The Anti-Essay

INTRODUCTION: Traditional conventions of style, syntax, grammar, coherence, form, punctuation and
so on tend to box us in, keeping us from really liberating ourselves as we search for meaning. There exist,
however, options for composing an essay that supplement the conventions. These options, though they are
unconventional, are not meant to disrupt traditional grammar, etc., nor do we reject coherence to simply
represent chaos. We still must strive for meaning. Anti-essays tend to nurture our natural ability to use
language, visuals, space, color, and even movement in order to communicate and make meaning. The
anti-essay is verbal and physical play, and play that enlivens, searches, and stretches.
HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES:
The crot
An autonomous unitword, fragment, sentence, paragraphwithout transitional devices relating
it to preceding or following crots. Who knows what that means? I dont know. The voice fills the room.
Crots invite the reader to make crazy leaps of logic. Readers must connect the element-images
together with their imaginations. How often is a noodle supposed a night deer?
Classroom. Drone of the lecturer next door. Cold heat rattles outside the windows. All play and
no work, as I crackle through youth. All work and no play. Dozing to the droning.
Lists
Sounds, signs, voices, feelings, cries. Or adjectives, nouns, details, images, verbs.
Car. Stop lights. More cars. Flashings lights. Stop signs. Headlights. Burning vehicles.
Lists can move across the page like this (dot, period, ellipsis, semicolon, colon) or down the page
like this:
One potato
Two dimes
Three inflations
Four starvations
Five politicians
Six non-solutions
The Self-Conscious Author
These are references by the writer to the act of writing and tend to remind us that we are, after all, human
beings using our eyeballs and brains to decipher little scratches on pieces of paper as we desperately try to
find meaning in our lives.

Repetition
Suggest movement and energy, things we can count, or things that are persistent.
Faster, faster, faster it whizzed, whizzed, whizzed. The cooks hand cut, cut, cut.
Doom.
Doom! Doom! Doom! Something seems to whisper it in the very dark trees of America. Doom!
Doom of what? Doom of our white day. Were doomed, doomed. And the doom is America. The doom
or our white dayMelville knew it. He knew his race was doomed. His white soul doomed. His great
white epoch doomed. Himself doomed. The idealist doomed. The spirit doomed.
D. H. Lawrence

Double Voicing
Double-voicing is a staple for informal writing (invention and journal entries) because it teases out multiple
perspectives. But it can also be used in more formal writing to indicate or convey the complexity of an
idea. Double-voicing can evolve into triple-voicing, quadruple-voicingwhatever your computer screen
or page or reader can accommodate.
Example
The student protest in Tiananmen Square in 1989
came about for a number of complex reasons.
While there were significant improvements in the
quality of life and relative freedom for many
Chinese, students and workers became increasingly
disenchanted with the conservatives in the
government who, while they reluctantly advocated
economic change, were highly resistant to political
and, hence, democratic reform.

We are better off than our parents were in some

ways. But we are not free! We yearn for a
democratic society! We want freedom of speech
and freedom of the press so that we can fight
corruption in government. We want a democratic
China! To hell with you! You are old and feeble
and rich at our expense. We are young and vibrant
and we want to save China from despotism!

Language Variation
Represents fun and play, which could be at the center of all language acts.
bRRidge, Sloooowly gaining, Whitewashington D.C., the POWER of positive
thinking???????
Outrageous Metaphor and Analogy
The writer slams, smashes, clashes unlike terms together and forces the reader to do the same, or
at least try to.
Other Examples:
An argument is a steady morning rain, saturating without drowning.
Windows catapult over the hedge like lemons.
Children are weeds, growing in utter anarchy and profusion.
Texts are black holes.
Leaps of Time and Space
Not unlike outrageous metaphor, this feature works to disrupt the linearity of time and the habitual
ways of conceiving the contours of space.
Some examples:
Meanwhile, the Hindu Priest helps another westerner to find peace, as I hide from the noisy
freeway.
Snoring can be dangerous for saturates the sea with anemones and bright red jellyfish.
Found Language
This can include labels, signs, advertising jingles, sounds, graffiti, and slogans.
Some examples:
Beam me up, Scotty.
Hasta la vista, baby!
Mr. Clean.
Lo-carb.
All the news fit to print
Melrose Place
Must be the al-al-al-al-alcohol.

Labyrinthine Sentences
Long, complex sentences tied together with stylish conjunctions, transitions, and subordinations,
containing lots of things and more, conveying a kind of endless quality that forestalls death, creates
suspense, holds off closure of any kind, unless it is a different kind of sentence such as a cumulative
sentence, in which case the subject and verb come early, in the beginning of the sentence, starting things off
with a little something that makes sense all on its own, after which there is no attempt to suspend closure by
the reader who gives in to that endless quality that characterizes sentences with unobtrusive beginnings,
such as, for example, this one youve just read.
Sentence Fragments
Stop before they really get started. End. As soon as they begin. Although finishing may be a
good idea. Or not. Suggest short, choppy action. Are particularly effective when they consist of verbal
phrases. Jumping all over the page. Running amok. Trembling passionately. Baked in a 350 degree oven.
Having a fantastic time.
Using the Page
syntax integrates itself
to the constraint of the paper
its format
its dimensions
its margins
its edges
its inconsistency
its whiteness
It constitutes the given
it is the hazard/fatality which determines what will happen next
the unpredictable shape of t
y
p
o
g
r
a
p
h
y
--Federman

Images/Signs/Symbols
This is for both:

AND

who do NOT

this is no longer our threat:

but this:

this:

and this:

and we are left with this:

wh@t other $ymbol$ can you use to make meaning?

From

or as complex as

to a simple game of

This is my purpose
How can images or symbols help achieve your purpose? What power do they have that words lack? Or
how can they complement words to make your purpose and meaning more powerful?
Font/Color

One font was playful.

One font was fancy and thought it was better than the other fonts.

One font was the biggest

because it was the most
important. And it was pretty
BOLD.
But other fonts thought it was the colors that made the font.
One wanted to GO.
One was cautious and hard to read.
One was dangerous.
And when they all got

together, things could get wild

and crazy, or even fragile, not like how boring and oldfashioned things could be

at school.

The traditional usage of a white screen and black type is typical of the traditional essay. But by varying
the font, the color, and the size of the font, we can emphasize meaning by calling attention to how we want
our words to be not just read, but seen and experienced.

The Assignment
Now that youve chosen your topic, create an anti-essay to
complement
emphasize,
or even explore your argument.
Utilize the different stylistic choices discussed above to make meaning of your topic and your argument
without feeling confined by the normal rules and regulations of grammar, structure, punctuation,
formatting, and space. The purpose of this play is not to be vague, nor is it to make writing stupid or easy
or confusing. We dont want to mystify the reader, but perhaps we can get the reader to respond to our
argument in a slightly different way, maybe more actively.
A good anti-essay will have a well-defined purpose, though it may not be explicitly stated.
The Anti-Essay is due on Thursday, February 24. Please bring an electronic version of this essay to
class; we will turn it in through Digication in class)