marital interlude

I've been neglecting to post much of anything here in the last few months, but for once I have a pretty good excuse: I'm getting married on July 25th, so arranging, planning, financing, and contstructing all the wedding-related stuff has taken priority. So it goes.

I've been keeping up with my writing elsewhwere, though. The novel writing is progressing slowly but surely, and tomorrow the first part of a four-part article I wrote concerning 4-3 and 3-4 defensive schemes will be published over on Seahawk Addicts, a Seahawks fan blog I've been editing for the last year or so.

I'll be sure to tell you all how things went when I get back on the 31st, but until then hooray for writing, double hooray for marriage, and go Seahawks!

"ye olde" should be grounds for a justifiable homicide defense

I am most likely alone in this sentiment, but I get inordinately angry every time I see "Ye Olde" written on a shop sign. And no, it isn't because "Ye Olde" is a sad, overused marketing ploy meant to imbue a store with a certain sense of age and pedigree that in reality only succeeds in insulting the intelligence of everyone involved, although that is a pretty good reason for hating the living hell out of the phrase.

I hate "Ye Olde" because everyone insists on pronouncing "Ye" as "ye" when it's actually pronounced "the." Yes, that's right: "ye" is just "the" wearing an idiotic wig and glasses.

This whole mix-up began with the original version of English, which historians have creatively named Old English. Aside from sounding like a sort of Scandinavian German, Old English also made use of several letters that are no longer around today:

Ææ - ash, which makes the same sound as "ae"

Œœ - ethel, which makes the same sound as "oe"

Ƿƿ - wynn, which sounds exactly like "W"

Ȝȝ - yogh, which makes the same sound as "Y" when it isn't busy sounding like "X" or "W"

Đđ - eth, which sounds like "th," and

Þþ - thorn, which also sounds like "th" but was a much more popular letter than eth.

Most of these either fell out of use early enough to not cause much trouble (yogh, eth, wynn) or were just other letters glued together and thus relatively easy to exchange (ash and ethel). Thorn is the exception, as it managed to survive just long enough to ensure that centuries later I would want to murder random shopkeepers.

You see, the first printing presses were made in continental Europe, not England, and as a result nobody thought to crank out a batch of the English language's wonky special letters. As a work-around, printers substituted a Y whenever they needed a Þ, and sometime in the intervening years everyone decided that it was time to retire thorn and just use "th" instead.

I can't help but wonder if those printers would have made a different choice in typography if they'd known that a few hundred years later a bunch of business types would decide it was a good idea to ape old timey spelling in their store names without actually knowing a damn thing about how any of those old timey spellings were meant to be pronounced.

"I wanted to rub humanity's face in its own vomit and force it to look in the mirror."

J.G. Ballard
1930 - 2009

productivity via anachronism

Has it really been that long since I posted here last? Time flies when you're recovering from surgery, I suppose. Anyway, I am still not dead, in case anyone was curious.

In the last couple months, I've been trying to solve a problem I've been having with my writing output. You see, I write most easily with a keyboard, but the keyboard I am using to type this post has a flaw, and that flaw is being attached to a big, time-sucking distraction: the internet. The easiest answer to this issue (aside from just canceling my internet service, which isn't going to happen) is to grab one of the dozens of legal pads scattered throughout the house and go sit out on the porch to write everything longhand, but that isn't without its flaws either, the main one being that I grasp pens between my thumb and forefinger like a hamfisted toddler (see picture) which makes my hand cramp up long before I'm done jotting down scenes and ideas.

So, I've been stuck choosing between writing via keyboard (potentially higher output, but with great temptation for distraction) and writing via hand (no distraction, but far less output per writing session), and for the most part I've done both in rotation in the hope that things would even out. Then a few weeks ago lawyer fiancee talked me into accompanying her to an estate sale to both look for decorative things to use in our wedding this summer (which was the main draw for her) and comb through the dead person's house for awesome cheap books (which was how she sold me on the excursion). We ended up leaving that sale with a handful of books, zero wedding decorations, and this $5 answer to all my writing productivity woes:


I wasn't sure why I was buying it at first. I mean, who the hell uses a typewriter these days? Plus, it isn't like that ugly 70s two-tone yellow & brown color scheme is terribly attractive, so it wasn't going to be used as a decoration. But then I tried writing with it one day, and I've been addicted ever since--all the benefits of a keyboard, none of the distraction of an internet connection. Perfect! Typewriter ribbons are still readily available and reasonably priced, so I don't have to worry about this being just a temporary solution.

I guess all I had to do was look for something that, technology-wise, fell squarely between the computer and the pen. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but back when I was planning on becoming an engineer (a plan that lasted until I realized 'round about three dimensional calculus just how much I hated math), my uncle the electrical engineer gave me a framed list of engineering rules to live by as a gift. Even after I switched over to English, I kept hanging it up on the wall in every place I lived because that damn list refused to stop being right about everything, and this time was no exception: "In nature, the optimum is almost always in the middle somewhere. Distrust assertions that the optimum is at an extreme point." Well said, engineering rule list. Well said.

Besides, nothing will make you feel more like a writer than filling a house with typewriter sounds. CLACK CLACK CLACK-CLACK CLACK DIIIINNGGG

in case you were wondering what it might be like to grow up without a sense of irony

apologia pro mea...uh...what's the latin word for absence?

As per usual, I have been negligent in my blog-updating duties for the last month or so. Along with the usual holiday travel merry-go-round, I've had some health issues that included some time in the hospital--I'll have to have a surgery (likely sometime in early February), but it's nothing serious. Bottom line, I will be fine and ready to get back to neglecting to update this blog in no time at all.

In other news, I'm finding that learning how to write a novel is heavy on the trial and error (particularly error), but I'm enjoying the process immensely. Did I mention the whole getting married thing? If not, I am getting married sometime in July. Life is good (aside from the hospital stuff I mentioned, I mean, but I suppose that depends on how much you like subsisting on Jell-O).

Oh, and Happy New Year's Eve--here's hoping all of you enjoy your small corner of the international drunken debauch tonight. See you next year!

P.S. I just looked it up--the word is absentia, apparently.

pretty much says it all

Writing and literature can wait--for now, I give you this, courtesy of CNN:

historical drift

One of the reasons I love to buy old fiction anthologies is because tastes in literature change so much over time. Take a look inside an anthology that was published even just twenty or thirty years ago and you'll be sure to find more than a few authors whose work has since fallen out of favor for any number of reasons. Some we no longer read because our cultural sensibilities have changed (Rudyard Kipling's racist imperialism makes for an uncomfortable read these days), some because they've been overshadowed by other writers from the same time period (Ford Madox Ford is the poster child for this), some because of a sadly petty resentment of the praise and success they'd previously enjoyed that leads many to drastically downplay their importance (Ernest Hemingway is currently the target of just such a backlash), and some are simply forgotten in the shuffle (Laurence Sterne? William Gaddis? John Gower?).

The non-literary parts of history are also susceptible to the exact same shifts in contemporary taste. Recently, I've been reading The Development of Modern Europe by James Harvey Robinson and Charles A. Beard, a college history textbook published in 1907. For your reading pleasure, here are the two passages from Robinson and Beard's preface that made me start thinking about this subject:

It has been a common defect of our historical manuals that, however satisfactorily they have dealt with more or less remote periods, they have ordinarily failed to connect the past with the present. And teachers still pay a mysterious respect to the memory of Datis and Artaphernes which they deny to gentlemen in frock coats, like Gladstone and Gambetta. The gloomy incidents of the capture of Numantia are scrupulously impressed upon the minds of children who have little chance of ever hearing of the siege of Metz. The organization of the Achæan League is given preference to that of the present German Empire
. . .
In preparing the volume in hand, the writers have consistently subordinated the past to the present. It has been their ever-conscious aim to enable the reader to catch up with his own times; to read intelligently the foreign news in the morning papers; to know what was the attitude of Leo XIII toward the social democrats even if he has forgotten that of Innocent III toward the Albigenses.

If you recognized more than two or three of the names above, then you've got a far better grasp of history than I. I don't really have anything else to add, other than that it continually amazes me how much knowledge falls off the back of the cart while we're all busy piling new stuff on the front. So, in lieu of insightful analysis or any sort of real definable conclusion to this post, here is a wholly unrelated picture of former Canadian PM Jean Chretien strangling a protester:

you should probably run

The following has absolutely nothing to do with literature or writing or anything else. It is, however, the most delightfully surreal thing I have seen in a long, long time:

apologia pro mea haerese

Okay, so it took me a month to get around to this post, but after a nice long rest (and a win by the Seahawks, woo-hoo!) I figured it was time to get back to it. And by "it," I mean that explanation of literary analysis I promised I would write. So, here goes:

What the Hell Is Literary Analysis?
or
What Is It That You Liberal Arts People Even Do, Anyway?

Whenever we read a book or poem or comic book or whatever, part of what makes up the reading experience is the reaction we have to the content of what we're reading. And by reaction, I'm talking both intellectual and emotional--even if a given work only makes us feel bored or indifferent, that's still a legitimate reaction evoked by our interaction with the text. What literary analysis does on its most basic level is examine a given text through a good old-fashioned close reading in order to better understand what it was that made us react to it in the way that we did--in other words, analysis simply entails all the things that we can see and read into a given work.

Most people who don't understand the analytical process think of it as a sort of literary scavenger hunt, wherein people like me wade through the words in order to find the one correct meaning for the text at hand. What they don't understand is that there is no one right meaning. I cannot stress this enough. If you don't believe me, drop by a couple of churches this evening and ask each of the ministers to explain to you the meaning of a few key passages from scripture; I guarantee that you'll hear more than a few different ideas about what those particular words mean, and several of those will likely contradict each other entirely. Think about it: if multiple interpretations exist for a holy book that's been endlessly scrutinized by legions of clergymen and scholars over the course of hundreds if not thousands of years, then chances are all those non-holy books out there can have a few different ways of looking at 'em, too.

I'm tempted to say that every analysis of a text is equally valid no matter how much they contradict each other, but just like that tired old saw "there's no such thing as a stupid question" the words barely have time to leave your lips before someone pipes up to ask the absolute dumbest question it's ever been your misfortune to hear. Likewise, there are plenty of analyses out there whose ludicrous statements are only matched by their complete inability to come to a point of any sort. Even so, the general idea that one analysis of a given work is just as valid as any other is a sound one more often than not, and it's a good concept to keep in mind.

And Now for a Brief Check-In with Reality

Now, all that is well and good, but is all this analysis strictly necessary? Do you have to be able to delve into a book and analyze its contents in order to enjoy it? Nope, not in the least. In fact, if all us lit-dork types were suddenly to die tomorrow from some sort of horrible book-borne illness I doubt it would matter much to the vast majority of the reading public, nor do I think that our loss would register as even a half-point blip on the Dow or any other economic index. Despite what your English teacher or Lit Prof may have told you, people can and do lead happy, fulfilling lives without ever once dirtying their hands by thinking about what all that stuff by Chaucer and Shakespeare et al was maybe trying to say.

What literary analysis can do for us is augment and enhance the natural response we already have to literature. Reading closely and deeply can reveal things about a work that you never would've noticed otherwise--a well-written novel can contain a staggering number of subtle, fascinating layers of connections and ideas and information, and poetry in particular is notoriously difficult to comprehend without multiple careful read-throughs. Analysis may not be necessary for you to enjoy a book, but it can and will deepen your reading enjoyment and appreciation for what the author is able to do. Plus, the better you get at it, the more accessible all those big, difficult, intimidating books out there will become.

Okay, This Analysis Thing Sounds Interesting, but How Do I Do It?

Granted, you may not be asking that question at all, but if you're still reading this post I'm going to assume that you're at least moderately interested in the subject. Besides, it's my blog and I get to do this up any way I want, so neener neener.

It's easy enough to say that literary analysis is a nice rewarding thing to do, but when you're first trying your hand at it the whole process can seem pretty daunting. In many respects, it feels a lot like being told to sit down and write a five-page essay on anything you like--having no limits at all has a tendency to freeze many people into total inaction. If instead the essay assignment asked you something more specific like "research and discuss several possible solutions for world hunger" you could get started on the assignment right away. Likewise, setting some limits on what you want to keep an eye out for in a given work will give you a starting point and a direction to follow.

For literary analysis, it is literary theory that provides the starting point and direction for the analysis. Think of theory as the ideological and/or methodological vantage point from which you begin your analysis; theory is merely the particular magnifying lens through which you view the text. From hereon out, I'll be spending the rest of the post introducing you to some of the major theories in brief, simplified form. By no means should you take this list as being authoritative or exhaustive--it's more of a appetizer sampler platter than a full-course meal. There's a whole lot more nuance to each and every one of these theories, and if someone asks I can go into more detail about a particular one. Until then, enjoy!

One last thing: not all of these theoretical approaches work equally well for every text, so don't make the mistake of swearing eternal allegiance to one and only one school of thought. Instead, think of each one as a different tool to add to your analytical toolbox--and remember, some jobs require more than one tool, so don't be afraid to mix and match approaches and viewpoints as you see fit. You can also find a list of books for further reading at the end of this post, in case you'd like to learn more on your own.

Here There Be Theories

Reader-Response Criticism
This one is the easiest of all the theories to understand. Reader-response criticism focuses on interpreting the work by examining how the reader reacts to it. After all, we're all individuals with our own unique set of experiences and behaviors and thoughts, and that is going to make our individual reactions to a text unique and highly personal. Say you read a story that makes you think about a trip to the zoo you took with your grandfather. What was it about the story that made you think about that trip? What do the two have in common? Did both make you feel the same way, or did something similar happen in the story and the trip? Or perhaps the story made you think about something else entirely, or simply made you feel a certain emotion. Examining the text to see what it was that made you feel or think the way you did is what reader-response criticism is all about.

Feminist Criticism
Feminist criticism is more of a group of loosely related approaches than a unified theory, but to a certain extent the same could be said of all these different theories. In general, feminist critics take issue with the way that women in literature tend to be stereotyped as "angels, bar maids, bitches, whores, brainless housewives, or old maids" (quoted from Bressler's book, page 154) and assert that the ways in which men and women are treated differently in a given text can and should be examined. Are women objectified more than men (i.e. do the character descriptions ogle the woman's breasts and butt but fail to extend the same eye-candy treatment to the man's anatomy?)? How are men and women treated differently by society in the work--do they experience different restrictions or expectations that are dependent on gender?

As an aside, feminist critics are also responsible for unearthing a great many women writers who have been unfairly ignored and forgotten over the years. If you've ever read anything by Kate Chopin or Mary Wollstonecraft or the Bronte sisters or a whole host of other women writers, you have feminist critics to thank for bringing them back to everyone's attention. As long as we're on the subject, How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ is a good, entertaining book dealing with all the various ways in which works by women have been marginalized and ignored over the years.

Marxist Criticism
While Marxism is concerned more with economic and social theory than literature, it does prove useful from time to time. A Marxist approach to literary analysis involves looking at a text in terms of social class and economics. Who is in charge, and who is doing the work? Do the characters have to earn a paycheck, or do unseen servants do all the work for them? What are the acceptable beliefs and behaviors in the society portrayed in the work, and who do those beliefs benefit more (if anyone)? From where does oppression arise in the text, and whom does it oppress and why?

New Historicism
This one is my personal favorite. New Historicism (and yes, there was an "Old Historicist" approach once upon a time) sees texts as products of their own time period--in order to better understand a novel by Dickens, for example, you would need to learn about the society and culture in Victorian England (especially with regard to how the poor were treated), just like you might want to study World War I to better understand All Quiet on the Western Front or read up on Hinduism and Ancient India before getting into the Bhagavad Gita. Books aren't written in a vacuum; every text has a social and historical context, and understanding that context will help you to understand the text. The New Historicist approach is especially useful to people who love to research things, but even in small doses it can prove eminently useful.

Let's take The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, for example. When the novel was published in the mid-1880s, slavery had only been outlawed twenty years previously, and the casual racism and bigotry espoused by many of Twain's characters was very much alive and well. Indeed, the perceived racism of the book is the main reason that so many modern readers have tried to get it banned from schools and libraries, although when the book was first published people tried to get it banned because they found its usage of ungrammatical dialogue offensive (they were perfectly okay with the racism, apparently). However, after doing even just a single Google search worth of research, one learns that Twain wasn't espousing racist views in his novel, he was attacking them. Quite a difference a little research makes, no?

Psychoanalytic Criticism
I don't have much to say about this one, except that Freud based more than a few of his psychological theories on literature (like his Oedipal Complex, taken from Oedipus Rex by Sophocles) and his method for interpreting dreams is essentially literary analysis wearing glasses and a fake mustache. Also, doing a Freudian reading of a text (where you more or less try to read as much dirty, kinky stuff into the work as possible) is hilarious and works really well on Emily Dickinson poems.

...Okay, so there's a little more to be said. Psychoanalytic Criticism does do a good job of pointing out that certain things like symbols (crosses, swastikas, etc.), colors, certain jobs (doctors, police, etc.), and various abstract concepts (death, motherhood, etc.) carry with them meanings and emotions that are universal for everyone (or at least everyone in a given culture). These symbols are called archetypes, and a great many works are simply lousy with them.

Deconstructionism
Oh man, do I really have to try to explain Deconstructionism? I should warn you that reading anything by the people who came up with this approach is an invitation to an aneurysm, but there is one simple deconstructionist lesson that you can use without too many headaches: beware of taking binary pairs (i.e. opposites) for granted. In our language we tend to define concepts in pairs of opposites like "good" versus "bad" or "hot" versus "cold," and we almost always see one of the two as being superior to the other. That isn't too much of a problem with a binary pair like "good" versus "bad," as you probably won't find many people who would argue that "good" isn't preferable to "bad." The trouble starts when we look at other binary pairs like "man" versus "woman," "Christian" versus "Muslim," "Englishman" versus "Frenchman," and "gay" versus "straight"--in each of these cases, an awful lot of very serious problems (including more than a few wars) have resulted from one concept being viewed as being somehow better than the other. When you notice one of these binary pairs in a given text, try asking yourself these two questions: which of the two concepts in the pair is being privileged, and what are the problems that may (or did) arise from that?

For Further Reading
Introductory Overviews:
Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics
Booker, M. Keith. A Practical Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism
Bressler, Charles. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice
Harmon, William. A Handbook to Literature (not an overview per se, but a good dictionary of literary terms)
Anthologies of Lit Theory Essays:
Letich, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism
Richter, David H. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends