Narration (7 page)

Do you see what I mean.

It is very interesting.

And it has an awful lot to do with everything.

There are so many things to say at one time and this is one of them. Beginning and ending in writing anything is always a trouble of its own and it is a great trouble to anyone doing any writing. That is where the newspaper is interesting, there is really of course no beginning and no ending to anything they are doing, it is when it is and in being when it is being there is no beginning and no ending.

That is because it exists any of every day and any of every day is not mixed up with beginning and ending.

That is a very interesting thing in writing in a newspaper in a newspaper being existing there is no beginning and no ending and in a way too there is no going on. One really has to think of everything as one thinks of anything and that is one thing.

I love my love with a b because she is peculiar. One can say this. That has nothing to do with what a newspaper does and that is the reason why that is the reason that newspapers and with it history as it mostly exists has nothing to do with anything that is living.

I said newspapers make things too easy and I said that once to a reporter and he said you have no idea I am sure how terribly hard we work. Yes I
said but after you have done all that hard work you have to write it up as it would be if you had known it all beforehand and that is what really makes it too easy. There is no discovery there is mostly no discovery in a newspaper or in history, they find out things they never knew before but there is no discovery and finally if all this goes on long enough it is all too easy.

I cannot come back too often to telling and hearing to talking and listening, to repeating and changing to knowing and remembering to having an intention of intending something or to have anything happening, all these things are as they are and one of them can never be another one of them no matter how commonly anyone that is every one is in any confusion about them. I tell you and I cannot tell it to you too often although I may not tell it often enough as anybody even I can change about something I cannot tell it to you often enough that confusion is either making things easy by knowing beforehand how it is going to be done or by mixing up talking and listening, remembering and knowing not beginning and ending, and that is a very interesting thing think of that that there is really no confusion in mixing up beginning and ending no none at all.

And so now that we have gotten here that is now that we are not only writing the newspaper as well as reading what it writes what is it that it does do that makes it too easy to do and to read what it does do.

You see there is no beginning and ending because every day is the same that is that every day has anything that it has happening.

Now that is the difference between existing and happening.

If you exist any day you are not the same as any other day no nor any minute of the day because you have inside you being existing. Anybody who is existing and anybody really anybody is existing anybody really is that.

But anything happening well the inside and the outside are not the inside and the outside inside.

Let me do that again. The inside and the outside, the outside which is outside and the inside which is inside are not when they are inside and outside are not inside in short they are not existing, that is inside, and when the outside is entirely outside that is is not at all inside then it is not at all inside and so it is not existing. Do you not see what a newspaper is and perhaps history.

No matter how hard you work the result that you have is that the outside is outside and when it is outside it is not begun and when it is outside it is not ended and when it is neither begun nor ended it is not either a thing which has existed it is simply an event.

It is very curious in a newspaper that sometimes really sometimes a personality breaks through an event, it takes a tremendously strong personality to break through the events in a newspaper and when they do well it is soon over it is soon smoothed over and even history wishes to change it into something that anyone could recover from.

In a novel in a play no matter what it is that happens it is hoped that nothing will be smoothed over that every minute of that novel there is a beginning and ending that always any personality that anyone has there is one that no one can ever change into something that anyone can recover from.

And the reason why is this. The more a novel is a novel the more a play is a play the more a writing is a writing the more no outside is outside outside is inside inside is inside.

I love my love with a b because she is peculiar.

There is something very odd that has happened in all this in connection with detective stories and now listen.

As I say beginning and ending has something to do with everything that is anything and so listen.

In real life that is if you like in the newspapers which are not real life but real life with the reality left out, the reality being the inside and the newspapers being the outside and never is the outside inside and never is the inside outside except in the rare and peculiar cases when the outside breaks through to be inside because the outside is so part of some inside that even a description of the outside cannot completely relieve the outside of the inside.

And so in the newspapers you like to know the answer in crime stories in reading crime and in written crime stories knowing the answer spoils it. After all in the written thing the answer is a let down from the interest and that is so every time that is what spoils most crime stories unless another mystery crops up during the crime and that mystery remains.

And then there is another very peculiar thing in the newspaper thing it is the crime in the story it is the detective that is the thing.

Now do you begin to see the difference between the inside and the outside.

In the newspaper thing it is the crime it is the criminal that is interesting, in the story it is the story about the crime that is interesting. Now think, you will perfectly realize that the newspaper practically never tells anything about detecting, a little in the case of Dillinger, a little in the case of Hauptmann but still really very little and in lesser crimes not at all the emphasis is entirely upon the crime and not upon the detecting and in the written story it is impossible to hold the attention by telling about the crime you can only hold the attention by telling about detecting. All this is very interesting
most most interesting and has to do with what the newspaper has to say and what it has not to say and the fact that in the long run one might say practicaIly any day the newspaper is not reaIly exciting.

I have said that the business of the artist is to be exciting and it is his business and if he is an artist whatever he does reaIly does is reaIly exciting. By exciting I mean it really does something to you really inside you.

Now is it the business of the newspapers is it the business of an historian to be exciting weIl I do not think so that is I do not think that it is the business of the newspaper to be exciting and I think in their hearts they reaIly know this thing they know it is not their business to be exciting.

About the historian, the biographer and the autobiographer that is another matter and pretty soon later we will have to go into that.

What is it that is exciting, and how can exciting be soothing if it looks like excitement and is therefore soothing or if it is exciting and is therefore soothing or if it is as if it were exciting and is therefore soothing or not soothing, all these things have to be a great deal thought about if you are to understand anything if I am to understand anything about newspaper writing about any writing about anything being or not being written.

It is a very curious thing that a story told by anyone about anything that has not reaIly been exciting is exciting and a story told about anything that reaIly has been exciting is not exciting.

It is a very curious thing this thing.

In thinking about plays I came to the conclusion that in real life the climax of a really exciting scene is completion and the climax of a made up exciting thing a written exciting thing is a relief and that it is not really possible to remember the climax of a real scene because you can not remember completion but you can remember relief.

Now the same thing is true when the newspaper tells about any real thing, the real thing having happened it is completed and being completed can not be remembered because the thing in its essence being completed there is no emotion in remembering it, it is a fact like any other and having been done it is for the purposes of memory a thing having no vitality. While anything which is a relief and in a made up situation as it gets more and more exciting when the exciting rises to being really exciting then it is a relief then it is a thing that has emotion when that thing is a remembered thing.

Now you must see how true this is about the crime story and the actual crime. The actual crime is a crime that is a fact and it having been done that in itself is a completion and so for purposes of memory with very rare exceptions where a personality connected with it is overpowering there is no memory to bother anyone. Completion is completion, a thing done is a thing done and so it has in it no quality of ending or beginning. Therefore in real life it is the crime and as the newspaper has to feel about it as if it were in the act of seeing or doing it, they cannot really take on detecting they can only take on the crime, they cannot take on anything that takes on beginning and ending and in the detecting end of detective stories there is nothing but going on beginning and ending. Anybody does naturally feel that, that a detective is just that that detecting is just that that it is a continuity of beginning and ending and really nothing but that.

And so you have this curious situation. Newspapers are written as if what is happening is happening as they are writing and as it is happening in that way they can have in them no beginning and ending but after all they are writing and they are writing not as it is happening not as it the newspaper is printing or being read and yet all that has to be as if it were.

As I say they try to bridge the gap in every way. Head lines were invented to help them do this better, they are all taught exactly how it can be done and as they are so well taught finally it happens not as if it had begun but as if it had never been done. Finally the newspaper gets its readers so that it does not make any difference whether any event can or will happen as long as the newspaper can go on getting larger and larger with anything or smaller and smaller with anything, and always tell be telling that thing, that they are larger and larger and smaller and smaller in telling everything. That is what is finally happening that everybody has to know what everybody or anybody does but does anybody have it as a feeling what anybody or everybody does no not at all.

And so that is what the newspaper is.

And that brings us nearer and nearer to the writing of history of biography of autobiography, I keep getting nearer and nearer but am I really near enough.

We now know what the newspaper is and what it does and why it has to be made easier and easier because the more completely in every way everybody anybody knows anything knows everything that is always happening the more easily, the more easy it is to make it easy for anyone to know this thing what is always happening.

A newspaper man is trained to make this easy by never changing, nothing must ever be changing, things are happening but nothing must ever be changing about their being happening, the newspaper must never give to anyone reading it a feeling that anything is changing about something being always happening, if it ever could or would or should then anyone would come to have some suspicion that there might be a beginning and ending to
anything and if there is a beginning and ending to anything then it destroys the simplicity of something always happening.

It is all a very curious thing but this is a true story of newspaper writing and the detective fiction just completely the other way progresses by a continuous beginning and ending and once more therefore destroys itself into not existing. It is too bad because it might have been yes it might have been something but always beginning and ending is as destructive to existing as never beginning and ending.

You do see this thing.

And now let us begin to think about another thing, about the feeling of a thing being existing even when it is a happening as the newspaper has it be.

Is a thing realler because not that you have really seen it but you have seen the place where it did happen. That is to say is there more beginning and end to it if you know what it looks like the place the actual place where the thing happened.

It seems to have more beginning and ending to it then and perhaps it really has not really has but gives the emotion of reality somewhat clearer.

It is for this reason that local newspapers have a different way of saying that anything is happening from metropolitan newspapers. The small local newspaper has the feeling that they are telling not what is happening as something that is happening but they are telling what happened to some one whom every one mayor may not know but might know and certainly anyone does know the exact spot the very place where the thing that happened has happened, that makes small town newspapers have a slightly different feeling about what is happening than the big newspaper and therefore they might if they were not a newspaper they might bring anyone that is
every one to have the feeling that writing which is not what is happening gives anyone.