I once had a creative writing student who had real talent, I told him he should buckle down and write his stories all the way through. He told me that he felt he needed to read more post-structuralism before he could properly write the fiction he wanted to put out in the world. My colleagues laughed at the folly of youth in that student’s statement, but I was happy to see it for what it was: He was simply a budding Critic, capital C. His mind was prone to seeking patterns, structures, considerations of machinations... We are misled by our choice of language in what’s called “lit crit”, as it gets reified as something ancillary. It’s simply a qualitatively unique mode of thinking and expression, and every bit as generative as the creative works with which it corresponds. We don’t call the traditional male dancer in a Tango couple the “dancing critic”. They are very much in it together.
This helps me realize that I value attention to the specific words of the text as much as I do the "subject matter" discourse in criticism. I once claimed to value the words more, but that's silly aestheticizing. Yet reading this, even though I don't really care for Byron, the phrase "tenth transmitter of a foolish face" just leaps off the screen as a beautifully Augustan bit of concision. So give me Empson at his best over even these excellent critic-writers.
I once had a creative writing student who had real talent, I told him he should buckle down and write his stories all the way through. He told me that he felt he needed to read more post-structuralism before he could properly write the fiction he wanted to put out in the world. My colleagues laughed at the folly of youth in that student’s statement, but I was happy to see it for what it was: He was simply a budding Critic, capital C. His mind was prone to seeking patterns, structures, considerations of machinations... We are misled by our choice of language in what’s called “lit crit”, as it gets reified as something ancillary. It’s simply a qualitatively unique mode of thinking and expression, and every bit as generative as the creative works with which it corresponds. We don’t call the traditional male dancer in a Tango couple the “dancing critic”. They are very much in it together.
This helps me realize that I value attention to the specific words of the text as much as I do the "subject matter" discourse in criticism. I once claimed to value the words more, but that's silly aestheticizing. Yet reading this, even though I don't really care for Byron, the phrase "tenth transmitter of a foolish face" just leaps off the screen as a beautifully Augustan bit of concision. So give me Empson at his best over even these excellent critic-writers.
Writing history might appeal to you.