sssh! this is a working library.

A self-conscious experiment

Any intellectual endeavor is bound to be more interesting if it is unsure of itself. A supremely confident effort will only reach as far as necessary to confirm its assumptions; it will go no further, and it will not question its reasons for existing. By contrast, an insecure process will act out its doubt by exploring, looking for the ways in which it may prove to be incorrect or incomplete or even irrelevant. Instead of searching for tautologies that prove its own effectiveness, it will seek out every plausible way to be discredited and dissect them, one by one.

It’s an exercise in discomfort, but one which can be fruitful if you’re persistent.

I was intentionally abstract about the purpose and methods at work on this site when I started it, knowing that if I prescribed a path from the beginning it would be easier but less engaging. Now, a little more than a month later, some of that purpose is coming into relief – a few edges of a path that is still being carved. This act of tracking and responding to books – collecting the texts that strike me as holding some truth – is an attempt to sketch out the foundations of a personal critical approach, the first step of which is to define the shape of my own beliefs; from there, I can better explore and question them.

The critical approach questions: and it questions its own assumptions as part of a refusal to take anything unquestioned. There are no beliefs – not of a golden age, nor of transparent communication – that can stand free of these questions and doubts. In this way the critical approach will always live on, never quite satisfied. It is coloured by dissatisfaction, even melancholy: it lives in the contexts with which it finds itself, but questions the terms of those contexts and is often unhappy with them. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (361)

So, the process I now find myself involved in is one of definition (seeking out the source of my beliefs in the books I’ve read and reread) and simultaneous questioning (following these beliefs from book to book to see if they become clearer or merely dilute, turning them inside out as they pass through different writers) all the while paying attention to the language itself, cognizant (and accepting) of my prejudice for ideas that are articulated with beautiful prose.

I am also beginning to think more clearly about the relationship between design and criticism, whether it be of a criticism that itself addresses design, or of a critical approach that is communicated through design. When developing any critical method, you must consider why it needs to exist in the first place: what are we to learn from it? How will it reshape what we already know (or think we know)? Who does it benefit?

The reproduction and distribution of text is part of the life-blood of social-critical dialogue. The argument for openness and clarity in typography is made, most importantly, for this reason. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (362)

This part of the path is still woody and overgrown, but I can just make out an opening ahead: if typography is the means by which criticism is distributed, then criticism owes much of its existence to typography. And typography – when executed in such a way as to serve the text and not compete with it – is a participant in that criticism. It is the parameters of that participation that I am keenly interested in.

That, it seems, is the direction I’m headed; and I’m happy to say, I don’t know where I’ll be when I get there.

A reminder about the collaboration required to produce a beautiful book:

Within the best book competition, we need an award for good editing. And it would be interesting to test the thesis that good design is only possible with books of substance, their material intelligently sorted out. The only fetishistic books would then be books that are actually about fetishism. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (213)

I don’t need a test to prove this; a book design can be attractive regardless of the substance of the text, but it can’t be beautiful. A beautiful design occurs at the intersection of great design and great writing.

Typographic disorder inevitably follows from disorder in construction; and, equally, typography by itself (if it could be ‘by itself’) cannot be effective with bad copy. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (228)

Kinross on Tschichold’s turn towards the traditional:

This astonishing change came to dog Tschichold’s career. When, in 1946, he first explained it publicly (in a highly-charged exchange with Max Bill), his reasons were of two kinds: that his modern typography had been authoritarian and militaristic and so imbued with the spirit that also drove German National-Socialism; and that modernism in typography was limited to publicity work (as opposed to book design), could not properly articulate content, could be practised only by an uninitiated élite. These arguments – a tangle of true perceptions and ingenuous special pleading – inform what may be the only decent attempt at postmodernism in typography, done for the most serious moral-political reasons. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (175)

Yet today much book design has gone the way of “publicity” work, has relinquished the love affair it had with texts. Which is not to say there aren’t any beautifully designed books being published, but they are increasingly difficult to find. Serious readers are forced to contend with incompetently designed and poorly composed texts if they are to read at all.

Two concerns need to be set aside before criticism can escape its literary chains and venture into mass culture. The first is the mistaken assumption that the products of mass culture are somehow less worthy of criticism, because they just aren’t all that complex or interesting:

We are accustomed to think of these subtleties in quasi-Pavlovian terms, as hidden stimuli that “turn us on” without our knowing it: nipples airbrushed into sunsets, lewd words traced into some ice cubes, etc. But this conception of the way ads work, and of the way we apprehend them, is much too crude. They function, not mechanically, but poetically, through metaphor, association, repetition, and other devices that suggest a variety of possible meanings. Miller, Boxed In (31)

In other words, there’s not as much distance between a poem and an ad as the poet would have you think. At least, not inasmuch as the critic is concerned.

The second assumption is that in order for a critic to establish that a meaning is evident in a text (wherein a text can consist of words or images or both), she must establish intent; i.e., she must not only convince you that the text means something, but that the author of the text intended it to mean so:

If criticism can demonstrate convincingly that a commercial uses certain strategies, then we can assume that those strategies are, in fact, at work, whether or not the advertisers might acknowledge them. Ibid. (32)

As with advertisements (or designs) as with poetry: the author’s intent is unknowable (perhaps even to the author) and irrelevant: once written down, the text takes on a meaning of its own.

On being a critic

The first definition of critic is often negative: “one who expresses an unfavorable opinion of something.”¹ The principal image here is of one who complains, who judges – probably prematurely and harshly – that which would be well enough left alone. A critic is one who spoils the dinner party with her invocations of disapproval.

Let’s put that aside for now. For while the negative connotation persists in sticking to the critic’s shoes, it’s really not her fault. A more effective definition of the critic is one who looks for the truth. By “looks” I mean looks with an attentiveness to the details, to the hidden meanings or sideways connections, to what is on the surface and what lies beneath; by “truth” I mean just that: real, reasoned truth, not the postmodern display of it – overwrought with self-doubt – but the real fucking thing. As hard as it may be to believe in some circles, we all still know what truth is; we’ve just allowed ourselves to become convinced that since truth is hard to find we shouldn’t bother to look.

Where the critic chooses to look is her prerogative, but she may look anywhere and still be a critic. Literature and film are natural points of focus, as is design; but I’ve seen criticism applied as effectively to Shakespeare as to TV commercials. In fact, in many ways, criticism today is more interesting when it looks to those areas that have traditionally been ignored; Shakespeare does not lack for critical attention, but Starbucks may.

How the critic looks is more interesting. For every critic harbors an ideology that informs her criticism. She may not admit of that ideology; or – bless her heart – she may not recognize it, so ingrained is it in her thinking that she cannot step back far enough to see it. But it’s always there. The application of her criticism is, then, a test to see if the object of study lives up to this ideology; or, if it fails, to dissect the nature of its failure such that something may be learned from it. It is through her criticism that she spreads her ideology, and as such, her criticism is a method for promoting a better world.

Put another way: criticism is the means by which an ideology is promoted and distributed with the aim of making the world a better place. Each critic may have a different idea of what that “better place” may be like (meaning, they may have different, and even conflicting, ideologies), but the methods and nature of their goals are always the same. To judge the critic, then, you must judge her vision of what the world should be.

It is my belief that the methods and ideas that make up the field of literary criticism are in fact most effective when allowed to escape the traditional field of literature. It is also my belief that these methods – in particular, those of close readings and an attention to historical and political context – are as applicable to literature as they are to design. And, furthermore, that these methods are especially suitable to that breed of critic known as the designer.

Designers possess the natural attentiveness that is at the heart of any critic. If you’ve been trained to notice that single awkward moment on the page where an ff ligature is missing, or that one extra pixel of space that offsets a column, then you already possess the skills of a literary critic. You just need to heed the words as much as the type. And since design is already entangled with the text itself – being the physical means by which a text is produced – an attentiveness to the meaning of words is hardly outside the designer’s purview.

I have read and listened to many a designer profess their disgust with the way things are in the world today. Many an organization has been created whose stated goal is to leverage the talent of designers to reduce world poverty, or combat the malicious spread of globalization, or end the war. What seems to follow is a lot of hand wringing and poster design. Let’s be honest with ourselves: no war will come to an end because of a poster. We don’t need more posters; we need critics – people who have the skills and persistence to uncover the truth and proclaim it loudly.

What I hope to do in this space over the next few weeks and months is to demonstrate how what we traditionally know of as “literary” criticism is applicable beyond literature, and how it can be an effective tool for designers. I’ve begun to lay the groundwork for this already, but it’s going to take some time to really work out all my ideas here. I hope you’ll bear with me; this is the kind of argument that is likely to proceed in fits and starts, and I may change my mind about some things along the way; the path to an idea is often as interesting – if not more so – than the idea itself.

As we follow that path, think again of our poor critic, as she’s forced from the dining room and told never to return. Now look, instead, at who’s asking her to leave: who is he protecting? Why is he so afraid of what the critic has to say that he tries to silence her? What does he have to lose? What do you have to gain?

1. From the Oxford American Dictionary.↩

Furthermore –

…fundamentalism and democracy are completely antithetical. Berman, Dark Ages America (5)

If fundamentalism is a textual affair, then it relies on revealed truths, not discovered ones. Revealed “truths” refuse to be interrogated and resist all but the most myopic of interpretations. Democracy hinges on an educated and capable citizenship to engage in a discourse about the nature of their government; it needs reason, not revelation.

On fundamentalism and texts:

Jehovah’s Witnesses are fundamentalists because they believe that every word of the Bible is literally true; and this, surely, is the only definition of fundamentalism that will really stick. Fundamentalism is a textual affair. Eagleton, After Theory (202)

I’ve always suspected that fundamentalism afflicts those unfamiliar with reading; spend enough time with a book in your hand (and more than one of them), and you’ll develop a healthy cynicism about the meanings of words:

Writing just means meaning which can be handled by anyone, anywhere. Meaning which has been written down is unhygienic. It is also promiscuous, ready to lend itself to whoever happens along. Ibid. (202)

The concept of promiscuity is particularly interesting: meaning as a whore – downtrodden, easily manipulated, too simple to care what people say about her. (The word promiscuous is almost never applied to men, because men are expected to couple loosely; there’s no need to describe that which is normal. It’s when a woman behaves like a man that terms like promiscuous are thrown about.) Why would you rest the foundations of your faith - or your law - on her?

As for law, nothing illustrates its slipperiness more than Portia’s legalistic sophistry in The Merchant of Venice.…Portia gets the doomed Antonio off by pointing out to the court that Shylock’s bond for securing a pound of his flesh makes no mention of taking any of his blood along with it.…Portia’s reading of the bond is false because too faithful; it is a fundamentalist reading, sticking pedantically to the letter of the text and thus flagrantly falsifying its meaning. To be exact, interpretation must be creative.¹ Ibid. (206)

Underneath this statement is a useful corrective to the way we often think of the word “creative.” Creativity does not require invention. At it’s best, creativity is an effort to reveal the truth, no matter how elusive or complex it may seem. It’s 12 Angry Men, not Athena emerging from Zeus’ head.

1. Emphasis mine. ↩