Writing Can Be Wacky

WWFT?  What would Freud think?  What did Freud ALWAYS think?

I think this is upside down. 

You never know with  modern art, do you?  The eye of the beholder and all that.  The actual person who painted the art might know which end is up.  Did Jackson Pollock ever flip out in a gallery because one of his paintings was displayed upside down?  How could he tell?  I'll be he cheated a bit and put one little dot right on the bottom of the canvas so he could orient his work properly. 

That's what I would do, if I were a painter.  I would also tell people that they had my work upside down, just to be contrary.  I hear that artists are supposed to be that way, but it's really only the painters and sculptors who get away with that.  Painters and sculptors can fling poop at people, or cut off an ear, and nobody even raises an eyebrow.  It's part of their genius to be whacky and mysterious and unpredictable like that.  They can be eccentric and we love that passion. 

Writers don't get to have all that fun with their audience. Writing is an introverted activity, and involves the painting of a picture in the reader's mind.  I think that is a more difficult task.  A writer can never throw a fit about people reading his book upside down, because that's not how books work.  Maybe a writer might demand that his book be read while hanging upside down, but that's about it.  No one would do that, of course, because it's impossible to read while all the blood rushes to your head.

But writers pour their personalities into their works just as much as a painter does.  It may not be instantly visible as it is in a painting, but by the end of a book, a reader often has strong feelings about what they've just read, and that's a reflection of the passions of the author, as much as it is for a painter.

What do you think?