by Jim Campbell
The following excerpt is taken from a 1989 article by Andrew Smith, analyzing Yukio Mishima’s novel Confessions of a Mask:
In addition to the textual dyads of Confessions of a Mask mentioned previously, instinctual binomials include the negativity between phenotext and genotext in general as well as, following Jakobson, any ‘double-sensed message’ that ‘finds correspondence in a split-addresser, in a split-addressee, and…split reference’ (140).
Now, reader, answer honestly: Did you get anything out of that? If you answered yes, odds are that you are either a liar or Andrew Smith himself — and even in that case, I might still have my doubts. As a graduate student in literature, a large portion of my life is spent ruffling my brow over passages like the above, reading and re-reading. With a little bit of background knowledge and more than a little patience, it’s (just barely) possible to squeeze some meaning out of it, but for me there still remains a nagging underlying question: Why does literary criticism so often require more exertion to interpret than the text it’s criticizing? Would any of us ever allow our students to get away with turning in a paper so unhelpfully obscure?
While I’m sure there’s an equivalent in every field, this seems to be an especially major problem in literary criticism. Papers can become so dense with hyper-specialized jargon, often borrowed and misused from adjacent fields, that even an informed and interested reader might be tempted to roll his/her eyes and give up. Now just imagine what a general audience must think. As teachers of writing, we should take this on as a personal concern. What kind of example is being set for our students? How might we, in the mere hour a day we have at our disposal, provide some counterweight to encourage clear and empathetic writing?
The good news is that it can be both fun and democratic. The fun comes in the form of games. There are a couple, and none of them would necessarily take more than five minutes (in-class certified). One example is a modified form of Simon Says, in which students are asked to describe on a flashcard an item somewhere around the room using only three or so functions or physical descriptors. They then pair off with other students, sharing their descriptions and having their partners guess.
Personally using this game both in the classroom and with other WIP TAs has led me to some interesting conclusions about its usefulness, namely that the structure can be modified to fulfill different teacherly goals: For example, the teacher might first only direct the students to describe their chosen item, leaving out the fact that they will be sharing these descriptions with a partner. The teacher may choose this structure if his/her goal is to demonstrate how important it is to keep an audience in mind when writing, even if that audience is hypothetical or imaginary. Alternately, the teacher may explain the whole situation from the top. This is a useful way to go if the goal is simply to give students basic mechanical practice in writing for audience understanding.
The teacher does not necessarily need to take a total sideline when encouraging students to give more thought to clarity. If teacher-centered instruction is more one’s style, there is the option of group-critique. The instructor might take a piece of writing s/he is already working on, or write something up for the purposes of the exercise, and then bring it up in front of the class on an overhead projector. It is now the students’ job to read and offer criticisms of the instructor’s style. The instructor might lead them with questions like “where could I be clearer or simpler?” This group exercise helps model the right self-reflexive questions to students while also giving them a concrete but guided opportunity to practice the necessary critical skills. It is tried and true, straight from my own classroom. The instructor can also modify it by breaking students into smaller groups and having them work together to mark up physical copies of the writing. This might be better if working with a larger or quieter class.
In short, striking the right tone when teaching is essential. The days when I’ve been the most self-indulgent in front of the class have also been the days when I’ve received the most self-indulgent writing to grade in return. Play games; offer yourself up for critique. Show humility and a sincere desire to communicate with your students, and they will show the same in return. And, hopefully, they’ll bring that humility with them into future writing.
