Intimacy and distance, both are required to be an artist.
 
Colin Leath, July 16, 1996
 
There is a fundamental problem with having both intimacy and distance. If we have only intimacy we are involved immediately in the experience of life. If we have only distance we are not involved at all; the life we describe does not concern us. If we have both, we love the life we are experiencing and we see at the same time the hoplesness of our situation. We want to do something, but at the same time, we see there is nothing to be done. Consider Bartleby who let distance and intimacy fill his own life. There is no resolution to this hoplessness but the mutual realization that there is nothing to be done.
 
Distance is thinking, but if we do not think, how do we decide what to do? If there is nothing to be done, what do we do? If I achieve intimacy with another, I imagine it to be no different than intimacy with myself. There is the hope in the achieving, but once we are together ... consider Emma. Agee loved her, and he could love her as long as he could help her. What if he brought her to his level, what if he could love her no more by helping her this way? What point is there in helping people escape opression to realize that there is nothing? What if there were no people to help? What of utopia, like that? It is amazing we exist at all. What if we are all the best we can ever be? As you can see, thought leads no where. The fundamental problem with distance is that it involves thought. The only true art is life, and life consits of nothing but action. Life consists of action, but there is nothing to be done. You see how this is all true and yet makes no sense? The only state of existence is the constant awe that we, that anything, exists at all.
 
It has become philosophically impossible to write this paper. To show that I began it in good faith, I will include my original beginning at the end. You will see how the paper starts at the end, continues in the middle and ends almost here.
 
Bartleby realized the meaning of life and expressed in the greatest of art forms, his life. He expressed it in death. I realize the meaning of life is death and so I ignore both, and continue to exist a little longer. I live for the sharing of my experience with others and the expression of my experience with others in life. This is a life that will never end because there will always be new worlds, new people growing free to see that this is all there is and it is nothing. This will happen forever, as long as humans live. Finis.
 
Writers must develop intimacy with and distance from their subjects. If writers are too intimate with their material, they cannot write about it. If writers are too distant from their material, they cannot write about it in a meaningful way. For many writers, distance is gained through time, but intimacy is lost. In some cases, especially with journalists, intimacy is gained through time and research of a subject, and distance is lost.
 
 
A quote mentioned in class describes the difference between fiction and journalism in this way: non-fiction moves horizontally covering the surface details of an event. Good fiction moves vertically taking you deeper and deeper into character and events. The length of In Cold Blood means the work functions in a dimension that most journalism pieces use very little: time. Perhaps the ideal fiction would never end. The longer the work, if it is good, the more and the longer the world of the fiction can be our world. Instead of being told in a paragraph the who, what, where and how of the killing, the reader can experience the killing as it took place, the trial, the execution, the investigation. The length of the fiction allows the writer to take the reader "deeper and deeper into character and events."
 
The length of the fiction also suggests that a greater length of time was spent on the work than the typical piece of journalism. With In Cold Blood, this certainly was the case. I believe Capote spent six years investigating this story, so that not only did he experience some of the events that he describes, but he spent so much time interviewing the characters he describes and immersing himself in the setting that he became deeply involved with his material. A writer must experience what she writes about in a more emotionally excited way than the everyday person. The writer is excited by what is seemingly a little occurrence or detail, feeling that it is unique and special and vitally important to the life of the story. At the same time, the writer must be able to write about her material. This requires the ability to transform emotion into another form, the written language. This requires at least enough distance from the material to stop and ask, "What is the emotion I try to describe in the terms of the language I speak." The heightened awareness of a writer and distance from the material, in time as well as thought are what make creative writing possible.
 
Consider your involvement in a love affair...  
earlier...


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