I won't say intellectual curiosity is the only thing you need, but isn't it the most important? Worrying about being smart enough is a trap, instead you should cultivate curiosity and recognize your own lapses of curiosity and see how you can learn from them. Scholarship without this quality is easy to spot because it is dull. The writer is never asking himself interesting questions, and is satisfied with dull answers. We don't really know that much about literature or about the human mind, so the possibilities are endless.
I was wondering recently whether there is another sense, along with the 20 or so with which we are possessed, with the name I would give it being chronoception. Of course if I google this word I get some results so I am not the first to ask this question or invent this word. But that doesn't matter.
I am also wondering if there is related research into ruthmoception, where the question is not longer duration, but also segmentation and articulation in time. I'll have to go back and read Bergson.
Showing posts with label scholarly self-fashioning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scholarly self-fashioning. Show all posts
Thursday, May 18, 2017
Friday, April 25, 2014
Formative (4)
So the one missing piece in my early education was language. Because of my interest in prosody and poetry generally I became a very good language learner. That, and my exceptionally robust memory. My junior year abroad in Spain was a formative experience. I learned the language by reading hundreds of pages of literature while I was in the country and speaking only Spanish as much as I could. While my Spanish wasn't perfect on my return, it was good enough to be a Hispanist.
***
In Spain I studied with Claudio Rodríguez. That was a formative experience, because I had never been in the presence of pure poetic genius before. I quickly left Bousoño's class. Whatever the opposite of poetic genius is, that is Bousoño.
***
Naively, I thought I needed to be better prepared for graduate school, so I read most of the boom novels the summer before. Oddly, I found when I arrived that I had read more than a lot of other people. It was odd that we were to read Roa Bastos, whom I found to be a mediocre writer. Maybe I was wrong but I haven't returned to him.
***
Another formative experience was the discovery of the periodical room at the UC Davis library. I used to go there before I was even in college, and it was fascinating to discover that there was a journal just for works of William Blake. That seemed a marvelous thing, simply that that existed. I have spent many hours in periodical rooms and bookstores. Library stacks are wonderful too.
***
I read the introduction to O'Hara's collected poems, by JA. He had a list of writers that O'Hara read, so I read those writers, especially Henry Green and Flann O'Brien. I had invented a technique that might be called backwards reading. You start with Borges, say, and then you read everything that Borges thought important. I tried Ronald Firbank too, but I didn't get it at all.
***
At Cornell, where I lived for a time, I systematically trained myself in my field, by reading all the individual books of poetry I could find by the novísimos.
***
I am sorry that my formative experience did not consist of sitting in the classroom and learning from some charismatic professor. I did learn from the British poet Thom Gunn, and from a guy named Richard Coe, a French professor who was also a specialist in autobiography. I took a class from a noted Beckett scholar, Ruby Cohn, and found her a mediocre mind. I liked Elliot Gilbert, a Victorianist married to Gilbert, of Gilbert and Gubar fame. Elliot later died tragically due to hospital incompetence. I did study a bit with Sandra too. Still, I am mostly an autodidact.
***
I would go to all the poetry readings. I saw Richard Eberhardt and Stephen Spender, and many others. In Spain I saw Rafael Alberti and Luis Rosales.
***
While preparing to write my dissertation, I came across a new book by Debicki, Poetry of Discovery. I was really shocked that a third-rate mind like this could be the big name in my field. That meant, in my arrogant opinion at the time, that I could be an even bigger name. Later I became friends and colleagues with him, and even taught the rest of his course once when he had cancer.
***
The Nobel prizes for Neruda and Aleixandre in the 1970s really motivated me to go into this field. Naively, I expected that this would be a normal kind of thing to have happened, but I have never met a colleague who entered the field for that reason. The journals were filled with translations of Neruda, so I thought that it would be cool to read him (and others) in the original. There are many Spanish professors for whom poetry is a complete mystery. They do not read it (aside from what they read for exams in grad school) or teach it. There are others who specialize in it, but have a very rudimentary understanding of it.
***
We talk about experiences that are formative. Formación in Spanish means professional training & education. Bildung is a similar concept: culture, development. We might also look at Greenblatt's concept of "self-fashioning," or my own idea of the "scholarly base." If we look at the idea of "cultural capital" that is another approach to this question, from a sociological perspective. I don't like the idea of capital as much, because it makes it sound like it is a mere birthright, something you acquire effortlessly just because of your social class. Of course I did inherit a good deal of this "capital," in the sense that the materials for study were always right there.
***
I play congas and bongoes. An analogy might be a Cuban whose whole family plays percussion. The kid might be playing at age 5 or so, and never have to wonder what the clave is. The drums will just be around in his house. The kid might grow up to the Changuito, or might never become a player of that caliber.
***
In Spain I studied with Claudio Rodríguez. That was a formative experience, because I had never been in the presence of pure poetic genius before. I quickly left Bousoño's class. Whatever the opposite of poetic genius is, that is Bousoño.
***
Naively, I thought I needed to be better prepared for graduate school, so I read most of the boom novels the summer before. Oddly, I found when I arrived that I had read more than a lot of other people. It was odd that we were to read Roa Bastos, whom I found to be a mediocre writer. Maybe I was wrong but I haven't returned to him.
***
Another formative experience was the discovery of the periodical room at the UC Davis library. I used to go there before I was even in college, and it was fascinating to discover that there was a journal just for works of William Blake. That seemed a marvelous thing, simply that that existed. I have spent many hours in periodical rooms and bookstores. Library stacks are wonderful too.
***
I read the introduction to O'Hara's collected poems, by JA. He had a list of writers that O'Hara read, so I read those writers, especially Henry Green and Flann O'Brien. I had invented a technique that might be called backwards reading. You start with Borges, say, and then you read everything that Borges thought important. I tried Ronald Firbank too, but I didn't get it at all.
***
At Cornell, where I lived for a time, I systematically trained myself in my field, by reading all the individual books of poetry I could find by the novísimos.
***
I am sorry that my formative experience did not consist of sitting in the classroom and learning from some charismatic professor. I did learn from the British poet Thom Gunn, and from a guy named Richard Coe, a French professor who was also a specialist in autobiography. I took a class from a noted Beckett scholar, Ruby Cohn, and found her a mediocre mind. I liked Elliot Gilbert, a Victorianist married to Gilbert, of Gilbert and Gubar fame. Elliot later died tragically due to hospital incompetence. I did study a bit with Sandra too. Still, I am mostly an autodidact.
***
I would go to all the poetry readings. I saw Richard Eberhardt and Stephen Spender, and many others. In Spain I saw Rafael Alberti and Luis Rosales.
***
While preparing to write my dissertation, I came across a new book by Debicki, Poetry of Discovery. I was really shocked that a third-rate mind like this could be the big name in my field. That meant, in my arrogant opinion at the time, that I could be an even bigger name. Later I became friends and colleagues with him, and even taught the rest of his course once when he had cancer.
***
The Nobel prizes for Neruda and Aleixandre in the 1970s really motivated me to go into this field. Naively, I expected that this would be a normal kind of thing to have happened, but I have never met a colleague who entered the field for that reason. The journals were filled with translations of Neruda, so I thought that it would be cool to read him (and others) in the original. There are many Spanish professors for whom poetry is a complete mystery. They do not read it (aside from what they read for exams in grad school) or teach it. There are others who specialize in it, but have a very rudimentary understanding of it.
***
We talk about experiences that are formative. Formación in Spanish means professional training & education. Bildung is a similar concept: culture, development. We might also look at Greenblatt's concept of "self-fashioning," or my own idea of the "scholarly base." If we look at the idea of "cultural capital" that is another approach to this question, from a sociological perspective. I don't like the idea of capital as much, because it makes it sound like it is a mere birthright, something you acquire effortlessly just because of your social class. Of course I did inherit a good deal of this "capital," in the sense that the materials for study were always right there.
***
I play congas and bongoes. An analogy might be a Cuban whose whole family plays percussion. The kid might be playing at age 5 or so, and never have to wonder what the clave is. The drums will just be around in his house. The kid might grow up to the Changuito, or might never become a player of that caliber.
Monday, July 25, 2011
The Lab
Imagine a big scientific lab that puts out a lot of publications, some of which are spin-offs of the main agenda of the lab. I've been worried that my publications were duplicating themselves a little too much, but I've decided that I'm fine. There will be a little redundancy and overlap because the corpus I'm working on suggests additional ideas, because books will repeat arguments made in articles, etc... I might write a second article making the same theoretical point, but using other texts, for instance. I feel bad sometimes when I do this, but looking back on previous cases I don't think I'm all that reduplicative.
A single scholar is a like a big laboratory in this respect. This is also why it's easier to publish a lot more if you are already publishing a lot. What is more difficult is going from zero to one, going from publishing nothing (or a very small amount) to publishing a moderate amount. If you are actively engaged in research, you will get extra ideas you won't even be able to use, because you will notice interesting things in other texts you are reading.
A single scholar is a like a big laboratory in this respect. This is also why it's easier to publish a lot more if you are already publishing a lot. What is more difficult is going from zero to one, going from publishing nothing (or a very small amount) to publishing a moderate amount. If you are actively engaged in research, you will get extra ideas you won't even be able to use, because you will notice interesting things in other texts you are reading.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
How I Wrote 4 Years Ago
WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be a modernist poet at the end of the twentieth century? Perhaps no poet more clearly embodies the ethos of “late modernism” than José Angel Valente, whose final book, Fragmentos de un libro futuro, was published after his death in the final year of the millennium. This book is not only posthumous but also designed to be posthumous. According to its front flap, “José Angel Valente concibió una suerte de obra poética ‘abierta’, un libro que—como la parábola cervantina de Ginés de Pasamonte o la novela de Proust—no acabaría sino con la desaparición misma del autor” ( José Angel Valente conceived of a sort of “open” poetic work, a book that, like the Cervantine parable of Ginés de Pasamonte or Proust’s novel, would not end until the author himself disappeared; my translation here and throughout). The book’s futurity, then, lies beyond the lifespan of the poet. Yet, in relation to the avant-garde movements of the earlier part of the twentieth century, Valente’s book is decidedly nostalgic rather than forward looking. Its predominant tone is elegiac. While steeped in the culture of modernity, it ultimately exemplifies an arrière-garde rather than an avant-garde spirit. Given Valente’s pre-eminent position within the canon of late twentieth-century Spanish poetry, an examination of his work during the last two decades of his life can also reveal the degree to which the modernist aesthetic has maintained its vitality in the contemporary period.
(Mayhew 2007)
A little verbose. It's not much different from how I write now, and I don't have the distance from it to give it a grade. A-?
How I Wrote 18 Years Ago
RAMÓN de Garciasol, reviewing Claudio Rodriguez's first book, Don de la ebriedad, praised the young poet for his rugged Castilian virility: "Claudio Rodríguez puede al verso, le gobierna con mano viril" (7). When I first came upon this quote several years ago, in the course of writing a dissertation on Rodriguez's poetry, I rejected it as an uncomprehending and inappropriate response to a highly complex work of metapoetry, an absurdly gratuitous intrusion of machismo into a context in which the author's gender was simply irrelevant. While rejecting Garciasol's blatant sexism, however, I was making a highly questionable assumption of my own: that Rodriguez's poetry somehow transcended gender. By dismissing out of hand the relevance of the poet's "virility," I was committing the familiar error of equating the masculine with the universal.
It should not be surprising to learn that Claudio Rodriguez writes as a man rather than as an impossibly genderless human subject. No one would claim otherwise; in fact, the point seems too obvious to be of any real significance. In what non-trivial sense, then, does Rodriguez's poetry reflect a particularly "masculine" vision? One approach to this question would be to identify masculinity with misogyny, canvassing the poet's work for sexist attitudes. Rodriguez does occasionally identify feminine figures with negative aspects of reality, especially deceptiveness ("Brujas a mediodía," 127-30). A related avenue of investigation is the poet's relation to his mother, a figure that appears in several poems from Conjuros and Alianza y Condena. A biographically minded critic could interpret these texts in light of the poet's problematical relation to his mother.
"Claudio Rodríguez and the Writing of the Masculine Body"
This is actually a bit better, in some respects, than the article from 2000, somehow livelier. The second paragraph is a little verbose, with "it should not be surprising that..." and "seems to obvious to be of any real significance" and "a related avenue of investigation..." There's the repetition of the word "mother" at the end of this paragraph too. The last two sentences should have really been one. I'll give myself a B here. I start off well, but fade in the second paragraph.
How I Wrote 11 Years Ago
THE majority of critical studies devoted to Francisco Brines insist upon the universality of his concerns. For Carlos Bousoño, the author of an important early study, Brines's poetry, while rooted in the particularity of his experience, ultimately transcends the merely personal, suppressing details that do not pertain to his more general themes: death, the passage of time, and the transitory nature of human existence. José Olivio Jiménez, likewise, speaks of "la indiscutible universalidad de su canto hondamente elegiaco, en el que, a un tiempo, el hombre se empeña en afirmar su débil realidad y la hermosura del mundo y de la vida " (Brines, Antología poética 8). Man and his existential problems are also crucial for North-American Hispanists like Andrew Debicki and Judith Nantell: "Francisco Brines ' Insistencias en Luzbel (1977) presents the reader with highly complex and often cryptic portraits of the modes of being displayed by man as he lives and works out his existence" (Nantell, "Modos de ser" 33). Whatever their differences, these critics share an underlying commitment to one of the fundamental tenets of humanist ideology: the universality of human experience. Thus Brines's poetry, in the eyes of its most influential interpreters, comes to epitomize the values of humanist existentialism.
From "Francisco Brines and the Humanist Closet," 2000.
I'd like to say I've improved substantially, but I don't find much to criticize here. I use the word "study" (studies) in the first two sentences. I would try to avoid that now. I don't like the word "important" very much. The phrase "whatever their differences" sounds a little vague to me as well. Did I mean that they were different because some were Spaniards and some Americans?
The rhetorical effect I was after was to cite particularly banal or over-general statements by other critics in order make my point, that critics should have approached him in more particularist, less general ways. At the same time, I was not overly disrespectful of these critics. Since I am arguing, in the rest of the article, for a homoerotic reading, I wanted to find a lot of quotes with the word "man" / "hombre." I'll give myself a B or B- here. It is clear and achieves the effect of hanging the other critics by their own rope, but it is not particularly elegant.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Scholarly Self-Fashioning
My image of myself, of what I am doing as a scholar, has shifted gradually over the years. I once saw myself as the hot-shot, hyper-theoretical Young Turk. Now I am more the old-fogey, old-school Comparative Literature professor. Between these two phases, I saw myself as the person with the deepest possible insight into poetry, aspiring to be the greatest possible reader. Sometimes I've wanted to see myself as the consummate specialist in my particular subfield. Other identities I've tried on include the "poet-critic" and the high-modernist.
I mention these overlapping or partially contradictory identities because it might be strategic to define oneself in a particular way, but it is also helpful to question one's own identity from time to time. What benefit do we get from thinking of ourselves in a category like those I've described? If you call yourself a professor-activist, a cultural critic, or an interdisciplinary scholar, what does that mean for you?
(I borrow the word "self-fashioning" from Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-Fashioning.)
I mention these overlapping or partially contradictory identities because it might be strategic to define oneself in a particular way, but it is also helpful to question one's own identity from time to time. What benefit do we get from thinking of ourselves in a category like those I've described? If you call yourself a professor-activist, a cultural critic, or an interdisciplinary scholar, what does that mean for you?
(I borrow the word "self-fashioning" from Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-Fashioning.)
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Agenda (5) and Scholarly Base
It strikes me that the scholarly agenda (overarching sense of the purpose of one's work) helps in the elaboration of the scholarly base: all the things necessary but not sufficient that support scholarship. The base is not just knowledge, but also access to materials, to other scholars; abilities, like writing prose or analyzing texts. The relation between the agenda and the base should go without saying, but a lot of things that go without saying need to be said over and over again.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
How can you be as efficient as possible when your base is still fairly undeveloped and your confidence is fragile?
This is the final question posed by my correspondent:
"How can you be as efficient as possible when your base is still fairly undeveloped and your confidence is fragile?"
This is an excellent question, and hard for me to answer. I have been there, with an undeveloped scholarly base and less confidence, but right now I don't have those particular problems. Thinking back, I remember struggling with whether I could write the dissertation, just get it done. I was dealing with very complex ideas and trying to come up with a brilliantly original theoretical framework. The first chapter in particular was very difficult.
Let's break this question down into three parts.
The base. I'd recommend doing an inventory of your base. Just sit down and write down everything that is part of it. Any foreign language you know; the fact that your advisor is a good one; that your university library has the resources you need; that you are a good prose stylist and have good time management skills (Include any positives in your happiness base too.) Once you have inventoried your base you will see where the weaknesses are. Maybe you haven't read enough theory, or don't understand what you've read. Make a shorter list of things you need to work on. Ok. Now instead of a vague and uneasy sense that you don't know enough to write a dissertation, you have a realistic assessment of your assets and liabilities.
Confidence. "Be confident!" is useless advice. Real confidence develops through realistic experience with successful performance. The most successful students are not even the most over-confident ones, because they can have more trouble when the world doesn't agree with their self-assessments. Realistically, almost nobody fails to write a dissertation because of lack of intelligence or because of a lack of a scholarly base.
Once again, I think the key is to replace vague, existential, infinite worries with very specific lists of things you can already do fairly well and things that still give you some trouble.
Efficiency. Yikes. The dissertation is hard work and will be inefficient simply because it is the first project on that scale you have done. There will be "wasted" work, pages you write that will end up on the cutting room floor. I have documents on my computer from my current project with titles like "rejected bits from Lezama Lima chapter." Here I will only say that regular work is efficient work. In other words, inefficiency tends to be more of a function of not having regular working hours, as opposed to sitting down for two hours and working inefficiently. The latter scenario does happen, but you can just average in those days with the rest and it will all come out ok.
"How can you be as efficient as possible when your base is still fairly undeveloped and your confidence is fragile?"
This is an excellent question, and hard for me to answer. I have been there, with an undeveloped scholarly base and less confidence, but right now I don't have those particular problems. Thinking back, I remember struggling with whether I could write the dissertation, just get it done. I was dealing with very complex ideas and trying to come up with a brilliantly original theoretical framework. The first chapter in particular was very difficult.
Let's break this question down into three parts.
The base. I'd recommend doing an inventory of your base. Just sit down and write down everything that is part of it. Any foreign language you know; the fact that your advisor is a good one; that your university library has the resources you need; that you are a good prose stylist and have good time management skills (Include any positives in your happiness base too.) Once you have inventoried your base you will see where the weaknesses are. Maybe you haven't read enough theory, or don't understand what you've read. Make a shorter list of things you need to work on. Ok. Now instead of a vague and uneasy sense that you don't know enough to write a dissertation, you have a realistic assessment of your assets and liabilities.
Confidence. "Be confident!" is useless advice. Real confidence develops through realistic experience with successful performance. The most successful students are not even the most over-confident ones, because they can have more trouble when the world doesn't agree with their self-assessments. Realistically, almost nobody fails to write a dissertation because of lack of intelligence or because of a lack of a scholarly base.
Once again, I think the key is to replace vague, existential, infinite worries with very specific lists of things you can already do fairly well and things that still give you some trouble.
Efficiency. Yikes. The dissertation is hard work and will be inefficient simply because it is the first project on that scale you have done. There will be "wasted" work, pages you write that will end up on the cutting room floor. I have documents on my computer from my current project with titles like "rejected bits from Lezama Lima chapter." Here I will only say that regular work is efficient work. In other words, inefficiency tends to be more of a function of not having regular working hours, as opposed to sitting down for two hours and working inefficiently. The latter scenario does happen, but you can just average in those days with the rest and it will all come out ok.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Slump
I was in a bit of a slump between about 1998 and 2005 or so. You wouldn't really know it from looking at my cv, though. I continued to write and publish. There are no gaps, periods of more than 2 years without significant publications. From my perspective I was in a slump, because I was writing more than I was publishing and having a hard time putting together a book manuscript. I wasn't having a very good time in my job and suffered from mild to moderate depression. What I did, essentially, is write myself out of it. Now it is clear to me that the work I did during this period wasn't wasted in the least, but I went 15 years without publishing a book.
I still bear some ill effects from that period. It took me longer than it should have to become a full professor, and my salary is still far below where it should be in relation to my accomplishments and those of comparable people in my department. I was barely hanging on in terms of living a satisfactory life, but I was still able to write, somehow.
Now I'm in a phase where I'm asking myself "what next?" I need to make a change of some kind for purely financial reasons. This means either getting another job where the renumeration is decent, staying at Kansas as Distinguished Professor, or taking on some kind of administrative job. None of these is a sure thing in a stagnant economy, but I need to try to make some move at this point. If I retired tomorrow I would have had a kick-ass career in terms of pure scholarship, but there are many things I have left to do, and the most urgent of these things is to make a little more money so I can eventually retire in comfort.
I still bear some ill effects from that period. It took me longer than it should have to become a full professor, and my salary is still far below where it should be in relation to my accomplishments and those of comparable people in my department. I was barely hanging on in terms of living a satisfactory life, but I was still able to write, somehow.
Now I'm in a phase where I'm asking myself "what next?" I need to make a change of some kind for purely financial reasons. This means either getting another job where the renumeration is decent, staying at Kansas as Distinguished Professor, or taking on some kind of administrative job. None of these is a sure thing in a stagnant economy, but I need to try to make some move at this point. If I retired tomorrow I would have had a kick-ass career in terms of pure scholarship, but there are many things I have left to do, and the most urgent of these things is to make a little more money so I can eventually retire in comfort.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
What do you want to be known for?
Do you want to be known as X's disciple, or as the Y's teacher? Do you see yourself as a theorist, a critic, or a scholar? Are you mainly an expert on Joyce or Twain, or on Ireland or Sweden? Do you define yourself by period or by theoretical approach?
In my case, I don't want disciples, nor to be known for whom I worked with. I'd like to be thought of as someone who defined the terms of the debate in my field, someone who raised the standard for what excellent work is in my subfield, and made this subfield relevant to those for whom it would otherwise not be so important. I want to have a reputation both in Spain and in the US academy. I don't need to be a star; I'd rather be respected by a few people who know quality work.
In my case, I don't want disciples, nor to be known for whom I worked with. I'd like to be thought of as someone who defined the terms of the debate in my field, someone who raised the standard for what excellent work is in my subfield, and made this subfield relevant to those for whom it would otherwise not be so important. I want to have a reputation both in Spain and in the US academy. I don't need to be a star; I'd rather be respected by a few people who know quality work.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
When Does a Scholar Peak?
Let's say 30 is too young. That's when you're likely to finish your PhD and be relatively inexperienced. I was probably smarter at 30 than I am now, but I didn't know a lot. Let's say 60 is too old for the "peak." You can still do good work and you're going to know a heck of a lot if you've been a scholar your whole life, but the ideas are not likely to be as fresh and original. You're likely to be repeating yourself a bit.
So the peak years are probably between 35-55. I personally feel I'm peaking now, but I don't actually know if I'll ever do anything as good as Apocryphal Lorca again. Even if I do a few more books on the level of my least accomplished book, I'll be happy.
The other theory is that it really doesn't matter how old you are. You could be Rimbaud or Sophocles. I'm still exploring ideas I had when I was 24. We're not tennis players who are old at 30.
So the peak years are probably between 35-55. I personally feel I'm peaking now, but I don't actually know if I'll ever do anything as good as Apocryphal Lorca again. Even if I do a few more books on the level of my least accomplished book, I'll be happy.
The other theory is that it really doesn't matter how old you are. You could be Rimbaud or Sophocles. I'm still exploring ideas I had when I was 24. We're not tennis players who are old at 30.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Owning It
You don't want to be alienated from your scholarly project. You want to be fully identified with it. It is you. You want to own your scholarly field--not in an exclusionary sense, since someone else can also own that same field--but in the sense that you are responsible for everything in it.
Think of something you know very, very well. Now think of something you have a superficial knowledge of. Do you see the difference?
Think of something you know very, very well. Now think of something you have a superficial knowledge of. Do you see the difference?
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Critical Voice
Critical voice means sounding like yourself. It means writing in such a way that your own scholarly persona is at the forefront. We say a student lacks critical voice when he or she is using citations from other scholars to make his/her points, and lacks a strong perspective. Stylistically, having a voice means choosing stylistic options deliberately rather than using a default style (generic acadamese) or an imitation of someone else's style. A strong theoretical model can weaken one's own prose. For example, if one has been reading Foucault a lot then the inclusion of a lot of that jargon can make one's prose sound derivative.
Whatever the other defects of my scholarship, I think that it always sounds like me. If I had to define my own voice it would be a little bit impatient and irreverent, fond of brash and opinionated statements but at the same time careful in qualifying them; self-conscious about my own biases, but at the same time fully invested in them. My style is clear but complex in its ideas. I rarely offer a paragraph of mere information. I am relatively laconic, but can sometimes slip into verbosity. I like to slip in the occasional huge vocabulary word (chthonic) just for fun. I like precision and humor...
It might be interesting to define your own style in this way. Do a stylistic self-portrait. What did you find? If you couldn't do it, why not?
Whatever the other defects of my scholarship, I think that it always sounds like me. If I had to define my own voice it would be a little bit impatient and irreverent, fond of brash and opinionated statements but at the same time careful in qualifying them; self-conscious about my own biases, but at the same time fully invested in them. My style is clear but complex in its ideas. I rarely offer a paragraph of mere information. I am relatively laconic, but can sometimes slip into verbosity. I like to slip in the occasional huge vocabulary word (chthonic) just for fun. I like precision and humor...
It might be interesting to define your own style in this way. Do a stylistic self-portrait. What did you find? If you couldn't do it, why not?
Friday, April 23, 2010
Most Influential Books
Ten most Influential Books (Literary Criticism)
I've been working on a list of books that have influenced me in literary criticsm. This is not a list of all books that have influenced me generally, just the ones in the genre of literary criticism and theory. This is in roughly chronological order of when I was influenced.
1 X.J. Kennedy. An Introduction to Poetry.
I didn't know this was a college textbook when I started reading it when I was about 12-years old. I know the book has gone through many revisions and editions, but the one I am interested in is, I believe, the 1971 edition. I studied this book until it fell apart, for three or four years. I still remember parts of it: a comparison between several different translations of a sonnet by Baudelaire... This book taught me the essence of what I still know. today. It made me a professor.
2. The ABC of Reading.
I loved Pound's idea that you could just study poetry by paying close attention to it, in its auditory, visual, and purely linguistic aspects. It taught me to listen.
3. Perloff. The Poetics of Indeterminacy.
This is the book I wanted to have written about the time I was graduating from college. It was published in 1981, the year I graduated and began graduate school. It helped establish a new view of the canon and a critical model of crispness and clarity. Rimbaud to Cage indeed.
4. Burke. A Rhetoric of Motives.
I used Kenneth Burke quite a bit in a formative stage of my career. He seemed the perfect bridge between rhetoric as formalism and rhetoric as action.
5. Barthes. Critical Essays.
I really went to school with Barthes. I wasn't interested in structuralism as method as much as in the growth of a critic's mind.
6. Borges. Otras inquiiciones.
I went to school with Borges too. One of the true greats of literary theory. The idea that Kafka could create his own precursors, for example...
7. Morton Feldman. Give my Regards to Eighth Street
Not a work of literary criticism per se, but a deep source of analogies for literature.
8. Lorca. Conferencias.
The work of a creative artist reflecting on poetry, with insights that are wholly unique.
9. Ricardo Gullón. Una poética para Antonio Machado.
I love the concept of writing a poetics for Machado. Not an interpretation of Machado's poetry, but a way of extracting an implicit poetics from Machado's poetry, subsequently dedicated to Machado.
10. Julián Jiménez Heffernan. Los papeles rotos.
What this book taught me was that there was something like the Spanish equivalent of me: someone who knew both traditions and was truly bi-poetic. It's also great to have the example of someone who has exactly my interests but is way smarter than me.
Such list-making is always a bit arbitrary. I'm sure that on another day I would come up with a slightly different list.
I've been working on a list of books that have influenced me in literary criticsm. This is not a list of all books that have influenced me generally, just the ones in the genre of literary criticism and theory. This is in roughly chronological order of when I was influenced.
1 X.J. Kennedy. An Introduction to Poetry.
I didn't know this was a college textbook when I started reading it when I was about 12-years old. I know the book has gone through many revisions and editions, but the one I am interested in is, I believe, the 1971 edition. I studied this book until it fell apart, for three or four years. I still remember parts of it: a comparison between several different translations of a sonnet by Baudelaire... This book taught me the essence of what I still know. today. It made me a professor.
2. The ABC of Reading.
I loved Pound's idea that you could just study poetry by paying close attention to it, in its auditory, visual, and purely linguistic aspects. It taught me to listen.
3. Perloff. The Poetics of Indeterminacy.
This is the book I wanted to have written about the time I was graduating from college. It was published in 1981, the year I graduated and began graduate school. It helped establish a new view of the canon and a critical model of crispness and clarity. Rimbaud to Cage indeed.
4. Burke. A Rhetoric of Motives.
I used Kenneth Burke quite a bit in a formative stage of my career. He seemed the perfect bridge between rhetoric as formalism and rhetoric as action.
5. Barthes. Critical Essays.
I really went to school with Barthes. I wasn't interested in structuralism as method as much as in the growth of a critic's mind.
6. Borges. Otras inquiiciones.
I went to school with Borges too. One of the true greats of literary theory. The idea that Kafka could create his own precursors, for example...
7. Morton Feldman. Give my Regards to Eighth Street
Not a work of literary criticism per se, but a deep source of analogies for literature.
8. Lorca. Conferencias.
The work of a creative artist reflecting on poetry, with insights that are wholly unique.
9. Ricardo Gullón. Una poética para Antonio Machado.
I love the concept of writing a poetics for Machado. Not an interpretation of Machado's poetry, but a way of extracting an implicit poetics from Machado's poetry, subsequently dedicated to Machado.
10. Julián Jiménez Heffernan. Los papeles rotos.
What this book taught me was that there was something like the Spanish equivalent of me: someone who knew both traditions and was truly bi-poetic. It's also great to have the example of someone who has exactly my interests but is way smarter than me.
Such list-making is always a bit arbitrary. I'm sure that on another day I would come up with a slightly different list.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Models
I've modeled my writing on a few other scholars. Marjorie Perloff for clarity. John Kronik for clarity. Guy Davenport for clarity.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Self-Control
Self-control is an odd concept, because it seems to divide the self into two--one part doing the controlling and the other being controlled. Anyway, I don't like not having the feeling of absolute self-control. It's interesting how discourse surrounding addiction, for example, is predicated on the presence or absence of will.
I am seriously addicted to caffeine. It seems to be the fuel of scholarship. I would have no problems with continuing to drink coffee in copious amounts the rest of my life--except that I don't want to feel that I have to have it. I'd like it to feel like an absolutely voluntary choice. Now I'm down to one double-espresso a day, a double-espresso that still feels entirely mandatory.
Self-control also feels like a restriction, something mandatory. In this case the servitude is voluntary. If you were addicted to writing, say... What one wants, desires most of all is to enslaved by a larger purpose.
Another word for addiction is habit. Our habits tend to define us more than our single actions, as Aristotle observed. The choice is not between habits and no habits, but between ones that are situated differently in terms of the will.
I am seriously addicted to caffeine. It seems to be the fuel of scholarship. I would have no problems with continuing to drink coffee in copious amounts the rest of my life--except that I don't want to feel that I have to have it. I'd like it to feel like an absolutely voluntary choice. Now I'm down to one double-espresso a day, a double-espresso that still feels entirely mandatory.
Self-control also feels like a restriction, something mandatory. In this case the servitude is voluntary. If you were addicted to writing, say... What one wants, desires most of all is to enslaved by a larger purpose.
Another word for addiction is habit. Our habits tend to define us more than our single actions, as Aristotle observed. The choice is not between habits and no habits, but between ones that are situated differently in terms of the will.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)