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:
“Good criticism is very rare and always precious.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... criticism ... makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)