Freud writes with a masterful degree of specificity. However much he deals with vague abstractions, he never fails at communicating meaning. He uses many previously-described techniques in his essay: references and quotes to establish breadth of knowledge and intellectual achievement, hypotactic sentences to keep one idea flowing into the next, and periodic style in order to maintain authority.
Freud moves “The Uncanny” from a long, long discussion of etymology and translation to ways the uncanny appears in different forms of expression. It is a shame that Freud predates work on robotics, because the notion of the uncanny, (most famously in the phrase, “the uncanny valley”) has become even more pertinent in this century.
My interest was caught when he talked about the uncanny in fiction, towards the end of the piece. “... it is a much more fertile province than the uncanny in real life, for it contains the whole of the latter and something more besides, something that cannot be found in real life.” His use of the word “something,” a very vague word in this context, implies an essence, a challenge to verbalize, and this captures the reader’s interest at the beginning of a new idea in his essay. He goes on to talk about the “realm of phantasy,” (“realm,” a phantastical word that goes along with “kingdom” and “magic”) and how fiction is not “submitted to reality-testing.” (Note the scientific note just here, later in the same sentence in which “realm” appeared)
Then follows a sentence with a surprising qualifer at the beginning, and then a parallel form that is an earmark of high style. “The somewhat paradoxical result is that in the first place a great deal that is not uncanny in fiction would be so if it happened in real life; and in the second place that there are many more means of creating uncanny effects in fiction than there are in real life.” “Somewhat” seems out of place, except when seen in the light of the following, “paradoxical.” Freud is constantly reaffirming how smart he is, so for something to be paradoxical would put him in the position of being confused. “Somewhat paradoxical” gives the impression that while it is paradoxical, he can still understand.
The parallel structure of that sentence, “first place/second place,” “uncanny/fiction” and “real life” being surrounded by different constructions that substantially alter the meaning while keeping the wording order intact, these strategies make him sound clever as well as smart.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
11/23 - Douglass
High, middle, and low all are utilized in turn to create the highly manipulative effect that Fredrick Douglass is going for. The first sentence, “I lived in Master Hugh’s family about seven years,” is the low beginning of a story-teller in a rocking chair, contrasting with his ecstatic hypotaxis as he talks about reading an essay by Sheridan. He varies his diction, using words like, “commenced,” instead of, “began,” and repeating words here and there, perhaps so as not to seem too educated to a largely white audience. (While his audience’s members probably believed in abolition, they were usually skittish about what would happen if it were successful.) He says he “succeeded” at learning to read and write, which immediately connotes pride in accomplishment. That would not be communicated by the word “learned,” with its connotations of having been taught. Douglass describes having to sneak and con his way into a relationship with the written word, often fearing peril.
When Douglass writes, he uses multiple descriptors, often intensifying the description with the second. “...in compliance with the advice and direction of her husband...” The stakes are raised as “direction” follows “advice” in the description of the husband’s behavior. It creates the impression that at first he only advised her, but then had to direct her, furthering the portrayal of Mistress Hugh as someone being warped by having a slave. “Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.” (There are references to religious imagery and William Blake’s poem, “Tiger,” but that’s another story.) Douglass suddenly turns the lyricism of his earlier description of Mistress Hugh against her, with slavery as the cause.
When Douglass writes, he uses multiple descriptors, often intensifying the description with the second. “...in compliance with the advice and direction of her husband...” The stakes are raised as “direction” follows “advice” in the description of the husband’s behavior. It creates the impression that at first he only advised her, but then had to direct her, furthering the portrayal of Mistress Hugh as someone being warped by having a slave. “Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.” (There are references to religious imagery and William Blake’s poem, “Tiger,” but that’s another story.) Douglass suddenly turns the lyricism of his earlier description of Mistress Hugh against her, with slavery as the cause.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
11/18 - Conrad
“On my right hand there were lines of fishing-stakes resembling a mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could reach.” (109)
If Conrad’s desire is to make me see before all, then he has sufficiently exercised his power in “The Secret Sharer.” From the moment of confusion at the beginning, as I wondered whether the fishing-stakes were the lines on the palm of his right hand, to the feeling of loss I experience along with the narrator as his “comfort of quiet communion” with his ship (note the alliteration) as other “disturbing” sounds are heard, dragging him from reverie into narrative. (110) I did not want to go anywhere. Seeing what the narrator saw, I was as loath to leave it as he.
The description manages to be journalistic and lyrical all at once. From it, one could take a pencil and draw what he is seeing in the opening, but in the moment of reading, a complex feeling is transmitted as well. The language is sensuous, that is, of the senses. The narrator is describing what he saw and experienced then. The opening to “The Secret Sharer” is neither a geographical textbook nor a pamphlet about running a ship. From the first person, past tense point of view, the narrator provides information because he is remembering, not instructing. It does not seem that a reader is necessary at all, because of how reflective the piece is.
The repetition of sibilant “s” sounds and their alveolar counterparts echoes the title of the story. The sounds in “The Secret Sharer” repeat themselves constantly, in internal alliteration as well as homonym spellings. “Division,” “ocean,” and “crazy” are only three examples of words that, with other spellings, echo the major sounds in the story’s title. The recurrence of these sounds is also a natural echoing of water as it laps on the banks of a river, or the sides of a ship. Conrad’s use of sonic cues creates a mood that is continued even when the narrator’s reverie is disrupted and more characters are introduced.
“She floated at the starting-point of a long journey, very still in an immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the eastward by the setting sun. At that moment I was alone on her decks. There was not a sound in her - and around us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe on the water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky.” (110)
Note the continued used of sibilant and alveolar sounds. Note also the touches of alliteration removed from the major sonic theme. “Flung far,” “setting sun,” “canoe... cloud.” In the first passage, there was also, “division... domain,” “fences... fishes,” and “human habitation.” (109) There are parallels between the things the narrator notices as a lack. “Nothing moved, nothing lived,” as if living is synonymous with movement, when the narrator himself is standing on the ship’s deck, and the ship, “She,” and he are both definitely alive, but both unmoving only for the moment.
If Conrad’s desire is to make me see before all, then he has sufficiently exercised his power in “The Secret Sharer.” From the moment of confusion at the beginning, as I wondered whether the fishing-stakes were the lines on the palm of his right hand, to the feeling of loss I experience along with the narrator as his “comfort of quiet communion” with his ship (note the alliteration) as other “disturbing” sounds are heard, dragging him from reverie into narrative. (110) I did not want to go anywhere. Seeing what the narrator saw, I was as loath to leave it as he.
The description manages to be journalistic and lyrical all at once. From it, one could take a pencil and draw what he is seeing in the opening, but in the moment of reading, a complex feeling is transmitted as well. The language is sensuous, that is, of the senses. The narrator is describing what he saw and experienced then. The opening to “The Secret Sharer” is neither a geographical textbook nor a pamphlet about running a ship. From the first person, past tense point of view, the narrator provides information because he is remembering, not instructing. It does not seem that a reader is necessary at all, because of how reflective the piece is.
The repetition of sibilant “s” sounds and their alveolar counterparts echoes the title of the story. The sounds in “The Secret Sharer” repeat themselves constantly, in internal alliteration as well as homonym spellings. “Division,” “ocean,” and “crazy” are only three examples of words that, with other spellings, echo the major sounds in the story’s title. The recurrence of these sounds is also a natural echoing of water as it laps on the banks of a river, or the sides of a ship. Conrad’s use of sonic cues creates a mood that is continued even when the narrator’s reverie is disrupted and more characters are introduced.
“She floated at the starting-point of a long journey, very still in an immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the eastward by the setting sun. At that moment I was alone on her decks. There was not a sound in her - and around us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe on the water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky.” (110)
Note the continued used of sibilant and alveolar sounds. Note also the touches of alliteration removed from the major sonic theme. “Flung far,” “setting sun,” “canoe... cloud.” In the first passage, there was also, “division... domain,” “fences... fishes,” and “human habitation.” (109) There are parallels between the things the narrator notices as a lack. “Nothing moved, nothing lived,” as if living is synonymous with movement, when the narrator himself is standing on the ship’s deck, and the ship, “She,” and he are both definitely alive, but both unmoving only for the moment.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
11/11 - Holmes vs. Steyn
Holmes and Steyn write in unsurprising ways for their subject matter. The tactics they use are obvious, and examination of these may show that their methods break down by political stance. But for the moment, that is out of the department.
Holmes is ostensibly writing a review of two nonfiction books. He begins the review by introducing one of the authors, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in detail. He uses her biography to highlight key moments in his article, giving her arguments emotional potency. Perhaps this is a reflection of the tactics Hirsi Ali uses in her book, but in either case, Holmes puts her, and to a lesser extent Ian Buruma, in the foreground.
He disappears almost entirely from the article. “Hirsi Ali argues...” “In Hirsi Ali’s view...” “Hirsi Ali urges...” “Buruma remarks...” “Buruma argues...” “Buruma describes...” These links are the ways that Holmes moves from one part of his examination of the issues to another. He mixes hypotaxis and parataxis. His sentences are long, as he usually needs one of the above framing clauses to begin an idea. Since very little of what he writes is framed as coming from him, he has to orient every statement from one of the two reviewees, to the reading public. He acts as conduit.
He hardly appears at all except for a few remarks at the end of the review, in a studied show of impartiality. “One comes away from these two remarkable books suspecting that neither compromise nor confrontation will do much to avert the coming train crash between a resentful minority of indigenous Europeans and a potentially violent minority of young men among the millions of Muslims now permanently residing in Europe.” And again, with, “One might even argue that, in today’s Europe, the Enlightenment ideal of universal citizenship is already dead.” That “One” can really only be one man in his review, since he quotes and names almost everyone else who has a voice in it. Holmes comes in at the very end to sum up, and insert a point of view that seems unforgivably wishy-washy, given the highly emotional problems the books he has been reviewing holds.
He does not “review” as much as sum up, quoting the authors and putting them in conversation with each other. He attempts neutrality, but it is clear from the amount of time he spends on Hirsi Ali’s biography that at least his emotional, if not political sensibility, is clearly in her corner.
Holmes poses questions central to the issues, and then uses quotes and the personified points of view of the authors to answer them, setting them up in conversation with eahc other. If it were not for the titles at the beginning of the review, it would be hard to tell that he was writing about two separate books.
Other writers get into the act, too. Oliver Roy, Fortuyn, and Baruch Spinoza all make appearances while Holmes is elucidating Buruma’s point of view. It may be that Buruma makes a point of mentioning/quoting those figures in his own book, but by using them in the review, Holmes subtly weakens Buruma’s stance. He does this by not mentioning other people in Hirsi Ali’s case, leaving her story to stand as the emotional signpost for her argument, and her anger.
The use of quotes and personal stories, emotion and political theory, is how Holmes “sells” his audience. His veneer of neutrality between the two authors has several cracks in it, but his attempt to be evenhanded does not quite fall flat.
Mark Steyn does not attempt to be evenhanded. He is also writing an article, not a review, so he has carte blanche to be as opinionated as he likes. And he is. While Holmes begins with the biography of a woman who, though important, may yet be unknown to the readers of his review, Steyn begins his article with, “Sept. 11, 2001, was not ‘the day everything changed,’ but the day that revealed how much had already changed,” a universal beginning to English-speaking readers, in the United States. Since the article is an excerpt from a longer piece of writing called, “America Alone,” it is not hard to see where he is coming from. From the first words of this excerpt, he is playing on fears that he knows are already present to help drive his point.
The opposing duality in the first sentence makes him sound lyrical. In that same first paragraph, he uses lists, perhaps to establish intellectual authority. He also uses some colloquial language, as well as bringing the reader in to the prose. “If you’d said that... most folks would have thought you were crazy.” “Most folks.” Really. Then he says, “Yet on that Tuesday morning the top of the iceberg bobbed up and toppled the Twin Towers.” A metaphor. How literary. But despite it being a very bad metaphor, it does imbue him with a certain amount of... well, I think what it imbues him with is a matter for debate. But it is there.*
He continues: “This is about the seven-eighths below the surface...” “This,” presumably refers to his article. Oh, and that ties in to his inane iceberg metaphor because seven-eighths of an iceberg is below the surface. I get it now. Great. Some substance, please?
And does substance ever arrive, beginning in the form of a math problem. “If your school has 200 guys and you’re playing a school with 2,000 pupils...” It rather illustrates his statistics nicely, but it also makes them hard to check because you are already invested in the imagery he has created. Or, at least, he wants you to be. He gives a statistic, and then tells “you” how “you” respond to knowing it. And the statistics come past and furious, usually accompanied by some kind of imagery attached.
When he says, “Experts talk about root causes. But demography is the most basic root of all,” he is subtly setting himself apart from the “experts,” while saying that he is going to the “basic” root. He even puts it in a mathematical formulation further down the page. He is saying that he is not an expert, while at the same time wielding population statistics in “friendly” language. He keeps coming back to “demography” as the defining signpost of his argument. His argument can basically be summed up as the pessimistic tagline, “How The West Was Screwed.”
His criticisms of the American government belong on the Glen Beck Show. He uses “you” continually, a method of personification very different from Holmes. In Steyn, “Big government is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you’ll be able to summon the will to rebuff it. We should have learned that lesson on Sept. 11, 2001, when big government flopped big-time and the only good news of the day came from the ad hoc citizen militia of Flight 93.” Leaving aside that “big time” is not hyphenated, let’s “we” examine that for a minute. It is symptomatic of much of Steyn’s writing, in that he makes a statement, and then expounds on it. Note “your vulnerability” and the suggestion that one’s government changes one’s ability to make decisions. Also note the absolute disrespect of calling what happened on Flight 93, “good news.” But he’s making a point. This one, thankfully, without icebergs.
He also defines the words he uses, acting as his own dictionary. This reminded me of the narration in Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” where the narrator uses a big word and then explains the word’s meaning in the context of that particular sentence, often partially obscuring the dictionary definition in the process, because it is such a specific definition. The analogy holds here. He specifies his multi-syllabic, sometimes vague word choices based on the context.
Holmes and Steyn write very, very differently. They are both writing for audiences they expect to more or less agree with them. But while Holmes is trying to consider, Steyn is trying to scare. He is more effective than Holmes is, because taking a stand is inherently more powerful than considering something, especially in text.
*Icebergs do not “bob up,” they break off glaciers. They do not topple things, they sink them. Furthermore, did we really need a Titanic reference in there?
Holmes is ostensibly writing a review of two nonfiction books. He begins the review by introducing one of the authors, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in detail. He uses her biography to highlight key moments in his article, giving her arguments emotional potency. Perhaps this is a reflection of the tactics Hirsi Ali uses in her book, but in either case, Holmes puts her, and to a lesser extent Ian Buruma, in the foreground.
He disappears almost entirely from the article. “Hirsi Ali argues...” “In Hirsi Ali’s view...” “Hirsi Ali urges...” “Buruma remarks...” “Buruma argues...” “Buruma describes...” These links are the ways that Holmes moves from one part of his examination of the issues to another. He mixes hypotaxis and parataxis. His sentences are long, as he usually needs one of the above framing clauses to begin an idea. Since very little of what he writes is framed as coming from him, he has to orient every statement from one of the two reviewees, to the reading public. He acts as conduit.
He hardly appears at all except for a few remarks at the end of the review, in a studied show of impartiality. “One comes away from these two remarkable books suspecting that neither compromise nor confrontation will do much to avert the coming train crash between a resentful minority of indigenous Europeans and a potentially violent minority of young men among the millions of Muslims now permanently residing in Europe.” And again, with, “One might even argue that, in today’s Europe, the Enlightenment ideal of universal citizenship is already dead.” That “One” can really only be one man in his review, since he quotes and names almost everyone else who has a voice in it. Holmes comes in at the very end to sum up, and insert a point of view that seems unforgivably wishy-washy, given the highly emotional problems the books he has been reviewing holds.
He does not “review” as much as sum up, quoting the authors and putting them in conversation with each other. He attempts neutrality, but it is clear from the amount of time he spends on Hirsi Ali’s biography that at least his emotional, if not political sensibility, is clearly in her corner.
Holmes poses questions central to the issues, and then uses quotes and the personified points of view of the authors to answer them, setting them up in conversation with eahc other. If it were not for the titles at the beginning of the review, it would be hard to tell that he was writing about two separate books.
Other writers get into the act, too. Oliver Roy, Fortuyn, and Baruch Spinoza all make appearances while Holmes is elucidating Buruma’s point of view. It may be that Buruma makes a point of mentioning/quoting those figures in his own book, but by using them in the review, Holmes subtly weakens Buruma’s stance. He does this by not mentioning other people in Hirsi Ali’s case, leaving her story to stand as the emotional signpost for her argument, and her anger.
The use of quotes and personal stories, emotion and political theory, is how Holmes “sells” his audience. His veneer of neutrality between the two authors has several cracks in it, but his attempt to be evenhanded does not quite fall flat.
Mark Steyn does not attempt to be evenhanded. He is also writing an article, not a review, so he has carte blanche to be as opinionated as he likes. And he is. While Holmes begins with the biography of a woman who, though important, may yet be unknown to the readers of his review, Steyn begins his article with, “Sept. 11, 2001, was not ‘the day everything changed,’ but the day that revealed how much had already changed,” a universal beginning to English-speaking readers, in the United States. Since the article is an excerpt from a longer piece of writing called, “America Alone,” it is not hard to see where he is coming from. From the first words of this excerpt, he is playing on fears that he knows are already present to help drive his point.
The opposing duality in the first sentence makes him sound lyrical. In that same first paragraph, he uses lists, perhaps to establish intellectual authority. He also uses some colloquial language, as well as bringing the reader in to the prose. “If you’d said that... most folks would have thought you were crazy.” “Most folks.” Really. Then he says, “Yet on that Tuesday morning the top of the iceberg bobbed up and toppled the Twin Towers.” A metaphor. How literary. But despite it being a very bad metaphor, it does imbue him with a certain amount of... well, I think what it imbues him with is a matter for debate. But it is there.*
He continues: “This is about the seven-eighths below the surface...” “This,” presumably refers to his article. Oh, and that ties in to his inane iceberg metaphor because seven-eighths of an iceberg is below the surface. I get it now. Great. Some substance, please?
And does substance ever arrive, beginning in the form of a math problem. “If your school has 200 guys and you’re playing a school with 2,000 pupils...” It rather illustrates his statistics nicely, but it also makes them hard to check because you are already invested in the imagery he has created. Or, at least, he wants you to be. He gives a statistic, and then tells “you” how “you” respond to knowing it. And the statistics come past and furious, usually accompanied by some kind of imagery attached.
When he says, “Experts talk about root causes. But demography is the most basic root of all,” he is subtly setting himself apart from the “experts,” while saying that he is going to the “basic” root. He even puts it in a mathematical formulation further down the page. He is saying that he is not an expert, while at the same time wielding population statistics in “friendly” language. He keeps coming back to “demography” as the defining signpost of his argument. His argument can basically be summed up as the pessimistic tagline, “How The West Was Screwed.”
His criticisms of the American government belong on the Glen Beck Show. He uses “you” continually, a method of personification very different from Holmes. In Steyn, “Big government is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you’ll be able to summon the will to rebuff it. We should have learned that lesson on Sept. 11, 2001, when big government flopped big-time and the only good news of the day came from the ad hoc citizen militia of Flight 93.” Leaving aside that “big time” is not hyphenated, let’s “we” examine that for a minute. It is symptomatic of much of Steyn’s writing, in that he makes a statement, and then expounds on it. Note “your vulnerability” and the suggestion that one’s government changes one’s ability to make decisions. Also note the absolute disrespect of calling what happened on Flight 93, “good news.” But he’s making a point. This one, thankfully, without icebergs.
He also defines the words he uses, acting as his own dictionary. This reminded me of the narration in Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” where the narrator uses a big word and then explains the word’s meaning in the context of that particular sentence, often partially obscuring the dictionary definition in the process, because it is such a specific definition. The analogy holds here. He specifies his multi-syllabic, sometimes vague word choices based on the context.
Holmes and Steyn write very, very differently. They are both writing for audiences they expect to more or less agree with them. But while Holmes is trying to consider, Steyn is trying to scare. He is more effective than Holmes is, because taking a stand is inherently more powerful than considering something, especially in text.
*Icebergs do not “bob up,” they break off glaciers. They do not topple things, they sink them. Furthermore, did we really need a Titanic reference in there?
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Assignment for 11/9 - Guru Montaigne
On Genre in Fiction
There is a certain air of distaste among a segment of the reading population for genre fiction. Especially for those types which do their best to entertain while eschewing most turns of phrase that make high fiction so entertaining at times.
I am a malleable reader. I want to to be entertained and I want what I’m reading to be entertaining, hopefully at the same time. Is this such an impossible request? A scanning of recent titles in my local Barnes & Noble suggests that I am not going to have much luck. There are deaths in families, the search for love and meaning in everyday life after an ugly divorce, a missing journal of Virginia Woolf, a troubled child with access to guns, young women sold into indentured servitude, and a man trapped on a island with insane people, mind-altering chemicals and a chip on his shoulder. And that is just one shelf.
While some of these are going to be written better than others, there is a common thread that runs through them all: misery. The themes are misery, loss, and epiphany through an outside influence. Perhaps it will be in the form of a handsome man, a piece of paper, or a mental patient, perhaps there will be enough variation on the theme so that the book will have won a prize of some sort, or that it will be sporting the movie tie-in paperback cover. But this will not detract from how nonsensical it is that book after book is put out about how miserable fictional people are, when it is the books that spend their narrative time cashing in on happy endings that make the most money.
In a thriller, the kidnapper will be captured and the child found alive. In a romance novel, the guy will get the girl. In a teen fiction novel about a girl torn between her love of a vampire and her love of tanning on the beach, stakings will not be mentioned. The common theme in all of these is that though misery occurs, it does not need to be prescriptive. These are the novels that sell best, to the dismay of publishers and authors everywhere.
It is possible to meld these those types. How much better would it be if the books about vampires, the books about fictional terrorists, the books about relationships between consenting adults, were written well? Would they sell? Would they act as cross-overs? It is only a matter of time before some enterprising young author decides to try it, as so few have done in the age of “genre” fiction, and is given that most supreme of accolades: No one knowing where to shelve your book in Barnes & Noble. Dreams, idle dreams, I know not what they mean.
There is a certain air of distaste among a segment of the reading population for genre fiction. Especially for those types which do their best to entertain while eschewing most turns of phrase that make high fiction so entertaining at times.
I am a malleable reader. I want to to be entertained and I want what I’m reading to be entertaining, hopefully at the same time. Is this such an impossible request? A scanning of recent titles in my local Barnes & Noble suggests that I am not going to have much luck. There are deaths in families, the search for love and meaning in everyday life after an ugly divorce, a missing journal of Virginia Woolf, a troubled child with access to guns, young women sold into indentured servitude, and a man trapped on a island with insane people, mind-altering chemicals and a chip on his shoulder. And that is just one shelf.
While some of these are going to be written better than others, there is a common thread that runs through them all: misery. The themes are misery, loss, and epiphany through an outside influence. Perhaps it will be in the form of a handsome man, a piece of paper, or a mental patient, perhaps there will be enough variation on the theme so that the book will have won a prize of some sort, or that it will be sporting the movie tie-in paperback cover. But this will not detract from how nonsensical it is that book after book is put out about how miserable fictional people are, when it is the books that spend their narrative time cashing in on happy endings that make the most money.
In a thriller, the kidnapper will be captured and the child found alive. In a romance novel, the guy will get the girl. In a teen fiction novel about a girl torn between her love of a vampire and her love of tanning on the beach, stakings will not be mentioned. The common theme in all of these is that though misery occurs, it does not need to be prescriptive. These are the novels that sell best, to the dismay of publishers and authors everywhere.
It is possible to meld these those types. How much better would it be if the books about vampires, the books about fictional terrorists, the books about relationships between consenting adults, were written well? Would they sell? Would they act as cross-overs? It is only a matter of time before some enterprising young author decides to try it, as so few have done in the age of “genre” fiction, and is given that most supreme of accolades: No one knowing where to shelve your book in Barnes & Noble. Dreams, idle dreams, I know not what they mean.
Assignment for 11/9 - James
“Paste” is a story about the things we want to believe set against the things that are shown to be true, but that we do not want to acknowledge. In this case, it is the life of a now-dead woman who was an actress when she was young, and had nothing left over but a box of costume jewelry, and one lone string of real and valuable pearls. Her stepson claims that they are only paste, imitations of the real thing. He wants to believe that his stepmother was likewise only a pale imitiation of an actress, that she never did anything to earn her those pearls, as a gift, or perhaps as something else. But the pearls, and she, were the real thing, or so we are led to believe.
The authorial voice of this piece comes out and brings the reader into direct collusion with the narration at one point in the first pages of the story. “Our young woman gave a start...” (85) Other than that, it is as straightforward as Henry James ever gets, in his heart of hearts. The first long paragraph of exposition is notoriously James. “...Arthur Prime had still in his face the intention, she was moved to call it rather than the expression, of feeling something or other.” (84) This half-sentence is rife with the dualities that make James so fun (or so plodding) to read. The “rather” alone is a rhetorical strategy that James often uses to make an observation about his characters without coming right out and saying what he wants his reader to come away with. In this case, through the mostly-limited third person perspective, Charlotte observes the world around her and reacts to it with a sensibility that seems to be an innocent and untrained version of the narrator.
Hypotactic sentences in the running style support the narrative device of having Charlotte be the main faucet of information for the first page and a half of the story. The high style of this point of view is justified by having her be a governess, but she is a naturally perceptive person. The narrator does not play this up, but allows her to speak for herself through her thoughts. The tone of her thoughts is intimate. Unlike the narrator, she does not know she is being read.
The authorial voice of this piece comes out and brings the reader into direct collusion with the narration at one point in the first pages of the story. “Our young woman gave a start...” (85) Other than that, it is as straightforward as Henry James ever gets, in his heart of hearts. The first long paragraph of exposition is notoriously James. “...Arthur Prime had still in his face the intention, she was moved to call it rather than the expression, of feeling something or other.” (84) This half-sentence is rife with the dualities that make James so fun (or so plodding) to read. The “rather” alone is a rhetorical strategy that James often uses to make an observation about his characters without coming right out and saying what he wants his reader to come away with. In this case, through the mostly-limited third person perspective, Charlotte observes the world around her and reacts to it with a sensibility that seems to be an innocent and untrained version of the narrator.
Hypotactic sentences in the running style support the narrative device of having Charlotte be the main faucet of information for the first page and a half of the story. The high style of this point of view is justified by having her be a governess, but she is a naturally perceptive person. The narrator does not play this up, but allows her to speak for herself through her thoughts. The tone of her thoughts is intimate. Unlike the narrator, she does not know she is being read.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Assignment for 11/4 - Montaigne
Reading Montaigne is a lot of fun. He is a very smart man, and yet, he does not belabor his intelligence as something peculiar to him. I expected that I was reading an Enlightenment thinker. Finding myself in the Renaissance was a shock only because his spelling has doubtlessly been modernized. (For which, let it be said, I am eternally grateful.)
The over-arching organizational structure of Montaigne’s essay XV is that of a point-by-point dialogue with another writer, a form which remains fairly popular today, especially on internet message boards. In Montaigne’s case, he is responding to some Virgil. He, as far as I can tell, does not directly translate any of the verses. This is not surprising, since in Montaigne’s day, it was a safe bet that whoever was reading his essays in the first place could read Latin as well. He only really needs the Latin verses as an organizational principle, since his opinions far outstrip the scope of responding to, in most cases, is only a fraction of a sentence of Virgil. It is possible to strip the Latin from the piece completely, and lose barely any meaning, but much organization. Without knowing what the Latin says, it is hard to tell how close he stays to the form of a strict response to a classical thinker, but it is a safe bet, given the way he writes, that he roams far afield.
He refers to many classical thinkers, although it seems that he restricts himself to quoting Virgil. Keeping the classical philosophers and writers in mind was a way of showing his audience how educated he was. It gave him legitimacy. This was, and still is, a common way of establishing authority in an argument. However, Montaigne does not seem to be arguing any one thing. He makes a lot of observations, many contradictory, most interesting.
Montaigne’s subject meanders in this essay. He uses the running style to draw a reader in to his mindset and thought process. He goes from one subject to another, hinging on one of the Latin phrases. On page 22 he switches from discussing women, marriage, adultery, and jealousy, to discussing language, writing, his own writing, its deficiencies, and his process. This change is sudden, achieved through his response to a certain excerpt of Virgil.
Montaigne never writes about only one thing at a time. He is always considering multiple ideas. His sentences are full of the interplay between one thought and another. He follows a thought until he is done writing about it, or until something interests him more. He hardly ever returns to an earlier thought. Each of the collections of subjects in the essay that he touches on could be the singular focus of a piece of writing. By modern standards, most of the topic-sections in this piece stand as their own essays, albeit essays without theses.
His writing is dense, packed with ideas about whatever is holding his attention in that particular paragraph. Either he is responding in short bursts to different passages of Latin, or he is jumping off a passage for pages of writing at a time. His sentences are complicated, being long strings of what, in another writer, would be hypotactic sentences. In his writing, they are merely clauses. In his longer sentences, there are usually lists of ideas, or qualities, that he ascribes to some particular part of an argument.
Take the following: “The wisdom of my instruction consists in liberty, in truth, in essence: disdaining to introduce those little, feigned, common, and provincial rules into the catalogue of its real duties; all natural, general, and constant, of which civility and ceremony are daughters indeed, but illegitimate.” (33)
We have liberty, truth, essence. Little, feigned, common, provincial rules. Natural, general, constant. Civility and ceremony. And this is a sentence on the simple side.
He uses expostulation where appropriate, bringing the emotion of his piece up by dramatically crying out in the middle of a paragraph, or a sentence.
He is self-conscious about his writing. But whether this is real or a conceit of his time, it is hard to tell. He is certainly dedicated to criticizing his abilities as an author.
He draws everything he has been talking about back in the last page of the essay, and ends with a joke. There is very little else to say at that point, except perhaps, “I wish I could do that.”
The over-arching organizational structure of Montaigne’s essay XV is that of a point-by-point dialogue with another writer, a form which remains fairly popular today, especially on internet message boards. In Montaigne’s case, he is responding to some Virgil. He, as far as I can tell, does not directly translate any of the verses. This is not surprising, since in Montaigne’s day, it was a safe bet that whoever was reading his essays in the first place could read Latin as well. He only really needs the Latin verses as an organizational principle, since his opinions far outstrip the scope of responding to, in most cases, is only a fraction of a sentence of Virgil. It is possible to strip the Latin from the piece completely, and lose barely any meaning, but much organization. Without knowing what the Latin says, it is hard to tell how close he stays to the form of a strict response to a classical thinker, but it is a safe bet, given the way he writes, that he roams far afield.
He refers to many classical thinkers, although it seems that he restricts himself to quoting Virgil. Keeping the classical philosophers and writers in mind was a way of showing his audience how educated he was. It gave him legitimacy. This was, and still is, a common way of establishing authority in an argument. However, Montaigne does not seem to be arguing any one thing. He makes a lot of observations, many contradictory, most interesting.
Montaigne’s subject meanders in this essay. He uses the running style to draw a reader in to his mindset and thought process. He goes from one subject to another, hinging on one of the Latin phrases. On page 22 he switches from discussing women, marriage, adultery, and jealousy, to discussing language, writing, his own writing, its deficiencies, and his process. This change is sudden, achieved through his response to a certain excerpt of Virgil.
Montaigne never writes about only one thing at a time. He is always considering multiple ideas. His sentences are full of the interplay between one thought and another. He follows a thought until he is done writing about it, or until something interests him more. He hardly ever returns to an earlier thought. Each of the collections of subjects in the essay that he touches on could be the singular focus of a piece of writing. By modern standards, most of the topic-sections in this piece stand as their own essays, albeit essays without theses.
His writing is dense, packed with ideas about whatever is holding his attention in that particular paragraph. Either he is responding in short bursts to different passages of Latin, or he is jumping off a passage for pages of writing at a time. His sentences are complicated, being long strings of what, in another writer, would be hypotactic sentences. In his writing, they are merely clauses. In his longer sentences, there are usually lists of ideas, or qualities, that he ascribes to some particular part of an argument.
Take the following: “The wisdom of my instruction consists in liberty, in truth, in essence: disdaining to introduce those little, feigned, common, and provincial rules into the catalogue of its real duties; all natural, general, and constant, of which civility and ceremony are daughters indeed, but illegitimate.” (33)
We have liberty, truth, essence. Little, feigned, common, provincial rules. Natural, general, constant. Civility and ceremony. And this is a sentence on the simple side.
He uses expostulation where appropriate, bringing the emotion of his piece up by dramatically crying out in the middle of a paragraph, or a sentence.
He is self-conscious about his writing. But whether this is real or a conceit of his time, it is hard to tell. He is certainly dedicated to criticizing his abilities as an author.
He draws everything he has been talking about back in the last page of the essay, and ends with a joke. There is very little else to say at that point, except perhaps, “I wish I could do that.”
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