THE INQUIRY PRACTICES of NONFICTION WRITERS by Suzanne Webb a DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in Partial
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THE INQUIRY PRACTICES OF NONFICTION WRITERS By Suzanne Webb A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Rhetoric & Writing 2012 ABSTRACT THE INQUIRY PRACTICES OF NONFICTION WRITERS By Suzanne Webb In the study, I take an innovative effort to investigate “the inquiry practices of non-fiction writers.” I am especially interested in how creative non-fiction gets made – a process that has often been either shrouded in complete mystery and attributed to the genius of an individual writer, or rendered as a work routine focused on drafts and/or editorial processes. There is little work that seeks to understand non-fiction writers as researchers themselves. I believe that in David Foster Wallace and in the papers recently made available to researchers via the Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin that document his non-fiction work, I have identified a singular opportunity to explore the work of a brilliant researcher as well as writer. My work primarily falls in the realm of rhetorical analysis. In this project, I conduct a detailed analysis of materials in the DFW archive that others might well ignore who are “Wallace scholars.” I sought out traces of Wallace’s practice, indicators of where he worked – as a well-known writer of fiction – to keep his non-fiction essays anchored in experience, in fact, in emotion true-to-life, while maintaining the compelling narrative for which he is so well known. In the end, my work is not a literary biography or a derivation of that, as valuable as those works on Wallace might undoubtedly be. My work will instead reveal a portrait of a working writer that can be compared with others – nonfiction essayists, yes, but also other writers – bringing both clarity and perhaps some critique to the boundaries of work resulting from ethnographic research, investigative reporting, and a host of other similar genres that we perhaps more readily consider the products of “genuine” inquiry. These traces of inquiry – sources, if not “evidence” - are occluded or perhaps just lost for the reader of Wallace’s nonfiction—in most creative writing. We occasionally hear references in the prose to those moments when, faced with an opportunity to stray from the facts he chose, instead, to consult some other text – an encyclopedia, perhaps, in “Consider the Lobster” – to tack back towards truth. DEDICATION Boys, I’ve done this all for you. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A thank you to my mentors and peers at R&W, especially my Chair, Dr. Bill Hart-Davidson and committee members, Drs. Malea Powell, Leonora Smith, and Jeff Grabill. Thanks for putting up with me over the miles during this last year of dissertating. A huge thank you to my friend, Jamie Lewis, who came all the way to Michigan to move me back home to Kansas. Thanks to my boys, Matt, Michael, and Mark who’ve loved me and supported me—whichever part of the country I lived in. I could not have done this without each of ya! v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES 0vii KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS 0xii INTRODUCTION: I AM A PROFESSIONAL WRITER 1 CHAPTER 1 LIVING WITH DAVID FOSTER WALLACE 7 CHAPTER 2 CONSIDER THE FIELD 21 What We Talk About When We Talk About Inquiry 22 One Possible Approach 26 Ways of Defining Inquiry & “Inquiry Practices” 30 Using Inquiry-Based Tools 31 What Constitutes Writer’s Expertise? 32 Rhet/Comp: In Our Peripheral View 33 Choosing Wallace 34 The Inquiry Practices in Wallace’s Work 36 Wallace’s Work: “Intro to “The View From Mrs. Thompson’s” 36 Wallace’s Work: “Intro to “Consider the Lobster” 37 CHAPTER 3 CONSIDER THE METHODS 38 The Inquiry Diagram 38 Inquiry is a Messy Thing 39 Methodology 40 Sorting Through the Findings 41 I Want to be a Better Writer, a Better Teacher of Writing 43 My Methods 44 Gathering Data by Listening to Stories 47 Changes Across Drafts in “Consider the Lobster” 49 A Note on Footnotes: Wallace’s and Mine 50 My Inquiry > An Inquiry Story 50 Forty-four Changes Noted in “Consider the Lobster” 51 Analyzing “The View From Mrs. Thompsons” 54 Converting Voice-to-Text 55 vi First Draft: A Hand-Written Mess 56 Voice-to-Text Conversion, cont. 56 Developing a Category System 57 The Second Pass Offers Additional Clarity (and More Questions) 57 Keyword Sear (and Re-search) 59 Finding Indicators of Change in a Mountain of Changes 60 Recognizing Indicators of Change 60 The Hand-Written Mess, cont. 61 Naming & Categorizing Those Moves 62 From Categories to Keywords 63 Keyword Sort: A Sort of Card Sort 63 WWDFWD? 65 CHAPTER 4 WHEN INQUIRY HAPPENS 067 The Whens of Inquiry: Inquiry to Write 67 The First “When”: Inquiry as Invention 71 Combined Pedagogical Approaches 72 Seeing Inquiry: Inquiry on the 74 The Moves Wallace Makes 75 Inquiry Moves in TVFMT (Rolling Stone 2001) 76 Inquiry Moves in “Consider the Lobster” (Gourmet. 2004) 79 CHAPTER 5 THE WHENS OF INQUIRY 084 The First When of Inquiry: Inquiry to Write 86 The Second When of Inquiry: Inquiry as We Write 87 Displaying Wallace’s Inquiry Moves 88 Discussing the Inquiry Moves Across the Drafts 90 Interior Views: Looking Deeper 93 Wallace Says: “Ask Three Different People” 93 The Whens of Inquiry: Arranging the Data 95 Inquiry Moves Alter Arrangement –or— Arrangement: It’s Not Just for Outlines Anymore 97 Wallace’s Arrangement: Division & Digression 97 An “Internal” Inquiry Move: To Hedge or Not to Hedge? 98 An Inquiry Move (Or Not?): Contemplating Style 99 Seeing an Inquiry Move: a Change in Tone Can Change a Meaning 100 Not Every Change Signifies an Inquiry Move 101 Inquiry Moves Through Editing, Editors, and Self-Edits 102 The Whens of Inquiry: Inquiry During Revision 103 vii Low Hanging Fruit? The Inquiry on the 105 The Last When of Inquiry: Inquiry We Ask of Our Audience 106 CHAPTER 6 ON EMPATHY: CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, FUNDAMENTAL IMPULSES & DEMOCRACY 108 Are We Living in a Meaner World 108 Helping Students Help 108 On the Public Good: Missions from the Field 109 Inquiry to Empathy to Engaged Citizenry 111 But What’s This Have to do with Inquiry Practices? 112 A Uniting Framework 113 Local Knowledge, General Knowledge, and Gaining Expertise with Both 114 Yancey’s Writing Public with Examples by Matt, Sue, and John 115 CHAPTER 7 CONSIDER THE PEDAGOGY 119 Writing for Change is NOT Writing to the Professor 119 What to Do with All This Inquiry? 123 Locating Those Fundamental Impulses 124 This is Water (Project 2: WDDFWW?) 124 Consider the Lobster (Project 3: DWDFWD) 126 Lobster, Lobster, Lobster, Week 6 Agenda 126 Attending an Event and Project Three 129 ` Research Paper Modules 130 The *Possibility* of Going Viral 131 Help Getting Started 132 CHAPTER 8 IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY 135 Shortcomings and Should Haves 136 Wallace Helps Students See the Inquiry 137 “Education Truly is the Job of a Lifetime” 139 The Coverage Model > Issues of Curriculum Design 139 Writing is Never Done; It’s Merely Due 140 “Attention to the Conditions of Growth” 142 Final Thought 142 WORKS CITED 144 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Bertram "Chip" Bruce's "Inquiry Cycle" 38 Figure 2: Reflect . 39 Figure 3: Reflect 39 Figure 4: Reflect 40 Figure 5: Investigate 42 Figure 6: Ask 42 Figure 7: Reflect 43 Figure 8: Investigate 43 Figure 9: Investigate 44 Figure 10: Create 45 Figure 11: Investigate 47 Figure 12: Reflect 48 Figure 13: Ask 49 Figure 14: Reflect 51 Figure 15: Investigate 52 Figure 16: Investigate 52 Figure 17 Discuss 54 Figure 18: Investigate 54 Figure 19: Investigate 55 Figure 20: Investigate 56 Figure 21: Reflect 56 ix Figure 22: Create 57 Figure 23: Reflect 57 Figure 24: Discuss 58 Figure 25: Create 59 Figure 26: Ask 59 Figure 27: Reflect 59 Figure 28: Reflect 60 Figure 29: Reflect 61 Figure 30: Discuss 61 Figure 31: Create 61 Figure 32: Reflect 62 Figure 33: Create 64 Figure 34: Discuss 66 Figure 35: Discuss 67 Figure 36: The Inquiry Chart 68 Figure 37: Reflect 69 Figure 38: Ask 71 Figure 39: Reflect 71 Figure 40: Investigate 72 Figure 41: Investigate 73 Figure 42: Investigate 73 Figure 43: Reflect 74 Figure 44: Create 75 Figure 45: Investigate 79 x Figure 46: Ask 82 Figure 47: Reflect 83 Figure 48: Reflect 84 Figure 49: Investigate 84 Figure 50: Discuss 84 Figure 51: Investigate 87 Figure 52: Discuss 87 Figure 53: Discuss 88 Figure 54: Reflect 89 Figure 55: Discuss 90 Figure 56: Ask 90 Figure 57: Discuss 91 Figure 58: Investigate 93 xi KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS CTL Consider the Lobster (the essay) CTL Consider the Lobster (the edited collection) DFW David Foster Wallace FYW First Year Writing HRC Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin .mp3 audio file format OCR Optical Character Recognition .pdf portable document format (fixed form)(often associated with Adobe) R/C or rhet/comp Rhetoric & Composition TVFMT The View from Mrs. Thompson’s .txt plain text documents (used by JuXta) C1 Consider the Lobster version 1 (Harry Ransom Center) C2 Consider the Lobster version 2 (Gourmet Magazine) C3 Consider the Lobster version 3 (Consider the Lobster) C4 Consider the Lobster version 4 (Time Warner Audio) T1 The View From Mrs. Thompsons version 1 (Harry Ransom Center) T2 The View From Mrs. Thompsons version 2 (Harry Ransom Center) T3 The View From Mrs. Thompsons version 3 (Harry Ransom Center) T4 The View From Mrs. Thompsons version 4 (Rolling Stone Magazine) T5 The View From Mrs. Thompsons version 5 (Consider the Lobster) T6 The View From Mrs.