cris cheek wrote:
> the sidetrack was >when criteria begin to develop<. Not the issue of
> criteria developing as performances of speaking and reading become more
> acculturated.<<
Sorry, this seems like a distinction without a difference to me: how
can "when criteria begin to develop" be a side-track to "criteria
developing as performances of speaking and reading become more
acculturated"? That *is the track, it seems to me, not a side-track.
Criteria begin to develop when one is exposed to language. Some words
are ostensively right and some are ostensively wrong. One learns to
call a pig a pig because someone points to a pig and says "Pig". When
one points, subsequently, to a pig and says "dog" one is corrected
because one is wrong. And so it goes. The notions of right and wrong,
of better and worse, of good and bad, are theories embedded in the
ostensiveness of the process -- learning a language is learning
criteria for good and bad, better and worse, right and wrong.
> ... For myself writing is a way of contesting the consensual
> within and without myself.<<
Well, that sort of approach is all well and good after one has
internalized the consensual -- it's a matter of having to learn the
rules so you know when and why to break them for this or that effect.
But to break the rules just because they are the rules, and for no
particular reason or effect, well, that's not writing -- that's not
even blurt -- that's wanking.
>. . . I'm most engaged by writing which energetically
> bemuses me, which encourages me to experience reading (listening too) to
> language in a way which refreshes my sense of the potential for writing in
> the world. The writing which I most return to is that which lives on in me...<<
Well it appears that this standard for "good" is so intensely
subjective that it is meaningless for others as a standard of "good".
How are we to apply to a piece of work the notion of whether or not
it will live on in Cris?
For that matter, how does Cris apply this rule with consistency
enough to say that it is really a rule?
> ... A lot of what I
> have found 'good' for me is in extremely limited circulation.<<
The notion that there is a "good, for me" (in the sense of "I judge
this to be good" not in the sense of "this is healthy for my body")
that is different from a notion of "good, in the context of
literature" seems to me to be entirely beside the point. The question
is, it seems to me, "Do you think this piece of art is good in the
context of the art form?" not "Is it good, for you?" -- unless, I
suppose, the person who is saying "It is good, for me" is someone
whose vast erudition and excellent taste one is relying on as a
substitute for one's own judgment.
Marcus Bales
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http://www.designerglass.com
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