"Blocked," an article in The New Yorker by Joan Acocella. Published in the summer fiction issue, which must be some sort of meta-irony. Informative and entertaining. Entertaining, that is, in the same sense as a really bad car wreck you've just avoided. Take Joseph Mitchell, who joined The New Yorker in 1938, wrote a series of brilliant pieces, culminating with what was thought to be his greatest (about a blocked writer) in 1964. After that, he continued to come to work as usual, day in and day out, for the next 32 years, but never submitted another word. Two thoughts immediately come to mind:
"Wow, at least I'm not that bad."
And:
"Wow, what a great job that was."
Acocella cites Ian Hacking, a philosopher, who has written about "dynamic nominalism." That's when you invent a category, and people "sort themselves into it, behave according to the new description, and thus contrive new ways of being. Possibly, some writers become blocked simply because the concept exists, and invoking it is easier for them than writing."
I haven't read Hacking, but it wouldn't surprise me if he notes the influence of society in this phenomenon: you not only sort yourself into the new category, but you're accepted by society as a member of the new category. When people discover I've published, and then how long it's been since I have published, the usual response is "Oh, writer's block?" No one's ever said, "Oh, lazy fucker?"
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