Anis Shivani Against the Workshop

Against the Workshop  by Anis Shivani has been on my list for a while; because I thought it might help me on the essay I wanted to write, I took the plunge and acquired it. My plans, at least for the time being, have fallen through; and furthermore, instead of being a reasoned critique about the title subject, the book is merely a smattering of assorted writings, many of them available online, to diverse ends. Still, several do address it. “Why is American Fiction in Its Current Dismal State” is one of those. Nevertheless, instead of reading straight through, I’ve approached the pieces selectively. Do I really want to see an individual writer or a book demolished which I have already made my mind up on? Jorie Graham again? No, thank you.

It was heartening to read, from the introduction: “At least the [literary] gatekeepers everywhere are visibly biting the dust”. He has studied the scene, and in his essay on fiction discusses the mechanics of it, with many of his tropes applicable equally well to poetry. Still, the limits of this kind of inspection are evident. The writer today has issues to worry about beyond who gets published and why.

He writes:

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Contemporary literary fiction has chosen to marginalize itself from mainstream culture.  It has its own niche, like specialized Foucauldian sociology or Derridean philosophy, catering to the sensibilities of other experts in the field.

This certainly seemed an apt description of what I found recently at the sites pertaining to “conceptualism” in writing. The coterie—another of the group’s code-words—seems to be writing to no one outside of its closed academic circle. There is no reason this should be deemed wrong; even a Finley or a Momigliano surely wrote treatises for a select and narrow audience of specialists from time to time, though much else was designed to appeal to the generalist. If the general or lay reader has been dropped from consideration, one has the sense that academia tries to bring more people into its select compass. (Hence the adoption of jargon across boundaries.)

The essay “Writers in Universities” addresses more directly the issue:

University teaching has the following overlapping deleterious effects on writing: a) shrinkage of the writer’s audience to likeminded academics; b) disinterest in the fiction and poetry of public import; c) inability to redraw the given boundaries of the chosen genre; d) lack of risk-taking and subversion, because of the shrunken reconceptualization of the writer’s status; e) infinitesimal subdivisioning of the writing, rather than branching out to encompass competing genres—a typical academic malady; f) focus on immediate reward rather than continuance of the literary tradition; g) withdrawal from public engagement, to the fatal detriment of literature’s timeless values; and h) reorientation toward the lowest common denominator, dumbing down writing.

None of this is exactly hokum, but some of his points strike me as being eccentric or expressive of a curtailed outlook. In trying to summarize his gist to a friend, I wrote, “I’ve just laid my hands on” the book:

Really less substantial than I would have wished, but he [gives] a good description of all the poetry being written in today's MLA culture as being career-driven, in which case, oh this is off the cuff here, it's a three step process. 1) teachers have to teach absurd ideas like "voice" (he rants on about this) and then can't help but have their writing begin to resemble the rules they preach. 2) to make headway in your career you have to write kinda in imitation of your teachers and 3) for gods sake don't say anything substantive or wave-making as that might derail your career...

In Shivani’s own words, “University writers teach simplistic rules. The writers’ own writing then begins to reflect it.” “Yet another effect of the writer’s assimilation in the university is the degradation of the literary journal.” “Writing programs like Stanford like to take young and inexperienced writers, then mold them according to the rules.” Too bad the entire essay is not available online—I’m not inclined to try and flesh out in rehash what the author has stated succinctly himself. The book is recommended, if with the caveat that a lot of the matter addresses specific concerns and may be extraneous to one’s inquiry. Still, nuggets of gold can be worth the work of separating—there is a good concentration of ideas here, if contemporary “Provocations, Polemics, Controversies” (the book’s subtitle) in today’s literary milieu pique the curiosity.

In relation to the “conceptualism” post of a few days ago, David Need made an apropos comment at the Montevidayo site:

I guess I can’t see the point of preserving anything called “conceptualism” so I don’t see why any effort should be spent assuming “an articulation of conceptualism’s globality,” nor any point to using its “trans-national significance as a way to catalogue and historicize contemporary literary production.” It’s like wanting in on the aristocracy, isn’t it?

Jefferson obliged that revolutions must needs periodically occur; however the typical scenario, after much destruction, often sees a replacement or substitution of overlords without systemic change—as Machiavelli noted the thing hardest to effect. Hence typically the rising conservatism with age. “It’s like wanting in on the aristocracy,” and installation of oneself as the new gatekeeper to replace the fallen. This may be inevitable (nor do I ascribe such motives to the “Gringpo” crew), yet, in light of history, the introspective soul must take pause.