Topical Guide 232
Mark Dorset
Words on Paper: Their Power
“I promise you,” I shouted above them, “that this is absolutely the last Tars Manual you will ever receive.”
Wild whooping and screaming greeted this announcement.
I said, “We’re going to conduct this meeting strictly by the manual.”
I held my copy of the manual high.
“A Tar does things by the manual,” I called out. …
Mr. Summers sneered. He handed me a sheet of paper. “I want this added to the manual,” he said. “It’s the official Tars court-martial procedure,” …
I took the paper from him, saluted again, and said, “Sir, it’s—”
He turned and walked to the coach’s office, herded the last of the Precious Metals inside, and slammed the door.
“—too late,” I said. I crumpled the sheet of paper into a ball and tossed it over my shoulder.Little Follies, “The Young Tars”
Reading is a material act, a retracing of a moment of writing, the author’s influence is inescapable: we don’t make a move without him or her. But the sheets of paper are also currency, forms of social behavior, and their reach and effect will often go beyond anything we can call influence. Once words are in motion they cannot be revoked and won’t always mean what we thought they meant, or wanted them to mean. Anyone who has ever quarreled knows this; let alone anyone who has ever written, even a letter or a shopping list.
Michael Wood, The Magician’s Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction
At home on my desk is the best story I’ve ever written. How can I tell Bob that my happiness streams from having wrenched a piece out of my life, a piece of hurt and beauty, and transformed it to typewritten words on paper? How can he know I am justifying my life, my keen emotions, my feeling, by turning it into print?
Sylvia Plath, journal entry (entry number 28 in The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
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