One More Time

A reposted repost.

Around the time the first draft of the first essay is due I start hearing questions that all start the same way: Can I . . . . ? The student then, almost inevitably, voices a "rule" about writing that he or she is worried about breaking: Can I use I? Can I use "you"? Can I use "we"? Can I use contractions? Can I use the word "because"?

The answers are: Yes, No, Yes, Yes YES!

Actually, the answers are all YES. I only make a tiny exception for "you" because it is difficult to use well and even more difficult to use it and maintain a sufficiently formal academic style.

I really hate these kinds of rules. Yes, of course, you (breaking the "you" rule here) have to abide by the basic grammatical conventions of standard English. But otherwise, there's an awful lot of ambiguity and flexibility in how we use language. Why put up obstacles to expressing meaningful ideas with all of these little rules?

More disturbingly, students frequently ask some variation of this: "Can I actually tell my reader what I'm trying to argue?" I know that some writing instructors come up with lists of rules and "Don't use the first person" or "Don't use contractions" might be on that list. But, "Don't tell your reader what you are up to"?!

Somehow, somewhere along the line, students get the sense that writing is about a set of tricks and isn't about trying to convey meaning to a reader. One the most literal level, I think students have been told to avoid "metacommentary"--saying what the essay is doing or arguing ( I will argue that . . . This essay will then look at . . . .). I fail to understand this rule given that most PUBLISHED academic essays use metacommentary extensively. If your ideas are complicated, giving your reader these concrete handhold really helps.

I also worry that this belief that writers have to disguise their ideas under fancy terms or convoluted sentence structures and follow a bunch of arbitrary rules means that beginning writers are afraid to fully engage in the messy work of drafting BEFORE editing. All of these rules can makes a writer stop and second guess every sentence before she has even worked out the main substance.
Somehow, somewhere along the line, students get the sense that writing is about a set of tricks and isn't about trying to convey meaning to a reader. One the most literal level, I think students have been told to avoid "metacommentary"--saying what the essay is doing or arguing ( I will argue that . . . This essay will then look at . . . .). I fail to understand this rule given that most PUBLISHED academic essays use metacommentary extensively. If your ideas are complicated, giving your reader these concrete handhold really helps.

Stopping to take a breath and write "Okay, what I'm trying to say here is . . . ." can lead to great revelations. If you been taught to avoid using the first person or to avoid using metacommentary, you've been deprived of this tool. You can always go back and take the main idea and edit out the thinking. But do the thinking first!

So, whatever it is, if it helps YOU say what YOU want to say--yes, you can do that.

Zombies

How was Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies received when it was first published in 2009? Here are a few reviews.

New York Times
New Yorker
Washington Post

"Any Satisfactory Description"

"Not all that Mrs. Bennet, however, with the assistance of her five daughters, could ask on the subject was sufficient to draw from her husband any satisfactory description of Mr. Bingley. They attacked him in various ways; with barefaced questions, ingenious suppositions, and distant surmises; but he eluded the skill of them all . . . "*

My epigraph comes from the beginning of Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Bennet has met Mr. Bingley, but, to his wife and daughter's dismay, won't reveal anything about Mr. Bingley's looks. A bit later in the novel, as Mrs. Bennet is relating the events of the dance, "Mr. Bennet protested against any descriptions of finery."* Mr. Bennet doesn't want to hear his wife prattle about clothes, which may not be so surprising, but it is interesting that Austen refuses to provide such description in any case. As John Wiltshire notes, Austen work is characterized by a "restriction of the visual."  Her novels often "leav[e] it entirely up the reader to imagine or, rather not to imagine"** any description of setting, dress, or objects.

I like Wiltshire's essay--after all, I keep assigning it to my students! But I'm interested in, and more than a little worried about, what happens when we are told that a writer is leaving something for the "reader to imagine." Of course texts leave much of the interpretive process up the reader; a large body of scholarship, in fact, argues that it is only when a text is read that meaning is generated. But this can be a dangerous position to act upon--or to take too far. Does that mean we get to make up the meaning? Does that mean we let our imaginations run wild? Clearly, in some sense giving imagination free rein is a good thing--we would not have clever adaptations and loose interpretations (like The Bridget Jones's Diary or The Lizzie Bennet Diaries) without such imagination. I get worried though, when too much emphasis is placed on the reader and we neglect the words and worlds that writers actually create. The important part of Wiltshire's statement is that Austen might be allowing us "not to imagine." In other words, Austen leaves descriptions of things out not because she wants to imagine or make up those details, but because she wants us to direct our attention to other issues.

The attempts of the Bennet family to find out about Mr. Bingley's person are phrased as if a battle or a hunt were taking place. The women "attacked him" but Mr. Bennet "eluded the skill of them all." While his elusive maneuvers are in keeping with his character--this is the man who refused to acknowledge to his wife that he plans to make the acquaintance of a near neighbor--Mr Bennet's reserve here is not fully explained. We are left to wonder whether he is unobservant of physical traits or simply teasing his family. It is clear, however, that the daughters are enthusiastically--even aggressively--interested in Mr. Bingley's appearance (as he is in theirs).  To what extent does Austen judge this interest in appearance? Is she asking us to sympathize with the frustrated women, and with Mr. Bingley, who find personal traits so interesting and delighting? Or is she, through Mr. Bennet, perhaps, teaching us to place less importance upon personal appearance? Is Austen making fun of us for also being curious about personal appearance?

I would claim that Austen doesn't care about appearance; I can't fully support that claim here. I do want to emphasize, though, that whether we think Austen is making fun of human nature and our superficial interest in appearance, or whether we would argue that she is underscoring Mr. Bennet's odd relationship with his wife and daughters, the key is that her text should guide us--or at least be the first place we look--in making the argument.


*Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Robert P. Levine (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2002), 48, 52.

** John Wiltshire, 'Why Do We Read Jane Austen?" in A Truth Universally Acknowledged. ed. Susannah Carson (NY: Random House, 2009), 164.

Image: By C. E. Brock (Scans from the book at Pemberley.com) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Novels and Education (repost)

Here's an old post on Northanger Abbey-still relevant!

When I heard that my proposed course on Jane Austen had been accepted for Expository Writing, I was thrilled. Austen is fun and the way her works remain popular presents fascinating questions for exploring contemporary culture and for thinking historically. And, of course, I love reading and teaching novels!

Novels play a significant role for students majoring or minoring in English literature. But the Expository Writing program is a general requirement; everyone takes it, or its equivalent. And classes need to to be not only interesting but widely valuable for a college student. Is it valuable to read novels? Does reading novels help you become a better writer? How useful is reading a novel going to be for, say a business major? Or a chemical engineer?

I struggle some with these questions every semester. But I remain convinced that these questions can all be answered with a firm YES. Interestingly, they are similar to the questions Austen herself asks in Northanger Abbey. In that novel Austen seems to suggest that the novel might play a role in the education of young people. When Catherine expresses astonishment at Isabella's deceptive character, Henry jests about her not having much experience: "Among all the great variety [of characters] that you have known and studied," he observes ironically (142). Perhaps, novels might teach their readers something about the "great variety" of characters in the world--and about those to avoid.

That probably sounds too simplistic--even if one considers how quiet and isolated life was before easy transportation and mass media. Catherine is innocent, but are we really meant to perceive her understanding as entirely limited when it comes to the obvious deceptions Isabella weaves through everyday conversation? Maybe.

But the "lessons" for the novel reader don't bear a one-to-one relationship to the lessons the characters within the novel learn. Particularly when those lesson apply, as in Austen's case, to social norms and modes of life long past. But maybe learning about that past is, in itself, important? Novels do not provide the facts of history; but, as Austen herself point out in Northanger Abbey, sometimes history needs the approach of the novel to keep it interesting. Eleanor finds the "embellishments" of historians to pleasurable and they seem to contribute to her understanding of the events (74). Reading the novels of the past can work to help us understand the ideas and the problems of the past on an individual level rather than from the perspective of the grand sweep of political and military history.

That deeper understanding of history may not be precisely pertinent to writing a business plan, or working out a chemical formula, but it does help make the reader a more generally educated person. I would argue further--although I don't have time right here--that reading novels gives one a larger vocabulary of words and ideas for understanding the world. And, while very few of those taking writing in college go on to be novelists, reading novels provides a deeper understanding of how language works and that produces better writing in all endeavors.

Novels and the Brain

What happens when one reads novels? Are novels bad for the reader? Are novels particularly bad for readers who are young women? These questions were being asked and discussed in the late eighteenth-century when Austen wrote Northanger Abbey. And her novel takes up these questions quite directly. I'm not going to discuss Northanger Abbey right now, but I wanted to point out some of the ways these issues are being debated today.

Scholars who study cognitive science are looking at what actually happens in the brain when the individual is reading literature. Here are some articles in the popular press about those studies.

For Better Social Skills, Scientists Recommend a Little Chekhov

This is your brain on Jane Austen

How Literature Changes Your Brain for the Better

How Literature Changes Your Brain for the Better, part 2


For another (much less scientific) direction in this conversation about what people should--or should not--read, try googling phrases like "should girls read Twilight" or "50 Shades of Gray censorship." There are still people out there trying to control or limit what others read.

And on that note, I want to remind everyone that September 21-27 is Banned Books Week. Check out the website.
http://www.bannedbooksweek.org

On the website you can find this list of the most challenged books in 2013:

1. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey
   Reasons: Offensive language, unsuited for age group, violence
2. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
   Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, violence
3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
   Reasons: Drugs/alcohol/smoking, offensive language, racism, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
4. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L. James
   Reasons: Nudity, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
5. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
   Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group
6. A Bad Boy Can Be Good for A Girl, by Tanya Lee Stone
   Reasons: Drugs/alcohol/smoking, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit
7. Looking for Alaska, by John Green
   Reasons: Drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
8. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
   Reasons: drugs/alcohol/smoking, homosexuality, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
9. Bless Me Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
   Reasons: Occult/Satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit
10. Bone (series), by Jeff Smith
    Reasons: Political viewpoint, racism, violence

(From bannedbooksweek.org http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/about)

What I Like About You

The perception that writing is "all subjective" is one I have to fight all the time. Many students seem to have received the impression that getting a good grade in writing classes is about "what the teacher likes."

I can't help but wonder if this comes from various seemingly arbitrary rules. The "I" rule is one. Many writing teachers simply ban it. That is probably easier than explaining the appropriate ways to use it--and the pitfalls of relying on it in argumentative writing. Other teachers come up with lists of "pet peeves"; these are often rules and conventions that are somewhat flexible--or, perhaps undergoing change, since language does change--and for which the teacher has a preferred form. A common example of this is the use of gender neutral language. (Here's the Grammar Girl's take on that one.)

What would we poor writing teachers do if we had to explain ourselves EVERY time one of these issues comes up? Language has so many rules and so much flexibility and changes so constantly that we can't always articulate every single reason why one word works in a sentence where another sounds awkward, why a comma rule that holds in most cases can be tossed in others, or even why sentence fragments are sometimes just fine. As soon as I've explained that the most common English sentence follows a Subject-Verb-Object pattern and that this pattern is the easiest for the reader to grasp, a brilliant sentence shows up that utterly contorts that pattern and works. Do I mark this down to be consistent and avoid the "just liking" it accusation? No.

Rules never seem to take into account context. Is the writer deliberately choosing a fragment? Or, is the writer unable to recognize sentence fragments? I'm pretty sure that I can tell the difference--I'm a highly trained reader of texts, after all, and I have a specialized knowledge of language that allows me to make informed judgements. Can I explain why a "mistake" or breaking the rules in one case is fine and works, but needs to be corrected in another? Probably. Will I always explain? Probably not. Does that mean evaluating writing is all subjective? Absolutely not.

Ah, all those little rules--of which, as linguists point out, we only know a portion--make for some big confusion about "good" writing. Here is one definition of good writing: a well-reasoned, thoughtful, insightful argument supported by evidence employed in a rigorous and responsible way. It's not subjective, but neither is it simple. And that complexity may just add to the trouble!

Revision is Really Writing

Getting a first draft finished feels good. Perhaps it is disheartening, then, to realize that a first draft is only the tiniest of first steps towards a finished essay. As a writer, I really love the revision process--I'm one of those writers who finds it hard to let go of a piece of writing (blogging is good practice in letting things go before they feel really finished; if you want to read a post about my process, click here). Tinkering with my ideas, moving sections around, developing the relationships between sections, and, finally, editing for clarity and precise language--this is what I love about writing. 

I'm not going to try to convince you to love revision. But I AM going to try to convince you take the process seriously. Here is what a few of the pros say (with thanks to John Trimble for the first two and the last):

From Nora Ephron, Revision and Life, “ in The New York Times, reprinted in The Writer magazine, April 1987.

In my 30’s, I began to write essays, one a month for Esquire magazine, and I am not exaggerating when I say that in the course of writing a short essay--1,500 words, that’s only six double-spaced typewritten pages--I often used 300 or 400 pieces of typing paper, so often did I type and retype and catapult and recatapult myself . . .*

 From an interview with Ernest Hemingway in the Paris Review:

Interviewer:  How much rewriting do you do?

Hemingway:  It depends.  I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

Interviewer:  Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?

Hemingway:  Getting the words right. *

From Anne Lamott:

For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.

This is from Bird by Bird. You can read an excerpt of this here.

And then there's editing. This is Oscar Wilde:

All morning I worked on the proof of one of my poems, and I took out a comma; in the afternoon I put it back in.*

I love the way Wilde's comment underscores the stylistic choice one might make about the comma (sometimes; sometimes rules must be followed). As facetious as Wilde perhaps is, this little quip also indicates how seriously a writer should consider every single choice, large or small. Re-seeing those initial choices is what revision is all about.

*Quoted in John Trimble, Writing with Style (Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall, 2000, 1975), 6, 99.