the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

i'm not sure i've been helped, exactly....

Yesterday, my 20th Century Literature class met to do peer reviews on our term papers. I wrote mine on Heart of Darkness, not only because I love this novella, but because I wanted to work with Janice.

This is a dual-prof class. Both are great, but Janice is...dunno how to put it. She tends to be very prepped for each class. She's excellent in guiding and pacing class discussion with the results of her studies--background on the author, time and place of the novel, reception, critical reviews, etc. I don't have enough experience with Laura (the other prof) to know what her style is, or how much it appeals to me. I like and respect them both, of course,* but I know Janice will demand much of me. So it was a plus that she taught the book I wanted to write a critical paper on (which means she is my advisor and grader for this paper).

* Well, maybe it isn't a given, but I don't know that I haven't not liked and respected any of the instructors I've spent time with at Boulder. We don't always see eye to eye--more on that in a minute--but I find that they consistently are invested in our education, and are there to help and guide. It's really a great atmosphere.

So Janice, see, has...well...the sort of approach I grew up with. To wit: she doesn't encourage a whole lot. She expects effort and a personal drive for excellence, and offers criticism on what she sees you doing wrong. The assumption is that you understand what you're doing right, and that you'll appreciate being told what isn't working, since we all want to improve.

I understand completely that this approach doesn't work for everyone, or even most. Some of my peers find it absolutely demoralizing. They leave her office believing they cannot write, have nothing original or worthwhile to say, and maybe they'd be better off pumping gas somewhere.

For me, it's good. I respond to this. I've been trained. My spirit has been broken (in this admittedly idiosyncratic sense). I can take a whipping without flinching, and without taking it personally. My parents taught me this lesson well, but so many years in the military iced the cake, as it were.

Two of my classmates reviewed my paper yesterday. One is a PhD student and apologized because she couldn't think of many suggestions for improvement (she did, however, have some solid input, even though she essentially said, "This is a draft?! Yer kiddin me."). The other was a more careful reader, and she pointed out several points I might argue more effectively, ways to make the paper stronger and tighter, etc. Overall, though, I fared well. I knew, at the same time, that the true test would come when Janice offered her feedback.

I was in with her for almost 45 minutes for a 30 minute consultation. Arguing.

My paper argues that Joseph Conrad did not, in fact, exempt British imperialism while it condemned Belgian imperialism--contrary to scholarly argument so far--and Heart of Darkness actually points an accusing finger at Conrad himself, and as such, the novella is something of a penance for what he saw but did nothing to stop. (For those of you who don't know, he spent 6 months in the Belgian Congo in 1890 or so, and is routinely acknowledged by scholars to essentially be Marlow, the secondary narrator, as well as the unnamed primary narrator of the tale.)

If you haven't read it and don't care, just push the "I Believe" button and I'll press on, ok?

Janice began by pointing out that I seem to be writing about two different things. I said I hadn't had time to tie it together, but I'm aware of it. She said OK.

That was the part that went well.

I'd written--and yes, it's relevant--that fiction works only as long as it is believable. Even if it is about, oh, I don't know...floating mountains and magical fairies, the interplay between characters must somehow ring true for the reader. If it does, it "works." If it doesn't, it makes no dent, and probably won't be read much. If we do not identify with the characters--and particularly the narrator--we will learn nothing.

She began her critique by saying that this critique only applies to a very narrow, specific genre of fiction, and that I've generalized.

Me: I disagree. All fiction works (or doesn't) on the same principle.

Her: There's a great body of work that argues the opposite: that fiction should actually distance itself from its audience. Let's say you have a narrator and halfway through the novel you discover he is an unreliable psychopath. The novel only works if you can distance yourself from him.

Me: I disagree. There must be something about him that I am able to identify with as a human for the narrative to work. Even if he's psychopathic and unreliable.

She thinks for a minute, then suggests I am wrong. I cannot just dismiss as inconsequential 50 years of scholarship.

Me: Why not? Psychoanalytic critics dismiss the copious scholarship (and other approaches) which have evolved over the years.

Deep sigh on her end, and a search for words. She doesn't have to search long. She's brilliant and articulate (no...really!).

She said my commentary on this point is just unfounded speculation, and it actually is contrary to the thrust of literary criticism. At this point, I brought up a paper I'd written earlier in the semester....

The paper in question was on an intro and a couple of chapters of a book by Sander Gilman (incidentally, a man with the longest CV I've ever seen--112 pages long). He provides historical :) information on assumptions about sexuality and body "features." But then...he tries to connect it--artificially, in my opinion--to his pet literary theory--psychoanalysis. I essentially wrote that the information was captivating and indispensible, and enlightens my reading of texts of that period, but the efforts to tie his findings to psychoanalysis is awkward and comes across as an afterthought tacked on at the end.

I said this with a considerable amount of eloquence. I think.

Then I blasted psychoanalysis. Think about it. I'm a very logical person. I crave things to make sense, and to be demonstrably grounded in reality. Psychoanalysis does neither.

I did well on the paper--which Janice graded, as well--but she gave me copious feedback regarding the fact that I was not called upon to critique psychoanalysis. I spoke with her afterwards, and pointed out that the thing that bothered me about literary criticism is that some of the popular theories/approaches are based on nothing but speculation. They often make assumptions/assertions and arguments I find laughable. Janice at that point tried to explain that these theories are admittedly not necessarily grounded in scientific fact (even though, I'll interject, psychoanalysis is still practiced as a "science"), but they offer a unique approach to the text.

I say, OK, thank you. I'm willing to accept that.

So. Back to the current paper.

Janice: You cannot just toss out your speculations like that and argue from them.

Me: Why not? All the literary theory I've read speculates based upon assumptions that I don't agree with, and they are somehow taken seriously. What am I, chopped liver?

I didn't put it quite like that.

She kept explaining how I need to contextualize my theory and reading of the text within current criticism, and this isn't current.*

* The scholarly work I'd used and referenced copiously was written anywhere from the '60s to 2007. Almost all of it uses biographical information about Conrad to support its argument. She didn't mean that my articles weren't current; she meant that the style of criticism I am doing is essentially no longer valid.

I thought about it a minute--I was oddly relaxed and unconcerned throughout this discussion--then I said: I see. If I base my observations or viewpoint upon some theorist who has for some reason been published and has a following, I'm ok. It doesn't matter that my observations hold just as much water as theirs; what matters is whether others have taken the theory seriously, and in large enough numbers to gain a following.

Janice: No. It isn't like that at all.

I sit back and wait for the explanation.

Janice: I agree that psychoanalysis is problematic. There's an argument to be made that it is ahistorical.*

* If this makes sense to you, please explain it to me at your leisure.

Somehow, this didn't help my observations about how psychoanalytic criticism gets taken seriously but my thoughts on the subject are not. I'm still doing it wrong. OK.

Janice (switching tacks): You conflate the author with the narrator a lot. The work in literary criticism in the last 50 years strives to separate them.

Me: I'm aware that the author and the narrator and characters are all different people. But the scholars I've used here argue that Marlow is Conrad. I didn't make that up.

Janice: Why do you care about the author? Who cares if he excused British imperialism or not?

Me: I do.

Janice: But it's about the author--not the book.

Me: I disagree. It's about both. My first master's degree is in history, and I'm fascinated with historical contextualization of literature (i.e., historical criticism), as well as biographical criticism.*

* Historical criticism and biographical criticism often go hand in hand. Historical criticism is to research views and beliefs, political movements etc. contemporary to the story/poem/play/novel in question, then place it within this context in order to offer a "reading" of the story. It seeks to understand, as well as possible, how people of that time and place would have read the work, and how it probably shaped their lives. Biographical criticism, pretty obviously, just goes one deeper and tries to learn the beliefs, pet peeves, habits etc. of the work's author, and attempts to divine what she :) probably meant the work to convey.

Janice: Studying history isn't studying literature.

(Wul...ja. :roll:)

Janice: That sort of criticism hasn't been done for at least 50 years. Criticism has come a long way since then.

Me: I disagree.

Janice: Well, think about it. You read Chinua Achebe [famous 70's critique of Heart of Darkness arguing that Conrad was "a thoroughgoing racist," a piece I'd argued vehemently against early in the semester]. Compare his criticism to Bratlinger. You have to acknowledge that Bratlinger is better.

Me: No. I think it's easier for me to identfy with because we're both Westerners and we live in roughly the same time, so it's easier to see his perspective, but that doesn't make it better.

Janice (switching tacks): The criticism of today is built upon the criticism written decades ago. I'd argue that it has improved. Would you?

Me: No. Criticism today is just as much a fad as criticism of decades back. The criticism of today is what is in vogue. That doesn't mean it's better. It's just different.

She talked a while about how people then thought examining the historical era and the biography of the author told them a great deal about the text, but that we've since come to realize that that wasn't serious textual criticism. Postcolonial and Postmodern criticism is recent, and therefore, serious.

I listened. I did. I thought about what she was saying. Then I said...(guess).

I disagree.

Maybe this--arguing with a prof who controls one's grade--isn't so smart. I don't know. But the whole point is to learn, to understand, and frankly...I don't get it. If psychoanalysis is just an interesting lens through which we interpret literature, then how can any particular literary analysis, however apparently brilliant, that we employ now be better?

So I made this argument: if literary criticism is not necessarily grounded in reality, then would my stated viewpoint get more credence if I couched it in an accepted creed, where I could quote someone else's ungrounded opinions that happened to get a following?

She said no. I don't remember why, frankly. By this point, I was painfully aware that I was writing for a prof who believed certain approaches had validity and others (most notably, mine) did not.

I pointed out that I do not see literary criticism as improving from time to time, but as simply different ways of viewing literature. You are a Marxist thinker, say; you will approach the text from that basic understanding of the world, and offer your interpretation. I am a historical and biographical critic; I view the text from these angles. This approach is no more or less valid than a psychoanalytic approach.

Think of the text as a gem with many facets. There's a Marxist facet, a psychoanalytic facet, a historical facet, a postcolonial facet and so on. There is no "one best way" to view the text. They're all just different perspectives on it.

Janice: So...if criticism doesn't improve, then why bother improving your paper?

Me: I'm not saying my paper cannot be strengthened. I just don't buy the notion that postcolonial criticism is necessarily better than historical and biographical criticism. When I wrote my paper on Sander Gilman's work mid-semester, you told me that literary theory doesn't need to be scientifically demonstrable; it's more or less a specific way of viewing the text. It teases out different aspects of the text. But somehow, I have to prove that my theory holds water?

Janice: You can't just disregard 50 years of scholarship that argues with your theory. There's a significant number of people who find your assumptions problematic.

Me: OK. There's a significant number of people who find psychoanalysis problematic, but people still write criticism from that perspective. What is it that makes that approach acceptable but mine not? Because enough people buy into psychoanalysis, scholars can write papers based on those ideas?

Janice: No.

We made no real headway. I finally excused myself, as I'd overstayed my appointment and was late to class. She said, "Well...good luck."

Now that I've thought about it, I think this is the problem: She seems to think literary criticism gets better over the years, that one must work with current approaches like it's biology or something. But lit crit isn't a science; it's an art. To say that criticism done in the past ten years is better than criticism done 50 years ago is like saying that Hemingway and Faulkner are better than Shakespeare and Milton. They're just different--but not better.

DISCLAIMER: Rather like Congress, I have taken the liberty of altering my words in the written transcript to what I wish I'd said. Unlike Congress, however, I have remained true to the intent.

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