Harper and Kroll: Creative Writing Studies

*Creative Writing Studies: Practice, Research and Pedagogy.* Ed Graeme Harper and Jeri Kroll. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters LTD, 2008. Print.

Three useful articles here. Fraser for the value of post-structural theory. McLoughlin for a framing of the project. Hardy for a negative example of the application of the intentional fallacy to the workshop.

Fraser, Gregory. "A Translator's Tale."

Fraser considers himself a translator in the sense that he devotes himself "'translating' the discourses of critical theory into the art and discipline of Creative Writing" (152). Fraser is especially interested in translating post-structural and postmodern theory into CW practice. The primary value of this theory to CW students, according to Fraser, is that is saves them from "parochialism" and/or "provincial attitudes." Understanding sophisticated theory allows authors to write sophisticated creative work.

The value of understanding Foucault's work is that it leads to closer examinations of power relations:

Without a fine-tuned awareness of 'minute and everyday' expressions of power, as well as of larger authoritarian forces in culture (not to mention the continual commingling of the two), Creative Writing students may open their work to criticism of parochialism...[S]killful authorship demands a keen perception of authority in its innumerable forms—in big business and government, to local-level yet no-less-complex exchanges between parents and kids, to 'everyday' (and often seemingly power-neutral) interactions with friends, lovers, and perfect strangers...It is frequently this vision of power that leads students to subtler works of fiction, drama, and poetry. It helps them avoid the narrow view that simply ignores the play of power, and the similarly limited vision that believes power to be located solely in institutions divorced, form, and standing above, the 'everyday'. (157)

Postmodern notions of the de-centering of discourse and the subject help "emerging writers de-essentialize their characters and destabilize formulaic plots" (160).

Lacan for characters:

I find that the Lacanian notion of deferred desire can help students create characters whose motivations are less predictable, more open to surprise. (160)

And Lacan for poetry:

Lacanian theories about selfhood have a special force, as well, for student poets. At the onset, many students who wish to write poems proceed from myths of wholeness about the self Students often write poems to voice what they take to be the essence of an inner being. They seek // to capture some final, genuine truth about an allegedly unique emotion or experience. And these underlying assumptions often produce texts that reach for effect...Lacanian theory can help students recognize not so much the fragmentation of an ultimately unified albeit imperiled self (a modernist conception), but the cultural/linguistic manufacture of the very idea of selfhood (a more postmodern assertion). Such a perspective gives students a different kind of freedom to adopt masks and to explore self-contradictions as generative rather than logically fallacious. Lacan can't help students completely shed the dominant fictions of culture (none of us can do that), but his thinking can encourage students to recognize and tamper with these assumptions in unexpected, artistically vitalizing ways. (160-1)

And Lacan for the creative process:

Students may in fact become more willing, after a little training in Lacanian theory, to let language (rather than a sense of stable selfhood) guide the poetic process. They may allow language to suggest unstable constructions of selfhood, flickers of desire, suggestions of unconscious strings of motivation. This can lead to stronger poems. (161)

Derrida has some value, too:

Derrida's thought can 'free' them [students] from the 'tyranny of the central idea.' Such freedom frequently leads to greater flexibility in characterization, plot development, and language use. By not beginning with a main theme or idea, students avoid working predictably down the page. (162)

I'm not as convinced by this argument. I've yet to see a constructive application of Deconstruction that works. And how could such a thing work? Derrida's thought is liberating for some, since it allows for the undoing of established categories, etc... But I'm not sold on the idea that reading "Structure, Sign, and Play" will allow students to write less predictably, or that whatever they'll come up with instead will be preferable.

McLoughlin, Nigel. "Creating an Integrated Model for Teaching Creative Writing: One Approach."

McLoughlin speaks of "writerly criticism":

At the center I write. Everything stems from that. If I didn't write, I would not be interested in writerly criticism, because to write means one must also criticise in a writerly fashion. Writerly criticism is // different from literary criticism. There is a difference of viewpoint. Literary criticism is concerned largely from the reader's viewpoint. What impact the text has on the reader, how different readers may read a text. While writerly criticism is concerned with that also, it is only part of the story, it is only ever a means to an end. A writer will examine a text critically in order to look closely at the effects it might have on the reader, and at different ways the text may be read, but the motivation is different. The writer may want to add an ambiguity or remove one; a writer may wish to engender a specific effect or set of effects on the reader. Either way, writerly critics are concerned with making the text 'better'. They tend to start from the premise that, this would work better if... (88-89, his ellipsis)

McLoughlin feels that teaching creative writing is, to some extent, teaching students the art and practice of writerly criticism. It allows them to practice such criticism on their own texts. However, he does not feel that they are best taught by workshoping their own texts:

It quickly became apparent that exemplars of good and bad writing worked much better as a way of demonstrating, in practical terms, particularly fine writing or cliche and redundancy etc. in a less emotionally charged atmosphere. It enabled students to criticise and edit the writing of others and by extension their own writing, through using worked examples from other writers that pointed out certain features that students could recognise in their own work or try and adapt to their own uses. (89)

Here's how to pass writerly criticism on to students:

Teaching students to be critical requires balance between bringing out ideas they may have about how a text is working (or not working) and whether the text is good of its type. That // means also teaching them that just because they don't 'like' a text, it does not mean that it is not working, or that there is nothing they can learn from it as a writer. In order to teach this, as great a variety of texts as possible are introduced and the students are asked to interrogate the text from several viewpoints: Does the text work? How does it work? Could it be improved and if so how? What are the constituencies out of which the text is written? What can the student learn from the text as writer?

Later, he expands slightly on these last questions:

How does the author achieve his/her effects? What tropes do they use? What can I learn from these texts as a writer? (92)

The rest of his essay is taken up with the elements that must be taught and the sequence in which they are best taught. It's a good essay and a fine prescription for CW. Strikes me that this along with Shelnutt's article would make for a healthy class discussion, since she provides the best critique yet of CW status quo, and he provides an solid alternative model.

LEAD:
He cites Kolb's model of the writing cycle from Jarvis, P. (2004) *Adult Education & Lifelong Learning: Theory and Practice*. London: Routledge Falmer.

Hardy, Nat. "Gonzo-Formalism: A Creative Writing Meta-Pedagogy for Non-Traditional Students"

I was hoping for more from this guy, but (as far as I could tell) he was promoting the traditional workshop in grandiose terms.

Most importantly to me, he exposes his unexamined assumption that the author of a text should be silent while the class critiques his/her work:

On a symbolic level, the workshop...embodies the 'death of the author' notion, because the monological author must restrain any response to criticism until the critical mass has concluded its interpretive, or poly- // phonic, review. For any author, donning the scold's bridle for the duration of workshop dialect is the most difficult, nay emasculating, part of workshop. Verbal castration sounds excruciating, and, for the silenced writer, it is as if he or she must quietly endure a discriminating panel of critics who cast literary judgments on the author's work...Once critical discussion of the creative work has concluded, the author can address his or her live audience to clarify ambiguities, ask questions or, in some cases, beg forgiveness. (103-104)

First of all, it's not possible to comment on this without first addressing Hardy's sexism. How can "any author" feel that something is "emasculating"? Has he ever felt de-feminated? Or, better yet, how can "he or she" endure "verbal castration?" Do his female students have their balls cut off by words? Or is that that all words have testes, and the workshop removes these, neutering each author's language?

In any case, this strikes me as really bad practice and leads to much wasted class time. Gonzo-formalist wasted class time, I guess. Authors are left on their own to measure the distance between intention and effect, rather than the whole class working intentionally and conscientiously on this project together. I guess "Gonzo" is his justification for all the weird, wasteful turns that class discussion can take when it is not directed toward productive criticism of the text. Radical.

Morton and Zavarzadeh

Morton, Donald and Mas'ud Zavarzadeh. "The Cultural Politics of the Fiction Workshop." Cultural Critique, No. 11 (Winter, 1988-1989), pp. 155-173

M&Z present a Marxist critique of the realist fiction workshop. My feelings about their work are similar to my feelings about Marxist critique in general: I appreciate their work in opening up the political dimensions of the workshop for examination, and when they make clear their own agenda, I lose interest.

They draw from another Marxist to show that realism isn't just an aesthetic category, but is an ideology that reinforces patriarchal Capitalism by affirming for the reader the status quo. They feel that realism has this effect as its "political agenda." Odd to think of an abstract category as in and of itself motivated to support anything at all outside of itself.

They begin by listing some of the assumptions of the workshop that have come under attack by postmodern critical theory:

the idea of the free "subject," the integrity of "experience," the sharp separation of "reading" from "writing," the individual "voice," the "authority" of the author, uniqueness of "style," the obedience of the reader, "originality," and "intuition." (155)

They certainly could have demonstrated all of these points without the Marxist slant, but the political agenda is important to these authors:

The fiction workshop is not a "neutral" place where insights are developed, ideas/advice freely exchanged, and skills honed. It is a site of ideology: a place in which a particular view of reading/writing texts is put forth and through this view support is given to the dominant social order. By regarding writing as "craft" and proposing realism as the mode of writing, the fiction workshop in collaboration with humanist critics fulfills its ideological role in the dominant academy by preserving the subject as "independent" and "free."...a subject who perceives herself as self-constituted and free so...can then "freely" collaborate with the existing social system, a collaboration that assures the continuation of patriarchal capitalism (161)

So by excluding the examination of cultural and historical forces, the workshop preserves these forces in their present form.

Their critique of the realist workshop's view of creativity:

"Creativity," in other words, is the ability to transcend the political, the economic, and in short the "material" conditions of writing (transcend the "order external to" oneself) as a social person and arrive at a transdiscursive space. It is in this unbounded space, free of all political, social, economic, and linguistic constraints, that the creative person is able to penetrate the opacities of culture and experience reality in its absolute plenitude. (163)

The emphasis on "voice" and "finding" one's unique, singular, personal voice reinforces the political agenda of the independent subject:

Far from being "singular," the voice is in fact a "construct"-a politically needed cultural product produced // by professionals of ideology such as...writers who direct fiction workshops across the country. The commodification of"voice" and of individuality in the fiction workshop is in fact the major political role played by creative writing programs (165-166)

On character:

Character (the model for the free subject) is depicted as a unitary and coherent individual who is always unique and, in his most authentic mode, solitary-like an entrepreneur, he works all by himself. Through individual characters realistically portrayed, the reader discovers his own subjectivity. The valorization of character in the fiction workshop, in other words, is part of its cultural politics in legitimizing the ruling values of capitalism. (167)

They don't like causality, either. Character, realism and causality are forces of patriarchal Capitalism. Seems kind of arbitrary. What if a-causal, non-realistic fiction without characters sold like hot-cakes? Wouldn't that make "experimental" fiction an ideological apparatus of the state? And what of realist fiction published in communist and/or socialist nations? Is that capitalism creeping in? Or simply a reinforcement of their own status quo, making realism exactly the neutral aesthetic M&Z don't want it to be.

Here's what they have to say about Nadine Gordimer, of all people:

Her texts work to legitimate a reformist program by offering a local critique of apartheid and thus help to forestall a radical reorganization of social arrangements in South Africa. In this respect, she is actually undertaking the same ideological program being undertaken by many white South African investment bankers and other capitalists against the wishes of the
present government. (171)

Which exposes the problem with Marxist criticism. It's all very smart and interesting and then eventually reveals that nothing short of full Marxist propaganda will ever be good enough. If you're not advocating the overthrow of the state and the installation of worker control over the means of production, you're just a puppet of capitalist ideology no matter how socially progressive your message.

And, of course, these guys are hypocrites. They publish marketable prose that in no way upsets the status quo. For all their talk of radical theory, M&Z have adjusted quite well to the comforts of the academy and the security of tenure (or the tenure process). In fact, publications like this are little more than efforts at tenure, since Marxist critique is a salable good in the academic marketplace. Journals are likely to publish, publications are likely to please tenure committees, and tenure makes for happy "Marxists", securely positioned in the Capitalist regime, their work appropriated by an intelligentsia with no interest in large-scale social reform.

Here's what they think the workshop should be doing:

Instead of "resisting" theory in the name of the free subject, the fiction workshop should be the pedagogical space in which the processes of signification in texts of culture are to be examined and the construction of what is represented as "reality" is made intelligible. By undertaking such an inquiry and political critique, rather than adopting the traditional stance of the humanist ideologies and "resisting" theory, the radical fiction workshop will propose theory as resistance to all semiotic constructs of culture which are offered as "natural," "eternal," and "unchangeable" and will discover under their seeming eternity the historical interests of the dominant social class and its texts. (173)

So essentially, they want to do to student texts what they did to Gordimer: "Can't you see, dear student, that you are merely a puppet of patriarchal Capitalism?" They want to forward their own ideology in the classroom, and their own postmodern aesthetic which they mistakenly feel best expresses their ideology. (*Gravity's Rainbow* was a bestseller, right? As was *Underworld*.) There is no indication from M&Z about how Marxism will make students better writers, but then, making students better writers is not the goal of these authors. They are not interested in helping students learn to write, they are interested in posing as radical social critics in order to forward their careers in the academy. Just like the rest of us.

Anyway, they do provide a valuable service in opening a conversation about the politics and culture of the workshop. They point out all the right problems, even if their solution lacks integrity.

LEADS:
Pierre Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production, trans. Geoffrey Wall (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 66.

Derrida *On Grammatology*

Marjorie Perloff, " 'Homeward Ho!': Silicon Valley Pushkin," American Poetry Review (November-December 1986): 45

Anticipating Barthes

I've not read more than "Death of the Author" and a few online secondary sources, but it seems to me that a deeper study of Barthes would be most productive. For folks like Mayers (and Dawson, too, I think) who feel that Theory is essentially theory of interpretation, Barthes presents a compelling alternative. Not that he didn't have a bit to say about interpretation, but he did write quite a bit about writing. And it seems he may provide a way into a more fully developed CWT.

The responses I've seen to Barthes "Death" from CW scholars (Wandor and others) seem to take his title more seriously than the rest of the essay. Yes, he declares the author dead, but what he means by "Author" is something most actual authors don't relate to anyway. His idea of the "scriptor" is something that we should be taking seriously, considering its implications for the writing process and CW pedagogy.

There's a very nice wiki on Roland Barthes, which includes a discussion of some of his key terms, like readerly/writerly texts and author/scriptor. And an excellent bit on "neutral and novelistic writing" that gives some nice leads into his work as it bears on questions relevant to creative writers.

A solid essay on Barthes at third factory gives a great overview of the work, with notes on its relevance to poetry in general and American poetry specifically. Good leads from this one.

From what I glean, if I want to go big on Barthes this semester, I should pick up The Rustle of Language, Writing Degree Zero, and The Pleasures of the Text at minimum. S/Z might need a skim as well.

His distinction between doxa and para-doxa, a distinction I'm not quite clear on yet, promises to be rather useful in discussing the social/political aspects of CW. The doxa is language limited by social pop-culture norms??? And para-doxa is use of language that somehow escapes those limitations. Something like that. Seems like this discussion would be useful for helping writers think about how to write given the social and political aspects of all writing.

Anyway, this could be a good direction to go. Maybe Barthes and Fish this semester. With a quick look at New Criticism? ...still sorting it out.

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"