Something that?s disappointed me about too many writers I?ve met during my short time in the writing world: how little they enjoy thinking and talking about their writing. About writing in general,? the reaction is usually kind of shy amusement or annoyed hysteria, depending on disposition, but when it comes to talking more specifically about the implications or intent of their style and aesthetic, I encounter an almost universal mystification, typically denoted by an agitated or, momentarily deranged, shrug.
Recently, for instance, in the last semester of my MFA program at Notre Dame, a program considered to be ?experimental? ? ?too experimental? for Daddy Warbucks Nicholas Charles Sparks, who even declined further donation to a scholarship created in his name for low to working class ?experimenters? like myself, so unworthy of Big Daddy?s hard-earned bucks we are ? my class of prose writers were asked to write about their literary aesthetic in the form of a manifesto. Sounds fun, right? Unfortunately, most of these ?manifestos? were slightly lazy or uninspired. Definitely unserious and unthoughtful to a scary degree (not that most weren?t well written surface texts, which is possibly an apt metaphor for too many contemporary writers). Some of this attitude could be chalked up to end of the semester doldrums, but this sort of dullness on the intellectual side of writing, I?ve found, has been a consistent part of my experience with the creative writing community.
My graduate time has often seemed schizophrenic. (Which may not be a bad thing, necessarily, if we agree with Deleuze.) As a former philosophy major also interested in literary theory, I was surprised at how differently creative writers and literature majors viewed thought. Their worlds are binary worlds, with little thoughtful exchange. The former tend to be hostile, anxious, or dismissive of theory, holding an almost magical view of writerly knowledge or ?intuition? ? except for their naive beliefs in humanist or Enlightenment theory, which they accept uncritically and are unable or unwilling to perceive as theory (really old theory) ? while the latter tend to be highly reflective, understanding generally the political implications of their thought and, even in disagreement, pleased to engage in a serious exchange of ideas. Sadly, I have found myself too often bored and frustrated with my own writing community, confiding to lit PhDs or philosophy students about how dead thought is in creative writing circle
s. And they understand my frustration. They too have encountered the intellectual stubbornness and apathy of creative writing students.
This isn?t to say that all writers are stupid and all critics are smart. In fact, one of the reasons this non-critical, non-reflective attitude bothers me so much is because so many writers have great minds. Some are even brilliant. Or could be. These writers are not limited in their imagination or intellect and, therefore, should not be limited in regards to creative thought. Instead, they limit themselves. They limit their own intellectual creativity and development. But why?
I believe this attitude is encouraged by a few different factors. One is obviously an unfortunate cultural inheritance from Romanticism: the notion of the genius writer or artist. Everyone wants to be Shakespeare, a (supposedly) natural born writer. A right-out-of-the-womb, ready-to-write genius. Early British criticism was obsessed with this idea (Pope, Dryden). Was it a writer?s natural wit and genius that made them great, or was it learning? The idea of being born a prodigy obviously has great appeal for the Ego. It?s easy for us artsy types, so used to being tormented by high school philistines, to find solace and yes, confidence, in thinking ourselves special babies. Miracle births. Ironic that a new brand of intellectual philistine or elitist (realist truthers?) is produced by so many MFA programs and literary journals from the rough clay of once promising thinkers.
There may indeed be something miraculous about writers ? I?m not completely willing to give this delusion up yet myself ? but there?s nothing miraculous about self-limitation. Particularly when this self-limitation, based on an apathy created by too much insecure love of self, makes writers afraid or too arrogant to explore a nearly endless horizon of historical thought, and in favor of? what? The writer?s ?unique? or intuitive ideas, which they imagine must come from someplace sublime and grassy, sunny, eternal ? God? Platonic heaven? ? anyplace other than transient culture, in all of its nomadic wanderings and pit stops. That is, somewhere else other than other people?s thought. In a way, writers are a sort of literary monster. They have the hubris, like Oedipus, to believe themselves independent of history. They have oracular words, not oral goo, pouring from their baby mouths.
One of the other factors that limits writers is the affirmative humanist ideology at work in most writing programs, how-to books, and in American literature and culture. This humanist ideology tends to be associated with realism in prose and the nostalgia of modernism, but it can also be found in too much gushy and insipid Romantic-nature poetry or lyrical prose that still tries to pass for inspired or ?original? thought. You know, original thoughts or intuitions about the healing power of Nature (not sharks) that might rejuvenate the corpses of Wordsworth or Emerson in their graves. Their bones must dance in delight for the singing poesy of the worms and maggots crawling through their marrow, apparently rebirthing their universal human Natures and Truths into coffin wood.
The key word here is not necessarily humanism, but ?affirmation.? Humanism could be critical; in fact, postmodernism can be seen as an effort to critique the problematic assumptions of Enlightenment humanisms, well-intentioned humanisms that have resulted in the affirmative programs of fascism, capitalism, and communism; programs that have birthed world wars, global poverty, environmental degradation, multiple genocides, class warfare, inequality, terrorism, and now the modern techno-panoptic surveillance state (i.e., the Emperor?s new droid army).
We can understand the problem of affirmation in American literature when we consider the case of John Gardner?s hard ideological stance on the near mathematical necessity of stapling free will onto ?the art of fiction.? All characters, says John, lose their humanity and become only pointless objects of scientific interest when portrayed without the possibility of free will. Gardner, mind you, doesn?t ever argue for free will, a very contentious and problematic concept in the history of thought. He simply believes it. For him, it?s a matter of faith, a necessary presupposition that all ?interesting? writers must make, unquestioned. While I think it?s fine for John to maintain whatever faith in realist magic he likes (he would probably believe in Marilynne Robinson?s ?realistic fiction,? too, which reads more like a Stepford delirium
, populated by erotic fantasy characters such as the Reverend Ames, the most delightful patriarchal prop for Christian apologetics one can ever hope to read), I believe too many young writers who read this sort of ideological tripe in workshops probably internalize it like bad fish, which makes it seem like ?Truth? for a while, until they eventually flush it down the drain and try to forget it ever happened. Hopefully, they can.
John?s hard truth is one opinion. An affirmative opinion. In other words, it affirms a popular myth of humanism that may actually hurt humanity more than it helps by ameliorating our alienation with contemporary culture. Affirmative art and entertainment seek to hide our hemorrhaging by bolstering the human Ego and its belief systems rather than critiquing them, and this Truthy malignancy spreads almost invisibly through the community of writers while they internalize helpful tips on style and metaphor. As a result, too many writers are robbed of their imagination and find in its place an inky clot that can only reiterate convenient fables of state.
The example of free will with Gardner is emblematic of many other presupposed human-centered beliefs that pass for original thought in our American-Romantic-Ideological State. Others should be obvious (this is not meant to be full list): writers should ?tell it how it ?is??; there is a totally objective, empirical world of truth for writers to represent, one that isn?t situated by pov, one provided by non-biased experts, particularly friendly scientists and shrinks with no capital interest or ideology of their own. All stories and poems must be organic, and resonate, like sidecars or horse-drawn carts; only the symmetrical is allowed ? stay back with your non-organic disunities of paper and ink. All characters, and by extension all people ? all cultures ? can easily change, or should change, when necessary. And these changes are stable, long-lasting changes, progressive changes: our ?selves? are not unstable constructions, but stable objects, like souls or pebbles, that fill us with a deep and universal humanity, born outside of history. Somewhere ?more real? over the rainbow. Our stories shouldn?t overtly deal with politics or theory, which are subjective, and all characters should be treated objectively or fairly, despite the logical impossibility of authorial objectivity. Above all, writing should always privilege the ?human? and universal (i.e., the classless, ahistorical) human experience, whatever flavor it is that week. And as long as we don?t stay too long on those on the margins of ?normal? humanity, or, for propriety?s sake, let the margins speak for themselves, American writers can pretend that they?ve authentically, according to their busy schedules, payed lip service to the other, and can go on selling and dancing with their fellow bourgeois, without guilt.
The answer to affirmative writing and affirmative culture is criticism. Criticism is a resistance to the myths that make us feel too good about ourselves; that allow us to grow complacent; that allow our bodies to ameliorate a hemorrhaging that could, if it were left to bleed totally out, lead to radical change. But resistance requires thought, stepping outside of one?s comfortable, inherited belief system, and having a critical dialogue with oneself and others about truths that seem natural, although they are really only constructed or normalized tales. This requires, for writers and artists, an understanding of what your style and aesthetics convey despite your delusions of genius; of perceiving the world differently with counter strategies of thought and writing.
Art is not merely beauty for the sake of beauty, or writing for the sake of writing, or experimentation for the sake of experimentation;? art is definitely not the mere affirmation of a constructed Self: art is a way of seeing the world differently so perception and culture can be changed as often as it takes to flee an all-consuming monologic, to escape a metanarrative that disposes of the other like a commodity with its only purpose being to arrive at its own identity, to
the eventual exclusion and domination of all meaningful dialogue and resistance.
Without solid technologies of resistance to affirmative culture, the literary community becomes a mere synonym for the entertainment industry and ceases to function as a legitimate counterdiscourse. A first step in the right direction would be a creative writing theory and community that resists by casting off the old affirmative stylistics and technologies of traditional realism and New Criticism and replacing them with the tech of the avant garde and postmodernism.
(Next time on mixer: more about techs of resistance. What the f? are they?)
Source: http://blog.mixerpublishing.com/?p=2203
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