This Week's Readings...

were my favorites so far. The idea of defamiliarization hits on one of the key points that I had tried and failed to describe in the first writing assignment of the semester: where we were told to describe what "good writing" meant to us. I had tried to probe (among other things) why Chuck Palahniuk's writing worked so well for me. What was it about his style and themes that captured my attention so relentlessly and that always seemed capable of helping me understand the world in new ways? I couldn't name it.
Well, Baxter seems to put forth myriad ideas in this essay, but the one definition that stood out to me, the one representing an idea I want to include in my writing, describes the way clever use of language makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar. At the core, a book like Choke is about existentialism. It's the familiar story of Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill and learning to love the process, reinterpreted with a masturbation-addicted main character. The decidedly strange subject matter Palahniuk produces makes the story entertaining, and as a result the message is accesible to people who would not have otherwise been exposed to it (me).
Considering not everyone has read Choke, I'm not sure I'm doing the best job explaining myself, but the short stories we were assigned for this week did a great job illustrating the same point; that was the reason I enjoyed them so thoroughly: to slightly misuse political jargon, they were really on message this week.
Anyway.
The use of language in a Gentleman's Agreement had that character of being totally new but absolutely true. The author chose such uncommon words to describe the almost banal activities in the story. A child throwing rocks is receiving lessons in trajectory. A rock through a windshield is a broken-glass eye poke to the friendly family van. A kid's response to his father's chastising abuse is a covenant in his heart. The list goes on. The effect is that the banality vanishes. The use of unfamiliar adjectives and metaphors casts connotative, new light on everything described and the reader benefits by being entertained and experiencing the mundane world in new ways.
All in all, the effect was that I was inspired to try writing like this more. But I often find it hard to do things intentionally with my writing, so those experiments will be lucky to see light.

PS. I wanted to note the Axoltyl (sp?) story for its use of defamiliarization as well, but I'm well over the word count limit and I can't bring myself to cut anything. Maybe someone strapped to find something to comment on can flesh that out. Or not. You know, whatev.