bishop and ostrom: Colors of a different Horse

*Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory and Pedagogy.* Ed. Wendy Bishop and Hans Ostrom. Urbana: NCTE, 1994. Print.

Camoin, Francois. "The Workshop and Its Discontents."

In favor of theory:

I would like to argue, I think, that just as war is too important to be left to the generals, so critical theory is too important to be left to the critics. (4)

The "law" of silence:

[I]t is the Law of the Workshop, as powerful as the law of incest is int he culture at large, that *the author must not speak*. This fundamental Law shapes the workshop, makes it what it its. (4)

Totally nuts. But generally accepted, I think.

Unexamined theory is still theory, and a theory already explicated by some other theorist:

The theory (whether we want to call it that or not) is always there, though it's often suppressed, disguised as craft, or common sense, or literary taste, or *what-I-have-learned-in-twenty-years-of-being-a-writer.* But, finally, it comes down to speaking about how texts mean, what they do, how they exist in the world, how they function. We can look into our hearts all we want; what we will find there will always be somebody else—Henry James or Percy Lubbock or E. M. Forster. Or Barthes, Kristeva, Irigaray. (5)

Theory helps us with revision:

It's not a bad thing, this critical theory...It gives us a way to talk to ourselves when the Orphic fever has died down, the first draft is done, and we're faced with the problems of craft. (5)

Tips his hand that his "theory" is mostly formalist stuff:

The student who learns that he has // no intentions worth talking about—that he has nothing to say when he sits down at the typewriter, only something to make—will write much better fiction. The student who thinks about narrative logic, writing strategies, the foregrounding or erasing of the narrative act, who has learned that writing fiction consists largely of putting off telling a story, (that in fact the ingenious devices by which she delays the story *are*, in the end, the story) will write better fiction than when she is trying to make the reader feel what she felt when her aunt Maggie died. The reader will still weep, if weeping is called for. (5-6)

These next two name the key difference between the writer and the critic:

I'm writing the story...I have options. The question is how to think about them in such a way as to write a better story. Or else I'm reading the story in a workshop, and the question is then how to talk about the options effectively. (6)

My critical colleagues—it's not a fault, it's the nature of what they do—never see the text at that instant where it must become something else. Sometimes they burrow through the special collections and come upon first drafts, or incomplete attempts, but those are texts already frozen, traces of a process always already completed. (7)

Domina, Lynn. "The Body of My Work Is Not Just a Metaphor."

We apprehend truth, as writers, at least as much with our bodies as with our minds...yet the form or hue or movement of our bodies will suffer [dis]approbation from a community of writers much more quickly than any movement of our mind—though this [dis]approbation will almost inevitably be vehemently disguised as criticism of our work. (28)

She's something of an expressivist, saying things like "one of the primary tasks of the student writer is to learn trust and acceptance of the self" (28) and "Know thyself...and the metaphors will come" (29). And yet she offers qualifiers like: "literature is not primarily therapy, workshops are not therapy sessions" (30). So I suppose she means that confidence in identity precedes good writing, and that workshops ought to be self-aware in their identity politics if they are to offer an environment supportive of a student's best work.

in the undergraduate classroom many students confront difference to a much greater extent than they have in the past, which can be very good for writing, but which also can have devastating effects both in execution and reception—to the extent that difference is threatening rather than engaging, to the extent that difference is hierarchialized // and hierarchy condoned in the classroom as it is outside the classroom. (29-30)

Here's her best point, I think, that unexamined workshops can suppress good writing:

what many traditional-age college students...long to do *is* to write mildly embellished autobiography. Much of the time, this is completely appropriate. Much more dangerous is s student's internal or external pressure to avoid autobiography.

For many students, this risk of revelation is exacerbated by their place in society. The dictum to write about what they know about means writing as a person of color in a racist culture, writing as a gay man or lesbian in a homophobic culture, writing as a woman in a sexist culture—and the culture of workshops consists of instructors and classmates who are as likely to be bigoted as anyone else in our reputed melting pot. If a writer's obsessions arise from experiences of exclusion, changing the proper nouns hardly suffices as protection when the excluder is running the workshop...And although students // who impose self-censorship may write competent, even eloquent sentence, the body of their work will lack the requisite investment and passion of the truly promising writer. (31-32)

Writing about what you know about often implies writing about what other members of the workshop will not know about, which is easily enough dealt with if what you know about is running a dairy farm or swimming competitively or communicating with an Australian via short-wave radio, less easily dealt with if what you know about is prostitution or incest or addiction, and much less easily handled if what you know about is anger at your exclusion from a culture by white people or by wealthy people or by men or by heterosexuals, who are all your classmates and/or your teacher. (33)

It seems to me that this is good justification for a workshop that begins with student intent. Who are you writing to and why and how can we as a class help you achieve that goal? How ought we to read? If we start there, then at least these issues are foregrounded in the workshop itself.

Berry, R.M. "Theory, Creative Writing, and the Impertinence of History."

His best line is his first:

One could persuasively argue that in America the most influential theory of literature since World War II has been Creative Writing. (57)

And, of course, that is exactly what he intends to argue. Not sure why he needs to be cute about it. Nevertheless, he's saying that CW *is* theory or is itself *a* theory. Smart move.

On the public influence of CW:

Most concretely, this influence makes itself felt on the public audiences for the writers' festivals, summer workshops, and readings sponsored by Creative Writing programs or faculty. Less noticeable but possibly more significant is the presence of Creative Writers on literary awards committees, editorial // boards, government funding agencies, small and large presses, book reviews, magazines, and virtually all other organs of contemporary literature. (57-58)

He brings in the training of poets in antiquity:

That Creative Writing is a theory of literature seems less peculiar when Creative Writing is compared to the literary apprenticeship it replaced. Prior to the nineteenth century the most widespread European model of the poet's education tended to de-emphasize individual creativity and to foreground the deliberate imitation of other poets...According to this pedagogy, the apprentice poet learned to replicate and adapt various models under the supervision of someone who had established his...reputation as a master. (58)

Contrary to modern expectations, what the Greek or Roman apprentice gleaned from models was not technique only, but plots, themes, scenes, vocabulary, and even the topics of characters speeches, as though becoming a poet involved both learning a skill and acquiring a repertory of stories or lore. (58)

What did strike them forcefully—the Greek and Latin writers as well as their Renaissance imitators—was the sharp difference between a master's transformation of a model and a novice's copying of one. (59)

He examines Castiglione's *The Courtier* as an explanation of Renaissance apprenticeship:

Where the difference between the Renaissance and our present institution appears sharpest is in their directly opposite remedies for affectation. Whereas Creative Writing might advise a mannered writer to find a subject, style, or voice truly her own, *The Courtier* advises further and wider-ranging imitation. Given all else in sufficient measure, Castiglione insists, imitation can make any voice, style or subject the writer's own. (60)

the old pedagogy imagined no unembattled realm // within which learning could occur. Education was, from the outset, a venture into occupied territory...*The Courtier's* assumption that nothing is inviolably one's own—except one's limitations—seems the vertiginous downside of the idea that anyone can learn to become just about anything. (60-1)

He turns to Bakhtin to show that perhaps the early pedagogy has more merit than we might expect:

For Bakhtin, imitation is the inescapable condition of speaking because language is no abstract for or tool to be picked up and layered back down. (61)

Then he turns to the theory that is CW:

Creative Writing's differentiation of itself from literary study appears—to an imitative poetics—as the severing of practice from its ground in the real life of language, the history of saying. The distinctive pedagogical innovation of Creative Writing—viz., the workshop—is a forum oriented exclusively to the present. (63)

Treating writers' language as unoccupied territory, Creative Writing from the start suppressed its own otherness. (72)

An early poet confident of the tradition and community he inhabited may not have felt // particularly self-conscious about imitating, but for poets—both in the Renaissance and today—whose relation to tradition is what modernity has rendered problematic, making one's writing answerable to and for some past may be precisely what's needed for that writing to count. This task can seem overwhelming, for it demands nothing less than the full acknowledgment of the nightmare that history threatens to become. To the extent that Creative Writing protects present poets from this nightmare, it obscures obstacles to practice and lulls poetry into continued sleeping. A political task of literary study today, and of its theory and practice, its creation and criticism, its teaching and writing, is to wake up. (72-3)

All in all a compelling argument for an imitative practice, or at least for some responsible ("answerable") engagement with language and its history.

Harper: Teaching Creative Writing

*Teaching Creative Writing.* Ed. Graeme Harper. London: Continuum, 2006.

Mostly this book is broken down by genre. Everything from radio to hypertext. There are a few pertinent essays in the back.

Rob Pope gives a succinct intro to his "Textual Intervention" deal in his essay called "Critical-Creative Rewriting":

Of course, all mature courses in Creative Writing require some evidence of 'process', too. But unless this is supported by a work-log and a full record of research and reading as well as reflection (as in a comprehensive portfolio), the critical element is often perfunctory: a dutiful bolt-on attached after the event. (130)

It strikes me, though, that most if not all criticism happens "after the event." For writers and readers both. Northrop Frye distinguished between pre-critical and critical experience of a work by stating that the first was the only type of experience that could take place while reading (or viewing, as with a play) since the whole was not yet in view and could therefore not be judged.

Writing can be a pre-critical experience, as when a work is developing by "inspiration" or "intuition" or whathaveyou. It can also be a critical experience--that is *the writing itself* can be a critical experience--as when one looks at what one has written and must make decisions about what to change or leave alone and why. So all writing, at least all rewriting is critical at some level. I suppose some folks rewrite more by "feel" and would call their revisions "inspirations" or "inspirational." Even so, they must, even if unconsciously, filter their work according to some standards of what makes a good piece of writing, or how a given piece will best suit its purpose.

Pope seems to feel this way too, since he says that "writing is not just 'creative' but...there is always a 'critical' dimension to it too (we weight the words we choose)" (131).

Maybe his "bolt-on" comment was meant simply as a take-down of workshop approaches that don't feature the critical as a part of the creative process and not as a take-down of the creative process itself. That makes more sense.

His description of the process he proposes:

We always start with a text that already exists, preferably in more than one version, and then we rewrite it: adapt it, critique it, intervene in it. (131)

*Textual intervention* is the more or less deliberate challenging and changing of a text so as to put it off balance: to point it in a fresh direction or develop it in an alternate dimension—to de- and re-centere, de- and re-construct it. This might involve anything from tinkering with a few words to full-scale textual transformation. (132)

He gives *Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead* and *Wide Sargasso Sea* as examples of the latter and "To buy or not to buy" as an example of the former.

The rest of his essay gets more specific about how to create textual intervention-based exercises. It's not a bad approach. Certainly a nice twist on the "imitation" exercise. It takes one aspect of the creative writing process and puts it in a new context. "Textual intervention" is what we all do to our own texts every time we write, calling it "revision." Pope's exercise allows students to make the revision process explicit and creative and playful by turning it loose on someone else's stuff. At some point, I think it would be important to make it explicit that this playful revisioning is what it is: an exercise that allows writers to bring a sense of play and creativity to the revision of their own work.

Harper's own essay "Research in Creative Writing" is a bit trying but gets at some good material.

His answer to the question "What is valid academic work for CW?" is, more or less, that writing is research. I'm oversimplifying things, but not so much. It would be better to say that, for Harper, research or critical work of some kind is always a part of the writing process:

The creative writer engages in, and constructs alongside their creative practice, an active critical understanding of a specific kind. This critical understanding is in part based on a development of a craft, a set of skills that are practical, applied, pragmatic; the creative writer learns what works, and aims to employ this learning...The creative writer's critical understanding is also based on a sense of genre, form and convention. (161)

This leads into his "responsive critical understanding" idea, which I've read about in other work by Harper elsewhere:

The creative writer researches their sense of critical understanding, 'in process', whether prior, during or after the production of a single work, and most directly in relation to immediate or future work, planned or as yet unplanned...This can be called *responsive critical understanding*, and it is both the purpose and the product of creative writing research. (162)

CW research exists for the purpose of enhancing whatever part of the writing process is necessarily critical.

He recommends research into what he calls the "art" and the "cultures" of creative writing. By art, he means "that all writers have a concern with words, their meaning, their arrangment, and their impact on their audience...the writer seeks additional knowledge of the nature of words, and of their use" (163). By "cultures" Harper refers to the "interaction between...the individual writer and her or his environment." His explanation of how this research takes place is helpful:

'What if?' is the question that drives the process of creative writing...'What if this was my life?' 'What if my daily routine took this turn?' 'What if this disaster had befallen me?'...The creative writer inserts themselves [sic] into the inter- // pretative position; empathetically, providing a way for the reader to follow through a speculation, effectively alongside the writer themselves [sic]. (164)

All his what ifs involve his own person, rather than a character separate from himself. And his list may be more specific to fiction writers than poets perhaps. But the idea that a writer is exploring material through a creative response is interesting. It means the creative project *is* a critical project, and defends the intellectual process of creative writing as equal (at least in merit) to other academic work.

Another reason this last quote is helpful is that it complicates the distinction between what I've been thinking about as the "creative" side and the "critical" side of the writing process. The "creative" side has a critical element to it, or it can. It can represent a critical imaginative engagement with the world.

LEADS:

I read in another article that Wendy Bishop has a more recent book on the writing process.
On Writing: A Process Reader.
There's a 2008 edition out. Could have some good leads on current stuff on the writing process.

the thinking thus far

My reading thus far is helping me reevaluate where I stand on this project. Rethinking what I want to do, as always.

Seems that "creative writing theory" is part of a larger category: "creative writing studies."

The basic question of creative writing studies is this: "What sorts of academic work are appropriate to this discipline?" It's a question that is of much concern in the present conversation, and theory is one possible answer.

But CW theory is new. So it's unsure how to go about theorizing. Should it draw on comp theory? Or literary theory? Or chart its own course? There are voices representing each of these directions. Seems to me CW theory can, and should, do all of these. It would be silly not to draw on comp theory, since they've been asking the relevant questions for some time now. But do we start over and do "process" like they did 30 or 40 years ago? Or do we catch up and do the sort of identity-politics influenced social critique stuff? Or both? Probably both. And it would be silly not to draw on literary theory, even if it is "interpretive" instead of "productive," since lit theory has been asking relevant questions for a long, long time. But what to take from lit theory? Only formalism? Post-structuralism, too? Both again? And it seems important that we chart our own course, too, since we are productive rather than interpretive, and there must be some important distinctions between us and comp folk...or are there? We can at least bring an extra emphasis on creativity and investigation questions of inspiration, etc.

So in short, CW theory has got way too much to do. It has to draw on two existing academic traditions and find its own voice and interests. This is a lot to accomplish all at once.

And more than I can handle in a semester. Or even in a Masters Thesis...

Things have been broadening, and now I need to narrow them down. I want to do something with comp theory, with literacy, with formalism and with post-structuralism, but not all this semester. My final project will need an extensive literature review, so maybe that's what I'm working on this semester. This is my chance to read all this stuff, so... I guess that's it. A big lit review, and if I get a chance, I'll address New Criticism and why it doesn't work for the workshop, and then if I really have loads of extra time, I'll do the other formalisms and why some of them might have something to offer.

That the thinking thus far.

Harris Article

An elegant, if a bit grumpy, article from Mike Harris over at TEXT offers his thoughts about the current direction of creative writing theory.

Has a nice metaphor for CW practice before the call for theory: "Meat-and-Two-Veg"

Don't we always choose that old recipe, the meat-and-two-veg of creative writing: one part realism, one part romance and a big dollop of neo-classical craft-based formalism? But this is one reason some creative writing academics are calling for more and different 'theory': they either don't accept that 'Meat-and-Two-Veg' is a theory or, if they do, they think it's well past its sell-by date and very bad for us.

Harris has problems with broadening the critical diet, too. Here he is on the interpretation/production issue:

Now, there is a problem here, because literary studies and creative writing are very distinct activities. The former is concerned with interpretation, the latter with creation. Or, if you like, writers produce, critics consume. As a result nearly all literary theory is consumption theory, focusing entirely on the relationship between reader and the text, with little or nothing to say about production.

Teaching theory unrelated to production is, for Harris, simply a waste of time: "precious creative writing teaching-time is wasted in favour of trying logically to explicate...literary theories."

And he finds the current call for CW theory, with its interest in poststructuralism and postmodernism, guilty of "yoking-together of philosophical incompatibles," as when CW scholars take on theories antagonistic to agency and selfhood while still suggesting that individuals can be taught a skill like writing:

To conceive of constructing anything - be it a personality or a poem - requires at least some conception of individual autonomy and free will but in, for example, Derridean poststructuralism both of these can only be the illusory symptoms of equally illusory 'metaphysical' discourse, which is itself a mere epiphenomenon of the ultimately unfathomable linguistic différance or trace that he alleges exists between one word and another without 'origin' or ultimately determinable meaning.

Here's Harris's definition of creative writing theory:

Writing is part of a wider creative process. In this process writing can be individual, collaborative, or both and can incorporate contributions from 'non-writers'. The writing process, in the widest sense, is everything that happens to a work before it is 'finished'.[12] This would include thinking, researching, planning, writing drafts, consciously revising, consciously manipulating the unconscious and being unconsciously driven by it. The study of writing is thus the study of a process, of a constantly moving and changing object, not a fixed field or 'text'.

It's all process for Harris. Which is rather limiting, I think. And in fact, the comp theory that has been done on the writing process has demonstrated that audience considerations are an important part of that process. Which means that theories of production are to some extent informed by theories of interpretation, or should at least be informed by them. Put simply, writers need to know how readers read in order to write for them. Of course, not all readers read like Derrida...but many do read like feminists and post-colonialists and people who work with identity politics. Reader response theory is especially pertinent, I think...anyway.

Here's Harris's list of what we should be doing. Several exciting projects here, and I hope he's getting to work:

Once we have escaped the dazzling tractor beam of inappropriate literary theory, and focused clearly on the writing process now and in history, wide fields of study open up before us. Many have already been cleared by literary scholars working on areas once marginalised in the academy by the dominance of anti-authorial theory - for example: literary biography; attribution studies; the work done by all literary critics when they edit texts and track the changes from one draft to another. The social, psychological and technological differences in historical writing practices are also, of course, significant, as well as the similarities, and could form the basis of legitimate creative writing research (see Larson 1986). Most important of all would be the return to centre stage, through its study in creative writing, of literary aesthetics - poetics - because it is arguably the one indispensible part of our writing process.

The social, psychological and technological differences in historical writing practices—that is the book I want to read next. Get crackin' Harris!

There was another quote I pulled that I have to include, a great, and very practical rebuttal of "readers do the writing":

The notion of the reader essentially 'writing' relies on a redefinition of the two terms that dissolves the essential differences between them; a process by which anything can always be said to be really anything else. For example: I might decide that eating is really cooking and, as long as the rest of my 'discourse community' agree, the redefinition will hold. It's just that, given the actual differences, if we really believe that eating food cooks it, and act upon the belief, then we will probably have to resign ourselves to a raw cold diet, and periodic intestinal disorders.

This is my point about writers needing to be pragmatists at some level. You can't be all spun out in theory and still write unless you are comfortable with a whole series of contradictions inherent in that state of being.

All in all, I like Harris's corrective. He's clearly informed about his Derrida, and I should probably revisit this essay if/when I get deeper into D's work. Harris is helping to point the way forward; he's trying to shake us loose of theory that wasn't meant for writers and is even counterproductive for the writing process. Clearing the ground to start fresh. It's a good instinct.

Some areas CW theory might investigate, based on this and other articles and my own sense of what Harris has left out:

Creativity
Writing Process
Formalism/craft
Rhetorical criticism
Audience studies

That last one, audience studies, means "how readers read." And it is an area that could include the whole history of interpretive theory, but should not be limited to that history. Important help can be gained from other areas. Media studies for example has some interesting things to say about how audiences react to media. And ethnographic research of reading communities. And psych. etc...


Leads from Harris:

Pfenninger, Karl H, and Valerie R Shubik 2001 The origins of creativity, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Czikszentmihayli, Mihaly 1997 Creativity and the psychology of discovery and invention, New York: Harper Collins

Nelson, Camilla 2008 'Research through practice: a reply to Paul Dawson', TEXT 12.2, October

questions

Questions on the relationship of Author to Authorship

What is an author? What does it mean to be one? Is "author" even the right word for what we're talking about or is there a better term? What sort of power does this position have, what sort of *authority*, if any? How is such power best used? What does it mean to call oneself an author? Why would anyone do so? What sort of people desire to attain this position? What are their motives? Is authorship a democratic institution, available to all, or is it an elite post, attainable only by a few? If democratic, what value does it have to call oneself an author? If elite, what qualities must one have to become one of these few? Are these qualities obtainable by anyone or are they a "gift"? What do we mean when we say that we are authors? Why do we say it?


Questions on the relationship of Author to Text

What do authors do? How? How can they do it better, and how could one learn to do what authors do? What is the nature of the writing process? What qualities make for a more effective execution of that process? Exactly what sort of "control" does an author exercise over a text? Conversely, how does a text exercise control over an author? Do authors write texts or vice versa? Similarly, do authors *make* texts or vice versa? To what extent do other texts influence authors as their write their own? What can authors do to make a "good" text? A "better" text? Is there such a thing? How would one—how *does* an author—decide whether a text is "good" and how to go about making it "better"?


Questions on the relationship of Author to Reader

What are the parameters of this relationship? Since this relationship is mediated by a text, how does that mediation affect the nature of exchange between these parties? Who exercises power over whom? How? To what extent? How much of a reader's experience can an author reliably control or predict? What sorts of ethical decision and responsibilities does author owe to reader? Why is "reader" singular? Shouldn't we be talking about "readers" in the plural, and how does this plurality alter the way we think about this/(these) relationship(s)? What do readers read and why? How can they be best addressed by authors who want to achieve a particular end or effect?


Questions on the relationship of Author to World

What does it mean to be an author in this world? What do authors do? What sort of effect does this have on the world? What responsibilities does an author have to the world? To what extent does the world shape an author and his/her work? Is the author a free agent, solely responsible for his/her actions, or is the author a conduit for the world, which expresses itself through the author? Who gets to be an author anyway and how? What powers and institutions act as gatekeepers for this position and what is their agenda? How is the status of authorship related to identity and identity politics?


Questions on the relationship of Author to Language

Who is in charge here? Is there any author outside of language? Is language an author's material, like a painter's oil and canvass? Or is language an elusive force that cannot be fully controlled, one that even takes over the composing process at times? Can language refer to anything outside of itself? If so or if not, what implications does this have for the author's task? If we think of language as necessarily social and society as necessarily political, how ought the social and political nature of language inform our thinking about authors and authorship? How ought it to inform the way authors go about the act of writing?

map

This is my little map of the elements of literature. I've tried to make it as general and uncontroversial as possible, but of course it's impossible to avoid some amount of controversy. The assertion that there are "elements" in something called "literature" that can be "mapped" already raises eyebrows somewhere in academia. Likewise, that there should be only five elements, or only *these* five, causes a new set of problems for some folks. But I think for the purposes of general conversation about the things that are important to include in our discussion of literature, this map serves as at least a rough guide to the territory. Present are Author, Text, Reader, World, and Language. I'm using the term "World" here in the most general sense; it is the Great Thing that contains all the other, lesser things. In this case, I'm featuring a few of these lesser things as of particular interest to theories of literature, namely authors, who write texts; texts, which are written and read; readers, who read texts; and language, which is the medium in which authors write, texts are composed, and readers read.

For some academics, "World" is just another aspect of Language, which contains all things. All the things we talk about, at least. And for these critics, my map seems to make a poorly articulated argument against the centrality of language. I've made "World" and "Language" separate entities, with "Language" subordinate to "World." In other words, I seem to have made a claim that there is an objective world outside of language, which contains language as one of its parts. I do not mean to make such an argument, but I also do not wish to make the reverse argument, that language is all in all and that there is nothing outside of the "Text." I could have drawn my map so that language was on equal footing with the world, encompassing the lower half of the large oval, but this would only have created new problems by creating a central opposition between "World" and "Language" as if these were clearly distinguishable and irreconcilable.

To some extent, the category "World" is also my way of including other "elements" that I haven't featured here. Time, for example, is an aspect of "World" that plays an important role in literature, especially since author and reader may exist centuries apart, a gap traversed by the text. Race, gender, class, Capital, History, and technology are other elements I've not featured, but which constitute important aspects of "World." To give "Language" equal billing with "World" would have given it priority over these other elements and therefore privileged post-structural theories of language over other, equally important academic work.

For English speakers, there is an implied directionality from author to text to reader, since we read from left to right. However, I did not draw arrows along this line because this is not a unilateral relationship. All elements have some degree of influence upon all the others, so that, if I had started drawing arrows, I wouldn't have known where to stop.

The value of this map is that it gives some orientation for understanding the emphases of various theories. New Criticism emphasizes only the text, and makes an effort to exclude all the other elements. Deconstruction emphasizes language to the exclusion of all other elements...or to the absorption and dissolution of all other elements, which is more or less what is meant by "Nothing is outside of the Text." Language is everything. Some theories take more than one element into account. Mimetic theories emphasize the relationship between text and the world. Reader-response criticism focuses on readers and the world, conceived of as a world of other readers forming interpretive communities. And some theories have a particular interpretation of how all the elements work together; Rhetorical theories, for example, understand literature as something authors do with language in texts in order to persuade readers and thereby influence the world.

Creative writing theory is meant to address the needs of authors, to help them better understand what it is that they do and the means by which they do it. For this reason, it will be important to gain an understanding of all these elements from the perspective of the author. What is the author's relationship to the text? To readers? To language? To the world? To authorship, even? These are the most basic questions of creative writing theory, and upon investigation of them, theorists can expect to discover further questions that concern matters of writing practice and pedagogy, matters of practical concern to authors who write and teach.

Investigation of these questions will also necessarily encounter theories of literature (and theories applied to literature) that are written from perspectives other than that of the author. Most Theory, in fact, is theory of interpretation, written from the perspective of the reader. These theories have various ways of addressing the author and thinking about the role of authorship in literary "meaning."

Theories that exclude the author or challenge the status of the author in some way are theories that creative writing theory ought to address as challenges and opportunities. These theories challenge creative writing theory to justify its existence and the validity of its project. In this way, they also provide an opportunity for creative writing theory to strengthen its claims and clarify its position on the author's relationship to the elements of literature emphasized by these challenging theories.

Theories that do not exclude the author still generally understand the author from the perspective of the reader, and so creative writing theorists must exercise caution when appropriating these theories, taking care to reevaluate their treatment of authorship.

Of course, creative writing theory, while drawing on the work of existing theories, need not limit itself to the work of interpretive theorists. Creative writing theory can begin with its own observations of the experience of literature from an author's point of view. It can also draw on work in other fields, such as the work of composition scholars the testimony of working writers about the nature of what they do, and psychological and philosophical treatments of creativity.

Haake Quotes

Haake, Katherine. What Our Speech Disrupts: Feminism and Creative Writing Studies. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 2000. Print.

Haake's book was not the thoroughgoing feminist critique of creative writing pedagogy I was expecting. It was more an act of "being" feminist and creative on the page. Modeling a "feminist" academic prose style, or something to that effect. Never the less there were some useful bits, especially when she does look at power and privilege in the CW classroom.

I pulled some big chunks, basically everything I thought was relevant. When I add "//" to a quote, it signals the page break and is not a part of the text.

Here's her take on writing the "Other":

Imagination is not entirely benign, for to assume that it can transcend the boundaries between us, whoever we might be, and what we loosely, freely call now the Other, is to align ourselves with the same romantic ideologies by which the "Other" has long been contained. It is a vexing problem. Do we simply assume we cannot know anything beyond our own experience—you in your fishbowl and me in mine? Certainly not; but neither can we act as if the fishbowls, which are not of our making, do not exist. (11)

Here's her basic outline of her project for the book:

this book argues for a shift within the discipline that would respond to student difference and allow for reconceiving creative writing as a practice that may take many forms of value in the lives and education of our students. It attempts to formulate a radical pedagogy of inclusion that sees the creative writing classroom as an intra-and interdisciplinary site where basic questions of language and discourse can lead to transformed notions of how we know and experience not just our writing, but ourselves. Such a classroom might be conceived of as a site of bricolage, where the teacher-writer, together with her or his student-writers, uses everything at hand not just to make writing happen, but to do so within a critical framework that reveals writing systems and gives students authority over their own work. (18)

She never did as much with "bricolage" as I was hopping. It seems like a nice way to conceive of the writing process. The bricoleur is something rather close to the "scriptor." They both draw on what's available to make their work. As for the radical pedagogy of inclusion, this never became fully realized in Haake's book.

Next up is a nice take on the power structures that limit creative expression in the West, as well as her cynical take on multicultural publishing. (I wonder if she still feels this way post-Obama. The New Sincerity President, as my wife calls him.)

To the extent that literary culture in this country has been white, middle class, and male, access to that culture has been determined by how one accommodates oneself to the strategies and values of that culture.
But we live in multicultural times, and while it may be argued that current proliferation of American voices reflects a shift in the historical distribution of power within our institutions of literary culture, I suspect that a quick review of New York publishing lists or the tables of contents of major literary journals will reveal instead that the celebration is as much a construction of liberal guilt and politically correct thinking, or a cynical market determination that multiculturalism "sells," as it is any kind of fundamental change in people's underlying attitudes. (54)

This next quote implies an association between romantic ideas of genius and white privilege; it also suggests that "minority" authors are better equipped to understand their writing process and writing "self" in post-structural terms:

Those of us who came to writing aspiring to express our deepest selves may want to maintain the modernist view of the author as inspired genius. And I don't know. Sometimes it seems that all of us must start out // this way, for we are the products of our education and reading. But those of us who have also had difficulty recognizing ourselves in that education and reading will adapt more readily to the notion of author as function. From there to the idea that the self we aspire to express is not natural, singular, and constant, but rather constructed, multiple, and fluid, it is not so far at all, and it is easy.
Assume, then, the latter. Assume that the self—one of many—is constructed in the act of writing, moment by moment, by our entry into language, not our mastery over it. Assume as well that the same may be true when we enter the classroom, that instruction—meaning—is achieved there in the play of signification that occurs *between* teacher and students. Embedded in these assumptions and the ones described above as implicit in the workshop are two different pedagogical stances. One might say, then, that the workshop is the classroom model by which we mark the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning. (54-55)

I'm not clear on what she means by that last line, and she never explains it. She seems to suggest that both stances—author as genius and author as function—represent different fears. Both are fears of the "proliferation of meaning." Meaning spreading. Each one fears the other, I suppose... I feel like I'm missing something. Maybe I'll email her.

Later, Haake says she leaned to make writing, "something...open-ended and fluid, a continuously unfolding site of surprise. Palpable, material, and with its own economy, logic, and music—language, I was learning, does not just get written but also somehow writes the writer, who is inscribed, being-written in the moment of the writing." (64)

This "being-written" strikes me as a nice response to post-structuralism, and is actually little more than a reframing of what many poets have reported about their experience all along, that it seems to come from some other place. The gods, or the muses, or inspiration, or the unconscious, or whathaveyou.

Here's a quote that strikes me as a great way to start self-reflection in a writing workshop on day one:

when I asked // the question—what do you want from this class?—students responded, as they almost always do, with the vague assertions: to write, to improve my writing, to talk about my writing with other writers. What was a bit different in this workshop was the explicit requirement that we define our terms and reveal their assumptions by framing such questions as: Write what? Improve according to what criteria? Talk with other writers how? (105-6)

She also requires that students talk about their own assumptions before they give the response that follows from those assumptions. Sounds like a good exercise, a practical entry point to theory for students, one that asks students to being their own theorizing based on experience and might allow for some critical work to be introduced as an aid to these practical questions.

Haake's take on interpretation:

I've never been convinced interpre- // tation is very good for writing. Where there's interpretation, there's an equal sign that functions for the most part to reduce the pure necessity of text. And we should be opposed to this, to anything at all that reduces textuality; we should focus our attention instead not on *what* but on *how* texts mean, trusting that meaning will take care of itself, as it surely will, with the reader. (110-111)

This "how" texts mean is a nice turn of phrase, but still confuses the issue by insisting on "meaning" which I think is an unfortunate term. Still, she points in the direction of rhetorical analysis.

Her exercise by way of Derrida:

In the play of substitution and replacement, which is our way of making meaning, we substitute for what was never really there, the center, and in the process we add something (a "supplement"), and the thing we started with is, in some small way, deferred and transformed. In writing, one possible meaning of the logic of the supplement is that writing itself becomes an endlessly unfolding process. Think of the narrative itself as a sign. As soon as something is added, the narrative is changed, made different, meaning is deferred, and all that precedes what is written is also irrevocably altered...
This is what I call *burrowing*...writing proceeds from language rather than image...Compelled by the process of signification, you burrow into the sign, play it for all it is worth. At the end of the sentence/sign/play, stop, add a new one, begin again, and again, and again. (179)

Haake mentions a student's published novel and another student's published and anthologized short story that both began as this assignment. Proof is in the pudding and all that. I'm not totally convinced. Seems like what a lot of writers do already, but maybe that's her point.

Finally, she tells a story of a young black woman who wrote a story that was an autobiographical report of her abuse experiences. The story seemed tied to details that were factual rather than effective:

As the teacher I tried to focus the discussion on conventions of genre and form. We talked about how work is received, and how, if marked as a "short story," the reader reads it as fiction and expects it to conform to certain conventions...We also talked about the difference between "fiction" and "autobiography," how they are ontologically different...And we talked about organizing texts to generate narrative tension, especially by structuring the kernel events in such a way as to foreground enigma and the hermeneutic code. (189)

Haake sort of gives herself away in that last line. Why should all stories do that? Sure it sounds smart and savvy, but must all stories "foreground enigma and the hermeneutic code?" What a bore. And what about inclusion? Isn't she excluding an author with different aesthetic values? A different sense of purpose and audience? Then she goes on to tell this woman that her story is "not really a 'short story'" and gives a speech about how:

literary short stories...conform to certain narrative conventions. Texts circulate in the world according to the way they align themselves with one set of conventions or another. (190)

True enough, and a fair point to raise, but not if she's not willing to explore the possibility that this young woman has her own vision of how her text might circulate. And, of course, the woman balked at Haake's impositions.

Naturally I believed I had the broad view and that for her to "own" her story she had to place it in relation to a particular tradition she might aspire to. I still believe that. (190)

She goes on to say that she leaned to respect the student's point of view, to appreciate that her struggles to be heard and her context for writing were far different from Haake's own, and that this difference required some amount of consideration.

One last note: she has an assignment where she makes people make a box that represents themselves as writers in some way. with stuff in it. then they write their autobiography as writers. then they write about their "scene of writing, when and how and when you literally do it" (197). Somehow this one is related to Foucault.


Leads

Mentions Peter Stitt and Marjorie Perloff arguing theory in AWP.

Triggering Town guy says "If you want to communicate, use the telephone."

Keywords: Theory

Bishop, Wendy and David Starkey. Keywords in Creative Writing. Longan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2006. Print.

Bishop and Starkey offer a gentle, commonsense apology for theory to CW folk who are resistant. This more or less answers some of my questions from last post (how to address these issues to this audience?) by way of demonstration. I'll quote at length without comment:

Theory is political, particularly in the hierarchies of English departments where many writers now house themselves. To feel angry about or indifferent to theory, to lack a bit of theory knowledge and theory talk is to make oneself vulnerable and defensive. To do the reverse is to participate in what is—for now—the lingua franca of these departments.

Theory is rhetorical and there are any number of genre arguments in contemporary writing programs; knowing which genres have currency for which reasons can matter...//

Theory is practical and performative...for there are any number of moments...when writers have a need to articulate their practices, their beliefs, their field, their genre, and so on...

Practice into theory and theory into practice is the normal ebb and flow of excellent teaching. Teachers evaluate student texts and need to have understandings of/ability to articulate their theories of reading, their values and beliefs, their judgments...

Theory is a tool for thinking and innovation. There is no experimentation without convention. There is nothing to rebel against without a community to approach or retreat from. Without theories of writing and writers, there are no genre innovations, movements, schools of writing...

Theory can be serious but theory can also be play when a writer is not on the run, on the defensive...Theory is language and language is the grubstake of writing. (175-176)

As for the rest of the book, I didn't draw much from it. A nice discussion of identity politics, which I may want to revisit at a later date. So I guess this book counts as its own lead.

Olson: Intro

Elder Olson's Tragedy and the Theory of Drama is one of the relatively (and unfortunately) small number of critical works that prioritizes literary production over literary interpretation.

In his introduction, Olson frames his perspective like so:

I have attempted to see tragedy—indeed, as much as possible the whole of drama—from a point of view of the working dramatist. The problems of the dramatist, the technical means for their solution, the principles governing the different methods of solution comprise the subject of this book. (2)

I'd like to do something similar, I'd like to attempt to see Theory from the point of view of the working writer. However, there are some problems with this sort of statement, mostly in the form of definite articles: the point of view of the working writer.

The first of these articles assume that working writers can, at least in their attitude toward Theory, can be lumped together into a unified "point of view", which is of course false. Writers have all sorts of different attitudes about Theory: some are enthusiasts, some antagonists; some pick and chose, others disregard it entirely.

The second of these definite articles assumes that writers as writers can be lumped together under the heading of something called "the working writer." The "work" of writing is different for each writer. Each has his/her own process, a unique (or at least importantly differentiated) approach to the "problems" of the writing task, and not all of their "solutions" are technical ones.

Writers do different things when they write, have different ideas about the significance of their task, its relation to Theory, and hold their own opinions about whether or not Theory and creative practice have anything to say to one another.

Of course, I make a similar error when I use the term "Theory," as if there were a discernible body of written work that could be unified in such a way that it could be introduced in opposition to something called "writing" or "writers." Perhaps I should say "literary criticism," or something similar. Still, whatever "Theory" is, people in CW are talking about it, sometimes as if it were a foe.

I think it's better to say something like this: "I have attempted to read Theory on behalf of working writers—that is, with the general interests of writers and their various writing processes in mind."

Even that statement makes a generalization, but I think its a more reasonable one. Writers have in common at least that they write, and their position as writers gives them some common ground in relation to Theory and its various treatments of the author.

Olson, Elder. Tragedy and the Theory of Drama. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1966. Print.

Mayers chapters 1 and 2

Mayers, Tim. (Re)Writing Craft: Composition, Creative Writing, and the Future of English Studies. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2005. Print.

I didn't dogear too many of the first 60-some pages. He's just laying the groundwork, as far as I can tell. Maybe I'm not deep enough in the conversation yet to get all the nuances of what he's doing...

He spends some time defining the "institutional-conventional wisdom" of creative writing, placing more emphasis on the hyphenated adjective than the noun, which he may even mean ironically. Or cynically. Maybe he's not a fan of "wisdom."

He's particularly interested in positioning CW in terms of the institutions within English studies. Strikes me as important, but dry. I'm more interested in seeing what he eventually proposes as an antidote to "wisdom."

Anyway, here's his pitch:

Briefly summarized, this institutional-conventional wisdom holds that creativity or writing ability is fundamentally "interior" or "psychological" in nature and that it is thus the province only of special or gifted individuals and is fundamentally unteachable. What *is* teachable in creative writing...is "craft," which is understood in this context as a collection of skills or techniques that writers can explore or use to demonstrate their creativity. Those people who possess the right kind of creative talent, if they can learn to master craft, can produce "serious writing" or works of "literature" that are aesthetically distinguishable from other kinds of texts. (14)

In his second chapter, Mayers introduces his concept of "craft criticism," which would seem to arise from the "wisdom" mentioned above, since his explanation of conventional wisdom relies heavily on the idea of craft, although it strikes me that, by his definition, craft criticism could cover a much wider swath of writing than simply that :

Craft criticism...refers to critical prose written by self- or institutionally identified "creative writers"; in craft criticism, a concern with textual production takes precedence over any concern with textual interpretation. (34)

See what I mean? Any critical prose by a creative writer focusing on the act of writing qualifies. Even if it doesn't subscribe to the "wisdom" mentioned above. So I'm guessing whatever Mayers comes up with will count as craft criticism, too. And as it develops, I believe his idea of craft criticism includes works that challenge the institutional-conventional wisdom of CW, which makes his definitions a bit awkward. If wisdom is all about craft, and craft criticism challenges wisdom, then craft challenges craft, more or less, which doesn't really make any sense. At least not in the abstract.

Everybody cites Myers (Elephants Teach), and Mayers is no exception. He visits Myers reading of the relation between criticism and CW, which finds the two closely related in history. Both entered the Academy at the same time, replacing "philology" (what is that?). Further, most of the "critics" were also "poets" and criticism was informed by their own practice of writing.

Mayers suggests that Myers account almost conflates criticism and CW, and mistakenly so since criticism became "institutionalized as an almost exclusively interpretive enterprise" (42). Instead, Mayers draws upon David Richter's schematization of literary criticism to suggest that craft criticism should be more closely identified with what Richter calls "rhetorical" criticism. This resonates with something I was thinking, which is that the Chicago School, contemporaries of the New Critics, were actually producing work closer to contemporary CW work. Crane and Olson and (later) Booth, are Rhetoricians at work in the field of CW. I think any study of the relationship of New Criticism to early CW should not leave these Chicago guys out. I remember one paper called "seven types of clarity" written in response to the more famous seven ambiguities; as I recall, this article (and the other Chicago stuff) took exception to the New Critical "fallacies" in a way that would provide a useful corrective to the contemporary CW talk about "formalism." Mayers would be a useful source for this:

Despite the fact that many of the New Critics were poets, their primary concerns...were formal and not rhetorical. New Criticism rapidly became a way to teach students how to interpret poetry by searching for the poems' own internal structures and rules. Rather than becoming institutionalized as a focus on writing poetry in general, New Criticism became institutionalized as a focus on reading, interpreting, and appreciating particular kinds of poems. (43)

New Criticism, the very movement that helped bring creative writing into the university, also effectively worked to disenfranchise many creative writers from the act of criticism. (44)

Because "close reading" and formal appreciation become dominant, the conversation of English studies move away from interests in production of texts. Interpretation is the focus, and remains so even after the rise of Theory, which simply takes interpretation to its logical extreme.

Mayers then gives a number of examples of craft criticism. Most notable among these is Katherine Haake's book, which is already on my reading list.

And that's it for the first two chapters.



Leads:

Mayers nods to Wendy Bishop, Mary Ann Cain, and Patrick Bizzaro as folks who did the work of informing Creative Writing pedagogy with insights from Composition studies.

He's got three sources for Bishop, in addition to her "Colors of a Different Horse" deal.

"The Literary Text and the Writing Classroom." JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 15.3 (1995): 435-54.

"Places to Stand: The Reflective Writer-Teacher-Writer in Composition." College Composition and Communication 51.2 (1999): 9-31.

Released into Language: Options for Teaching Creative Writing. 2nd ed. Portland, ME: Calendar Islands Publishers, 1998.

I'm thinking the book is the way to go...and was what Mayers was referring to as her "pioneering work."

He says this one analyzes student work and "workshoping" with the tools previously only used in comp theory:

Cain, Mary Ann. Revisioning Writer's Talk: Gender and Culture in Acts of Composing. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995.

Bizzaro, Patrick gets a bunch of entries, but I think this is the one, and it looks like a *must read* for me:

Responding to Student Poems: Applications of Critical Theory. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1993.

Cites David Richter's The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends as a source of many "maps" of literature, similar to M.H. Abrams. I should check that out before I present my own map again.

Dawson: Chapter 3 and 4

In this chapter, "Workshop Poetics," Dawson puts into practice the theoretical analysis of workshop practices that he promised in his intro. I'd say the results are mixed. He repeats his "mini-histories" approach from the last chapter, this time giving the background of three guiding principles of most Creative Writing workshops: "Reading as a writer," "Show, don't tell," and "Discovering a voice."

Here's his orientation for the chapter:

In asking if there is a poetics of creative writing, I mean a general theory of literature (fiction, poetry, drama)--but literature as creative writing, that is, as a process rather than product, something which has been written rather than something which is to be read; and a general theory of literature which enables the analysis of specific texts, in particular, the student manuscript. (90)

I'm not sure if he can really make a distinction between something that "has been written" and something else that "is to be read." Likewise, splitting process and product is a bit problematic, but the general orientation is sound, I think. He wants to ask what literature is for writers, and he wants to ask this in a way that helps us all to analyse student work. Fair enough.

In his section on "reading as a writer," he defines this phrase as "reading with the aim of discovering ways to improve one's own writing" (91). Apparently, reading like a writer goes back further than the source I cited as a lead in my last post. Dorthea Brande's book Becoming a Writer (1934) was the first to use the term.

Dawson starts with Walter Besant and works forward in large strides. He arrives at Moxley's collection Creative Writing in America and notes that most of the entries are occupied by this notion of teaching student writers a particular method of reading.

A few quotes worth pulling:

We have seen here an attempt to distinguish Creative Writing from Literary Studies by virtue not of the work students produce, but of the manner in which they read literature. It is a difficult distinction, however, based on a difference of motivation (to learn how to write rather than how to appreciate literature), and presumably of expertise (the writer drawing upon his or her first-hand experience of the craft rather than a training in literary study)" (95).

It is obvious that the terminology employed in the writing workshop, such as plot, structure, point of view, dialogue and character, is formalist in orientation. And it is also obvious that this sort of reading of literature wishes to concentrate on the craft of writing: how a work of literature is made, rather than extra-literary concerns. The claim, however, that 'reading as a writer' is somehow not criticism, based on a writer's point of view than a critic's, cannot be validated. (96)

So the distinction between literary studies and CW, between the author and the critic, is tenuous at best. Authors do criticism, and CW students are very much students learning to appreciate literature even as they learn to "make" it.

Dawson's work on "show, don't tell" is more or less a rehashing of Wayne Booth's work on the same topic in his Rhetoric of Fiction. So I'm skipping. Better to quote from the Booth.

In the "discovering a voice" section, Dawson brings Morton and Zavarzadeh back in as "the most damning critique of Creative Writing from the perspective of postmodern theory" (108), which is a pretty clear sign that I need to find that one and read it.

There is a sort of "surprise" section on Authorship that has a bunch of good stuff in it. It strikes me that Authorship is a central concern for Creative Writing Theory--defending the author against claims that would undermine his/her power, finding ways to understand the reach and limits of authorial power in such a way that enables authors to base their efforts on reasonable assumptions about what effects they might hope to achieve--these are important projects.

Dawson says this:

Authorship exists in the workshop as an implicit assumption, in the sense that an exemplary text is attributed to an agent who has consciously employed techniques of writing. 'Reading as a writer' operates by approaching the text as a series of artistic choices made by the author...And while these techniques are implicitly attributed to a conscious organising agent, that agent is only the anonymous embodiment of the compositional techniques themselves (115)

So students to not attempt to read into the psychology or biography of the author, but are simply interested in the author as a set of artistic choices among available techniques and their application.

The writer is the origin of the piece, the owner and the one responsible for its development towards an exemplary standard. The writer may be consulted for clarification and subsequently put forward motivation, an intent, which was not apprehended or indeed was misinterpreted by readers. (115)

The intent referred to in a workshop is not the end-goal of the critical work done on a piece. Rather, it provides an aid to the work of remediation or of improving the piece.

The object of analysis for intellectual work performed on student manuscripts is not the reconstruction of the writer's intention; there is no desire to latch on to a single wordless meaning and enable its expression (115)

This is not to say that students do not perceive themselves as creative beings using writing as a medium for their ideas. The student manuscript is undoubtedly an authored work but it is not critically apprehended or evaluated within the discipline according to a paradigm of authorial criticism derived from Romanticism. Furthermore, the reading practices which enable Creative Writing to operate as a discipline are not reifications of the writer's consciousness. They are derived from formalist literary criticism. (115-116)

So CW workshops assume an "intent" in student work, but are only interested in that intent in as much as it expresses itself in formal, or technical, choices made in the process of writing the draft, choices which may have resulted in a poor communication of that technical intent and which therefore require revision.

It strikes me that the whole project would be impossible without the assumption and investigation of the student author's intent. How else would one suggest revisions? Based on what? Without appealing to the author and asking "What did you hope to accomplish here? Why did you choose this form and apply it in this way?" we are left to apply our own arbitrary standards of taste or "good writing" which could only result in a sort of aesthetic tyranny. Not to mention a stifling of the very creativity the discipline is meant to nurture if not teach. And eventually a blandness and sameness to student work.

I am going to have to read up on the New Critical "intentional fallacy" and see how this compares to the type of formalist intent Dawson finds at work in the workshop.

Dawson's conclusions for the chapter:

The poetics of Creative Writing, then, consists of a critical study of exemplary texts which is no different from...formalist criticism.... The end of this study is not so much a critical evaluation of these texts...nor a structuralist account of the linguistic codes which underlie all narrative, nor even a stockpiling of narrative methods and devices which may be of use to the writer, but the development of a method of 'reading as a writer.' This same method of criticism is then deployed in the analysis of student manuscripts, of works in progress, with the intention not of passing final evaluative judgement, but of aiding its progress to a completed form, and with the secondary intention of encouraging the aspiring writer to internalise this form of criticism as a method of revision and editing and an integral part of the 'creative' process. (120)

Reading is the deal. Makes sense in light of somethings I've read by David Lodge and others. Criticism is an essential part of the creative process, and it is this aspect of Creative Writing that we can actually teach. Although, I'm not totally opposed to the "stockpiling" of techniques. You have to know what's been done and how its been done in order to find new ways to play with whatever genre you're working in. Still, reading is it. At least according to Dawson. The student writer learns to 'read as a writer' and thereby internalizes the critic as a part of his/her creative process.

And all this time, I've been told to "silence the internal critic." Dawson is suggesting that the whole point is to strengthen, inform, and give voice to the internal critic. It's this critic that is doing all the work.

Leads:

T.S. Eliot enters the discussion once again. His essays "The Frontiers of Criticism" and "The Function of Criticism" (and there may be a few others) look like they may be required reading for me this semester.

A nice quote from Paul Engle (1964):

Criticism is not simply a fiendish attack on a book, but a constant part of the writer's job, beginning with his rejection of one concept in favour of another, one image, one phrase, rather than others.

More or less supports Eliot's theses, I believe.

Chapter 4: I skimmed it and am passing. It's a history of Creative Writing in Australia, which is interesting, but not so germane. They get a late start down under, and wind up with the workshop model just like everyone else. They're a bit more interdisciplinary. Clearly separated from the English Studies folks.

The real meat of the book, I hope, is up next: Chapter 5. "Negotiating Theory"

Dawson: Intro

Dawson states his orientation as follows:

Creative Writing functions as a discursive site for continuing debate over some of the foundational questions of literary studies: what is literature, what is the nature of the creative process, and what is the nature between the creative and the critical? It is possible, then, to see the pedagogical strategies which underpin writing workshops themselves as responses to these foundational questions. As a result I intend to approach Creative Writing not as a practice (creativity), or as a synonym for literature, but as a discipline: a body of knowledge and a set of techniques for imparting knowledge. (2)

I like his list of questions, as they are the ones I'm interested in, too. He nicely frames the relationship between pedagogy and theory in a way that allows him to read classroom practice as enactments of and/or responses to theory. I'm not sure what to make of the idea of CW as a "body of knowledge." Makes sense in terms of its location in academia, but maybe too limiting...

Dawson says he aims to place CW within a "history of crisis" in English studies:

Creative Writing first developed disciplinary identity in American universities alongside the New Criticism, in mutual opposition to scholarship in English Studies. Writing programmes expanded at the same time as the rise of Theory but became entrenched in opposition to it as a means of retaining this disciplinary identity. This is because Theory called into question the privileged category of literature, the raison d'etre of Creative Writing. (6)

I think there are a few lines worth investigating here, and I wonder how much theoretical work Dawson will be able to do over the course of his book. First, New Criticism is often adopted by folks in CW as the foundation of the workshop and its method of critiquing student work, but this stance is apparently adopted in spite of the "fallacies" of New Criticism, the "Affective" and "Intentional" fallacies actually work against the project of CW, at least as I see it. CW teaches writers to write intentionally and in order to affect readers, right? So if the discipline is to adopt New Critical methods, it must do so carefully, justifying what it is appropriating and its choices about what to leave behind.
Second, there's a boatload of work to do in defending CW against or within Theory. Dawson puts his finger right on the sore here: CW has, by and large, not adapted to the age of Theory. Even calling ours a "post-Theory" age is not sufficient grounds for dismissing the theoretical work of the last several decades, as Dawson explains that "post-Theory" simply means we've entered a phase of incorporating the challenges of Theory into our teaching practices. I'd like to see what I can do to address CW in terms of Theory, and I'll be interested to see how much ground Dawson gains on this issue.

Three questions Dawson wants to ask (very helpful):

(1) instead of asking whether writers need formal training or whether teaching the craft is helpful for writers, and instead of producing more handbooks on the craft of writing, we must ask what are the theoretical underpinnings of the practical writing workshop, what are the assumptions about literature which allow writing instruction to take place; (2) instead of questioning the academic rigour of the writing workshop, we must ask what constitutes knowledge in Creative Writing, and how does work produced by teachers and students in Creative Writing (i.e. their 'research') contributed to knowledge in Literary Studies—and this also means asking what is the function of literature in modern Literary Studies; (3) instead of bemoaning a split between writers and critics we must ask what position of literary authority can a writer assume in the academy, not as an artistic practitioner, but as an intellectual? (6)

'Nuff said. I'll save comment for his answers to these.

The remainder of the intro is taken up by three sections: "Can writing be taught?" "Should writing be taught?" and "The garret and the ivory tower."

The first two questions are common enough in the discourse about CW pedagogy, although I find them rather dull and purposeless. CW is taught, and taught widely, a fact which seems to me to make these questions moot. We should wash our hands of these questions and move on to how to teach CW. Except for one thing. CW is often taught as if it cannot be taught, and so the question of "if" is unfortunately enmeshed with the question of "how." Dawson comments thusly:

The irony of the debate over whether writing can be taught, which was triggered by the rise of Creative Writing, is that most writing courses themselves tend to operate with the notion of innate talent, claiming only that talent can be nurtured in a sympathetic environment: a community of writers where the practical skills of literary craft can be taught, and where students become better readers of literature and better critics of their own work. In fact, it is common for classes in Creative Writing to regulate enrollment numbers by requiring the submission of a folio which displays creative potential. (11)

WTF, right? This seems especially odd to me in light of the fact that Composition Theory has progressed swimmingly past these questions and has established itself within academia to such an extent that you will not find in the pages of CCC or College English anyone wondering about—or even dreaming they should bother defending the discipline against—the question of whether writing can be taught. CW suffers under a burden of excessive, specious privilege. Fiction and poetry must be placed in a special class, apart from the essay, if their instruction is to require its own justification. I say, if writing can be taught, writing can be taught; what do genres matter? But this excessive, specious privilege has a long history, is tied to notions of genius that have held claim on us for thousands of years. So bucking the trend may take some work. I'm personally disposed just to ignore the questions and move on. I think this movement might actually prove to be the better answer. Anyway...

The final section is taken up with the metaphors of the garret and the tower and their relationship to one another. Not much here that catches my interest, so I'll not comment any further.



Leads:

He cites Donald Morton and Mas'ud Zavarzadeh (1988) as a source that critiques CW workshops as failing to respond to the challenge of Theory.