(no subject)
so my gertrude stein seminar is being taught by a celebrated american poet. i am officially intimidated but can't seem to shut up.
when i see someone else's writing (and when they seem to be persuing metonymy better than i am) i never know whether to be influenced (if i like it) or to hew doggedly to my own idiosyncratic way of making statements. it is true that reading stein has nearly eliminated the comma from my prose (which will have to be reinstated once i bend myself back to academic writing) but beyond minor perturbations of this sort it seems one ought to do what one is called to do by whatever it does that does the calling. but at the same time a deliberate intellectual imposition of form is not necessarily a bad thing.
i don't know what to do.
when i see someone else's writing (and when they seem to be persuing metonymy better than i am) i never know whether to be influenced (if i like it) or to hew doggedly to my own idiosyncratic way of making statements. it is true that reading stein has nearly eliminated the comma from my prose (which will have to be reinstated once i bend myself back to academic writing) but beyond minor perturbations of this sort it seems one ought to do what one is called to do by whatever it does that does the calling. but at the same time a deliberate intellectual imposition of form is not necessarily a bad thing.
i don't know what to do.
