Writing and Responsibility
Carl Tighe
Language: English
Pages: 177
ISBN: B01FEPOIJY
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In a world where literary scandals often end up in court, the issue of responsibility in writing has never been more important. In this groundbreaking study, Carl Tighe asks the questions every writer needs to consider:
*What is it that writers do? Are they responsible for all the uses to which their writing might be put? Or no more responsible than their readers?
*How are a writer's responsibilities compromised or defined by commercial or political pressures, or by notions of tradition or originality?
*How does a writer's audience affect their responsibilities? Are these the same for writers in all parts of the world, under all political and social systems?
The first part of this book defines responsibility and looks at its relation to ideas such as power, accuracy, kitsch and political correctness. The second part examines how particular writers have dealt with these issues through a series of often-controversial case studies, including American Psycho, Crash and The Tin Drum.
Writing and Responsibility encourages its readers to interrogate the choices they make as writers. A fascinating look at the public consequences of the private act of writing, Carl Tighe's book is a must-read for everyone who writes or studies writing.
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and for those who seek, for whatever reason, to read what writers write. Politicians and religious leaders almost always seek to enlist writers to their cause or to control them, in order to limit the intellectual and popular opposition their work might arouse. At the other end of the power scale, the written word can seem vitally important to societies facing threats to the survival of their nation, identity, language or way of life. Writing brings the public world into private scrutiny and puts
the widest possible fan base by being bland and inoffensive. Bateman, though he prides himself on his knowledge of yuppie etiquette, is not as clever as he likes to pretend. At one point Bateman in a drug haze blunders into a Kosher restaurant and asks for a milk shake and a ‘kosherburger but with cheese’ (Ellis 1991: 152). And even among yuppies, he is not a great success. His colleagues frequently comment sarcastically on his permanent suntan. He shows off his newly designed business card, only
centred on the Polish town of Kartuzy. In spite of everything that history subsequently threw at them in the form of Scandinavian, Swedish, German, Polish, Prussian and Russian invasions, the Kaszubians have remained in the place they first chose to settle. All the other Slav dialects of Pomerania – indeed with the exception of the Sorbs and Wends of East Germany, all the other Slav peoples who once co-occupied the great north German plain right up to the mouth of the Elbe – have withered away and
been absorbed into German nationality, leaving hardly a trace. The Kaszubians were, and remain, insular, agrarian people thoroughly resistant to change. Sir Robert Donald, writing in the late 1920s characterized them thus: The Cashubes remain a somewhat primitive community. They have no ideals. They are devoid of initiative in political action, are content to be led, and are easily exploited. They want to cultivate their fields; to live peacefully under conditions which suit their habits and
London: Penguin. Smith, R. (2001) ‘We’re in this together’, The Guardian (14 May). Soyinka, W. (1971) ‘The choice and use of language’, Cultural Events in Africa, 75: 3–6. Soyinka, W. (1976) Myth, Literature and the African World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Soyinka, W. (1998) Art, Dialogue and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture, London: Methuen. Spriano, P. (1975) The Occupation of the Factories: Italy 1920, London: Pluto. Steiner, G. (1996) No Passion Spent: Essays 1978–96,