critical thinking? really?

first, let's get this out of the way:

Likely, somewhere, at some time, you had an English teacher who tried to distinguish between great literature and popular pot-boilers. In some cases, it's relatively easy to plunk some fiction into the trash category. Formula fiction, for example romance novels, and pulp Westerns. and pop adventure stories, offer very little beyond a fun ride, and that's not a bad thing. I read a lot of "junk" fiction (especially mysteries).

But even there the distinction is not easy. Why, for example, is a Louis L'Amour Western considered just formula writing and Charles Portis's True Grit considered more literary?

We are going to end this semester with a post-apocalyptic novel that was runner up for the 2014 National Book Award, so someone thinks it is more than just Mad Max, but what is the difference? And to make the question really, really hard: some works that were considered just pop fiction when they were written (the pulp sci-fi novels of P.K. Dick, for instance) are later looked at as works of genius (sort of like the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh).

You may already suspect that I am not going to resolve this question in this little side-bar, but consider this: In that book we will discuss at the end, much of what was popular in the current world is gone. What's left, in terms of the written word, is, in large part, what was most pop(ular), not most literary. That makes sense. If 1,000 copies of an intellectual work exist and 10,000,000 copies of a Dan Brown novel exist, then chances are what will survive is the Dan Brown novel. It kind of makes me wonder if those works from antiquity, such as Antigone, by Sophocles, was the most literate work of 5th C BCE Athens or just the most pop.

Oh, there are distinctions, and we will look at some of them, but you should have just a bit of doubt about that English teacher :)

This class satisfies the critical thinking (also known as thinking) component of the curriculum. I hope you find the assigned readings pleasurable, but this is not just a reading for pleasure course. It is a what-does-that-suggest-and-why course? It will require you to look at several works that are not just simple surface stories and figure out what they mean as well as what they don't mean.

For the most part, the vocabulary in the readings will not send you running to a dictionary, but you will probably get to the end of a story or poem and wonder, "Well, what does that mean?" Parts may be unclear and require some re-reading, you will probably have to look at the works in fresh ways, and there should be plenty of note-taking and puzzling along the way.

Figuring things like this out is called analysis, and it can be applied to automotive repair, medical diagnostics, poetry explications, and many other "problems." Imagine an unusual ker-THUMP, ker-THUMP noise is coming from your car's engine, and you pop open the hood to figure out what is wrong (or you go to a mechanic who has expertise in auto repair). You know what the engine is supposed to sound like, and you know that ker-THUMP is not it. So you poke around to locate the source of the sound, take that part of the car apart to locate the problem, then put the car back together. In other words, you puzzle over something that is unusual, look closely, dismantle, make sense of it, put it back together. A physician does the same thing when trying to locate the source of some irregularity in the body (maybe an elevated white cell count), making a diagnosis (making sense of the problem), and figuring out how to fix it.

diagnosing a poem vs. diagnosing a blocked fuel line or a blocked artery

You could ab-so-lute-ly apply analytical critical thinking skills to a car or a patient in a hospital, and those two skills actually pay a lot more than analyzing short stories and poems. Those might feel "useful" and the Shakespeare analysis trifling. However, "a rose is a rose is a rose," as Gertrude Stein wrote, and thinking is thinking is thinking.

Can you imagine every student being assigned an old beater to work on or a ward of terminally-ill patients to diagnose? It's not very practical. Fiction is inexpensive, portable, widely available, self-contained, and harmless (you are not likely to accidentally destroy a play or kill a novel). Much has been written about fiction, so you can do the research, and the range of "things" to discover is humongous.

And with luck, you may even enjoy it (a side benefit), though there are no guarantees, and even learn something about human nature while you are at it.

it can be tricky

It can be tricky, and, in fact, this may be one thing (there could be more than one) that separates so-called literature from simple pop fiction--it can be tricky; it can require some effort to figure out (like playing Clue); it can have ambiguity. If it did not have ambiguity, what would be the point. "Aha! This story is about someone who foils a plot to take over the world, and the good guys win. The End." That may be entertaining, but it is not stretching our thinking, giving us a deeper understanding of life, the universe, and everything.

Consider the very short story called "All About Suicide," by Luisa Valenzuela.

note: i know some of you are not going to do this

shame on you; you are not going to get the benefit from this

Read the short story "All About Suicide," by Luisa Valenzuela. Twice (it is very short; it will not take long). Do not look at the rest of this lecture until you have read the story (twice), and answered the following question:

Who kills whom?

That seems like it should be simple enough. The story is short, and that's just a plot fact you are looking for. I recommend you read carefully and closely and take notes; really think about WHY you answer the question the way you do, and look at how your answer may change. I open my face-to-face classes with this question, and typical answer look like this:

How can there be so many answers? This is so short that it should be obvious. What is causing the ambiguity? The answer to that is there are lots of tricky bits to look at in Valenzuela's story, and they are not there accidentally. We will ultimately want to try to figure out why the author is making us puzzle over this and what it might all mean.

We do this by looking for unusual patterns (like the car engine that is going ker-THUMP ker-THUMP). We must look closely at all of the parts that might cause this confusion.

dissecting/diagnosing the story (in the process, you will see what looks a lot like an analytical essay :)

The title suggests that Ismael kills himself; that is what suicide means. However, there are many kinds of suicide (political suicide, business suicide), so that might be ambiguous. The first few sentences, though, describe a physical suicide: "Ismael grabbed the gun and slowly rubbed it across his face. Then he pulled the trigger and there was a shot. Bang. One more dead in the city. It's getting to be a vice" (Valenzuela). This is, in essence, the whole short story. It has a beginning; the action rises to a critical point; there is a climax (where Ismael pulls the trigger), and the short resolution is that he is dead. There is also the suggestion of a place (setting) where death is so common it is just considered "a vice," like smoking or drinking. A little research shows that the author is from Argentina, and her writing is rooted in the religious and political unrest that has characterized certain periods in Central and South America. So far, the only name we have is Ismael, and when we look for a name to connect to "his" and "he" (this is called pronoun reference), all we have is Ismael killing himself.

Then the author decides to tell the story over. This seems redundant, but, really, a short story that is only a few lines long is not very satisfying. Readers like more detail, more dirt. The re-telling is not much longer, though: "First he grabbed the revolver that was in a desk drawer, rubbed it gently across his face, put it to his temple, and pulled the trigger. Without saying a word. Bang. Dead." There are some descriptive details now--where the gun (a revolver) was taken from, how it was rubbed across his face (gently), and where it was placed (the temple). Authors add detail to give the reader a clearer picture, to make the story feel more real. But, really, not much has been added, and we still have only Ismael named, so Ismael killed Ismael. It is not just planning a death, either; we have in both versions, so far, "Bang" and "dead."

The author decides to "recapitulate" (give the reader a re-cap, to go over it again). Certainly, a magazine is not likely to print a one-paragraph story, so she has to give the reader more. Paragraph two adds more details--the grand office, the sensuality of rubbing the gun across the face. We do have the word minister, but it only refers to an office, not a person, so all of the he, him, his pronouns still refer to Ismael. There are now three short versions of the story that all suggest Ismael killed himself.

Feeling that this does not really tell the whole story--"There's something missing"--Valenzuela sends the reader to a bar where Ismael is mulling over the consequences of his future actions, then further back to Ismael in the cradle being ignored, a bit further forward to Ismael in elementary school making friends with someone who will become "a minister...a traitor" and then to the decision that something unnamed is so horrible that it is better to accept death, but whose death? This longer section gives the reader much to think about. Was Ismael somehow warped because he was ignored as a baby? That sounds like the sort of psychological motive that might show up in a court case. If Ismael befriends someone who will later have political power and betray his authority/country, why wouldn't Ismael just go to the newspapers? The government likely controls the media, so if the government is corrupt, that will remain secret, and, likely, Ismael will be silenced with death, so it seems he feels it is his obligation to fix the problem by killing the minister. At this point, all of the he, his, him references in the story can be re-evaluated. Is Ismael rubbing the gun across "his" (the minister's) head?

There is now some background, and there are possible motives (psychological, political) for killing a traitor, but Valenzuela adds to the confusion.

Describing baby Ismael crying with his dirty diapers, the author follows with "Not that far." In other words, this is not something that the reader should consider.

It gets worse. Describing the most solid motive, the friend who becomes a traitor, Valenzuela follows with one word--"No." In other words, that would make sense, but it is off the table; it is not an explanation.

Going back, there are more (not fewer) problems. Is Ismael really rubbing the gun across the minister's temple? Did the minister say, "Oooo, Ismael, that feels so good. Could you rub my neck while you're at it?" Is Ismael slowly rubbing his own forehead? If so, why isn't the minister reacting? Then there is the final paragraph which suggests Ismael shoots the minister and then himself ("another act immediately following the previous one. Bang"). If he also shoots himself, how does he come out of the office "even though he can predict what awaits him"? Yes, this country would be predominantly Roman Catholic, and the consequence of suicide would be eternal damnation, so this could be a supernatural ending.

The problem is that it could be lots of things. That's ambiguity.

The retelling of the plot with additions and changes each time suggests that the story might have a different point altogether. If Ismael killed the minister or himself or both, and if the reader is trying to figure out what happened and why, that puts the reader in the position of a survivor looking at someone who was so desperate they actually killed. If it were a friend or family member the questions, "Why?" and "What could I have done?" would be examined and re-examined with different details and from different angles. In the end, the survivor would never really have an answer. In the end, perhaps, that is "All [that can be known] About Suicide."

ok, so what is the correct answer?

Now this is both the beauty and the madness that is literary analysis (really, all kinds of analysis). If it is a truly thought-provoking work, there probably are several ways to logically look at it. Your job is to back up your claims/conclusions with evidence (details from the literature). As long as your evidence is consistent and fairly represents what is in the story, it is a reasonable claim/conclusion. There are probably several reasonable ways to look at various works of literature. As long as you can back it up fully, logically, with evidence, then it is "right" (though likely not the only "right" way to look at the literature). This is an exercise in logic and evidence (and sometimes even research).

Enjoy :)