Marc Dadigan is a freelance writer and multimedia reporter currently based in Redding, where he is reporting on the Winnemem Wintu tribe and working on a book about their struggle for cultural survival. His feature stories and photographs been published in the Christian Science Monitor, the High Country News, the GlobalPost, and Etude literary journal among other publications. He also has produced radio features for Free Speech Radio News and co-produced a short documentary about a master luthier that aired on Oregon Public Broadcasting.To learn more about his book project, visit www.salmoncomehome.com.
An Insincere Literary Work Is Known As
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I'm a student of the work of Stanford professor Jeff Pfeffer for many reasons, including his rigorous pragmatism and no-bullshit attitude. (This is even reflected in the title of one of his books: Leadership BS.) [2] A client recently observed a pattern of obvious flattery being directed toward a high-status member of a group, and my client expressed some surprise that such seemingly insincere praise would have the desired effect. This brings to mind Pfeffer's comments on the subject:
Tolstoy claims that professionalism causes a lack of sincerity in the artist, and argues that if an artist must earn a living by producing art, then the art which is produced is more likely to be false and insincere. Tolstoy also claims that interpretation or criticism of art is irrelevant and unnecessary, because any good work of art is able to express thoughts and feelings which can be clearly understood by most people. Tolstoy argues that any explanation of such thoughts and feelings is superfluous, because art ultimately communicates feelings and experiences in a way which cannot be expressed by any words.
It is well known that ancient Rome looked upon the ancestors of the present-day Germans and French in the same way as the representatives of the "superior race" now look upon the Slav races. It is well known that ancient Rome treated them as an "inferior race," as "barbarians," destined to live in eternal subordination to the "superior race," to "great Rome", and, between ourselves be it said, ancient Rome had some grounds for this, which cannot be said of the representatives of the "superior race" of today. (Thunderous applause.) But what was the upshot of this? The upshot was that the non-Romans, i.e., all the "barbarians," united against the common enemy and brought Rome down with a crash. The question arises: What guarantee is there that the claims of the representatives of the "superior race" of today will not lead to the same lamentable results? What guarantee is there that the fascist literary politicians in Berlin will be more fortunate than the old and experienced conquerors in Rome? Would it not be more correct to assume that the opposite will be the case?
There can be no doubt that all these forms of transport could work much better if the transport system did not suffer from the well-known disease called red-tape methods of management. Hence, besides the need to help transport by providing personnel and means, our task is to root out the red-tape attitude in the administration departments of the transport system and to make them more efficient.
As for the Central Control Commission, it is well known that it was set up primarily and mainly for the purpose of averting a split in the Party. You know that at one time there really was a danger of a split. You know that the Central Control Commission and its organisations succeeded in averting the danger of a split. Now there is no longer any danger of a split. But, on the other hand, we are urgently in need of an organisation that could concentrate its attention mainly on checking the fulfilment of the decisions of the Party and of its Central Committee. Such an organisation can be only a Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.), working on assignments of the Party and its Central Committee and having representatives in the localities who are independent of the local organisations. Naturally, such a responsible organisation must have great authority. In order that it may have sufficient authority and be able to take proceedings against any responsible executive who has committed an offence, including members of the Central Committee, the right to elect or dismiss the members of this commission must be vested only in the supreme organ of the Party, viz., the Party congress. There can be no doubt that such an organisation will be quite capable of ensuring control over the fulfilment of the decisions of the central organs of the Party and of strengthening Party discipline.
It is said that in some countries in the West Marxism has already been destroyed. It is said that it has been destroyed by the bourgeois-nationalist trend known as fascism. That, of course, is nonsense. Only people who are ignorant of history can talk like that. Marxism is the scientific expression of the fundamental interests of the working class. To destroy Marxism, the working class must be destroyed. But it is impossible to destroy the working class. More than 80 years have passed since Marxism came into the arena. During this time scores and hundreds of bourgeois governments have tried to destroy Marxism. And what has happened? Bourgeois governments have come and gone, but Marxism has remained. (Stormy applause.) Moreover, Marxism has achieved complete victory on one-sixth of the globe; moreover, it has achieved victory in the very country in which Marxism was considered to have been utterly destroyed. (Stormy applause.) It cannot be regarded as an accident that the country in which Marxism has achieved complete victory is now the only country in the world which knows no crises and unemployment, whereas in all other countries, including the fascist countries, crisis and unemployment have been reigning for four years now. No, comrades, that is no accident. (Prolonged applause.)
Typically the characters in a fictional work are endowed with distinctive personalities, and this fact (together with the long-established sense of a thing's "character" as its "distinctive nature") has given rise to an additional sense of the term "character" frequent in literary critical talk. In the course of a longish story, we will meet with several characters (identifiable fictional individuals), but what makes each of them identifiable beyond their proper name ("Ivan Stepanovich") or some descriptive tag ("the older waiter") is their distinctive way of behaving, "behind" which we postulate (as their enabling condition) some persisting personality, or "character." We have then an separate sense of the term "character": an hypothetical "self" or "nature" expressed by a given individual's actions. This concept of "character" has been imported back into everyday life. (The preference today seems to be to speak of people's "personality," though it is still common to speak of a person's "character traits.") Both the everyday senses already discussed above ("he's a real character" and "he has real character") are further specializations derived from the concept of a person's "character" as a more or less stable complex of traits - dispositions, attitudes, opinions, values. In discussions of literature, though, this is perhaps the most important sense of the term "character." If it is true that Dickens has given the world a gallery of memorable characters, what makes them memorable is their endowment with vivid "characters" in this sense of the term. For convenience, we can call this "the term 'character' in lit-crit sense 2."
This deep interest in the element of character is one of thecharacteristic traits of the genre known as "the shortstory," which is a comparatively recent literary phenomenon("merely" a couple of hundred years or so old).
Annette M. WoodliefThoreau Journal Quarterly, VII (January 1975), 13-22.Any study of Henry David Thoreau's writings should reckon with the rhetoric of his literary works. He sought not only to express his ideas, but to communicate them with the same immediacy he had experienced, so that his readers could, at least partially, recreate living ideas. The vast influence of Walden and "Civil Disobedience" today suggests that he did succeed in powerfully affecting many readers' minds.
107Why do these impertinences come to birth? Why should it be thought that because a man has once been a journalist he cannot therefore be sincere? Have only those who follow other professions and trades the right to possess souls and not journalists? Have only doctors, butchers, lawyers, shopkeepers, and peasants a desire to understand the inner meaning of life? As a matter of fact, my old work was more editorial than journalistic and an editor is more finicky about his facts than most human beings. Cannot a man be in earnest even if he does wield a pen? No, these lightly made criticisms, so easy when you depend on appearances alone, are an indication of the arrant stupidity, the suffocating conventionality, the befogged outlook of the world at large. Whoever endeavours to break away from the old manner of presenting spiritual truth; whoever tries to sandwich the cheese of attractive anecdotes or interesting interviews between the dry crusts of philosophic doctrine; whoever seeks to stimulate individuals to new avenues of thought by showing that truth, religion, philosophy, and wisdom need not bore the average reader as they often have done hitherto; and, finally, whoever seeks to make as plain as day what has hitherto been as obscure as night, may expect to be termed insincere, superficial, liar, imposter, and perverter!
136Every writer who is worth his salt possesses at some time or another the ambition to create a single work, a magnum opus which shall be his literary testament to mankind. I, too, have possessed this ambition. The books which I have already written and published were really written to prepare the way and to introduce the present volume. 2ff7e9595c
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