The blog of Ron Schafrick
A couple days ago, while listening to the news, I heard a journalist interviewing Americans at Reagan International Airport in Washington who were travelling for the holidays. While many of them were well aware of the risks associated with travel at this time, they felt compelled to do so because they couldn’t imagine spending Christmas apart from their families. As one interviewee said, “I don’t know… It would be somehow wrong not to go.”
Apart from the exhilaration (along with the potential terrors) that comes with beginning a new story, I love how those initial stages of creation become something that dominates my thoughts instead of the usual petty concerns, worries, and gripes that tend to take front and centre. The same can be said, I’ve discovered, when it comes to reading Nietzsche (which, admittedly, I’ve become weirdly obsessed about over the last half year or so), as I find myself devoting a lot of those in-between moments to ruminating over his ideas, making connections to our present historical moment, and trying to find the answers to the numerous questions that come to mind. As Michael Tanner very aptly puts it in his excellent book Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction: “All good aphoristic writing is tiring to read, because one has to do so much of the writer’s work for him. [Nietzsche] supplies a sentence, the reader turns it into a paragraph.”
As I said elsewhere, one thing I admire about Nietzsche’s philosophy is that he exhorts us to strive to “overcome” what is “human, all too human,” to rise above mediocrity, to defy conformity, and to re-examine all that we consider “true” and irrefutable. What I also admire is the relevance, even vatic quality, of much of what he says. As I pointed out in previous posts, Nietzsche’s theories—particularly when it comes to power—are just as incredibly insightful today as they were a century ago.
In section 19 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche posits the eye-opening idea that “freedom of the will” is not as free (or as innocuous) as many of us would like to believe. Nietzsche writes: “‘Freedom of the will’ is essentially the affect of superiority in relation to him who must obey: ‘I am free, “he” must obey’.” In other words, every act of will requires a corresponding act of obedience, even if that obedience means little more than “putting into motion our arms and legs,” as he writes. The notion that there is “freedom” at all, Nietzsche argues, is a falsehood; it is simply the domination of one will over another, which, of course, is a manifestation of the will to power. To put it yet another way, every act of will comes at a cost. “In all willing,” Nietzsche writes in the same aphorism, “it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as already said, of a social structure composed of many ‘souls’.”
As I said in my previous post, I feel a deep need to write something in response to all the Nietzsche I’ve been reading lately, yet it is impossible to write something resembling a book review (not that I’m very good at writing book reviews) that would somehow encapsulate his ideas in a few paragraphs or pages. There are too many ideas, too many new and truly thought-provoking concepts that come up in his work that I think the only way I can “exorcise” them is by now and again writing about some idea that’s been dogging me—and there certainly have been a lot of them lately. But I also want to be careful not to claim any kind of authoritative interpretation here. I’m obviously a dilletante when it comes to Nietzsche; this is just my way of “working out” a lot of what I’ve been reading.
Every one in a while, one comes upon a book that changes one’s life. Reading Proust a few years ago was one such experience for me. And earlier this year I had another, one that came from what at first glance seemed like a very unlikely source. When the world turned upside down with pandemic back in March, I wasn’t able to read or write. The idea of fiction—reading it, writing it—seemed impossible. Fiction, I suddenly understood, belonged to the realm of leisure. So when we went into lockdown and panic and uncertainty reigned, who could afford such leisure? Every book I turned to and tried to read (I had to do something in the evenings) seemed so utterly irrelevant, dissatisfying, even frivolous. So I turned to a book of non-fiction that had been sitting in my “to-read” pile, a book I’d ordered in 2018 after reading a good review of it in The Atlantic but never got beyond cracking back the cover: John Kaag’s Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are.
My story “Mr. Williams” is now live on The Write Launch website and I’m thrilled to share it with you. This story was a long time in the making, and I want to thank my first readers for their feedback and insight on those early drafts. I also want to thank Sandra Fluck at The Write Launch for accepting it. Enjoy!
I’m thrilled to announce that my long short story “Mr. Williams” has been accepted for publication by The Write Launch, an online literary journal out of the U.S. While this story poured out of me so easily and swiftly in its first draft more than a year ago, it proved to be quite an arduous journey to get it to where it is today and underwent multiple drafts in the process. Thanks to my friends, Isabel and Dan, for their sharp eyes and insightful feedback. The story will come out in November.
I’m thrilled to announce that my short story “Queen of the Heap” was accepted for publication by The Nashwaak Review and will come out in the next issue. It will be my third appearance in the magazine. Thanks to the editor, Stewart Donovan, for accepting this story!
I’m so very thrilled to announce that I was awarded a Recommender’s Grant from the Ontario Arts Council in support of the collection of stories I’m currently working on. Apart from the financial support these grants provide, it’s always so very encouraging to receive one. Writing is a very solitary task, and it’s easy to sometimes fall victim to the notion that what we do has no value. So after the many rejections that go hand in hand with the business of writing, it’s awfully reassuring to know that someone—or several someones—believes in your project. Thanks OAC and The New Quarterly who made the recommendation.