Constrained writing
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 15:49:37 -0700 From: Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org> To: CTY-L@cornell.edu Subject: Re: Cruel and Unusual writing assignments [I made a slight change or two here when I put this up on the web.] Chiu, Tien writes: > > Tien, it shouldn't be so hard to express "insane asylum" in > > words of one > > syllable; how about "home for the mad"? > > That was indeed what I came up with (actually "house for the mad"), after > briefly considering "snake pit". But that was at the end of four pages of > similar contortions. > > Scarred for life, I tell you, scarred for life. :-) > > now for the hard part: how do you say "words of one syllable" in words of > one syllable or less? They are words which you can say with just one "a", "e", "i", "o", "u" sound (or blend of these, like "oo" or "ee" or "ou" and so on) out loud, not those which have two or more such sounds in a word. (If you can not hear it, it does not count as a "sound" -- like the "e" at the end of "these" or "one" or "like".) What I wrote here just now is formed from words which are like this: each of them may have a few of the signs "a", "e", "i", "o", or "u" when you write it, but still, if you say it out loud, has no more than one of the kinds of sounds those make. You may have to add "y" some of the thyme, if you want to be sure that this rule will work. Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 19:35:23 -0700 (PDT) From: Alison Bazeley <abazeley@yahoo.com> To: CTY-L@cornell.edu Subject: Re: Cruel and Unusual writing assignments --- Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org> wrote: > [...] > You may have to add "y" some of the tyme, if you > want to be sure that > this rule will work. You are one sick pup... err, dog. Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 20:19:02 -0700 From: Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org> To: CTY-L@cornell.edu Subject: Re: Cruel and Unusual writing assignments Alison said I was > one sick pup... err, dog. for writing that monosyllabic account of what a monosyllabic word is. Thanks, but it's not as hard as writing lipograms which show profound admiration for what Mr. Wright did with his book Gadsby, or what an author whom I forgot long ago also did in his similar La Disparition. Lipography is a difficult art, an art at which I am not particularly good, but still I say that it is virtuous to honor Wright and his cohorts. And I'm glad to do that, if I can. If your habit is to hang out with CTY folks, you'll no doubt run across many constraints which you could try to put on your writing. Always, in that kind of group, among that ilk, an impishly-grinning man or woman, boy or girl, will show up, daring you to "Try this! Lipography, or writing only in monosyllabic words, or only using words that start with 'j', or only words which can function as nouns... You can do it, I know you can!" You will think that this task is far too hard, and still you will, with a bit of a strain (to find that linguistic ability CTY has said your mind plainly contains), do it. (Abolish your doubts, I say, by trying it.) And I say that constraints that such folks hand you call for an originality not as thoroughgoing as that of many famous artists, but still giving skills which I call, in a way, important. [Also, my .sig was not my usual .sig with its usual quotation. It had this translation of that quotation: "And do not say, I will study if I can; for possibly you will not find an opportunity. -- Avot 2:5"] Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 11:32:50 -0400 (EDT) From: Bram Boroson <bboroson@shell.valkyrie.net> To: CTY-L@cornell.edu Subject: writing with constraints The master of this is Georges Perec, whose novel in French missing the letter e was translated into English (still missing the letter e) a "A Void." Bram Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 12:37:49 -0700 From: Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org> To: CTY-L@cornell.edu Subject: Re: writing with constraints Bram Boroson said: > The master of this is Georges Perec, whose novel in French missing the > letter e was translated into English (still missing the letter e) a "A > Void." Although I forgot La Disparition's author as I was writing my own lipogram, it's plain that actually saying what folks call him is not so handy for accounts which try to follow that author's own habits! Possibly this fact was known to him and it was an additional constraint to stop actors in a play from naming its playwright, mutatis mutandis. Thus fourth walls of narration of all sorts can stay intact -- it's contrary to natural law in that world to proclaim in full "G---- P---- is my author!" (as in old Judaism it was thought bad to say out loud a particular holy word, God's actual way of saying "God"; this strict policy could stop many ways in which folks might say things about God). A grand tradition of all antiquity holds as magical what you or I should truly call a thing, or a man, or a god: if you know this, you obtain a status as magically knowing it or him. So you may thus also obtain mystical information or magically command his or its actions or by charms do various things (alas, such as injuring a man with magic this way!). (Naming-charms and naming-mysticism still last today in ways which I find amazing. Cf. ISBN 0-631-20510-1 and any work by its author.) So lipography shows us a world in which a law forbids naming rightly any of a list of things (naturally, giving that list in full is also against this law) -- and on that list is found (though not from within this world, not by any man or woman thinking about it within this story), possibly, our story's own author. Is this not our situation as actors in traditional plays or similar dramatic and fictional works? Why do actors traditionally not know about fourth walls, or an actor about laws which bind him, holding him back from such a wall? But in lipography our way of forming words has profound flaws which imply that authors of lipograms, and actors in lipographical fictions, could not approach particular topics at all! Laws say that such actors must lack words, which finally an actor might still not actually miss. It's amazing! A fourth wall stays wholly apart from vision, but I watch a traditional play and actors don't pass through it. Why? Confabulation? Cf. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.372, and 6.43. At 6.4311: "Our span of living lacks a boundary, just as our vision lacks a boundary obvious to us." This hardly says that a man is not mortal: and as a famous song asks, do you actually want immortality?
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