All entries for Friday 29 February 2008

Timeliness vs. Untimeliness

Writing about web page http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/magazine/11BELIEVERS.html?ex=1284091200&en=e1fba32179d284cf&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

The link above refers to an article about two experimental - and successful - US magazines: The Believer and n+1. The former is in the McSweeneys' posse, edited by Dave Eggers' partner, Vendela Vida. The latter I can badly describe as an avant garde journal, commentating on a variety of issues that often get ignored in mainstream US media outlets.

The key discussion, on page 3 of the article, is of how 'untimeliness' becomes the very 'timeliness' of these magazines, in order to make them a part of a zeitgeist. Mainstream journalism has become so focused on promoting the same handful of news stories and reviews of the same cultural output in order to corroborate a mainstream zeitgeist, that it has lost its diversity of content and style. You're left with several opinions of the same few things, which leads to a lack of awareness about what's out there.

The worst manifestation of this phenomenon is the digested articles that have started cropping up. Mainstream dailies, particularly weekend supplements, have started compiling how each others' critics have rated plays, films, books; or giving statistics of column inches dedicated to particular news stories.

So audiences, who are starved by seeing the same old in all the easy reach media, reach further to places like n+1 and The Believer, for commentary and ideas that astonish and delight (to borrow Peter Blegvad's phrase) by their diversity. This diversity manifests in both technique and content.

Philip Gerard, in Creative Non-Fiction's opening chapter, talks about the 'timely' and the 'timeless' aspect of good creative non-fiction. The word has more positive associations than 'untimely', but at the same time starts to smack somewhat of the universal, a term I'm equally wary of. But it's an important point: what translates when a piece of writing dates? Fiction is said to carry an 'emotional truth' through all its specific, contextualised lies. And creative non-fiction has this 'timelessness' that you might say is the human angle, the part that we can all share in, no matter our culture or experiences.

I don't know about that concept of shared humanity so much. I treat it as a belief, one that is perfectly acceptable, but with easy disproofs that leave the idea exclusive. The part of writing the reader can relate to is always dubiously interpreted anyway, even reading work by the best communicators.

But maybe it's that shared understanding of democratised interpretation that lends the idea of universality weight. More questions, as usual.

George Ttoouli : 29 Feb 2008 20:06 |  Tags: Creative Nonfiction Journalism Nplus1 Nytimes Thebeliever |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem