on Writing for the Ear

I think contemporary fiction is divided between those who are still writing performatively and those who are not. Writing for voice, in which you imagine a performance in the auditory sense going on, is traditional and old-fashioned and dying. The new mode is not performative and not auditory. It’s destined for the printed page and you are really supposed to read it the way they teach you in speed-reading. You are supposed to crisscross the page with your eye, getting references and gists; you are supposed to see if lowing on the page, and not sound it in the head. If you do sound it, it is so bad you can hardly proceed. It can’t all have been written by Dreiser, but it sounds like it. Gravity’s Rainbow was written for print, J.R. was written by the mouth for the ear. By the mouth for the ear; that’s the way I’d like to write. I can still admire the other– the way I admire surgeons, bronc busters, and tight ends. As writing, it is that foreign to me.