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Monday 1 December 2008

The Writer’s Brush

More marks on paper

Victoria Glendinning

Friedman, who diagnoses in most of his writers some physical or psychic injury, and sees the recourse to art as an attempt to overcome trauma, describes himself as a ‘dilettante’, and The Writer’s Brush as a book for non-scholars. His source-notes reveal a cheerful reliance on websites and reference books, and a disregard for the most current biographical authorities. His text displays an unfamiliarity with the work of some of the European writers and their milieux, and a comfortable reliance on that old sofa of a word, ‘legendary’. His choice of books for which authors are ‘best remembered’ is sometimes questionable. The Writer’s Brush has been several decades in the making, and as Friedman says, was out of date the day it appeared, with new writer-artists constantly emerging. He could have gone even further. Now, artistic practices like academic disciplines leak into one another creatively, and words — you might not want to call it ‘writing’ — are mixed with images in much current art. ‘Multi-media’ is the soup of the day; and the hand that moves the mouse can replace the hand that held the brush, as the computer generates images and creates art.

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