Editor's Turn

Maren V. Henry

Truth, Writing, and Cyberspace

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them
     — Whitman 

In “Thirst and the Writer’s Sense of Consequence,” David Bottoms writes about writers’ “human need to connect” with something beyond themselves, to form bridges or connect the dots between “moments of clarity” or truths. Writers define themselves through comparison of their truth with the truth of their predecessors and contemporaries. Paul Rabinow explains this concept in his Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco: “Thus, following Paul Ricoeur, I define the problem of hermeneutics (which is simply Greek for ‘interpretation’) as ‘the comprehension of self by the detour of the comprehension of the other.’ […] it is the culturally mediated and historically situated self which finds itself in a continuously changing world of meaning” (5-6). The search for self is really a search for inner truth, and writers have a responsibility to pursue truth. Thus, good writers are, as Bottoms says, “yearners after meaning”; they don’t just tell nice stories. If a writer is not interested in defining truth, challenging current definitions of truth—or is not at all curious whether truth exists, then she shouldn’t write. But this idealistic notion of the writer as prophet is not without its problems.

The sticky permanence of print will not allow writers to disown what they have written, as I may want to disown this essay in the future. Writers must accept that writing outlives the writer—a fact Shakespeare celebrated, and Plato disparaged. In the Phaedrus, Plato recognized the problem of the permanence of writing:

And so it is with written words; you might think they spoke as if they had intelligence, but if you question them, wishing to know about their sayings, they always say only one and the same thing. […] when ill-treated or unjustly reviled it always needs its father to help it; for it has no power to protect or help itself. (38)

Writing is static once it has been printed. Writers are accountable for what they have written long after they have written it. In the Winter 2003 issue of American Scholar, Dana Gioia offers an example of the crux of this accountability. Early in his career, Gioia had written and published in a small journal an essay criticizing James Dickey’s latest book of poetry. Four years later Gioia met Dickey at a literary gathering. This encounter was intensely uncomfortable for Gioia because Dickey had seen and remembered the negative review, and Dickey was not the kind of man to let it pass. In fact, he held Gioia accountable for every word.

This accountability causes some writers to hide behind a persona—remember, the narrator is not really the writer—but that thread hangs on in the readers’ subconscious. Fledgling writers often wish to protect their poems and stories, their gossamer threads so fragile, from intruders unaware of the complexity of their weaving. They may even want to disown a poem unraveled by critics, but the filaments are sticky and much stronger than we imagine. There is a permanence to them.

Plato, Socrates’ student and puppeteer, criticized writing for not being alive to answer readers’ questions and counter-arguments. Plato preferred the interaction of dialogue—the back and forth of two speakers seeking truth through debate. Although his famous dialogues seemed one-sided, his definitions of truth evolved with each answer a student offered. The winner won the right to define truth, and Plato usually won. Since then, truth has been redefined, but not without Plato’s lingering influence.

Ironically, as Derrida has already pointed out in his deconstruction of the Phaedrus, writing was the medium Plato chose for his dialogues. So, although he railed against writing, he was a writer. Writing gives him voice centuries after his death. Writing allowed him to play ventriloquist—to plant words in his former teacher’s mouth, words that would outlive Socrates’ original speeches. However, these attributes to writing and the existence of the Dialogues undermine Plato’s ethos as well as prove his argument about writing—that it fails to defend itself against argument. Now that Plato’s original voice has been muted by his own writing, I am left to question rhetorically, unable to beg an answer from the long-deceased devil's advocate: What would he think of the Internet?

Truth is not static, and it is not singular. As technology becomes more complex, as we grow “more advanced,” truth evolves and multiplies. As children we were taught to trust the printed word. Now many teachers attempt to instill a healthy distrust of the printed word in students: It’s called “critical thinking.” But still, students run to the Internet for answers, and when they find a source that confirms their belief, they feel they have found truth. The old days of publishers being gatekeepers of the truth are gone.

As a participant in the many realms of writing (creator, editor, teacher), I do not mourn this loss of control over truth. I celebrate that the idea of truth is shifting from prescription to description and that reader responsibility is shifting as well. In the past writers would define truth, and readers would absorb it like sponges. Now, readers have become responsible for filtering, discriminating, between truth and gibberish—for defining their own truth.

The Internet has provided the closest context writing has come to Plato’s vision of written dialogue. In it, writing can be read and questioned, and the truth can be negotiated. Here writing is alive. As editors of the Kennesaw Review, we are responsible for shedding light on various truths. Writers give life to these truths; the Kennesaw Review merely provides “a little promontory” on which to stand. Paper decays, but the World Wide Web will continue to spin “filament, filament, filament, out of itself.”

Note: As the Kennesaw Review nears its first annual CD version, I am reminded that, although the Web is a timeless stage, the links to get there can be as fragile as a spider’s web. For as long as technology doesn’t abolish the CD, the Kennesaw Review will be available in that medium for those who prefer a more tangible form of the journal.

Works Cited

Bottoms, David. “Thirst and the Writer’s Sense of Consequence.” Kennesaw Review Spring 2003 <http:www.kennesaw.edu/kr/spring2003/bottoms-thirst.htm>.

Gioia, Dana. “How Nice to Meet You, Mr. Dickey.” The American Scholar 72.1. (Winter 2003): 83-88.

Plato. Phaedrus. Trans. H. N. Fowler. Readings in Classical Rhetoric. Eds. Thomas Benson and Michael Prosser. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1988.

Rabinow, Paul. Reflections on Fieldwork in Morrocco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.