WTF-tastic

[wholesomelymid]

You see it's awfully hard to talk or write about your own stuff because if it is any good, you yourself know about how good it is--but if you say so yourself, you feel like a shit.

-Ernest Hemingway to Malcom Cowley, 1945. Selected Letters, pg 603

Comments

[jankmeister]

babe, you can always send me your work to critique. here are the reasons why:
1) i've been to YWW for both poetry and fiction and so i know that nothing is ever perfect. even published pieces have things to be fixed.
2) i'm also in a college fiction writing class right now, so i have some more knowledge that i've recently gained.
3) you've given me feedback on my work with complete honesty and i can only do the same.
4) i love you enough to read your stuff! woohoo!

[anonymous]

my AP English teacher mentioned a psychologist or a philosopher or someone

Kind of halfway in the middle, I guess -- he's a psychoanalyst, really. That's Lacan. He's actually interesting, and a lot less depressing than, say, Freud. A lot of the French feminists used that theory in developing their ideas, which have largely to do with the connection between feminism and language.

[my_rain_face]

Eep! That was me!

[bleakreality]

How long's the draft? I can look it over if you like.

. . . And I ended up a Speed Racer. Apparently I "like to have fun all the time," and am "very easy going." Quizzes know all.

[vientoeste]

Teh Lemon!! *snickers*

I feel like I learned somewhere about the ability to recognize oneself in the mirror has to do with cognition that most animals lack, yet that ability obviously brings some downfalls with it, as you said. Ah, the Language Matrix.

Really, there is no spoon, love.

<333

[vientoeste]

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that that Hemingway quote is really true. It sucks when you try and explain something you've written. I think that might be one of the hardest parts of publishing a novel or something is having to pitch it consicely and not feel like you're misrepresenting or selling short your work of art.

/ramble

[galaxynumber5]

Why is the terrible world of language terrible, exactly?

[wholesomelymid]

The idea is that human beings are perpetually frustrated by language's inability to communicate ideas bigger than just "This car is red!" or "This chair is made of wood!" We have all of these words like love and fear and trust and no one really knows what they mean, and still, they are not adequate enough to express what they stand for. (Like saying "I love you" to someone you really love is not enough at all.)

At the same time, human beings know that they cannot live without language, because they have no other way of connecting with other humans.

Some suggest that the world you live in when you are a baby, before you learn what language is, is our true essence as human beings, and language forces us to lose that. And others think that language is the essence of human beings.

So yeah.

/geeky rant

[galaxynumber5]

I imagine that you can guess what I think, what with the linguistics study, but just in case: language is the way we think. The very fact that humans are the only ones who are able to really use language suggests that it is the essence of the species.
I plan to google this notion's name, because I would love to see the theory explaining how all that linguists have found in the last few decades doesn't joss the theory.

And what do you think? :)

[wholesomelymid]

Well, I'm somewhere in between. I'm both frustrated by language's inadequacies, and I appreciate moments in my life when I can transcend it in my relationship with someone. But at the same time, I understand and respect how necessary, beautiful, and undoubtebly human language is.