Another kick in the teeth
If there's been one thing to set this academic year apart from all others, it has to be the amount of blows to my confidence I've taken in the name of education and so-called self-betterment. Be it educational inadequacies, cheating, lazy students or lecturers with overinflated views of their own worth, I've been getting progressively more and more fed up with my place in the world this year - as no doubt my blogs reflect. To make matters worse today, I had a conversation with a rather prominent literary figure working for the creative writing department of our university only to be told that my writing style is archaic and at least 30-years out of date. If this sort of thing isn't enough to make you want to give up English for good I don't know what is. I really do struggle sometimes to come to terms with how this world operates and this is yet another example of institutionalised madness. I mean, why on earth does something have to be "fresh" (I use their word, not mine) to be good. Surely if something is original, well written and smoothe-flowing then it deserves some sort of recognition as a good piece of work. To be "good" in the arts world, would appear to be incoherant, non-sensical and at times plain ridiculous. It seems to me that you can't be talented these days: the only way to be successful is to meet the socially accepted convention of what is "good": in this case, from my perspective at least, writing complete and utter BULLSHIT. I honestly don't understand it. I did of course try and argue for the fact that surely "archaic" in this case can't always be bad, but no, my lecturer would not have it - either I have to change my style and start writing like the writers I loathe, or else I will seemingly not make it. It appears to me I am confronted with the great foustian question. Do I sell myself to the devil? Only time will tell.