In preparation for my lit. crit. exam earlier, I was reading Annette Kolodny’s Dancing through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism. Kolodny makes an interesting observation about the literary canon:
simply put, we read well, and with pleasure, what we already know how to read; and what we know how to read is to a large extent dependent upon what we have already read (works from which we have developed our expectations and learned our interpretive strategies). What we then choose to read — and by extension, teach and thereby “canonize” — usually follows upon our previous reading. Radical breaks are tiring, demanding, uncomfortable, and sometimes wholly beyond our comprehension. (1556)
Radical breaks in, or challenges to, our reading history (our mental libraries), are, according to Kolodny, necessary in spite of the difficulties they cause. Kolodny uses the example of the “usually male” reader who, because his reading history covers only male contexts, often rejects woman’s literature which covers more conventionally “female” contexts. [i]
Though Kolodny herself writes concerning feminist literary critical politics, her assessment here also reveals the logical flaws in a problem I encountered earlier today.
Gaurav and I were fortunate enough to stumble upon a few small boxes of unsold books waiting for liberation outside the bookstore (no, we didn’t thieve the books, the liberation was sanctioned by the bookstore itself). One of the books I took home with me was Jay Millar’s Mycological Studies. It looks like a Dickinson book, which is to say, it’s contemporary Canadian poetry of an ecological bent. I haven’t had much time to read over it, but as I’ve enjoyed most of the poetry associated with Dickinson’s classes — McKay’s Vis á Vis, Mouré’s Sheep’s Vigil (a trans-e-lation of Fernando Pessoa’s The Keeper of Sheep)[ii], Robertson’s The Weather, Spahr’s This Connection of Everyone with Lungs, even Dickinson’s own poetry in Kingdom Phylum), I think this will be an enjoyable read. As near as I can tell, the text formally imitates the disjointed-yet-linked fragments of mycelium and fungal bodies.
I’m pleased to own this book, especially considering the abuse it encountered under its former owner. I assume this previous owner was female, based on the handwriting inside [iii]. Unfortunately, the neatness of the handwriting does not reflect an ordered mind. Next to the following passage:
& thus I was witness
to collective effort
at an early age a holding pattern
a single thought
even if it was
‘get him & kick
the shit out of him!’ (68 )
on the opposite page, with a line drawn to reference this passage, the former owner writes:
maybe they beat him too hard because this make no sense. I usually enjoy studying something if I understand what I’m reading, or feel like I’ve taken something away from it. This one? Not so much.
I am distressed to observe the nigh-perfect punctuation and spelling here, as it prevents me from dismissing the owner as completely ignorant. The fact that the note-maker takes pains to offend a work they don’t enjoy (not only going to lengths to make a sarcastic note, but to make the note with proper grammar) suggests they are not only carelessly dismissive of the mental labour of the text (which would be bad enough), but that they are actively detesting it.
I wouldn’t be as offended if the previous owner had read the work carefully, and chosen to dislike it based on justified criteria; they haven’t, however, and all the proper punctuation in the world cannot convince me otherwise. I assume that a third-year university undergrad (this book was part of the 3P45, modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, syllabus) who understands sentence structure well enough to formulate their own coherent and grammatically-correct sentences, would have no trouble understanding the literal sense of the sentence “and thus I was witness to a collective effort at an early age — a holding pattern — a single thought, even if it was ‘get him and kick the shot out of him!’” Even without the punctuation, and divided into verse, the sense of the sentence, an observation on group mentality, is clear. If not the sentence, then, what is it about the reading that “makes no sense”? I can only conclude that the previous owner means the text as a whole, its fragmented structure, and the rather novel ecological basis for its poetics. My suspicions are supported when in the “Author’s Statement” where Millar explains where he first encountered the idea of structuring a text after fungal structure:
I had been working in a specific woodlot in southwestern Ontario for about seven years, travelling there once a month from April to October to collect data on white-footed mice. I never noticed the fungi. Then, one summer, they were everywhere, a vast array of different species that quietly and simply announced their presence.
As a result, I begin to think about them, and about mycology in general. (125)
Here the note-maker has written “Oh, right! Because everyone does.”
Well, perhaps the note-maker doesn’t think about mycology and perhaps this is why s/he has such difficulty “understand[ing]” the text or “tak[ing] something away from it.” It is, as the Kolodny passage suggests, an uncomfortable break from the note-taker’s previous understanding.
Admittedly, sometimes contemporary ecological poetics are hard to grasp, partly because they are scientific and abstract, but partly because their theoretical abstraction is also rooted in something ordinary and mundane. The student of English literature is isolated from the scientific aspect of the theory because of the segregated operations of the sciences and the humanities within the university. The English student is also often isolated from the ordinary and mundane aspect of the theory because urban existence (universities are always in cities) has caused the student to lose familiarity with the natural world.
Both the natural world and the sciences (and social sciences, and all other non-English disciplines) are, however, part of the student’s larger environments: we engage with them, at least indirectly. If we lack the capacity to understand the parts of our environment with which we do not have immediate or constant contact then we lose access to those parts of the environment, and risk being destroyed by them (as the sciences take social and economical precedence over the humanities) or destroying them ourselves (as urban development erodes the natural landscape). We risk, as Kolodny points, oppressing members of the community.
The more difficult it is to understand a poetics like Millar’s then, the more the reader should exert him or her self to gain theoretical understanding. We must not, as the note-maker has, only study a text because we already understand it. Refusing to study a new idea is antithetical to the ideals of the university itself.
Further, leaving sarcastic and angry notes that deface and interrupt the text is not only antithetical, but also disrespectful, to the text, the author, the publishers, the professor who loves and teaches the class, and the students who study this, or any other discipline. Failing to immediately understand or like a text does not give you the privilege to metaphorically defecate over the work of all of these individuals and the traditions they represent. I would far rather you simply ignore a text you don’t like: ignoring is irresponsible, but at least it does not cause the unjustified hurt that these comments, offered uncritically to the public, do.[iv]
End Notes
[i] conventionally female contexts. I am not here reversing my previous critique of arguments claiming there is an essential difference between men and women. There is a difference between claiming that men and women have, historically, lived their lives in different contexts and claiming that these contexts are “natural.”
[ii] The Keeper of Sheep. Another text that was defaced by the same note-maker, this time almost on every page, and with more sarcasm and anger (i.e. referring to Mouré as an “idiot”). At this point reading the text became intolerable.
[iii] the handwriting inside. That is, it’s fairly rounded and loopy. It doesn’t have to be female, it just looks like it might be.
[iv] offered uncritically to the public. I did consider a stance of non-engagement with the note-maker, out of a concern that in reproducing these comments I would in some way validate them; I obviously decided otherwise. The fact that these notes appear and that I found them, suggests to me they may not be an anomaly in one student and should be addressed. Too, I cannot criticise the note-maker for careless reading and non-engagement if I too take a position of non-engagement with her arguments. Finally, if any one reader is moved to reconsider hasty dismissal of a text, discipline, or other person based on this argument, it will have been well worth it, and I will conclude that as with mushrooms, growth can come of fecal matter.
Works Cited:
Kolodny, Annette. Dancing through the Minefield: SOme Observations ofn the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism. In The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. 3rd Ed. Ed. David Richter. Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. 1550-1562.
Millar, Jay. Mycological Studies. Toronto: Coach House Books, 2002.
16 April 2008 ~ St. Catharines
