Fascinating essay. I'm more familiar with Gandhi's literary influences--Ruskin, Morris--than with his writing itself (I keep meaning to read Hind Swaraj, but it has eluded me, so far), but I find this highly persuasive and well-articulated.
William Morris, the great English artist, craftsman, designer, poet, socialist, etc etc etc. The most immediately relevant works here would be the utopian fantasy News From Nowhere and, above all, Hopes and Fears for Art, among other late lectures. That said, my favorite Morris—apart from Morris the designer—is Morris the poet. The title poem and the other Arthurian poems in The Defense of Guenevere are remarkable. The title poem—unparalelled vigot. https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/collected/The_collected_works_of_William_Morris_vol01.pdf
I read An Autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth this year and loved it. I bought Satyagraha in South Africa as a result and maybe now is the time to get into it. Yes he definitely had an old fashioned paternalistic side as in some of your examples, but what a beautiful person, liked it seemed by so many of his adversaries (and open to changing). He mentioned the Ruskin and Tolstoy and their impact on him in An Autobiography and I loved how he wrote of that. At these same time I was surprised as I think at one point he said something like 'I haven't read many books' and I think went on to say that he had digested very well those that he had. Your essay brought it all back and I am primed to read on. I had a sense of the chapters in An Autobiography being clarities he wrote almost daily and perhaps related to his meditation and the rhythm of that, but I need to reread and may infer too much -- do I remember that he dictated it also? It is very conversational. You also reminded me how he wrote of Satyagraha as an evolving process and understanding even for himself, and that came back to me as I read you and also thought about being a writer and Substack (for myself too).
Sorry hope this is not too much, you've enthused me, thanks.
Not too much at all! Yes, I went back to My Experiments With Truth to look up some things about his fight with Kasturba, and I realized it's written in a very different style from this book: it has very short chapters, and it's more freeform with the timeline, less chronological. I really should look into the textual history of that book sometime!
I'm not surprised he'd say he hasn't read many books--there's a certain kind of thinker that doesn't really devour books (Nietzsche is another example). They read a few books very closely and return to them again and again.
Very thought-provoking piece. I've considered this question a lot since word-wise, I've written a lot of fiction, but only my non-fiction has been read publicly. What kind of writer does that make me? I've always thought I'd be a novelist, but why, exactly? Is it just because a hardcover book with chapters was what I was told was the highest form of literature? Does that even still apply, especially when genres like autofiction are just essentially memoirs and personal essays in fiction's cloak? What literary genre should internet writing be classified as, especially those that aren't shitposts but also aren't traditional literary essays?
Absolutely. I haven't read Gandhi, but I'd include both Lincoln and Marx in the category of great writers who weren't artists. I took a seminar with Marilynne Robinson once in which she noted that the two read each other's work, which blew my little mind something fierce at the time and still kind of does. (She was, at the time, reading the collected works of John Wilkes Booth, which she did not recommend.)
Wow! I guess I vaguely knew that Lincoln read Marx, but that the vice versa was true is also a bit mind-blowing. Also fascinating that there exist the collected works of John Wilkes Booth! Jealous that you took a class with Robinson--though I think I'd feel a bit intimidated and afraid to talk if I was in a seminar with her =]
Yeah, most of us sat and listened, save a few brave/foolhardy souls who’d try to argue with her about Calvin. I always feel name-droppy talking about her and thus mostly don’t, but sometimes it’s relevant and thus hard to avoid.
Fascinating essay. I'm more familiar with Gandhi's literary influences--Ruskin, Morris--than with his writing itself (I keep meaning to read Hind Swaraj, but it has eluded me, so far), but I find this highly persuasive and well-articulated.
Who's Morris? I want to read Morris!
William Morris, the great English artist, craftsman, designer, poet, socialist, etc etc etc. The most immediately relevant works here would be the utopian fantasy News From Nowhere and, above all, Hopes and Fears for Art, among other late lectures. That said, my favorite Morris—apart from Morris the designer—is Morris the poet. The title poem and the other Arthurian poems in The Defense of Guenevere are remarkable. The title poem—unparalelled vigot. https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/collected/The_collected_works_of_William_Morris_vol01.pdf
I read An Autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth this year and loved it. I bought Satyagraha in South Africa as a result and maybe now is the time to get into it. Yes he definitely had an old fashioned paternalistic side as in some of your examples, but what a beautiful person, liked it seemed by so many of his adversaries (and open to changing). He mentioned the Ruskin and Tolstoy and their impact on him in An Autobiography and I loved how he wrote of that. At these same time I was surprised as I think at one point he said something like 'I haven't read many books' and I think went on to say that he had digested very well those that he had. Your essay brought it all back and I am primed to read on. I had a sense of the chapters in An Autobiography being clarities he wrote almost daily and perhaps related to his meditation and the rhythm of that, but I need to reread and may infer too much -- do I remember that he dictated it also? It is very conversational. You also reminded me how he wrote of Satyagraha as an evolving process and understanding even for himself, and that came back to me as I read you and also thought about being a writer and Substack (for myself too).
Sorry hope this is not too much, you've enthused me, thanks.
Not too much at all! Yes, I went back to My Experiments With Truth to look up some things about his fight with Kasturba, and I realized it's written in a very different style from this book: it has very short chapters, and it's more freeform with the timeline, less chronological. I really should look into the textual history of that book sometime!
I'm not surprised he'd say he hasn't read many books--there's a certain kind of thinker that doesn't really devour books (Nietzsche is another example). They read a few books very closely and return to them again and again.
Very thought-provoking piece. I've considered this question a lot since word-wise, I've written a lot of fiction, but only my non-fiction has been read publicly. What kind of writer does that make me? I've always thought I'd be a novelist, but why, exactly? Is it just because a hardcover book with chapters was what I was told was the highest form of literature? Does that even still apply, especially when genres like autofiction are just essentially memoirs and personal essays in fiction's cloak? What literary genre should internet writing be classified as, especially those that aren't shitposts but also aren't traditional literary essays?
Absolutely. I haven't read Gandhi, but I'd include both Lincoln and Marx in the category of great writers who weren't artists. I took a seminar with Marilynne Robinson once in which she noted that the two read each other's work, which blew my little mind something fierce at the time and still kind of does. (She was, at the time, reading the collected works of John Wilkes Booth, which she did not recommend.)
Wow! I guess I vaguely knew that Lincoln read Marx, but that the vice versa was true is also a bit mind-blowing. Also fascinating that there exist the collected works of John Wilkes Booth! Jealous that you took a class with Robinson--though I think I'd feel a bit intimidated and afraid to talk if I was in a seminar with her =]
Yeah, most of us sat and listened, save a few brave/foolhardy souls who’d try to argue with her about Calvin. I always feel name-droppy talking about her and thus mostly don’t, but sometimes it’s relevant and thus hard to avoid.