Richard Mitchell Interview, Pt. 7
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6
Honest and Dishonest Writing
Styles: You mentioned earlier that the audience, the question of the audience, is all important in understanding writing. Particularly when we teach, we say, if we understand with you that language is communication or should not be communication, that we write to other people, but I've often thought that we write for ourselves first, and only thereafter to other people.
And that as we understand that we are writing really for ourselves in this process of self-discovery is the important issue. We learn thereby to write, but also learn thereby that there is something called the spirit of the law as well as the letter of the law, to borrow Jesus's term.
Richard: Yes, I think that is true. Eliot somewhere distinguishes the three voices of writing; that voice in which people speak to each other; the voice in which one speaks to oneself; and the voice in which one speaks to God. And he uses this distinction to make elaborate categories of various kinds of poetry, as I remember. That is, nevertheless, a useful distinction. There is some discourse that is the discourse between us. There is some discourse that I suppose in a way is discourse to God or something like that.
Styles: Prayer.
Richard: Well, not just prayer, but even to think "I should ever live to see such a day," or "What a beautiful morning" when you walk out all alone. There's no one to whom you speak really, but the kind of discourse that we do spend our time with in school, certainly, is the discourse of the self speaking to self. This is the appropriate audience.
Now this raises some interesting questions when students are attentive to it. They say, "Well, look if really my job is to be the self, speaking to the self, I don't care about these dangling modifiers, so why should you?" That raises intriguing questions, because eventually one has to somehow convince students that, in some deep sense, you shouldn't care about the dangling modifiers.
But if those dangling modifiers are, as they so often are, impediments to clear thought, then we do care about them a lot, not because they are dangling modifiers, but because they are impediments to clear thought. And that the so-called conventions of writing are there because writing is not speech, and because it doesn't have the resources of speech, and they serve as convenient crutches, in fact, to this pale imitation of speech; but they’re more convenient ultimately. They are essential.
Styles: Alfred North Whitehead says somewhere that style is the ultimate morality of the mind. I think that's pretty heavy phrase.
Richard: Very heavy…I wonder what he means. I like it.
Styles: Earlier you said that somehow these issues of style, clear writing, being able to share what we have as clearly and quickly and efficiently as possible, is a matter of morality. Just to what extent can you understand this style being the ultimate morality of mind?
Richard: Well, of course, I don't know exactly what he means by style, but I think I do know what most of us would mean by honesty, and when we write, it is a good opportunity to practice dishonesty.
Now by that I don't merely mean an opportunity to say that which is not true. Of course we do that and this is certainly one of the great uses of literacy is to lie and lie in a big and very effective way.
But rather I mean that we do that which is not our own; that when we fall into writing, and we say, "Oh, I am writing writing, and writing goes a certain way, and it sounds a certain way, and it says a certain thing," that we can easily become imitators. And imitators, even of other imitators, which is to say, that we are not making our own judgments--and after all, if we don't make our own judgments, then in a sense, we aren't even living our own lives.
There's another kind of dishonesty that arises from this desire to imitate which is perfectly natural to us all. I can remember the last time I taught writing, I had a horrible experience because somebody asked me about topic sentences, and I said, "Oh yes, topic sentences. Right, I've heard about those. Yes, a topic sentence is part of a paragraph; it's somehow the thing; it's the gist of it, or the beginning of it, or something like that, and I guess the other sentences all sort of hang on it in a way. Yes, that's truly nifty, topic sentence, isn't it?"
However, I couldn't tell them how to come up with a topic sentence. I went home and it occurred to me, you know, I've written I can't tell you how many essays, articles, reviews, all sorts of things, and I have to write all the time as much as I hate it. And never in my life have I been conscious of writing a topic sentence, and I was quite convinced that there would be no topic sentences in any of my writing.
I haven't looked, by the way, and so I don't know if that's true. However, I was paralyzed for almost six weeks after that. I couldn’t write…I couldn't write. I'd start to write and I'd say, "Wait a minute, how can I write this? I don't even know the topic sentence of this paragraph."
Now when we give ourselves to idols like that--it is a kind of idolatry--we fall into the deepest sort of dishonesty. See, if I had fallen into it at that point, I would have said, "Well, now wait a moment; I'm going to learn what a topic sentence is, and I'm going to do it right, and I'm going to do a topic sentence for every single one of my paragraphs, and I'll make a topic sentence outline and so forth."
So that very often our very ways of instructing people in how to write, generate these sluts of dishonesties. Especially when we teach, you know, there's a certain kind of sentence, a periodic sentence, and then there's a nice balanced sentence, and here are some nifty examples.
Well, I don't know how bad that is; it is fun to try those things out, but after all, no writer writes writing. Nobody sits down to write writing. He sits down to write something else; he just has to do it in writing.
In composition courses we dwell so much on writing that people start thinking that that's their job. "Oh, I am now to write writing" and they violate themselves in some way, I think.
Styles: Well, one of the things that we do, of course, is to convert writing into a technology. They say that there is a technique for doing this. In the most fundamental sense, writing is a technology.
Richard: Yes.
Styles: In the root sense of the term, not thinking of the buried metaphor of the term, do you think it's the logos text, it's the wording of the text, and somehow or another, if we can give vent to the root meaning of that technology, it's a liberating thing.
Richard: It is clearly a technology, and it should be a technology, but it is a technology that's obviously without limits. You know the technology that builds us engines has certain limits built into its very nature. The technology by which we write--and in order the to prove this to yourself all you have to do is look at the vast differences that are possible in writing--seems to be open ended.
Yes, there is a technology; yes, there are rudiments; yes, they work; they count; but there seems to be no end to how far these things can be applied. I would think that I imagine the ideal student, yes, although I've never encountered this one but some day, the ideal student would look upon learning the technology of writing as a gateway to a tremendous undiscovered realm, and it is generally undiscovered.
Is there going to come a day when the last possible piece of writing is done? Is the universe going to click at some time? That's it, that's it' we have now finished with the technology of writing? No, this will never happen, so the possibilities are marvelous and they're terribly exciting.
Styles: You mentioned the limits of technology and this being an unlimited form, writing, a technology without limits. In our world today, we constantly are wondering, "Gee, is there going to be a limit to this technology that we have?" in other ways, thinking about practical machines.
Richard: Yes, I wasn't really thinking of technology in general. I was thinking of a technology of the wheel or some such thing. I mean, how round can a wheel be? But a limit to technology in general, of course, is equally unimaginable, except of course that we will, I suspect, destroy ourselves with what we do know before too long.
Richard Mitchell Interview Pt. 8
Honest and Dishonest Writing
Styles: You mentioned earlier that the audience, the question of the audience, is all important in understanding writing. Particularly when we teach, we say, if we understand with you that language is communication or should not be communication, that we write to other people, but I've often thought that we write for ourselves first, and only thereafter to other people.
And that as we understand that we are writing really for ourselves in this process of self-discovery is the important issue. We learn thereby to write, but also learn thereby that there is something called the spirit of the law as well as the letter of the law, to borrow Jesus's term.
Richard: Yes, I think that is true. Eliot somewhere distinguishes the three voices of writing; that voice in which people speak to each other; the voice in which one speaks to oneself; and the voice in which one speaks to God. And he uses this distinction to make elaborate categories of various kinds of poetry, as I remember. That is, nevertheless, a useful distinction. There is some discourse that is the discourse between us. There is some discourse that I suppose in a way is discourse to God or something like that.
Styles: Prayer.
Richard: Well, not just prayer, but even to think "I should ever live to see such a day," or "What a beautiful morning" when you walk out all alone. There's no one to whom you speak really, but the kind of discourse that we do spend our time with in school, certainly, is the discourse of the self speaking to self. This is the appropriate audience.
Now this raises some interesting questions when students are attentive to it. They say, "Well, look if really my job is to be the self, speaking to the self, I don't care about these dangling modifiers, so why should you?" That raises intriguing questions, because eventually one has to somehow convince students that, in some deep sense, you shouldn't care about the dangling modifiers.
But if those dangling modifiers are, as they so often are, impediments to clear thought, then we do care about them a lot, not because they are dangling modifiers, but because they are impediments to clear thought. And that the so-called conventions of writing are there because writing is not speech, and because it doesn't have the resources of speech, and they serve as convenient crutches, in fact, to this pale imitation of speech; but they’re more convenient ultimately. They are essential.
Styles: Alfred North Whitehead says somewhere that style is the ultimate morality of the mind. I think that's pretty heavy phrase.
Richard: Very heavy…I wonder what he means. I like it.
Styles: Earlier you said that somehow these issues of style, clear writing, being able to share what we have as clearly and quickly and efficiently as possible, is a matter of morality. Just to what extent can you understand this style being the ultimate morality of mind?
Richard: Well, of course, I don't know exactly what he means by style, but I think I do know what most of us would mean by honesty, and when we write, it is a good opportunity to practice dishonesty.
Now by that I don't merely mean an opportunity to say that which is not true. Of course we do that and this is certainly one of the great uses of literacy is to lie and lie in a big and very effective way.
But rather I mean that we do that which is not our own; that when we fall into writing, and we say, "Oh, I am writing writing, and writing goes a certain way, and it sounds a certain way, and it says a certain thing," that we can easily become imitators. And imitators, even of other imitators, which is to say, that we are not making our own judgments--and after all, if we don't make our own judgments, then in a sense, we aren't even living our own lives.
There's another kind of dishonesty that arises from this desire to imitate which is perfectly natural to us all. I can remember the last time I taught writing, I had a horrible experience because somebody asked me about topic sentences, and I said, "Oh yes, topic sentences. Right, I've heard about those. Yes, a topic sentence is part of a paragraph; it's somehow the thing; it's the gist of it, or the beginning of it, or something like that, and I guess the other sentences all sort of hang on it in a way. Yes, that's truly nifty, topic sentence, isn't it?"
However, I couldn't tell them how to come up with a topic sentence. I went home and it occurred to me, you know, I've written I can't tell you how many essays, articles, reviews, all sorts of things, and I have to write all the time as much as I hate it. And never in my life have I been conscious of writing a topic sentence, and I was quite convinced that there would be no topic sentences in any of my writing.
I haven't looked, by the way, and so I don't know if that's true. However, I was paralyzed for almost six weeks after that. I couldn’t write…I couldn't write. I'd start to write and I'd say, "Wait a minute, how can I write this? I don't even know the topic sentence of this paragraph."
Now when we give ourselves to idols like that--it is a kind of idolatry--we fall into the deepest sort of dishonesty. See, if I had fallen into it at that point, I would have said, "Well, now wait a moment; I'm going to learn what a topic sentence is, and I'm going to do it right, and I'm going to do a topic sentence for every single one of my paragraphs, and I'll make a topic sentence outline and so forth."
So that very often our very ways of instructing people in how to write, generate these sluts of dishonesties. Especially when we teach, you know, there's a certain kind of sentence, a periodic sentence, and then there's a nice balanced sentence, and here are some nifty examples.
Well, I don't know how bad that is; it is fun to try those things out, but after all, no writer writes writing. Nobody sits down to write writing. He sits down to write something else; he just has to do it in writing.
In composition courses we dwell so much on writing that people start thinking that that's their job. "Oh, I am now to write writing" and they violate themselves in some way, I think.
Styles: Well, one of the things that we do, of course, is to convert writing into a technology. They say that there is a technique for doing this. In the most fundamental sense, writing is a technology.
Richard: Yes.
Styles: In the root sense of the term, not thinking of the buried metaphor of the term, do you think it's the logos text, it's the wording of the text, and somehow or another, if we can give vent to the root meaning of that technology, it's a liberating thing.
Richard: It is clearly a technology, and it should be a technology, but it is a technology that's obviously without limits. You know the technology that builds us engines has certain limits built into its very nature. The technology by which we write--and in order the to prove this to yourself all you have to do is look at the vast differences that are possible in writing--seems to be open ended.
Yes, there is a technology; yes, there are rudiments; yes, they work; they count; but there seems to be no end to how far these things can be applied. I would think that I imagine the ideal student, yes, although I've never encountered this one but some day, the ideal student would look upon learning the technology of writing as a gateway to a tremendous undiscovered realm, and it is generally undiscovered.
Is there going to come a day when the last possible piece of writing is done? Is the universe going to click at some time? That's it, that's it' we have now finished with the technology of writing? No, this will never happen, so the possibilities are marvelous and they're terribly exciting.
Styles: You mentioned the limits of technology and this being an unlimited form, writing, a technology without limits. In our world today, we constantly are wondering, "Gee, is there going to be a limit to this technology that we have?" in other ways, thinking about practical machines.
Richard: Yes, I wasn't really thinking of technology in general. I was thinking of a technology of the wheel or some such thing. I mean, how round can a wheel be? But a limit to technology in general, of course, is equally unimaginable, except of course that we will, I suspect, destroy ourselves with what we do know before too long.
Richard Mitchell Interview Pt. 8
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