I have a problem with form.

I also have a problem with, you know, writing; especially beginnings—and, when unrevised, organization.  No organization at all here.

Last night, as I was settling down in my opulent bed, having partaken of my usual post-prandial libation, I set about mentally composing an email to one of my many correspondents, one componenet of which was to have been a postscript.  (A post-script?)  At first I was uncertain where in an email a postscript ought to go—common sense would indicate after the signature block, but gmail, bless its soul, uses the traditional "-- " to delimit signatures and for all I know there are mailers about that strip everything after it.  But a PS before the signature is surely an abomination in the eyes of god and man.  It's my presumption that, if you were writing a letter out on paper, with ink, in the days before corrective fluid or whatever the generic name for white-out is, you'd write a postscript if, after having signed the damn thing, you remembered that there was something else you wanted to include, or remembered something else you wanted to include.  You couldn't go back and insert the new material where it would actually go, either in the midst of some already-written part or before the signature, because there was no room, so: this is what part of the alphabet would look like if there were no "q" and "r".  But that simply isn't the case with an email.  If I want, after having written the whole thing, to include yet more thing, that option is open to me.  I can edit it however I want.  Including a PS, an artifact of pen-and-ink writing, is contrary to email-nature; one ought never, therefore, include one.  It's an affectation.  It shows that you haven't really thought about what you're doing or the tools you're using.  &c.  Or some such.

But of course a PS has a rhetorical meaning too (a perlocutionary effect?  Of course people rarely loquize "pee ess, remember to bring an umbrella", but—I wouldn't even put it past myself, a person occasionally tempted to say not "what the fuck" but "doubleyou tee eff" (but I fight it, oh readers, how I fight it!), to do so), so that's silly.  It's something by the way, or perhaps something wholly unrelated to the main thrust of the message but which you're including because it's convenient, or—other such things.  And of course that rhetorical effect was available to letter-writers in the age of the necessitous postscript (though not, I assume, at once), which probably occasioned, now and then, interpretive difficulty: is this postscript, which contains quite important information, written as a postscript in order to impart breeziness, or is it a "natural" ps?  At any rate, given that "PS" has connotations that aren't really available otherwise in an email (perhaps sending the first, then rapidly sending a second right after, would have a similar effect, but if that were one's plan, well, I don't know.  Perhaps what I really dislike is the strategic use of things.  Something that's rather PS-like in effect is writing a post, and then immediately making the first comment on it.  It's qualitatively different from writing a post and using a "more inside" or cut-tag feature.  Sometime's I'm tempted to do it deliberately. I feel similarly about intentional fouls in basketball, sort of.  It undermines things, to play rules against each other—they're not supposed to be another aspect of the game, but what structures and makes playable the game.  It's like you're acting in bad faith.  I'm reminded of a (short (but they were all short, they were supposed to be), not that good (though it got an A)) essay I wrote, about a funerary lekythos.  I employed a word which now I can't remember [but see below for an informative update!].  This is where I went in and added that bit about disorganization at the top, btw (qualitatively different from "by the way"?  I think so).  Of course I could, this all being typed into a text field, move what has basically become the main part of this post out of a multiply-nested parenthetical, but instead I'll just draw further attention to the fact that I haven't.), why not employ it?  I don't think that paintings should be limited to expressions of their own flatness; that seems absurd.

I really dislike the last stanza of "One Art" on not entirely dissimilar grounds:

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Yeah, like you would actually write "write it".  What's it doing there?  That expostulation really messes things up for me.  I can accept a poem that's a monologue, even though most people speak in prose their whole lives, and but for the self-exhortation in that last line, "One Art" could plausibly be such a poem—if it read "say it", no problem.  It's referred to here as "formalized spontaneity" (actually, part of a draft is characterized that way (and uses "say it", for that matter, and the essay addresses the change), but good enough), but that seems wrong; when it's "say it" it comes across as actual spontaneity in a monologue; when "write it", an attempt at evoking or signaling spontaneity.  Later in that essay the author interprets the change (which is accompanied by verb tense change to "I shan't have lied"—after having Write it-ed, you see) as meaning "that in the writing of such a disciplined, demanding poem lies a piece of the mastery of the loss."—a meaning that could only be conveyed if it's clear that this poem is being written, and is reinforced by the exhortation, as the author has to be pushed*, has to work through the very process of writing.  But to have written the exhortation itself makes no sense.  Its being written implies exactly the sort of distance and reflection that its use implies are absent.  (It also seems to embody a confusion of roles, but I'm unsure how to articulate that in light of its evidently autobiographical nature—basically, it makes sense for Elizabeth Bishop to include "(Write it!)", because without it, we would interpret the poem differently, but not for the "author"—the one doing the exhorting, who presumably did not write numberless drafts before arriving at the final form—to do so.)

What it really boils down to is, I have a problem with self-awareness, its absence and presence.

*passive voice used so I don't have to decide whether to use "himself" or "herself"—I gather it's autobiographical so presumably "herself".

Updated later: the word I employed was "attenuation".  That was a kind of pretentious essay, really.

Comments

[ac]

I think of the postscript as honest in a way. There are some ideas that genuinely occur to you as afterthoughts, beyond mere timing, a distinction which may be clearer in the digital era. That is, the handwritten postscript may just reflect the timing of a thought occurring after a signature. But in the digital era what it may reflect is an honesty about the fact of editing--specifically, about having finished a draft, and reading it over, and deciding something was missing. At least, that's what occurs to me with the post/comment point. You publish the post, read it over, and then points x & y occur to you, which you might add more honestly in a comment. It captures the quality of reflection?

[ben wolfson]

Yes, but I meant not publishing the post and then, instead of editing it, adding comments, but rather composing the post (mentally if not on a keyboard) and deciding that having part of it be a comment would be rhetorically more effective than having that part be on the main post, or in a "more inside" (which is itself rhetorically different ... Languagehat frequently has just one- or two-sentence more insides, often on posts where he's pointing something out he found elsewhere and quoting a lot; inside will be a brief commentary or related quotation from elsewhere).

I wasn't really thinking about honesty, drafting and editing issues (though I think that's a good point; the PS allows you to preserve what came originally while still making your meaning clear—I'm now not sure that this is what you mean but if not I do think I understand what you mean). In fact the paradigm postscript that I had in mind is one in which it's purely rhetorical. That is, I wouldn't be tempted to use a PS to write out anything very lengthy, or very explanatory of what had come in the body of the email; I'd put that into the body itself. I would be more inclined to use one if I were writing on matter $X, and also had to inform the recipient of something else entirely—something that could just as well be introduced with "incidentally" or "by the way". Something that has the character of an afterthought, or that I want to seem afterthoughtly, even if I knew it all along.

[Jacob Haller]

I would just leave out the .sig for that message. It's not like people read email .sigs anyway.

The PS is a bit of an affectation and including one in email, or in a document composed in a word processor, may lead to the conclusion that one is a fop and a dandy, not that there is anything wrong with that.

I once got a form letter that said that the people I had written to were too busy to respond personally, and then there was a short personal note written in the margin, something which I was actually fairly psyched about. The P.S. lives!

[ben wolfson]

I am not a fop or a dandy!

[ac]

Yes, I see. It's funny that the same device can be affected or in some way authentic, depending on how you look at it. It can be an acknowledgment of a break of some kind, a lack of flow, or too self-consciously acknowledging this. Is it that the more effective it is as a rhetorical device--the more it is a "by the way" rather than an attempt to preserve the first draft--the more affected it is?

(I think the reason the first draft element occurred to me because I was thinking of a friend who is a film editor who talks about the essential nature of the first viewing of a rough cut, for all subsequent editing. You have to keep in mind your first reaction, or you lose a sense of how it will look to someone else.)

[ogged]

By the way, Ben, "Wite-Out" is the brand name, so "white out" just might be the generic name.

[ben wolfson]

I have learned something new, today.

[bitchphd]

And yet you love Tristram Shandy.

You are an odd one.

[ben wolfson]

Well, you know, Tristram Shandy is hilarious.

[bitchphd]

Yes. Because it consciously and deliberately plays with formal devices and self-awareness.

[dave zacuto]

Ok, three things.

1. Actually, two things.
A) I'm reminded of a (short (but they were all short, they were supposed to be), not that good (though it got an A) essay I wrote, about a funerary lekythos. I employed a word which now I can't remember [but see below for an informative update!]. This is where I went in and added that bit about disorganization at the top, btw (qualitatively different from "by the way"? I think so). Of course I could, this all being typed into a text field, move what has basically become the main part of this post out of a multiply-nested parenthetical, but instead I'll just draw further attention to the fact that I haven't.), why not employ it?

Where's the opening parenthesis for the parenthetical phrase ending in "the fact that I haven't" and where's the sentence whose end is "why not emplot it?".

B) I hated that Bishop poem so much I almost dropped out of high school.

[ben wolfson]

A: Way up at "perhaps".

Because it consciously and deliberately plays with formal devices and self-awareness.

That isn't why it's funny.

[ben wolfson]

I can write a less flippant/dismissive response, if you like.

[text]

bw -- this post was a lot of fun.

[dave zacuto]

Ah, there it is.

You know, Ben, parentheses are even more special when you use them in moderation.

[ben wolfson]

I'm trying to demean them.

[dave zacuto]

I'm only saying this because I care. I think you have a parentheses problem.

[clew]

In novels from the epistolary ages, people comment that the real message of a letter is always in the postscript; especially requests for favors, or postscripts in letters from women. And yet, we are also told that people wrote their letters out in a clear hand to send, partly for aesthetics and partly so they would have a record of what their correspondents were responding to. Why did they not interpolate the postscript?

I think the postscript was already a rhetorical strategy, something like a claim to deniability. Oh never mind; that didn't matter; I wouldn't want to bother you.

[abultalse]

friend has given the link has not regretted that has come