Anarchism is Not Enough, Laura Riding

This 1928 treatise is strange and, at times, hard to follow, but Riding’s musings remain remarkably fresh. A few quick hits, to give you an idea of some of her arguments -- for instance, on writing and the blank slate:

“... literature is preferable to experience, since it is for the most part the closest one can get to nothing.”

Or, on precision in wordsmithing:

“Language is a form of laziness; the word is a compromise between what is possible to express and what is not possible to express. ... Prose is the mathematics of expression. ... Prose evades this problem [of communication] by making slovenly equations which always seem successful because, being inexact, they conceal inexactness."

She also has a renegade, take-no-prisoners view on matters of the heart:

"Love is simply a matter of history, beginning like cancer from small incidents. There is nothing further to be said about it."

Nothing further, then? I guess we’re dismissed.

The Narrow House, Evelyn Scott

People live nearly atop one another in Evelyn Scott’s The Narrow House, a suffocating invocation of middle-class provinciality in early 20th century America (Theodore Dreiser, none too cheery a sort himself, called it one of the “grimmest” books he’d read, apparently). Indeed, it’s a bit difficult to read, but her unflinching portrait of people hurting each other and themselves -- there’s a rather frank description of one character’s habit of self-harm -- is also inspiring, in a way, seeing as it was published in 1921.

Scott, once hailed as one of the country’s best modernist writers, has all but fallen into obscurity; however, several of Scott’s works, including Narcissus, are in the public domain and can be accessed via Project Gutenberg. It may otherwise be difficult to find her texts.