'Discipline Imposed By Ourselves'

Marianne Moore died on this date, February 5 in 1972 at age eighty-four. She is a genuine homegrown American eccentric, writing in a manner borrowed, in part, from Henry James. Of him she wrote, “There was in him ‘the rapture of observation,’ but more unequivocally even than that, affection for family and country.” Her self-describing tag from James is taken from his 1875 short story “The Madonna of the Future.” As with Keats, I prefer Moore’s prose to her poetry. Regardless of fame, honors or critical recognition, a good or great writer amounts to a man or woman observing the world and turning what he sees into memorable, sometimes beautiful, sometimes savage words.

I started Anecdotal Evidence twenty years ago today, on February 5, 2006. I started in ignorance, not certain what I wanted to do, unsure of my digital skills. I have posted at least once every day since then – 7,595 times in total -- except for a brief spell in 2019 following spinal surgery. Writing a blog amounts to conducting an education in public. As I wrote on the occasion of the blog’s fifth anniversary: “If a day were to pass without a thought worthy of nurture, I would be a sorry writer. Arranging words in pleasing shapes, like a folk artist snipping tin for a weather vane, is what we do.” I try not to take myself too seriously while taking the writing very seriously.

 

I have many readers and covert teachers to thank. Among the personal dead: Guy Davenport, Kenneth Kurp, D.G. Myers, Helen Pinkerton, Terry Teachout. Among the public dead: Max Beerbohm, Whittaker Chambers, J.V. Cunningham, Dr. Johnson, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Oakeshott. Among the living: Nigel Andrew, Gary Baldridge, R.L. Barth, Elizabeth Conquest, Boris Dralyuk, Joseph Epstein, Joel Gershowitz, Dana Gioia, Cynthia Haven, Mike Juster, Thomas Parker, Jay Stribling, Rabbi David Wolpe, Mike Zim and many others. Above all, Dave Lull, my personal copy editor and style conscience since the early days of the blog.  

 

In her 1948 essay “Humility, Concentration, and Gusto,” Moore writes: “All of which is to say that gusto thrives on freedom, and freedom in art, as in life, is the result of a discipline imposed by ourselves. Moreover, any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.” 

 

[Moore’s 1934 essay “Henry James As a Characteristic American” is one of her best. It’s collected in The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore (ed. Patricia C. Willis, 1986), as is “Humility, Concentration, and Gusto.”]