I have long noticed that my writing has a cubist touch to it, but I have never explored the subject in any depth (“On Writing and Painting,” June 20, 1999). In cubist paintings, a subject is broken up and observed from a multitude of viewpoints before it is reassembled to offer a richer view of reality. This is the case with my writings, as well. Any subject is addressed on a number of occasions, but from a wide variety of angles. When brought together, my writings offer a richer view of reality. The time dimension only adds to the richness of the collection. Thus I just spent some time reading everything I have ever written about chi-gong balls. To my surprise, there are ten pieces of writing about this subject. The first was written in 1996 and the last only yesterday. Each individual piece of writing sheds light on only one aspect of this subject. All together, my writings show how important the Chinese balls are in my daily life albeit from many different vantage points. And this is true of anything I have ever written about. My selections, which are presented as books, offer a much richer view on any subject than individual pieces of writing ever could. In this sense, my writing is definitely cubist. But the time dimension introduced by dates of individual pieces adds something that forever escapes painting. Alas, no analogy is perfect!

Addendum (December 24, 2016)

To my disappointment, the World Wide Web is as good as mum on cubist writing. For all my trying, I cannot find anything worth reading on this subject. At best, it is associated with so-called stream of consciousness writing, which is entirely foreign to me. Instead, I go for pearls of consciousness writing, which strikes me as the very opposite to the Modernist fad from the early decades of the Twentieth Century. All that connects cubism and stream of consciousness writing is the period. At any rate, I seem to be barking up a wrong tree when I associate my approach to writing with cubism. Not to worry, though. The World Wide Web is mum on many other important subjects, as well. As ever, it is up to me and me alone to come up with something worth reading on cubist writing. This will take quite some time, no doubt. For the time being, this addendum provides a welcome example of how cubist writing actually works.