Dialectical Journal: Murray

Author/Title:

Donald Murray: All Writing is Autobiographical

Summary:

In this very personal piece, Donald Murray explains to his reader why he believes writing is always autobiographical. He uses many examples from his own writing that eloquently make his point.

Reflection	Quote
Murray is talking about how as a writer of many genres, he is still the same person at the desk when he writes, no matter what he is writing. I want to take this directly back to McCloud’s image of the mask, and this seems to counter the metaphor. Murray does not “change masks” so to speak when he is writing—he is always the same and his writing is always autobiographical. Given this writer’s perspective, how does this complicate or help McCloud?	“…when I am at my writing desk I am the same person” (57).
True, true…it is hard not to write the self into any given piece of text.	“All my writing—and yours—is autobiographical” (57).
Lovely little element Murray uses to pull in his audience.	“Haven’t you all had the experience of reaching for the phone and hearing it ring?” (58)
Really breaking down the idea that writing is autobiographical, personal, intimate.	“I have my own peculiar way of looking at the world and my own way of using language to communicate what I see” (58).
Same as above, furthering the idea.	“My voice is the product…of all the language I have heard and spoken” (58).
Such a powerful moment—and connects with this idea of perspective, great moment to discuss in class.	“I learned to sing “Onward Christian Soldiers Marching as to War,” and still remember my first dead German soldier and my shock as I read that his belt buckle proclaimed God was on his side” (59).
The piece this came from was very beautiful and moving, I definitely tear-ed up though much of it—but I love this take away about mourning for the dead and dying as an act of mourning for ourselves and learning to live through death—I don’t really have a way to connect this to writing, or teaching, but had to bring it into the journal for the sake of it’s beauty.	“He would understand that as we mourn for him, we mourn for ourselves. Of Course. We are learning from his dying how to live” (60).
“Few things are in writing or in life.” No doubt. And this is where we can talk (again) about writing being a process—life is hard, so much of life we have to learn and relearn and then unlearn…writing too.	“This is a simple narrative with the facts all true, but it is really not that simple; few things are in writing or in life” (60).
Frost explains his phrase “a momentary stay of confusion” http://www.frostfriends.org/FFL/Periodicals/Interview-lewis.html	“I wrote a limited truth seeking a limited understanding, what Robert Frost called “a momentary stay of confusion” (61).
Quote from Don DeLillo (Anthing Can Happen, Ed. Tom LeClair and Larry McCaffery, U of Illinois P, 1988). I love what DeLillo is saying here—it is not just that we are making our own language and style as writers, but we are literally making ourselves—we become what we write…makes me want to only write very peaceful, beautiful things so that I can walk in serenity…	“Working at sentences and rhythms is probably the most satisfying thing I do as a writer. I think after a while a writer can begin to know himself through his language. He sees someone or something reflected back at him from these constructions. Over the years it’s possible for a writer to shape himself as a human being through the language he uses. I think written language, fiction, goes that deep. He not only sees himself but begins to make himself or remake himself” (62).
And here is Murray echoing my thought—we become what we write, we write what we are, we are the language and the voice of ourselves.	“We become what we write” (62).
	“I read and wear the lives of the characters I inhabit” (63).
Murray explains this concept in the third edition of Write to Learn; he uses a painting metaphor in order to express what he means “Once I did quite a bit of oil painting and my pictures were built up, layer after layer of paint until the scene was revealed to me and a viewer” (63).	Layering (63)
Another beautiful observation by Murray—really bringing home this need to stop and listen to our own work, what are we trying to say, how do we say it better, what does the text need in order to convey the message we want?	“I try to allow the text to tell me what it needs” (63).
Just as we must listen to our texts to allow them to tell us what they need—we must listen to our students and allow them to tell us what they need. How will we best serve and guide them in their studies? Do we value quantity over quality? Do we want to give them unrealistic amounts of work and watch them struggle under the weight of it? Or do we allow them become immersed and engaged in their studies—allowing them the opportunity to reflectively write and build upon what they love?	“I do not think we should move away from personal or reflective narrative in composition courses, but closer to it; I do not think we should limit reflective narrative to a single genre; I do not think we should make sure our students write on many different subjects, but that they write and rewrite in pursuit of those few subjects which obsess them” (64).
I love this! It is a warning, yet we want to continue. We want to see how we will subvert the text or how it may subvert us…oOoOooOOo! The mystery of it all J	“Writing is subversive and something dangerous may happen as you hear my autobiography” (64).
This makes me go directly to Barthes Death of the Author and to reader response theory.	“That is the terrible, wonderful power of reading: the texts we create in our own minds while we read—or just after we read—become part of the life we believe we lived. Another thesis: all reading is autobiographical” (65).