Wrote Milan Kundera in "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" (1979), quoted in "The write stuff: A brief overview of typomania and graphomania," a blog post by Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK.
Griffith also quotes an 1896 NYT article "Bryan’s Mental Condition" (Bryan = Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan):
“The habit of excessive writing, of explaining, amplifying, and reiterating, of letter making and pamphleteering, forms a morbid symptom of known as ‘graphomania’. Some men may overload their natural tendency to write, but a certain class of lunatics use nearly all their mental activities in this occupation, to the endless annoyance of their friends, relatives and physicians”.ADDED: I'm looking up this word after confessing to Meade that I wrote 6 1/2 pages in my handwritten notebook before 4:46 this morning, before beginning my first blog post, which was published at 5:21 a.m. The post you are reading now is the 6th of the day. And I've written in the comments too.
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48 comments:
I suspect that Kundera hit the high point of European (and American) literacy, or perhaps overshot it by a few years. It did sneak up on us, I would not have expected that at the time either.
I dont think the modern world can be accused of graphomania, as the main requirement, an audience of readers, is melting away rapidly.
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton suffered from graphomania to the point where he would be scribbling about what he saw around him from the back of a camel as he traveled.
"Some men may overload their natural tendency to write, but a certain class of lunatics use nearly all their mental activities in this occupation, to the endless annoyance of their friends, relatives and physicians”
And to the annoyance of opposing lawyers and judges.
Blog comment-readers too.
Kundera is still alive. He's 88. From Wikipedia:
"Milan Kundera (Czech: [ˈmɪlan ˈkundɛra]; born 1 April 1929) is a Czech-born French writer who went into exile in France in 1975, and became a naturalised French citizen in 1981. He "sees himself as a French writer and insists his work should be studied as French literature and classified as such in book stores".... In 1975, Kundera moved to France. There he published The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979) which told of Czech citizens opposing the communist regime in various ways. An unusual mixture of novel, short story collection and author's musings, the book set the tone for his works in exile. Critics have noted the irony that the country that Kundera seemed to be writing about when he talked about Czechoslovakia in the book, "is, thanks to the latest political redefinitions, no longer precisely there" which is the "kind of disappearance and reappearance" Kundera explores in the book."
Let it be written. Let it be done.
There's certainly some blog commenters who get a bit wordy. Graphomania is a fine affliction as long as whatever you're writing is worth reading. Unfortunately with a lot of people that rarely seems to be the case.
Here I was thinking, "Wow! Althouse is on fire today!" I had no idea it might be a mental condition. Selfishly, I hope it's incurable.
A notebook AND a blog. That's a lot of writing.
I think active writers wonder: "Why doesn't everyone do this? It's stimulating and free."
I am a writer by trade, but I work in a field where I can't post my opinions on most topics. So I have what is basically an off-line blog - posts I'd publish if I could, and someday might. It's like when Ryan from The Office set up Creed's "blog" in a Word document because he didn't want the world to be exposed to it.
Kundera=French
Conrad=English
It takes great talent to become a great (or celebrated anyway) writer in a foreign language learned as an adult.
I don't count Nabokov or Naipaul as both learned English as little children and from the start wrote mostly in English.
The graphomaniac writes promiscuously.
I'm an economist, but I once worked closely with a very well respected attorney in a gov't policymaking context. The lawyer was amazing in his ability to crank out 10 page drafts. This gave him (us) considerable power in the policy process, since the group was always working off of his latest draft. I wondered if this was a skill that people acquire in law school, or whether people with this natural talent gravitate to law where the skill is highly rewarded.
@Molly
I wonder how the distribution of good or prolific writers has changed since we have moved away from Dictaphones and secretaries to keyboards and computers as the tools for writing.
Secretaries probably are the unsung heroes (or heroines) in many literary careers. Also editors.
A lot less of both these days I think.
Trollope wrote some forty five novels and, perhaps, another twenty books on travel and poliitics. Not such an impressive number, but consider the fact that for most of his life writing was a part time job. He used to finish one novel and then, without pause, immediately take up the next novel. In his defense, it must be noted that he claimed to write strictly for money and not for any less worthy purposes. I have read five or six of his novels and found them worth reading.......Lenin wrote over fifty books and each book was over six hundred pages long and packed with economic statistics. I've never read any books is by Lenin, but they're reportedly pretty dull. When you consider all his other activities, his literary production remains impressive in quantity if not in quality.......I think Dickens is the only monstrously prolific writer who routinely produced works of great quality.
In the beginning was the word...YADA, YADA, YADA...
Perhaps oil painting might be a useful alternative to your malady of constantly expressing your ideas. EMBRACE THE BEAUTY OF SILENCE.
I think Dickens is the only monstrously prolific writer who routinely produced works of great quality.
Balzac and Victor Hugo come to mind.
Keep at it, and you might rival Barbara Cartland, maybe even Richard Baxter.
First-World problems...
Hemingway, in "Big Two Hearted River" writes about Nick's (his alter ego) "need to write."
It seemed to be related to his war experiences. Men who were in combat for a time seem to want to forget their experiences rather than write about them.
EB Sledge, who has written the best book I know of bout combat, waited years before writing " "With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa."
Alvin Kernan also waited years to write his books about the Navy at Midway.
High Volume is human. We all are making messages we want heard all of the time. And inscribing them makes our messages reach a mega bigger audience,including many that are not yet born ... for centuries ... To the age of ages.
And then there is the creative muse that makes unique characters liver in special stories. That is Steinbeck's territory.
I'm guessing this covers commentomania, too. Ritmo, I'm looking at you.
Huh.
Apparently H.P. Lovecraft wrote over 100,000 letters in his lifetime, some of which were 70+ pages in length.
Mania, mania, mania. Doesn't anyone just get excited by life anymore?
Bi-polar manic writing episodes sound like a good way to get invited on CNN.
Graphomania- I like this word. It makes the urge to write sound more elegant, less... compulsive. For me, it's as if there's a set number of words in me I have to get into print, every day. If I'm not writing professionally I'm making long posts and comments, if I go offline I find myself writing really long letters to people who would rather have a postcard.
Could be worse. Could be stinkbugs.
"Useless" is in the eye of the beholder.
The opposite would be the graphophobe, for whom each word is an extracted wisdom tooth.
A pseudographomanic spends long hours sitting at his desk pretending to write.
I'm going to keep this short and simple.
To keep this short and simple just read the first line and go no further.
Because after the first sentence are usually just words trying to explain the first sentence.
Sometimes the sentences that follow digress, which typically undermines simplicity. According to wordorigins.org "'undermine' is one of those words whose etymology is readily apparent by examining its constituent elements, under + mine, a reference to the military tactic of digging under the walls of a fortification in order to collapse them."
After a digression there is usually a sentence that tries to tie up the digression to the first sentence. So as not to undermine it. So you are now back at the first sentence.
And if the first sentence is not short and simple it is only going to get worse.
Maybe by parsing the meanings of the key words.
For instance, 'simple' might mean different to people of, say, different expertise. Something Einstein found simple might be considered dauntingly complex by a waiter at Appleby's.
Note that I said 'waiter', not waitress" -- to use a woman in that comparison would probably cause a digression into issues of sexism. As opposed to the issue of stereotyping waiters at Appleby's as people who would find Einstein dauntingly complex.
And perhaps Einstein would find being a waiter at Appleby's complex.Or maybe he just would find carrying a platter of food dishes to a table physically challenging, which is not necessarily complex.
Except maybe to someone who studies ergometry. And the person who studies ergometry might not be able to explain the aspects of balance, strength and muscle memory used in carrying a platter of food dishes to a table in a short and simple manner.
And maybe the waiter -- or waitress, she is just as theoretically capable -- COULD explain it in a short and simple manner.
Table Seven.
Three dishes.
The fat guy gets the Diet Coke.
Like that.
Short and simple.
Especially when you consider that 'Coke' is a shorter and simpler way of saying 'Coca Cola beverage'.
And a short and simple way to convey that you do not want Diet Pepsi.
Unless you are using 'Coke' as a short and simple way of saying 'any cola beverage.'
So then Pepsi would be fine, too.
The Germans have a word for this.
Or maybe authors are more obsessed with writing than normal people.
Imagine that.
Althouse has one foot in the graveyard
shift.
After he retired from the Post Office, Trollope would sit down and write 5,000 words before lunch. Or was it 25,000? The Victorians were also writing for serialization, one reason they read as if paid by the word.
I come from a long line of obsessive writers on my mother's side. I mean 12-page, both-sides-typed, single-spaced epistles. A couple of them also wrote books, self-published or otherwise I'm not sure.
The letters were really intense. They were fallen away Methodists or outright atheists, liberal-socialist, pseudo-scientists. They spun themselves into their own irrational corners and made three generations of fuckups.
When I read their old letters I think, God, just take a drink will ya.
Oh and +1000 on Trollope. I've been living in his universe for about a year and half now, with still more to read!
Bob Boyd said...
A pseudographomanic spends long hours sitting at his desk pretending to write.
"All work and NO play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and NO play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and NO play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and NO play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and NO play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and NO play makes Jack a dull boy."
I filled a dozen notebooks with Derrida, just as a way to slow the reading down to a speed where things got thought about.
The company paper reported on the enthusiastic start of the manic-depressive march across America that an employee was involved in.
It was never mentioned again. I assume they gave up.
"I filled a dozen notebooks with Derrida"
Amazing what hobbies people will pick up.
Carol, my favorite is Phineas Redux, perhaps because I've read it recently and most often (bought it at the library sale).
Unfortunately, Ralph the Heir was disappointing 25 years ago. Perhaps I should try again.
Ecclesiastes 12:12 -- Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.
Okay, I will go public with this. As much as we all (or most of us) love the Althouse blog, wouldn't it be great if Ann wrote a novel?
I've posted here before that I am of the opinion that Althouse has the potential to be the next Tom Wolfe.
Worst case scenario is that Althouse self-publishes the book and sells 1,000 copies here.
Ann, don't keep your light under a bushel basket or restrict your talent just to the blog.
All these writers you folks mentioned? Pikers.
Isaac "Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards."
Bryan was from Lincoln. Four time loser as the Dem candidate for President. Populist.
"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of--but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
Dear Ann, As long as the quality is there keep it up (but don't ignore Meade so much that he leaves you).
I'm surprised no one mentioned Churchill. Apparently between his books and speeches he wrote somewhere around 11,000,000 words. Not bad for a guy that had a full time job running a country and winning a world war. https://richardlangworth.com/words
Churchill gets an asterisk. Most of his later books were written by his private secretary. He added some brass furnishings to make the works distinctly Churchillian, but most of the words weren't his. His early books were though, and they're the most readable books ever written by a world historical figure. He got the Nobel Prize for Literature, but that's only because you had to give him a Nobel for something, and you couldn't very well award him the prize for Peace or Chemistry.
I tend to be pretty wordy in my work product or if I’m giving a presentation on some topic related to my hobbies. But as far as keeping a diary or journal, I’ve written maybe two pages in my entire life, and only when I was a schoolboy doing it for a grade. Bored me stiff.
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