funny: just this morning i finished reading Murakami’s ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running’. A strange book. I had the feeling the entire time that Murakami wanted to write one of those books about writing, but felt that he needed to mask it with this overarching metaphor about running. The book could’ve been ten pages long; instead it’s a couple of hundred.

I think there are two main reasons why writers love to read about other writers.

1) Thievery. Writer-readers are looking to steal anything – ideas, methods, the best way to do anything that might help themselves to write. Which it never, ever does, of course.

2) Support. All of those books and essays and short fictions about writing are crutches. Little word-wheelchairs, so writers can sit down and be looked after for that little while.

p.s. how good is Adaptation? so good.

Have you seen the movie Ulysses' Gaze by director Theo Angelopoulos? I watched it as a meditation on the creative process. I don’t mind writing about writing or movies about movie making when they’re playful and a bit of a distraction, but earnest works in this vein don’t really fly for me (their gaze, albeit useful theoretically, feels limited to the navel), unless like Ulysses' Gaze they’re more broadly about the creative process. There’s another playful self-referential film about Hollywood called ‘The Player’ , which doesn’t seem to have a beginning or an end. Oh and how about ‘Tristram Shandy’ – I loved that movie!

I guess it depends which way you come from it. As writers reading writers writing about writing, we’re a bit ho-hum, cop-out, etc. But a non-writer might find the exploration of the writing process fascinating, in the same way as discovering the secret to a magician’s trick.

I’m still trying to work what I do/don’t like about this ‘genre’. Sometimes I think it gets way to squeamish if it’s done too earnestly/bluntly, or if the cliches are too obvious.

I loved Adaptation because is was just so neurotic but also entirely self-mocking, but for some reason was quite bored in Tristram Shandy. Enjoyed Elizabeth Costello, disliked Chabon. I’m really interested in the Murakami though – got a feeling I’ll either love it or hate it.

Some times I enjoy writing about writing – other times it feels self indulgent. I liked Elizabeth Costello, and enjoyed Tristram Shandy. Was bored by Adaptation. All in all, this comments adds nothing to the debate!

You haven’t mentioned Roberto Bolano, whose writing on writers – poets mostly, but also academics, sports journalists, lit-critics – has gotten away with much that Roth and Chabon and other haven’t. Perhaps because he is documenting a generation of Latin American poets, people are not as likely to criticise him of “lacking imagination”. It doesn’t strike me as being that different to Bellow using the life of Alan Bloom (Ravelstein) or poor old Delmore Schwartz (Humboldt’s Gift) – and I think if we’re talking about Bellow and Bolano and the reason they write about writing, we’re talking about a really high level of writing – and the only reason it seems to me that their characters are writers is because those are the only characters who would engage with the ideas that they present in their books, at least on a daily basis. Chabon does it for laughs and doesn’t really have anything significant to say, as does Adaption for that matter. But Bellow and Bolano are engaging with a culture, and it seems the only way to do that is to get the writers on board. I find it easier to read about Keynes or Steiner or H.L. Mencken when it is put in the mouth of one of Bellow’s talky, chatty characters – or to read about the underserved canonization of Paz or Neruda when it’s coming from one of Bolano’s shaky narrators.

I’m not a writer, but I must admit I love reading writing about writing, and for me I think the psychology is what draws me — the chance to get inside the head of a creative person, to see all the different ways people’s minds work. I just finished Nicholson Baker’s ‘The Anthologist’, a book about a writer (a poet completing an anthology) thinking about, talking about and avoiding writing, and I loved it precisely because it’s made up of the poet’s inner monologue.

Actually, I just found a transcript of Baker on the Radio National Book Show in Sept 2009, and I think what he says here is interesting:

“I remember when I was starting out and I had some essays in the Atlantic Monthly, a venerable American monthly magazine, I used to walk past the offices…I would feel…my right shoulder would be closer to the doorway and I would just feel that I had some sense of belonging somewhere because I was walking in front of the building that had published me several months before. It’s the only way that you can feel that you’re part of some literary project, some big community activity, otherwise you’re just on your own writing your little jingles.”

I’d guess that (as well as having the ‘self-reflection’ function Jess mentions) reading writing about writing gives a lot of people that sort of ‘belonging’ feeling — that they’re not just readers or writers alone, but that there are others out there doing (or trying to do) the same thing, feeling the same anxieties, struggling with the same avoidance tendencies …

Anyway, I’m not sure that I’ve said what I set out to, but if nothing else, I’m saying this: check out ‘The Anthologist’, especially if you loved ‘Adaptation’; it’s worth it for the unexpected making-you-giggle-out-loud-on-public-transport moments. :–)

The Anthologist was good – but if you haven’t read it owl you should check out Baker’s U&I, a lovesong to John Updike, which is one of the warmest, funniest literary tributes I’ve read.

This was my first of Baker’s, but I’ll definitely check out his other stuff — thanks STM.