Belle Lettres

Beautiful letters are more than fonts or calligraphy, though sans serif, old English, castellar, harrington, bradley hand, Bauhaus, Gill sans, goudy stout (draw me a pint), palatino linotype, trajan pro, or the like are all visually lovely.

While Belle Lettres has come to mean light, chatty, aesthetically celebratory writing (art over information), it has its origin in an inclusive categorical concept of literature. My dictionary tells me that it comes from the French, meaning about what it says: fine literature. Belletrists, then, write stylish pieces on literary or intellectual topics. What else would intellectuals do?

When I first came upon the term Belle Lettres when I was younger, I took it to mean a writer who was not restrictive to one area of writing only, since the term was often used to discuss how a novelist, say, would also write reviews, essays, social or political commentary, maybe poems, as well. I liked that idea. It somehow provided a shorthand for the concept of "the writers' writer," also used to describe someone who wrote well in all genre and subgenre, someone who seemed to approach it with the idea that if it has words, and I am a word artist (here is that aesthetic tic again), then I should try my hand (a pen or plume) or fingers (keyboard) at it. A Writer for All Genres. A belletrist.

But specialization has reigned this impulse in (a riding metaphor on a horserace day). Sadly? Nothing wrong with obsession or honing one's talent (as one sharpens a knife which is then used to cut a sharp new edge on the goose quill or plume so as to calligraph cleanly): practice makes perfect, or at least proficient writers.

Still, what is gained from range can be seen in production: hybridity, pastiche, send-up, creative non-fiction, brevities, impure forms, the poet-novelist-essayist-critic-reviewer-facebooker-blogger-belletrist. Compare the idea of biodiversity to the writer--must everyone have yards of grass? Consider the evolutionary concept that species adapt to habitat--must everyone inhabit single genre? How many tricks can the pony do?

Charles Olson wrote that form is nothing more than an extension of content. Could we say, then, that belletrism is an extension of form? And if so, in what genre might we compose our argument? Would we have the diverse experiences to create a new genre if needed to belletristically say it?