It's Dirty to Keep Yelling Digression
Thomas Newkirk

Near the end of Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is in the apartment of his former English teacher, Mr. Antolini.   Holden complains to Antolini about an oral expression course in which students shouted "digression"whenever any speaker went off the subject. Holden's comments can be also viewed as a general criticism of any teaching practice which doesn't respect discovery:

 There was this one boy, Richard Kinsella. He didn't stick to the point too much, and they were always yelling Îdigressionâ at him. ...He got a D plus because they kept yelling Digression at him all the time. For instance, he made this speech about this farm his father bought in Vermont. They kept yelling Digression at him the whole time he was making it, and this teacher, Mr. Vinson, gave him an F on it because he hadnât told what kind of animals and vegetables and stuff grew on the farm and all. What he did was, Richard Kinsella, heâd start telling you all about that stuff--then all of a sudden heâd start telling you about this letter his mother got from his uncle, and how his uncle got polio and all when he was forty-two years old, and how he wouldn't let anybody come to see him in the hospital because he didnât want anybody to see him with a brace on. It didnât have much to do with the farm--I admit it--but it was nice. ..1 mean itâs dirty to keep yelling Digression at him when he's all nice and excited.

I begin with Holden because he (or J. D. Salinger) clarifies the difference between using language to present a finished thought (what Mr. Vinson wanted) and using language to explore thought (what Richard Kinsella did.) This distinction is crucial not only for courses in oral expression, but for courses in writing--especially for courses where students are expected to revise their work. The danger is to treat the language of exploration as if it were the language of presentation, or to use Linda Flowerâs terms, to treat writer-based prose as if it were reader-based prose.
 

Flower is not the first to argue for the role of exploratory language, but her examination of writer-based prose is perhaps the most precise available and the most useful for the classroom teacher. I will briefly summarize the function and features of writer-based prose and then show how the writing teacher might profitably use this information in responding to student papers.
 

Writer-based prose helps the writer deal with a complex of pressures. He or she must not only search memory or collected data for relevant material but must also prepare that material for a reader. Trying to locate, evaluate, elaborate, and present the material--all in the act of writing one draft--can overload the memory circuits of the inexperienced writer, who either becomes frustrated or attempts to only meet some of the demands on the first draft. In that case, the result is writer-based prose--writing to inventory, writing to discover.

 

It is also writing that may appear chaotic to the reader. Transitions will be missing. Pronoun references will be vague. Major concepts will not be developed. The information may be strung in a narrative that lacks a point or focus, just one damn thing after another. The handbooks warn us about these sins and provide the appro?priate correction marks. But they don't tell us why these errors occur or why they may be psychologically necessary. Flower does.

 

A number of the features of writer-based prose resemble the features of inner speech or verbal thought that were first described by Lev Vygotsky, the Russian  psychologist. Drawing on Vygotsky's work, Flower identifies three major characteristics.²

 The first is the use of words that are "saturated with meaning." Words are not used in the specific and limited public sense but in a private sense where the word contains  the sum of all the psychological events aroused by the word. For example, if I write,  Ashland, Ohio, you may think of a town in Ohio. A few of you may have passed the Ashland exit on Interstate 71. One or two of you may know that Ashland is famous (or, at least, we like to think it is) for making balloons. But the meaning you can draw from  Ashland, Ohio, is limited. I grew up in Ashland, Ohio, and for me those words are saturated with meaning--they contain images of football at the college, homecoming parades, afternoons pretending to work at the park. The name calls up Center Street where the town barons built their mansions, and, further out, the country club section where the descendants of the barons built their sprawling ranch houses. All of this and much more adheres to the words.
 

 In student writing, this same saturation occurs. The student writes, The view from Mount Washington was breathtaking, and no more. The words  Mount Washington are saturated for the student in the same way  that  Ashland, Ohio is saturated for me. As the student revises, he or she must wring the meaning from the word, reduce the word itself to the public meaning, make those psychological events connected with the word explicit.

 

The second characteristic of writer-based prose is ambiguous or absent pronoun reference. Most adults know that pronouns should have clear referents but none of us consistently provides them. We often fail to provide them when we are ãthinking out loud.ä For example, it is the end of a long day. Fm sitting in the kitchen and my wife is dutifully listening to me sort out my day.

"She was late again"I say. ~"Who was?" asks my wife. "Debbie Baxter," I answer. " Who's Debbie Baxter?" she asks. "A student."

"Graduate student or freshman?"

"Graduate student."

According to Vygotsky, inner speech is largely predicative, because the predicate often carries the new information while the subject often provides older, understood, information. The new information in the talk with my wife was the predicate--She was late, In my state of self?absorption, the information about the  she, the fact that she was a graduate student names Debbie Baxter, seemed unnecessary.

The third, and most important, feature of writer-based prose is the narrative form. The narrative helps the writer to recover information. Suppose, for example, you were asked to tell someone the layout of your home or apartment. Chances are you would not draw a map, you would describe a tour through your house Flower cites a study conducted by Linde and Labov³ in which 97% of those asked to tell the layout of their house responded by describing a tour. The tour is a kind of narrative--an account of movement through the house--and it helps us to think about and recover the relevant information about the layout of the house.

Many of these traits can be seen in the following piece, written by an eleventh grader:

 My Life

In this composition I intend to write about myself, my life from as young as I can remember until now. When I was about six until the time that I was nine I use to go to school and play baseball, and thatâs just about all I did

I was born in Niagra Falls New York, and I lived there until I was nine, all of my relatives live there, except my motherâs parents who moved to Farmington about three years after we moved here. When I was real young one of the kids that I use to play ball with, was hit by a car and killed, that was terrible. He was a good kid and a really good baseball player. I donât remember much about when I was really little except maybe, Christmas and Easter.

When I was nine years old my family moved to New Hampshire, because the company that my father worked for moved here. I didn't want to move. I figured I would miss all of my friends. I did for awhile, but I got over it and now the friends that I have are really great. I started school here in the 4th grade. My parents introduced me to my teacher as James which I'm not so crazy about, and for that whole year I was known as James but in 5th grade I got that all straightened out. I remember in 5th grade it was a really easy good off year. The teacher was really simple. But sixth grade wasn't the same, my sixth grade teacher was tough. We worked hard in that class. But it payed off it always does. The last week in the summer between 6th and 7th grade I was sort of upset about going to school. Because it would be different. I've never liked new or different things I' m very aprensive about them. I didn' t do very well academically when I was in 7th grade. But 8th grade was different, I do really good. I think alot of it was because I liked my teachers a lot. When I like my teachers I seem to do well in school.

Towards the end of my 8th grade year I got mono. At first I was just tired but I started feeling really rotten I got swollen glands unbelievable and a sore throat, I wasn't hungry at all. All I wanted to was to just sleep I was totally miserable. One night I spit up some blood. Anyway my mother called the doctor and told him. He said that if I did it again that she should bring me in. The next night I spit up some more blood so I had to go to the hospital in Dover, thatâs were the doctor was after running some tests he said that I had to be admitted into the hospital so I stayed in the hospital that night. They put this stupid I.V. in my arm I couldnât stand it. I didnât sleep hardly at all threw the whole night. The next day I was suppose to have some x-rays taken after that was done my doctor told me that I had to go to Boston Children's hospital because they couldn't figure out how to stop the bleeding or where it was coming from so in about an hour an ambulance came and the ambulance put me in the ambulance and everybody cleared out of the way for me. That was great. Although the reason that I was going wasnât to wonderful. I ended up spending a whole week in which for three days I couldn't eat or drink and that stunk because eating is my favorite pastime. During this whole ordeal. I lost 26 pounds my clothes didn't fit properly. I got an awful lot of get well cards while I was sick and that certainly helped to make me feel betting knowing that people care always makes rough times either. Because of mono I had an inlarged spleen and because of that I had to miss three weeks of the baseball season. I was very made that I had to miss so much but there wasnât nothing that I could do about it. So that's my mono story.

My freshman year, was extremely dull. I made the freshman basketball team. And our record was 16-1. I think we were the best freshman team in Spauldingâs history other than that my freshmen year stunk. My grade in french and algebra proved it. I just didnât understand. nothing exceptionally good happened my sophomore year. In October my grandfather died. But that was terrible. My grades were good. I think they were better last year than anyother. I made the J. V. Basketball Team and I was proud of that. I started the first 13 games. Last summer I made the American legion team and now Iâm a Junior in HIGH School just 2 more yearâs and I graduate itâs hard to believe but itâs true. Time sure does fly when your having fun.

The most obvious writer-based prose trait is the narrative structure that is more an inventory than a shaped account of an experience. The writer, in the first sentence, indicates that he is trying to remember what has happened to him and the narrative structure is clearly helping him do that. Also prominent are saturated words or expressions that seem to hold a great deal of experience and feeling.

 One possibly saturated word is terrible which is used twice, once in connection with the death of his friend and the other time in connection with the death of his grandfather. It may be that the writer is invoking a piety--all death is terrible. And it is possible that he may not want to expand on the experiences which is, of course, his right. But I feel that a teacher could ask, without being insensitive, Could you say anything more about what made these experiences terrible?

A second saturated expression seems to occur at the end of the third paragraph. When I like my teachers I seem to do well in school. There is a history of dealing with teachers embedded in this sentence. Here the teacher might ask, Think of a teacher that you liked. What did that person do to help you do good work? Tell me exactly what that person said and did to help you.

A third saturated expression may be related to the comment about school. Near the end of the third paragraph he writes, I've never liked new or different things. Iâm very apprehensive about them. Again, there is a history of adjustment contained in the sentence. The teacher's question could be, What makes you apprehensive about new situations? Can you think of the time when you were most apprehensive? Tell me as much as you can remember about it. What have people done to make you less apprehensive in these situations?

 There are other characteristics, not mentioned by Flower, that are common in writer-based prose and that appear in this piece. The listing gives way to a story in the fourth paragraph. This kind of shift happens frequently in conversation, when we talk on the phone for example. My brother calls and asks me what Iâm doing. I begin to list things--trips, illnesses in the family, books read, until, after a minute or two something catches; Iâm reminded of an incident, a joke, a conversation--inventory becomes real narrative. It is this kind of shift that Holden describes in the speeches of Richard Kinsella. The shift also occurs in My Life. The inventory goes on for three paragraphs until the writer comes to his mono story, which is more of a true narrative. After the mono story, he goes back to his inventory. The writer might be encouraged to revise focusing solely on his   mono story.

There also seems to be an aversion to using the period in writer-based prose. Readers need the period, but Iâm not sure writers do, especially when they are discovering material. The writer's impulse, his need, is to move forward and the period makes him stop. The aversion to using periods is most evident when the writer of  My Life  takes off on his mono story. In the 820 word piece there are 16 clear errors where the writer has failed to punctuate sentences or has separated sentences with a comma to form a comma splice. Nine of these errors occur in the 336 word Î~mono storyä segment; the mono story has one error/37 words as compared to one error/68 words for the rest of the piece. Sentences run on more in the mono story. In this section sentences average 20 words as compared to 12 words average for the rest of the piece.

Why the difference? It helps to read the mono story section aloud as I did at a conference. The effort left me breathless. the writer seems to sense he's on to something, but if he stops that something will vanish. The period, signifying as it does completion, may not only be useless for the writer; it may be an impediment.

No one is suggesting that writer-based prose is an end in itself. The aim of writing, ultimately, must be to share meaning, and writer-based prose does not do that well. One of the education implications of Flower^ts work, however, is to help teachers recognize that writer-based prose may be a necesary intermediate step, a half-way house, between the thoughts, perceptions, memories that the writer brings to the paper and prose that can be truly appreciated by a reader.

Flower reminds us that many of the flaws in first draft writing are the flaws of discovery. They are flaws that exhibit a mind at work-?remembering, pushing against and beyond sentence barriers, laying bare loaded expressions that are really undetonated generalizations. They are flaws that on subsequent drafts must be remedied. But during the discovery process they must be tolerated, even encouraged. Otherwise we are blaming the seed for not being a plant.
 
 

Footnotes