Question: Does the academic study of literature and writing get in the way of creativity?

I myself often like reading literary criticism and also film criticism, and I do find that it often helps me understand more about a literary work or film. But I also find that a lot of criticism tends to divert one's attention away from the work itself, or at least distance the reader from the work and encourage the reader to respond to it on an analytic level rather than on an emotional one. As Edmondson says on p. 9 of his prologue (p. 5 of our packet), "Formal terms are distancing, rendering one immune to the emotional force in the work. Using the formal vocabulary, you may analyze a work, but it is unlikely that you will afford it the chance to read and interpret you." I myself would say that this often applies to criticism as a whole and not just the use of formal terms.

On my web page, there's a review of a marvelous book called Air Guitar by a guy named Dave Hickey, which exemplifies in some ways the antithesis of much academic criticism by emphasizing enthusiasm and appreciation rather than analysis. I think we need more of this in university teaching.

Academic criticism is often thematic in focus and I think that this misses the real point of creative works. Certainly if you read many works by a given author, you will generally find certain philosophical, moral, or political themes that pervade his or her work. This is interesting, but I think that it's often (although certainly there are many exceptions) about as important as the fact that John Irving's novels often touch on the subject of wrestling. It has little to do with the author's intent.

Now an academic critic can justifiably say that the author's intent is beside the point. The work stands on its own. However as writers, we have a different attitude. We want to learn how to create works of our own, and if we take courses that focus on aspects of creative works which are in fact (in my opinion) almost accidental byproducts of the writing process, this gets in the way of our own creative efforts.

In other words, I think that literature courses often promote the idea that the purpose of a poem or piece of fiction is to convey some deep message. But I don't think that it's productive for a writer to start out by trying to find some deep message s/he wants his or her work to convey. The theme/message is something that evolves organically during the creative process.

Just about everyone who reads my own story ``The Chekhovian Smile'' notices that it's a story about loneliness. I certainly agree with this, but that wasn't my starting point for writing the story. The starting point was the image of a young woman (maybe in her late teens) who I often saw standing in a doorway on Broadway in San Francisco when I was in my early twenties. I wanted to write about her, and I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to write in the second person. When I go back and analyze this now, I suppose that it's fair to say that the reason for my wanting to write in the second person was that the story was actually about the feeling the viewpoint character has about this woman, the yearning for something without even knowing what it is he's yearning for. And it seemed to me that even a conventional first-person narrative would be too distancing, would lack the emotional immediacy I wanted. But I certainly never thought all that out at the time.

The opening of the story, which establishes the tone of loneliness, was actually the very last part of the story I wrote. I was making the story a ghost story for a very practical reason, namely that I wanted to write something for The Twilight Zone Magazine. And I had one hell of a time trying to find a shape for the story that worked. When I finally did come up with a narrative structure that seemed to work, I realized that I didn't know how to open the story. Finally, looking through my notebook, I found an attempt at a poem which I'd never been able to do anything with, and I realized that it would work well as an opening for my story.

This opening is as follows: "Sometimes your life seems measured in dark windy streets. You've trudged down so many, looking for an interesting bar, looking for someone to talk to, looking for a girl who might smile at you. Looking for real life.;'

Now if I'd started with that poem and the idea of writing a piece about loneliness, I don't think I could have ever written the story.

In contrast with critical courses, creative writing courses focus on craft. For the most part, they focus on the question of how to take a piece one has written and eliminate flaws and add features (for want of a better word) which enhance it. For most of us, such courses can be extremely useful. But inasmuch as they are focusing on the final stage of the creative process rather than the beginning, they can also get in the way of creativity.

On the other hand, certainly a writer needs to learn craft, just as much as a performer or visual artist or musician does. Classes and workshops are one way of doing this.

I think, though, that if one wants to learn the craft of fiction, it's a mistake to start by studying stories by Chekhov, Hemingway, Katherine Mansfield, and Alice Munro. I think one can learn a great deal about the craft of fiction by studying genre fiction: mysteries, classic science fiction, westerns, and even romance writing. And I notice that often academic fiction workshops will let slide things which genre writers would immediately point out as classic blunders: the use of stilted dialogue to convey information to the reader, for instance, or the lack of appeal to the five senses.

Creative writing courses for the most part focus on form (structure, voice, etc). They concentrate on teaching students to write well. This is good, but I think that writing courses most often overlook an even more important part of writing: substance. Having something worthwhile to say is even more important than being able to say it well. And I think one sees over and over again that when academic critics turn to writing poetry or novels or whatever of their own, the biggest problem in their works is that they really don't have any worthwhile subject matter.

Furthermore, to repeat what I said above, academic criticism tends to think of subject matter in terms of some deep philosophical/moral/political message. But fiction and poetry don't deal with the abstract. For a writer, the subject matter which is fruitful is more likely to be some intensely emotional experience, either imagined or in the writer's own past, or a haunting image, or an intriguing situation.

So what I'm saying, for the most part, is that academic courses in literature and writing tend to direct the student's attention away from him/herself. And thus they divert the student's focus away from that emotional core which is where a lot of great writing originates.