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I, Literary Critic

Jamie Leigh KeggEnglish 312 / Seton Hill University

+Literary Theory:

What my parents think I do What my friends think I do

+Literary Theory:

What my peers think I do What my professor thinks I do

+Literary Theory:

What I think I do What I really do

+When the semester began, despite having been warned that theory is something you do and not a set of facts you can know, I still foresaw the work ahead of me as a giant memorization and comprehension challenge.

+I thought if I studied hard, read carefully, wrote thoughtfully, engaged in discussion with my peers and dedicated plenty of time and energy to learning the theories we studied, I would eventually “get it”. I would know theory.

+In my head, this was something like installing a software program on the computer of my mind: it was going to take awhile, and I might run into technical difficulties, but in the end, the information was going to be there, complete, concrete and ready to be put to use.

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I quickly realized I was wrong. I would have to adjust my expectations.

+I was right about reading.

And I was right about writing.

I was right about studying, and discussion, and time and energy…

(though I never could have foreseen quite so much time and energy…)

+I was wrong about getting it.

By week four, I stopped expecting to “get it” and started desperately hoping my blogs, discussion posts and exercises were even making sense.

(Sometimes my writing didn’t make sense. Sometimes my writing was terrible and seemed pointless… but every once in awhile, writing would lead me to a breakthrough. So I kept writing about everything I was reading.)

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I had visions of knowing all the buzzwords, the appropriate jargon to use and the hot topics to bring up when discussing each theory.

+But I realized that even if I knew the lingo, and could “talk the talk,” there was only one way for me to “walk the walk”—by actually doing theory.

+My blog posts, my Moodle forum posts, my discussions with peersand comments on their work were preliminary;preparatory exercises to exorcise the clutter from my brain so I could cull out what was really significant and just write.

(Like Dr. Jerz tells me to do. Stop overthinking. Stop worrying. Just write.)

That’s my new mantra. Stop overthinking. Just write.

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For my first exercise in criticism, I tried to make sure I sounded like I knew what I was doing, even though I felt like I was writing in a foreign language.(Not just any foreign language. A dead language. Like

Sanskrit. Or Latin. Or Old English. Or Klingon…. Oh, wait…..)

I wrote things like

“Hamlet uses his play to simulate the conditions under which his father’s murder took place, but does not consider that the actions and reactions of those who witness the play will cause it to cease being a simulation and to become reality itself—he believes he is staging what is not reality, but in fact he is constructing reality through his simulation, thus defying and disturbing order and rationality—as Baudrillard says, ‘order opts for the real’ (Baudrillard 373). “ (Yes, that’s all one sentence...)

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My first attempts at doing theory were full of ridiculously long sentences, fancy words (the kind that earn you big points in Scrabble) and vague, imprecise connections.

(I often fall prey to the idea that if I can make it seem like I know what I’m supposed to be doing, I’ll look competent. Once in awhile, it works. Usually, not so much.)

By the way, did you know that the longest word currently in use in the English language is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis?

It’s a lung condition. I swear I’m not making it up. (But you can’t actually make that word in Scrabble…)

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A few weeks later, as I began to work on my next formal exercise, I had a meeting with Dr. Jerz. I had spent about twenty hours formulating the position I wanted to take on Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and writing my essay. Dr. Jerz didn’t want to read my paper; he wanted me to talk about my paper. As usual, when put on the spot, I flaked and couldn’t articulate my thoughts. Dr. Jerz gave me lots of advice that would have been helpful before I started writing.

(I left. And cried. Because I had finally thought I was getting it right until the meeting, after which I was sure I was getting it all wrong. For the rest of the semester, I found it impossible to motivate myself to write anything prior to a meeting with Dr. Jerz for fear I would have to throw it away and start over. Don’t get me wrong—Dr. Jerz is helpful and encouraging. But I’m really good at psyching myself out.)

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Once I stopped panicking and got down to business with my psychoanalytic perspective on The God of Small Things, I noticed a difference in my writing.

I wrote things like:

“The physical encounter between Rahel and Estha is more than an incestuous expression of love—it is an inevitable manifestation of long-repressed memories and emotions stemming from childhood trauma. The traumatic sequence that occurred twenty-three years earlier, when the twins were eight years old, provoked such definitive repressive mental action in both siblings that neither was able to cope alone. Reunited for the first time since childhood, the twins symbolize the re-establishment of their unified identity with physical consummation. Their pairing represents quiet retribution for all the injustices committed against both of them as children—drastically damaging events such as Estha being the victim of child molestation, the twins witnessing their mother’s abuse at the hands of their father, and the twins witnessing Velutha’s vicious beating by the police. All of these instances were permitted and even quietly condoned according to societal norms, while the act of incest, were it to be found out, would carry far heavier repercussions than any of the far more damaging events of their childhood. Their union symbolizes emotional freedom, taking back control and finally moving forward. “

+There were coherent sentences of a manageable length. Most of the vocabulary was comprised of words I would actually use in everyday speech. My ideas were clear and the approach had taken was evident.

(Okay, maybe most people wouldn’t use those words in everyday speech, but I would. It’s a personality quirk.)

+Maybe I wasn’t engaging with my primary source enough, or drawing on secondary sources to support my conclusions. I knew I would need to improve in those areas. But at least I was able to demonstrate my improving grasp of how to do theory.

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Once I realized I was capable of doing theory—and putting forth a decent performance, at that—I got excited. Actually, I got super-enthusiastically overzealous.

(You have to be super-enthusiastically overzealous to try to take on Stieg Larsson’s entire Millennium trilogy in a couple of short papers…)

+I wrote a Marxist perspective on Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. I meant to write only on the first book, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. But after I got into writing, I realized most of the material I was trying to discuss was in the other books. Rather than backing off and tackling a more manageable text, I dug in my heels and searched harder for passages that would support my assertions.

(See, told you I learned something from the paper I wrote on The God of Small Things!)

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My first Millennium paper said things like this:

“Lisbeth is not a commodity belonging to the capitalist domain, despite being labeled a ward of the state. She manipulates her circumstances so that she has total control. Though her methods of acquiring funds are not legal, once those funds are in her accounts, they appear legal for all intents and purposes. She employs her exceptional computer skills to procure all information necessary to perform the financial transfers legally and openly (Dragon Tattoo 634). Then, she uses her digital research skills to select and blackmail lawyers and financial advisors to manage her estate, which furthers her appearance of legitimacy in the upper social echelon (Hornet’s Nest 617-22). Additionally, most of the funds she appropriates have first been procured by the entities from whom she has stolen them by illegal, illicit or corrupt means. Even if they could implicate her in the theft, which would be nearly impossible considering Lisbeth’s unsurpassed skill in embezzlement, those entities are in no position to fight to have the stolen money returned or to have Lisbeth prosecuted. So the funds she possesses are good as legal, and the upper echelon mobility and power she procures with those funds is legitimate, as though those assets were legal. Lisbeth is not owned by capitalism because she exists outside of that socioeconomic hierarchy. “

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Ambitious? Probably.Fun to write? Definitely.Exasperating at times? You bet.Did I feel sure of what I was doing? Not at all.

(But because I’m a glutton for punishment, and sifting through 1800 pages of text for good evidence for my paper seemed like a productive way to spend my time, I pressed onward and expanded the Millennium paper for a second exercise. Crazy, I know.)

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What I learned during Millennium, round two:

1. Sometimes even when you’re searching as hard as you can for evidence to support your position, all you find is evidence to the contrary. This is discouraging, but don’t give up! Intuition is rarely wrong.2. I understand Marxism better than I ever thought I would, but not nearly well enough to be writing from a Marxist perspective.3. Working on a text from a certain perspective cements a lot of technical stuff in your mind, and you can NEVER, EVER go back to enjoying that text for fun. Ever.4. Ambition pays off. My expansion earned a perfect score.*

(*I did not discover this perfect score until I was ten pages into writing my term paper. Had I realized I was finally “getting it right”, I probably would have kept slogging through 1800 pages of Larsson.)

+Finally, it was time to write my last formal exercise, which I planned to expand for my term paper. After burning out on 1800 pages of Larsson, I thought I’d choose something short, sweet and simple: a few short stories by Raymond Carver.

(Also, I wanted an excuse to pull out the Carver collections I picked up a few years ago but never had time to read. This way, I could consider it research…)

+I wrote my exercise. It went well. Plain language, readable sentences, clear ideas, plenty of citations. I felt good about it.

Then it came time to expand it for the term paper.

I panicked.

(I know, I know. When do I not panic?)

+But after some reassurance from Dr. Jerz that I was, once again, overthinking it, I settled in to write.All the while, telling myself, “Stop overthinking. Stop worrying. Stop panicking. Just write what you think you want to say. Just write.”

+And I surprised myself.

By creating an outline of all the ideas I wanted to include, rearranging them into a logical progression, marking where and how I would engage with scholarly sources and noting what questions I wanted each section to answer, I came up with a plan for my term paper—a thorough, detailed plan. A good plan.

(Now all I had to do was write.)

+So I wrote. I wrote all my topic sentences first. Then I started filling in paragraphs and citations. I began to see ideas come together. I thought to myself, I think you might finally be starting to do theory!!

+And I was.

And it wasn’t about using fancy words—or even about knowing the right words. It wasn’t about memorization or being conversant about hot topics. It wasn’t about how much I could read or write or cram into my head at once.

(Though reading, writing and hours of studying certainly paid off…)

+It was about taking a work of literature I had read before and looking at it from a new perspective—a new “lens,” as Dr. Jerz would say. And it was about being able to support that perspective with evidence from the text and communicate it in a clear, progressive and engaging manner.

(All along, I had been making it so much harder than it needed to be. Who knew?)

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My term paper, a cultural studies perspective on three selected stories from Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, culminates like this: “In these three stories, Raymond Carver creates meaning implicitly

by accentuating the differences between cultural ideologies and representations of reality. Carver situates his characters in mundane circumstances in the midst of working-class America, then unwraps the tidy package of perceived normalcy to reveal the beauty, complexity and horror of anomalies which are, perhaps, not so unusual after all. In “A Storyteller’s Shoptalk” Carver writes, “what creates tension in a piece of fiction is partly the way the concrete words are linked together to make up the visible action of the story. But it's also the things that are left out, that are implied, the landscape just under the smooth (but sometimes broken and unsettled) surface of things.” Carver creates the space between ideology and reality, the gap between explicit and implicit, but ultimately, meaning is as much a product of interpretation as transmission. What the reader takes away from these texts depends upon the way he understands what Carver has left unwritten. “

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I’m proud of it. And excited about it. I’m doing theory. And, just maybe, I

like it.

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