Updike's 6 rules on literary criticism from Brain Pickings

Updike's 6 rules on literary criticism from Brain Pickings

I came across this gem on the always excellent Brain Pickings website.  You too, should read the content here on a regular basis, your life will be more interesting for it.

You can also follow Maria Popova on twitter at @brainpicker

If you want to read more on Updike you can read an excellent interview with him the from phenomenal Paris Review here.  In the 1967 interview at Martha's Vineyard the interviewer asked him (among many questions) why he writes so much literary criticism. 
His response:
"I do it (a) when some author, like Spark or Borges, excites me and I want to share the good news, (b) when I want to write an essay, as on romantic love, or Barth's theology, (c) when I feel ignorant of something, like modern French fiction, and accepting a review assignment will compel me to read and learn."
 
From Updike:

My rules, drawn up inwardly when l embarked on this craft, and shaped intaglio- fashion by youthful traumas at the receiving end of critical opinion, were and are:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.
2. Give him enough direct quotation–at least one extended passage–of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.
3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.
4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending. (How astounded and indignant was I, when innocent, to find reviewers blabbing, and with the sublime inaccuracy of drunken lords reporting on a peasants’ revolt, all the turns of my suspenseful and surpriseful narrative! Most ironically, the only readers who approach a book as the author intends, unpolluted by pre-knowledge of the plot, are the detested reviewers themselves. And then, years later, the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf.)
5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author’s ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in an idealogical battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never (John Aldridge, Norman Podhoretz) try to put the author ‘in his place,’ making him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.

In Praise of Refworks--The Best Reference Management Tool?

BONUS LINK:  My entire (so far) grad school notes collection can be found here. 

In Praise of Refworks

Do you have a favorite program that you use to manage your references?  Before coming to grad school I never thought twice about this.  Truthfully, I didn't think twice about it for my first two quarters.  I didn't have too many papers to write-and the ones that I did write were on varied topics.

Now that I am finishing my third quarter, I have become an unabashed believer in the absolute need for some system--any system really--to keep track of your references.

For me that answer has been RefWorks.  I will admit, my initial motivation to use it was that it is free from NPS students (and alumni I might add--if you were a student here, you can contact alumni affairs and they can make sure you are set up to maintain your use of library research capabilities).  But I researched EndNotes as well, and while I see its merits, ultimately the cloud capability of RefWorks is what sold me (although I understand that EndNote X6--the latest version--has incorporated a cloud capability too).

The feature in RefWorks that will provide me with the most long term utility though are the USER FIELDS for each reference that you add to your library.  I paste my notes for each reference into this field.  This gives me the ability to find an essay or article that I read from years ago through a keyword search in the program.  I often will remember that I read about an idea somewhere but won't be able to recall the exact article--that problem no longer exists.

As I plan on writing for the rest of my life (to include books one day), the benefits of this RefWorks will continue to grow as my research does.

What Reference Management System do you use and why?  

Writing Tips from Previous Blog Posts:

How to Write an A+ Paper

My Personal Editing Checklist

On Revising Well or “Taking the ax to your work” or “Getting the words right”

101 Writing Tips from Famous Authors