Writing is a lie

In the West (which includes the East, of course) text is so much of the texture of life that it has become natural to us, like rocks or rain.

Or has it? Does magic cling yet to the written word? In spite of it all, in spite of the tabloids and the IRS forms (and the blogs!), do we by reflex in our unguarded moments (that is, most of them), and at this late date in our jaded culture, still think of writing as a priestly craft, a setting-down of divine knowledge?

A few weeks ago "The New Yorker" published, posthumously, John Updike's last review -- of the new John Cheever biography. Updike knew Cheever, and we all have known for a long time that John Cheever was a fallible human being, which this bio apparently seals. OK, fair enough, but he wrote luminous stories in inimitable prose that also had wisdom in them. Sacrifices must be made, shamans are not to be held to bourgeois standards of behavior. But Updike said something more interesting -- that Cheever, for all the smarts in his stories, was essentially clueless in his life.

Perhaps we see beauty and we infer wisdom. In our natural state we would look for signs in clouds and listen for them in thunder. The most obtrusive natural phenomena in modern life are texts. And they come to us from on high: we don't see their production; they simply arrive -- presumably from and with the approval of Those Who Ought To Know What They Are Doing. If you have read this far you are making my point for me. Do you think that I know what I'm doing? If I told you what you were like -- as a man, or a woman, or a veteran of a foreign war, wouldn't you believe me, just because it is written?