Forum / just thinking out loud...

Gone
Jul 05, 03:01pm

I love schematics, the interpretation of complex electrical control systems as diagrams, the most logical and beautiful of which are ladder diagrams, which lend to logical interpretation into computerized software. It's complicated, but relatively simple when you start to use them.

I was just thinking there is a direct correlation between schematics and fiction.

When we write a story... talking about fiction, not poetry or essays... it may have emotional impact on the reader that we can't really parse into logical, definable segments.

I can love a story and not be able to tell you why and wouldn't want to, since there may be no definitions to cover all our responses, social science and psychiatric discipline aside.

I'm sure there is such a thing as controlled response. Lord knows ad men since the fifties have been trying to tap into that little black box. But language is not software and art is not logic. It's really sad that writing has become a 'career' to be studied and formalized in the academic sphere.

Academics may become great writers, but it's more likely they'll do so in spite of their eductation than because of it.

Wiring schematics are just another form of language. There are conventions and specific methods that must be followed if they are to be understood by those who comprehend the language of laddr logic, but they are not dictums. Engineers and designers are usually involved in expressing new and different schemes, so interpretational genius always supercedes accepted form when the form has no pre-existing convention. But when you lay it all out in schematics, the average technician still has to read and understand them. It's a gift to be able to express it so they can.

In other words, you can't learn what nobody ever thought of before you had to design some circuit that is utterly new. You can learn to be an engineer at any good school, but try as they might, they won't be able to make you a capable designer. By the same token, an MFA program might be able to teach you all the conventions, but they can't begin to make of you an artist.

Just an opinion. It's Matt's fault. He got me thinking along this vein.

Ann Bogle
Jul 05, 04:26pm

I like your thinking out loud, Candlewax. My thinking out loud causes weight loss and lithe movement and vocal chord strain. I end up believing I'll have a heart attack or COPD and that I'll need to be seen toting an oxygen supplier as I water a few flowers in the front yard, cusping a Nat Sherman.

My writing thoughts out loud causes weight gain and cumbersome movement. I grow chunky (for a once-model) and breathe freely again without vocal chord strain. Thoughts of imminent heart attack and COPD and the image of myself toting an oxygen supplier as I water a few flowers while cusping a Nat Sherman, disappear.

Let me beg to differ with one of your observations, while appreciating the rest of them. I especially like engineering as a profession and engineers I have met and befriended.

I feel that the study of Creative Writing is not academic enough and also not studio-based enough. Scholars of Creative Writing almost do not exist, and by now, they should exist. Dissertations in the field of Creative Writing should be scholarly and based in literature or demographics or statistics or sociology or anthropology or history of ideas or aesthetics or philosophy. Scholarly publications about Creative Writing should have been established. Seth Abramson has supplied valuable research in the field. A few others, such as Gabriel Gudding, Ron Silliman, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writers in their more primary way, and teachers interested in Creative Writing pedagogy have variously defended and critiqued literary writing as an academic pursuit. Occupational Therapy has documented the use of Creative Writing as therapy for the elderly, children, and other groups.

I keep in mind that Creative Writing, studied by most students as an elective, has been the most popular course campus- and nationwide. Others in the Fictionaut forum have pointed out that Creative Writing is a cash cow for schools and Universities, especially campuses able to retain Name Writers, usually for less in salary than they generate in sales and tuition.

Jerome Rothenberg has been a proponent of relocating Creative Writing to the Art Department.

I might like to see Creative Writing's Academic establishment as comparable to Music's four fields: Performance, Composition, Musicology, and Education.

Music is different from Creative Writing in that the Reading (interpretation and collective interpretation with the guide of a Conductor) of others' writing (composition) is what is most often performed. Performance is often an aspect of historical tradition and even public ritual, as is concert attendance.

I have realized that many people study piano, not with the goal of becoming world-class performers but for the cultivation of skill and sensitivity to art, the discipline of practicing, the satisfaction of becoming proficient, and the joy of playing. Those families who furnish a piano for their children expect to pay for lessons. Writers who wish to teach writing privately still have almost no defense if they expect to be paid for it. Language art is viewed as free rather than as a commodity. The time of language artists outside the classroom, a 1-10% circumstance among trained or otherwise qualified writers and poets who teach, is viewed as hobby time rather than as expertise.

I realized later, after my formal study was complete, that in workshop, we rarely revealed or asked one another what each of us SAW or IMAGINED as we read or listened. More knowledge of reception in more specified detail would have been interesting and useful.

My last point: I wish in the Study of Creative Writing at advanced levels that we had had more chance to study in depth Metaphor, Grammar of English, Ethics, Copyright, and Audience, among other complex and wonderful subjects that relate.

What you are saying: ART, to be an artist, cannot be taught, and you may be right, yet can it be learned? Maybe it is learned in early childhood in the home or in response to early injustice or maybe it relates to genetics (taste?) or role-modeling (discipline) or to spirituality not satisfied by religion. I do not know.

Gone
Jul 05, 06:34pm

You make good points. I suppose my main objection to presumed educational license is the exclusionary propensity of publication-at-large when the gatekeeping function is heavily populated by MFAs.

I believe the process you call cultivation of sensitivity is artificial when the heart of it resides in academic programs. Ultimately, language is a universal human environment and it is seldom enhanced by rote or theory, but by experiential circumstances. Story telling is the backbone of fiction and language the meat of it. Often when readers appreciate a work of fiction, it is because there is some element within that strikes a personal chord.

Difficult to fake experience. Not impossible, but difficult. Life is the greater classroom in which an artist can experience a finer cultivation. An academic program can teach you the mechanics of language, the naming of the parts, if that's what you need, but the artist's eyes and ears, all of the senses engaged.. I believe these are the true mirrors of human experience.

But it is a human trait to classify every process, codify and package them to death at times. Art is not immune to the influence.

mxi wodd
Jul 05, 06:47pm

John Gardner has a lot to say on this subject. He is all for the writer-to-be getting the best education he can vis-a-vis the study of literature.

And I agree with that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I can't recommend this book highly enough:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32532.On_Becoming_a_Novelist

Ann Bogle
Jul 05, 08:39pm

Mr. Candlewax writes, "Difficult to fake experience. Not impossible, but difficult. Life is the greater classroom in which an artist can experience a finer cultivation."

Life in writing may be more important than life in interpreting music as a performer. So yes.

I have heard or read in columns at Chronicle of Higher Education or a similar place that academic ranks, as they swell with writers as new hires, must be served first by publications regarded as most prestigious. Most M.F.A.s are not hired, as many as 90-99 per cent, to teach creative writing, so their continuing to publish is not considered to be an Institutional priority.

The Loft in Minneapolis does not award degrees in writing or even offer academic credit for coursework, but teachers at The Loft or else it is the students themselves who sign up to study writing at that community writing center expect to publish a book, and many of them expect not only to publish one book but to publish a new book every year. How can we keep up with the demand, not for books, but to be published and to be published by people serving as publishers. The rather open secret is that most writers (speaking in numbers) finance at least part of the cost of publishing their works on paper.

Gardner's books are classic, Matt, and that is worth noting. Speh agrees with you about Gardner. I even liked reading Gardner's On Moral Fiction, even though he specifically disagreed with minimalism, fragmentary writing, and post-modernism to quite an extent.

Gone
Jul 05, 09:05pm

Not against education, me, but perhaps the best education in literature is to read the books that generated the institutional study thereof. One by one.

It would not be a waste of time.

mxi wodd
Jul 05, 09:32pm

" It's Matt's fault. He got me thinking along this vein."

Thinkin's the devil toolbox! Open with care!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To me, education (return to college at 32) meant exposure to that which I did not know existed (though, having read widely from the age of 7 on, I learned I was never more than 2-3 degrees of separation between what I knew--mostly learned from the used-book stores of New Orleans--and what I was being exposed to). I LOVED going to class, sitting back and being told the old stories.

(And I loved it for the love of it. And won all the school-boy prizes. But realized I could not whore it out everyday in the "teaching" of it, so left academia...)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think, ultimately, to be a writer of merit, you must be born strange, live strange, and work very, very hard.

There is *one* aspect of the above definition you can control.

mxi wodd
Jul 05, 09:48pm

(also, it helps if you're lucky enough to have a good ol' hard-ass teacher in Freshman Comp. to beat the rules of usage into yer head--which that foreman on the oil rig (NO MATTER HOW INTERESTING HE IS) is simply not going to do...)

Frankie Saxx
Jul 05, 10:08pm

I think if there was a patented method to become a Writer of Merit, it would be bottled and sold like Vitamin Water to MFA students.

The point of this discussion seems to be that's what dewy eyed MFA students think they're buying, but what they're actually drinking is snake oil.

Or maybe it's something about the nature/nurture of creativity and genius.

On some level, I think "perhaps the best education in literature is to read the books that generated the institutional study thereof" is reinforcement of Ann's point that work in the language arts is under valued. That it's somehow easy. Just read those good books, then you can write a good book! It's sort of like telling someone the best way to learn to be an engineer is to look at the really good schematics.

mxi wodd
Jul 05, 10:12pm

"I think if there was a patented method to become a Writer of Merit, it would be bottled and sold like Vitamin Water to MFA students."

You can't control/chose the nature of your soul/brain-wiring/environment at the time of birth.

mxi wodd
Jul 05, 10:15pm

So that's what I'm saying. It can't be bottled and sold.

strannikov
Jul 05, 10:28pm

One title more, not devoted strictly to literature:

Robert Bresson/NOTES ON THE CINEMATOGRAPHER. NOT simply about film-making, but as with his films themselves, these notes may help lead readers to see film and other art freshly.
Samples (from the Griffin translation/Green Integer edition): "Let it be the feelings that bring about the events. Not the other way." (fine terse contrast of emotion-driven plot with conflict-driven plot) . . . "The faculty of using my resources well diminishes when their number grows." . . . "One does not create by adding, but by taking away. To develop is another matter. (Not to spread out.)"

If you're unfamiliar with his work: as disparaging as Bresson is of the theatre vis-à-vis his stark conception of cinematography, remarkably, most of his films are derived from literary sources. --This little book displaced Strunk & White's ELEMENTS OF STYLE from my "annual re-read" list years ago: startling and valuable descriptions of what it takes to SEE and BE.

mxi wodd
Jul 05, 10:41pm

Thanks for the recco, strannikov. Will look for it.

Other one I highly recommend (you might know of it already, stranni--)

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Uses-Knife-Nature-Purpose/dp/037570423X/ref=la_B000APXE7Q_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373063838&sr=1-6

strannikov
Jul 05, 10:48pm

Matt: welcome back to you, too. The Green Integer ed. was out-of-print as recently as a few months ago (I still pick up copies from time to time to spring on the unsuspecting).

Thx for the Mamet title, new to me.

(and to return favor: Milan Kundera's ART OF THE NOVEL contains a psycho-nutritive essay on Kafka)

Frankie Saxx
Jul 05, 10:52pm

"You can't control/chose the nature of your soul/brain-wiring/environment at the time of birth."

No. But afterward it's all up for grabs.

(I was not disagreeing w/ you by the way.)

But if it *could* be bottled and sold, I bet it would taste like John Irving's piss.

mxi wodd
Jul 05, 11:09pm

"But afterward it's all up for grabs."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"and work very, very hard.

There is *one* aspect of the above definition you can control."

--moi

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"(I was not disagreeing w/ you by the way.)"

I thought I was going to have to break out the ol' arm-wrasslin' pad on this cold, dreary, raining-for-the-past-two-days-as-if-it-were-late-October day.

(hold on, I gotta go git something...)

Gone
Jul 05, 11:28pm

"Just read those good books, then you can write a good book! It's sort of like telling someone the best way to learn to be an engineer is to look at the really good schematics."

You're right, Frankie. I must have rocks in my head. What was I thinking?

mxi wodd
Jul 06, 12:19am

I think it's odd (or at least something worth considering) that within the other art communities this question of academic vs. self-taught doesn't come into play (at least from what I can gather).

You want to be a ballerina? Go to dance school--it's a given.

You want to be an operatic soprano? Go to music school--it's a given.

You want to be a classical pianist? Go to music school--it's a given.

You want to be an engineer? Go to engineering school (an art-form for sure)--it's a given.

You want to be an artist? Go to art school--it's a given.

You want to be a quilter? Go to quilting school (at the YMCA every other Saturday at 10 a.m.)--it's a given.

And above all--FIND THE BEST TEACHER/SCHOOL YOU CAN.

Even if the question is Do you want to learn how to CREATE dance/operas/symphonies/bridges/paintings/quilts... still the answer is GO TO SCHOOL.

But when it comes to writing all bets are off.

Writing is a unique "art," as EVERYONE communicates through words. As a rule, people do not dance/sing/play the piano/draw a picture/make a quilt of what they want when they are (at last) standing before the cashier at McDonald's.

Nor do they do any of the above when they see a child about to walk in front of a car.

They use words.

Anyone can use words, right?

Obviously our predecessors prevailed without benefit of MFA programs, though many/most received a thorough grounding in Latin, Greek, French, THE BIBLE, etc., meaning they LEARNED THE RUDIMENTS OF COMPOSITION.

They learned what a sentence was. They learned what a paragraph was. They learned THE BASICS.

And there were many "learned" fools who, ultimately, had nothing of value to say, no matter how well said.

And many "unlearned" fools who, though maybe having something to say, didn't know how to say it.

Writing, being the act of creation closest to the tongue, closest to the soul from the baby's first "Waaah!" to the dying man's last breath, is special among the arts.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Learn all you can about the basics, learn all you can about the classics. Absorb it then forget it and, if you still want to, write.

mxi wodd
Jul 06, 01:12am

to repeat myself (and end):

Writing is special among the arts.

it is our soul
in the commonest
soil

Gone
Jul 06, 04:42pm

"Writing is special among the arts.

it is our soul
in the commonest
soil"

Been thinking about this all day. One of those just-about-perfect capsules.

Matthew Robinson
Jul 06, 05:41pm

Yeah, agree with J. Candies, really damn well said, Matty Dens.

Sally Houtman
Jul 06, 10:14pm

There *is* magic in those words.

You can teach/study/learn technique.

But magic can't be taught.

Without magic it's highly skilled mechanical assembly.

mxi wodd
Jul 06, 11:32pm

"But magic can't be taught."

You've got to be born with a spark, a weirdness, a quirk of nature, an invisible power of comprehension that the other kids simply do not have.

A spark/weirdness/quirk/power that, applied to the kindling of your existence, starts a fire on the page.

Or else you're
Just Someone
saying Just-Someone Things,
now matter how well-taught.

No one,
to this very day,
truly understands fire
or how to make it.

We really haven't progressed beyond the caveman in that regard. We're always amazed when we encounter it. The creative act remains a mystery that cannot be captured,
in the classroom least of all.

(but still, if you can, go to college, if for nothing more than to sit back and listen to the old stories, and think about the old stories, and write about the old stories.

It can only help.

But beyond that, I say no more...)

Frankie Saxx
Jul 07, 12:34pm

I'll arm-wrassle ya anyway, Crime Dawg. My guns are looking mighty fine these days & I figure it's 50-50 whether you're built like a lumberjack or got spinky poet arms. :D

Jane Flett
Jul 08, 11:28pm

So many good comments and ideas in this thread, but I gotta disagree with you, Matt D, about writing being the only art that doesn't generally get told to learn it from school.

I used to be heavily involved in running a collective arts space, then set up my own venue, and also worked as a promoter for a while.

I know way, WAY more writers who consider MFAs and creative writing courses a given than I do musicians (I'm not talking about sopranos or classical pianists) who feel that way about music school.

In fact, I don't know any musicians who took that path. (I'm talking about solo musicians and bands who are trying/sometimes succeeding at make a living out of making music here.)

Among (admittedly arty or political) film directors I know, it would be about half and half going to school vs doing it learning as you go along.

Similar with fine artists. In fact, for most of the people I know who did go to art/film school, the draw was the use of studio space/awesome materials/editing studios/etc rather than tutors to learn from.

Quilters, crocheters, knitters, collagists, crafty people of all sorts--the ones I know all learned through mistakes and hanging out with other folk and learning from them.

Also, branching into other things I think of as art, the chefs I know who are doing well all learned by doing rather than going to a culinary school.

I totally agree with you about the expectations about words, but I think so many other arts communities have similar situations. It's interesting the ones you chose though, because to me there's clearly something different about them.

Hmmmmmn....

mxi wodd
Jul 09, 12:06am

"(but still, if you can, go to college, if for nothing more than to sit back and listen to the old stories, and think about the old stories, and write about the old stories."

"And above all--FIND THE BEST TEACHER/SCHOOL YOU CAN."

"(also, it helps if you're lucky enough to have a good ol' hard-ass teacher in Freshman Comp. to beat the rules of usage into yer head--which that foreman on the oil rig (NO MATTER HOW INTERESTING HE IS) is simply not going to do...)"

I'm SAYING:Go To School!

mxi wodd
Jul 09, 12:08am

(except for the study of humor...)

;-)

mxi wodd
Jul 09, 12:30am

"I'm SAYING:Go To School!"

To learn the basics, how to walk--but once learned, get out and returning to the little kid LOVING to run for the LOVE of it...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

KNOW that RUNNING IN CLASS is not allowed!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Soul exists outside the commonly-gathered-commonly-judged commonness of the classroom.

Have you READ the NON-SPARKED drivel from the highest-level MFA programs?

It's
Just-People
saying Just-People Things.
Expressing Themselves,
as it were: (See: Pimple)

(and no one in their right mind give a damn)

strannikov
Jul 09, 12:37am

Found in Lichtenberg's WASTE BOOKS (F152, Hollingdale tr.):

"It is necessary for a writer to go out into the world, not so much to observe many situations as to get into many situations himself."

Plus this caution (K69):

"There can hardly be stranger wares in the world than books: printed by people who do not understand them; sold by people who do not understand them; bound, reviewed and read by people who do not understand them; and now even written by people who do not understand them."

He's full of such choice maxims. Highly recommended, and NYRB has a convenient edition (ISBN 978-0-94032-250-9).

stephen hastings-king
Jul 10, 04:45pm

I like this, from Robert Rauschenberg:

I think a painting has such a limited life anyway. Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it. I think that's just a natural phenomenon. It may be I think it is even an important one. I don't think that we have the strength over a period of years to see things always as though we hadn't ever looked at them before to see them new. There may be someone that you're very close to and you see them every day. If they take a two weeks' trip or you take a two weeks' trip, it's only for about the first fifteen minutes when you're back together that you notice how they have changed from the idea that you have of the way they look. And then one's readjusted. I think the same thing happens to painting. So if you do work with known quantities making, puns or dealing symbolically with your materials, I think you're shortening the life of the work even before it's had a chance to be exposed. I mean, it hasn't had a life of its own. It's already leading someone else's life.

The whole interview is interesting:

http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-robert-rauschenberg-12870

stephen hastings-king
Jul 10, 04:51pm

I don't see the sense of an either/or position with respect to formal education. Nor do I think that writing is different from other arts to the extent that it is also a craft and so takes time and work. Whether that time and work takes one through formal education or not seems to me an individual matter. I don't have a particular position on MFA programs beyond thinking them quite expensive and a bit bewildering in their number. They do not seem to me programs that sell illusions any more than any other advanced degree. Nor do they magickally create writers, any more than conservatory training magickally creates financially viable musicians or graduate work in other disciplines magickally creates others in the image of their training. What matters is what you do with the training. In that, everyone is on their own.

mxi wodd
Jul 16, 03:56am

"I figure it's 50-50 whether you're built like a lumberjack or got spinky poet arms. :D"

I are a LUMBERJACKSPINK!

;-)

(checks self in mirror, nods...)

Frankie Saxx
Jul 18, 05:48pm

How does that even happen?

mxi wodd
Jul 27, 05:43am

it
's
just
one'a them
thangs that
do
You must log in to reply to this thread.