Criticism
Van Herk has published numerous works blending fiction and criticism, which also offer a complementary exploration of her relationship with place. In particular, van Herk has rooted and uprooted conceptions of the Canadian west and the far north. In 1990, she initiated a new genre she called geografictione, with Places Far From Ellesmere. As a travel narrative that analyzes the very concepts of both travel and narrative, Places Far From Ellesmere questions the mapping of works of fiction, as well as the journeys that take place within fiction itself, most notably Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
Van Herk has also published two collections of essays and ficto-criticism, In Visible Ink (crypto-frictions) (1991) and A Frozen Tongue (1992). Both works question the boundaries of the traditional genres of fiction, memoir, poetry, and criticism that van Herk’s writing characteristically seeks to combine yet circumvent.
Read more about this topic: Aritha Van Herk
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“As far as criticism is concerned, we don’t resent that unless it is absolutely biased, as it is in most cases.”
—John Vorster (1915–1983)
“...I wasn’t at all prepared for the avalanche of criticism that overwhelmed me. You would have thought I had murdered someone, and perhaps I had, but only to give her successor a chance to live. It was a very sad business indeed to be made to feel that my success depended solely, or at least in large part, on a head of hair.”
—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)
“A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he can divide.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)