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WRITING PHILOSOPHY

“WHAT GREAT BOOKS?”

September 7, 2015
AUTHORS, EDUCATION AND LEARNING, READING, WRITING PHILOSOPHY
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“The great books are those that tradition, and various institutions and authorities, have regarded as constituting or best expressing the foundations of Western culture…derivatively the term also refers to a curriculum or method of education based around a list of such books.

Mortimer Adler lists three criteria for including a book on the list:

the book has contemporary significance; that is, it has relevance to the problems and issues of our times;

the book is inexhaustible; it can be read again and again with benefit;

the book is relevant to a large number of the great ideas and great issues that have occupied the minds of thinking individuals for the last 25 centuries.” [Wikipedia]

TODAY:  In Defense of a Liberal Education (2015) by Fareed Zakaria is a “great book.”

YESTERDAY:  The Idea of A University (1854) by John Henry Newman is a “great book.”

Here are some other “Great Books”:

Classical/Old Fashioned, but not-outdated sources for reading/reading skills:

Art and Reality— Joyce Cary (1957)

The Dynamics of Literary Response--Norman N. Holland (1968)

Great Books–David Denby (1996)

How to Read a Book–Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren (1940; 1972)

Literature as Exploration–Louise M. Rosenblatt (1937; 1968)

On Moral Fiction–John Gardner (1978)

Perspectives in Contemporary Criticism–Sheldon Norman Grebstein (1968)

Principles of Literary Criticism–Lacelles Abercrombie (1932; 1960)

Understanding Fiction–Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren (1943; 1959)

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JOHN GARDNER’S GREAT STUFF ABOUT LITERATURE AND ART

August 31, 2015
ARTISTIC VENTURES, EDUCATION AND LEARNING, READING, WRITING PHILOSOPHY
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From

 On Moral Fiction (1978)

Notes put together from the book; each passage could be a starting point for discussion.

***

Criticism, like art, is partly a game [but the game has a point].

My basic message . . . drawn from Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Dante, and the rest, and a standard in Western civilization down through the eighteenth century . . . : TRUE ART IS MORAL: it seeks to improve life, not debase it.

Trivial art has no meaning or value except in the shadow of more serious art.

Art is essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy.

Art re-discovers, generation by generation, what is necessary to humanness.

The critic’s proper business is explanation and evaluation, . . .

To understand a critic, one needs a clear head and a sensitive heart, but not great powers of the imagination.

Criticism and art, like theology and religion, are basically companions but not always friends. At times, they may be enemies.

True art is a conduit between body and soul, between feeling unabstracted and abstraction unfelt.

Dullness is the chief enemy of art.

True art is too complex to reflect the party line.

True art is by its nature moral. We recognize true art by its careful, thoroughly honest search for and analysis of values.

**Morality is nothing more than doing what is unselfish, helpful, kind, and noble-hearted, and doing it with at least a reasonable expectation that . . . we won’t be sorry for what we’ve done. Moral action is action which affirms life.

True morality [is] life-affirming, just, and compassionate behavior.

Great art celebrates life’s potential, offering a vision unmistakably and unsentimentally rooted in love.

In art, morality and love are inextricably bound: we affirm what is good . . . because we care.

Critics would be useful people to have around if they would simply do their work, carefully and thoughtfully assessing works of art, calling attention to those worth noticing, and explaining clearly, sensibly, and justly why others need not take up our time.

A good book is one that, for its time, is wise, sane, and magical, one that clarifies life and tends to improve it.

The chief quality that distinguishes great art . . . is its sanity, the good sense and efficient energy with which it goes after what is really there and feels significant.

The true artist’s purpose, and the purpose of the true critic after him, is to show what is healthy, in other words sane, in human seeing, thinking, and feeling, and to point out what is not.

The theoretical border between art and madness seems to be, then, that the artist can wake up and the psychotic cannot. When Hamlet plays mad, he takes a step toward real madness. Sanity is remembering the purpose of the game.

**The business of civilization is to pay attention, remembering what is central, remembering that we live or die by the artist’s vision, sane or cracked.

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THE WORK OF WRITING: APOLOGIA PRO LABORA MEA

August 24, 2015
EDUCATION AND LEARNING, WRITING PHILOSOPHY
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A “theme” or “composition” is a writing with a purpose, not necessarily to make a point or state a moral.  It could be a story (narrative).

An “essay” is a kind of “theme” or “composition,” with form and content–and a purpose.

(Blogs are “compositions,” of course.)

A writing course has a goal: to allow those enrolled to have the opportunity to do better writing than before.  It’s that simple.

Or, if not “better,” then to learn more than they knew before.  And, if they know it “all,” then to produce a product worthy of them, exhibiting knowledge and skills–and art.

Crafting an essay or theme or composition (or blog) is not easy for most.  Composing and writing this piece requires awareness of what has been learned and an ability to use drafting, revising, and proofing (editing) skills (to say nothing of using a keyboard on a computer, perhaps, even, to transcribe from a hand-written rough draft).

The basics of writing knowledge we learn by and through sixth grade–if all goes well.  After that, it’s a matter of chance and choice: having a good foundation, choosing to learn, having the opportunity to “get” learning, staying healthy, being subject to many other variables.

Note that all compositions reflect care, concern, and competencies:

Caring about self and goals

Concern for a subject

Competencies in language skills.

Bloggers must ask:

What do I care? What’s the point of doing this? 

Why should I do something “stupid”–ever?  Like write about a dumb topic I really am not concerned about?

Why should I care about my language or punctuation or spelling?  Do I really have to learn all the rules of such a difficult language?  Do I want to exhibit my confidence and competency–or ignorance?  (And who really cares about who and whom?)

The point to all of this:

Care

Concern

Competency.

It is as simple as that.

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GREAT STUFF ABOUT LITERATURE/ART/READING–(1)

August 4, 2015
AUTHORS, READING, WRITING PHILOSOPHY
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from Art and Reality by Joyce Cary (1958; 1961)

ART is the MEANS

by which we can express ourselves in forms of meaning and communicate these meanings to others.  It is the only means by which we can convey both FACTS and FEELINGS about the fact.

Truth in art can be checked with an objective reality, by correspondence with the real. All the scenes, all the events, and all the characters must contribute to the total effect, the total meaning of the work. The reader must not be confused by side issues.

Men live so entirely by feeling that reason has extremely small power over even our most intelligent geniuses.

The most important part of man’s existence, that part where he most truly lives and is aware of living, lies entirely within the domain of personal feeling.

Reason has very little power in conflict with any strong emotion, any powerful symbol [like a flag, the mere name of a country . . . or words like “freedom”].

 

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