Think About It 105: C WRIGHT MILLS

 

The knowledgeable man in the genuine public is able to turn his personal troubles into social issues, to see their relevance for his community and his community's relevance for them. He understands that what he thinks and feels as personal troubles are very often not only that but problems shared by others and indeed not subject to solution by any one individual but only by modifications of the structure of the groups in which he lives and sometimes the structure of the entire society.

      Men in masses are gripped by personal troubles, but they are not aware of their true meaning and source. Men in public confront issues, and they are aware of their terms. It is the task of the liberal institution, as of the liberally educated man, continually to translate troubles into issues and issues into the terms of their human meaning for the individual. In the absence of deep and wide political debate, schools for adults and adolescents could perhaps become hospitable frameworks for just such debate. In a community of publics the task of liberal education would be: to keep the public from being overwhelmed; to help produce the disciplined and informed mind that cannot be overwhelmed; to help develop the bold and sensible individual that cannot be sunk by the burdens of mass life. But educational practice has not made knowledge directly relevant to the human need of the troubled person of the twentieth century or to the social practices of the citizen. The citizen cannot now see the roots of his own biases and frustrations, nor think clearly about himself, nor for that matter about anything else. He does not see the frustration of idea, of intellect, by the present organization of society, and he is not able to meet the tasks now confronting 'the intelligent citizen'.

 

The Power Elite (1956)

 

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read about the life and work of North American sociologist CHARLES WRIGHT MILLS (1916–1962):

https://www.sociologygroup.com/charles-wright-mills/

 

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 211: BETSY LERNER

 

Chances are you want to write because you are a haunted individual, or a bothered individual, because the world does not sit right with you, or you in it.  Chances are you have a deep connection to books because at some point you discovered that they were the one truly safe place to discover and explore feelings that are banished from the dinner table, the cocktail party, the golf foursome, the bridge game.  Because the writers who mattered to you have dared to say I am a sick man.  And because within the world of books there is no censure.  In discovering books, you became free to explore the full range of human motives, desires, secrets, and lies.  All my life, people have scolded me for having an excess of feeling, saying that I was too sensitive — as if one could be in danger from feeling too much instead of too little… I am not suggesting a writer let it bleed so much as I am suggesting that he understand his motivation.

      The more popular culture and the media fail to present the real pathos of our human struggle, the more opportunity there is for writers who are unafraid to present stories that speak emotional truth, or that make such an intimate connection that briefly we become children again, listening with rapt attention… At a time when people are encouraged to follow their bliss, to pursue whatever makes them feel good, I suggest you stalk your demons.  Embrace them.  If you are a writer, especially one who has been unable to make your work count or stick, you must grab your demons by the neck and face them down.  And whatever you do, don't censor yourself.  There's time and editors for that.

 

The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers (Revised edition 2010)

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of North American writer, poet, editor and literary agent BETSY LERNER:

 

https://betsylerner.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Poet of the Month 098: RENÉE PETTITT-SCHIPP

 

RENÉE PETTITT-SCHIPP

2018

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT WATER BRINGS

 

 

we are learning archaeologies of loss

rummaging along edge of island

turning each gift left by the tide

 

meanwhile, unseen at the edge of the atoll, fifty-eight

Tamils are escorted in; navy ship grey, fishing boat festive

jubilant in sunlight

 

within the lagoon’s still waters officers

insist on life jackets, clothing refugees

in orange irony

 

from SIEV to zodiac, zodiac to Customs, Customs to shore

shore to bus, they are watched, guided, guarded

a headline brews

 

but here we are oblivious, searching amongst the seaweed

finding thongs, whole bulbs and bottles, a toy soldier

minus his head

 

later, we drive through palms beneath tall towers of cloud,

past the Quarantine Station where the bus has just arrived

and the dust will not settle. 

 

from the 2018 UWA collection

The Sky Runs Right Through Us

 

 

Use the link below to read more about West Australian poet and writer RENÉE PETTITT-SCHIPP:

https://fremantlepress.com.au/contributor/renee-pettitt-schipp/

 

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The Write Advice 210: ANTHONY BURGESS

 

What could I teach these sharp, wary, vigorous Creative Writers?  Only the grammar they should have learned in fourth or fifth grade, only the professional trickery which shocked them with its insincerity.  They were terribly sincere, even when they divined that there was money in this writing racket if only you cut out the artsy-shmartsy crap.  By professional trickery I meant and mean the use of repetitive verbal tropes to fix a character in the reader’s mind, helped along by ocular tics and patches of alopecia (give the character the name Fox, since he has fox-mange); how to describe a seething party with everybody talking at once; how to convey a stormy sea by raiding an arbitrarily chosen page of a dictionary (stairwells of foam, waves rearing in stalagmites, precipitating in stalactites, staminiferous in their stalwart stallion-balled stalling angles). Or I could concentrate on opening techniques, with reference to The Good Soldier or Middlemarch.  What I could not evade was the dogged listening to dull work in progress.  Wow, that’s great, Janice…If these young people learned nothing else, they learned how heartbreaking the writing game was.

 

You've Had Your Time (1990)

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of THE INTERNATIONAL ANTHONY BURGESS FOUNDATION, an English-based organisation which 'encourages and supports public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of Anthony Burgess.'  It also operates an archive/performance space in his home town of Manchester.



http://www.anthonyburgess.org/

 

 

 

 

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