*

In a sense it's an insult to tell a writer that he writes well. You will only rise in him the cyclical, self-cynical feelings of confusion and dismay at his own perceived inability. If a writer's words bore flesh, there would be plenty more outcasts in the world.

Writing is a surge. One writes with a feeling, and the words that result are always a crime against the spirit that bore them. I can only think of one sentence I've ever written that I thought was out-and-out, solidly good. Do we really read a work by analyzing each word and stringing them together? Or do we at most use certain words to indicate a deep tone, a certain energy, in which the work is written, in which each word considered in itself can never contain? The second, which is why the idea of a writer who perfectly knows all the "rules", who prides him- or herself as a good writer because of a degree from a university, is repugnant, a crime upon aesthetic humanity.

Nothing can come close to touching the hem of the garment of a high feeling, of the intoxication of creation, of releasing the inner demons who constrict and drive insane and of so exorcising, angelizing, the soul through splurging words on paper. Then you look back to what has fallen, and it looks like it was from a hand from another universe. Words are a form of murder, and language is more than words. Thus all great writers loathe what they write. They know that what they've revised for the hundredth time is still light years away from the misleading feeling of perfection that tagged every moment of creation. They know and shrink, for writing always involves a degree of self deception. Do you want the litmus test for a good writer? Test how much he shrinks at what he's written. A "classic" writer might be nothing else than a masochist with stratospheric words.

But, no, I'm an exception: everything I've written, except that one anorexic sentence thoughtlessly composed years ago amidst a pile of creative stillborns, is nothing more than the blood of my own soul from which I wash my hands. The wound will never be content with closing up. Blessing, curse, or cursed blessing. Choose your time of the day.