Kathyrn Hume on Late Coover

[Paul Mackin]

OK, sure.

Madeleine never said you couldn't continue to put criticism of specific 
fictional works (and all such criticism is based on somebody or other's 
theory) in that Big Drawer clearly marked NONfiction.  That is, continue 
to follow conventional usage.

It was probably clear to almost everybody that her argument was 
graduate-school-English-departmentish and a prioriish.    It was plenty 
good enough as such argumentation goes.  And. of course, that a lot of 
literary people don't take this type thinking very seriously goes 
without saying.

My own theory is that writing is subject to a kind of Gresham's law.  
All writing is a mixture of fact and fiction. However, there is a 
definite and statistically verifiable tendency for fiction to drive out 
nonfiction. This is a little unfair to fiction I know. It puts it in the 
place of bad money, which as we all know from econ 101 drives out good 
money.   But life's not fair.  Anyway I will be elaborating on Gresham's 
Law of Writing in the coming weeks and will be presenting various chi 
square and other statistical tests I have applied to the data.

P


On 9/8/2012 6:41 AM, alice wellintown wrote:
>>> So that, when one purports to link, in a realistic fashion, an abstract
>>> thought about the nature of literature, to some specific fictional text,
>>> that purporting--that theory--becomes *itself* a work of fiction.
> No. We all know what we mean by fiction. Don't we? Usually, the term
> "fiction" is used to describe imaginative writing in a narrative form,
> such as the novel, the romance, the short story, though drama and
> poetry are also forms of fiction.
>
> If one argues that any attempt to impose order on the flux of though
> or experience is making a fiction, and this is a popular use of the
> term in graduate programs these dayz, well fine, but get that out
> there so as not to confuse others.
>
> Theory. Now that is a fine word. It has, as does "fiction", very
> different meanings when used by literary folk and by scientists and by
> those who use it in the common sense.
>
> But is theory fiction? No.
>
> If we mix and mash all of these terms and ideas into one big pile of
> letters...well...it becomes, as Prufrock sez, or as Hamlet never quite
> understands, impossible to say just what we mean.
>
> Of course, if we make clear that we are applying a defined term, say,
> "fiction" as defined in the "poetics of fiction" or in formalism or
> narratology or by Wayne Booth....etc. ....well we have a course 0f a
> differenty silly bus and we can now expect Dorothy to follow our
> yellow brick road. Or not.
>