While I’ve skirted the issue by hiding behind a declarative mask of grassroots, gut-level analysis of the books I am reading, I realize that the lack of confidence in myself as an adequate literary critic cannot really slide me by the library reading group uptown (which I didn’t attend out of fear) much less the austere group of readers, writers and critics to which I somehow managed to belong known as Metaxucafe.
So saying, while I still am posting my thoughts as I read, I am also pursuing a better understanding of the methods and thinking of the various literary theories and hope to affiliate myself to a slighter closer proximity to one of them rather than come from out in left field.
While a quick reminder of the manners of thinking and focus decidedly point out some horrendously boring concerns, I do realize that if I learn a bit more about them and seek out the direction(s) that interest me, even if picking and choosing highlights among them, I can at least present a more intelligent organized mish-mash of my own doing.
As always, I find it difficult to separate the reader and writer within, and believe both voices will be heard, hopefully not raised in argument. (Which would possibly mean that the subject of the disagreement just ain’t that good!)
So I’ll probably be doing more reading than writing, except for my secret writing of story that just can’t be stopped right now.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
To what end is all this criticism? If you dissect a frog, it is still dead there on the table, etherized.
Comparative analysis can only go so far. I don’t believe any of these writers consulted due process of literary stone balancing when they wrote. Of course knowledge is power, and Mark Twain said that one shouldn’t attempt writing as a craft unless trained in no way less than a steamship captain should take charge without knowing boats.
But I like the elegance of expression that yields unto me something new or revives in a new way an experience. The mechanisms are important but not all that.
I follow your thinking, and certainly do not aspire to “Literary Critic” status, but as a writer, I am trying to learn as I read. Not everything is automatically absorbed but must be thought over a bit. My feeling is that with the aid of those who are established in the art of literary criticism, just as with those established in the writing of literature, I will understand what I seek that much more quickly.