Thanks for the recommendation of "The Story About the Story: Great Writers Explore Great Literature edited by J.C. Hallman." I'm loving not only learning what "Creative Criticism" is(!) but I also love this description from Amazon: "With over thirty essays written by authors as diverse as Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf to Cynthia Ozick and Salman Rushdie, this collection offers an invaluable course on literature as well as a look into “Creative Criticism,” a form of critical essay that involves a personal perspective. Writers such as William Gass, Wallace Stegner, Albert Camus, Milan Kundera, Susan Sontag, James Wood, E. B. White, Herman Hesse, Cynthia Ozick, Walter Kirn, and Michael Chabon discuss the work of such luminaries as Marcel Proust, J. D. Salinger, Franz Kafka, John Keats, Malcolm Lowry, T. S. Eliot, Anton Chekhov, Robert Lowell, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry David Thoreau, Cormac McCarthy, Truman Capote, and John Steinbeck."
And this begs the question (at least in my mind 😉) do you know if such a book exists where the majority of writers and authors are female and more recent?
So much gratitude once again for the work you're doing! I'm learning so much from your posts and from you, and having so much fun with it all!✨🌟💖🙏🕊
As I read your article, I was thinking about the Introduction to Literature college course I teach. I can definitely see having my students write a creative criticism essay about a piece of literature they've read (or even a movie they've seen) as a way of helping them connect their lives to literature.
By the way, I just purchased the second volume of The Story About the Story. The writers in that volume were more appealing to me. I'm also thinking about which book I can write a post for on M. E. Rothwell’s Substack, The Books That Made Us. Hopefully, the book will inspire me with that.
It seems easy to write, but like everything that seems easy, it’s not. It’s a really advanced form and very hard to do successfully. Young people (and my grad students sometimes) fall into liking a text, movie, etc. or doing a high school English paper with a lot of I. Creative criticism demands knowledge of memoir techniques (scene setting, etc) and a deep understanding of the text, etc. Check out Charles D’Ambrosio’s essay in the anthology. Amazing.
Thanks. I can see where it is hard. I’ll have to think twice about assigning it for my literature class. Or maybe I’ll assign something simpler and not call it a creative critique. At any rate, I guess I need to learn to write it properly first before I assign it. Lol!
Thanks for this. As I’m currently working on my essay for Books That Made Us - it’s very timely! I never heard the term before, and it makes total sense.
Thank you so much for the book suggestion. I've felt pulled in this direction but did not realize it is an established sub-genre. Knowing this, I sense freedom lurking, like a new path just around the bend.
Hi Sarah,
Thanks for the recommendation of "The Story About the Story: Great Writers Explore Great Literature edited by J.C. Hallman." I'm loving not only learning what "Creative Criticism" is(!) but I also love this description from Amazon: "With over thirty essays written by authors as diverse as Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf to Cynthia Ozick and Salman Rushdie, this collection offers an invaluable course on literature as well as a look into “Creative Criticism,” a form of critical essay that involves a personal perspective. Writers such as William Gass, Wallace Stegner, Albert Camus, Milan Kundera, Susan Sontag, James Wood, E. B. White, Herman Hesse, Cynthia Ozick, Walter Kirn, and Michael Chabon discuss the work of such luminaries as Marcel Proust, J. D. Salinger, Franz Kafka, John Keats, Malcolm Lowry, T. S. Eliot, Anton Chekhov, Robert Lowell, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry David Thoreau, Cormac McCarthy, Truman Capote, and John Steinbeck."
And this begs the question (at least in my mind 😉) do you know if such a book exists where the majority of writers and authors are female and more recent?
So much gratitude once again for the work you're doing! I'm learning so much from your posts and from you, and having so much fun with it all!✨🌟💖🙏🕊
No, but one of the best examples is Roxanne Gay's "What We Hunger For"--https://therumpus.net/2012/04/12/what-we-hunger-for/
Thank you!💖🙏
Love that I have a name for this genre. Creative Criticism. I'm going to enjoy finding examples of this genre
Report back!
Sorry. I hadn’t seen your sorry!
Hi there! Yes, my piece on Styron linked above!
As I read your article, I was thinking about the Introduction to Literature college course I teach. I can definitely see having my students write a creative criticism essay about a piece of literature they've read (or even a movie they've seen) as a way of helping them connect their lives to literature.
By the way, I just purchased the second volume of The Story About the Story. The writers in that volume were more appealing to me. I'm also thinking about which book I can write a post for on M. E. Rothwell’s Substack, The Books That Made Us. Hopefully, the book will inspire me with that.
It seems easy to write, but like everything that seems easy, it’s not. It’s a really advanced form and very hard to do successfully. Young people (and my grad students sometimes) fall into liking a text, movie, etc. or doing a high school English paper with a lot of I. Creative criticism demands knowledge of memoir techniques (scene setting, etc) and a deep understanding of the text, etc. Check out Charles D’Ambrosio’s essay in the anthology. Amazing.
Thanks. I can see where it is hard. I’ll have to think twice about assigning it for my literature class. Or maybe I’ll assign something simpler and not call it a creative critique. At any rate, I guess I need to learn to write it properly first before I assign it. Lol!
Thanks for this. As I’m currently working on my essay for Books That Made Us - it’s very timely! I never heard the term before, and it makes total sense.
Thank you so much for the book suggestion. I've felt pulled in this direction but did not realize it is an established sub-genre. Knowing this, I sense freedom lurking, like a new path just around the bend.
It’s so fun— even more so when you have the precedence and can be inspired.