"Argument is a rhetorical strategy I don't use that often..."

Luc Sante's most recent interview hits several topics dear to this blog, including argument-as-improvisational jazz...:

Luc Sante: Rhythm in writing is somehow analogous, but it’s a completely intuitive matter. I don’t really understand the process. It’s related to the substance of Flaubert’s famous letter to George Sand: “When I come upon a bad assonance or a repetition in my sentences, I’m sure I’m floundering in the false. By searching I find the proper expression, which was always the only one, and which is also harmonious. The word is never lacking when one possesses the idea. Is there not, in this precise fitting of parts, something eternal, like a principal? If not, why should there be a relation between the right word and the musical word? Or why should the greatest compression of thought always result in a line of poetry?” This is crucial stuff for me. I write intuitively, not knowing where I’m going, not knowing what the next sentence will be until this one has guided me there, and knowing how the sentence goes begins with my hearing its rhythm in my head, and then filling in the specific words. If the sentence is cloddish and clunky, it’s simply wrong—and not just wrong-sounding but wrong in its meaning...

G: Do you regard argument, which you mentioned alongside story and meaning a bit earlier on, as you do plot? [Earlier in the interview: "I can't remember plot to save my life." --CSB] I take it—and read it—that in the pieces collected in Kill All Your Darlings you are more attuned to critical processes than to argument.

Luc Sante: Argument is a rhetorical strategy that I enjoy but don’t use that often, in part because I find that argument for me implies that the work has already been done before I (metaphorically) put pen to paper, so that it becomes a matter of simple transcription.

. . . as well as Oscar Wilde, constraints ("Constraint is as ever the mother of invention, and maybe I haven’t yet figured out a suitable set of constraints to impose on myself when blogging"), and movie criticism. Go RTWT.