Day 2: Dorothy Parker, Susan Sontag, Sylvia Plath
Day 2 of reading a short story, essay and poem each day. I am picking whatever I have available to me and feel like reading, focusing on female authors this month.
Short Story: Dorothy Parker - You were perfectly fine
A really short story that feels like a comedy sketch for something on BBC. I find Parker's witty and frippy style a bit grating in her prose, but find the situation of the story very relatable, and I like how it reveals itself over the dialogue.
After every social gathering, I feel terrible or worried about something dumb, awkward or mean I have said. And I know how hard it is to get better when everyone's always kissing your ass. "No! You were perfectly fine". This story really ratches it up in a fun way.
Who hasnt woken up the next day repeating "Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear"?
Then again, I don't know how other people generally experience life. Lately I believe I am only four sixths human. One sixth is the devil and the other sixth is jack shit.
Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
Essay: Susan Sontag - Against Interpretation
Interpretation is the revenge of intellect upon art. Even more, it is the revenge of intellect upon the world.
A very clear and concise essay against the kind of arts criticism that strangles the life out of the art by dissecting and categorising its contents under the consultancy of Marx, Freud or God.
I know the temptation. You have boned up on a big book of theory, probably for uni, and now you're just waiting for the right piece of art to come along so you can do a ____ist analysis. It could be any film, book, poem or exhibition; what is most important is that you have demonstrated your application of the theory. This, from my experience, is how most academic assignments go in the humanities, and how many papers go in later careers in academia. Who is it serving? People wanting to learn the theory, maybe. Is the game of interpretation worthwhile? Well, I think so, if only because I value brain exercises and intellectual pursuits, but Sontag does not. There are better ways, she says, to engage with text, and with this I agree
Sontag would prefer to leave content alone and focus on conveying the artwork's form. To me this seems like it would lead to fairly dull writing, though Peter Schevendahl is an example of a critic who can write vividly about visual art without ever resorting to economic, psychoanalytic or religious allegories, yet making you see the art with new eyes. Perhaps it is 'less critical' but not less valuable; if anything, this kind of criticism is more likely to get the every day crowds more interested.
It does make me think though- what do I like in arts criticism? What makes a good or insightful piece of writing? I will have to be on the lookout, that when I enjoy a review, to ask myself why.
Poem: Sylvia Plath - The Hanging Man
I chose a short one as its 1am. Only six lines and it rules.
By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.
The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard's eyelid :
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.
A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
If he were I, he would do what I did.
Grim subject matter aside, each cluster of words is so vivid and violent and I really like the rhyme scheme. I think it captures the physical feeling of emotional anguish so well- of feeling as though you have been zapped by lightening, or a huge hand is squeezing your brain, or when lying in bed, feeling as though your heart and chest and ribs have been impaled on a shiny black crag at the bottom of a pit.
ENOUGH. tomorrow I will read some other things.