ON THE USEFULNESS OF LITERARY CRITICISM

Yesterday I attended a book club session on The Art of Fiction, by David Lodge. Apart from commenting on several novel excerpts and literary devices, we discussed the convenience, usefulness or even influence of previous study on the act of reading. To what extent does acquaintance with literary criticism and text analysis help us enjoy a book?

Probably understanding and therefore appreciating some kinds of works requires prior or subsequent access to guides and essays but most readings can be better 'digested' if we allow ourselves discovery and personal interpretation without feeling prejudiced in some way by brainy pieces of literary criticism.

Related to this issue, I found amusing a short essay by Juan Marsé in which he mocks the triviality of some studies by imagining titles of theses.

“ Por un breve instante, horribles fantasmas de posibles tesinas pasadas y futuras desfilan por mi mente con extravagantes títulos: El significado de los toros y de la humilde patata en la poesía de Miguel Hernández - Estructura, calor y sabor de las magdalenas en la obra de Proust - El Pijoaparte hijo natural semiótico de Henry James, con permiso de Félix de Azúa - Los silencios de Moby Dick y su relación metalingüística con la pata de palo de John Silver y con el mezcal y los barrancos de la prosa de Malcolm Lowry - Madame Flaubert soy yo, dijo Federico García Lorca”.

From “La isla del libro y el día del tesoro”

LANGUAGES

The Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies (Southampton University) includes in its website different kinds of resources, among them a list of 700 reasons for studying languages, all of them quoted from diverse sources such as linguists' works, surveys done to sixth form students, EU documents, and many more. After a bit of browsing, I have chosen this reason in order to provide an example:

"Languages give us access to other "countries of the mind", and help us to look back at our own country and culture from a different and more healthily critical perspective"

Reference:

Footitt, H. (2001) 'Lost for words' in the Guardian, Tuesday October 23 2001

Another section of this website contains the Power Point presentation Why Study Linguistics?, an informative and entertaining slide show aimed at encouraging people to study linguistics.

I've stopped at the following slide:

"What makes a word beautiful?" When reading it I have recalled an evening among friends when someone proposed us to say our favourite words. I found it curious the possible reasons that could make us select words. I'm not saying them here before inviting readers -anyone around here?- to share their favourite word in any language.

JABBERWOCKY

This blog does not update too often these days -too much work? other interests? lack of ideas to share? - it does not matter but ... not a single post in April? I still have some minutes left before May starts and, not finding anything more informative or serious, I will allow a bit of nonsense to fill this entry.

Last week I saw Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and enjoyed it. The story was not Carroll's and this time the script contained allusions to a 'real world' which somehow explains and is influenced by the actions underground as well as a conventional plot of struggle between good and evil with a heroine. Anyway it still keeps part of the nonsensical and dreamlike atmosphere of the original.

Alice's stories contain plenty of nonsensical images or dialogues to choose from, among them the poem Jabberwocky.

Here I leave a link to some translations of the poem.

DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?

Just a joke for the holidays!

ELMORE LEONARD'S RULES FOR WRITERS

During this month of March, Elmore Leonard, the well known crime writer, is publishing a new book, "10 Rules of Writing". The following is a brief summary of his advice that I have taken from The Guardian.

1. Never open a book with weather. If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a charac­ter's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead look­ing for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

2. Avoid prologues: they can be ­annoying, especially a prologue ­following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in non-fiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday, but it's OK because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: "I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks."

3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But "said" is far less intrusive than "grumbled", "gasped", "cautioned", "lied". I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances "full of rape and adverbs".

5. Keep your exclamation points ­under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose". This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use "suddenly" tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apos­trophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavour of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories Close Range.

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants", what do the "Ameri­can and the girl with him" look like? "She had taken off her hat and put it on the table." That's the only reference to a physical description in the story.

9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're ­Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

THE GLOBE STAGES FIRST PLAY WRITTEN BY A WOMAN

The Globe theatre is to stage the first play in its history by a female playwright. It will be the premiere of a new work by Nell Leyshon.

The original Globe where many of Shakespeare's works were first performed - by all-male companies - has no records of plays by women and, until now, none has been programmed in the modern reconstruction in the 13 years since it opened.

Leyshon is working on Bedlam, a "funny and bawdy" story of a beautiful woman inmate in the London hospital for the insane in the 18th century.

When interviewed by the media, she said she was excited but it did seem "shocking" to be making such a gender breakthrough as late as 2010. "It made me really think about all the women who are in graveyards with their talent for writing unfulfilled. But it's luck for me. I was the first person to come along with an idea that was right for the Globe."

Leyshon, 48 years old and a mother of two, originally made television commercials before turning to writing. She won the Evening Standard award for Comfort Me With Apples only five years ago.

Her work is part of a season that includes a new Howard Brenton play on Anne Boleyn, Dominic Rowan playing Henry VIII and Lucy Bailey directing Macbeth in collaboration with Venezuelan choreographer Javier de Frutos. Bedlam will run from 5 September to 1 October as part of the Globe season from 23 April to 3 October. It is a “must” if you visit London during those months.

LOST CONSONANTS

Yesterday I read a mention about Lost Consonants cartoons in Language Play by David Crystal. Their author, Graham Rawle, bases the wit of his pictures and captions on the simple fact of altering the meaning of one word by leaving out one of its letters. Crystal tells in his book about the need to know the norm, the correct form of any linguistic form, when they are purposely modified in order to produce a humorous effect in the reader or listener. This can be a good exercise to test our lexical knowledge: to try and identify the original word and compare sentence meanings.

EXÁMENES EN LA UNED

En estos días previos a los exámenes de la UNED, una amiga me pasa la referencia de este vídeo:



No sé qué efecto tuvieron, pero seguro que endulzaron el trago de "reconcentrarse" delante del papel en blanco.

¡Suerte a cualquiera que pase por este blog y tenga exámenes a la vista!