Um, um, speaking of criticism, can someone groom my monkey? Lubricate my social?

I've been having two solid days of self-doubt, made the mistake of reading some Sarah Vowell (dear god she's good), and want to crawl under my bed and die of shame for what I've written.

If there's a spare stroke, can someone pick it up off the floor and apply it to my ego?

why would their take be any more valid than mine? And since I was forced to sit in the chair, and listen to them talk, and at least half the time, I thought their take was absurd? There you have the roots of my adult dislike of analysis, which is what I think of as litcrit. Half a century, and never come across a reason to feel differently. Why would I need anyone to tell me how to think or feel about someone else's creativity?

LIGHTBULB! I've been reading this discussion with interest (just not anything to add), and I finally get your POV now, deb. This makes perfect sense to me.

I see analysis as a way to understand someone else's viewpoint. That doesn't negate my own opinion or make it any less valid. Rather, it opens up something I may not have thought of before. Assuming that they prove their argument with me.

Allyson, step away from the Vowell. It doesn't apply.

Yes, I agree - I think she writes beautifully. But what does that have to do with you? You write different things, different realities, from different places in the heart, and to a different end.

You're really not even writing about the same food groups. And what you're writing - your food group - you're doing in a spare, elegant prose, that has conscience as one of its propellants.

That kind of comparison exists only, and I do mean only, to drive you bonkers. If I start comparing myself to Michael Chabon...no, not even willing to go NEAR that.

Step away from the Vowell, and stop comparing. It simple doesn't apply.

I see analysis as a way to understand someone else's viewpoint.

And if that was the way it had ever been presented, I might not have had to restrain myself from standing up and telling the soi disant "expert" that his or her shit stank just like everyone else's.

But it wasn't. It wasn't "This is my viewpoint", it was "I am not a writer myself, I can't write three words of fiction in a row without plagarising, but hey, I have a degree and you're under age and by God you will sit in that chair and listen to me pull the wings off people who actually could do it, and then I will tell you how to think about it, and you can't leave! BWAHAHAHA!"

They can bite me, then and now. Feh.

But Deb, I think you're conflating two things, and I don't think that's a good idea. There is this:

Then we do agree on the definitions. I just never wanted any help in thinking about my take on what I've read.

and then there is this:

the opposing arrogance, there: why would their take be any more valid than mine?

The first part? Sure. You read your own way; you're not interested in the stuff of literary connections and references and all that. That's fine. But it's whether or not you find analysis useful to you is not the same as whether analysis is arrogant. Arrogant analysts definitely exist, and they're people to avoid; but calling all analysis arrogant is as reductive and dismissive as saying "all romance is bad".

I'm not asking you to read analysis, if it's not your thing; but I wish you wouldn't call it names in front of those of us who enjoy it.

And if that was the way it had ever been presented, I might not have had to restrain myself fropm standing up and telling the soi disant "expert" that his or her shit stank just like everyone else's. But it wasn't.

I can completely grok your POV if that's how things were presented to you. Completely. My back would have been up if someone had presented something in a "My way is the One True Way" mode.

Since I'm working on getting my teaching certificate in H.S. English/Theatre, it's nice to get a reminder on how to present literary analysis. I'm lucky that I had good teachers who were of the "This is my viewpoint. If you have another and can prove it, wonderful" school of litcrit.

Allyson, there are a couple of people here, and when I read their stuff for free, I feel like I am stealing. You are one.

Do you have a particular piece you want read, and for which you want feedback? I love to read you. You breathe life into your words--give them blood, and a heartbeat.

But it's whether or not you find analysis useful to you is not the same as whether analysis is arrogant. Arrogant analysts definitely exist, and they're people to avoid; but calling all analysis arrogant is as reductive and dismissive as saying "all romance is bad"

I don't think all analysis is bad. I'll listen to it from people who can actually do some of what it is they get paid to talk about. I spend a couple of hours a week on the phone to London with Roz Kaveney; she is an analysis queen, and we have lively conversations on it.

But she knows, when dealing with me, what my boundaries are, and she respects them. As a fourteen-year-old in a classroom, having my own gut-level take on Hamlet and having to listen to a little man waving his Oxbridge cred about like a handkerchief and insisting, for three straight months, that the only thing that mattered in the play was the homoerotic subtext?

He's being paid to do that, Nutty. And as a student - may I add, one with a brain, thank you, and one with opinions that are no less valid than his, despite the credentials - I had no right to stand up and tell him just how and why he was ruining the play for me. Believe me, I know. I tried it. Got kicked out of his class for it - he didn't want feedback on his opinions, he just wanted a captive audience, and he had one.

I'm not asking you to read analysis, if it's not your thing; but I wish you wouldn't call it names in front of those of us who enjoy it.

OK, now I'm confused, and rather edgy. I didn't start any of the conversations about it; my comments are in response to other comments. Are you saying that it's ok for the proponents of litcrit to effectively bully me out of Literary (ironic, in and of itself, now I think of it) because my opinion doesn't match theirs, but that expressing my own dislike of it is somehow not equally acceptable? And if that's not what you're saying, could you please clarify?

I'm lucky that I had good teachers who were of the "This is my viewpoint. If you have another and can prove it, wonderful" school of litcrit.

I had a bunch of those. I also had a few who were of the "My view is right, yours is wrong" school, and I got terrible grades in those classes, because, first, I couldn't restrain myself from raising my hand with "But couldn't it also be seen as...?" questions, even after it was abundantly clear that the teacher hated it, because I really have a total inability to not give my point of view in academic discussions, and also because I'd hand in papers with my own interpretations, because I considered it both lazy and dishonest to hand in a paper with what I knew the professor wanted to see when it wasn't what I wanted to write.

t edit: x-post.

"This is my viewpoint. If you have another and can prove it, wonderful"

See, with fiction, that stops my ability to deal with said teacher right there.

Fiction is just that. A novel is someone else's landscape, someone else's dreamscape, someone else's heartbreak or historical distillation or personal triumph, filtered through their ability to use language as a tool.

So how on earth can anyone ask someone to "prove" a viewpoint about something that's purely the result of creativity?

This is where it lost me.