Creative Crit: Torgovnic

While reading through Marianna Torgovnic's article on experimental critical writing, I became almost enthralled with her attitude. Her ideological and stylistic transformation impressed me. As she states, when she first began writing her essay on Malinowski, she was approaching it in a very clinical, sterile way; writing in a way that she felt would be found appropriate from a scholarly standpoint. After peer review though, she realized how dry and mundane her work was. There was no spirit, no voice to her work. Once she added her own voice, her work began to take off. This really resonated with me because it seems as if she began to look at her writing, though non-fiction, as almost a creative meaning; as art. This is an ideal I have always gotten behind; it does not matter what product being produced is, the process of its creation is a form of art. Whether that product be a painting, a poem, a song, or a building. The thought process that goes into creating nearly anything can be considered an artistic endeavor. To me, realizing that anything can be considered art and forwarded in such a way is the first step to creating something amazing and new. In my eyes, the aim of artist endeavor is to create something new that both conveys and evokes emotions. This ideal is how the world progresses. Nobody sets out to create what has already been created. That would be pointless. We do not strive to replicate the Mona Lisa, we work to expand upon it, to create the next amazing portrait.

Torgovnick seems to embody this ideal of creating something new. Rather than publish her black and white, sterile essay, she chose to rewrite it. This time, however, she used her own voice. She made parts funny. In a sense, she wrote a scholarly essay in a way that has not been done before. Nobody else has her voice meaning nobody could have conveyed these ideas and ideals in such a way as she did. She managed to write a scholarly paper while breaking free of the confines and stringent guidelines that so many other writers follow to the ends of the earth. Really though, isn't that what being an artist is all about?