Postmodern Prometheus

The New York Times has a review of The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, by Peter Ackroyd. It is a new novel that re-imagines and retells Victor’s story in a more authentic context: that is, the one in which the author creates it. So, Percy Shelley shows up in the novel, for example. This sort of ‘postmodern’ version of Frankenstein, stripping away the stereotypes from the film history, is another version of what Shelley Jackson pursues in Patchwork Girl. In both cases, the stories seem to take off from Mary Shelley’s introduction, where she puts her own authorship up front, weaves it into the story: her hideous progeny is the writing, the creation of her novel. As you will see, Shelley Jackson runs with that strand. But she also remediates the novel with digital technology: in the way that all the various strands of story and history that inform or influence her vision of the novel are brought into her version, rather than edited or hidden.

Perhaps it is something like an essay that has been revised many times, but in which the final version contains all the versions in one. Why do this, you might ask?

But it is also worth asking you: have you also, before Patchwork Girl (and even if you have never before read such a text in digital form), read or viewed or played a text that was non-linear, that offered lots of material and options for reading, that had more than one place to go? That, at some level, in some form, invited the reader to become a writer? If so, then you have experienced what can be called “hypertext.”

For more on Shelley Jackson, you can go to her web site, Ineradicable Stain.

beyond revision?

This moment from chapter 7 of The Gutenberg Elegies engaged me, but also jarred me. I think it sheds light on where he is coming from in his vision of reading, and why he views books (or at least, books he thinks we should be reading) as though they were sacred objects. I also think it offers a view of writing that is, simply put, unsustainable. In other words, I will urge you in this course (and beyond) not to follow Birkerts’s vision of how one writes.

First, here is the passage in which Birkerts describes a vision of writing that is “beyond revision.”

When we begin to write our description, then, we find that we already have a sense of the kind of shape we want, and some intuition of the pace. This is not because these are necessarily properties of the reality we would render; rather, because we have a very particular expectation built up from everything we have read and internalized. We know just the feeling–the effect–we want. In a sense we proceed toward our expression by trying to read in ourselves the very prose we are about to write. Writing, then, becomes a kind of matching up of the right words to the specific word-impulses that are lined up inside. This is all very Platonic–to see the act of discovery less as an inventing than a recovering, an anamnesis. In writing we grope toward what we think of as the inevitable wording, as though the prose were already finished in an inner place we can just barely reach. And when we do succeed, when from time to time we reach it, we know we are beyond revision. [112]

The reference to Plato reiterates Birkerts’s vision of perfection: writing, or at least what he implies is successful writing, writing that is worth our time and attention, is discovered or recovered whole (Plato’s notion of the ideal–coming out of the cave and into the light of truth); writing is thus not invented (rhetoric) or made (poetry)–Plato banishes the poets and rhetoricians from the republic of letters, or wishes to. Put another way, Birkerts believes that true writing is not made through the process of revision. I would most directly disagree with Birkerts here by asserting that writing and revision are synonymous, that there is no beyond revision, that the ideal is to make and invent the discovery of writing through the process of revision. To that extent, I suggest that Birkerts, oddly–but perhaps the strangeness can be located in his strange family dynamics with reading?–defines a vision of writing that seeks to remove much of the material, even mechanical, process of writing from its view. Wanting to be a writer without having to write.

This, I would argue, is a perfectionist vision of writing that we get from reading great books. The vision is misleading if we believe that those books dropped from the sky. If we don’t get behind the curtain and see the not-so scary man (who doesn’t look that different, when you think of it, from the guy back home in Kansas) working the machinery of poetics and rhetoric. If you wait around for the right word to come, you won’t do much writing, possibly won’t write at all. Perfectionism, it seems to me–and this comes from my own experience, from the voice of a recovering perfectionist–might lead to perfect writing but it also leads to lots of weakened writers, writers afraid to get messy in writing, unwilling to write if they have to revise–in other words, leads to writers who don’t write.

A better goal, the one we are after in this course: to go through revision, get a better grasp of the poetic and rhetorical potential of writing, of mediating our thought through language, print, electronic signals–through various processes of mediation. And perhaps in that better grasp, to become stronger writers in knowing where and how to revise; and perhaps even, therefore, needing to revise less. But wanting to get ‘beyond revision,’ since very little writing takes place there, at least on earth.

revision: seeing things, again

Some further, if not final, thoughts about revision as you move headlong into the final project. As I mentioned last class, a key aspect of the revision project is a crucial component of becoming a stronger writer: reflection. For that reason, in focusing on revision even more deliberately than we already have throughout the course, your final project is your final exam. If, as you leave this course, you have a better sense of how to revise your critical thinking and writing to be more effective, thoughtful, and imaginative, then you have achieved the objectives of the course.

That said, here are some ways to grasp further what I mean when I say that a writer needs to take a risk when revising. If revision literally means “seeing things again,” then I suggest the key to revision is to focus on the “seeing things.” Go back to an essay or an idea, but consider what you didn’t see; consider, even, what may not be there. Try juxtaposition: for example, go back to an earlier reading of a text (say, Frankenstein, or your own autobiography as a reader) and see some things that aren’t there, but could be there–if you now put that earlier text/idea in the context of another text/idea. How might Birkerts’ notion of privacy and reading change your view of Frankenstein? Does it help you complicate your vision of the novel? Does the novel help you complicate your understanding of Birkerts? In doing this, in seeing some things that weren’t originally there, notice also that you start to combine the focal points we have worked on individually and weave them together: close reading, critical application. That should be an aspect of your final project that you consider and reflect upon: how you are able to see multiple elements of your writing (the four focal points, the various elements of our strong writing rubric) at work in your writing. Seeing things then blends into doing things.

notes: first writing project

Revision workshop:

With help from John Boyd of the Writing Center, we emphasized the importance of all writers, any writer, getting response for their writing, finding audiences for feedback. This is different, I suggested, than needing or wanting to fix something. Not the teacher marking up a paper with a red pen. With our focal point of critical reflection, we used the hear/notice/wonder response sheet to give feedback to a writer in your writing group, focusing in particular on where you noticed the essay providing the kind of depth and understanding in the personal reflection (rather than the resume listing, the nostalgia of quick reference), and where you wanted to see more of it.

Editing workshop:

Focused on ways to think about editing as defamiliarizing our essay–in order to get outside of it and see and hear it from without. One way to do this: read aloud, have someone else read it aloud: listen for areas where the reading stumbles or slows or is unclear. The main point introduced–one we are working on throughout the semester in our attempt to learn about style and how better to grasp it in our writing: need to look AT our style, not just through it. Think more self-consciously about how style is created in the mechanics and machinery of the essay: the words, the sentence structure, the punctuation; all the choices we can make and edit.

As a starting point, we focused on a basic issue (and trap) we find in sentence structure: the difference between active and passive sentences. One of the ways we looked at this: finding places where we see lots of “is” sentences which tend to bury the action; also bury behind lots of prepositions. We began to change this around. The example I gave:

“One thing about reading that I believe is that reading is meant to be fun.”

change to: Reading should be fun.

further change to (recognizing the weakness and vagueness of ‘fun’): Reading cultivates pleasure.

Essay follow-up:

The critical vision–aka, the focus or ‘thesis’ of your essay. Traditionally, this comes in the beginning–you might have been taught at the end of an introductory paragraph. However, things don’t need to be that strict–nor would you want to be terribly blunt: My thesis is…. Sometimes it is effective to have a thesis at the end of an essay; or perhaps an initial statement of your focus/thesis–that you then furhter refine in a conclusion (or in the scientific model, completely change). It is important, however, to engage your reader’s focus directly in your introductory material, let them know, before getting into the “body” of your essay, the various examples and reflection, what you want them to be thinking about with you. You need to give them a thread to take with them. What you need to avoid, then, is a general statement such as: reading has many definitions. You need to go further–suggest what particular definition is on your mind and suggest how you want to explore that. This is something to do during revision: after you have a stronger sense of what you are, in fact, getting into (where your examples and reflection are taking you), then go back and refine and elaborate the thesis–and from this you can then build a more engaging introduction–a stronger way into the story you are trying to tell.