An Agreeable Crest: The New Writing 20^th Anniversary Year

When in the 17^th Century Edward Shin Yentre and Millicent Caracaccio unknowingly and almost simultaneously invented creative writing neither expected it to last. The notion of it, by its very nature, was preposterous and even more so in a century in which electricity and calculus were invented and gravitation discovered. And yet, somehow, a hundred years passed, and it was still around. The Age of Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, Imperialism, Rationalism – none of these could shift it. So still it persisted. In 1876 the world’s first phone call did nothing to dislodge its popularity. In fact, if anything it enhanced it. And when in 1878 electric light was invented it shed enough light on paper and quills that it set in motion the invention of the fountain pen and, subsequently, the ballpoint, which followed. Both empowered the fatuous scourge of creative writing.

Undeterred by the ridiculousness of it, and unmoved by actions against it, which included powered flight, globalization, popular music, video recording and quantum physics, by the arrival of the 3rd Millenium it had all but reduced commonsense to an afterthought and unsettled such emotions and thoughts as could never have previously been imagined. Around then – well, to be entirely accurate, three years hence – New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing was slung out into the world with the kind of abandon that is mostly reserved for high dives from concrete platforms and for wrestling venomous snakes. Appropriately, it promised to sink like a stone – in the sparkling blue pool water below that platform, most likely, surrounded by those grinning serpents. Nonsensically, instead, it swam.

It is an affront to decency and clear thinking, of course, that any publication, never mind an entire eminent journal, could devote itself to a practice so ridiculous, so speculative, so unconscionable and so imprudent as this one. More so, that it might flourish and grow. And that it should ever in any reasonable lifetime be read! More so still, that while flourishing that it should chart the absurd nuances and preoccupations of the practice, a practice so irrational that domestic animals run from it and leaders of certain political parties condemn it. And yet, such a journal here exists and it persists.

I am reminded of the time, in the Summer of 1963, when wandering along a beach in the Molacanacan Islands two young shellfish farmers saw that the sky was filled with something approximating crustaceans in a deep sea pond and came to the conclusion, right there, that the universe was, to all intents and purposes, upside down. The Moon was therefore a glistening puddle and the soil and seagrass around them were the textured celestial sphere, teaming with life. The result, of course, was the utter ordinariness, six years later, of human beings landing and walking on The Moon, and brought about a rejection of any interest in those islands of that event or any other involving leaving the terrestrial. No one flies there. There are no airports. No seaplanes, even. In the Molacanacan Islands they get around in boats. Everything is reversed. The animals live in houses and the people in the jungles and the streets. The night is morning, and the morning is night. People sleep for entertainment, and they keep themselves awake to rest.

It is amazing, that here in 2024, the reversal of understanding and good sense seen on those remote tropical islands is reflected in the lack of corrective action history clearly demands be taken concerning this very publication. And, now entering its 20^th year, that without such action this outrageous publication continues to exist and to impact.

‘Nay!’ I hear you shout, ‘Nay! In fact, its impact extends!’

So true.

After 20 years, what lies ahead of us here is therefore abundantly, outrageously and disturbingly clear. As Edward Shin Yentre wrote, now some 348 years ago, or 4176 months as it is on the Grenoble Calendar, in the first stanza of the world’s first poem, ‘The Agreeable Crest’:

Wilt thou forgive that stone where we began

In gardens each contemplating yet

An agreeable crest (Yentre 1676: 1)

A sentiment Millicent Caracaccio’s opening sentence of the second paragraph of her third chapter perfectly echoes 12 years later:

So fearful a place, among such strange Creatures, yonder, a moment

of life will pass, and pass, and pass again (Caracaccio, 1688: 9)

And so it went also with two young shellfish farmers observing, there at night on a remote warm island beach, a clear night sky with an openness of mind that was not so much overanxious as unequivocal. In all this comes the message of what lies ahead for us, 20 years from now.

Voila! Firstly, in the next 20 years in the life of this preposterous journal Artificial Intelligence will productively remove any need of human involvement in the practice of creative writing. Lord knows we’ll all be celebrating that day! The labour will no longer be of any interest, because of course, it will no longer exist.

‘AI AI AI, it’s off to work it goes.’

Further, new tools will emerge that mold and mightily empower our human brains – with small batteries implanted strategically, I believe - vanquishing the random bizzarery of imaginative speculation and the uncertainty of barbarous conjecture that makes up the majority of creative writing - if not all of it, to be frank. We will conquer by eliminating and eliminate conqueringly. Gone will be the unsettled! Dismissed with be the unknown! Neural networks will be manufactured, and expert systems perfected. Prediction, or what psychologists brilliantly call ‘Prospectism’, will disappear and surety will thereafter prevail. Informed by big data, the need of analysis will grow less as our faultlessness grows greater.

In these things, reason will finally prevail.

That is the second and final thing, of course.

As a hundred, a hundred times hundred hundred human events have made clear to us, there is no merit in emotional outpouring and none in the ingrained consideration of chimera and figments. With that in mind, the next 20 years will eliminate these completely. Beyond that lies the shore onto which we will crash, rocky perhaps, and distant no doubt, but oh so much more agreeable than the tempestuous sea we have been sailing so far.

20 years since this journal’s foundation what follows, building on previous and current generations of the preposterous, the ridiculous and the imprudent, is now surely certain demise. It is premature to celebrate. The destruction needs to be complete, the demons put to bed (as Dostoevsky or Updike, one of those amateur philosophers, once said), the dragons slayed, if you like, the hunting wolves, the Midgard serpents, the Tooth Fairy, the Cheshire Cat. At least evidence suggests we won’t have to wait long now. We have reached that ‘agreeable crest’, and now will come crashing down as all crests mightily must.

I have included here in this first 20^th anniversary year issue, an interview with poet, biographer and novelist, Sir Andrew Motion, to show there is occasional resistance, in some quarters at least. But we all can see the direction this is heading. Of course, Andrew is such a romantic, as by nature poets tend to be.

20 years ago this journal was launched with no understanding of what a real discipline of study might look like, of course. It might as well have been a late-night bus service to Croyden or a painting competition for sea lions. Then something possessed people, as the published evidence here suggests. Who knows why? Old beliefs die hard, I suppose. Hearts and minds persist in their ludicrous ways. Folks speculate. Rabbits, mice and spiders jump out. The imagination goes its own way, looting and gathering. Empathetically, we can but offer a platform for whatever survives. Humans will be humans, the saying goes. I sometimes wonder if, had we not been flawed enough to invent the electric light and the phone call, we would all be far better off. At least then we would have no reason to see or speak.