What is Externalism?

A Summary:

1. Externalism is a mediation between existing literary philosophies.
2. Externalism is not about form or style. Quality writing comes in many shapes and sizes.
3. Externalism is not a political idea. Conservatives, liberals, and everyone in between write externally, often without realizing it.
4. Externalism is about content. It embraces human perception and experience in context of the outward world, ideas that instruct and inspire, that are filled with honest reflection of the world beyond self.

If this interests you, read on!

As we pondered the implications of a call for a new kind of literature and studied other such calls, we realized that externalism can be generally defined as a conglomerate of many old ideas that have been thus far separate and oppositional to each other. Call it a collaboration, perhaps an extended mediation, between competing ideas of what is good, what is great, and what is art.

A little history:

• In Ancient Greece, dramatic performances, written poetry, and bardic songs comprised virtually all of literature. These were all generically called "poetry" and their purpose was to educate the masses, especially about moral and political issues. Even Greek comedy was intended to instruct and inform, such as Aristophones' hilarious Lystistrata.
• The Renaissance saw a proliferation of art in all its forms. Literature especially aimed at new philosophical and intellectual heights. Writers were expected to discuss old ideas or new ones, and to do it in new and interesting ways. Dante's The Divine Comedy approached religion from a new direction whil Shakespeare's comedic stage plays used elements from the comedies of the ancient Greeks to highlight cultural trends.
• Romanticism highlighted human subjects and added a stronger focus on emotional impact to literature, but continued to advocate for well-written works. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the first major novel of the horror genre, is distinctly literary, obviously intended to educate the emotions, and also moralistic in nature. Her husband, poet Percy Shelly, said, "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Nationalism was also a distinct characteristic of Romanticism.
• In the 19th century, literature continued to be thoughtful and meaningful even as entertainment and Romanticism's appeal to human emotion took force as components of critical evaluation. From Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, to Walt Whitman's profound nationalism, to Henry David Thoreau's Walden, literature was a major player in education, philosophical, and intellectual thought. Satire, a technique that had been largely ignored for centuries, was brought back and given a fresh start through the work of Mark Twain.
• In the early 20th century, a number of influential writers in all fields began to consciously separate their values and emotions from their work, calling for a literature (especially in poetry) that focused on the nuances of craft. Even these "detached" pieces, however, held on to traditional subjects that appealed to the thinking reader. For example, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.
• Around this same time, African American artists (writers, musicians, etc.) began writing about their experiences, perspectives, and the future of their race in a segregated America. Blues and jazz grew with incredible power. People began to recognize the value of a wide variety of art forms and techniques. The Harlem Renaissance continues to be influential today.
• In the mid-20th century, stark formalistic and craft-based literature led to a rebellion of sorts with Confessional poetry. Attention to craft continue to be present, but was secondary to the raw emotional power of writing. The highly publicized suicide of Sylvia Plath gave Confessional poetry tremendous attention. Over time, this appeal to emotion and individualistic focus became the overriding value used to define "good" poetry.
• The added influence of Beat writers, most notably Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, and Jack Kerouac, urged on the movement of literature focused entirely content without the previous importance of attention to craft. The profound success of these writers can be simulataneously attributed to their entertainment value, the political climate of the era in which they were writing, and the desire of readers to read work that approaches significant issues in accessible ways.
• Also during this period, feminist writing began to gain force. The influence of poets like Adrienne Rich and Anne Sexton severely limited women's ability to write about other subjects without the now-obligatory reference to gender.
• By the 80's, emotion was everything to "literary" literature. In an effort to counter this trend, Language Poetry focused on the idea that language dictates meaning. Language poets sought to involve the reader in the text, placing importance on reader participation in the construction of meaning. However, Language poetry became a theory looking for a poetry, the reverse of the usual process, and soon became alien to human concerns, cementing the general view of modern poetry as "meaningless" and poets-writing-for-poets.
• As mass media began to overpower the entertainment market, writers of fiction and nonfiction increasingly turned to one of two schools of thought. The first, generically labled "mainstream" or "genre fiction," focused almost entirely on the entertainment value of their work, the mass appeal of a good story, and/or the potential to sell movie rights. The opposing school took the opposite extreme, asserting that language use and "literary" (i.e. non-genre) prose was the only literature of value. In this school of thought, the least accessible, least popular work was the most important.
• Throughout all of this, ideological extremes took shape. With the coming of the politically correct era, different groups of writers began to focus on singular significant issues like feminism, racism, environmentalism, religion, war, or poverty, summarily dismissing any work that didn't include their particular view of the most important subject for our times.
• Also throughout all of this, a good number of talented, thought-provoking writers in all venues were largely ignored. Some, like Elizabeth Bishop, are only now getting the attention they deserve. Opposing literary ideologies often attempt to fit these newly-appreciated writers into their own school of thought and if they can't, often dismiss their work wholesale.

Somewhere in all of this history, the balance that existed in the beginning of literary tradition was lost, and with it, a thinking, reading audience. Even the briefest study of literature that has stood the test of time--from Homer to Shakespeare and Eliot to Frost, up to contemporary giants like Isaac Asimov--shows that people value balanced literature. Who can deny that Hamlet was extremely well-written, but also educational (historically and morally), inspiring, and entertaining? Who could argue that Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 wasn't beautifully written, meaningful, entertaining, and also belongs to mainstream genre fiction? Who could say that Louise Glück's poetry is not both accessible and meaningful while exhibiting extreme adeptness with language and poetic devices?

We writers have forsaken the most obvious of writing rules: think of your audience and write for them. In search of ways to boost our own egos and make our way the right way, we've created an unforeseen, but entirely understandable, problem for ourselves. Our work is read only by other writers, and then only by other writers who either share our literary ideologies or vehemently disagree with them. In the meantime, mediocre (and sometimes downright bad) literature has been absorbing the reading market because the audience could give two hoots about our literary politics. To compound this issue, instead of learning from the successes of these individuals, we shrug them off and blame the movies and (sin of all sins!) the readership for our lack of similar success.

The truth is that there is a huge reading audience today (yes, even poetry readers--Billy Collins regularly sells hundreds of thousands of copies of his books), but they want very specific things and have been taught through experience that well-written "literary" literature is inaccessible, boring, and meaningless to anyone besides the writer. They want stories that entertain (King's horrific The Mangler that even fans say was badly written but just plain fun to read). They want poetry that amuses while teaching important lessons (Dr. Seuss is perhaps the most well-known poet of all time and anyone who says his work wasn't moralistic hasn't read much of it). They want fiction and nonfiction that makes them think about important, human issues without preaching to them (Brown's The Da Vinci Code was an instant bestseller. Michael J. Fox's biography was also and it wasn't because of his popularity as an actor).

Externalism embraces the balance between craft, entertainment, and substance with a focus on subjects that are meaningful in human context. The externalist writer, then, is the writer who is driven by a desire to write well while also writing in such a way that others can understand their perspective (even if they can't relate or disagree) and through writing in this way, keeps an eye on the world outside of themselves. The externalist writer understands that there is an audience and it is up to them to reach them, that is possible to be informative, talented, accessible, and inspiring to others in the 21st century.

Externalism values craft and content equally. It recognizes that there are still important lessons to be learned, that there is still a need to understand and relate to the world around us, that differences are as important as similarities and vice versa. The externalist believes that there are significant human concerns across the globe, even here in the United States, and that good literature has the power to create discussion around these concerns. The externalist also believes that the multiplicity of perspectives found in today's quickly changing world can (and should) be valued as a means to comprehension--a way to change the things that do not work and give force to the things that do.