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:
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Good criticism is very rare and always precious.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)