Chapman,+AP

Journalism 2773 Chapman, David W. "Forming and Meaning: Writing the Counterpoint Essay." //JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory// 11:1 (Winter 1991), 73 81. Andréa Peters

In “Forming and Meaning: Writing the Counterpoint Essay”, David W Chapman discusses composition teacher’s experiences and general opinion that students composing pieces of writing need to find what they call an “organic” way of organizing the content of their work; and he advocates for the counterform style of writing by discussing some of McPhee’s work in a way that highlights just how much of a twist such a different perspective can give to meaning, interpretation, and language in general.

Chapman points out that students more than often fall back on the customary “five-paragraph theme—an introduction followed by three or four supporting points and a summary conclusion” when writing, simply because it is all they know. While some teachers believe in not imposing a specific form of writing to their students and in repressing the technique of imitation in order to help them develop a unique and individual pattern of organization of their ideas, Chapman suggests that it actually encourages them to stick to the standard patterns because it is what they believe to be “what the teacher really wants.” Chapman also says that venturing out of the realm of the known five-paragraph form is too great a risk to take, when students who have been taught alternative forms of writing (such as the opposing form), have also been through the years, invited to link conforming to well-established formats of writing with getting good grades.

The author also advances that if students became more aware of other different styles of writing, that it would not restrict their creativity, but rather expand it, because it would finally allow them to form and give more meaning, subtlety, and purpose to their work. And this, in a voice that is theirs, for they would have to engage in a lot of critical thinking processes as they wrote. Chapman says that students don’t lack imagination because they are using a stricter form, but because they lack models to try to new things with their language. For these reasons, the author often brings models of unusual arrangements of language to his classes, and many of them “literary nonfiction” which experiments with new approaches to the typical essays. He explains why by saying

“Because the forms used by these literary nonfiction writers—sudden disjunctures, shifts of time and place, unexpected conclusions—are jarring to a reader unaccustomed to this genre, students frequently begin to “see” form that was previously transpar­ent to them. They also begin to sense the importance of form as something more than the “container” of knowledge.”

Furthermore, he tags McPhee as a “particularly effective model”, and cites the piece “The Search for Marvin Gardens” as one of the texts that proved eye-opening to his students. In this piece, McPhee compares a Monopoly tournament with real descriptions of places in Atlantic City, which have become known because of the game. The shifting of narratives occurs almost after each paragraph, and Chapman says weaving the game’s rules and its information with in depth descriptions of the actual Atlantic City helps establish subtle connections between the two narratives, and is overall much more effective in creating an alternate style of writing.

Counterpoint is what critic Roland Barthes calls a form of writing “whose intention is to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text”. Because McPhee’s counterpoint work often seemingly has completely unrelated yet ingenuously intertwined topics, a reader really has to stop to try and form connections between the two stories if they want to understand it, while still having room for personal interpretation of what is going on. Although counterpoint is relatively easy to do, it leaves room for a lot of variations, so even if it’s a form, a lot of creativity is involved in applying it, says Chapman. It also involves writers into thinking on a more abstract level, and it provides expression for concrete yet thoughtful, unique writing. Most composition teachers agree that good writing includes sensory detail, purpose, meaning, clear descriptions, and elaborate meaning.

Chapman presents McPhee as one of the few authors whom students have been asked to think about in a non superficial way, and in this article he encourages composition teachers to let their students experience with the counterpoint essay. He says that it promotes individual narratives, complexity in the plots, and a more comprehensive as well as subtle grappling with meaning and language-- without putting pressure on a writer to come up with any kind of firm conclusion like the five-paragraph theme and its thesis, as well as argument-based structure requires.

Another perk of counterpoint as McPhee demonstrates, Chapman says, is that his lack of use of the pro and con argumentation defies the Western culture’s tendency to put everything in one of two boxes of socially accepted notions, or to see things as only one of two “side” of a coin; with an inflexible label on human experience. Even if McPhee’s counterpoint writing is often dualistic, it still invites readers to make connections between two narratives, Chapman argues. He also refutes the counterpoint essay’s assumed lack of validity outside of the classroom environment, and reinforces that it is a real and legitimate form of literature. He actually points out that his students found great similarities with cinematic techniques which also use sudden breaks, shifts in narration, and breaks in the scenes. Overall, “validation of the counterpoint essay comes from its usefulness in providing a “way of experiencing” for students as they look for intersections of meaning in parallel experiences.”