Hello to all who have surely missed me in my time of absence (Although, from what I can read and hear, there hasn't been a lack of excitement, or at least controversy, on this thread). I assure you that I will never again leave you to helplessly roam the overwhelming expanse of literary criticism in search of a glimmer of wry sarcasm, an inkling a priggish intellectualism, or even a soupçon of what can only be rightly described as all things Stregean without my services as academic ombudsman . . . that is until the next time I'm not scheduled to blog for a while. Nevertheless, I am with you now, and our short amount of time together must be appreciated. I have been working on a socially destructive amount of papers recently which, as usual, has been preceded by an even more unfathomable number of hours spent researching. (For the record I love writing papers and even researching them, don't get me wrong, but sometimes when it takes you away from tasting a vintage year of Château Lafite Rothschild, I, unlike the seductively aromatic acescence of the Lafite, become temporarily bitter)
Thank you for allowing me this minor digression, but I find that even my tangents have the potential for elucidation, so why deprive you? Anyhow, I came across a quote by one of my personal favorite theorists, William H. Gass. The quote reads as follows:
"The expression 'to write something down' suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it"
I was inexplicably moved by this statement, and found myself possessed with the fervor to share this with you. As you may or may not know (and what my fellow colleagues know all to well) is that I have an inexhaustible theoretic preoccupation with Carl Jung and his psychiatric models and how they aid in the analysis of our most seminal literary works. So, in the spirit of your new-found understanding of a portion of what makes "yours truly" tick, and this delicious quote from Gass, I am making an intellectual call to arms! Is our field of endeavor, that is, writing, fundamentally flawed? And if so, what does this mean for our understanding of truth? Now I don't want banal discussions of language as arbitrary, I want real discussion!
Thank you all for taking the time to consider this blog and for your magnanimous efforts in supporting this blog and magazine. As always, read, discuss, comment, and for god's sake, leave your knives at home,because I would like to say on behalf of some of the editorial staff, there are enough knives in our backs already.
Knowingly Poignant,
Eric W. Strege
Language is arbitrary.
ReplyDeleteOh, how I wish so badly that could've been the entirety of my comment, but alas, I have something to say.
Writing things down is indeed a descent of thought because thoughts are intangible; however, these intangible thoughts do need to conform to language (and not the other way around) in order for them to be manifested into our world. I don't think this fact means that writing is fundamentally flawed, but rather points out one of the challenges that writers face and gives a criteria for a writer to evaluate his/her personal abilities as a writer.
In my last blog I suggested that one of the major determining factors that make a writer is his/her ability convey an idea. The level of clarity this idea holds in its written form is directly reflective of the skills of the writer.
You should read other people's blogs sometime, you might learn something and avoid being redundant
And on the matter of our understanding of truth... Who cares? Truth isn't absolute anyway.
;)
Oh sweet Sarehkainan, you sophistic bastard, how I love how you keep my frivolous soul grounded.
ReplyDeleteWith all the respect I possess, EWS
Writing can be considered "flawed" if we the wrong things from it. If we attempt writing with the belief that our thoughts can and should be perfectly copied upon the page, then yes, writing is a flawed endeavor. But, as with any medium, the content must adapt. Our thoughts (in this case, the "content") are ephemeral and seemingly disjointed. When we "write down" our thoughts, we must inevitably adjust them for presentation and understanding. Just as the contents of books are often adapted to fit the medium of cinematic story telling.
ReplyDeleteAlso, as Nick wrote about recently, writing allows for more complex critical thinking than what we are generally capable. So, I would contend that the process of writing is far from flawed (which is not to say it's not difficult) as long as we acknowledge that it cannot and should not simply convey our thoughts, but rather is a part of the thought development process itself.
So yeah, I kind of gave two separate answers here, the first being that writing is a medium for conveying our ideas in an adapted form, and second being that writing is a tool in the complex thinking process. I do think both can be true. To use the adaptation-of-a-book-into-a-movie example again: if a story teller changes his medium, the story itself is necessarily going to change to some extent, and in many cases the story will develop further and new ideas, concepts, and nuances will be discovered and incorporated by the story teller as a result of changing the medium. So, put more simply (because I'm figuring out my thoughts on this as I go): writing, as does any other medium, adapts our thoughts into a new form and can sometimes allow us to more fully develop our ideas.
Beautiful expressions, all of you. (my Moss moment for the year)
ReplyDelete