Wednesday, May 18, 2011

The "I"s Have It, Once More With Feeling

This topic has generated more feedback than anything else I've written on this blog, and I find myself unable to let one of the comments in particular pass without more substantial comment. (First post, second post)

Jillian of A Room of One's Own took exception to my desire for book bloggers to use more evidence and do more analysis in book reviews. I don't agree with her, but not for the reasons she thinks we don't agree. This misunderstanding is worth thinking about.

She writes:
Some book bloggers are only journaling (me.)
I would far rather hear what someone personally thinks of a book (I), than what they've analyzed about it according to somebody ele's idea of proper reader response (one should/we believe/etc). In fact, I recoil at a dry 'review' of a book (analysis, supporting evidence, blah, blah, blah) rather than an embrace of the work as a dance beween I and the author.
 A few things to note here.

1. Some book bloggers are only journaling.

I know many people use blogs as reading journals, but my question is this: why make it public? I can only assume that the desire to journal online includes the desire to have people read what you write. My point is that if you readers, hell even one reader, who will read what you write about books, you have an opportunity to do more than journal. Pick your verb for what that is, but I am thinking along the lines of "enrich," "educate," "entertain," "inspire," "complicate," "contribute," and so on. If you are giving your opinions of books, you may well get a readership, but what is it that you are offering that readership? And how can you offer them more?

2. I would far rather hear what someone personally thinks of a book (I), than what they've analyzed about it according to somebody ele's idea of proper reader response.


Unless you are writing history or doing mere description/summary, there is no way to avoid writing what you "personally" think. I am not arguing, nor shall I ever, that there is a way to objective book reviewing. In fact, I am actually arguing for a much more transparent, contemplative subjectivity, a subjectivity that not only expresses your reaction, but gets into details about the source and nature of those reactions. One last thing here: since I write somewhat formally and from an academic background, many readers assume that I think only "dry" and "proper" writing about literature is acceptable. This could not be further from the truth: I want writing about literature to come in all flavors. A diverse, invigorated, on-going literary conversation is good for literature, and it's good for me. No matter the style though, writing about literature can be in service of making us all better readers. 


3. I recoil at a dry 'review' of a book (analysis, supporting evidence, blah, blah, blah) rather than an embrace of the work as a dance beween I and the author.


So do I. That's why I started a book blog and don't just write academic essays. The fact that this is positioned as an either/or choice for writing about literature gets to the heart of my thinking. I think that there is a wide, inhabitable space between impressionistic reviewing (describing the "dance") and scholarly writing. That analysis and evidence are cast out with academic/high criticism hurts book blogging. Analysis doesn't have to be boring, nor does using evidence. In fact, I think it can be amazingly illuminative, both for the reader and for the reviewer. Why do you hate the main character? Why do you think the plot is unlikely? What does that say about the book and what does it say about you? Why do you think that is? This is not the stuff of graduate seminars (though sometimes I wish it were)--this is the stuff of living an examined life. 
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I'm going to put a coda on this discussion with a bit of one my earlier posts. In it, I disagree with Sarah Mancuso's reading of the end of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. I include it here as an example of what I hope to do more often here, not as an exemplar for how other people should review. A few words about it after.



Mancuso on Freedom:

"...Freedom focuses on two fully human adults who, despite their history of betrayals, return to each other. When Patty and Walter drive away from the lake house, they complete the book’s convincing depiction of a mature marriage—one that survives serious conflicts and requires serious mercies. It isn’t nostalgia for Walter’s affair that broke my heart; it’s Patty’s forgiveness, and Walter’s forgiveness of her own betrayal, and the reminder that such forgiveness is possible..."
Mancuso reads Freedom's end with considerably more hope than I do. In her assessment of these novels, Mancuso provides compelling textual evidence, but here at the end she abandons direct quotation of the text. To my mind, one paragraph describes the nature of Walter and Patty's reconnection, and it is the reader's interpretation of that paragraph that will determine how positive their reconciliation is. I'll quote at length:

"Her eyes weren't blinking. There was still something almost dead in them, something very far away. She seemed to be seeing all the way through to the back of him and beyond, out into the cold empty space of the future in which they would both soon be dead, out into the nothingness that Lalitha and his mother and his father had already passed into, and yet she was looking straight into his eyes, and he could feel her getting warmer by the minute. And so he stopped looking at her eyes and started looking into them, returning their look before it was too late, before this connection between life and what came after was lost, and let her see all the vileness inside of him, all the hatreds of two thousand solitary nights, while the two of them were still in touch with the void in which the sum of everything they'd ever said or done, every pain they'd inflicted, every joy they'd shared, would weigh less than the smallest feather on the wind" (p. 559).
I find it difficult to call this moment forgiveness. Forgiveness implies a kind of ethical transaction in which wrongs against a moral system are pardoned. Here, the moral system is completely obliterated by "the void." This absence of ethics makes any transgression meaningless, any emotional benevolence null. Their relationship here is cast as a strategic alliance against nothingness--not a turn to each other as subjects of meaning and value.
But that’s me.  
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There are a few things I am pleased with here. First, I used a relevant quotation and looked at the passage in detail---no scholarly apparatus required. Second, my reader can follow my logic because they can look at the text in front of them. Third, I didn't even know I felt this way until I wrote about it. And this is where I will end: writing with analysis and evidence actually tells you more about what you think than you even know. You already know how you feel about something, what you don't know is why. Writing can be the most intense personal exploration there is, a place of deep subjectivity and discovery.


In short, write about books in a way only you can write about them. Do it generously, passionately, and deeply.  

10 comments:

  1. 'why make it public?'

    I remember being a livejournaller way back when and having maybe 2 people look at my posts every month. Honestly I wasn't running that particular journal to have people read it (although y'know I wouldn't have been upset if they had). I made it public, because the act of putting it online motivated me to actually put my thoughts together outside of my head, whether anyone saw it or not. I blog differently now, as I go looking for a community, discussion, or sometimes self centredly an audience. Still, there was a time when journalling was all about getting the words out of my head and writing for myself and maybe others use it that way as well.

    I've really enjoyed this series of posts btw. I like to see analysis crop up in the book blogosphere and try to have a go at it myself. I'd probably just say that writing in this way can take a lot of time, especially if you need to go off an retrieve quotations, which might exclude some bloggers from taking an analytical approach.

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  2. I've read every word of these posts! I find them thought provoking and impactful. I am approaching my reviews differently and hopefully will produce writing that is more honest. Thanks for taking this on!

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  3. *Jillian of A Room of One's Own took exception to my desire for book bloggers to use more evidence and do more analysis in book reviews.*

    No – I took exception to your suggestion that "I-centered reviewing covers for a relative lack of vocabulary.”

    I have yet to see you prove the above statement, which makes me seriously question your analytical skills.

    *writing with analysis and evidence actually tells you more about what you think than you even know. You already know how you feel about something, what you don't know is why. Writing can be the most intense personal exploration there is, a place of deep subjectivity and discovery.*

    This is your opinion. You’re inside your own head, and assume that because you don’t know what you think until you write it out, no one does.

    *Writing can be the most intense personal exploration there is*

    So can reading.

    I certainly don’t mean to suggest that your ideas here aren’t sound – or that they can’t convey inspiration. But you seem to think that the only way to convey inspiration is to think and write the way you have decided is inspiring. And that blogging has no purpose beyond inspiring as you have laid it out, brick by brick. And that no one can be inspiring unless they quote text and analyze.

    I frankly disagree.

    Reading is the great conversation. Why would you attempt to curb that conversation to fit your own voice? Let people sing out where they stand -- whether it's as a sixteen-year-old screaming, "Twilight Rocks!! or a retired pilot analyzing Shakespeare or a college sophomore just entering the lit world and singing her joy. Let it be universal.

    We don't all think as you do. We don't all find joy in logic. Some of us find joy in passion -- or in the reading itself. Some of us would rather read and read and read, and check in with a two-minute post, than spend the few moments we could be reading, analyzing text and rewriting quotes lest someone in the blogosphere scold us for "lack of vocabulary" and insufficient ability to inspire.

    Harmony is created by different voices, different notes, different people. If we all wrote like you, there'd be a deficiency in texture -- just as there would be if everyone wrote like me.

    Jane Austen didn't write Pride and Prejudice to have it deeply analyzed. She wrote it to tell a story. Let us never forget that, about literature. Let us never make it into a test people either pass or fail, according to their ability to remember "vocabulary" or properly analyze.

    I do respect your position. You want to promote a deep love of literature, and literacy. I just don't agree with the approach.

    Best wishes.

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  4. This series of posts has got me thinking about the style of my reviews. I think that it goes back to the idea of audience that you discussed in another post. And clearly my ideas about who I am writing for are still evolving.

    I made a goal when I started my blog to write about every book I read, but maybe that is something that will not work if I want to do more substantive reviews. Because I don't always read substantive books, and it's pretty hard to do a substantive review on a popcorn book. This post (and all the others) have really given me some things to think about as I go forward as a blogger.

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  5. I've read your 3 posts on this and although I don't completely agree with you, it is thought provoking. I'm not going to write dissertations with textual evidence to back up my every thought but I can take some of your points, and especially the thoughts posted in the comments, into consideration and use what I will to improve my writing.

    I do wonder though, if you assume every blog about books is trying to be a book review blog and sell people on reading this or that. Personally I'm not interested in someone telling me why I should buy a book. I am interested in the unique voice of the blogger and their journey.
    And yes, there is a whole boat load of Is in this post, *I* am all about the I ;)

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  6. Jodie-
    The public is an excellent motivator isn't it? Writing for other people does something to what you think yourself. This is one of it's manifold benefits. I do think the community aspect is important, but I also think we can have both community and rigor, at least to some degree.

    Kathy-
    I'm glad that you've found these helpful, though I hope I wasn't accusing anyone of dishonesty.

    Jillian-
    First, I guess I misunderstood the central element of your disagreement. I thought the first part of your comment contained the core of what you were saying, not a sentence in the middle.

    Second, I'm not sure if my claim that writing can be the most intense form of exploration there is is just inside my head. From my experience as a writer and teacher of writing, it seems to me that the process of writing does something to the thoughts and ideas themselves, that in the process of putting word to thought, change, alteration, crystallization, and the like happen. Futhermore, if nothing happens to what you think in the writing process, what exactly is the point of journaling? Is it just a memory-record?

    Third, you write that I say "no one can be inspiring unless they quote text and analyze, brick by brick." I don't think I said this. I said I think this is a good, perhaps the most reliable, path to deep, serious discussions about literature. The reason for this is simple. If you say you felt X about MRS. DALLOWAY and I say I felt Y, our conversation ends. To have a discussion, we need the material to be discussed, evidence to consider, analysis to compare, reactions to gauge. In my experience, seeing people wrestle with specifics is a point of entry to talking with others about the whole.

    Last, you wrote: "If we all wrote like you, there'd be a deficiency in texture -- just as there would be if everyone wrote like me." This is true, but I don't think everyone should write like me. I think that writing about literature using evidence and analysis is a bit like writing with proper grammar; it helps people understand what we are trying to say. There are dozens of ways to use evidence and analysis, each of them useful in their own ways, many of them compatible with emotion. Evidence is the common grammar of discussing literature in a collaborative, exploratory way.

    Heather-
    I'm thrilled to hear that this has been thought-provoking; this is really the most important thing to me. I think a diversity of writing about books is to the good; I don't think every sentence written need be the same in style or approach. I have been thinking about how to review different things and am going to experiment. Sometimes I might do a simpler "recommendation." Sometimes I might wrestle with a text deeply. The important thing is to think about why you are writing the way you are writing and decide if that style/approach aligns with what you want to do.

    Shannon-
    You might notice that I use "I" quite a bit. I singled it out because it is the thing that got me thinking and is a good starting point for this discussion. I hope I haven't made it seem like I want anything like a dissertation (god forbid). What I want is to be able to understand the "why" of a reader's claim, and the only way I know that is if they give me reasons and evidence.

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  7. *If you say you felt X about MRS. DALLOWAY and I say I felt Y, our conversation ends. To have a discussion, we need the material to be discussed, evidence to consider, analysis to compare, reactions to gauge. In my experience, seeing people wrestle with specifics is a point of entry to talking with others about the whole.*

    Hm. I guess this is another example of where our approach to blogging differs? I would be satisfied with hearing X and Y, then going off on my own to explore again. I don't have a desire to be locked into discussion, hear evidence, etc. I'm more interested in hearing X in response to my Y, and determining the why of it independently.

    A different mode of exploration perhaps? Or perhaps an example of my very new exploration of literature. I'd far rather turn to the text itself for conversation (independently, as in conversation with the author), than spend a lot of time discussing it amongst people. The ideas from people thrill me, but because of them, I'm immediately pulled to separate myself, explore independently, and come up with new ideas that I then share, see electrically sparked with counter-arguments, and cause me to be inspired to explore independently again. (I think this may not make no sense. I'm answering you hurriedly.)

    *I'm not sure if my claim that writing can be the most intense form of exploration there is is just inside my head. From my experience as a writer and teacher of writing, it seems to me that the process of writing does something to the thoughts and ideas themselves, that in the process of putting word to thought, change, alteration, crystallization, and the like happen. Futhermore, if nothing happens to what you think in the writing process, what exactly is the point of journaling? Is it just a memory-record?*

    Oh, something happens! I just don't see a need to document it all to prove that it has happened or to elicit further discussion -- and it isn't the reason I journal. I journal absolutely to record my journey. My blog is a form of commonplacing, essentially, as well as an opportunity for some casual conversation.

    I don't really feel inspired to explain what I think, so much as record what I think. Any explanation I may record, is for myself. If I share it, it's truly as simple as the act of sharing, with no expectation that people will prove me wrong, prove me right, want explanation, expect discussion, etc.

    I think I addressed the rest above.

    I'm thinking I might be more introverted than you, perhaps? I've been writing all my life, too, and though I'm not a teacher of writing, I am a tutor of writing (and apparently a very good one.)

    You seem to be fueled by the conversation itself, and unable to believe that someone could be interested more in their own private thoughts inspired by reading, debate, writing, etc, than the debate itself. I'm fairly independent, as a reader and thinker. (Meaning I may say what I think, but I don't generally stay interested in a conversation that expects me to provide evidence for what I think. Nor do I expect others to provide evidence or hang around for a discussion to prove to me why they think what they think.)

    [post is too long - continued below]

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  8. I was angered by your initial post, but having addressed it, I've moved beyond the conversation to consider your blog as a whole quite interesting, as a different viewpoint on literature itself. I might quietly read it, and address topics now and then, but I'm far more renewed by my private revelations, than I am an interactive discussion that expects us both to fundamentally "prove" our viewpoints so the other can understand.

    I see your comment, "I thought the first part of your comment contained the core of what you were saying, not a sentence in the middle" and wonder what in the world you are talking about, but fear that if I say I don't understand, you'll then want to lock me into a conversation that pushes me to explain ideas that are for me more conceptual births of ideas than they are concrete theories I can put into words.

    I'm very much a poet, very much a painter of ideas -- meaning that there are often no words for my thoughts -- just symphonies of feeling that explode then fade into new symphonies. This is a weakness in me, in part. I'm not practiced in critical thinking. It's also what makes much of what I say, I think, meaningless to you. (I'm referring to the two sentences that begin your last comment to me, mentioned above: "I guess I misunderstood the central element of your disagreement. I thought the first part of your comment contained the core of what you were saying, not a sentence in the middle.)

    We speak two different languages, and clearly have two different reasons for blogging. You don't understand my reasons, and I don't see any reason to explain myself.

    Sorry! I'm interested in your viewpoint -- truly! Indeed, I was just this morning (independently) exploring literary analysis, based in part on your sparking the topic to life.

    Also, as much as I say I dislike analysis, I have a friend who pours over text with me, often, discussing linguistics. Fascinated? Yes! Analysis? I reckon so! But I would never do it if he told me I must. I do it because it intrigues me, in the moment, and because we are bo0nded by a similar passion for the text. I often know what he is thinking, without a need to say it, and likewise. For us, the thrill is in the independent discovery, that is sparked by a sharing of analysis that needs no explanation beyond itself. I might say something that sparks in him inspiration that makes him retreat to think independently, and likewise. We share, but as a means to express our excitement -- not as a means to debate.

    I'm aware this likely makes no logical sense to you, and that questions may be forthcoming. But honestly, I can't understand why it matters to you that you understand what I think, or that I explain myself? (I do sometimes explain myself, but am cursed with an obtuse persponality that makes me feel I must do the opposite of what seems to be expected of me.)

    That fact shall be filed perhaps where the many inexplicable things of humanity are filed -- things that make the study of humanity and history so fascinating a world to both depict, and explore, in literature.

    Cheers!! (As I leave you, I am certain, more baffled than before I attempted to answer, here.) ;-)

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  9. *I think this may not make no sense.*

    Forgive the typos - ha! I meant 'this may make no sense.' (Chuckling.)

    Likewise to any others above. :-)

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  10. I too dislike reviews that neither analyze nor have any personal critique--that is, I hate reviews that only say "I can't identify with the characters and therefore hate the book" for example. On the other hand, I love reading posts where bloggers really try to interrogate themselves about why they hate a book--even if the post winds up telling me far more about the writer of the post than about the author of the book.

    I started my blog for two reasons: 1. because writing helps me think (as you point out) and 2. because people seem to be out there willing to read and help me learn. I can't quite imagine why they think it is worthwhile to read what little I have to add to the conversation, but it is honestly only through my perhaps naive efforts to do that kind of analysis that I can get any better.

    I really love Jillian's comment that she likes analysis conversations that express mutual excitement rather than debate. It is through discussion that we can encourage that excitement that books can give us. I think to get any sense of excitement from other people's discussions, we have to have some kind of analysis or textual evidence. I'm not sure you two are quite as far apart as it seems.

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