What does The Work bring to this table? A very, very late work of philosophical literature. Long after the literary boat has sailed. And sunk.
Literature’s, like, a ghost town. Literature! You can’t use that word anymore. Smacks of elitism. And racism, probably. And every kind of prejudice. Sounds so stuffy.
Sounds like it’s part of some forgotten literary avant garde. That played out in another country a long time ago. Robert Pinget in the house! Make some noise for Nathalie Sarraute! Don’t tell me you actually read that stuff? Butor and co. And actually enjoy it?
I like the idea of it.
They only read those things in France. And only because they have to. Because they’re made to. To pass their exams, or whatever. Made to do their avant garde duties. Made to eat their avant garde greens. Like some literary nationalism thing. And then they have to go back to watching Canal+, or whatever.
No one else reads them. Not even in translation. The French ministry of culture funds all the translations, but no one ever buys them. There are entire warehouses full of unsold Helene Cixous translations.
You just want to join the long line of crap British imitators of French literary stuff.
Just like you’re part of the long line of pathetic imitation French philosophers.
That’s our fate, right? Total irrelevance. Irrelevance times irrelevance. Irrelevance to fucking infinity.
I really appal myself. I do. But I get all my energy from appalling itself. I amaze myself by how appalling I am. By my instincts. By the things in my head. By my stupid fantasies.
Self-loathing is, like, the best energy. The best driver. The Work comes out of that. That’s what The Work is.
The Work appals me. Every sentence is appalling. And then I have to write more sentences to correct those. And more sentences still.
The Work! It’s even got a stupid, pompous name. Calling anything The anything. I couldn’t think of anything better. Like, sub-sub Thomas Bernhard. Bernhard without the gorgeous music and spiralling sentences. Just, like, obsessive italics. And exclamation marks. And all these sentence fragments.
My prose is so terrible. Someone told me that you should learn Latin if you want to improve your prose style. Makes it all clipped and orderly, apparently. If I spent half the time learn Latin as I do writing about how much I hate my work, I might actually get somewhere, though I probably wouldn’t.
I might publish it under the title, Why I am So Stupid. You know, an inversion of Nietzsche’s chapter titles in Ecce Homo. That might redeem it.
They’ll just think you’re a tosser – some with a Russell University job writing about what an idiot he is. Pure self indulgence.
My stupidity is so mesmerising. It amazes me so. It really does.
I think you’re getting lost in your idiocy.
I think I am.
If only we could be put on trial for crimes against scholarship.
I don’t think it’s very healthy to be appalled at yourself. Unless you’re genuinely appalling, and I think I might be.
I’m not even modest. I don’t think writing something called The Work is very modest, is it? Giving it that title. Anyway, the idea was to kill myself at the end of it. When it’s done. When the Work is done. When everything is, like corrected, like in that Bernhard book.
Which is total bad faith, because I know it can never be done. You can’t just correct the fault when you are the fault and writing The Work only compounds the fault.
Work in Progress 