Art as Performance, Story as Criticism


Book Description

Pick up a work of typical literary criticism and you know what to expect: prose that is dry, pedantic, well-meaning but tedious—slow-going and essentially humorless. But why should that be so? Why can’t more literary criticism have a political edge and be engaging and fast-paced? Why can’t it include drama, personal narrative, and even humor? Why can’t criticism become an artistic performance, rather than just a discussion of art? Art as Performance, Story as Criticism is Craig Womack’s answer to these questions. Inventive and often outrageous, the book turns traditional literary criticism on its head, rejecting distanced, purely theoretical argumentation for intimate engagement with literary works. Focusing on Native American literature, Womack mixes forms and styles. He is unafraid to combine meticulous research and carefully considered historical perspectives with personal reactions and reflections. The book opens with a short story, “The Song of Roe Náld,” in which a Native filmmaker loses control of his movie project, in part because of his homoerotic attraction to its star. The following chapters, or “mus(e)ings,” include original dramas, while others more closely resemble traditional literary criticism, such as essays discussing the lesser-known plays of Lynn Riggs and the stories of Durango Mendoza. Still other chapters defy easy categorization, such as the piece “Caught in the Current, Clinging to a Twig,” in which Womack interweaves historical analysis of the state of the Creek Nation in 1908 with a vivid recreation of the last day on earth of Creek poet Alexander Posey. Throughout the book, the author offers his take on such controversial issues as the Cherokee freedmen issue and the ban on gay marriage. In being different, Womack seeks to breathe new life into literary analysis and in-troduce criticism to a wider audience. Radical, groundbreaking, and refreshing, Art as Performance, Story as Criticism reinvents literary criticism for the twenty-first century.




The Art of Confession


Book Description

"The Art of Confession tells the history of this cultural shift and of the movement it created in American art: confessionalism. Like realism or romanticism, confessionalism began in one art form, but soon pervaded them all: poetry and comedy in the 1950s and '60s, performance art in the '70s, theater in the '80s, television in the '90s, and online video and social media in the 2000s. Everywhere confessionalism went, it stood against autobiography, the art of the closed book. Instead of just publishing, these artists performed--with, around, and against the text of their lives." --




Art as Performance, Story as Criticism


Book Description

Pick up a work of typical literary criticism and you know what to expect: prose that is dry, pedantic, well-meaning but tedious--slow-going and essentially humorless. But why should that be so? Why can't more literary criticism have a political edge and be engaging and fast-paced? Why can't it include drama, personal narrative, and even humor? Why can't criticism become an artistic performance, rather than just a discussion of art? Art as Performance, Story as Criticism is Craig Womack's answer to these questions. Inventive and often outrageous, the book turns traditional literary criticism on its head, rejecting distanced, purely theoretical argumentation for intimate engagement with literary works. Focusing on Native American literature, Womack mixes forms and styles. He is unafraid to combine meticulous research and carefully considered historical perspectives with personal reactions and reflections. The book opens with a short story, "The Song of Roe Náld," in which a Native filmmaker loses control of his movie project, in part because of his homoerotic attraction to its star. The following chapters, or "mus(e)ings," include original dramas, while others more closely resemble traditional literary criticism, such as essays discussing the lesser-known plays of Lynn Riggs and the stories of Durango Mendoza. Still other chapters defy easy categorization, such as the piece "Caught in the Current, Clinging to a Twig," in which Womack interweaves historical analysis of the state of the Creek Nation in 1908 with a vivid recreation of the last day on earth of Creek poet Alexander Posey. Throughout the book, the author offers his take on such controversial issues as the Cherokee freedmen issue and the ban on gay marriage. In being different, Womack seeks to breathe new life into literary analysis and in-troduce criticism to a wider audience. Radical, groundbreaking, and refreshing, Art as Performance, Story as Criticism reinvents literary criticism for the twenty-first century.




Perspective Criticism


Book Description

Perspective Criticism sets out a new and illuminating biblical methodology designed to help the reader of biblical narratives in which there is a character engaged in action but no explicit indication from the storyteller on how the action is to be evaluated. Gary Yamasaki argues that in these cases we are receiving cryptic guidance from the author through the narrative technique of point-of-view. In such cases the methodology of Perspective Criticism may be applied to reveal this abstruse guidance. Gary Yamasaki provides a series of frames of analysis within the theory of Perspective Criticism which may be applied to biblical stories: the spatial, psychological, informational, temporal, phraseological, and ideological perspectives. Because the majority of the point-of-view devices found in biblical narratives are also used in cinematic storytelling, the book includes accessible analyses of film scenes, providing pop-culture illustrations of the workings of the point-of-view perspective. Gary Yamasaki concludes by applying his method to two case studies: the New Testament story of Gamaliel, and the Old Testament story of Gideon. In his work Yamasaki creates a valuable foundation for the deeper understanding of biblical narrative, a gift to anyone who has struggled with the concealed messages that should be divined in biblical point-of-view narratives.




Better Living Through Criticism


Book Description

The New York Times film critic shows why we need criticism now more than ever Few could explain, let alone seek out, a career in criticism. Yet what A.O. Scott shows in Better Living Through Criticism is that we are, in fact, all critics: because critical thinking informs almost every aspect of artistic creation, of civil action, of interpersonal life. With penetrating insight and warm humor, Scott shows that while individual critics--himself included--can make mistakes and find flaws where they shouldn't, criticism as a discipline is one of the noblest, most creative, and urgent activities of modern existence. Using his own film criticism as a starting point--everything from his infamous dismissal of the international blockbuster The Avengers to his intense affection for Pixar's animated Ratatouille--Scott expands outward, easily guiding readers through the complexities of Rilke and Shelley, the origins of Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones, the power of Marina Abramovich and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.' Drawing on the long tradition of criticism from Aristotle to Susan Sontag, Scott shows that real criticism was and always will be the breath of fresh air that allows true creativity to thrive. "The time for criticism is always now," Scott explains, "because the imperative to think clearly, to insist on the necessary balance of reason and passion, never goes away."




The Ferrante Letters


Book Description

Like few other works of contemporary literature, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels found an audience of passionate and engaged readers around the world. Inspired by Ferrante’s intense depiction of female friendship and women’s intellectual lives, four critics embarked upon a project that was both work and play: to create a series of epistolary readings of the Neapolitan Quartet that also develops new ways of reading and thinking together. In a series of intertwined, original, and daring readings of Ferrante’s work and her fictional world, Sarah Chihaya, Merve Emre, Katherine Hill, and Juno Jill Richards strike a tone at once critical and personal, achieving a way of talking about literature that falls between the seminar and the book club. Their letters make visible the slow, fractured, and creative accretion of ideas that underwrites all literary criticism and also illuminate the authors’ lives outside the academy. The Ferrante Letters offers an improvisational, collaborative, and cumulative model for reading and writing with others, proposing a new method the authors call collective criticism. A book for fans of Ferrante and for literary scholars seeking fresh modes of intellectual exchange, The Ferrante Letters offers incisive criticism, insouciant riffs, and the pleasure of giving oneself over to an extended conversation about fiction with friends.




Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism


Book Description

Autotheory--the commingling of theory and philosophy with autobiography--as a mode of critical artistic practice indebted to feminist writing and activism. In the 2010s, the term "autotheory" began to trend in literary spheres, where it was used to describe books in which memoir and autobiography fused with theory and philosophy. In this book, Lauren Fournier extends the meaning of the term, applying it to other disciplines and practices. Fournier provides a long-awaited account of autotheory, situating it as a mode of contemporary, post-1960s artistic practice that is indebted to feminist writing, art, and activism. Investigating a series of works by writers and artists including Chris Kraus and Adrian Piper, she considers the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of autotheory.




The Story Grid


Book Description

WHAT IS THE STORY GRID? The Story Grid is a tool developed by editor Shawn Coyne to analyze stories and provide helpful editorial comments. It's like a CT Scan that takes a photo of the global story and tells the editor or writer what is working, what is not, and what must be done to make what works better and fix what's not. The Story Grid breaks down the component parts of stories to identify the problems. And finding the problems in a story is almost as difficult as the writing of the story itself (maybe even more difficult). The Story Grid is a tool with many applications: 1. It will tell a writer if a Story ?works? or ?doesn't work. 2. It pinpoints story problems but does not emotionally abuse the writer, revealing exactly where a Story (not the person creating the Story'the Story) has failed. 3. It will tell the writer the specific work necessary to fix that Story's problems. 4. It is a tool to re-envision and resuscitate a seemingly irredeemable pile of paper stuck in an attic drawer. 5. It is a tool that can inspire an original creation.




Theatre of the Unimpressed


Book Description

How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it. Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendencethat kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama – from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres – to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of ‘risk aversion’ paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill’s wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he’s dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre – one that apprehends the value of ‘liveness’ in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. ‘[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.’ —J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail ‘Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.’ —Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award–winning playwright (Fault Lines)




On Criticism


Book Description

In a recent poll of practicing art critics, 75 percent reported that rendering judgments on artworks was the least significant aspect of their job. This is a troubling statistic for philosopher and critic Noel Carroll, who argues that that the proper task of the critic is not simply to describe, or to uncover hidden meanings or agendas, but instead to determine what is of value in art. Carroll argues for a humanistic conception of criticism which focuses on what the artist has achieved by creating or performing the work. Whilst a good critic should not neglect to contextualize and offer interpretations of a work of art, he argues that too much recent criticism has ignored the fundamental role of the artist's intentions. Including examples from visual, performance and literary arts, and the work of contemporary critics, Carroll provides a charming, erudite and persuasive argument that evaluation of art is an indispensable part of the conversation of life.