BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Creation >

how to write critically?

  
 
Disco is My Class War
06:45 / 23.08.01
How does one write critically? I'm talking specifically about non-fiction here, essays, articles, reportage: 'literary non-fiction', some people call it.

I'm writing an article about this at the moment. (Yes, okay, I'm writing my goddamn editorial for Voiceworks, and it's about writing again.) I'm only gonna post the first fragment, but I'd really like people to argue with me. What is it that makes writing critical? How do you get critical? What skills do you need? is it in the story? Is it in the points of view you make, the shifts in focus? Your 'primary source material', ie eyewitness accounts and interviews? Is it your attitude? Your style? How cool you are?

__________________

‘The power of language to confront us with the vivid, the frightening or the unaccustomed is equalled only by its opposite—the power of language to muffle any such alarms.’
—John Carey, Faber Book of Reportage

‘... managing to stammer in one’s own language...’
—Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues.

A friend of mine said recently that the pieces of writing she likes most in Voiceworks are those that don’t assume a position of authority on any given topic. Rather they’re pieces in which the writer is speaking from experience, as experience stands when you’re under 25. She says it’s the grittiness she likes, the sometimes unintentional honesty and directness, the sense that this is a rant someone typed up in the midst of their messy bedroom. I can understand her point: there’s a kind of experimental and often intensely, deliberately casual honesty in submissions we receive at Voiceworks. It’s as if what’s written doesn’t matter, isn’t important—when of course it is important, it does matter, and yet there’s a safety in pretending to ignore that possibility. Because acknowledging that writing is meaningful is a huge risk, especially when you haven’t let many people see it or aren’t terribly confident as a writer or a person in the world.

To call something ‘fiction’ makes a space for that where calling it ‘non-fiction’—with all its claims to truth, or honesty, or research—doesn’t. Which is why we get heaps of fiction submissions at Voiceworks, and not quite so many non-fiction pieces. Usually, a piece of non-fiction in Voiceworks will be an interview or an article about something completely unrelated to you yourself. It’s safer that way, right?

And yet, that’s not only why we’re here. (You as well as me. We all own this joint.) In some sense, Voiceworks is also a place where people under 25 can be experts, not ‘practice’ experts in order to make us all into good little journalists or novelists, but actually talking about things important to us, on our own terms, in our own words. And surely that involves taking on the weight of writing non-fiction, at some point. The question is, how? How is it possible to write about stuff close to your heart or your crotch or your fist but still do all the 'expert' things that writers of non-fiction do?
 
 
Ethan Hawke
10:42 / 23.08.01
I think the most effective "critical" writing mostly follows classic modes of argument and rhetoric. An orderly argument (SMP, whatever) is much more likely to be persuasive than a rant, which is what seems to be passing for critical writing these days. I have recently become a big fan of structure; or at least of seeing the structure of an argument and subverting it in subtle little ways. This may have to do with the fact that the most interesting and persuasive non-fiction I've read in recent years has been science writing. Someone like Malcolm Gladwell writes about "scientific" topics at their most expansive, from abstract laws of physical behavior to how your safety in an automobile is determined in Detroit.

Such writing can be personal and political, if the author uses examples from her personal life in order to illustrate larger points. I t would be more effective, to me, if a writer focused on one small personal event and made one limited point about society from it than if she were to relate a whole bunch of abstract slogans and goals in a rant.

So, to sum up, I guess the most powerful criticism to my mind is (1) structured and (2) limited.
 
 
grant
12:47 / 24.08.01
I'm not sure critical writing has to be as much argumentative as engaged - something where you're following a writer's train of thought about either a social problem, a text, or even personal crisis.
It has to do two things at once: engage the text, and in so doing engage the reader.
This can be violent engagement (argument) or it can be sexual (feeling it out, you know, finding the ticklish points of bliss), or some other kind of involvement.
It can't be exterior to the experience - can't be commentary or mired in mystery. (That's always my own problem with the style).
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
15:27 / 28.08.01
Bump.

todd, I'm torn between wanting to agree that critical writing needs some kind of structure and discipline, and needing to ask: whatever do you mean by "classic modes of argument and rhetoric"? I keep reading that as "classical modes", which is very limiting, although probably not what you meant - however, the point still stands, I can't help but feel you're making one particular form of discourse with a specific cultural context into the universal ideal (and I'm not evcen sure which modes of argument and rhetoric you mean by "classic"). Whereas in fact, the kinds of argument and rhetoric specific to that "classic" mode of discourse aren't universal at all, and may not be useful in every given situation. Journalists know this, that's why things like house styles exist.

Much more I want to say here, but am leaving office. Laters.

[ 28-08-2001: Message edited by: The Flyboy ]
 
 
Disco is My Class War
06:50 / 31.08.01
I think structure is important, yes, and so is 'limiting' yourself, sometimes. But as Flyboy says, what count as 'classic rhetorical techniques'?

More importantly, maybe, is the difference between 'fact' and 'feeling' (information/opinion) and how these are deployed in non-fiction... But I'm trying to leave the office too, and don't have time to expand.
 
 
agapanthus
11:59 / 31.08.01
To me, the non-fiction critical (essay), piece must primarily engage with the text that it addresses itself to. And it must, to be worth writing/reading, come at it from at least a combination of two angles: philosophy and history. In other words if you want to write a lit/crit essay on Easton-Ellis'"Less than Zero", it maks for better writing/reading if you can talk about the nature and history of American middle-class, post-adolescent anomie in the 1980s, in a time of Reganomics, MTV and the expotential gathering of affluent baby-boomer offspring who find that there's nothing to push against, in an effort to mark out their collective self-hood, but the speed of fashion/ the fashion of speed.

Also, the piece worth a damn, usually contains, some sorta poetry in its form/structure: whether the writer uses their own experience, which, again, works to the extent that it digs deep into salient philosophy and history, or maintains an impersonal, authoritative voice, the structuring of ideas and word choice, are crucial in producing good criticism.

Ag.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
12:19 / 31.08.01
quote:Originally posted by agarchy:
In other words if you want to write a lit/crit essay on Easton-Ellis'"Less than Zero", it maks for better writing/reading if you can talk about the nature and history of American middle-class, post-adolescent anomie in the 1980s, in a time of Reganomics, MTV and the expotential gathering of affluent baby-boomer offspring who find that there's nothing to push against, in an effort to mark out their collective self-hood, but the speed of fashion/ the fashion of speed.

Well that's one perfectly valid way of writing a lit-crit essay on Less Than Zero - to place it in the social/historical/cultural context of the time. There are others. Depends what the subject of your essay is...

Which is sort of my point above. To a certain extent the subject matter should (and perhaps will inevitably) shape the style of the piece. Content dictating or at least suggesting form. The question is, to what extent if any do you check this - and to what end? For example, if you wanted to discuss the casual violence in Less Than Zero, you might decide to do so in an equally casual manner, or in an impassioned manner, or in a strictly academic manner. And each of these ways of talking about the violence in the book would result in a different essay, and each way could be argued to have its advantages. It might be necessary to write about the violence in a violent, emotive manner in order to highlight the fact that this kind of treatment of violence is what is (deliberately) missing from the book. Then again, you might want to reign this in in order not to alienate your readers. Or you might want to mimic the book's detached, flat treatment of violence to make a point.
 
  
Add Your Reply