Interesting article.
Many critics and most (school)teachers only search for, only find, and only communicate platitudes. (Maybe one of the reasons I disliked literature at school)

Post-It Notes

There is nothing wrong with reducing an idea to something that fits on a post-it note. Social scientist have to do it all the time. Sure, it is often uncomfortable and the results may vary, but it also helps find out what you think is important. The reason you apparantly find it so distasteful , is that you outsource this job to readers. - as all writers do. The reasons for this are obvious and legitimate. But it is to be expected that the end result is often a platitude. It is very difficult to summarize and not to trivialize at the same time. It is in fact an art.

When I teach, I also regularly hear students summarize my argument in a platitude. While this is sometimes frustrating, I typically experience this as my own fault. If I want them to remember something different, I should help them summarize that idea.

Of course, this approach is completely antithetical to literary texts. People engage with your text and produce meaning themselves , which is a wonderful feature of literature. You have argued repeatedly - and now I'm going to summarize one of your ideas in a platitude - that you want people to read your books in the context of their lives. This is the only way for the novel to be potentially dangerous, rather than merely enjoyable. Good point. But the one area where people flock around platitudes, is when they are talking about themselves. One of the reasons to read is to escape your own platitudes.

M. van Eeten

I'm sorry if I spoke in platitudes. I tend to do that all the time. Sometimes this platitude is too vague so it becomes a brushstroke. A cleansing of the need.

Dens

You didn't.

We spend our dailylife on post-it notes. In models so known to us that they become platitudes. We like to believe in the effectiveness, intelligence, happiness of our own post-its.
Looking to novels as well means doubting ones own beliefs.

@Dens

Like an addiction?

@Michel Van Eeten
Concerning platitudes, I cannot see more or less platitudes when talking about ourselves, other persons or fictional characters in a novel.
I think it all depends on the eye of the beholder – to quote another platitude.

Hanny

Addiction? I'm afraid I don't get where you're going.

What's wrong with platitudes? Most things can be explained by a platitude.

Michel/ Calisha

There is nothing against proverbial wisdom; I guess that’s what we mean with platitudes in this context, but I do believe that the novel offers other things than proverbial wisdom.
To say, “look, this novel is a wonderful thing, because we found this proverbial wisdom in the novel,” doesn’t do the novel justice.
That’s my point.
Michel, can you give an example of an argument you made that is returned to you as a platitude?

Arnon

That is a bit of a paradoxical question. The problem of giving an example is that I would first have to summarize the argument to the level of a post-it, which is fine in the course of a lecture, but less fitting for a blog comment. Let me try anyway. In one course I teach a rather Machiavellistic view on how firms and governments (can) deal with stakeholders around large technical projects. Invariably, someone will summarize the argument as: 'It is important to involve stakeholders in the process as early as possible.' Which is not only banal, but incorrect. I'm still hoping that one day a student will say: 'It is important to bribe stakeholders as early as possible.' That would be a more interesting summary.

Michel

Isn't the problem that students tend to think that bribery can never be a solution?

Arnon

They do think that. It would be nice if the lecture would give them a reason to change some of their ideas. Just like a novel.

The problem with the platitude isn't its simplicity, but the fact that it is a prefabricated idea which the reader/student already held before engaging with the novel/lecture and which is then regurgitated afterwards. It renders the whole effort harmless, if not futile, also for the reader/student. For this reason, I'm always amazed that critics still use sentences like "the novel demonstrates the impossibility of human communication" or some such.

(BTW, I'm not saying this is always the fault of the student or reader. I sat through many lectures and novels without feeling my pre-existing ideas were challenged. Sometimes that was my own fault, sometimes that of the lecturer/writer.)

@Dens

I tend to do that ... a cleansing of the need... platitudes. And why sorry...?

Michel

Exactly, sentences like "the novel demonstrates the impossibility of human communication" are a cause of depair.

@Arnon/Michel v E
As our progressive gymnasium schoolteacher Dutch once said, “Novels are only an illustration of an idea” (I had no much need for illustrations).

Hanny

did you get my "cleansing of the need"? I think even I didn't get it, apart from when I wrote it.

Just in case someone stumbles on this thread

Below is a interesting quote from an interview with psychoanalist and writer Adam Philips. I like the distinction he makes between informing and evoking. My remark about bribery suggests I hope to evoke rather than inform. Then again, who wouldn't..

"Does he think he has succeeded in getting his ideas across, given the complexity of those ideas and his unwillingness to make them appear less so?

'That's an interesting question,' he replies, looking momentarily perplexed. 'I mean, I don't really think like that. I don't have theories, I have sentences. I don't want people to come away thinking, this is what Phillips thinks about X or Y. My wish is not to inform people, but to evoke things in them by the way the writing works. That, I value. Ideally, I want the books to return you to your own thoughts.' In this, I think, he has succeeded. "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/feb/13/booksonhealth.lifeandhealth