I watch my share of television, I admit, but I draw the line at the reality-game-show-contest genre that has grown (groaned?) in popularity in the past five years, where would-be millionaires survive great races and/or significant weight loss to become American idols before declining into answers to Trivial Pursuit (pop culture edition, fer sure) board games.  But try as I might, I have been unable to escape completely unscathed from the baleful influence of such programming, and so suddenly felt quite Simon-like while reviewing this year’s convention submissions.  Simon Cowell is, I suppose, preferable to what’s-her-name from Weakest Link with her scathing pronouncements of mental fatigue, of neural pruning having left a few too many synapses snapped, her “You are the weakest link,” stingingly superlative, though even here the contestant is destined for failure, doomed to be dethroned in the next episode by some dunderhead even duller than he/she.  But Simon, so far, has survived, a model to those of us called upon to evaluate the efforts of others.  Simon says, and the chosen few advance while many more, unfit for adulation—what could they have been thinking?—return to their prosaic lives and routines.  That’s me, only anonymous, without a live audience, and no British accent, sitting in judgment on this year’s crop of critical essays.  
Holding a Ph.D. in English, I am singularly well qualified, I suppose, for this job.  Only a sado-masochist would pursue an advanced degree in English in the first place, willingly submitting to the ritualized abuse and humiliation such study entails.  Only the MFAs have it worse.  But then again, as comp instructors, we wield such power, keepers of the key, Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates, however poorly paid the position. Do unto others as they have done unto you.  It’s an Old Testament kind of thing, a matter of blind justice.  Really, you know better, but you just can’t resist.  It just feels too good.  A little like watching 24 on television, which I do watch. Come to think of it, Jack might have made a good English professor.  He has all the right traits.

But along with that Ph.D. in English and all the psychological baggage it entails, I am also an educator, and, as such, I am possessed of this absurd notion that people can learn, that they are improvable, if not quite perfectable, an optimism out of keeping, to be sure, with what we know of international affairs and affairs of the heart, but again, we just can’t resist.  So here I go, having read just a few too many submissions, with a few pronouncements, a few words to the would-be wise.  Simon says.

In evaluating submissions, reviewers use an informal five-point rating scale, running from 5, accept and nominate for convention prize in this category; to 4, accept enthusiastically; to 3, accept; to 2, accept if space permits and subject to revision; to 1, do not accept.  We try to be generous, really, so most submissions will find their ways onto the program, but most of those submissions are relatively lowly rated, 3s and 2s, papers with potential but often a potential unexploited, a piece that could be better, would be better if only.  It is at this point that we part company with Simon, who cracks wise at the expense of the latest contestant’s tunelessness before sending the poor unfortunate off to the showers.  We, by contrast, offer suggestions for improvement.  Hope springs eternal.  But what are we looking for?  

The most common problems, so it seems, are problems with purpose, development, readability, and documentation.

(1) Purpose: Engage the critical literature on this topic.  Poetry comes from poetry; the only response to a poem, broadly defined as an imaginative act, so Harold Bloom noted long ago, is another poem, an equal and opposing act of the imagination.  Though fraught with anxiety—and requiring some actual effort—that means we need to know our precursors.  Why are you analyzing this particular piece?  What is the question and where did this question come from?  A good critical essay will engage the critical literature, will acknowledge those who have gone before us, the author entering into that community and conversation that literary discourse consists of.  It may come as something of a shock to egocentric adolescents, but people have been reading and writing about most of these texts for a long time.  It’s a little like sex.  Every generation seems to think they invented sex, but they didn’t.  People have been doing it for a long time, even your parents (eek!).  Get over it.  Criticism begets criticism.  

Moreover, there is a difference between a good classroom paper and a good conference paper.  The best conference papers will transcend the limitations of the assignments that prompted these papers in the first place.  At times, the immediate audience for a classroom assignment is the instructor (or someone just like the instructor), the goal of the paper to demonstrate a mastery of the material considered in that class.  The class provides the context for the paper, the reasons for writing.  The conference paper will address larger questions and a potentially larger audience, its purpose to address issues of interest in the discipline.  A classroom instructor may ask students to write a “response statement,” the student engaging directly with the text, a paper that, no matter how well written, will have limited value as a conference presentation.  On the other hand, this paper might provide a springboard for the exploration of reader-response concerns relevant to the consideration of the work in question, a topic a conference paper might consider.  Bottom line: If your only citations at the end of the paper are to primary sources, deduct two points.

(2) Development:  Submission guidelines limit prose works to 2000 words, roughly seven pages or so of 12-point, double-spaced text.  If you have seven pages at your disposal, you had better use all seven pages.  A three or four-page paper just won’t cut the mustard.  Conversely, overrunning the word limit by more than 10% risks being rejected out right.  Presentations are typically packaged four to a panel, each panelist given 15 minutes to present his or her work, the presentations taking up 60 minutes of a 75-minute session; that leaves 15 minutes for discussion.  Delivered at a normal, conversational pace, a 2000-word paper requires 15 minutes to read.  Papers that overshoot or that fall short of the target pose scheduling problems if nothing else, and you don’t want to be a problem.

The short paper poses other problems.  Most of the time, the discussion is underdeveloped.  Critical essays are analytic in nature, and as analytic works, should move from technical description to functional analysis to causal analysis, taking the work apart, looking at how it works, and then considering the reasons why.  The movement is from the relatively concrete to the increasingly abstract, from the materials on the page to thematic issues to questions of cause and effect, from what to how to, most importantly, why.  Short papers consistently fail to consider the why questions, which is often the result of the author’s failure to engage the critical literature and develop a context for the study in question.  Understanding the story and how it works is one thing; explaining where that story came from, why the author chose to write about that material in just that way, how that work responds to aesthetic, historical, psychological, sociological, cultural forces, is something else.  Why?

(3) Readability: As short papers, efficiency and economy are a premium.  Don’t tell us what you are going to do, just do it.  Remove process-oriented statements (e.g. “The purpose of this paper is . . .”; “The analysis will consider three points . . .”; “In order to understand . . . , we must first consider . . .”).  And while you’re at it, avoid the first person statement; put yourself in the background.  In short, keep the subject in the subject position.  After that, work on phrasing and sentence structure, on paragraphing, on mechanics, on proofreading.  Paragraphs that go on for pages, ill-placed punctuation, wordy and awkward phrasing—anything that serves to disrupt or frustrate the reading of the paper—these things are all problems.  Remember that the paper will be presented orally, read out loud in front of a live audience.  It must be readable.

(4) Documentation:  The guidelines for submission limit the paper to 2000 words, “exclusive of documentation.”  That means that the words on the works cited page do not count in the total; it doesn’t mean that you do not need to submit the works cited page.  We need to see the references, to know which editions you are using and where the commentary cited in the paper is coming from.  Currency, reliability, authority are all issues here; the documentation, consequently, plays a critical role in the rater’s ability to evaluate the paper.  

Additional problems also occur within the text of the paper where references to critical materials are dropped into the discussion without appropriate introduction.  The paper requires “signal phrases,” brief references to the author and the work where this material appears that cue listeners to quotation marks.  The quotation marks may be visible on the printed page, but they are invisible when the text is read aloud.  “Air quotes” are not an acceptable substitute.  We need signal phrases, full names in the initial references, last names only in subsequent ones.  

You know the drill.  You have been hearing some of this stuff since high school, and, yes, there are always exceptions. George Orwell concludes his list of commandments at the end of “Politics and the English Language” with the appropriate disclaimer: “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”  But you better have a damn good reason.  

Simon says.