Week 1: Catalogues and Analogues
An interactive course in reading and writing, based on the teaching materials of the late poet and critic John Hollander
Dear subscribers,
Many thanks to all those who have signed up for Daily Themes since last week’s edition. For those of you who missed it, that one contained an introduction to Daily Themes, which you can still read here.
Today, we begin with the first instalment of the course: ‘Catalogues and Analogues’.
In this edition, you will find:
1) A five-step series of instructions for this week’s writing exercises, which ask you to create lists and turn them first into sentences and then into paragraphs.
2) A series of example lists to inspire and instruct you in this, and
3) A series of example paragraphs that contain or are built around lists.
We encourage you to take your time to work through the exercises – which were designed to be completed over a few consecutive days – and to read the examples. The instructions appear a little dense and forbidding at first but follow them step-by-step and they turn out to be more straightforward than they look.
Next week, we will share a selection of the texts you produce in response to these exercises. Please send your work to editors@creativecritical.net by Thursday, September 7th and indicate whether you would prefer for it to be shared under your name or anonymously. We also welcome reflections and comments about the process and the materials. You can share these in the comments below or via the same email address.
One last note: Hollander’s course materials contain a longer list of examples than you will find below. You can read the entire list on our website at: creativecritical.net/assignment-1-catalogues-and-analogues
We hope you enjoy this week’s assignments and look forward to reading your work!
Exercises:
Ground rules: This week we're going to generate paragraphs from lists or catalogues. The elements of a list will become parts of sentences, and the sentences parts of paragraphs. The structure, order and even the dramaturgy of the lists themselves will be your first concern; the transfiguration of a series of entities merely coordinated (a + b + c + d) into a sequence of sentences subordinated violently or subtly will follow.
1. Make up a number of lists of various sorts: congeries*, incremental or classified in various ways. Take at least one of these about twelve elements – and, by presentation alone, see what you can do to make it build to a climax, fall away, form subgroups, etc.
*Congeries: ‘a collection of things merely massed or heaped together’ (OED)
2. Take this list and, embodying each item in a sentence, build the sequence of sentences into a paragraph. The paragraph should describe a space – interior or exterior – or situation (if your elements are not objects). If your list is a congeries, the unified category may be harder to construct; if it is a simple unfolding of one category, it may be duller to read. Your control and modulation of sentence structure, length, and pace will be as important to the shape of your paragraph as the sinews of its subordination and its conceptual coherence.
3. Take the same list and compose totally different sentences which will compose a paragraph of narrative. You will discover that the elements may have to play various – and sometimes far-fetched – roles in your narrative line.
4. Take the same list once again and subject it to random permutations of order (as by writing the elements on slips of paper and shuffling them). Then do a totally new paragraph in the same manner as before. You can try to bury or hide the elements if you wish, or bring them to the foreground in new ways.
5. Now, freedom at last: take a sentence from 2, 3, or 4 containing your favourite element. Start or conclude a new paragraph with it, unshackled now from the rest of the catalogue. The paragraph can be of any sort, and go anywhere. Its beauty should be a function of its augmented freedom.
Example Lists
1. shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages, kings, why the sea is boiling hot,
whether pigs have wings
2. livers, opacities, positrons, cough-drops, unicorns, doubts, Liszts (lists)
3. darkness, damsels, deficiencies of Vitamin D, dimity, declarations, delights, diffractions, desire for doughnuts, denim, dread, demi-tasses
4. limes, dimes, times, chimes, crimes, mimes, rhymes
5. apple, bear, beach, thumb, shape, Helen, ferry
6. apple, pear, peach, plum, grape, melon, berry
6a. Winesap, macintosh, russet, delicious, Granny Smith, Gravenstein
7. apple, pear, peach, plum, grape, felon, berry
7a. apple, pear, peach, plum, grape, Helen, berry
8. berry, grape, plum, apple, grapefruit, melon
9. lemon, orange, grapefruit; apple, quince, pear; peach, plum, cherry
10. apple: cherry, berry, pear, peach and plum
11. apple? pear, peach, plum; grape? cherry, berry
12. apple? pear; peach, but not plum; grape, however, and yet melon. Finally, alas, berry
13. Rocks, caves, bogs, fens, lakes, dens, and shades of death, a universe of death
Example Texts
1 I will give out divers schedules of my beauty. It shall be inventoried, and every particle and utensil labell'd to my will: as, item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them; item one neck, one chin, and so forth.
(William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night)
2 …animals are dividen into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (1) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.
(J.L. Borges, ‘The Analytical Language of John Wilkins’)
3 Everything was bought in small quantities, exactly as it was wanted day by day. Today, for instance, she made the following purchases:
One cake of Vinolia for the bathroom,
Half a dozen Relief nibs,
One pot of salmon and shrimp paste (small size),
One pan scrubber of crumpled metal gauze,
One bottle of Bisurated Magnesia tablets (small size),
One bottle of gravy browning,
One skein of 'natural' wool (for Dickie's vests),
One electric light bulb,
One lettuce,
One length of striped canvas to reseat a deck chair,
One set of whalebones to repair corsets,
Two pair of lambs' kidneys,
Half a dozen small screws,
A copy of the Church Times.
(Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart)
4 We came to know the curious roadside species, Hitchhiking Man, Homo pollex of science, with all its many sub-species and forms: the modest soldier, spic and span, quietly waiting, quietly conscious of khaki's viatic appeal; the schoolboy wishing to go two blocks; the killer wishing to go two thousand miles; the mysterious, nervous, elderly gent, with brand-new suitcase and clipped moustache; a trio of optimistic Mexicans; the college student displaying the grime of vacational outdoor work as proudly as the name of the famous college arching across the front of his sweatshirt; the desperate lady whose battery has just died on her; the clean-cut, glossy-haired, shifty-eyed, white-faced young beasts in loud shirts and coats, vigorously, almost priapically thrusting out tense thumbs to tempt lone women or sadsack salesmen with fancy cravings.
(Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)
5 What of the hands? We require, promise, call, dismiss, threaten, pray, supplicate, deny, refuse, interrogate, admire, number, confess, repent, confound, blush, doubt, instruct, command, incite, encourage, swear, testify, accuse, condemn, absolve, abuse, despise, defy, despite, flatter, applaud, bless, humiliate, mock, reconcile, recommend, exalt, entertain, congratulate, complain, grieve, despair, wonder, exclaim, and what not, with a variation and multiplication to the emulation of speech.
(Michel de Montaigne, ‘Apology for Raymond Sebond’)
6 Before I decided to write this book my twenty-five years with Gertrude Stein, I had often said that I would write, the wives of geniuses I have sat with. I have sat with so many. I have sat with wives who were not wives, of geniuses who were real geniuses. I have sat with real wives of geniuses who were not real geniuses. I have sat with wives of geniuses, of near geniuses, of would be geniuses, in short I have sat very often and very long with many wives and wives of many geniuses.
(Gertrude Stein, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas)
7 We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher knife without any handle, and a brand-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old bed-quilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and a fish-line as thick as my little finger, with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar, and a horse-shoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label on them; and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable good curry-comb, and Jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg. The straps was broke off of it, but barring that, it was a good enough leg, though it was too long for me and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn't find the other one, though we hunted all around.
(Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)
8 And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
(The Gospel According to St. Matthew)
9 Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad' the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinpad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and Limbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer,
(James Joyce, Ulysses)
10 Under the general name of Commodity, I rank all these advantages which our senses owe to nature. This, of course, is a benefit which is temporary and mediate, not ultimate, like its service to the soul. Yet although low, it is perfect in its kind, and is the only use of nature which all men apprehend. The misery of man appears like childish petulance, when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this green ball which floats him through the heavens. What angels invented these splendid ornaments, these rich conveniences, this ocean of air above, this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of earth between? this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped coat of climates, this fourfold year? Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his bed.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature)