What we’re reading: Mr. Gwyn - a novel by Alessandro Baricco
Translated by Ann Goldstein, McSweeney’s 2014
An aging British novelist decides to call it quits and makes a brash announcement in The Guardian stating that he will never write again, but doesn’t succeed in abandoning his chosen profession for long. Embarking on a new career as a “copyist”, Jasper Gwyn begins to write personal portraits in the very controlled setting of his new private studio. I just finished reading Mr. Gwyn, by Italian novelist Alessandro Baricco, and discovered many themes touching on the creative spirit and process. Here are a few that I thought would resonate Montreal’s creative communities.
What to do when you lose inspiration?
Mr. Gwyn begins with the protagonist realizing the superficiality of his public image as a novelist - he’s tired of doing PR, and being photographed looking “pensive”. He seems to have realized the triviality of his work within the grand scheme of things, and is no longer inspired. The novel explores the idea that what you love will also destroy you eventually: children for parents, success for artists, or the next peak for mountain climbers. Anyone working in a creative field can likely relate to this, at times feeling like what we are doing is futile yet all-encompassing.
For a novelist this is indeed a crisis. For those of us working in communications, it might be easier to separate our personal from professional lives. Despite feeling strongly about giving up writing, and attempting to “write mentally”, Jasper realizes that his calling is predestined, he cannot not write. In other words, he has a gift, and despite the challenges of maintaining a successful writing career (the limitations of being pigeonholed into a specific literary genre for example, or criticized because his novels are so distinct one from another) he carries on. With some down-to-earth advice from a chance meeting with an older woman in a doctor’s office waiting room, Jasper Gwyn ends up taking up the practice of writing “portraits” within the strict confines of a studio of his own creation. Could the key to staying inspired be as simple as changing one’s surroundings?
Necessary constraints for creation
Once Mr. Gwyn decides to give his copyist career a go, he defines a highly engineered environment in which to work, commissioning an artisanal light bulb maker to create custom light bulbs that will give off a “childlike” light and extinguish after 30 days, one by one. He has a composer friend put together an enveloping moody soundtrack that will play on a loop in a studio that he has rented and sparsely furnished, pondering what the best setting would be in which to write his client’s portraits, over the course of a month. Author Alessandro Baricco describes Mr. Gwyn’s in an interview with Le Monde as “living out every writer’s ultimate fantasy, the desire to write in a situation of absolute purity. To write a text destined for an audience of one, in total solitude is the epitome of the author’s trade” (trans. from French). It may not be everyone’s fantasy to write for only one person, but we can definitely relate to the notion of orchestrating the ideal environment in which to create. Yet does this system work for Mr. Gwyn? Initially yes, he seems to produce good work, although his subjects take some time to get used to the controlled environment, the artificiality of not-speaking and highly selective soundtrack, the strange lighting and the extended duration of the exercise. Is this a suggestion that we need specific constraints in order to create good work? On one level, Mr. Gwyn feels free to begin writing without worrying too much about the outcome, since he is working within so many other defined parameters. Despite this, he only really begins to get his act together and start assembling a cohesive written portrait when he realizes that the month is almost up, as the light bulbs begin to go out one by one.
In reality, it is very rare for artists and designers to be able to curate their environments to this degree. Yes, we can try and find a studio or office with just the right about of sunlight, arrange things on our desk perfectly, and look for the best studio mates (or conversely look for a quiet solo environment). But usually despite our best efforts, our concentration is interrupted by an incoming mobile message, something popping up on a social feed that we didn’t expect, loud studio mates, or hunger, to name a few. In other words, artists and creators are human. Despite a certain necessary removal from the trappings of day to day life in order to be able to accurately observe and respond to our these observations, at the end of the day, we need to stay engaged in order to remain relevant, thereby producing work that will feel human and meaningful to our audience.
Art vs. craft
While a craftsman's work often involves the creation of a practical object thereby resolving a problem or question, an artist is usually doing the reverse - asking questions or provoking us to think about an issue in a new way. While the Camden Town maker of the custom “Catherine de Médecis” light bulbs takes his craft very seriously, it is less clear if Jasper considers himself to be an artist or a craftsman. On the one hand, as a novelist, he has created original works, and has experienced a reasonable level of success as such. On the other, his assistant Rebecca discovers that some of his written portraits are appearing in books attributed to other authors. Is Mr. Gwyn plagiarising, or simply writing under different noms de plume? In transitioning from the profession of author to copyist, Mr. Gwyn may be shifting from the life of an artist to that of an artisan. Although the situation doesn’t seem to be so black and white.
Baricco and Mr. Gwyn seem to have an appreciation for the straightforward aspect of craft - there is no second-guessing one’s purpose in life, but rather a concise carrying out of tasks, improving upon one’s skills and creations to perfection. This is very distinct from the often messy nature of creating art, literally and figuratively, where one’s direction and purpose can fluctuate and change over time. Perhaps it’s a question of timing and phases for Mr. Gwyn - when he has the strength and perseverance to put forward a singular vision, he can allow himself to dream and make ambitious art. But when he less secure in his footing, he is better suited to the creation of one thing over and over again (hence copying). The assurance of carrying out straightforward tasks is comforting, and provides enough of an intellectual challenge and stimulus in this context. We could therefore conclude that when Mr. Gwyn decides to become a copyist, he is not giving up on his creativity, but he is transitioning in a way from identifying as an artist to identifying as a craftsman. There is no moral judgement over which is superior, but rather an acknowledgement that there is often a need to self-identify with one or the other in order to be productive. In this sense, Mr. Gwyn is pigeonholing himself, the act he loathed so much when journalists did it. By having a clear sense of his place and role, he can be productive again.
Novelist Alessandro Baricco © C. Hélie / Gallimard
Slow vs. fast culture
A final aspect of the novel that stuck out in terms of the creative process is the notion of time. When Mr. Gwyn decides to spend thirty full days with his subjects in order to write their portrait, we get the sense that this is a luxurious amount of time in which to write a few pages. As Alessandro Baricco explains in Le Monde:
« Mr. Gwyn est un personnage qui appartient au passé. Dans notre société, il apparaît comme une figure obsolète. Au fond, à travers son histoire, j’ai rendu un dernier hommage chargé d’émotion à un monde culturel dans lequel j’ai grandi et qui aujourd’hui est en train de disparaître. Voilà pourquoi Mr Gwyn termine son existence comme un clandestin dans un monde qui n’est plus le sien. »
Baricco seems to be asserting that there is no place for reflection and meditative creation in our fast-paced lives. Mr. Gwyn evokes a nostalgia for an era when it was possible to block out all distractions, to hole up in order to reflect and think (although I suspect this was never easy under any circumstances). At the end of the day, most often we are not creating in a vacuum for an audience of one. While removing oneself from the world and slowing things down can be valuable, as we discussed in the work of artist Suzanne Treister last week, fearing technology and it’s pace will not make it go away. We are better off having an understanding of the power of today’s digital innovations, not in order to fully embrace them necessarily, but to be able use to them to our full advantage when needed…. and turn them off when not.
While Mr. Gwyn isn’t a novel specifically about the digital age, in some ways, it is a commentary on how quickly the world is evolving. Hopefully, rather than inciting a fear of change, these themes will allow us to reflect on our responsibility as creatives and communicators, choosing our roles as we see fit in order to able to carry on and create good work.
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