In it he sets up the notion that there are three ways (really two ways) to read or believe a story: Mythickly, Epickly, or Critickly (misspellings intentional to separate them from the original words and their inherent shadings). Mytick is the belief that a story is true of all human beings. Epick is the belief that a story is true of a particular group. Critick is the belief that a story must be viewed as external and unattached to the reader, and not believed.
Critickal reading is what he is decrying. Criticks, he explains, choose not to believe the stories they read, but instead create their own stories about those stories. In essence, Criticks write their own stories, to be read mythickly, about stories by others that are not to be believed at all. While mythick or epick readers choose to participate in the story, critick readers keep themselves outside it in order to instead write their own story about what they read.
It's a powerful essay, but one passage particularly leapt out at me:
You see why the critic-priests must shun participatory reading, must deny it, must refuse it. Participatory reading puts your very self at risk. It will and must change who you are. This may be much of the reason why most people never read stories at all after they leave adolescence. Consciously or not, they do not wish to change, and so they avoid an experience that will unavoidably change them. The critic-priest, with his detached reading, does precisely the same thing. He avoids the experience of reading a story, in exchange for the experience of affirming the story that he is a superior, elevated, fit and above all non-bourgeois reader. It is a story that is not dissimilar to the story of the divine right of kings or the infallibility of popes: It bestows power and privilege, provided that enough other people believe it.
I've long suspected that I'm a mythick or epick reader. It is a poor story that cannot engage me. My wife teases me about getting caught up in commercials on TV, and she's right. If the commercial is telling a story, I have to know that story. I may quickly decide afterward (or even during) that the story is not true, but seldom will I fail to finish the story.
Likewise I will often ignore or avoid certain stories. Sometimes it is because I know the story will ask more of me than I am willing to give. It could be that I see the enthusiasm of the person recommending it to me and do not wish to disappoint them by not sharing their enthusiasm. Or it could be that I simply do not wish to become like that person by allowing the same story that has shaped them shape me.
Card also discusses the idea that writers will write specifically to please the Critickal crowd, hoping to gain their acceptance by providing them something designed to be read critickly. That concept went "click" in my head the moment I read it.
I didn't mind critickal reading in high school and college. It was fun sometimes. It was like putting together a puzzle. But it became a real chore if I liked the piece. I remember reading "Huckleberry Finn," knowing full well there would be a major essay test on it. I loved the book, and I was still only 2/3 the way through by the time the test was given.
It wasn't that I'd been lazy. I read the book every chance I got. I devoured it. The experience of the book was more important to me than the grade I would get. (I still managed a B+ via some quick analysis and extrapolation of the essay we were assigned to read and argue for or against.)
Similarly, a particular poem in college caught my fancy. I got a poor grade on my paper evaluating it because I didn't catch all the poetic techniques employed. I went the rounds with my professor (Doggone it! He cared about me!) until he finally convinced me that the poet had intentionally used those techniques, and that they added to the poem.
But I maintained (to myself) then, and I still do now, "so what?!" Perhaps the means by which the poet delivered her message made the message more polished, but it is still the message that counts. The poem made me feel something, experience something. Why can't that be enough?
That is why I, like Card, will always consider myself "only" a storyteller. My goal in writing will never be to please the criticks, but to help the reader feel and experience and remember and think.
That's not to say that I don't sometimes consciously try to help my reader/listener feel and experience and think a certain way. I will occasionally make up bedtime stories specifically to teach my daughter some point or another. Because consciously or unconsciously I've known for awhile that a truth wrapped in an experience will sink deeper and stay longer than a truth by itself.
Unless, of course, the recipient receives the story critickly. If my daughter ever fires back with "Nice story, Dad, but I can't help but notice that your having the flower change her ways is really just a pale attempt to reinforce Judeo-Christian values by invoking a Dickensian model of being able to view the outcome of choices in time to avoid them, which would seem to contradict the Faustian paradigm" she'll never get another bedtime story again. Ever.
Because it's as obvious as the nose on my face that I was really referencing Milton while invoking Wordsworthian imagery. So nyeah!
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