Literary Criticism--Collaborative Fiction
I came from the world of literary criticism. Much of my original training was learning to read "texts" critically. I studied the myriad schools and theories of criticism and, in that time, took them quite seriously. With time, one gains perspective--being away from the fire of that intense intellectual crucible allows one the calm and cool use of reason in examining the claims of the various schools. What I have come to conclude is that literary criticism is an elaborate and sometimes excruciating act of collaborative fiction. Perhaps that isn't quite the right description--it is a fictional riff on an extant work--a reworking of the elements of the novel, poem, short story, or plan in the fashion of the critic rather than in the fashion of the artist. It is both less and more than a secondary source. At times it comes to resemble parody more than it does any analytic work. Why do I refer to it as fiction? A person (not the author) reads the work and creates fr