediately by the “doubt regarding his birthplace,” only to reveal right after that the book Atardeceres is about “childhood memories in a small town in the province of Buenos Aires”? I'll leave it to each person to draw their own conclusions. You lose nothing by embarking on something as naive as that, but you gain a little bit in publicity; and ultimately, writers make their living by writing and must sell their works (just like the previous talk where the writer indirectly hinted at her writing workshops). If that was the intention, they played it well. If it was just a mistake, a stumble by the presenter and the person who wrote the brief review (or perhaps they copied it from Wikipedia, where the book's title is also listed incorrectly, at least as of October 2015).

This writer shared some theoretical concepts with us: writing by hand requires extended time, but it is great for creating poetry, for instance. Writing on a computer requires immediate responses, and it is very good for drafting reflections or letters. He mentioned the era of typewriters, the predecessor of PCs, noting it was richer in the sense that it allowed for “textual genetics.” He highlighted the importance of taking notes.

He mentioned a movie—though he didn't name the title, it was The Magic of Belle Isle (Summer at Dog Dave's) (2012) http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film643353.html—where actor Morgan Freeman, playing a disabled character in a wheelchair as a struggling writer, in a dialogue with a little girl, reflects on writing fiction by saying, “Write what isn't there yet” (imagination).

From this point on, the guest—previously clarifying that his own method isn't the one just mentioned—told us about his particular way of beginning a text or a piece of writing. He needs a phrase. For everything he writes, he needs an initial phrase. An initial phrase that demands feeding. Then comes the second phase, which is articulation. When talking about the initial phrase, he listed some of its characteristics: it does not come from the outside; it is not pure; it is always worked, “contaminated” with remnants of memory. This initial phrase comes from the unconscious—that place containing an accumulation of concepts, but only of those concepts that have been registered, and everything is registered that makes sense to the brain. From that depth of the unconscious, the initial phrase arises. Here he raised a question: Does spontaneity exist? But he decided not to delve deeper because it was touching upon areas of psychology and philosophy, and it would become too broad and exceed the topic at hand.

Somehow—and this is my personal opinion—all those people need a phrase to start with, and I imagine that phrase first pops up in one's head or arrives from the outside at some moment, but one analyzes it and then transfers it to the text. Therefore, I didn't quite understand that idea of the “initial phrase,” as it seems like a general truth to me. But I suppose he was referring to the “precise and necessary phrase”—that one and no other being the one that will start his writing. Or that phrase which will not be modified, deleted, or moved once started. Still, I find it a bit confusing.

He referred to the importance of having a good beginning. He mentioned the “glow of the phrase.” He spoke about essays needing to be constantly motivated, of “closed phrases” characteristic of poems or that give rise to poems, and of “open phrases” that give way to narrative. He also discussed the search for answers to a literary problem. He continued by alluding to the “logic” necessary for the articulation of a text.

He shared some anecdotes, about his travels for example, and another that brought some smiles when he said that he currently wakes up with an hendecasyllable in his head (an hendecasyllable being an eleven-syllable verse). This, he calls a “sprout.”

Another question he raised—supposedly from the perspective of a literary critic—referred to “metaphors”: whether or not they constitute art. For him, the workshop is where crafts are worked on, but art is not made there. At least that’s what I understood; it might not be correct, or perhaps it wasn't phrased well on my part. When he writes, or reads other authors, he expects something more than a metaphor; the text must move the reader.

To what extent this is true, I don't know. Personally, I don't think all texts aim to move the reader, or looked at from another angle, not everyone is moved by the same things they read.

He is an author who has written a variety of works spanning narrative, novels, essays, poems, articles, opinion columns, and literary criticism. But as he said, from his perspective, having walked down so many paths, if there is a common thread connecting everything, “he is always telling something, narrating to communicate,” as he put it.

The talk was brief and only meant to be a single encounter—around an hour and a half long. Basically, what he did was provide an approach to various topic titles that each person on their own, at least those interested, could explore further. He opened a path, sketched out some guidelines, and each person can decide whether or not they find them useful.

As for the audience, taking the previous talk as a benchmark, I would say that about half the attendees were new faces. And I'd say that about 80% of them (estimated by eye) were people over 55 or 60 years old. Yet, when he addressed the audience with some advice, he said, “You young people,” and I wondered: Is he talking to us? Is he seeing the audience correctly? Is he flattering the crowd? But looking at it from another perspective, this man is 87 years old; to him, we were all young, and the oldest people in the room were still 10 to 15 years younger than him. I mention this observation regarding age because he himself made some jokes about it (for instance, mentioning the amount of accumulated life experience versus the very little of it that could actually help when trying to write something new, among other examples). Besides, he doesn't look like he is that old and he moves quite well; in fact, other attendees pointed this out to him and congratulated him. When answering questions, it was obvious he had a wealth of knowledge. Sometimes his answers started off sounding pedantic, but he would immediately steer them back to complete them with a joke, a quip, or an anecdote.

Regarding the audience, some left quite a bit to be desired—rude and disrespectful. This time, the presence of cell phones made itself felt. Some people didn't even have the courtesy to turn them off. Assuming your brain is so attached to the device, that you have a phone addiction where you simply cannot ignore a call—didn't they have any other alternative? Yes, many options: turn down the volume, put it on silent with a flashing light, set it to vibrate. But nothing reaches these disrespectful characters who, to grab attention and show a lack of respect for the rest of the audience and the speakers, let their phones ring at maximum volume, don't turn them off, make all the attendees look at them with a “how disrespectful you are” expression, and then go out to talk right on the staircase, right there disturbing everyone. Who wants to listen to you? We came to listen to the guest, not you. Do you think you're a star? And there were others who didn't reach that extreme, but allowed themselves one or two rings before finally turning their phones off.

Another case was a big guy who came with a woman—it gave the impression he had just accompanied his partner. While she was respectfully attentive to what the speaker was saying, this guy was goofing off. It looked like he was suffering from the heat in the room because his ears were extremely red, and to kill the boredom he started rumashing through his companion's hair. He played with that blessed hair like a little child, constantly twisting it, tossing it around, repeating it, looking at her and not at the speaker. Then, with an air of superiority, he leaned across two chairs as if they were a sofa, putting on a ridiculous spectacle for everyone sitting behind him. I wonder: if you want to whisper and chat, couldn't you go to a coffee shop or a park? You're at a conference! The guest and the audience deserve some respect. Obviously, this individual with childish behavior didn't care about that.

Then came the question-and-answer session. While some questions were moderate and a couple of attendees congratulated him, two individuals stood out. First, because they kept asking and asking—they hogged the microphone and seemed insatiable with the answers, but they made a scene in another way. A female attendee confronted the guest writer with a barrage of inquisitorial questions. It felt like she was genuinely upset with the writer for what he had said, and she confronted him with what the writer himself had published in the newspaper Página 12, where he is a columnist. The questioner was disenchanted with the answers she received from the author and kept following up with new questions; it seemed she was looking to hear the answers she wanted to hear and no others, and she even cross-examined him by mentioning an Argentine poetess. The response seemed to please her even less than the previous ones; she then lowered her tone (after a slight booing from the room) and her subsequent questions became calmer.

Another attendee took the microphone, asked several questions, and then at one point pulled a two-page clipping of the pro-government newspaper Tiempo Argentino out of his pocket containing a text by another writer, and confronted the guest by reading a paragraph to him. He is a literary critic; he doesn't need someone reading him a paragraph by another author. What is the point of doing that? If he felt like bringing a couple of newspaper pages, why didn't he bring something written by the guest? The theme of the series is Writing Tips, and there are three clearly identified guest writers—what is the need to bring texts by other authors? We can all bring and confront the guests with the thousands upon thousands of writers who exist in the world (or who ever lived), but I find it quite out of place. It's almost disrespectful: if you bring author A as a guest, well... we talk about author A. How are you going to show up with writings by B or C? What is the purpose? What is the balance? What objective is being pursued? Was anything productive achieved for the lecturer and/or the attendees? Nothing.

Finally, the questioner got his answer, folded the newspaper pages into quarters, and put them back in his pocket.

Once the time was up, we applauded the writer, and the gathering ended. Now, to wait for next Thursday for the last of the meetings.