Time for pCARL Time

Two years ago, frustrated at a nationally known amateur-writer holiday month thing that takes place in November, but whose name will not be spoke, I created my own little writer's holiday.

I know--creating your own holidays is one of the first signs, isn't it?

Basically, despite being a jerk and a general curmudgeon, I think that setting an arbitrary word count as a month long writing exercise is probably the least effective practice in writing. And the holiday aspect of it is equally silly. Writing a little over 1600 words a day is really not that hard. If you need help to write that much in a sitting, you might want to find a hobby that you actually like.

But I think there could be something in this annual, force-yourself-to-write in a new and different way (just if a "new and different way" is 1600 words in a sitting, then, well... you get it). So I invented pCARL: the psuedo-Creative Annual Ritual for Literature. As originally discussed, part of the charm is the name sounding like a marginal sex act. You can read more about it's traumatic birth here, in the FAQ.

The deal is this: in the month of November, the pCARLer will REWRITE a piece of literature they know, love, admire, hate, or otherwise have casually met. The only rule is that it must have originally been written by someone else.

The prototype is to rewrite the piece directly, word for word. With pen, woodblocks, keyboard, whatever. Of course, pCARL is not the sort of holiday that would get all up in your business by telling you exactly what to do. No! That is for other holidays with much less awesome acronyms. So, if you feel like getting creative with your rewrite process, for example, adding some of the things you think the author meant to say the first time around, but must have gotten accidently cut in the editing, go right ahead. The only rule is that the piece must have been written by someone other than yourself, and when you are done, will be somehow posts and shared, with the original author's name still given credit, albeit with the sub-title, "rewritten by ____."

It may sound stupid, and maybe it is. But once you have taken the trouble to actually rewrite something, you see the benefit. Also, maybe the benefit of doing it only once a year. Even to place an original text next to the keyboard, and bend your head to think about the letters of each word as they flow through your fingers, is good exercise. It's like reciting a Shakespearian monologue. The cadance of the text, and the shape of its symbols pass through your mind like a train through the countryside.

Sure, you can write pages of "original" prose. And you can reread the classics a lot faster than you can rewrite them, and gain more from the reading experience. But rewriting a text is like stepping into history; it's not going back into history, but like lifting the fibers of your historical view of the world and literature, and stepping inside, to see how things look from another vantage point.

The first year I did the first chapter of Melville's The Confidence Man. I don't remember what I did last year, but I think I did end up doing something (other than writing about it on the Internet). This year I re-wrote a section from Heidegger's Being and Time, into which I inserted my own comments about history, time, and the internet, and which I published as a post in conjunction with this one.

Part of the reason I did them together, is because the conclusions I drew from the passage, are relevant to pCARL itself. Clearly, this holiday does not avail itself to the stricter interpretations of what Intellectual Property is. But additionally, it casts the literary canon in a different light than simply paying for a book, and putting it on the shelf. It brings work into the present, into a state of literary being. The passage of Heidegger was written in 1926, but now it was also written in 2009. Maybe you prefer the '26 version better. It certainly will continue to be the "true" version that will be republished, and the next time I want to read the section in question, I will probably reach for the '26 as well. But nevertheless, because I am posting it on the Internet, the 2009 version exists, and will continue to exist. It was here, part of the present, and will remain so, though most-likely ignored. I'm sure I don't have to tell you how today we only know of many great historical works because they were mentioned in other commentary--all original copies being lost. I don't claim this will happen with Being and Time, but still, it proves a strange, dopplegangered existential quality for such referential work.

The original English translation of Being and Time was completed and published in the 60s. My physical copy is the Stambaugh re-translation, completed in the 90s. Translation is a form of re-writing, of course, and definitely suited to pCARL's mission. When I typed the text, I used the older translation, most of which is available via Google Books. Not all of it, however. Because of Google Books' innane "preview" deal, there was one "unviewable" page from the section in question. This renders the work nearly useless, in my opinion. Thanks, for nothing Google. But, since it is easier to retype something on the screen than a book in one's lap, I used the portion that was available, and then filled in the missing page from the Stambaugh translation. Among other fun pCARL experience, this laid differences in the translation bare. I was able to pick up the missing page easy enough (without using the standardized page numbers of the original edition), but I actually had some trouble figuring out where the missing page ended, because the wording was so different. Key phrases are translated differently throughout the text. The newer translation prints "Dasein" as "Da-sein", to better show the composite nature of the term. This gave me some clues, but when the sentences are completely transposed in the clause order, it gets difficult to tell what sentences are "equivalent". I left the language true to each version, but I did write all "dasein's" without the hyphen, just to keep it the same.

So have I violated copyright, or not? I used the publicly available, fair-use Google Books preview of one edition, and then supplemented it with a fair-use portion of another edition, with a totally different copyright. Or have I violated the copyright of the Heidegger estate? I don't think so, because I think 1927, the date of the first edition, renders it public domain. But this doesn't qualify further translations, with their own copyright. But then, isn't all of what I did fair use? I inserted more commentary than original text. Or maybe nobody cares. This is the Internet, after all.

Despite the hard-to-understand measurements of Intellectual Property, what I did was to create a segment point at which this text re-enters world-history. This text is canonical; it is historical. I have reinvigorated it's being in the present, by making it something both old and new. I have made it signify according to all four of Heidegger's listed significations of history, which I discuss in the post. Is it more historical now, or less? I'm not sure.

Regardless, pCARL will press onward, ever pushing to boundaries of what my mind and the Internet will tolerate, or completely ignore.

Forward!

Witty puns 'til November...

Hey, its November! A great month all around!

Our five regular readers will remember that this is pCARL month.

pCARL is the pseudo-Creative Annual Ritual for Literature, birthed from my perhaps wry, failing sense of humor and my theoretical disappointment with National Novel Writing Month.

Basically, the idea is that the exercise of attempting to write a "novel", (a specious idea in itself, as the only constraints seem to be fiction and +20,000 words) in one month, while perhaps helping those who work best under arbitrary deadlines and contest-like project rules, is not really a very helpful stimulus to writing.

However, a yearly celebration of writing does sound like an awesome idea, especially if conceived as both a writing exercise, a celebration of the writing community, and a general stimulating project for new and current writers.

I thought pCARL might be be a better idea. You can read the entire argument in the link above, but generally, the idea is that we re-write a novel that we already enjoy, pretty much word for word. It's a close-reading study, a mimicry exercise, and something to do while we wait for our own creative juices to start flowing (which we hope that they would be, all year round).

Last year I re-wrote the first chapter of Herman Melville's The Confidence Man. It was a lot more work than I originally thought, for just re-typing a short printed chapter. It was fun, and I had planned to do more, but then immediately my own creativity grabbed a hold of me (for better or worse) and I embarked on a long string of other projects, one being my recently published novella. Goodness, that smug feeling of self-promotion gives me a rush.

I don't know if I will do a pCARL this year. I'm still swamped in other projects. Megan is working on one, (code name: Cookbook) with even further goals of re-publishing! I'm helping too, but so far she has done most of the re-writing.

If you are interested in taking part in pCARL, for a book, a story, a chapter, or even a page (hell, just do a sentence if you want!) let me know in the comments section. I'm interested to hear how other people experienced the project.


Also, there is the pCARL blog, that still exists. You can post your experiences there too. In fact, if you write them up in a nice paragraph, (or more) I'll even post them!

happy pCARL!

Some time, some where, there will be blogs...

Hi...

Just checking in to tell those interested in pCARL but are perhaps not checking the pCARL blog, that I have decided to memorialize and periodize my pCARL attempt in a Journal on the pCARL blog. So, if you want to read about my experience re-writing The Confidence-Man: His Mascquerade by Herman Melville, you should check pCARL at intervals.


Later!

pCARL, off into the world you go

pCARL has its own blog! Check it out!

Soon to come, social networking! The interdome is JUST THAT EASY!

pCARL is born! No, not an indecent sex act! A writing project!

So, recently, as in, my last post, I developed a lengthy and polemic rant against the National Novel Writing Month. Many strange avenues of argument were followed, and some personal issues laid bare. But, the criticism was largely not on the constructive side.

However, in a change from my typical style of "lambaste 'em and leave 'em", I am going to start making this a personal mission. I am actually going to "follow thorough", rather than sardonically sit back with folded arms. Through some brainstorming with Tom and Megan (you can see my conversation with Tom in the comments section of the last post) I have given birth to an illegitimate, monstrous, and most likely short-lived offspring. What is this placenta-wet son of Cain? Let me be the first to introduce you to:

The Pseudo-Creative Annual Ritual for Literature
henceforth to be known as pCARL, until a better name with a better acronym can be developed.

Questions That Might be Asked Often to Elucidate this Strange Thing:

What is pCARL?

- pCARL is a sarcastic response to National Novel Writing Month (and the according acronym that will not be named). pCARL is a project that is pretentious, largely tongue-in-cheek, and yet still completely and utterly serious about helping people improve their writing by an actual appreciation for literature rather than a self-indulgent leap into basic literacy.

What is the motivation for this self-righteous act that mocks the creativity of others?

- National Novel Writing Month is based around the idea that a method for instigating the art of writing is the sheer propagation of quantity. The FAQ says that without the challenge of the deadline and the ritualistic group aspect, many of the participants would not put pen/cursor to paper/screen at all, and therefore any writing is good writing. The 50,000 word limit is also one of the most steadfast rules, celebrating an arbitrary length of symbols as the quantifier for the completion of the task.
Here at pCARL, we take a different approach. In a country with a near-perfect literacy rate and yet such an abundance of mediocre-at-best literary output (tell-all books, popular histories, fan fiction, and gimmicky series being some of the most widely-selling printed material, not to mention the rise of the magazine in place of actual prose) it seems straight-up detrimental to praise the cancerous metastasis of malignant words as actual creativity! It is as a plague to the art of prose! It is a insult to iambic pentameter! It is deleterious to every literary device we praise and enjoy! The day that the sheer abundance of words is treated as actual literary output is the day the public library is absorbed by the department of motor vehicles, and by the muses, we will not stand by and see authorship reduced to a mass of bureaucracy!

So, what are we actually talking about?

-As noted by Tom, one learns to play a musical instrument by learning classic tunes. There is a reason that classics stand the test of time, and by practicing the basics we learn to create new art on our own. Artists take pencil and paper to the museum, the budding guitarist buys a book of Led Zepplin or Bob Dylan tabulature, and craftsmen make a simple chair before constructing an ornate sideboard. Authors begin by reading. But in the journey towards creative output, and making paper actually accumulate weight, the writer often puts down the library card in favor of a pen.
Not so fast! No one is too old to learn from the likes of Marlowe, Gogol, or Woolf. There are too many classic works of literature for us ever to absorb the lessons of them all; however, this is no reason not to try. No amount of newly penned work could erase the weight of all that has come before; the creative process must always look backward, as it also looks forward. Otherwise, we will look up one day and find ourselves in a desert of Newspeak: our language would not even familiar to ourselves, because it has lost the long history of evolution by which meaning is passed into symbol, and by which stories are told. Amid sound and fury it may still signify, but the long life that is its power is diminished. Whether told by and idiot or an ideologue, true literature is not the author's own language s/he is uttering, but the language of all of us, of all humans, of Homer, as much as Chaucer, as much as Shelley, as much as Dickens, as much as Pynchon...

Will you get to the point, jerk?

-During the month of November, we will each re-write a great work of literature. The goal is to learn the lessons of language that have already been inscribed in classic texts, and thereby to reanimate the creativity inherent in great writing by learning from it, word by word, sentence by sentence, from "beginning" to "end". It is a close reading, a writing exercise, an act of homage, and a way to while the hours til death claims us all. The work of literature to be re-written may be anything literary, that is defensible as such in the Introduction to the Re-Writing. Length of the work chosen may be any number of words or other quantitative markers, but it is cautioned that the goal is to learn something, and as practice makes perfect, repetition makes renewal. Therefore, pick a length of work that will not be too easy, but not be an insurmountable task. Too short, and the lesson of the literature may be missed. Too long, and one may not follow through. The work chosen is the participant's choice for a reason, so choose carefully for yourself.
Note: The re-writing does not necessarily have to be "word for word". However, it is a re-writing, and not an adaptation. The finished product will be labeled: "the title of the work, by the original author, edited by the participant."

What did you mean by "Introduction to the Re-Writing"?

There will be an original Introduction to the Re-Writing written by the re-writer, just before the beginning of the re-written text. This may consist of anything, but should justify the task and the re-written text as the participant justified it to him/herself, to set the context for anyone examining the newly re-written text, under the new appended label. If there are differences between the original text and the re-written version, we suggest that you think seriously about what the differences may signify, and how the work of literature changes, and include mention of these reflections in the Introduction. What can be learned from the original, the new, and the comparison between them upon the reading of the text? One way to study any differences may be to note the re-writing changes with a note of some sort, as is common in newly edited editions of classic works. But all of this is up to the participant, as the person conducting the lesson for him/herself. The only rule is that there must be an Introduction.

Are you freakin' serious?

-Well, not generally, but regarding pCARL, yes. While we may not subscribe to the idea that there is never anything new under the sun, we definitely feel that there is a building of culture, that there is a sediment of creative human output that builds upon itself. How could we consider ourselves adding to it unless we study what is already there? A close reading as a personal course of study and reflection is one way to take on the weight of culture. And besides, it could be fun! What student of literature hasn't wished that s/he was able to write Gulliver's Travels, or Beowulf, or Naked Lunch, or The Bible? Now you can! And you will certainly walk away with a heightened appreciation for the text that you didn't have before, no matter how many times you had read it in the past.

So, what are you going to re-write?

-I think, but have not quite decided, on re-writing The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville. I just read it, would like to read it again, and fell in love with Melville as a writer through the work. It is also available in the Project Gutenberg, which means that no one owns the copyright. I think that this could only help, in case I decide that I want to publish my re-writing on the internet or something. Megan has loosely committed to re-writing The Gambler by Dostoevsky, as long as she can do it in Russian. Another reason to participate in pCARL! Foreign language books are totally in, and this could help you brush up on your second, third, or ninth language. You could even translate something if you want! Translating is certainly an homage to a work of literature, and a decent exercise in writing, and an art all of its own.

How do I get involved?

-Re-write a book! Conduct a Pseudo-Creative Annual Ritual for Literature! If you like, spread the word about it to your literary friends, and let us know your results! Even if you only get halfway, you are halfway through. No need for an half empty/full glass here, there is no such thing as empty words!


Now go, get to the library, and re-write for literature!
Silly, perhaps. Pretentious, yes. But we're going with it. Happy literature to you.