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| When words make you laugh - a sign outside Foodland in Bangalow. |
Yes, I'm doing Theory of Writing at uni.
The upside of all these isms is that I have to understand the texts on the subject reading list.
Virgina Woolf, James Joyce (never got him, maybe this time I will), Helen Garner (my hot favourite), Flaubert's Madame Bovary (someone strangle Emma please), Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Kurt Vonnegut (weird, weird but wonderful) and Eva Homung with her strangely poignant Dog Boy, about a boy living with wild dogs.
As long as the theory doesn't get in the way of a good story.
I know at uni, at least, we need to understand where the literature fits in the grand scheme of things. We learn to label stories and see how they are a reflection of the times in which they were written.
A good story is a good story - whether it was written yesterday or in another century.
Words travel through time and while we study the influence of literature at universities the reason these words of the authors I mentioned have survived is because they mean something to us even now- despite what ism they fall under.
i had to aggressively defend helen in the creative non fiction class..they accused her of being racist and having a middle class lens among other things..must be jealousism
ReplyDeleteAll these isms make me think if 'enjoyable-ism', surely the most important criteria for any story? I don't even know what most of these labels are trying to achieve. Although your reading list is fabulous. As you said, what the have in common is that they resonate at a personal level, through a community and across generations. A good book fits in anywhere.
ReplyDeleteIt's almost as if we assume that writers of a given era shared some kind of collective mind, a hive mind if you like, and that if we analyse what those writers wrote closely enough, we'll gain insight into the hive mind of those times...
ReplyDeleteMakes me wonder if all this talk about AI futures where all our human minds are connected isn't already here... and been and gone?!
Speaking of Plath and Hughes... If anyone is thinking of trying her hand at biography, Janet Malcolm's 'The Silent Woman' is a must read - 'a astonishing feat of literary detection' (as the back cover blurb tells us) and to my mind, scalpel-sharp writing about the pitfalls for a writer when conflicting emotions, ambitions - and payback - all come into play. Sue S
ReplyDeleteI'll check that one out Sue.
ReplyDelete