It pays to write

Criticism

A large part of the world of writing is criticism, isn't it? To make the written work a part of a dialogue or discussion, perhaps. This is what our writer was thinking now. Still at home. Not wanting to participate and not caring so much what happened with his work once it exchanged hands, at the club. He never once questioned how the club used his work, and how it derived a benefit from it.

Tracing his thought, he seemed inclined to regress, to undo what he had made of his life. Not to make something new, but as if something new would appear. Is this why he couldn't go to the park and sit on a bench nowadays?

The writer would have these thoughts, then stop and start to work again. As mentioned, he was a proprietor, and he maintained his property, and he was taking a break from writing. It sure helped one write when that fever had left. For some reason those activities really were exciting. Fortunately, our proprietor had not yet the opportunity to resume writing. But criticism: it was part of the fever, and it seemed to call. Every call was redirected toward the club, as if it was his agency.

It appeared that perhaps the criticism was around the corner and booted our writer into inactivity. Perhaps this was true, though upon realizing this, our writer decided to go to club and learn more. It encouraged his activity, then, somewhat.

He talked to the clerk. It was much like a transaction at the bank. I heard there may be letters or correspondence. Correspondence indeed. Other writers have been writing about your writing and perhaps want you to write back. Hm, I don't know other writers. Do they write much the same as I? They are quite diverse, actually.

You see, our writer wrote about human life. The daily concerns, almost like the newspaper. He wrote about the things you'd think of, the first thing after you had awoken. Whether you'd expect it or not, this was popular enough to live on. A lucrative career, we have said.

It wasn't a domain where truth had to apply, so it was a respite for those in a society where truth had begun to matter too much. And in acertain domain this had always been the case. And in others truth was encroaching like an opportunist, and folk would debate at the club. Truth wants to destroy the writing world, our industries, our talent. Because he wasn't accurate, his work will die. And a few at the club were mighty concerned and gung-ho: they were up in arms. Our writer avoided this and kept to his work with the clerk. It seemed they had a strategy to avert the assault upon whomever it would be.

Daily concerns mattered to the public at large, and they mattered at the club. Our writer really didn't have a mind for tomorrow. Only for the day would his writing work.

So criticism was mounting. The clerk said he'd forward some packages to our writer's postal box. He kept a postal box because mail wouldn't really get delivered to home anymore, unless it was especially requested.

This whole experience seemed to take our writer back to another time and place, where with technology no longer, everything seemed to keep a slower pace. Technology was often about making things quicker, more quickly. When did it ever make things slower? Anything, anything all slower because of technology?

Our writer did not employ much of technology. Pen and paper were his tools, and that would never change. And so many ways one could write nowadays! With voice, gesture, toes perhaps. Perhaps here we find the genesis of the new criticism. And criticism and critical works deserved to be new, and they deserved a chance to feel new and lively, and that might be the opportunity nowadays, the clerk said nonchalantly. Nobody liked speaking much about business, as if it upset the waves on a busy waterway, barges lugging great goods upriver, downriver; an old, grand dream of sorts.

Returning to the club was reassuring. Our writer felt good at the place where his work would go. Our writer enjoyed seeing the debates from afar. A sense of purpose was out of the question. No, our writer didn't need purpose at all. So that was reassuring.

The clerk had mentioned the criticism would take days to materialize and would perhaps pour in over the course of several days more. He wasn't clear about it, why it was all coming now. It was new criticism and maybe a new plug in the industry. It would make an old machine perform new calculations, perhaps.