Waxed jackets (short form)

Reflecting on my last post I realise that I'm quite drawn to what you could call 'short form' writing, and that's what blogging seems to invite. My research collaborations with Cathy have really brought this out. After all, the idea of stacking stories depends on short narratives (or narrative extracts) based on research observations and field notes. In recent iterations of this I've been trying to capture the essence of an event without faithfully rendering every detail. In some of these attempts, I've been inspired by the short prose poems of Francis Ponge. I suppose the idea of drawing out the detail or the nuance of small ephemeral things can, if successful, work on the reader in interesting ways. There's something similar going on in the journalism of Joseph Roth. His shorter pieces, sometimes referred to as feuilleton, often draw attention to the minutiae of everyday life but, in doing so, also manage to comment on larger issues. For example, ahead of his time Roth, to whom the idea of the anthropocene would have been unknown, was keenly aware of our tendency to separate out something called 'nature' as a thing that has to satisfy a human function, to be of use, even if that is just as a place for recreation. He disdainfully describes that sort of attitude as a 'waxed jacket relationship with nature'. At the same time, however, he manages to celebrate 'the sudden, unexpected, and wholly meaningless rising and falling of a swarm of mosquitoes over a tree trunk. The silhouette of a man laden with firewood on a forest path. The eager profile of a spray of jasmine tumbling over a wall.' (Roth, 2003). It's a kind of attention to detail that works well for me. Detail, but in a compressed piece of writing (four pages in my paperback copy). Well then, the short form is at least something to aspire to, an ongoing project for 2018.