Are pictures worth a thousand words?

 The statement "a picture is worth a thousand words" has an obscure derivation, but people have pinpointed a moment when the phrase saw print; Wikipedia offers a similar derivation to the early 1910s and an association with advertising.

I like the idea that a character created by Ivan Turgenev germinated the idea of images having more content than words, as found in the 1862 novel Fathers and Sons. Turgenev and Henry James were good friends.

Inverted pint glass (from stock.xchng)

I disagree with the idea that images have more content, because the specificity of the picture and the words are what is at issue. I have had some film and literature students argue that film is superior to printed text because a film image contains more information than words can represent.

I think that people are comforted by film images because people tend to absorb visual information faster than written words. Visual images don't have to be symbolic, whereas writing requires decoding (the ability to read a specific language through symbols).

Yet some images are not easy to interpret, even the nonsymbolic kind. (See the caption on the image to the right.)

Besides, a film image is not the same as an image that people normally see during the day just by walking around and living. Film images are stylized (even for those films that claim to be documentary in approach). Cameras give the illusion of objectivity because they mimic human sight, but mimicry is still a form of mimesis (representation or imitation).

from stock.xchng

Security camera footage might be closest to a kind of pure objectivity, but even then, security cameras are positioned in specific places rather than randomly. Their location is selected. As well, note that security cameras will often not record much new information at all (the same unused doorway may well have the same image for days at a time). Security camera footage only becomes interesting when something happens that catches security personnel's attention.

 Human attention (even if programmed into a computerized alarm system) is what makes that footage significant--what human attention considers worthy of being recorded and reviewed. That judgment of significance is what makes any particular sequence of footage (or even of a single still) worthwhile of being described in words. Once an image requires judgment, the possibility of mimesis arises.

So--I like pictures and words: together, alone, whatever.

Narrative

I have just subscribed to Narrative, a web magazine that claims to be "the PBS of literature." The subscription is free. I joined so I could read in full Cynthia Ozick's piece on Henry James's story "The Lesson of the Master."

Narrative seems to like stories, so Narrative is good by me.

Banished Words

Cliches (familiar phrases that have been emptied of originality due to overuse) may be easier to pick up and harder to drop because of the Internet. But the Internet can be a good source of information on new cliches. Lake Superior State University has been running a cliche contest in which people vote for their least favorite word or term of the year. (I am happy to see "amazing" on this list. I have seen this word in much student writing in the last few months.) See the 2012 List of Banished Words. For more fun, look at past years' lists.Writers should beware of using words that people are tired of seeing and hearing.

Black Mountain College

I have just finished reading Martin Duberman's Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community, a history of Black Mountain, an experimental college in North Carolina that ran from the 1930s to the 1950s. 

Charles Olson, who was a significant force during Black Mountain's last years, said something that warrants notice here: "good expression is not a quality of language but of the experience that initiates it....Banality is a lack of profound emotion before the object. The problem is how to restore yourself into a state of clean experience, how to open the latch unto the outside world which makes feeling and involvement possible" (qtd. in Duberman 398).

I often tell my students to avoid verbal cliches (a kind of banality), but quite possibly the problem lies not in the language but in the writer's attitude towards the event being described (whether a fictional event or a historical event). The act that leads to the "opening the latch" doesn't have to be extreme, I don't think: for some people freewriting or meditation may be enough. Physical isolation in a cash-poor college among productive artists--what the Black Mountain College offered in later years especially--may be what people need. Cliches may be a sign of some writers' inability or unwillingness to figure out their actual emotional or intellectual responses to characters and events. ISuch writers have shallow responses to their own writing and represent those responses in shallow terms (namely, what other people--nonwriters--tend to say about such experiences).

Two days ago I watched the documentary In the Mirror of Maya Deren. Maya Deren was an avant-garde filmmaker who influenced many other filmmakers, avant-garde or otherwise. She used the medium of film for poetic ends. She is worth mentioning on the blog because she valued many other art forms as well, especially dance and music, and she incorporated these art forms into her work and life. Such interdisciplinarity expanded the film genre forever. Crossing boundaries helps creativity.

Five Writing Books I Recommend

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. I have used this book to supplement writing advice in textbooks for courses that I have taught. Browne and King talk about the evils of trailing participial phrases and cliched writing and about the goodness of proper dialogue formatting and concision. Its exercises are useful because they are practical and have suggested solutions.

Word Menu by Stephen Glazier.  Glazier's book is a thesaurus-style dictionary that is organized not by word so much as by discursive category. For example, I have always been fascinated by the terminology of religious clothing. I can look at the liturgical vestments section and find out what an amice or tunicle is. Then, if I ever have to describe a priest getting ready for mass, I can  use these words.  Each word entry has a definition (an amice is a "priest's square cloth worn over the shoulders"). Answers.com seems to have bought the rights to this book, so you can do electronic lookups. (I have only ever used the print version, but that may change.)

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg.  It is organized into short chapters that explain how Goldberg goes about her writing life. It offers practical advice but is also, in part, a member of what I like to call the emotional support category of books about writing. For example, it has chapters entitled "Original Detail" and "The Action of a Sentence" but also "Don't Use Writing to Get Love" and "Doubt Is Torture."


Understanding English Grammar by Martha Kolln and Robert Funk. Yes, grammar is important. Writers need to know the rules so that breaking them is an act of choice rather than an act of ignorance. For example, to understand the evils of trailing participial phrases, one must know what a participial phrase is.  To find out, you can look up "participial phrase" in Kolln and Funk's index. This book uses some linguistic terminology, so the book has educational value as well. On that note, this book's exercises have answers.

If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit by Brenda Ueland is a full-fledged example of the emotional support category of books about writing. It gently explains why writing is the best thing a writer can do. Unlike many people in one's life, most likely, Ueland says that the creative act is important. She discusses William Blake and Vincent Van Gogh, and rather than describe them as crazy people (which noncreative people like to do), she lauds them as creative geniuses who loved imagination and treated art as the highest form of  human participation in the world. Chapter titles include "Everybody Is Talented, Original and Has Something Important to Say" and "Why Women Who Do Too Much Housework Should Neglect It for Their Writing." Isn't that nice to hear for a change?

Prompts

A writing prompt is a topic for people to write about. Writing prompts give writers something to write about when they are stuck. Prompts can also force people to write about things they don't normally write about and thus take people out of their writing habits. A habit can be good, but a habit can be habit-forming in a bad way. You can make up your own prompts, but the temptation is for you to create a prompt that keeps you in your habit. Creative Writing Prompts (http://creativewritingprompts.com/)  is one of many websites that contain prompts other people have written. Choose a prompt at random. I did this, and I found myself writing an open letter to a high school teacher. That piece of writing was something that I would never have written otherwise.