Writing = Garbage?

In browsing through Jon Winokur's delicious The Portable Curmudgeon, my imaginary big toe just stubbed itself on this bit of a boulder in the shoe we now call blogging:

All writing is garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try to put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs. -- Antonin Artaud

Um, Mr. A.A.? That would me moi. Oink. OINK! And the rest of us, I s'pose.

I don't know Artaud's works except for a riveting essay about him by the late Susan Sontag around 1973 in The New Yorker. You could look it up (as Casey Stengel said, and sources say HE was actually mimicking an earlier quote). My anal-rententive mind works that way. (Did you ever see the great T-shirt in Wireless, the public radio catalog, that says something like, "Is anal retentive hyphenated?") I remember Artaud as an anarchist French playwright. I guess. But, whew, how prescient could one be?

...to put into words any part of what goes on in their minds...

That be us, Artie.

Winokur's little gem of a book offers just two more quotes on writing. Here they are:

If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing. -- Kingsley Amis.

That's Martin's Da, the author of Lucky Jim, a fine satire. (I love Martin Amis's Money, as well as other works. I know, not on my Favorites. Who cares.)

And:

If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces. -- Paul Fussell.

And now a word from our irredeemably shameless sponsor:

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