Response #3

A Precocious Trending of Literary Theory?

I wanted to know what is considered to be the literary critical theory du jour.

Throughout our readings, one thing that was becoming annoyingly glaring, or haunting was, in addition to the dated editions we are reading – Elmaz even mentioned concern regarding this ‘dilemma’ in last Tuesday’s class – is the dated theoretical body of knowledge/works that was being referenced or drawn upon therein, at least, those that were being cited. Just a fraction of the litany: the New Criticism; Structuralism; Deconstruction; Post Modernism; Traditional Literary Criticism; Formalism. Interesting and informative? Yes… from a historical point of view. Satisfying? Well…. In my previous academic life which ended over thirty years ago, we were at that time examining literary texts per the exigencies of Structuralism - which itself was still being refracted through the lenses of the New Criticism – “la Nouvelle Critique”. Argh! It’s all coming back.

My patience was tested when I undertook to read “Reading the Creative Writing Course: The Teacher’s Many Selves”, by Patrick Bizzaro (think he should have changed his name? - I only pose the question) of East Carolina University, and published in Colors Of A Different Horse. Let me just say here that I think our 3 texts are invaluable reading for anyone wanting to understand creativity and its fulcrum in all its iterations. They contain, in fact, wisdom for the ages. It is this particular essay by Bizzaro which stirred in me an appreciation of collaborative writing, offering a perspective I had not previously considered, especially the idea that when collaborating, there has to be a third or other voice for the collaboration to take root. Collaborative writer is one of the “selves” a teacher has to be: “One of the goals of the creative writing teacher should be…showing students not how to change individual texts, but introducing students to the many selves writers might become. To do so, however, teachers must relinquish power in the classroom.” (p. 235). It led me to think more deeply about the delicate and potentially shifting balance of instructor/student, master/apprentice, and teacher/learner dynamic in a creative writing workshop. Just before class last Tuesday when my group met, I had mentioned the idea of a collaborative free write as part of our teaching assignment, so impressed had I been.

Shifting gears - on the third page, p. 236 in Colors of a Different Horse, there it was: the first mention of the old workhorse “ the New Criticism”. And I was impressed by the number of instances it appeared again and again either as an authoritative point of reference or departure. Bizzaro compares the New Criticism to “current thinking about evaluating student writing” (“current” being sometime before the copyright of Colors in 1994) and concludes that “they hold a great many things in common”. All fine and good. But that got me to thinking about what is the current thinking in 2010 with regards to evaluating student writing, and from there I wondered if there exists now a ‘school of thought’ or a new critical theory. Colors of a Different Horse, which I have found to be engaging and informative reading, was copyrighted in 1994. Not so long ago? Mr. Bizzaro’s essay is replete with citations from William Cain, “The Crisis in Criticism”, 1984 (p.237), with works by Richard Lloyd-Jones, “Primary Trait Scoring”, 1977 (p.238), Alberta Turner, “Poets Teaching: The Creative Process”, 1980 (p.237), Wendy Bishop, “Released into Language: Options for Teaching Creative Writing”, 1990 (p.238). With the exception of Wendy Bishop, these critical assays are older than my daughter! An entire generation aged even further, particularly in light of the fast-paced cyberspace era. Things have to have changed, I said to myself. After all, we had an ass as an illegal president in the White House for eight crippling years, and the first, ever, black U.S. president - with an African name, to boot – go Obama! - whose legitimacy continues to plague certain less than fully informed Tea Party goers whose shortsightedness has failed to underscore the subversive character of the previous administration. My apologies – politics are as much a part of the literary terrain as they are the corporate or governmental (Bizzaro: “…the New Criticism, by virtue of its elevation of the text as the authority for meaning, made the study of literature apolitical…”). I do understand that literary criticism, like all things written, has a history - a past - and can/should be regarded under the gels of honorary distinction, at the very least. But I couldn’t help but ask myself over and over what is new. What are the new trends in critical thought and theory? Is there not a new face of the field, to be bow-tied and tuxedoed for the literary prom, to walk the catwalk and strut its stuff on the red carpet to receive its accolades, no matter how transitory or ephemeral?

A brief jog on the Internet highway led me to an article, “Professing Literature in 2008”, by William Deresiewicz, published in The Nation’s March 11, 2008 issue. A generation younger than myself, Deresiewicz confronts the same issue by addressing the then reissued Professing Literature (after twenty years have fled past) by Gerald Graff, a “history of American English departments”, Deresiewicz goes on to say. To quote: “What’s happened since? Graff’s new preface reaffirms his belief that the answer to the mutual isolation of competing critical schools is to ‘teach the conflicts’, but it doesn’t tell us what’s happened in the past twenty years (which happens to be the twenty years since I decided to go to graduate school)”. One senses Deresiewicz‘ frustration, and perhaps disappointment, when he suggests, after making his case, and not without irony, that floundering English departments are desperately trying to keep up by appealing to the continually changing tempo of popular cultural demands, mutating to keep up with the times, such that, he concludes, the “profession’s” agenda is being set by teenagers. His ultimate conclusion: “It’s the fact that no major theoretical school has emerged in the eighteen years since Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble revolutionized gender studies. As Harvard professor Louis Menand [of the New Yorker article, “Should Creative Writing be taught?”, read first off in the semester] said three years ago, our graduate students are writing the same dissertations, with the same tools, as they were in 1990”. And, I might add, as they were in 1978.

Okay, so it takes me a while to get it…but I think I did.