A little about me.
This is my third year at CSUN, and I’ve always been a Creative Writing major. I write mostly narrative fiction. No, I’m not into the current writing fad, so don’t look to me for the next series starring wizards or lycanthropes. But seriously, I love writing about people. I try to make the situations my characters are in as tangible as possible. It’s all about feeling, and well, I’m going to make my reader ‘feel’ it. I wonder if there is a theory about that.
I would love to pen a book someday, and it be the most ‘ingenious’ published work by my generation. I’m not sure that my dream is completely not accomplishable—I mean, if Snooki could write a book, I could too. I’ve learned it’s all in the timing.
I’m not sure I understand all that theory has to offer; however, all I know is that I really like uncovering all of the historical or social significance of the symbols used in a particular text. For example, I once took Beloved, by Toni Morrison, and tracked down every ‘symbol’, if you will, and found that each had a particular meaning. I found that the rivers correlated to a myth created by a tribe in Sierra Leon; Sethe and Amy’s heroic journey across the Ohio River, can be considered a metaphoric Middle Passage. And, that the tree on Sethe’s back is part of a poisonous genus, symbolically poisoning her from the inside out. I love making symbolic connections.
On that note, I love reading. If I could, I would read every moment of every day. But I can’t, and that is one depressing understanding I have to accept. I’ll read just about anything. I put the qualifier ‘just’, because there is one genre I can’t get into—harlequin romance novels. Other than the repetition of words to describe the human anatomy, harlequins simply don’t provide any literal substance. There are no hidden meanings or symbols to uncover. And, complicated plots are nonexistent, and only over simplified plots are present to fill in the space between trysts. So, there you have it, my only literary Kryptonite.
I guess in the whole scheme of all that is theory, I can’t help but be a little skeptical. Perhaps I need to study the subject more. Yet, as I read the Classical theories, I find that all they really wanted was a boring society. Imagining a life without narratives or poetry is, is just a life I couldn’t live. To conduct my life as if I were in a philosophy book, as Plato would’ve liked, is not ‘right’.
In the end, I’m really looking forward to reading and understanding, to the best of my abilities, all of the major literary theories. And by the size of the book, I have quite a bit of reading to do. Ultimately, by the end of this semester, I hope to really hone my analyzing abilities and become an even better reader and writer.
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