Run through my brain and f-list. It's a short trip, I promise.

[megwrites]

- I don't believe in Mary Sues. I just believe in bad authors. I came to terms with this after reading this little piece on pbackwriterfeed. You could make an awesome character or a terrible character out of any description given. It just depends on if you're that good or not.

- I mean, okay. A museum curator with a Jag and a big house and a dog and hybrid roses and gourmet dinners. She could be deeply in debt and the female James Bond with an Art History degree. How much would that rock? You could be all "Monet, not Manet" instead of "shaken not stirred". And the roses could be poison evil roses with extra pointy thorns designed to kill people and small animals who do business where they shouldn't.

- It's kind of not fair. James Bond gets to be a big, beautiful oversexed man-whore with way more credibility than he deserves but Money Penny stays that the office?

- Oh, hell no.

- Keep your *&&)^ing plotbunnies to yourself, brain.

- The quickest way to convince me that you're an idiot is to overuse ellipses (the "..."). Besides the dash is the new ellipsis. It's way cooler and literarily snobbier. Word to Emily Dickinson.

- I'm a bad grammar nazi, overall I believe grammar is only important in that it creates a universal system by which people can decipher what the hell you are trying to say. Otherwise it's all stylistic and that's also why I can't be part of a writer's group. My soul can't take another person handing out diatribes about grammar, and the next time anyone says the words "you shouldn't use semicolons in fiction" I'm gonna break out the zombies and LET THEM EAT YOUR EYEBALLS, BETCH.

- Did I mention I also hold ee cummings near and dear?

- Anyone who says that any word is not a word is an idiot. If you say it, use it grammatically, and it has an arbitrary meaning - then it's damn word. Firstly is a word. I will use it whenever I feel like it. You will be forced to understand exactly what I mean by it, because FIRSTLY is a word.

- I don't get the point in life of literary criticism. I want to. I went to school for four years as an English major. I still don't get it. I try to read lit journals and my eyes start glazing after about three paragraphs. It's all one big "blahedy blah blah" to me.

- I realized this after reading this review written by truepenny. Good points are made all around. Go read. Feel educated.

- As a great professor of mine said, "These books were never intended to be read in a set amount of time and then picked apart this way, and it's an author's nightmare that you have to." (paraphrase). So, basically, literary criticism is the fine art of using literature for something else than its intended purpose. It's like trying to critique a bunch of runway models on the basis of IQ. I'm sure some of them are quite intelligent, but that's not what they're there for. They're there to be *pretty*. So you evaluate them in terms of *prettiness*.

- Whenever I think about English academia, I miss the halcyon days of my history minor. Something about having actual facts and evidence to work with makes me all nostalgic. Dude, when you're working with literature, you can fake anything as long as you have proper footnotes and citations.

- I've toyed with creating my own style. You know, like Chicago Manual or MLA or something like that. Except my style wouldn't change every five minutes like MLA and would probably make more sense. Also, my style would contain the rules and guidelines for the use of all caps, using misspellings as a form of mockery and derision, and sentences that go like this: "IM IN UR ______, _____IN' UR ________." For example IM IN UR FRIDGE, EATIN UR FOODZ. It's important to know how to parse these things out.

- The more I research agents and publishers, the more I find that a cover letter for an agent/publisher and a cover letter for a job share a lot of similiarities. They seem to contain a pattern for answering these basic questions:

Who the hell are you?

What do you want?

Where did you find me?

Okay, what are you selling?

Give me one good reason I should give a damn?

Has anyone else given a damn?

If I do give a damn, where I can look you up?

Can you act like an adult even though chances are that I'm all out of damn to give?

Is there an SASE by which to expedite the process of telling you that nope, we're fresh out of damn?


- All in all, it's not an unreasonable position to take. The more I think about what agents/editors do, the more I sort of pity them. Imagine having to make your living by going through the Pit of Voles on a daily basis, trying to pick out the pieces which someone might bother to pay money for. It's a needle in a Mt. Everest of Crap. I'd start sending out form letters, too.

- Still, makes my stomach hurt sometimes, thinking about all this. Right now I'm the end stages of having a manuscript that I wouldn't be ashamed to show another human being. So I keep telling myself, hey, I'm on step #403 and this is all step #687, and to just keep my eye on the ball.

- But I'm also telling myself that if I don't keep an eye out, step #687 will come and slap me in the face.

- Still, I can't complain. I knew that I stood a 99.99999% of ending up in penniless, rejected obscurity with nothing to show for my life's ambition when I started this venture. Chances are good this will come to nothing, that I will turn out to be a failure, and that everything will go wrong. But I can't fathom doing anything else. So I'll do my best, and I'll shoot for the moon 'cause there's nothing else left and I can't turn back now - because I want this so bad that sometimes I physically ache, and because I've been sharpening this sword since I was a kid barely big enough to hold it. Time to start swinging.

- This took longer than I thought it would.

Comments

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Anyone who says "Don't use semi-colons in fiction" should be whapped upside the head with a Naomi Novik novel. Maybe it's genre-related, I don't know. My (published) mom says not to, but I just smile and keep using them anyway because sometimes it's really the only appropriate punctuation to use in that particular situation.

*waves pompoms* You can do it!

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

Anyone who says "Don't use semi-colons in fiction" should be whapped upside the head with a Naomi Novik novel.

YES! The zombies will all have copies of His Majesty's Dragon. Yes! Thank you for helping that plan come together there.

And thanks for the pompom waving!

[klmorgan.livejournal.com]

So, basically, literary criticism is the fine art of using literature for something else than its intended purpose. It's like trying to critique a bunch of runway models on the basis of IQ. I'm sure some of them are quite intelligent, but that's not what they're there for. They're there to be *pretty*. So you evaluate them in terms of *prettiness*.

Oh, disagree, disagree.

I concede that a lot of what passes for literary criticism isn't lit crit at all, just academic self-pleasuring. ("Loooook at meeeeeeee, I can see where Austen went wrong!" Ugh. I read a preface to Mansfeild Park -- in a Penguin edition, no less! -- which apparently to read the novel without absorbing any real sense of the characters or why they made the choices they did.) But real lit crit is incredibly useful and fascinating. Many canon authors wrote in a cultural shorthand which is now more or less extinct, and it's important to peel away pretention and the knowledge it's good (Everybody says so! It must be!) in order to find out why a text is actually, well, good.

Of course, I should read Monette's article myself... I might be responding to something you're not really talking about. (Darn English langauge.)

I love your summation of a cover letter! And yes, I figure agents and editors deserve more pity than scorn... especially after reading submissions to Miss Snark.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

But real lit crit is incredibly useful and fascinating. Many canon authors wrote in a cultural shorthand which is now more or less extinct, and it's important to peel away pretention and the knowledge it's good (Everybody says so! It must be!) in order to find out why a text is actually, well, good.

That, my friend, is part of my problem. Literary criticism that I've had the misfortune to encounter hasn't been about de-mystifying a text or revealing something new we didn't know about it. It's been all about showing off the writer's prowess to be spectacularly wanky, boring, and long winded about an aspect of a text, rather than the whole.

It is also unbelieveably inaccessible to the people it might be helpful to. Literary criticism is usually read, reviewed, and written by people who've spent years and years reading the same books and go to classes which teach them how to see the book and what to think about it.

Anyone who is struggling just to understand Austen is going to be completely lost in the world of cricitism concerning Austen. Thus, criticism defeats itself.

I love your summation of a cover letter! And yes, I figure agents and editors deserve more pity than scorn... especially after reading submissions to Miss Snark.

I'm always happy to amuse. Having been a beta reader for years, I can safely say that I understand where agents and editors are coming from.

[klmorgan.livejournal.com]

Literary criticism that I've had the misfortune to encounter hasn't been about de-mystifying a text or revealing something new we didn't know about it. It's been all about showing off the writer's prowess to be spectacularly wanky, boring, and long winded about an aspect of a text, rather than the whole.

I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that academia tends to, mmm, promote a kind of near-sightedness. It's a sad and strange thing, and I suspect it happens because people tend to associate "a person I can't understand" with "a person who's much smarter than I am." (Much in the same way "expensive" and "worth the money" are confused.) It's the Emperor's new clothes, PhD-style -- if no one can untangle what you're saying, no one can prove you wrong.

And it lends itself to a furthering of near-sightedness among the un-academic -- Monette's allusion to a high school teacher using Aristotle's principles of tragedy to dissect Hamlet being an excellent example. Though I'd disagree with her idea that it doesn't work because Aristotle's "perscriptiveness" is inherently flawed. Shakespeare's concept of plays and tragedy are so incredibly different from the Ancient Greek concept of plays and tragedy as to be two different species altogether -- but does that mean one of them is wrong? I mean, Jesus, when there's a space of almost 2000 years between the two, there's bound to be changes in ideology.

Also, Aristotle wasn't setting up Oedipus Rex as an example of Greek tragedy as a whole -- he said it was the best tragedy. He liked it because it was clean and elegant, not because it had so much in common with other offerings in the genre. People tend to forget that A) this was his opinion, not a God-given edict and B) he was a philosopher, not a playwright, and not even speaking as an audience member to other audience members. He was part of a school of philosophers who wanted to find a system of determining the value (the first academics!) of things, so this was right up their alley.

Anyone who is struggling just to understand Austen is going to be completely lost in the world of cricitism concerning Austen. Thus, criticism defeats itself.

Often? Yes. But always? Generalizations are dangerous things.

Also, keep in mind that, just as Aristotle was writing for other philosophers, critics are writing for other critics. They're speaking their own cultural shorthand with an aim unique to their profession -- just as Shakespeare's work was attuned to his own audience, political atmosphere, and personal circumstances.

It's just two different ways of writing and interacting with the text. I don't think it's inherently flawed -- I've read criticism which was immediately accessible, but I've also seen the kind the article deplored, filled with confusing jargon and inscrutable standards. Sometimes they were worthless, but sometimes, with a little effort and concentration, I was able to garner something worthwhile from them.

Alright, let me put it this way -- lit crit is often a mental experiment. Scientists have their own "thought experiments" which they can't completely prove, and so those in the humanities. They impose an arbitrary set of values on a text just to see what happens. A lot of them forget the results are unprovable, but is the experiment a loss just because its conductor was a pompous jackass?

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

Alright, let me put it this way -- lit crit is often a mental experiment. Scientists have their own "thought experiments" which they can't completely prove, and so those in the humanities. They impose an arbitrary set of values on a text just to see what happens. A lot of them forget the results are unprovable, but is the experiment a loss just because its conductor was a pompous jackass?

Let me zero in on something you said, for a moment. You say "lit crit is often a mental experiment", and while I don't disagree that it's a mental exercise, I don't think that calling it an experiment is right.

Experiments are what you do when you want to determine that the practical value of something is.

Literature has a practical value that I believe is beyond needing experimentation.

Call it a side-affect of being a history minor, but I don't believe that there is any discipline that isn't capable of producing some kind of practical result - and by practical I don't mean something scientific or technological.

All of the best in-depth discussion, analysis, and examination of literature I've done has had more in common with psychology, history, and linguistics than with literary cricitism - and that's because that kind of examination of a text didn't look at it as "oh, it's just a text. We have to invent a reason that looking at it is important."

The good type of examination looked at literature as a practical asset.

It asked these things: How does literature teach us to think? How does it affect our heads? What does literature make out of us? And why?

For instance, when I studied the novel The Strange Incidence of the Dog in The Night Time (a novel I highly recommend, btw), instead of trying to decode imagery or authorial intent, we let that novel (which is about an autistic child) teach us about theory of mind, about what the world looks like when you have no access to the thoughts of others, and how our ability to guess at the thoughts of others has changed how we act, how we write literature.

You can't get that kind of experience from science. You can describe autism to me all day long, and I'll have no ability to understand it. But show me that book, tell me a story through that lens and suddenly I *am* autistic for a few pages. Suddenly I understand a part of my mental composure that I didn't really even know existed.

No psych class could ever replicate that experience. You can't say "imagine you don't know the thoughts of others". You physically have to put blinders on me and make me walk around that way - and the only way to accomplish that mentally is a story.

Literary criticism forgets this. Literary criticism seems to forget that literature is much, much older than it is, and that literature had a purpose long before criticism came along.

It forgets that we were telling stories in pictures and words before we had cities or writing or even farming - and it forgets that there is a reason we still have stories, because stories are very practically important.

Criticism sees a text. I see a story. There, we diverge. Texts are just words. Stories are something else entirely. Stories are, in a way, living things.

I guess we may have to agree to disagree.

[klmorgan.livejournal.com]

I guess we may have to agree to disagree.

I don't know if we're disagreeing or just talking at cross purposes.

I'm trying to say that lit crit is one way of interacting with a text. Just because it's not the way you prefer to interact doesn't mean it's inherently flawed. You're a visceral reader, critics are analytical -- it's apples and oranges. One doesn't invalidate the other.

Experiments are what you do when you want to determine that the practical value of something is.

Emperical experiments are, but I was referring to thought experiments, that wonderful realm of woolgathering often frequented by physicists. Think Schrodinger's cat. Theoretically, that cat is both dead and alive. Theoretically, to a Marxist scholar, Jane Austen was arguing the case for bourgeoise values as threatened by encroaching city life in Mansfeild Park, which can then be projected onto her other works to claim she was debunking capitalism in Pride and Prejudice... but no one can every really prove it. And we're not sure about the cat, either.

It's an analogy, and I won't say it's not flawed, but I was trying to show why this vehemence towards critics is largely unnecessary. Critics are not writing as readers. You may not agree with what they're saying, but you don't have to. They're simply conducting an experiment -- what happens to Lorca, for instance, when we impose the values of feminist theory on his plays? Do we still value them? Why or why not? Etc and so on.

Lit crit is not supposed to be swallowed down without question. It's supposed to start discussions, pose new questions, inspire others to take a fresh look at a body of work they'd taken for granted. Do some critics think they're above reproach and should be treated as such? Yes, but that's hardly lit crit's fault, it can be found in every profession. My boss was like that, and he was in construction.

Texts are just words.

I'm using "text" as a sort of catch-all phrase for literature. It's easier than always typing "novel/play/poem/short story."

Literary criticism forgets this. Literary criticism seems to forget that literature is much, much older than it is, and that literature had a purpose long before criticism came along.

... I think you're generalizing again. Again, not all critics are pompous asses. They might love, love, love their books in the same way you do, and experience them the same way... when they have their reader hats on. Their critic hat requires a different way of thinking. Is it a crime to enjoy both?

And keep in mind: criticism has spurred literature. Many poets, writers, and playwrights were also critics. They would discuss the works of their contemporaries, examinging the vagaries and becoming inspired to respond not only in nonfiction articles but with their own work.

Criticism sees a text. I see a story. There, we diverge.

And this is where I become curious -- just because you prefer a different path, lit crit has no merit at all? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to find it almost offensive.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

I don't know if we're disagreeing or just talking at cross purposes.

I wondered that myself, actually, and I've be re-reading our discussion to see if that might be the case.

But whether we're disagreeing, talking at cross purposes, or just shooting the breeze, I'd like to thank you for the discussion. It's been lively and interesting and it's always nice to be able to have a civilized, intelligent debate, especially with someone who obviously is as thoughtful as you are.

If I read your reply like I think you meant it, then this where I think our bone of contention may be:

You're saying, Lit Crit, is perfectly valid and it just happens to have a few bad apples ruining it for all of us, and that the values I'm applying to it are those of a reader who reads for pleasure and enjoyment, while Lit Crit seeks a different purpose in evaluating what's worthwhile in a text. You're saying that you think that I'm saying because Lit Crit works differently than I do, I think it's invalid. (I hope I got that right, and if I misunderstood, do correct me).

I'm saying I think that Lit Crit is a broken system. I don't think the pomposity is completely the fault of individual critics (although, some of the blame does rest with them). I think reading as a "visceral" reader should be part of Lit Crit. I'm saying that the criteria that literary criticism uses in determining what's even worth looking at is completely skewed. But I am not saying lit crit should disappear from the face of the Earth.

I don't think that divorcing literature from its visceral, practical nature gets us anywhere useful, because that's like divorcing a symphony from its music.

Let's go for metaphors, since we seem to do best with those.

Literary criticism is a car. It's a car that squeaks and makes funny noises and doesn't always start and and when you shift gears, you hear grinding. That much we agree on.

However, I think that you're saying: "it's that way because sometimes, it gets driven by an idiot. Get someone who knows how to drive, and it's fine."

I'm saying, "Nope, the CAR is broken."

(Although to be fair, it's entirely possible that it's because the car IS indeed being driven by an idiot who doesn't know how to drive stick and when to take his foot off the clutch - we may never know).

So, I'm saying I don't get the point of driving this car around. Not because you shouldn't have a car, but because you shouldn't have a *BROKEN* car. I think that we need to take the car into the shop, overhaul the hell out of it, and get it running like the smooth machine it *could* be.

I think it needs oil and gas. I think it needs a tune up. I think it needs to borrow parts from other cars. I think it needs to remember that the point of driving the car in the first place is to go somewhere, to carry out a practical task.

And I hear you saying (again, correct me if I'm wrong), we have the car to see if we can have a car, to see what the car will do, to look at its parts, because the car is worth having all on its own.

*whew*. Okay, I think the car metaphor's done its job now.

And this is where I become curious -- just because you prefer a different path, lit crit has no merit at all? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to find it almost offensive.

Trust me, it takes more than lit crit to offend me. :) I'm not so much offended as frustrated. I have similar frustrations when it comes to some methods of looking at history, feminist theory (that is a WHOLE other thing though), and large parts of modern psychology.

It doesn't mean I find those studies and disciplines completely invalid (certainly not!), but I do think they need to change.

If I had my way, I wouldn't throw literary criticism out the window - I would just take it into the shop to get that tuneup. Although I suspect that if we built it from the ground up, our cars might look strangely similar. ;)