Camus

So this is weird--a couple of posts down I referred to the British survey that asked men and women what novel had 'changed their lives' and compared the responses. I noted that I personally found the men's choices far more compelling. . . but I didn't realize I had also read their first choice--Camus's The Stranger. I didn't know it is translated in British English as The Outsider. Anyway it's nice to know that I'm in company--even if it's exclusively male--in my literary preferences. Clicke here for the article.

on communication, again

Thanks all for your comments . . . I guess we are each compelled by different forces to write, to communicate, to connect. But this fear of miscommunicating is as much about the other, the reader as it were, as it is about the self. At least so I think. So that this thing called 'writer's block' or just a general fear of transcribing thought into a mode of communication is really quite terrifying. Ok I'll step away from this neutral/objective voice and let my own kick in. I need to write. And yet I don't write. Not nearly as much as I should or could or would. It's an emotional intensity I'm afraid I simply won't be able to put into words, a sort of visceral need to communicate, to be heard, to give voice to the thoughts and emotions that both torment and inspire me, that I'm afraid I could never capture--whether for lack of skill, imagination, or my inherent distrust in the written word, even ycommunication itself--and so I don't write. And I call myself a writer but I don't write and at times I feel I cannot read either, because there is only so much I can take in without giving back, and because I'm afraid I could never adequately give back, relay, communicate. Ach.
It is such a fine line we walk in this attempt to communicate the incommunicable--to relay the I to you. Ok, my ignorance of conceptual vocabulary tells me to shut up now before I start spewing meaningless jargon . . .