Imagination and style relating to Bartleby

Reading Bartleby the Scrivener made me realize that I think two of the main things that can make a piece of literature great are imagination and style. I see Imagination as the creativity it takes to dream up an interesting story and decide what themes, and meanings go along with the story. In my opinion authors like J.K. Rowling and Tolkien made a career almost entirely off of their imaginative abilities. Style is a very different matter. it is the manner in which the story is written. a good style can bring to life even an extremely common place event. Hemingway is a good example of an author who can make an otherwise boring life event fascinating by the way it is told. Personally i find that I don't particularly like Bartelby the Scrivener because in my opinion, the story isn't very imaginative nor is the style very intriguing.

Morality in writing

Some of my favorite writers have been bad people. My two favorites are Jack Kerouac and Ernest Hemingway. Kerouac was a notorious user of drugs and Hemingway was a misogynistic, alcoholic antisemitic. The discussion in class about misogynistic writers got me thinking that maybe it possible that bad people make for very interesting writers. Personally I find it more interesting to  be inside the head of a sinner than a saint for the same reason teenagers prefer Miley Cyrus to Christian Rock (regardless of their faith): its fun to be bad. But regardless I don't feel that when judging the value of a piece of art that the morality or the artist should be called into question; much less be the determining factor. As Lucien Carr stated quite beautifully - "Art transcends traditional morality"

Exact Rhyme eats me

Simply put, im not a big fan of poems with exact meter and rhyme scheme. To me good poetry doesn't need to be sing-songy in order to be a success. In my opinion an exact rhyme scheme can even make certain pieces of poetry worse. If you take powerful language and contort it to mimic children's rhyme, it takes away its ability to command attention and take your breath away. The I found the most eloquent description of why rhyme can be detrimental to some poetry in Tobias Wolff's Old School. "'Rhyme is bullshit. Rhyme says that everything works out in the end. All harmony and order. When I see a rhymed in a poem, I know I'm being lied to. Go ahead, laugh! It's true--rhyme's a completely bankrupt device. It's just wishful thinking. Nostalgia'"

Happy literature

I'm just realizing that most of what I consider to be fascinating literature is never centered around happiness. I would much rather read Sylvia Plath's "Daddy"  than Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud" any day of the week. I don't feel that I am alone in this either. I don't know of many pieces of literature in the canon that are nice tales with happy. My theory is that people typically enjoy reading about things that they can relate to. People and feelings that they can identify with. Im not exactly an authority of the subject, but I can speculate that most people always strive for happiness in one way or another but few actually achieve it completely. This being the case, how may people could identify with a character that is living in a paradise

my mind wanders while i try to read formal poetry

During my reading of Wordsworth's "I Wandered lonely as a Cloud" I noticed that there were several instances which I was perplexed by his  word choices. For example he used "never-ending" rather than limitless, ceaseless or everlasting (which wouldn't have interrupted the meter. In my opinion the image those other options would've brought a similar image and would've served as suitable alternative. After thinking as to why he might've wanted chosen this choice of words in this and other instances, i came to the conclusion that Wordsworth might've chosen that particular simply for they way they made the lyric sound out loud. i was wondering idly about this theory when i googled cellar door because it is a good example of a word that sounds beautify but has a very prosaic meaning. I came upon this website  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14FOB-onlanguage-t.html. I found this theory which was very interesting, “Poetry, in fact, is two quite distinct things,” H. L. Mencken wrote in a 1920 magazine column. “It may be either or both. One is a series of words that are intrinsically musical, in clang-tint and rhythm, as the single word cellar-door is musical. The other is a series of ideas, false in themselves, that offer a means of emotional and imaginative escape from the harsh realities of everyday.” Accomplishing both of these themes is something that i think wordsworth accomplishes well.