writer’s intent
At Princeton, students are required to take a writing seminar class as part of their general education requirements. While I’ve always pondered the use of such classes - how can you truly teach someone how to write when so much of it is subjective? - my seminar seems like it will be an interesting one. It is an unrealistic expectation here for anyone to get an A in their writing sem, but at least I feel compensated by having gotten a seminar with an awesome subject matter. My seminar is on The Graphic Novel, which jives well with my indolence for reading.
I knew I got lucky with this class when I first flipped open my textbook, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, and found it to be a comic book in itself. Hell yessss. While one might think that a class on comic books would seem to be somewhat of a joke, I’m finding graphic novels to be a legitimate and extremely powerful medium. It is the dynamic union of two crafts - art and writing. This duality is unique to comics, and the interplay between the two artforms can communicate in the most expressive of ways. And of course, it becomes twice as easy to bullshit your way to a profound analysis of a piece of work.
In my class we read a short text called “War Memories: On Autobiographical Reading” by Susan R. Suleiman, in which Suleiman establishes the truism she calls the “autobiographical imperative.” To put it simply - everyone has a story in them, and the autobiographical imperative describes the need for an individual to tell his story. The ultimate goal of this act is not to bring attention to the self, but rather to reach a higher understanding of one’s own life experiences after having told the story.
Whether or not this blog springs forth from that very principle, I don’t know, but I suppose the reading led me to evaluate the motives behind my writing.
Of course it would be nice to develop a steady following of readers, but the reason for my writing should be independent of how it is received. Besides, I don’t believe that I am a particularly interesting person, and the fact that I am a male probably doesn’t help either. The “Ivy League blogs” that I’ve seen generally fall under the “sexually liberated female intellectual” category (although I’ve heard of much worse names for it). Sex sells, but as a guy, it’s not like I can make it the central premise of this blog, especially when I’m in a monogamous relationship with someone who spends most of the year 3000 miles away from me.
I wouldn’t go so far as to agree with Suleiman and say that I am writing my way to self-discovery. I have no agenda or lofty goal in mind. All I know is that I have some cool things to share and that this tumblr is a means for preserving and recording those things. Writing is my preferred method of meditation, and while I often start writing with no direction in mind, somewhere along the way, underneath all the syntactical maneuvering, the puzzle pieces start to come together. And by the end of the entry, I’ve gleaned some sort of insight about the world I live in. So rather than writing to understand myself, I’d argue that I write to understand the world I live in.
As philsophical as this all sounds, I fully intend to use this blog as a place to put random web memes, lol-worthy images, funny conversations, and random bits of news and pop culture. I have a pretty stupid sense of humor, and if you stick around, I’m sure you’ll start to realize that this seemingly articulate boy is really just a dork.
