writers, readers, critics

[dhunt]

There was a long discussion of Andrew McNabb's book on Catholic Insight. I've been impatient with all the discussions of what constitutes Catholic writing, recalling like a reflex, Tolkien's comment that Lord of the Rings is a Catholic book because it's the product of a Catholic mind. (That's sufficiently definitive for me.) A non-Catholic reads LOTR and demands "evidence" of Catholicism--whereupon some Catholic critic points to lembas or sundry other presumed metaphors. Of course, that's not where the Catholic mind is evident to the Catholic reader, but it's the way critics operate.

Now, in that last phrase, I think I've just begun to understand a certain type of difficulty I've had for some time: Critics don't think the way writers do, and further, they don't think the way readers do. Yes, of course, I know many writers are also critics and vice-versa, and of course, we're all readers. That's not my point.

I just had an email conversation about writing with Eleanor that was very uncomfortable--nothing she said, but the conversation itself. I kept trying to say "something" I was unable to say. (Have you ever wanted to keep repeating: "What I meant to say was....") Downright painful. One just quits.

When I was about to finish graduate school, a professor friend apologized for ruining reading for me. He was right. It was many, many years before I could "read for pleasure" again (phrase borrowed from Katy's linked blog discussion). I had a knee-jerk critical response to everything. In fact, it was Tolkien who restored reading to me. In some essay in St Austin Review I read the phrase "re-enchantment of nature" in descriptive reference to Tolkien. Yes. Just so.

But since I've been writing, I can't think like a critic. I become impatient with it. And unwilling/unable to talk about it. Have certain brain cells died? I don't know.

[dhunt]

I'm replying to my own post. Bluemaydie's comments on another section of this forum has caused a re-think. No, I'm not a critic--and probably never was. I just did what was expected of me by academia--my job. That I "can't" do that any more is cause for gratitude, not complaint. I don't have to assume a mental posture that is externally imposed in order to say things that are also externally imposed by the expectations of those who have the power to publish or not to publish or to grant tenure. Praise God. I can say what I think. Now, critically, what I think about fiction:
It's not film. Fiction should not try to compete with film. It should not be written in the present tense. Nor is it a photograph. If the writer wants to achieve that, he should forget writing and go buy a camera. It does a better job.
It is a tale. Good fiction is a tale well told. Unless you're a Zen Buddhist, it's a tale that has a point. That doesn't mean the point has to be intellectually articulable--that's why there's fiction--but it does have a point, though the point may be discovered by the writer only as he constructs the tale, or even after it's finished.
But a writer's purpose has to be to tell the tale. If his purpose is to shock, to impress, to "enlighten"--anything other than to tell the story, it will fail--though it may indeed succeed in shocking, impressing, etc. Hyperbolic reviews from friends, those who owe him a favor, or whatever, notwithstanding. He may publish, sell, and be read--but never recommended privately--only publicly--bought, scanned, and criticized by externally imposed expectations.
I don't really care about publication. I can read what I want and write what I want. If somebody likes it and wants to publish it, I'm gratified; but if they don't, I'm not deprived. Age and retirement are blessing: age informs me that pursuit of writing for publication or reading what I don't like, or saying what I don't really believe is a waste of precious time, and a pension makes it unnecessary. Good stuff is not all that rare. Great stuff is very rare--and should be. That's what makes us appreciate it so much.
And Amen.

[bluemaydie]

Here, here.

My question: Now that I'm out of grad school (okay, I've been out for a couple of years, but sometimes my brain is still there) and I can write what I want, what do I write? I mean, when I think of a story, why do I examine it first to make sure it's "important" enough to be worth writing? Why don't I sit down and finish my vampire novel or write a romance (you know, when the baby goes off to college or something)? That critical training lingers on and drives me nuts.

[job]

Ms. Hunt, Ms. Bluemaydie,

Of course, the term "critic" has equivocal uses. But at issue is whether the hypercritical apparatus of modern exegesis is the only form of criticism available. All reading and writing is in a certain sense an act of criticism, to the extent that all reading/writing amounts to an act of the intellect which says that such is so or not so and why or why not.

The reader who finds Austen/Joyce/McNabb/Whomever engaging or a yawn - either way, that's criticism. The writer who decides to employ allegory or the tale or the fable or the interior monologue - it is all an act of criticism.

It is , finally speaking, as inescapable as the assertion of truth is for the relativist who says there is no truth.

JOB

[dhunt]

JOB,
sorry to have caused an overlap, I think, in two forums. Two different terms: you say all writing ( including fable, allegory, interior monologue) is criticism. I see all fiction as tale--including fable, allegory, interior monologue. I think criticism belongs in essays, not in stories. In fact, criticism IN fiction is the very thing that so often ruins it. (I always suspect that such a writer is confused about his native genre.) Brilliant criticism is as rare as great fiction--and seldom found, I'll add, in academia.

I do read critically, though not while I'm reading, only in reflection. While reading, I give the writer the AUTHORity that belongs to him as the writer. But I sort of "take it back" when I find he's being unfaithful to his reader. If he is, it's usually apparent fairly early on, and I simply put the book down--it's not worth reading. I can't stop a writer from trying to "jerk me around" but I don't have to submit to it. I just finished Death of a Pope by Piers Paul Read. Good book. But about two-thirds the way through, he interfered once, and fatally, with his main character for the sake of pre-constructed plot. On reflection, I see why he felt he had to do that, but he could have taken a bit more thought and chosen a different route, avoiding mutilating his character.

I never write critically. (That's where we disagree.) I'm sure there are as many different approaches to writing as there are writers. I'm completely non-"critical." I have no idea where a story is going until it arrives. It starts with an image or a line and a story gets built around it. I know that sounds almost passive, but it's not; actually, it's a lot of work. It has to develop organically, and not have any sort of synthetic crap imposed on it. For example, a couple of months ago, I submitted "The Funeral" to DT, but then I withdrew it: I had re-read it and knew that, although that ending was neat and tidy, in complete harmony with the clock metaphor, etc., it wasn't really what happened. After I revised the ending, changing it from what I would like to have happen to what actually did happen, I re-submitted it. It's a matter of fidelity to the truth. When I interfere, I betray that fidelity.

In fact, it was Eleanor's essay about writing as "contemplative" that prompted the email to her that started this whole line of thought.

I'm sure there are good writers who approach their work as critics. We might say "active" as opposed to "contemplative." In my judgment, however, they too often tend to underestimate their readers' intelligence.

Bluemaydie,
*taste* is an often overlooked part of reading. Critics seem to ignore it. I dismissed the taste-bullies a long time ago. A taste-bully is some critic who tells readers they OUGHT to like such-and-such, for whatever reasons--which they're only too happy to share with you. A lot of that goes on on Catholic Insight--and other places.

[job]

Ms. Hunt,

"I never write critically...."

At the risk of sounding contentious, I insist that even though you may not think you're being critical when you read/write, you really are (unless you are an automaton - which I know is not the case!).

The word "criticism" comes from the Greek word for the ability to discern. Every writer worth his salt uses dicernment in both the medium he chooses for his story and in the way he devlops it "organically" along the way. To riff on the witticism that writing is 10 percent vision and 90 percent revision, it is also fair to say that writing is 10 percent invention and 90 percent convention. Without rules, we'd never be able to say anything. When a writer submits to these rules, he is making a critical decision, he is submitting his judgment to the belief that this particular convention enhances his story whereas another would detract from it. Then also he judges whether his individual stamp on the convention will enhance or detract. In fact, every step along the way forms a series of important queries which will render the work more or less imperfect depending on the writer's response to each.

As for audience criticsm, I'd say even the reader of Danielle Steele or Harold Robbins is being critical, to the extent that he is discerning whether the story is worth reading, or worth continuing to read. It may not be a sophisticated form of crticism, but it is a form nonetheless.

Consider: Why is it so difficult to get young students today to read something which even 50 years ago would have been standard - i.e. Shakespeare, Homer, etc.? In part, I believe, because their own critical sensiblitiies have not been trained to discern between good and bad writing - in fact their critical sense has all but atrophied. Thus Goosebumps and Harry Potter are good reading while Homer, Shakespeare and Co. are boring, don't keep their interest, are hard to relate to, etc. This isn't to take away from either the Goosebump authors or Ms. Rowling - but compared to these other writers they're mere pikers. Yet, that's the pabulum which today's youth are fed...

The didactic in literature is a deal-killer, I agree (although even Tristam Shandy and Tom Jones prove they have their place and can not only survive but thrive in fiction - again, thanks to the interplay between convention and invention...); but I'm speaking of criticism being essential to the act or process of writing, not as a product or dividend of the story.

I hang on to the disctinction because as I maintain above, we cannot completely dispense with criticsm in our own work, whether we like it or not.

But of course you're right, good, artful criticsm is extremely rare - and I think it no accident that the best critics are often also practioners of the craft they criticise. I think in poetry of T.S. Eliot, for example, and Dana Gioia. In ficiton, John Gardner, Tom Wolfe and Italo Calvino come to mind, to take a random sample of good storytellers who also happen to be astute critics.

I hope I'm not coming off as doctrinairre - I merely wish to point out that the baseline meaning of criticsm ought to be acknowledged as a part of the writing/reading process and that any discussion of criticism ought to acknowledge the integral part it plays in this process.

JOB

[dhunt]

Dear JOB,

Your homily is well received. Looking at a manuscript last night in need of revision, I can see that its biggest problem is its unconscious criticism (as you've defined it) which, in this case, actually misleads the reader. I believe also, by the way, that very strict adherence to the truth of characters *can* cause a weak awareness of audience. Yet, I also have to say that what impressed me most about McNabb's fiction was its (seeming) atonality, "criticism" in this sense meaning an apparent absence of didacticism. And it may be, at bottom, a lack of audience awareness that so irritated many readers.

T.S. Eliot's criticism (and some others') is pure joy to read. Shredded minutiae, false praise, disguised petulance, etc., is the stuff which causes one to think: false heart, false mind. I do know that I'm not a critic by instinct, either good or bad. That's why I appreciate the rare good criticism as much as good fiction--more, actually, since the paths of invention are not as unfamiliar to me. But decades of analyses, enforced by sources for whom truth was pretty much irrelevant, may have destroyed any instinct to write criticism, per se, or even to think as a critic. Discernment in anything at all is a good; I've just become very judgmental of judges.

Thanks for the homily. Really.