ENL 505 - Stylistics
Reflection On Style
Assignment
Style is the way a
person engages and reflects the world. This is my understanding as of
mid-February 2019.
Or maybe...style is better understood as how one perceives THE world but/then reflects THEIR world. Like digestion, what goes in is NOT what comes out. An “objective” world is sensed but a subjective world reflected. Whittle this down to literary style and we might come to the consensus that literary style is the process by which a writer (and ergo a reader) engages the world and reflects that world in or through the act of writing (and ergo reading).
But, as Ben Yagoda painfully points (alliteration) out: style IS the person. Style is not a person/attitude/culture/genetic/geographic/generation neutral proposition. So you’ll (shift to 2nd person) have to accept that you’ll never be Joshua Ferris or George Saunders or Toni Morrison or Tim Kreider but deep down in places you don’t like to talk about at cocktail parties, you knew this. Oh you knew it all right. You, of all people, rail against the mundacity (neologism [mundane+audacity=mundacity]) of tautological utterings practically day in and day out (“it is what it is”) as the most boring, offensive offerings of words for the sake of words. And there is nothing as tautologous as you not being someone you aren’t. No, what you don’t like about style being the person, is the person you are.
And nothing, NUH-theeng, has changed over the course of 14 weeks of learning about style. Should it have? Maybe (hypophora). What really changed is that I’ve learned, even more concretely, I ammore still incapable of change.
And this is dreadful. Depressing, truly (anastrophe). So very awful. And so it
goes.
Or maybe...style is better understood as how one perceives THE world but/then reflects THEIR world. Like digestion, what goes in is NOT what comes out. An “objective” world is sensed but a subjective world reflected. Whittle this down to literary style and we might come to the consensus that literary style is the process by which a writer (and ergo a reader) engages the world and reflects that world in or through the act of writing (and ergo reading).
But, as Ben Yagoda painfully points (alliteration) out: style IS the person. Style is not a person/attitude/culture/genetic/geographic/generation neutral proposition. So you’ll (shift to 2nd person) have to accept that you’ll never be Joshua Ferris or George Saunders or Toni Morrison or Tim Kreider but deep down in places you don’t like to talk about at cocktail parties, you knew this. Oh you knew it all right. You, of all people, rail against the mundacity (neologism [mundane+audacity=mundacity]) of tautological utterings practically day in and day out (“it is what it is”) as the most boring, offensive offerings of words for the sake of words. And there is nothing as tautologous as you not being someone you aren’t. No, what you don’t like about style being the person, is the person you are.
And nothing, NUH-theeng, has changed over the course of 14 weeks of learning about style. Should it have? Maybe (hypophora). What really changed is that I’ve learned, even more concretely, I am
Dude: “What was that?”
Bro: “What?”
Dude: “What do you mean what?”
Bro: “What do YOU mean what? From earlier, ‘what.’”
Bro: “What?”
Dude: “What do you mean what?”
Bro: “What do YOU mean what? From earlier, ‘what.’”
Interlocutor Emeritus: Enough! We all heard it you dopes! It’s obvious. Shannon is
waxing on again about facticity. He’s got a complex or some shit.
You are stuck with you
and you can’t change. Not a bit. Human all too human as Nietzsche
said...but
You. Can. Write about it.
Engage the world and
reflect that engagement WITH WORDS on the damn page. String sentences together
and have end-focus and throw in some rhetorical figures and learn grammar rules
so that you can bend em’ and try the upper, middle, and low styles and use
Latinate and be colloquial and imitate the authorial silence of Capote or try
your best for some powerful status details a la Didion (a lone, dusty,
plastic poinsettia adorned his desk - no pictures of children dressed in
Halloween costumes) and don’t you dare argue - instead dramatize, the way
Mailer would and don’t forget to try to Tom Wolfe-it and just throw everything
against the page and see what sticks...but you’ve got to, must, put SOMETHING
on the page.
You know you are special, right? You know that spatio-temporally you are unique in all the universe and yet you are going to NOT write for fear of, fear of what? Criticism? Did I mention that you have a point of view unrepeatable in space/time? I did (hypophora). What are you waiting for?
Style be damned!
Humanity be damned!
Inability cursed, brainpower (or lack thereof) ba!
Forget ALL that.
Do I have to quote that puke-green skinned, Dagobah swamp residing, jangly-toothed Jedi, Yoda and tell you that you must unlearn what you have learned?
Style is the person but your fallacy is thinking only the styles of others matters. Maybe write till you do matter or maybe write because writing matters...to you.
You know you are special, right? You know that spatio-temporally you are unique in all the universe and yet you are going to NOT write for fear of, fear of what? Criticism? Did I mention that you have a point of view unrepeatable in space/time? I did (hypophora). What are you waiting for?
Style be damned!
Humanity be damned!
Inability cursed, brainpower (or lack thereof) ba!
Forget ALL that.
Do I have to quote that puke-green skinned, Dagobah swamp residing, jangly-toothed Jedi, Yoda and tell you that you must unlearn what you have learned?
Style is the person but your fallacy is thinking only the styles of others matters. Maybe write till you do matter or maybe write because writing matters...to you.
Maybe when we talk
about style we are really talking about what matters to you.
I could be wrong and my opinion may not be worth a hill of beans in this crazy world but I do have a question. Tis a simple one:
I could be wrong and my opinion may not be worth a hill of beans in this crazy world but I do have a question. Tis a simple one:
What matters to you?
Your style is what you care about, what you value, what...matters to you; if you are afraid of what others think about what matters to you, it doesn’t REALLY matter to you and you aren’t done learning your values. No sin there. And good news, you can write about it.
What are you waiting
for?
Either way, write. Right?
Either way, write. Right?
(Psst! I lied about
tautologies. I fucking love tautologies. Not really. But…)
***
Word Count: 716
Please compose a brief
(500-750) word reflection on this semester and your understanding of style,
fourteen weeks later.
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