Nothing should be easier than talking about ways in which I write about myself, but I find it isn’t easy at all. Indeed, I want to say before anything else that a great problem for me, in writing about myself, is how not to write merely about myself. I think the problem is very common among writers even if they are unaware of it. Basic elements of writing–diction, grammar, tone, imagery, the patterns of sound made by your sentences–will say a good deal about you (whether you are conscious of it or not) so that it is possible for you to be writing about yourself before you even know you are writing about yourself. Regardless of your subject, these basic elements, as well as countless and immeasurable qualities of mind, are at play in your writing and will make your presence felt to a reader as palpably as your handwriting. You virtually write your name, as it were, before you literally sign your name, every time you write.
Read more in Partisan Review 1/ 2001 VOLUME LXVIII NUMBER 1
"I try to describe with love what I love. My secret ambition is to pierce through the veil: think about a work and then not just describe it but arrive at something, an underlying principal or an underlying emotion and then say what the work's true value and beauty really is." Joan Acocella
Recommended reading
- Baird, George. “Criticality and Its Discontents,” Harvard Design Magazine, 2004.
- Butt, Gavin. After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance, Blackwell: Malden & Oxford, 2005.
- Critical Inquiry
- Eagleton, Terry. After Theory, Penguin: London, 2004.
- Hays, K. Michael. “Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form,” Perspecta 21: The Yale Architectural Journal, 1984. pp. 14-29.
- Martin, Reinhold. Critical of What?
- Somol, Robert & Whiting, Sarah. “Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism,” Perspecta 33: The Yale Architectural Journal, 2002.
- Sontag, Susan. ‘Against Interpretation’ and ‘Notes on Camp’, in A Susan Sontag Reader, Intro. Elizabeth Hardwick, Penguin: London, 1983.
- Speaks, Michael. “Design Intelligence, Part I: Introduction,” A+U, 2002.
About Me
- Rolf Hughes
- Writer & critic; Guest Professor in Theory and Practice-Based Research at the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm; Senior Professor in Research Design at the Sint-Lucas School of Architecture, Brussels & Ghent; Senior Researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology, School of Architecture, Stockholm.