Hi class! This here is my test post for the class blog I will be writing my weekly entries into.
This week, reading Precious, Disappearing Things proved to be a bit challenging, but still extremely interesting. Reading the first essay, in which the text Ava is described, a few very interesting questions are posed. What stuck out to me the most is the total condemnation of traditional popular fiction, a genre of writing that I personally prefer above all others. The writer makes a few points about its failings, and her problem seems to be the idea of conventions. She says that mainstream fiction is at fault for its "complacent, unequivocal truths, its reductive assignment of meaning, its manipulations, its predictability and stasis", as well as "it's tyrannical plot lines, its linear chronology, and characterizations that [leave] no place in the text for the reader, no place to think one's thoughts, no place to live".
This is a very aggressive stance to take, but poses an interesting point. In a lot of ways, mainstream fiction is generally fixated on the strategy of showing the reader a story in which people have to deal with adversity, and either surpass it for a positive message, succumb to it for a negative message, or only succumb to some of it for a more mixed and complicated message. However great of a simplification these may seem, there is truth in that the message is generally laid out with as much detail as necessary to make sure that this message will be noticed by readers. This seems to be where the issue is, as this essay writer suggests that a more ambiguous text is able to avoid the problem of simplifying a world for narrative description. She criticizes the way a normal narrative must force the complexities of life into more simplified terms in order to be understandable, and by being ambiguous, a reader can bring all those complexities with them into a text to give a more accurate reflection of the world.
I must admit, I have trouble buying into this as a solution to a problem that may not need to be fixed. The text that follows, Ava, is a poem that is very well written and filled with strong imagery as well as patterns, and despite its ambiguities, it still manages to get several possible messages across to the reader. However, readers are still very good at only seeing the truths they want to see, so the freedom this text grants can, in a way, restrict a reader to the confines of their own ideas, since the text is so light on direction from the writer. Of course, Ava DOES still have some direction, so other readers may still stumble across new ideas in this poem that I simply failed to find. What I seem to take issue with is the idea that mainstream fiction is at fault for its lack of ambiguities, when rather I find its conventions useful vehicles for forcing a reader to consider a slightly different viewpoint than they are used to. When reading a piece of conventionally written fiction, the writer can use its precise and unambiguous language to force a reader to think about a new critique of the human condition that the writer feels people should consider. It allows people to present their opinions freely so that others may examine them and decide if they agree or not.
This is not to say Ava is wrong in what it tries to do. It is a very unique a clever text, and it's special approach certainly delivers a freshness that the world very much needs more of.
Great; thoughtful and articulate response to the ideas in Maso.
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