Richard Ohmann’s essay entitled “The Shapes of a Canon: U.S. Fiction, 1960-1975” discusses the idea that the American public is being influenced by a select few of elite, upper class if you will, society of people. These people depict which books are Bestsellers and which will be gathering dust in the backroom of Barnes and Noble in a cardboard box.
So is
The telling of stories…
Most would say that storytelling is a lost art. We are no longer an oral culture, but rather thrive on the tangible written word instead of the spoken. We get our stories from novels, newspapers, and the internet.
But has storytelling completely dropped off into oblivion? I don’t think so.
Listen to any dinner time conversation. Turn on Comedy Central and listen to comedians tell stories about hilarious incidents they had. Go to any family reunion and listen to stories about the good old days. Stories are still alive and well. They are told everyday, we all do it. Sure, maybe it’s not our main way of keeping alive a tradition or a memory or passing on information from generation to generation, but that still is part of it. Humans are born to communicate. And we are born to tell stories. That will never die.
And that brings up yet another point, do the stories we tell and read have to contain a point, a message, a meaning? According to Walter Benjamin in the essay “The Storyteller Reflecting on the Works of Nikolai Leskov”, Benjamin states that all stories must have a meaning or a message, without it they aren’t real stories. I would have to disagree. What about all those stories told at the dinner table and around the campfire? Just because there isn’t a moral at the end of the tale, doesn’t mean it isn’t a real and true story. I am a strong believer of stories that are just purely for entertainment. We all need a little laugher and enjoyment now and again, so sometimes a message and meaning just aren’t needed. Even novels or versions of the printed word that don’t have a strong point shouldn’t be discarded. The world is full of serious matters; humans need a laugh now and again. So Benjamin, let the human species laugh now and again!
What to do with the people who hate Shakespeare.
Professor Powers raised an interesting question in class the other day: Do we have a responsibility to appreciate things that we don’t like? Especially, in this case, literature?
As Professor Powers stated, that is not the case in our culture today. As Americans we are all about making our decisions, we are individuals, we can decide what we like and what we don’t like. No one, nothing, can make us thing otherwise. And there is no way that we are being held “responsible” to appreciate something we don’t like.
And what exactly does the word “appreciate” mean in this context. Are we trying to say that we should like what we don’t like? Should English majors be shunned if they detest Shakespeare? If we are talking in terms of we should be liking something because it is a “great” work of literature, then I do not think we have a responsibility to feel like we should like something. We all have our own tastes, our own likes, we are partial to certain styles over another. I’d rather read a good nonfiction novel with some humor than a boring academic piece. Just because the academic piece may be a “better” piece of literature doesn’t mean that I should like it.
But if we mean “respect” when we say “appreciate,” then I think we have it right. Just because an English major doesn’t like Shakespeare does not mean that he cannot respect his skill and craft and mastery of the English language in his work. Of course, all people can respect things that they don’t like. If it is worthy of being appreciate. If the work is good, if it is notable, and worthy of praise even though it might not be someone’s cup of tea, it should be appreciated. Do we have a responsibility to? There I’m not quite so sure. I don’t think it would be a sin to totally condemn Shakespeare. A shame, maybe, but not a sin. I don’t think we should feel bound in any way to appreciate something we don’t like. If you don’t like something that is worthy of being appreciated, it’s more your loss than anything really.
Can writing be collaborative?
“The buzz these days is all about the network, the small pieces loosely joined. About how the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. About how working together and joining the dots serves the greater good and benefits our collective endeavours.
This is undoubtedly true in many fields. Software is rarely written in a vacuum and indeed the “open source” movement is built on the premise that collaboration is the only way to get bugs spotted and move forward. Scientific research, too, is more often than not a collaborative activity - and peer review is key to checking and honing the development of scientific ideas.
However, is the same true in artistic fields? We are used to the romantic notion of the artist or the novelist working alone in an attic room, or in the shed at the bottom of the garden…” - “About the Project,” A Million Penguins
It’s true. We are used to the romantic notion that a writer writes by himself, writing is a solitary act. This is the notion we have all been accustomed to.
But let’s think about it. The project that De Montfort University in
I think it can be. Writing can be collaborative, and it has been, and continues to be. Look at all the writings done for the media industry, screenplays have been written by more than one people, and television shows have been writing by teams of people. Look at SNL, they have a team of writers every week coming up with new writings. The fact is that collaborative writing happens all the time out there, and it works. But I guess a better question is, the one that A Million Penguins brings up, is can a novel be written in this way? Can a group of writers sit down in a room, or come together online, to write a novel? Looking at this “wiki” style novel, where anyone can add anything at anytime, the end product is interesting. It’s quirky, strange, but it does produce a work of writing in the end. How does one say if it is successful or not? What makes it successful?
When it comes to collaboratively writing for a novel, it is an intriguing idea. And I think it holds a lot of potential. Sure it holds the potential to be tricky, as multiple people have different ideas on where the novel should go and that could conflict. But the potential to bring those two ideas together and somehow work creatively to merge them and conform them into something bigger and better is tremendous. Two brains are better than one they always say. So why not let them make a novel together?
Check out A Million Penguins project at: amillionpenguins.com
Does formalism work?
Does formalism actually work? A way in which we read literature only be letting the text stand alone as is. Sounds great in theory. The words on the page are the only thing that matters, what is good or bad is determined only by the black curves of the consonants and vowels of the page. The intention of the author is completely irrelevant.
Can this actually work? Can a reader completely discount everything from the intention of the author to his own emotional and personal responses to the text? Can this work?
If formalists only look at the text, and solely the text, it would seem as if the formalist would all be getting the same conclusions about the text. But can this really happen? No. There is no way everyone is going to come to an unanimous agreement about a text even if all personal and emotional responses have been discounted. And what about the intentions of the author? Who cares if the author is dead or is not there to recount his intentions with the piece, shouldn’t the author be taken into account here? After all, the author did write the piece. I feel that you can’t get more in touch with the writing if you don’t look more at the author of the piece itself. Formalism just doesn’t seem to make sense.
Maybe I’m just a romantic at heart…
