Writing at Barnard: Synchronicity
Sometimes, when a series of encounters and experiences interlink improbably well (and with improbable beneficence to oneself), it becomes tempting to imagine that if the Universe were a person (capital 'U' here, as in "the Universe," like 'D' as in "the Doctor") , it would be jumping up and down, waving its arms at you, and shouting, "look at this! Look at this! Isn't this weirdly relevant to your interests? Don't you just love me for pointing it out? Oh, and yes. Yes you are obligated to love me for this, even if I did let a bird poop on your head last Tuesday."
Well, I attended a guest lecture at CU School of the Arts a few weeks back, and have come to the conclusion that the Universe wants me to steal a particular bit of nomenclature from Samuel R. Delany and feed it to my senior thesis.
Before I can tell you why the Universe wants me to pilfer from Samuel R. Delany's vocabulary, I need to explain a little bit about the thesis itself.
My thesis focuses on several tropes that are pandemic in (though by no means limited to) YA and children's fantasy. These particular tropes are very property-oriented; mainly repetitive plot elements (like the "birthright hero" and the "need for secrecy") that use the reader's property-oriented anxieties to drive or ratchet up the tension either in a scene, or throughout an entire narrative.
When I first began to seriously interrogate these tropes for meaning, the meanings that surfaced were revelation enough. I became conscious of powerful, inbuilt imperatives that I'd very much bought into as a child (whenever the trope was played straight). But while the process of uncovering and describing structural bias was relatively straight-forward, justifying my unease with structurally biased tropes was not. I felt a need for a more concrete, vigorous justification of my stance towards property-driven story-lines. From an aesthetic perspective, audiences on the whole clearly are not tired of (for instance) the narrative of the "heir apparent," when it is framed in a sufficiently engaging light-- so the question for me became, what is the basis of my criticism? Why criticize, rather than simply describe?
I had reached some of my own conclusions when crazy random happenstance* led me to Samuel R. Delaney's lecture. And in the course of his planned talk, he framed the problem of cliché so concisely that afterwards, I thought about the fact that (given my previous track record of event attendance) the odds had been astronomically against me being present in the room to hear said concise framing, and I sort of boggled at the possible evidence of a serendipitous force in the universe.
But enough of that-- back to my story.
Samuel R. Delany, guys. I first encountered his name only a handful of months ago, but by the time I started noticing the flyers on campus advertising his talk, I was intrigued. The high of discovery had not yet worn off-- otherwise (again, given my track-record of event truancy), I probably wouldn't have shown up. But I knew him by reputation as one of the foremost literary (not to mention, erotic) science fiction authors in the history of ever, and moreover, I'd actually managed to read some of his criticism-- most felicitously About Writing, which ranges in insight from the consummately practical, to high-minded, high-concept, literary meta (I say felicitous, because I found myself stopping a lot, to write as I read).
So anyway, I won't lie. Based on little more than a sketchy image of genius under construction in my head, I basically expected the moon from this man. That I wasn't disappointed after such an indulgent amount of foolhardy, incautious build-up can only be a great credit to Mr. Delany, because I was engaged long before he said anything I had any immediate, obvious, academic use for. For the fact that the second half of the talk wound up being so very relevant to my own academic writing, I can only thank the Universe.
Mr. Delany's opening gambit was very amusing; an anecdote from one of his writing workshops in which a young man handed in an unbelievable "true story," which turned out to be almost entirely fabricated. He went on to discuss how we, as authors, lie to ourselves as we write, how easily readers sometimes see through our deceptions and self-deceptions, and the effect this has on the credibility of our stories. He lead us, rather indirectly, through the etymology of the word "cliché" (also very amusing)-- and spoke of why 19th century print-setters loved them so much. And of why they are tantamount to linguistic torture for almost anyone who is not a 19th century print-setter.
And then he spoke about his dislike of clichés in politics. I swear, my ears perked up (if you'll excuse the trite phrasing in an essay about tropes and clichés). Clichés, he said, so often act as "stabilizers" for harmful and oppressive narratives-- standing in for rational discourse where prejudice and misperceptions might otherwise be changed.
"There you have it," I thought to myself. "'Stabilizers.' Ten-bajillion times better than 'crystalizing agents' or 'narrative solidifiers.'"** And after the lecture I went outside, did a little victory dance on the College Walk, and I've been attending events pretty religiously ever since (or, okay, more like one or so a week).
I guess the moral of this story, Barnard writers, is to go out into the world (no, but really, go out) expecting inspiration to jump at you from completely random places. And also (I suppose): to know what your questions are. The more you work at cataloging and chipping away at the weak places--the little gaps and unanswered questions-- in your own work, the more quickly you will recognize it when solutions present themselves to you. The fact that Samuel R. Delany and I are both thinking and talking about the harmful effects of cliché ended up being pretty serendipitous for me. But in all honesty, breakthroughs like that-- the eureka moment, that flash of recognition-- are probably one part serendipity, and (at least) nine parts preparedness for inspiration to strike.
____________________________________________________________________________
* "Crazy random happenstance" grabbed from Joss Whedon. My apologies to Joss Whedon.
** To be honest, I knew beforehand that trying to use "narrative solidifiers" would be bad news, because it always made me think of constipation.
yousharknotpass
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
prguitarman
romaincrisis
turnnoffyourmind
ellievsbear