In my current GN 265 (German Literature in Translation, 19th & 20th centuries) course we are preparing a second short essay as well as final papers; this is an opportunity to return to discussing different types of writing styles for essays. We wrote traditional “TS123C” (Topic Sentence, 3 supporting arguments or pieces of evidence, and a Conclusion) style essays earlier. For the name “TS123C” I have Mrs. Ascuena (9th grade) to thank; and, indeed, these are basic, high school level kinds of essays.
But they work.
I refer to them as “analytic,” as they take something “big” (a “thing,” a “thesis,” a “topic”) and break them down (into “parts” or “supporting arguments”). The other two I wanted to focus on I refer to “synthetic” (they bring different levels of discussion—e.g. macro and micro—or different kinds of material together) and “dialectical” (essays that deal with a thesis, an antithesis, and a resolution). Ideally we would have written three essays, one in each style, but the reality of this semester—the reality, really, of almost any academic term—is that we have run out of time, and so only two short essays (not counting the final project) will be composed.
Elsewhere I’ve written about these three three-part essay structures—their general necessity and sufficiency, even—and so I won’t go over that again, except to say that I usually treat the “synthetic” style by way of two visual metaphors: the diamond and the hourglass. The diamond starts with a point, develops into a broad discussion, and returns to a (different) point; whereas the hourglass starts broadly, focuses, and returns to a broad discussion.
I was re-inspired to think about these structures during our first discussion a couple weeks ago of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, a novel that I still love all these years later. But it was not Steppenwolf that inspired me; instead, while listening to a student’s presentation I was distracted by—focused on—one thing she said, and that in turn led me to related topics, and so on and so forth until I had sketched out an entire essay outline on the back of my lecture notes. I managed, at least, to give the student much of my attention and I followd the discussion … that is, after all, one of my jobs.
When I think about that essay now—in a sense a rhapsody about Rilke, Hesse, Kafka, marty(i)s(m), “torture porn,” and Heidegger—I think of it was an hourglass within a diamond. Each point of the diamond is a literary work or at least part of one, and one point, top or bottom, is Rilke’s “Archaischer Torso Apollos,” an admittedly over-analyzed work, yet a beautiful pseudo-sonnet. The “broad” argument bookended by those two works would then be more of an hourglass; I’d considered it first as a “TS123C” and, potentially, as dialectical, yet came to the conclusion I wanted the entire essay to have a certain symmetry, to be balanced around the middle. And so that narrow, focused point would have to be Heidegger, perhaps a little Hegel, perchance Benjamin or Gadamer … I may have narrow or focused, but probably not both, I must admit.
I have the Rilke; I do not, however, have the other “point.”
And the overall point, in a sense (a phrase I overuse, that I know), deals with a “phenomenology” of “art” (air quotes, scare quotes … air quotes, schmair quotes …) as in a way “agential” but, really, more “interactive” and “mutual.” I also see a weak dialectical strand in the essay (inspired by Rilke’s final line, “Du musst dein Leben ändern”); the “change” (“ändern”) tied here to art and the subject is not the mere external power of art compelling us to act (as a kind of propaganda), nor is it about the subliminal or desensitizing … (external and internal respectively … cha-ching!) but I digress.
This brings me back to today, to Thursday the 12th of April, 2012.
The “dialectical,” it seems, is something I have to bring to the object. It’s also about changing the subject (its thinking) and the object (its “being” or “existence” in the world, its relationships). It does not just “present” itself. The “synthetic,” though, seems to be lurking around every corner, but that’s perhaps just because it’s just an obvious form(at), and it’s particularly common in personal narratives and certain varieties of journalism.
For example, I began reading a book review at NPR and noticed that the review was synthetic. It starts with something cultural and somewhat broad (apocalypse), this time rooted in something specific and historical (such as WWII); this is the “broad” level. Then the reviewer spends a few paragraphs discussing the book: the plot, the author, the writing style. Then the review is wrapped up by way of expanding outward again to a “general” level, this time more examples of apocalyptic fiction (fact and fiction are the wrapping / container, and this particular book is framed as the glue combining them). It’s also a variation on the “TS123C” (an introduction the finishes with the specific thing to be discussed, then a three-part discussion of elements related to that topic, and a “conclusion” that wraps up previous threads).
A “healthy living” blog post that I came across this morning followed a simliar though slightly inverted path. Something anecdotal, a quote, a quip, a catchy but perhaps unexpected turn of phrase is our introduction; in this case it is the idea of being “M.I.A.” (missing in action), usually something problematic but here desired. Then the discussion expands outward to unwrap, to unravel this idea of being “M.I.A” in a health-fitness sense. The author then brings the discussion back to the personal by relating an anedote, this time about her daughter:
My daughter always jokes about my purse. She refers to it as my ”girl scout backpack”. One of the goals of the girl scouts is to be prepared, right?
Like “M.I.A.” we have the “girl scout backpack.” Like “missing in action” we have “be prepared.” Were I editing this essay I might to find a way to finish with this paragraph, a paragraph that ties up the whole post with a bow … it begins and ends on the same level, but the two points are not identical; there has been “progress” made; we did not just end up where we began. But there is a final paragraph, and it does the job just fine:
Starting today, I’m going to write ”M.I.A.” on an index card along with the five elements of adventure and I will keep it in my backpack.
We began with “M.I.A.” and we ended with “M.I.A.” What came between was a digression of sorts, a moment of freedom, a period of reflection.
I could not stop with just these two sort-of-obvious examples. A discussion elsewhere on the broad, broad IntarWebs (from The Economist’s discussion of the current Günter Grass controversy) gave me some Frost and two quotes that the comment’s author found in a way “similar”—
“Persuasiveness and truth are not synonymous
but in the long run, they tend to converge.”Although stylistically and somewhat thematically different, I would follow this up with –
“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”In support of this post, I would say that mistreating people who are not like you is a waste of time, and a silly use of a life.
—and I was captivated in that I wanted to find content suitable to an essay that linked these two passages as beginning and end.
In a few minutes I’ll head over to Lloyd Hall, climb the steps to the 3rd floor, and find a darkened room mostly empty but populated by a few, tired students who couldn’t care less at this point about “Modernity,” the 20th-century German novel, or synthetic and dialectical arguments. We’ll pull out quotes from Kafka and Hesse, perhaps images from Mann or characters studies from Schnitzler and Fontane. I’ll at least bring up (again! and again!) the interesting if not intentional parallelism of Joseph K. dying “like a dog” and the dog-like demeanor (“[…] the condemned man looked so submissively doglike that it seemed […]”) described in “In the Penal Colony” (translated by Donna Freed), perhaps Effi and Else as tragic counterpoints (one over years, one in a day), or even the Apollonian and Dionysian in “Death in Venice.”
