A Student of English

Thoughts on a Vocab Habit

2012-01-12T22:19:00.000-08:00

This is for all the wordy people. Don't let the word haters get you down. Don't let them stage an intervention to break you of your vocab habit. It's good for you, and they should be able to see that.

In this month off from schooling and teaching, in the absence of my esteemed English grad student colleagues, I've been dropping some big words here and there. They don't fall into place quite so well when you don't have a captive audience of officemates who use all the same words. We get excited when someone says "aplomb" for God's sake. (And one day a couple of us even took pains to look up the language of origin for that one, so we could enjoy it more fully. With aplomb even.)

I've come to a sort of conclusion that as you use more words, longer words, and more discipline specific words, you just don't hear them anymore. Or you expect that other people know them, because you've known them for so damn long. This not hearing one's self can happen with any jargon. Hank Hill probably talks to people in propane terms they can't sort out. A doctor might use all kinds of medical terminology at home while his kids just roll their eyes. But we in English, our thing is words!

So, how does that make our jargon spouting okay? Words are what our jargon is about. And we love all kinds of them. So the objects of our jargon, instead of being some industry specific doodads that no one else knows about or ever needs to care about, are already all around us (and you, and anyone who speaks or reads). Perhaps a plastics manufacturer could say the same thing. But we don't consume plastics the way we consume books and culture.

So if we use a big word on you, it is a compliment. We think you know what we're saying. We think you're smart.

We are not, contrary to popular belief, trying to make you feel stupid. Nor are we always trying to show off. These things, they just come out of us. We don't intend to be showy, offensive, or obfuscatory. (See, there it goes again.) How about this: If we are being otherwise reasonable, but use a word you don't understand, you can ask what it means, or say something friendly like "I'm not sure what you mean." We'll probably even apologize for our wordiness. But yelling at us to "SPEAK ENGLISH!" just won't do. We could ask the same of you, if that's your attitude. That's right.

I recently caused some kind of offense (whatever kind is caused by non-offensive words) when I used "discourse" and "philosophy" in a non-academic conversation. I shouldn't have to apologize for that. Nor should I be made out to be Ms. Bombastic for uttering more than three syllables at a breath. None of us should. Don't kick the habit.

Now I'm not saying that we who study English forget how to code-switch. I'm sure some intellectuals in all fields forget how to talk to their mothers or to the garbage man, but most of us don't strike up a conversation about hermeneutics with the latter or tell the former she's looking "pulchritudinous" today.

I'm also not saying there aren't actual living sesquipedalians (people who use big words just to use big words) out there. In fact many of them probably reside in the English and Philosophy departments. But those windbags are the minority. That's a great word -- windbag.

By the way I totally know what hermeneutics means now, and it's lost all its mystique for me. Not knowing a word can give it so many dimensions! Even half knowing a word can be fun, because then you can try it out. What the hell, right? Someone who didn't quite understand "empower" turned it into a word for women's issues, and it used to be something only the friggin' Pope could do.

So there you have my attitude on not knowing a word. Just because we like to use the biggun's doesn't mean we have all of them in our personal arsenals. No one does! But if I hear one from a friend or read one in a book, I won't demand a sorry substitute. I'll look it up. I'll ask what it means. I'll probably try it out on you tomorrow. And not because I think you're stupid, or because I want you to think I'm smart. It's just a healthy habit of mine.

A Slough of Despond

2012-01-11T22:42:00.000-08:00

    In his PMLA article “The Evolution of Literary Study, 1883-1983,” fittingly published in the centennial issue of the “industry” journal for the study of literature, Karl Kroeber attempts to describe changes in literary study since the university model brought about its systematization. He distinguishes between scholarship in literature (the study of texts and their histories) and literary intellect (the “timeless” theory and criticism about texts), and discusses how these two approaches to literary study are somewhat at odds. Criticism is the approach most valued by university hiring committees since the 1980s, despite its lack of practical value when compared with our ever-evolving, ever-improving scholarly tools. Kroeber advocates placing a higher value on literary study such as textual studies and biographical studies, arguing that even the most robust theories may be passing fads, while excellent scholarship will always give us some ground to stand on, no matter our critical approach.

    From the start, Kroeber’s approach to his subject reveals his sense of humor, and he acknowledges that his attempt at painting the picture of the last hundred years of literary study will be mediocre at best. As a teacher of mostly undergraduate courses who mostly writes about Wordsworth, he doesn’t consider himself a member of the higher echelons of the literary studies club, or of any trendy theory crowd. He wonders why the MLA approached him to write such a history for their hundredth-year issue. “I was appalled by the invitation to write this essay,” is how the essay begins (326). He has set the tone.

     Kroeber prefaces his discussion of what goes on in literary study by calling the MLA (and the profession of studying literature) a bureaucracy, and he equates it with other types of bureaucracies, such as those found in the medical professions. In order for the bureaucracy to function, it needs a hierarchy. He spends a few paragraphs on unflattering descriptions and analogies (in PMLA no less!) about the functioning of this bureaucracy, and calls on members of it to recognize “how increasingly we function as a profession only bureaucratically” (327). Specialized interests are commoditized by forums and panels, all exacting dues and hiring out for speakers in tangential topics. Kroeber laments what the study of literature becomes under this bureaucratic system -- in the era of professionalization, “power, prestige, and professional virtuosity disguise the professional's persistent trivializing of human experience” (327). All these things we do with literature (in 1984 anyway) are causing us to lose focus on the literature itself, and making the work we do less and less approachable by scholars or students of any other specialization. Who wants to read PMLA? Kroeber doesn’t. (Neither do I.)

    Next Kroeber makes his distinction (which is a pretty widely recognized distinction) between scholarship in literature and literary criticism. The first, he says, is evolving all the time, always building upon past work, always discovering more about history, and always bringing about good revisions to the canon. Because of literary scholarship we have Blake as one of our Romantic “big six,” and we have moved Swinburne to the margins. As this scholarship piles up, we start to “take for granted a vast apparatus of bibliographies, compendia of criticism, checklists, catalogs of library holdings, reference works, and many scrupulously edited texts”(328) that make continued scholarship much easier than it was a century ago. As more and more is discovered, histories and biographies become more accurate, fueling new discoveries. Textual scholarship (which “real” critics treat as “a slough of despond” [329]) keeps step with scholarship on literature, and studies of the book fuel debates on everything from editorial copy-text to authorial intention. After expounding the virtues and successes of modern literary scholarship, Kroeber turns to the problem: “Young Ph.D.’s” as he calls them, are not trained to be scholars. They are trained to be critics – specialized critics. So despite scholarship’s steady march forward, “our discipline now decays intellectually.” We have the mounds of scholarship, and no one wants to work with them.

    Those young Ph.D.’s who do want to work with scholarly materials lack the skills, and instead write heaps of criticism without actually consulting much of anything literary except the primary texts themselves. Kroeber claims that we have impoverished our critical vocabulary by reaching out to various only tangentially related disciplines – sociology, linguistics, psychology – and critics now borrow so much from the sciences, all the while claiming to be doing something “creative,” that the criticism (or, theory) they produce ultimately has little to do with “literary study.” So, his practical concern about where literary study has ended up by 1984 is that there will soon be no jobs for the young Ph.D.’s. They are either incompetent at actually studying literature, or if they have managed to focus on their literary scholarship, they will not get hired by the committee looking for the latest theory buzzwords (or, to update this, cultural criticism buzzwords) on the C.V.

    While Kroeber brings his argument about scholarship vs. criticism to bear on a very practical issue (and a vital one, if we all wish to continue to have jobs and a department of our own), he does so within a framework of discussing how literary study has gotten where it is today, even if part of the “study” is in a sad state. That’s what PMLA wanted him to do – a history of literary study. But Kroeber is limited by his own knowledge of the subject, his lack of involvement in any of the “new” types of literary study, and the time period the PMLA team wants him to cover – the hundred years that the MLA has existed! It is telling that they did not ask him to delve further into literary history. No literary study existed before it was sanctioned by the MLA? This limitation is noted in the title of the article, and can’t be blamed on Kroeber. He gives the dates he is covering: 1883-1983. That is all that is required really. Like any good bibliographer does, you have to put a cap on the thing somewhere, or it will not fit between the covers of a book, much less a journal. The other limitations that stem from Kroeber’s lack of specialized knowledge about literary history are his own limitations, but for some reason the MLA chose him to write this.

Perhaps Kroeber was chosen precisely because he is an outsider on the history of literary study. He can give a broader picture of what it looks like from someone who does it in the way most professors do it: teaching undergraduates, and writing on a period of canonical literature. Kroeber does well to call attention to the limitations of the article, calling it an “amateurish foray” into literary study (336), and ultimately brings his argument home to advocate for teaching literature to small classes as the saving grace of the English department. If we try not to “fret” about the bureaucracy in which we must teach and write, and if we try not to jump on every theoretical bandwagon, we will get back to teaching literature in that way that supposedly helps our students' critical thinking, and all those other brain functions that can be magically turned on by reading a book – the reason the other departments send all their majors over here for at least a class or two.

    So while Kroeber ends up in a very specific place at the end of his essay, and fails to give a sweeping overview of, or a definite shape to, the century he is supposed to be describing, he at least gives the PMLA reader something to think about when it comes to dealing with the legacies of that century, and deciding whether to turn away from them, embrace them, or count them as irrelevant to the very practical work we do in classrooms, and as scholars of texts.

Work Cited
Kroeber, Karl. “The Evolution of Literary Study, 1883-1983.” PMLA 99.3 (1984): 326-39. Print.

McGann’s Roman Example

2012-01-07T21:53:00.000-08:00

Jerome McGann’s The Beauty of Inflections is a collection of essays and readings that attempt to outline a program for the re-historicization of poems. McGann’s readings of Keats, Coleridge, and other Romantic poets show how to historicize, while the broader essays give theoretical justifications for the program, or show how it might benefit literary study. Toward the end of this program (the last chapter before the conclusion) McGann chooses to include an essay on “Rome and its Romantic Significance.” In the introduction he had told us that these essays were carefully selected and ordered in the book, sometimes out of chronological sequence, to best make the argument for historicization. Why include an essay on a place and civilization that seems antithetical to anything Romantic? (Despite the obvious shared root in the city’s name, what is Romantic about the civic-life-loving Romans?) McGann uses Rome as one of his best examples of the poet’s ability to Romantically idealize almost anything, and discusses how Rome’s long and tumultuous history lends itself to embellishment and longing in the imagination of the Romantically-minded.

Romantics have a notorious aversion to cities and cities’ trappings, yet Rome was somehow the “one city that escaped the judgment of Romanticism” (313). McGann names Winckellmann the first Romantic to visit Rome, arriving when Rome had just come out of yet another fall of some “civilization.” It was a beautiful, empty place of ruins, ripe for the imagination’s taking, ripe for yet another birth. Winckelmann “presided over its birth” and saw to it that it was a Romantic one. It is because of Rome’s peculiar position as a city of rich history and a city of empty ruins that the Romantics, McGann argues, were able to “discover the limits of their ideological experience” (314). The poets had found a blank canvas, but under the ruined surface were millennia of possibilities for what Rome could be. No matter that none of these possibilities suited the poets, for it was the remembrance of Rome that could easily be Romanticized, painted with the imagery of the city in its beautiful desolation, desolation that was just waiting for melancholy and nostalgia to give it an afterlife. So, the ruins and their shadows inspired poetry, and even though Winckelmann’s Roman project was really a historical one (full of discoveries that somehow only fueled the nostalgia rather than grounding Rome’s new identity on the facts of its un-Romantic history), portrayals and conceptions of Rome going into the 19th century were those of the “Everlasting Rome, not the Rome which is replaced by another every decade” (Geothe as quoted in McGann 316).

McGann’s example of a Romantic Rome shows how far the Romantic ideology can go in conceiving of a place, a time, or even a city as something that reflects the Romantic's inward turn, his longing for some imagined place of the past, and his veneration for creativity and the individual. Rome is the least ideal place and possesses the least ideal histories for those particular kinds of daydreams. (Those daydreams spawned some great poetry, for sure, but the Romans of antiquity or any time before Winckelmann would have called them daydreams.) I don’t know if this essay proves any of the major tenets of McGann’s beliefs about historicizing literature, but it does provide some insight into how the Romantic mind works, and a great example of what we still mean when we talk about “Romanticizing” something. The fact that a city such as Rome can fuel the same imagination that longs for pastoral solitude, freedom of expression, and freedom from religion and civic life, seems surprising, even if we already know that humans, Romantic or not, tend to envision “everlasting” places and cultures, usually picturing them in some conflated recollection of every iteration, glossing over the troubling bits, and conveniently forgetting (or valorizing anew, in a new language befitting the contemporary climate of nostalgia) the parts that don’t fit the ideology. Winckelmann, Goethe, Chateaubriand, and the rest, are interested in history – real, factual history, full of troubling events likes those happening in France – but that does not stop them from deeply Romanticizing Rome.

Only in Stendhal (who McGann comes to at the end of the essay) do we see the movement reach the “limits” McGann had promised to show us early on. The other thinkers and poets “refused to part with their most cherished forms of Romantic illusion and displacement,” but Stendhal finds these ways of viewing history “finally wanting” (333). Stendhal exhibits the despair of losing Rome, or anyplace for that matter, but not the desperate nostalgia of his contemporaries (331).

Perhaps Stendhal is the example McGann wants to leave us with, even though much of the essay is spent on those most charmed by their illusions. Stendhal’s Romanticism allows for a more realistic view of history and the loss of civilizations without imagining all of history as something preferable to the present day, something longed after through a misty veil of Romantic embellishments. Stendhal’s historical perception of Rome is one that teaches lessons (as McGann thinks history should), one that reminds us of what we should not forget, and allows us a rich poetic outlet, through its well-known histories and literary tropes. Perhaps Stendhal’s view of Rome is in many ways like McGann’s view of literary study. We learn from its losses (textual or otherwise), we lament the losses, and we do not forget the losses. Instead we record them, we seek inspiration from them, and we look forward to the possibilities of variants, interpretations, and meanings that a future of continued losses surely holds.

Work Cited

McGann, Jerome J. The Beauty of Inflections. Oxford UP: Oxford, 1985.

Justifying Critical Outliers in the NATC

2012-01-05T20:43:00.000-08:00

If we were to leaf through the second edition of The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, we would not be surprised by many of the early entries. Plato, Sydney, Wordsworth… In fact, the first two-thirds of the book include selections from poets, literary critics, philosophers, linguists, and other folks who are easily at least tangentially related to what we think of when we think of “theory.” Most of these critics and theorists have at least one foot firmly planted in some humanities sort of discipline. While the text does not claim to be a collection of “literary theories” per se, there is an expectation that the selections will somehow all come back to books, or philosophy, or something with which students who are interested in theory are comfortable. Toward the end of the book, we might start to become more than a little disoriented as theorist’s names (and the related names their headnote writers drop) become less familiar, never heard of. When we begin to read the headnote, and discover that this “theorist” doesn’t do what we thought was “theory” at all, but instead studies the behaviors of scientists in their labs, the befuddlement is complete.

Bruno Latour is one of these critical outliers. Situated between Barbara Johnson’s reading of Billy Budd and a bit of Martha Nussbaum’s philosophy that draws on poetry to make its claims, Latour the “science studies” guy seems out of place. But while Latour himself is somewhat atypical of an NATC canonized theorist, his headnote does most of the things the typical headnotes do, and even stands as something of a model for how the editors typically deal with an outlier’s headnote. Or how they typically deal with anything that might leave the reader wondering if they should ask for their $75 back. The Norton rule: Justify, justify, justify!

The introductory paragraph gives Latour’s overview, a thinker in “science studies” and “technoscience.” The overview introduction is in the style of most headnotes, but in Latour’s overview the justifications begin almost immediately. Headnotes in the NATC often contain justifications, even for critics long recognized as major voices. These usually fall at the end of the headnote, after some critical objections are brought to light. “Even though critic Y debunks everything critic X says, critic X is still important because…” is the typical formula. (My prof calls this the “Newsweek ending.”) But with Latour the headnote writer can’t wait for the conclusion to get the justification, because we are already boggled by “technoscience.” The writer assures us (we who are sweating and thinking "Oh shit, he's talking about science!?") that “the consequences go beyond disciplinary boundaries” and “illuminate several important concepts in cultural theory” (2277). Key terms are dropped, that bring us back to literature and its tangents. Phew. While Latour’s brand of social constructivism can certainly be seen unfolding in gender studies and other lately recognized, literature-related schools of theory, the lengthy list of schools in the overview helps drive this point home. Look at all the -isms he’s influenced! He belongs in this book. (Or, You are not thinking that he does not belong in this book. Norton mind-trick.)

The biography of Latour is typical of a headnote’s second paragraph. No justification is given here, but a brief history of scholarship and positions held. This holds true for some other entries, but a more literary scholar may have had more information his or her accomplishments and publications at each institution related in that paragraph. The next section of the headnote explicates one of Latour’s major works, one that is not included in the volume. Terms like "Actor Network Theory" come up, and the doubt may begin to seep back in to those of us who are still wondering what Bruno is doing here. The justification is simple -- he weighs in on the nature/nurture dichotomy, along with other “monstrous” binaries that contemporary theory sometimes seeks to deconstruct. This may be true, but it is doubtful whether most who use this book will go out and find a copy of Laboratory Life tomorrow, just to see those dichotomies meet their doom. We have more “literary” sources to go to for that kind of reading.

The next paragraph begins with a list of Latour’s “eclectic and wide-ranging” influences. Those adjectives are probably meant to keep us on our toes to spot the novelists and critics whom he has read, but the list consists of sociologists, analytical philosophers (that is, the kind who don’t typically write about literature), and linguists (so close!). In order to get some kind of legacy out of Latour, the headnote author speculates on whom Latour is referring to in his critiques of contemporary social constructivism. STANLEY FISH and MICHEL FOUCAULT (Latour never mentions either) make it into the note, as theorists who bear “some resemblance” (2278). Two more all-caps names are listed, and these are his true legacies. However, they are sociologists and science studies thinkers as well. Influences and legacies are typical of the headnotes in this book, and reaching to make connections that may or may not be significant is not uncommon either. An outlier’s headnote exemplifies how far the authors sometimes have to stretch.

The remaining two pages of Latour’s headnote are almost completely given over to explaining his positions as outlined in “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?” Again the author stabs at naming a literary critic whom Latour may or may not be commenting on (Fish), and brings up the dichotomies which we are all supposed to be so appalled by. If a scientist type can deconstruct them, we will welcome him in, is perhaps the thought there. The last sentence of the summary of Latour’s theories makes another association for us, by talking about associations: “The work of science studies, and by extension of literary theory as well, is to study associations…” (2278). What a dumb sentence. How “by extension” works is not quite clear, but they sure want us to think that science somehow extends into literature, because Latour has made it so!

The final paragraph gives the typical brief NATC overview of critiques of the theorist’s work, ending on the style of justification that has become quite familiar by page 2279: “In spite of the polarized responses he evokes, Latour remains a significant presence in cultural theory for his ingenious attempts to bridge the two-cultures model that divides the humanities from the sciences.” Perhaps the headnote author should have said that in the first place. The “[i]n spite of” portion of that sentence is for once not even necessary. We are not objecting to Latour. The scientists are. We just want to know what he’s doing here! And explaining that Latour helps us with a bridging of scientific and humanities cultures puts him in league with fellows like C.P. Snow and Matthew Arnold. To some of us, this might be the best kind of justification. Pointing to a legacy of writers on cyborgs and trans-humans (science, science!) might just befuddle us even more.

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I've nothing against Bruno. My goal here was to give a specific example of how Norton is always justifying things.

Here's a cool article and interview about We Have Never Been Modern.

Here's a blog all about Latour and company, co-authored by my friend Mike Johnduff at Princeton (who is a literature student...maybe Norton can use him as their justification in the 3rd edition of NATC!):

"We Have Never Been Blogging."

Cozying up to the NATC

2012-01-03T18:10:00.000-08:00

Don't be put off by the bloodstain on the cover.

When The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism appears on your book list for the first time, you may get a sinking feeling. If you don’t already have that feeling, then by all means get to sinking. This tome (guaranteed to be more tome-ly than any text you have purchased to date) is a ten pound, nearly 3000 page monolith that may be the most expensive thing you ever buy as a graduate student in the humanities. (And if you aren’t a graduate student in the humanities, back away slowly.) While the NATC may cost you half your monthly TA stipend, and it may endanger your life every time you leap onto the subway with that ponderous weight in your backpack, rest assured that it is a sound investment in your future as a critic and scholar. I will endeavor to explain why.

First let’s talk about what this book isn’t. (With all those pages, there will be plenty to say about what it is.) The NATC is not an introduction to theory, and it is even less an introduction to literary theory. Notice, “literary” is not even in the title. And the only place you’ll find “introduction” is in the introduction, which only takes up thirty-some bible-thin pages of the thing. Though you can’t expect to be prepared for what follows by reading these pages, if you really are new to this theory game then by all means read the introduction! It is a very cursory discussion of “What is Theory?” and of theory’s current place in literary and cultural studies, followed by an even more cursory wham-bam list of schools and methods in theory. The schools and methods are probably what you’ve heard of. Feminists. Deconstructors. Cultural critics. Etc. While these entries are in a sort of chronological order, the descriptions are short and the list format does not help the newbie to understand the relationships between all of these schools and methods. If you have a true introductory text, the kind with schemas and charts and things, that might be a nice supplement as you wade through the issues and lists. Donald Keesey’s Contexts for Criticism is a good place to start, and Jonathan Culler’s Very Short Introduction to Literary Theory is even better. While, in the end, schemas don’t always make perfect sense or allow for the nuances that differentiate certain theories, they are handy when you are in the face of the NATC with no prior exposure to semioticians and linguists, New Critics and Formalists (“What’s the difference?!”) and their ilk.

One other feature of the book that could be considered introductory material is each critic’s or theorist’s headnote. Again, some background is necessary to see how the critics fit together (because now you are dealing with individuals and their thoughts, not over-arching, sometimes nebulous schools), but each headnote can nearly stand alone because of the amount of biographical and critical information there. Always read the headnote for any reading you have been assigned. Your professor probably assigned the headnote along with the reading, but if not, read it anyway. Be the teacher’s pet. The headnotes do not give away the juicy bits of the selections themselves, but set nicely a reader up for what is to come.

You will notice, especially at the beginnings and ends of headnotes, that some names appear in ALL CAPS. This means the person referred to is somewhere in that book, and you should go look them up if you want to know more about the connection between, say, Hegel and Marx. However, unlike the obvious Hegel-Marx connection, sometimes these associations are tenuous and even dubious. JAQUES DERRIDA appears in Plato’s headnote, but we cannot learn much about Plato from Derrida. Derrida deconstructs a Platonic dialog, so he made it in. They even go so far as to include the relatively minor dialog in Plato’s section, to justify the nudging into the twentieth century (they want you to look in the back of the book!). If they really wanted to throw in a responder to Plato, MARTIN HEIDEGGER would have been more apt. But he’s not cool anymore. So when you read these ALL CAPS names, just be sure to have a few grains of salt handy.

While NATC is by no means an introductory text, it is a hit parade of works that you may be assigned in your early years of advanced literary study. All of the biggies are in there: Laugh of the Medusa, Poetics, Biographia Literaria, Of Grammatology, and so on. You will have nearly everything you need. They even put them in a sort of historical order for you, by year of the critic’s birth. Also included, however, are some tidbits you’ve probably never heard of. The newer stuff follows the current trends in literary theory as observed by the editors. Some of it will get nixed from the next edition, and some will be immortalized either by its own merit or by simply having a place in the NATC.

Of course, every time a young upstart gets his or her gender theory article included, some hoary old fellow will be shaved off the other end of the book to make room. The early criticism, therefore, is the choicest cuts. You can think of the book as an open faced sandwich. The aged meats are on top and the fresh pieces of bread are on the bottom. It remains to be seen which breads will soak up the juices of history and remain edible, and which will turn to soggy mush. While the quality of these later selections is mixed, with the latest edition you will at least stay on top of the trends in literary theory. But if you are in a theory class just for fun (what?), or if you are a stalwart Classicist or Romantic or the like, don’t bother keeping up with editions. The oldies but goodies are in every one, and you might have even more oldies in the older editions, as each new edition will land some of them on the chopping block to squeeze in new essays on buzzy new topics. Anyway, with the savings on a used book, you will be able to buy a few more TV dinners at Aldi. Or even a roast beef sandwich.

With such a huge volume, navigation is always an issue, and you may worry about getting lost at sea. Luckily the crack Norton team has anticipated your seafaring reticence, and has given you multiple options for charting a course through the book. The first table of contents is in historical order, just like the entirety of the book. Thumb to the very first page with anything meaningful on it for the traditional “Contents” pages (although you can find all sorts of interesting things on the preceding pages if you’re into that sort of thing). On page xix begins the “Alternative Table of Contents,” which gives you multiple useful options for digging up articles that may be of interest to you or useful for your projects. Methods and schools are there, for sure, but also genres, historical periods (since they are in order but not periodized in the main text), and issues in theory. The issues section is especially handy for many paper-writing tasks. So even if you don’t read even a quarter of the book as assigned readings, you may find at least another quarter of it can be used as your bibliography on any literary topic. (Hollow out the other half and use it to store your gin.) Another way to navigate the book is by the indices, which again give you options. You can look up authors and titles, or you can browse subjects.

Once you find a nice chunk of entries that work for the authors, titles, or subjects you are interested in, look at the bibliographies. If you get nothing else out of this book, look at the bibliographies! Everything in the NATC came from somewhere else, and it will tell you where to find the selection, along with more material than you could ever want to read. What’s more, they evaluate the books for you, and annotate many of them.

So the NATC will not answer all your questions about theory, and it will not make you an instant expert (although the presence of the book on your desk may elicit many astonished "Holy SHIT you read THAT?!" looks). If you need it for a class, then you need it. Suck it up and buy the thing, and make it your own. Put colorful post-it flags on the sections you love, write angry marginalia on the ones you hate, design your own alternative table of contents, paste color coded heuristics into the headnotes to help you put it all into perspective. I won’t say you’ll never regret buying the thing. But sometimes, you’ll be really glad you did.

What English Majors Don't Want

2011-11-15T23:20:00.000-08:00

I keep getting emails from a couple of graduate programs who seem to think an old gal like me is just itching to go get professionalized. I don't know if they're wooing me because of my absolutely spectacular GRE scores (uh-huh...) or if they just send this crud to every schmo who has their name plastered on a uni website's TA listings. Either way, they've got me (and many English majors) all wrong,

Does it seem to you that I would want to wear a grey suit? Straighten my hair and part it in the middle? Pair this new style with some non-descript silver earrings and black pumps? Drink water from tall, clear glasses? Shake hands with similarly grey-suited, dark-haired man-children? Do you think I have a business card? (If I did it would be a haiku.) And WTF is my "business"?

Maybe this is what the school looks like? No. Wait. No one wears a fucking suit vest to class. And they don't give you free water.

This must be the life I'll live as a junior executive after getting my master's degree in professional writing or some shit. Right?

Seems like false advertising. The grad school advert depicts career life, not grad school life. I don't think anyone who is this "career oriented" (as the douches and douchettes in the picture) should even think about going to grad school. These things don't happen there. And you have to go through a whole lot of there once you sign up. If your goal is the corner office, you'd do better to just climb the side of the building and wait for an opening.

I was a speaker at a roundtable discussion this evening. It was six English graduates telling a circle of soon-to-be-graduates about avenues they might take after college. A couple speakers suggested trying out as many things as you can, like temping, and seeing what you like. A humanities education has made us into jacks of all trades, so why not? I think that's good advice for someone who knows they don't want to keep going to school. But one speaker, who had a very weird specialized job that no one else will ever be able to get, told the group not to go to grad school. She told them that her friends didn't graduate, and that you can have a "meaningful career" without more degrees. Well, what if some of those English majors are not looking for a "career"? In fact, our major's tagline could probably be: "Career? No. Meaningful? Yes."

I think the very reason some of us study English is because "career" isn't even a thing for us. As long as we can eat, and we can see a day on the horizon where we might even be slightly comfortable, doing English is the thing. So we're not looking for a way to make money. We're looking for something to do. Or even, a way of being. What's the line they always give about diets nowadays? It's a lifestyle decision.

I know I have probably written about this ad nauseum on this blog, but the roundtable session tonight just reinforced my confidence in my decision about what to do with myself in this life.

It might sound silly to refuse to call what professors (instructors, TAs, etc) do a "career." I use the word, yes, and even in my head I use it. I was just thinking how I'll be over forty before I'm "mid-career,"* and wondering if that's normal. Maybe I can have a mid-life crisis and a mid-career crisis simultaneously. (That sounds like an occasion for a party.) So, what we do can be called a career, but it is not to be conceived of as a career. That is to say, it does not have a career teleology.

*(Mid-career is from 7-10 years in, till 7-10 years from retirement. Just in case you want to start throwing that term around at luncheon parties.)

Anyhow, to go back to the picture of executive youth, we don't even need to get all self-righteous about the English major to see what's wrong with this marketing strategy. It's as simple as the grey suits. You show me ironed hair and suits and and fancy water glasses and business cards, and I respond with profound discomfort. You see, I have messy hair, I wear scarves, I drink tea from a second-hand mug, and I'm in the staff directory. And I am quite comfortable.

Rhetoric, I Swear

2011-10-14T22:59:00.000-07:00

I swear. I swear pretty much every day. Sometimes it's for a stubbed toe, other times, a forgotten homework reading. But sometimes I swear to make a point.

Rhetorical swearing works on several levels. First, it is an attention getter. Second, swearwords are often the most intense word for a thing ("shithead" is way grosser and meaner sounding than "poopyhead"), or they can be used to modify a word to make it more intense (not just "crazy," but "fucking crazy"). Third, swearwords can express a sense of humor about a serious subject -- which can either lighten the mood of a piece, or make it irreverent. This third use is probably the most complex. (As we talked about in pedagogy class today, we are not allowing our students to write on a funny ad when they write their essay about a commercial. Funny is too hard.)

I use swearwords on this blog in all three of those ways. Although, I probably avoid the attention-getting tactic unless the attention-getting obscenity ties in with the tone of the piece. (I was going to title this "Some Fucking Rhetoric" or something like that, but decided to play with words instead.) The Onion uses attention-getting swears in article titles all the time. When the rest of the article keeps up that tone it works, and it does not seem out of place. This is true for the recent Steve Jobs obit, "Last American Who Knew What the Fuck He Was Doing Dies."

I can't think of an example that uses attention-getting swears without going for humor. I don't know if that tactic would even work for intelligent people. I'm mostly talking here about what works in essays and articles. But rhetoric is for everyone. So, to take it to the streets, "REPRESENT, BITCHES" probably gets more attention than "DO WHAT IS RIGHT, WOMEN" when someone wants to be persuasive within a group of she-thugs.

The second use of swearwords is pretty much the standard one. They enhance our message, making it more intense, and more "colorful," as the prudes like to say. While I do that all the time here, and everyone already knows how to do it (if you do need a swearing lesson, I can probably hook you up), there is still a rhetoric to swearing this way. The most important thing to do is to build up to the dirty words. If you haven't set a tone with a title like "Comma Splices: An Asshole's Delight" then you haven't yet let on that you are among the potty-mouthed. This is good -- you have a rhetorical ace in the hole! When your reader can't see that "FUCK!" coming at the end of an exasperated sentence, it is a pleasantly unpleasant surprise. "Jeepers, this writer doesn't like to curse, but this thing makes'im mad enough to kick a cat by golly! Must be important!" (Says your newly-convinced reader.)

Swearwords as humorous interjections or humorous modifiers in an essay create a complex system of truth combined with hyperbole, seriousness combined with refusal to take things seriously. I try to use my swears like this as much as possible. It's a goddamn bitch to pull off sometimes, but so fucking worth it.

So I write this because I have a serious (serious!) problem with people who think swearwords have no place in an argument, i.e. an article, blog entry, etc. A commenter on my Jimmy Buffet post from a couple years back said:

"I doubt if you were face to face with a parrot head (or me) you would use poor language like that, but I suppose you feel safe behind your computer sweety. What next, going to call us "retards?" To think, this whole time I thought liberals were supposed to be politically correct."

I had used the word "dumbasses" to describe a bunch of drunken parrot heads spilling margaritas all over themselves. She took it quite personally. Poor language? Some of the best words are swears! And somehow, since I am educated I'm not allowed to use bad words. And somehow, she thinks swearing is politically incorrect. I'm not sure how her logic got her there, but there she is. When people get offended, they say all kinds of stupid shit.

And there is the KEY WORD! Offended. The possibility of offending is the number one reason some people think that cussing is off limits for educated people, even when they're writing down to earth stuff. Well, it offends me that someone would be offended by a swearword.* In the class I'm teaching, we read a story entitled "All Beings Are Interconnected." The author uses humor and ethos (among other rhetorical strategies) to tell a story of demoralizing captivity. He makes up funny words for gross things, like the Unfortunate Mess Rag. One of my students wrote on this story, and she said his essay was effective because he made up those words to make sure he didn't offend anyone! I think she used the word "offend" about five times. I wrote on her draft that she was missing the point. Since when does an author write a story about something so important and life-changing, and stop to change words so that they don't offend someone? He chose not to use swearwords, but I'm pretty fuckin' sure that's not why.

*(OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE is another thing entirely. Language that is meant to do harm to or to make generalizations about women, African-Americans, gays, or other groups [excepting parrot heads] should not be tolerated by any educated person. But saying "Fuck" is not the same thing.)

To provide some support for my offensive arguments, I can point to many examples of swearing in very popular, widely read, and even incredibly intelligent magazines and websites. I mentioned The Onion, but another favorite of mine is Rolling Stone magazine. That's the first place I ever saw the "f" word in print. I was fucking flabbergasted. Every issue drops f-bombs I'm sure.

To go beyond the printed word, since rhetoric is a spoken thing too, a colleague of mine mentioned today that she counseled a student with this advice: "You'll really have to bust your balls if you want to get caught up." She wondered if that was okay. I assured her there is a rhetoric to swearing, and that she had pulled out a crude turn of phrase at just the right time. That student needed his attention grabbed, and he needed to know that she A) is taking his absences seriously, and B) still has a sense of humor with her students, even when they fuck up. That one little obscenity took care of all that rhetoric!

I could continue with anecdotes (like one of my pedagogy instructors nodding his head vigorously when I suggested some of my "rhetoric of swearing" in class), but anecdotes (and my own attempts at rhetorical swearing here) are all I have. I could not find an article that argues what I am saying here. There is plenty on the cultural value of swearwords, on the linguistics of swearwords and how they can be just about any part of speech (or even in-fixed!), and even on how swearwords can help relieve pain! But no "Rhetoric of Fuck." Maybe I should formalize this and do it up proper. (Without removing the swearing, of course.)

You'll notice I never swear when I'm writing a piece on Milton. That's one fucker I do not wish to offend.

Colonoscopy? (or, another look at the colon)

2011-10-08T21:33:00.000-07:00

If you remember last year (I hardly do), I wrote a little article entitled "Against the Titular Colon." Read it, if you would like to continue reading this with some knowledge of my particular anti-colon arguments.

(Sorry for telling you to go read it. If you read blogs on shit like this, you've probably already clicked the link. Can you tell I've been teaching freshmen? Can you tell they don't do their readings?)

Well, I received one of the nicest blog-related emails I've ever had the pleasure of reading from one Vivian R. of the American Musicological Society. According to Vivian, a "major newspaper arts critic excerpted about 35 paper titles from our forthcoming national meeting program and published them without the post-colonial (i.e., intelligible) portions." In other words, only the part of the title that came before the colon (what would be the "real" title of, say, a book with a subtitle) was printed. Can you imagine?! This colonic oversight led to a firestorm on the AML listserv discussion. (Yes, apparently those are still a thing.) Wow!

But really, what do colon-dependent paper writers expect? Why would someone write a pre-colonial gibberish title? The part after the colon should illuminate, not be the final result of some colonic process. Writers should not expect the colon to fix their bad titles by digesting them. You put in crap you get out crap.

SHITTY TITLE : EXCREMENT OF SHITTY TITLE

So it doesn't magically make your title good. And, if you already have a good title (the "post-colonial," "intelligible" bit -- it sounds like some of AML's truncated titles must have been good before the critic chopped them), don't cheapen it by putting it on the back end of a colon! You know what's on the back end of a colon, right?

First, I have to give Vivian major props for that colon pun. Post-colonial! Ha! Most colon jokes (and most of my colon jokes) tend toward the scatological.

Next, I have to thank Vivian for sharing me with the AML listserv. She forwarded my humble blog article, offered up as an end to the discussion: "This should settle for all time what a proper title should look like," she tells the list. Thank you Vivian.

Hear that? (Read that?) No more colons, because I said so.

Last, I have to excerpt here Vivian's discussion on why we should try not to make so many poop-related colon jokes. She did some nice etymological detective work for the list:

"Bad puns invoking medical procedures and body-parts abound. The most interesting was "colotomic structure" [...] The medical definition of "colotomy" is an incision into the colon. "Stoma" is not the removal of an organ, but the creation of an artificial "mouth" to take over the function of the organ altered or removed. Thus, all the "colostomy" jokes about punctuation are misguided."

Darn! Oh well. I was just about to make another one.

The Swing of Things

2011-08-26T22:06:00.000-07:00

Did you ever hear that old saying, "The more you do, the more you can do"? I've always believed in it, and now that I'm teaching I believe it to the core.

So some of them might hate me. Some of them just hate writing. And sure, I couldn't figure out for the life of me why they still didn't understand the assignment after I explained it three times. Yes I stumbled today when the pre-printed handouts the department gave me referenced last year's comp class's assignments instead of this one's. But I'm also sure they can't tell this is the first time I've ever done anything like this.

I'm loving teaching, but perhaps more importantly I'm loving the cohort I'm teaching with. Either the stars aligned for us, or the university's application readers have a knack for selecting mostly compatible kids. (We share such a cramped space, it would be awful if it were jammed with a disagreeable crew.) A small group of us had a celebratory pint after class today, at the local dive bar with the sticky floors and the peeling tabletops. We started out talking about our students, then about the program, and then ended up discussing genealogy for an hour. It was nice to talk about something besides school with my schoolmates, after these two grueling weeks of teaching practicum and then BOOT! right into teaching.

It is just so awesome to work with and socialize with people who get the thing you are doing with yourself! (And it helps that they're all real smart too.) I am working hard and probably tiring myself out because of it, but it feels good. This is not work, I keep thinking. Those other jobs were work. This is just what I do.

This is the longest I've been away from this blog, but I wanted to post something to record that I'm not done with it yet. This has been a crazy month, and I will get back in the swing of more things than ever pretty soon. It seems even in the short time since I have started the school year that I can do so much more with myself. I'm starting to love routines, because they mean everything will get done. I pack lunches for me and my first-grader, I help him with his homework, I grade my students' homework, I do MY homework. The house is getting messy during the week, but I'm a whirlwind of cleaning energy on the weekends. And then there's the band. New songs this month, and practice every week, and editing video for our website. HOLY CRAP how am I doing all these things? And I still want to post my little essays here. I know I can find the time, because: "The more you do, the more you can do!" (For about 16 weeks anyway. Week 14 I know I'll be begging for Christmas to come.)

Words to Eat

2011-07-21T22:20:00.000-07:00

In this heat wave, the worst since my move to Illinois, my favorite words have started to move to cooler pastures. (That is, if words graze on pastures befitting their seasonal appetites.) Fall being my favorite season, I usually gravitate toward woody, full-bodied words that linger like a nut brown ale. But this summer, in 100 degree misery, those words will never do. "Maritime" has wandered into the fold, as well as some food words that bring me more joy than I formerly cared to notice.

I love consumables. Not the word, the things themselves. By that I mean ingestibles, I suppose. Food and drink. I can't just say I love food, because then you'd think I was a foodie. I'm certainly not. Besides, it is my fervent love of drinks that is rather uncanny. (I love drinks in a can.) And by that I don't mean booze alone. Anything liquid that can be bottled, poured, canned, fountained, I'm pretty much all over it. I always have to have something to drink. I am an iced tea fiend. If it is in tea form I will drink it. This brings me to my first new favorite word: REFRESHMENTS.

As a kid I always thought that refreshments were supposed to be refreshing. Not hard cookies, not room temperature juice. Minty lady fingers or layered cookies, cucumber sandwiches, flavored iced tea...those things are refreshing. I expected these things to be there, whenever any event claimed to have "refreshments" waiting on a table somewhere. I also thought it meant drinks, and lots of them. Why else do they say "Can I freshen up your drink?" And why are dry, packaged foods supposed to be refreshing? I think anyone hosting some event with "refreshments" after should change the invite to say "snacks" if all they have are snacks. REFRESHMENTS require far more attention to detail and far more hospitality than a PTA meeting or a chess night at the library can muster. They must refresh. Delight and refresh.

To move into food-only territory, another word: SANDWICHES.

Doesn't it just sound like what it is? Weird since it's named after a guy. The word has less to do with the thing than just about any word! And it's never troubling that "SAND" is in there. Everyone's had a sandy sandwich at the beach, and it's quite awful. Yet the name doesn't put us off. The SAND is like the part of the word that represents all the stuff, and the WICH is like the mushing together. SAAAAAND (putting on lettuce, putting on mayonnaise, putting on cheeses...) WICH! (SMOOSH! It's a sandwich!) I eat most sandwiches on untoasted bread. I like the WICH to be extra WICHy. And what a refreshment for a hot day!

CUCUMBER SANDWICHES and FINGER SANDWICHES are two subsets (and the latter includes the former) of SANDWICHES that I adore, both for the words and the things themselves. There were finger sandwiches at my honors convocation reception in undergrad. That is the last time I saw them. Sandwich ephemera. (Isn't all food a kind of ephemera?) I pressed toward the many-tiered finger sandwich tower only to find that ham salad was all that remained. The parents of the other honorable students had devoured my hard-earned finger sandwiches. I was devastated. Even chocolate covered strawberries could not bring me out of my finger sandwich funk.

I never make finger sandwiches for myself at home. Ninety-nine percent of the point is that someone had to make them for you. (Funny how sandwiches went from something for men to eat while playing cards to something with which women impress other women. But now they are universal, and so American at once!)

A broader category of food thing with a lovely word to denote it is the LUNCHEON.

LUNCHEON first appeals to me because it is old-fashioned. Today a luncheon is only called that when it is some big lunch gathering for a cause or a seminar or something. Red Hat ladies luncheon. But suburban housewives just go to lunch. Don't they know people used to luncheon just for the sake of lunching! I adore the scene in A Room of One's Own when Mary gazes out the window, turning away from the "luncheon party" to think about whether women hummed Tennyson at luncheon parties before the war. And her refusal to gloss over the dishes! She catalogs the fare of the luncheon -- it is as much about the food as it is about "something very witty that was said."

Lunch is my favorite meal (there's always a sandwich in it, right?), yet it is the one I get to share with others most seldom. I almost never luncheon. I would like to say witty things while gesturing with a cucumber sandwich. I'm picturing it.

So those are my food words this summer. I have also renewed my penchant for Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink, because it's like chocolate milk that won't make you puke in the summer, and it's a drink so I have to drink it. (My son calls it "Yo-Ho.") This is the first time I've noticed a real seasonal change in the words I think about, and try to use often. I can add seasonal word disorder and seasonal food disorder (shouldn't we all eat seasonal?) to my seasonal music disorder. All of these neuroses probably keep me out of the woods for Seasonal Affective Disorder. I'll stay over here in the cool green pasture and luncheon on my sandwiches and refreshments.

The Band

2011-07-20T21:42:00.000-07:00

I may be a student of literature, and I may be about to hold in my hands the minds of 25 unsuspecting college freshmen, molding them (hopefully) into properly processing centers of language and critical thought. But that doesn't mean I don't have a life. I figured I'd live out my rock'n'roll persona this month, the last before I take on the frightening task of role modeling.

I'm in a band. It's a silly thing. A classic rock cover band that only plays bars and parties in the western suburbs of Chicagoland. We do all right. This band is comprised of me and four men, one of whom is about ten years my senior, and the rest even older. So they have good taste in music.

We used to have the stupidest name. It was awful. So we changed it to something consummately awful. We are making our debut as

DICK COYLE AND THE DRILLERS

this August 13 in Aurora, Illinois.

Crass! Offensive! What? These are all things one might say at the sound of that name. I didn't choose it, but I like it. It makes no sense. And it's delightfully awful.

I am the lead singer, but I am not Dick Coyle.

Please enjoy photos of us looking very serious. We will drill your ass. Website is "under construction."

Love,
Robyn Coyle
Lead Singer, Harp, Small Cha Chas

PS: I know shorts are not rock'n'roll. But photo shoots no one knew were about to happen are.

All photos are copyright Erica Nicksin, who also had no idea she was about to shoot photos.

Summertime and the Livin's Aubrey

2011-07-17T23:24:00.000-07:00

I started copying some lady faces.

My darling friend Erica visited me this past week, and brought me treasures from the New York City. One such treasure is a yellow cloth-bound biography of Aubrey Beardsley. The true measure of a friend is when she brings you something you never knew you wanted, yet once you see the thing, you say, "I've been wanting that."

Erica studied history, I, literature. She usually reads the history. I usually read the literature. When she arrived with a thick copy of MELVILLE this visit, I got to thinking about biographies. They are a hard thing to read sometimes, for those of us who want everything to be a story. Or more accurately, who want everything to have layers of meaning. How can this be, with biography? Last semester I dragged through a well written, detail-filled, critical biography of Milton. The Lewalski. Indispensable to a Milton scholar, but summer reading it is not. Erica and I talked about biographies. Turns out, few of them are summer reading. Aubrey Beardsley happens to be an exception.

Ended with creeps.
(Click for a close-up!)

I'm enjoying the read, even though there are only a few plates. Presumably if one is reading the biography of Aubrey Beardsley, one is probably already familiar with his or her drawings of men and/or women (Erica and I also discussed the silliness and the limits of gender neutral language!), and one does not need an extensive collection of Beardsley prints thickening up the bio. So I am in the midst of it, watching little precocious Aubrey charm all his schoolmasters, when I get the urge to draw. I have not drawn in ages. A biography that gives one the urge to draw is indeed a good biography.

So it began with the copied lady faces (and other parts) like the illustration above, and ended with my own characters like this sleazy fin de siecle fellow on the left.

Now, back to reading about Beardsley!

My drawing of the Beardsley photograph in Weintraub's book.

Unfriending Ourselves

2011-06-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

Sometime in August, I am planning a single-person exodus from Facebook. I have paid my way through school, including two years of undergrad and a year of grad school, by working in internet marketing and social media. So how can I want to leave Facebook? Because I like to be different, I guess. Whenever I hear that "90% of people do this stupid thing" I no longer want to do that stupid thing. (I know that 90% of the freakin' WORLD is not on Facebook, but according to some studies, 90% of people who use the internet are on Facebook.) I read a dumb article that the internet is "shrinking" while facebook is growing. The article was poorly argued, but we can all see how Facebook is taking over like AOL once did long ago, making every user think that Facebook IS the internet.

As far as marketers are concerned, this means we need to focus more and more on conversions (a dirty word for getting your money) through Facebook. Marketers are like the linguists of advertising culture. Linguists just watch what language does and record it, take note of it, respond to it. They don't try to influence it. Marketers do the same with people's buying habits and spending trends. They don't try to influence what you buy or what ads you like -- they watch what you are already buying and responding to, and try to profit on that. No marketer (or linguist) says "This trend is bad! People are idots to let Facebook tell them how to interact with businesses!" Or, for the linguists, "People are idiots to always type in text message lingo!" They just accept it, and work with it. They make no value judgments.

I don't agree with the linguists or the marketers on these things. I value-judge like a mofo.

I've read too many reports about how we need to keep focusing on Facebook. But Facebook is eating our brains! Why can't we just decide to say "FUCK FACEBOOK" and move on? Well, the bottom line is, online companies won't make as much money (at least not right away) if they do that.

But I'm not concerned about making money off of Facebook anymore. Next month I will have far bigger concerns! Concerns we lucky denizens of the First World have contended with before Mark Zuckerwhatever was even a twinkle in anybody's eye! "How do we teach people how to write?" That will be my main concern.

So yes, I am worried about losing touch with real friends. But if they are real friends, they can email me pictures of their daughter, or an interesting article they found. Or they can Tweet at me all they want. I have no desire or need to flee from Twitter. (It's only words!) Leaving Facebook does mean I won't see myself in other people's eyes in quite the same way. I will sort of be unfriending myself. But I will continue to have alternative social outlets, and an ongoing message of blather. I can't help myself. I'm a writer.

So email me, tweet me, blog me, or Flickr me if you like to look at things. Just please don't Facebook me. I'm too cool for that now.

I had hoped to wax more philosophic about this, but here is a good article on why to do it and how to do it from my friend Mike Johnduff, who was off Facebook before "off Facebook" was cool:

How to get off Facebook

And here is an article from a couple years ago when Facebook first started fucking with my brain:

Robyn Byrd is Itchy Typewriter Finger

Oh, Old People

2011-06-09T18:41:00.000-07:00

I have always had a sickeningly soft spot for a certain kind of old person. I don't know if it's something about their money woes, their physical discomfort, their confusion at new situations, or what. Then there's their love of being around young people, no matter who the young people are -- that gets me too. I just think they can be so cute and endearing I just don't know what to do about it. There almost always will be a miscommunication when a young person is speaking to a very old person, and this opens up a space of confusion and empathy for both of them. All this probably sounds insensitive, like I'm not being politically correct about the elderly. Well, the elderly is a big faceless saggy group of people hailing from all walker-assisted walks of old-person life. Not all of them are loveable. Some are downright intolerable. But I can't exactly explain what makes the ones who are loveable stick in my head the way they do. Here are some of my old people, or situations that make me think of them:

- An old man at a Pennsylvania gas station, full service. He hobbles out to do his job, but we don't need gas. We need bathrooms and snacks. After the bathroom stop, we ask about the snacks. He says "Head on over to the snack shop there!" It's a shelter next to the gas station with vending machines in it, and we don't have any change. I will buy your gas next time old man! And I'll bring change! I'm so sorry!

- Aisles of toys at drug stores and grocery stores always make me think of old people. They don't go to toy stores, but they certainly go to drug stores. If they are visiting a grandchild, they might buy cheaply made, overpriced toys, bibs, teething rings because they're there. This is no big deal to the mom who wants to shut up her whiny five-year-old with the plastic bow and arrow set. Young people can always earn more money tomorrow. But the old people! Their fixed incomes! Noooo!

-Fake and knockoff toys and videos also make me think of old people. Again, they are in the grocery store, or they used to be much more often when I was a kid. I rememberbeing 8 or 9 years old, looking at faded VHS tapes of "The Very Little Mermaid" or some other Disney knockoff and wanting to cry, thinking of the old man who would buy that for his four-year-old grandaughter only to have her throw a temper tantrum when Ariel didn't show up on the screen in Disneycolor. Oh dear, dear. Yes I have always thought about these things. I wanted to bawl right there in the Martin's Foods checkout while my mom plopped packages of chicken thighs and boxes of potatoes on the sticky conveyor belt. (And years before this, my mom would buy Golden Books at the supermarket. That was in the early '80s, when markets were still places to "market" specifically to women, and the freezers had those plastic flappy things instead of doors. I think we even got our encyclopedias at Martin's. My Goldenbooks still have the discount price tags on them, 69 cents, 81 cents...)

-With an ex, visiting an old man who was once an influential cartoonist. He was ailing, his wife gone for a couple of years, and he was living with his son in Northern California. His son had his own family to deal with, so our visit was so welcomed. We offered to get this old man some things at the store. He asked for maybe two things. We brought him back a big basket of all kinds of fruit. I remembered he liked fruit. He was so happy he wanted to give me a cute old man peck on the cheek. But he had shrunken so much, as he leaned in I could tell he was going to miss. So he hugged me a little, and planted a kiss on the tip of my collar bone.

- My grandmother is a hoarder. Not the kind whose house is filled with cats (she hates cats!), but whose kitchen is filled with foods of questionable freshness. The refrigerator teems with half-drunk glasses of buttermilk (hers) and open soda bottles (no doubt some ungrateful granchild's). The ancient Formica table, not '50s Formica but some '40s variety with a wooden drawer full of things that have been there since I was a kid, is spotted with the tiniest ceramic dishes, each with a little glass lid, holding leftover potatoes, banana pudding, biscuits, and anything else that can stand to "set out" until bedtime or longer, just in case someone would like to eat it. Grandma Byrd's standards for what goes in the fridge are a holdover from the icebox days, when cold space was at a premium. Now that she has this refrigerator, the former "larder" items still sit outside the fridge, growing tangy, while Grandma, overwhelmed by the cavernous space within that modern appliance, fills it up with cups of milk.

----------------------------------------------

I know this seems like a pretty random entry, but besides just wanting to share my old people pathos, I think this is a bit topical too. Like I said in that politically incorrect sentence above, we don't really sympathize with "the elderly" as a group; at least not the same way we feel for "children in poverty" or "kids with cancer" or other groups that might need our care and help. But many of us sympathize with elderly individuals quite deeply. In light of recent threats to Medicare, I think we all need to remember the old people we know and love, remember the stories they tell, the funny little things they do, the crotchety hugs they give, and all the little details that make us love them and make us want them to stick around as long as they can. Then we need to remember that many old people are someone else's Pop-pop, Meemaw, Grammy, or whatever, and that for all of them to stick around, they're going to need a little help from all of us strong, young folks who have time enough to make another dollar tomorrow.

Grad Student Paper Panic

2011-05-06T11:46:00.000-07:00

My last post was about the term paper I wrote for my Milton class. It was a grand old idea for a paper (so I thought), but it tumbled out of my hands pretty quickly. I'd never written on Milton alone (though I'd focused on him for a fem crit paper or two in undergrad), and I soon saw how big he really is. The paper, to be complete, would have to span time back to Virgil's day, nay, back to the beginning of time itself. To talk about the pastoral, to give any complete sense of what it is, one would need a thorough education in classics, along with concordances to Milton, Romantic poetry, metaphysical poetry (what are we supposed to call it nowadays?), etc, and the ability to see all these things happening at once. Only God (or Milton) could do justice to a paper on Milton. So it seemed.

Have you ever turned in a paper and been completely embarrassed by the act? Not just the act of writing such a steaming pile, but the act of placing something so putrid on the desk of a learned professor who you know will see right through the pages of your crap to your true self, the trembling, ignorant student! Or maybe he'll just think you're a hack. And which would be the more shameful? you start to wonder as you scurry out of the classroom. You wait for an email where he demands to know what you thought you were trying to get away with, putting that thing on his desk that way. Nothing comes. You dread the next class session. Next week, you avoid eye contact during lecture. "If he sees me, he'll know!" You're still not sure if you're a lazy jerk trying to get away with something, or if you just have no idea what you're doing. "Here it comes! Oh God! Oh God!"

A MINUS.

Do all grad students do this to themselves? I mean, I did get a "minus" after my "A," but as I said, I did fumble a bit under the weight of Milton's hefty pastoral legacy. But I guess I didn't really drop the ball.

Next day, in my bibliography class, the room was filled with chatter of the final short paper we were turning in. A girl behind me, a smart cookie, a teaching assistant with two years of freshman wrangling under her belt, was having Grad Student Paper Panic (GSPP). "I know I say all my papers are bad...but this one is REALLY BAD!" Her fears were echoed by the rest of the class, half of them Ph. D. candidates. I'm sure she will also get an A minus. Or maybe even an A. (Bibliography class is nowhere near as serious as Milton class. I really thought I was about to get kicked out of school.)

My newest blogger associate over at Girl on a Mountain with a Chicken blog recently wrote about GSPP in her program. It is real!

Before he handed back the Milton papers, the professor handed each of us a "certificate" printed on marbly parchment paper: "PERITUS MILTONI" it proclaimed. I think I'll frame it.

Pastoral Degeneration

2011-04-23T13:28:00.000-07:00

Lo! The sheep are melting!

A summary of the paper I'm writing, on Milton of course:

To Hell and Back: Pastoral Degeneration in Milton's Poems (Workin' title! Want to find something in PL to replace "to hell and back.")

The young Milton is thoroughly "rusticated" by the time he composes "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity." The classical pastoral had become his best expressive vehicle, and he continues to work in this Virgilian vein into his 30s, culminating with "Lycidas" (in English) and "Epitaphiam Damonis," his last Latin pastoral elegy. At this point he vows he will lay down the pastoral altogether, unless he can continue it in a distinctly English voice. When Milton finally gets down to the real work of his great poem, Paradise Lost, he has moved away from his earlier dependence on pastoral imagery and builds an epic work, rivaling Virgil's later epic poetry, but, like epic Virgil, Milton still interweaves the reminiscent, soothing tones of the "oaten flute" behind the soaring voice of his universal tragedy. The penetrating literary tradition, found in Milton's dense allusions and similes, is evidence of Pastoralism's strands in the fabric of PL. Finally, as Milton dealt so beautifully with pastorals of fields, forests, and even oceans in his early poetry, Milton must deal with the ultimate pastoral landscape -- Eden. His classical mindset, his constant urge for Virgilian homage, and his Christian beliefs must come together to create a pastoral scene like no other, both in its resplendent beauty before the Fall, and in its completely degenerated form (degenerated, like his use of the pastoral has become) once our "general ancestors" have undone any hope of reclaiming the perfect Earthly landscape.

That's just the summary I wrote up to share with my colleagues. Now I have to actually write that shit. Just wanted to say 'hi' to the blog, to confirm that yes I am still reading Milton, and no I am not getting lazy.

When I came up with that degeneration concept (which I haven't found anything specific on -- yes!), I was thinking of Milton's pastoral lapse and his move to the epic, by fits and starts (some seemingly intentional, some a writer's struggle). I'm not as interested in what made Milton change his tune, but what happens when you take this degenerated application of a literary type (pastoral elegy) and apply it to Eden, pre- and post-lapse. The former is almost garishly and sexually generative, the latter is (and I didn't even intend this!) most literally degenerative. Add in all Milton's careful use of words like "general ancestor" and I've got all kinds of wordplay to work with. I'm still trying to work in something about Hell being a pastoral landscape too, but I don't know if that will fly.

My sources are all antique ones, which I think is okay for Milton studies. All the newer sources were about "the body," gender, and other such buzzword buzzkills. I wanted some good meaty treatments of the Virgilian aspects of Milton, the pastoral, you know, old timer stuff. So I'm turning to some dead men who wrote for Studies in Philology and the like, and I will see you in 15 pages or so.

Fun with Milton

2011-04-06T18:20:00.000-07:00

4/13/11: Added some more stuff after third reading.

I decided to make a list of fun things and thoughts about Paradise Lost. Not that the whole thing isn't fun, but some parts are funnier (or more interesting) than others. We are keeping commonplace books, but it's possible that not everything in my notes will stay in the commonplace.

The Whole Poem
Milton only uses the word "providence" three times in the poem.

How many times does he use "orient"? It gets so old! I don't think I get too tired of any of his other oft repeated words and appellations ("vouchsafed," "general ancestor," etc.) but "orient" is used almost once per book. It really catches the ear if you listen to the poem, and not in a good way.

Milton's use of "thunder" in place of lightening. Thunder is sound. The word is sound. Thunder is the word? Whoa. Pretty cool, JM.

Satan never goes in a straight line. He bends, wheels, scours the edges of hell, etc. He also never looks back, literally or figuratively.

Satan sees one thing at a time, God sees everything at once.

Books I and II
Satan rocks.

Book III
God has intensely fresh breath. (l. 135-36)

We're supposed to think the demons are cowards because they don't offer to fly through Chaos (Book II), but the wimp angels don't volunteer for a suicide mission either. Only The Son takes that on.

God is so boring. What's Satan up to? (flip, flip, flip...)

Book IV
Uriel is a little light on his feet. Even for an angel. He's got technicolor wings and sparkly locks and what not.

Satan is a voyeur.

Gabriel is kind of a jerk. First he tells Uriel "Nobody got in on my watch!" when obviously someone did. Then Gabe calls Satan a liar when Satan gives more than one excuse for why he fled hell. Of course he's going to make excuses. He's Satan, for Christ's sake!

"Myself am Hell" (l. 75). Great line. Put that one on your bathroom mirror!

"...into the fold" (l. 187). For some reason that combination of words is beautiful to me. He uses it twice within a few lines.

Satan turns into a cormorant (like a vulture) and perches on the Tree of Life (l. 194). Creepy stuff!

The circus of animals cavorting around in the garden is garish. I can't help getting that sick tickle in my stomach when I read lines like "the sportful herd" (l. 396). I think it even trumps "trip on the light fantastic toe" (L'Allegro) which actually doesn't bother me so much anymore. The scene gets even sicker when Satan starts turning into one, then another creature. I love animals, but I guess I always pictured Eden as a North American Paradise, with some nice fawns, bunnies, and robins and stuff. Elephants and tigers are too wacky.

Satan cusses for real: "Oh Hell!" (l. 358). He's not saying "O Hell," like "Hail Hell!" or "Hey there, Hell." He's really saying "OH HELL!" as in, "FUCK!"

Book V
Abdiel is pretty cool. He's supposed to be the "littlest angel," but he tells Lucifer he's about to meet his maker in a beautiful line (894-95): "Then who created thee lamenting learne, / When who can uncreate thee thou shalt know."

Book VI
Michael is a kickass angel. I see why Gabe is his second.

The angels and soon-to-be-demons start hurling mountain tops at one another. If that wasn't funny enough, when The Son (Jesus) shows up, the mountain chunks scurry away, embarrassed, and resume their places on the hilltops. It reminds me of the Monty Python animation where the monk comes out of the tower and yells at the cavorting sun and cloud, and they amble over the horizon on their chunky legs.

The Son drives a chariot made of eyeballs. Flaming eyeballs. Word. (Word!)

Book VII
Man. Old blindy is really starting to lose it in the invocation for this book. "Dangers compast round," worries of Orphic dismemberment. But who can blame him in that state? "Half yet remains unsung" (l. 21) at that point, and he had to finish. The invocation for this book is so long, and I think he had abandoned invocations after the first book. (He does use apostrophe a few times, as in talking to the poem itself or to the muses again, but not invoking them.) He sounds desperate. He needs to muster his strength, to get a second wind from the muses. His talk of dismemberment also make it seem almost like he knew the finished manuscript would be threatened by fire.

A note on the Orphic stuff: Until I took Milton, I had no idea that the word "remember" has an important connection to the myth of Orpheus. He was torn apart by Bacchus's followers, yet his head floated, still singing, down the river. This myth has a lot of significance for Milton and is all over his minor poems, but he actually lays off of it in PL, except for this mention. Anyway, to remember is to "re-member." To undo the tearing apart. This makes it a very different word from "recall." Something to add to the language arsenal!

Book VIII
Adam asks Raphael about angel sex. Seriously, he does. Raphael blushes "celestial rosie red" and describes the act briefly:

Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy'st
(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy
In eminence, and obstacle find none
Of membrane, joynt, or limb, exclusive barrs: [ 625 ]
Easier then Air with Air, if Spirits embrace,
Total they mix, Union of Pure with Pure
Desiring; nor restrain'd conveyance need
As Flesh to mix with Flesh, or Soul with Soul.

So I guess angel sex is like mixing up some Kool-Aid, or jumping into a blender.

Book IX
Lots of stuff in this book. You should read it.

Book X
When Adam is trying to tell Eve that their fate is really not so bad, he says: "Pains onely in Child-bearing were foretold, / And bringing forth, soon recompenc't with joy" (ll. 1051-52). Pains ONLY in childbirth Eve! No big deal! While he's right that these pains are made worth it by a mother's love, he can't imagine all the other pains that would be heaped upon Eve because of her poor, sensitive uterus. I wrote on "Eve's Labor Pains" last year, and I think I might revisit the topic now that I'm better versed in my PL.

Books XI and XII
I'll come back to these, as I haven't listened to them on tape or reread them yet, and therefore don't have any good or interesting notes.

This poem is great. I thought my Milton crush might wear off by now, with only five weeks of classes left, but I think I'm going to become a Miltonist.

Titular Revisit

2011-03-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

You may have read my rant on bad titles last semester (and forgive me for assuming everyone blocks their time in semesters), but I am returning briefly to the subject after my “titular” opinions were validated by a Distinguished Professor this past week.

We were learning how to use various search systems and article databases at the university library, and our little smart-classroom session was being conducted by a British professor old enough to have earned that title “Distinguished Professor of Literature,” and British enough that most of us could only understand his every third word (which, by whispers, we would collectively attempt to piece together into sentences). Like so many professors whom I end up liking enormously, this chap cut his critical teeth amid a campus full of 1960s activists and budding poststructuralists, and like so many of the same professors, he is rather older fashioned than the vintage of his doctorate would suggest, having grown up with the stuff, and then watching it turn into all manner of -isms and queernesses.

As we searched for whatever the embarrassed student called to the front of the classroom was in the mood for searching (“Faulkner + horses,” “Herman Hesse + Freud,” “Ergodic literature,” etc.), the good Doctor’s disapproval of certain titles returned by the search became immediately apparent:

“Multiplicity and whaaa? Yuu-ni-ver-sal snopeism and blah, blaaaah… what kind of pretentious nonsense is all that?! That has to be pretention embodied! What the blazes?”

But inevitably (and thankfully for the class, as well as for the future of literary study), there would be a few results in each search that struck the Doctor’s fancy, or just had the right ring for him:

“'Horses, Hell, and Highwater,’ now there’s a title! Oooh, ‘The Unappeased Imagination,’ that’s nice. Oh look at that, ‘Whores and Horses’! Faulkner’s good for some whores and horses. Let’s see,'An insider’s view of depraved, deranged, drugged out brilliance’ – well!”

The Distinguished Professor complains of the same things as I: titles with semicolons, virgules, parentheses, long and trendy words. Throughout our session he relates stories of job candidates whom he interviewed in the ‘80s and ‘90s, telling us how they all made sure to drop the names of the latest "fashionable" critics and "fashionable" criticisms (which some time ago always meant dropping the big “D”). He likes the same things as I, in a title that is. Short and intriguing. Strong but common words. The same things one looks for in the title of a work. Perhaps a critic who uses an inflated title doesn’t value his or her own work as a work? Maybe that's going too far, and I noted in my other "titular" post reasons one might need a long, colon-riddled title. I was just pleased to have a bloke like the Doctor agreeing with me on this.

An Intimate Evening with Milton

2011-03-06T14:52:00.000-08:00

If they put that up on the marquis at the Chicago Theater, I doubt they could sell any tickets. My Milton professor likes to joke, "I'd love to just sit down and have a beer with so many of the greats -- James Joyce, Wordsworth... Shakespeare! Me and Shakespeare'd get roaring drunk! But not Milton. I wouldn't have a drink with him. What the hell would I have to say to Milton?"

Dr. Johnson ("This Dr. Johnson, not the other!" -- also a running joke) doesn't doubt that Milton has plenty to say, but what do you say back to someone who is so learned, so poetically gifted, so...temperate? If he were here, I don't know that he would enjoy a drink with any of us.

I'm taking a break from Milton midterm studying to do a big brain dump and ask a quick question, one I've asked here before. What the hell is "studying"?

Do you re-read everything? Re-skim it? Write stuff down? And what do you write down? In high school, in undergrad, I never really had to study, except to reread the philosophy a couple of times. I took notes in class, retained them in my noggin. I don't think that will continue to fly in grad school, especially reading a hundred pages a week per class.

Here's what I'm doing -- I made a chronological list of the works we've read, dated them, and wrote summaries of them from memory with key terms for each (i.e. pastoral elegy). Now I'm going to go back with the book and add in anything important that I missed. This is mostly for piece identification, since the essay is open book.

How do you study? Really, I'd like to know.

Ness-ness

2011-02-27T21:53:00.000-08:00

My favorite suffix in the English language is -ness. Since our language was in its Germanic infancy, some kind of -ness has been used to turn things (usually adjectives) into nouns. The -ness suffix is one of many little game-changers and word-makers that help give English its flexibility, potential creativity, and seemingly never-ending productivity.

Here is -ness in the OED:

Forming abstract nouns from adjectives, participles, adjectival phrases, and (more rarely) nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adverbs.The following are examples of some distinctive nonce-uses of the suffix since the 19th cent.
1804    S. T. Coleridge Let. in Lit. Remains (1836) II. 414   The exclusive Sir-Thomas-Brown-ness of all the fancies.
1853    ‘G. Eliot’ in J. W. Cross George Eliot's Life (1885) I. 319   Dislike-to-getting-up-in-the-morningness.
1859    G. A. Sala Gaslight & Daylight iv. 43   An irreproachable state of clean-shirtedness, navy blue-broadclothedness and chimney-pot-hattedness.
1901    Academy 8 June 495/2   Southport, with its sponge-cakeyness and school-girlism is surely worth study.
1949    P. Grainger Let. 23 Nov. in All-round Man (1994) 240   You are a love-child moving towards art. I am an artist moving towards love-child-ness.
2000    Guardian 24 Mar. (Review section) 21/1   The numbskulled singalong-ness of Oasis.

As the OED mentions, these examples are all post-1800. I think the 19th century must be when -ness really came into its own. In fact, English language productivity was at its all-around highest in that century. (If you log on OED look at the "Timelines" link. Fascinating!)

Now for the examples. "Sir-Thomas-Brown-ness"! Hilariousness. (Thomas Browne wrote rambling and ornate inquiries into how snails' eyestalks work, among other tidbits of 17th century prose. That particular appellation is not all that descriptive, but doesn't "17th century prose" just sound tortuous?) And as for George Eliot's "Dislike-to-getting-up-in-the-morning-ness," I have once before mentioned that as one of my favorite examples of anything in the whole GD OED. The others are fine examples too, with the exception of the music review from 2000. "Singalong-ness"? It's clumsy. "Sing-songy-ness" would have been better. Which brings me to a different point.

The suffix -ness has been abused and overused as of late. I think it started innocently enough, being appropriated by youths to coin or re-introduce nouned adjectives such as "awesomeness," but now it's all the time popping up in commercials and TV shows, used clumsily and for humorous effect (e.g. "Family Guy-ness" on TBS). Granted, it is a funny suffix, and there seems to be something inherently funny about changing parts of speech, especially now that constructions such as "noun of noun, noun of noun..." are rare to obsolete. But changing the part of speech is not a joke in itself. The -ness has to add something new to the meaning for it to really work. And it has to sound good! Coleridge fluently nouns the essence of a 17th century writer. Eliot heroically nouns an undesirable personal characteristic that we still joke about today. Their uses are unique and productive.

Another acceptable thing to do with -ness, is to distill something into a noun (rather than string-together-nouning ad infinitum). Adding -ness to a quality possessed by a person makes it carry more weight. Unfortunately the advert writers use this method too, to make jokes by hyperbole. It doesn't work very well, and again they wrongly think "the clumsier the funnier." I think the Grainger example above fits this distillation type of -ness use, though this example, like almost all the OED examples, appears to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Commercials and sitcoms aren't capable of such subtlety, and by that shortcoming, as well as others, they don't let -ness do its best work. And like so many other words, it begins to fall out of my favor because its ubiquitousness.

I won't give up on -ness, not on a suffix with such a long and colorful history! I am optimistic that it can be reclaimed and be allowed to do its work. Unlike so many Old English suffixes that have left us, and so many new suffixes and prefixes from the French and Latin that infected Middle and Modern English, perhaps -ness will live with English until English breathes its last gasp.

Note: I didn't link to the OED because it "lives behind a paywall" as they say. You have to log in through your university's library database list. The wealth of Englishness that awaits you is well worth the two minutes it takes to figure that shitz out.

Gatsby Gaining Ground

2011-02-26T20:57:00.000-08:00

A stout, middle-aged man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.

“What do you think?” he demanded impetuously.

“About what?” He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.

“About that. As a matter of fact you needn’t bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They’re real.”

“The books?”

He nodded.

“Absolutely real — have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real. Pages and — Here! Lemme show you.”

Taking our scepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the “Stoddard Lectures.”

“See!” he cried triumphantly. “It’s a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too — didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?”

He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf, muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse.

--from The Great Gatsby, Chapter 3

Friends and colleagues have grumbled at me over the years, for being openly indifferent about The Great Gatsby. Thanks to a class discussion about books as physical objects, I discovered a single page in the text (the book) that might be the beginnings of salvaging the whole thing for me.

Why have I resisted Gatsby for so long? First, it's all the symbolism! Crammit down your throat symbolism. I could forgive that, though, if it weren't for the people of average intelligence for whom the book is a testament to what they think is their own interpretive genius. The fact that there are so many easy ways into the novel (er, symbols), means it has a following of people who habitually read things that are easy to read, and perhaps are only capable of really getting into reading things that are easy to read. I've come to realize that this is not a flaw in itself. No fault of Fitzgerald's that he writes simply and in modern English. So to better put my finger on my distaste, it's one of those not liking the fans situations.

This in no way means that there are not thousands of well-read, highly intelligent people who love the book. I think most of them do, actually. Unfortunately no fellow student of literature has ever presented me with a critical defense of the thing. Besides the aforementioned causes of my aversion, I am, again, mostly indifferent, and therefore open to argument. I just don't see what's to get excited about. I welcome any illumination on this topic. As long as you're not going to tell me it's all about the symbolism.

You know, this might just come down to "to each her own," so I hope I can be forgiven. I study 19th century British novels, I have a newly flourishing fondness for Milton, and I like my 20th century mean and dirty. Gatsby isn't any of those. Maybe I'm flawed because I need to read things that contain a certain percentage of either obsolete or offensive vocabulary.

Now that you're cursing me, vile Gatsby-doubting miscreant that I am, I'll tell you why I like this page. And you can be sure it has nothing to do with the "owl-eyed man" and his likeness to the big dumb eyes on the billboard (although I do like his dialog, and I like that he shows up at the funeral). I like it because it only made sense to me once I knew what the uncut pages mean. You see books are put together out of lots of folded up pieces of paper, not one page at a time. Duh, right? But we children of industry never really think about how the top fold gets opened up. So after all this talk of books as things in my bibliography class, we held and molested an old uncut Italian book that the professor had brought in. Obviously he's never read it, but he keeps it for just such an occasion -- letting graduate students manhandle a book in its pre-20th century pre-machine-cut form, and ruminate on all the implications of page cutting. What involvement the readers of yesteryear would have had with their books! A personal, tactile involvement. Violent even, in a way.

The fact that Gatsby did not cut the books was actually a testament to his character -- as disingenuous as he may be, as easily as he could have afforded to pay his help to cut all the pages open, as careful pains he took to stock his massive library with real books, "pages and everything," he's not going to pretend he's read them. That would be going too far. I love that the man calls it "realism."

This page is also evidence, to me, that books are worth going back to every few years, especially ones you had trouble with. I've read it three times (in sophomore year of college, last) and I'm considering another go at it, just to be sure I'm still indifferent. If I missed this scene, maybe I missed something else -- and it'll be fresh in my mind when the Gatsby defenders attack. It's only nine chapters. And yeah, it's an easy read.

Our Bailiwick

2011-02-15T16:06:00.000-08:00

At work I have an idea, pull off a post-it, and scrawl it down: "To write: Bloom confirms my suspicions of Miltonic Bardliness among the Romantics and Moderns." Another fragment of a thought: "Angle-lond in the Springtime, the Pastoral, and Oxford lament." I look at these things on the post-it, briefly, then go back to my descriptions of sunglasses, snow goggles, and biker t-shirts. As I write about fielding road debris and shredding the gnar, I imagine someone finding my post-it note and reading it. It wouldn't make any sense. It would appear to be the ravings of a weirdo, or something with so little context for the reader they would wonder at its origins. But maybe most people aren't that curious. Or observant. Nor do they read things they find lying around.

So instead I imagine finding the post-it note myself, at someone else's desk. (I am curious, and I do read things I find lying around.) I almost get that tingly feeling in my head. It would be really, really strange to find a post-it note like that.

So I tried to imagine a situation where a post-it note, like mine, would be normal. At the university library? Still seems weird. Dropped on the floor in the English building? Maybe. The only place my post-it seems at home is on the book-piled desk of a student of English. And maybe only a graduate student of English.

I suppose this is what happens to anyone as they specialize in their field of study or their line of work. Thoughts are given over to more and more specific topics, ergo notes they may write end up more and more out of context with anyone else's reality. Technical specifications on a plastic extruding machine, a dated list of names of some erstwhile Earl's ten children, even a scrawled staff with speculative musical notes adorning its wayward lines… these are all things we might find at someone's desk.

But the word speculative catches my eye. There is something so speculative about "Englishing," and not only speculative but inward looking, reflective, and considerate of its subject and its object (assign those bugbears whichever roles you choose). If we showed our notes to anyone, even our fellow graduate students, it might be embarrassing. Embarrassing how unsure the notes are, embarrassing how much they reveal about their author's internal life… Yes, sharing research in English has the potential to be very embarrassing.

This is our bailiwick, our chosen path (or for some, like Milton, a calling). Even when we make connections along the way, or have a traveling companion for a time (be it a mentor, a research partner, or an adviser), the road is lonely. I don't think all graduate students experience it that way, even if they are very independent. They may bolster themselves with a front of professionalism, which is attractive and effective in some, and frightening and pernicious in others. One student in my program interacts with others in an extremely professional manner, even on discussion boards that are meant for "Considerations." (Other than her thesis style considerations and careful diction, she is friendly and open, not competitive or anything. I see other first-year students emulating her posts.) But I just pour stuff out on the message boards, and stay conversational as always. (As if I'm capable of any other kind of voice!) Perhaps the fastest travelers keep steady to the road because they are surrounded by a company of their own fractured personalities. That sounds mean, but I don't intend it that way. Some of us only work one way, and it makes the road a little more winding, and it makes the passers-by and pilgrimage companions a little fewer and farther between.

NIU Attitude

2011-02-09T15:31:00.000-08:00

That's supposed to look like NEW attitude. Did it work?

I am three or four weeks (who's counting?) into my first semester at Northern Illinois University, but my second semester as a graduate student. That last semester was spent writhing in discomfort at DePaul University. Now the consummate relief of being here, out past the corn fields, a Midwestern wind farm (and some farm farms) on the horizon, is bathing me in some much needed serotonin.

I met with the graduate director today, to introduce myself, to make a plan for this next year and a half, and to make sure it's okay that I'm taking Milton even though I'm a professed Victorian. Breadth is rewarded in early graduate study here. ( I can even take three philosophy classes toward my master's degree!) We're not all supposed to know what we're doing. We're just expected to have a general inkling about it -- and to be curious. The graduate director is approachable, friendly, open, and taught one of my former professors. She says it's a family here, that the incoming teaching cohorts bond together and share war stories. You should see the graduate assistant offices. Workspaces packed in like Tetris blocks, eager student/teachers facing one another over back-to-back hulks of 1960s steel that used to pass for desks. I think it's a beautiful thing, housed in a mid-century hall full of creaky wooden doors, outmoded split-level floor plans, and gorgeous vintage wall-to-wall linoleums. It looks like nothing from the outside. Blase university architecture. But inside it's a protective cave!

So today I told the DGS about my DePaul experience. I had planned to gloss over it, but she asked to hear about it. I had rehearsed a thousand times in my head how to explain this awful, awful fiasco. Would she, upon hearing about my fearful exodus from another school, kick me out? Refuse me a teaching job? As I ran down what was uncomfortable about the DePaul program, the professional students, the distant professors, the inexplicable competitiveness (there's not really anything to compete for), she seemed to understand. There was no disapproving "hmmph" or anything like that. Just a reassurance that that's not the way things work around here. At NIU, we're all in this English thing together.

I'm writing this three or four weeks into the semester because exactly three weeks into the semester at DePaul I knew I could not stay there. Now, after the same number of meetings with the faculty and students of NIU, I know I'm in the right place. Fancy it is not. No one is throwing dinner parties in DeKalb. Prestigious, maybe not. I'm lucky to be in a discipline where your writing and intellect are much more important than where you earned your degree(s). Comfortable, practical, friendly, and even exciting are apt words for this program.

At NIU, conversations are had before class and at break, rather than fake smiles being exchanged as well dressed women pile out of the classroom to pretend to buy something in the vending machine. Professors say "Great discussion!" at the end of class, rather than "Let's see how many of you are left at mid-term." The PhD students are helpful and encouraging when they spot a new student. Faculty offices have chairs arranged for students to sit and talk with them, and bowls of candy sitting out, rather than having to move all their research work off a buried chair just to find you a seat before rushing you out of the office with your head in your hands after five minutes of berating your work. There are schools like that. And then there are schools like this. I'm so glad to be here!

I'm in the library (a former favorite blogging/procrastinating hangout for me in undergrad) for the first time. There is an escalator in the middle of it. Things are of huge proportions on a state school campus. It doesn't bother me, because I'm on my way up to the rare books room to learn about the history of the book.

P.S. My research class is what brought me to the rare books room, where I learned that not only does the library specialize in collecting George Eliot, but also science fiction, from the pulpy to the "serious." The head of special collections seems devoted to making that genre something of scholarly interest. Consequently, NIU owns one of the largest H.P. Lovecraft collections outside of his hometown of Providence. I can have my Victorians and my colorful space-traveling blobs too!

Bardliness

2011-02-03T14:36:00.000-08:00

"For truly, the bard is sacred to the gods and is their priest."

In Milton's "Elegy VI," which isn't really an elegy but a letter in Latin verse to his "BFF" Charles Diodati, Milton makes an important distinction between a "poet" and a "bard." For those of us who don't get into every kind of poetry, this distinction might be helpful. Most of us in class hadn't thought about it this way before.

The back-story of "Elegy VI": Charles had been feeling down after partying all winter break, and had asked a 21-year-old John to send him a letter to cheer him up. Charles felt his poetry (the two had been exchanging verses) was suffering from all the wine and women. John, having no truck with wine or women at the time, could not offer any real advice for his friend except to assure Chuck that his poetry must be even more beautiful because of his Yuletide reveling, and that the combination of lively spirits within young Charles had a "potency" that "brought forth sweet songs." After painting a lovely picture of Charles getting smashed and writing poems with Comedy, Bacchus and the bunch, Milton puts on his serious voice and begins a sermon of sorts. That is, after describing (and almost vicariously living) Diodati's poet's life, Milton has to contrast that by writing about himself -- the austere, chaste, spare-eating bard.

What, according to Milton, makes for bardliness? The bard cleanses himself of earthly contaminants, shuts himself off from earthly distractions, and makes ready to receive a message that must be told. His preparation is like that of the priest in training. His words give form to what was already being said, draw on themes from all of spiritual history, and have a way of stopping time. Not the way the poet stops time -- the poet might stop time to show us the particular, to let us contemplate it. The bard pulls a nunc stanza. That is, all time converges to a single point, enabling Milton to deliver his gift of verse back through time to the infant Christ on the wings of the Holy Spirit, and enabling the reader to take in the beginning and the end and all time, all at once. (The poem delivered to Christ is Milton's On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, which he was in the middle of writing when he sent Diodati this elegy on poets and bards.) It's funny that Milton loves to write "occasional" poems, that is, on the consideration of some occasion or other, i.e. the death of a friend. This seems very topical and particular. But, in Milton's words the occasion becomes an everlasting, ever-recurring event. So to put it simply and perhaps incompletely, a bard is a poet of epic proportions -- one who writes our epics.

But aren't epics a little out of style? Surely we have Romantic and twentieth century poets (I skip the Victorians because while their verses are beautiful I haven't read any that seem bardly) that live up to Milton's definition of bardliness. Perhaps we need to update that definition, or update how we think about the poet and the bard in contrast to one another. While Milton may have been a bard poet and only a bard poet, Il Penseroso with seldom a hint of L'Allegro coming through, later and modern poets probably led decidedly more complex psychological lives. Not that Milton's brain wouldn't have made an interesting case study, but back in the day (the seventeenth century that is) men kept their alternate personalities and secret desires a little better under wraps than a Wordsworth, a Whitman, or a Yeats would have had to. To write textbook epic poetry today, would be to deny one's self of expressing those earthy, visceral sentiments and tensions we know writhe under the surface of every poet, no matter how baroquely his words flow. So in an era when strict self-monitoring for the purpose of remaining pure enough to receive the lyrics of one's poems from on high might have been something to strive for, we don't do that today. If we did, we would be diagnosed.

Perhaps it is not just the modern poet's complex psychology (with which he is comfortable) but the modern poet's secular philosophies that make him seem less "epic," like less of a bard. I can see how many poets since Milton would fit nicely into his "just a poet" category, and make it hard to argue that they are indeed bardly at all. William Carlos Williams -- okay, so much depends upon a wheelbarrow. Lovely, but epic? Not really. Robert Frost, who's frosty verses I find wonderfully soothing, may paint an idyllic winter scene, but bardly he is not. Emily Dickinson? Hmm. It's not a hard and fast distinction for many poets, but it does provide a fun way to try to classify them when you are learning a new poet or trying to get a handle on the kinds of themes a poet uses. In no way is denying the title of "bard" a slight to a poet -- in "Elegy VI" Milton was pretty much telling Diodati that Diodati is not a bard. But he loved and praised Diodati like no other. In fact, Milton sometimes seemed to pine for the kind of experience to be had by writers of "sweet" poetry (he uses "sweet" a lot, to describe the words and temperaments of the non-bards). In L'Allegro he does not run short of lively characters and sweet poets to call on. While Il Penseroso is also filled with names, the only "bard" he mentions outright is Plato. Hardly a maker of sweet songs! Perhaps Milton felt he traveled a lonely, bardly road.

A simple test for bardliness would be to look for the traits of the epic poem, toned down or humanized as they may be in post-seventeenth century poetry. Some epic traits are allusions to myth, saints, proverbs, invocations of deities to help tell the tale, catalogs of characters (since the tale can span all time), and a narrative distance that is at once far above the event and right in the moment. But we can't reduce our search for epics and bards to mythological allusions and angelic hosts. The bard's "secret depths of his soul, and very lips alike breathe forth Jove." And again, we aren't as likely to find angelic hosts hanging around in poems these days.

I would say Wordsworth is an example of a later bard (Ode is the best known example), and some of his Romantic contemporaries might be candidates for bardliness as well. As for 20th century poets, maybe even Yeats is a bard. Yeats is much more in the moment than Milton, of course, but his occasional poems give a similar "all-encompassing time" feeling to Milton's occasionals, even though Yeats's are on much more localized and personal events ("Easter 1916," "Among School Children"). (That's not to say that Milton didn't write on personal events, i.e. the death of his newborn niece, but he would take care to universalize them.)

Forgive me for not listing any obscure poets or more minor poems here. When one is looking for bardliness (as scholars have certainly continued to do since Milton's time), it's bound to be already bound in a thick tome of major works. You'll also notice I didn't mention The Bard. I don't know if Shakespeare would have fit Milton's definition, or even an updated version. Milton wrote of him in L'Allegro, calling him "sweetest Shakespear fancies childe/Warbl[ing] his native woodnootes wilde," (l. 133-4) which suggests Shakespeare does not fit the bardly mold like the speaker of Il Penseroso, the writer of the Elegy, Milton, would. Shakespeare is something completely different -- a cerebral, humanity-enthused kind of genius.

Who is your bard?

White Whales and Octopus Experts

2011-01-25T19:24:00.000-08:00

Someday I'd really love to teach a seminar class in literature that is cross-listed with a science course. I took a seminar like this in community college, a co-taught class on farm literature and the ecology of food production: "Seed, Soil, and the Soul", it was called. The professors were good, and the books were okay -- but even with some average materials and some less than interested classmates, the class turned out to be amazingly challenging and even life-changing for a few of us (it was the very next year that I became a vegetarian). The novels kept us humanities types interested in the difficult science work, and the science (both natural and political) behind what happened in the novels helped the bio students get some context for their work. This is how good interdisciplinary classes should work at the lower levels of undergraduate study.

Early interdisciplinary study is important as students explore possible majors, and is helpful for students who do not look forward to taking general education requirements in disciplines where it might be difficult for them to do good work. Co-taught, crosslisted, six hour courses seem to me like a great approach to this. The only other incarnation of undergraduate interdisciplinary work I have experienced was a three hour course listed as IDS (Interdisciplinary Studies), on the topic of wellness. We read awful, mass market paperback books and argued about health insurance. Wellness is important, I guess, since students are often taking care of themselves for the first time, and learning how their decisions affect their health and the environment. But how was that an interdisciplinary study? And how is interdisciplinary studies a field of study that has its own three-letter acronym in the course catalog, along with ENG, PHL, MAT and the others? There has to be some ENG, PHL, MAT, PSY or whatever making up that IDS. Otherwise it's just some kind of self-help or potpourri course you'd take at the YMCA.

Unfortunately for the community college kids of tomorrow, the college where I took that awesome English-Biology mash-up course had to tighten its Honors Program budget, and stopped doing the seminar classes. Were those cross-listed courses a weird thing?

I hope the seminars come back to College of DuPage, and I hope other schools are offering similar opportunities. I mean, the class had enough of an impact that I still think about it. The IDS Wellness class on the other hand, was mostly forgettable, except the really annoying parts that just made me angry (like having to write in APA style even though I was a declared English major -- what a waste of paper).

So I had one of those rare shower epiphanies about what I would want to teach. An "Introduction to Literature" course cross-listed with marine biology or marine ecology. I think marine biology and other oceanic sciences are going to be pretty important as the globe continues to warm. What better way to get bookworms interested in what's going on with the planet and its watery denizens? And what better way for budding biologists to explore the history of man's fascination with the sea? This would probably be a sophomore level class -- so they already know how to write, but aren't too busy with major requirements to really get into a class. The reading selections would be pretty obvious. Just in case the little scientists don't take any more literature, at least they'll end up with a few books to put on their display shelves. And each text serves a purpose (a porpoise - ha!).

Rime of the Ancient Mariner -- to expose students to British literature (you would be surprised how many start college having read only American authors), to get them used to reading poetry, to get English students to start thinking about recurring maritime themes in literature

Selections from Moby-Dick -- No one's going to read the whole thing while they're busy memorizing stuff out of the biology textbook! But everyone can stand some exposure to great books. We won't have them read the chapter entitled "The Crotch." And we can have serious discussions about whaling.

The Old Man and the Sea -- It's short, and it will provide some 20th century relevance that doesn't come in a paperback with soft-focus, sad looking little girls on it. Maybe we'll talk about overfishing.

Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us -- This'll be the glue that holds it all together! A literary sort of book by a real live marine biologist.

And last but not least, Some Marine Biology Textbook.

Of course in order to teach this class I'll have to befriend a marine biologist -- an octopus expert, a sea cucumber connoisseur. Preferably one who also likes white whales. There's a catchy course title in there somewhere.

It seemed like a good idea in the shower anyway.

Land of Eaves

2011-01-20T11:02:00.000-08:00

Anyone with an eye for beautiful things is bound to complain about strip mall architecture once in a while. But its latest trend here in the midwest is more maddening than the ugly, low 1970s strip of shops we grew up hating, and just as out of place as those adobe and stucco numbers that were popping up everywhere from Tucson to Buffalo for a decade or so. I searched in vain for what to call this new style of commercial architecture, and I don't think the builders who produce it are educated in architecture to the point where they would even know what to call it. A professor called it New Urban, but it's more like a square dung heap. So I'll describe it: angular, squared off, tall buildings with extremely wide overhanging eaves, and extremely low pitched roofs. Here is one from this area:

I'll tell you why I hate it. I hate the overhangs because they are too high to provide cover, and stick out so far that icicles will almost certainly fall on and kill the person who can't calculate their trajectory. This is a problem in the Midwest. You don't walk right next to a building because ice falls. Put the eaves out six feet, ten feet, twenty feet... how will we know where to walk? In addition to the the lack of practical applications for these wide roofs, I have a more important objection: they look idiotic. It has somehow become a status symbol of commercial architecture, that whoever has the widest most massive eaves must have the fanciest establishment.

A fancier option, with walls of glass and stone pillars. Dick's Sporting Goods chose this one, because we all know how fancy sporting goods can be.

What's strange about these buildings is they house everything from your typical strip mall denizens -- liquor stores and sporting goods shops -- to all manner of city and public buildings, to high-end medical offices (like, you know, places where people who have insurance go). The city of Aurora and the village of North Aurora both built new police stations in the past year, and they look like this:

It looks almost like this... they didn't quite come through with the grass and trees

Granted the city and medical buildings that go this architectural route are usually thicker and sturdier looking than the strip malls. They pay for the nice facades, a taller entryway, and the widest roof that won't fall off. (Now I'm curious what will happen to these things after a few years of blizzard snows landing on them. Don't the architects know why Alpine roofs are pointy -- not flat?)

I think what bothers me most about these monstrosities is that they are trying to look incredibly important. That's great for the police station and the courthouse and the library*, but won't they look stupid ten years from now? The liquor store does not need to command anyone's architectural respect. And the doctor's office in the middle of the cornfield does not need to impress anyone. The people on the other side of the cornfield are just glad it's there.

Buildings are for living in, living with, and for using their spaces. These crazy roofs and imposing facades do not make them inviting, especially on a backdrop of flat ground and white sky. (I've seen some of this style of building look decent in Phoenix or Palm Springs, with well-watered greenery all around and a southern sort of flair to the facades.) The massive roofs, if anything, make a person feel small and unwelcome. Personally, these buildings frighten me when they're free-standing without any other tall structures nearby. There's one all alone on desolate Route 34 between Yorkville and Plano, soaring into the sky and slashing it with its violently protruding black eaves. Terrifying.

Commercial design of strip malls will always change with the trends, but I don't see why other public spaces should be built on a whim. I guess that's my point here. City planners, put some thought into your buildings and who is going to be using them -- or even enjoying them if you don't build a sea of eyesores! Don't look to the liquor store or the new hair salon down the street for your inspiration. Let's go back to a simpler time when strip malls were the only thing that looked like strip malls. We've kind of gotten used to those anyway.

*The Batavia Library was built in 2002 in a modest neoclassical sort of style. It doesn't have a wide roof, and never fails to look inviting. And if you sit on the bench next to the Mark Twain statue under the portico, you will actually be protected from rain and falling ice. You can't go wrong with columns on public buildings. So symbolic! So structurally useful!

Pile Day

2011-01-17T12:39:00.000-08:00

Don't you love pile day? Thanks to Amazon Prime all my shit ships in two days these days, and lands in a glorious well-timed pile on my doorstep. I came home to the pile on Saturday, and in it was the following:

T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land with original manuscript (which makes me want to make crazy notes and arrows on everything)

The Textual Condition (which sounds like a terrible disease of the intellect)

The Life of John Milton (which will either blow my mind or put it into hibernation)

MLA's Literary Research Guide (which I thought was stupid at first but might become indispensable this semester)

I was also supposed to order some huge tome of Milton works, but I think I have them all between various Nortons and crappy Penguin editions. It wasn't a critical edition we were supposed to get, so I don't think I'll get flogged or anything. There were a couple required Shakespeares too, but I'm planning on extended loans from the public library. In undergrad the profs were all about saving us poor English wretches money. Hopefully grad school profs are just as lenient about textbook editions. If we've come this far in English (instead of heading off to law school or MBA school with our liberal arts BAs), then we really don't have any money.

So this is it, and here we go. Milton on Mondays and research on Wednesdays is it, for now. I won't know my crazy Fall schedule until March (I hope it's crazy! And full of snotty, despondent, eye-rolling freshmen writers! The more you do the more you can do...)

Looking at my newest book pile on the first week of the semester is always a joy, and this semester it is an especial joy because I'm only reading literature and doing research. No theory, no reflective essays, no pondering the state of the academy (or the state of my future...my future state? I stopped following the MLA on Twitter because it was all so obnoxious...). None of that junk. Just good gritty work on this here pile.

Place's Place

2011-01-12T09:39:00.001-08:00

I recently began reading Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers, edited by Joyce Dyer (an Appalachian outmigrant herself). I'm not through with it, because I've admittedly been skipping back to the writers whose "place" most closely resembles my grandmother's place of upbringing. But when you're dealing with place, how near or far a place is from your own becomes very important.

I've been interested in my Appalachian heritage for some time, but this interest has become more urgent as my grandmother's health wanes. I'm not interested in this heritage in a genealogy sort of way -- I'll leave that up to my Aunt Mary Virginia -- but in a cultural, and partially socio-political way. And of course, in a deeply personal way that I tie to my family's and my own fierce connection, attachment, or involvement with place.

My first real study of Appalachian art and politics was in my second English comp course at the community college, here in Illinois of all places. The professor chose to teach us to write argumentative essays by showing us politically charged documentaries --I think it worked. We watched Stranger with a Camera and read Harry Caudill's Night Comes to the Cumberlands. Only then did Appalachia crystallize for me as its own culture, and as a place that is deeply troubled, yet capable of producing some of the clearest and most thoughtful American voices.

My next way into Appalachia was through writing it. I joined a writers group after that comp class, and wrote stories and vignettes about my family. I received a lot of positive feedback on everything from descriptions to dialog, but what always got the most kudos was my building of a place. My group mates felt they knew just what it was like to stand in grandma's kitchen, or to walk the ridge where grandpa has slept in the Virginia earth since Thanksgiving 1964. I never felt like I put all that much craft into getting these places across. They just sort of came out of me. Like I was born with brown hair and a little voice, I was born with ready-made images of mountains and streams and chipped coffee cups and pickled beans that I could just unwrap and present to anyone who was interested.

I wasn't raised in Virginia. I wasn't even born in Appalachia proper. Though to get from Grandmother's to Dad's one must drive under the Appalachian Trail (my sister and I would race to spell it first as soon as it came into view, "A-P-P-A-L-A-C-H-I-A-N!"), western Maryland is a few miles too far north to qualify as the southern highlands. So though I grew up in the shadows of the smaller Appalachian ridges, south of the Mason-Dixon Line, a stone's throw from West Virginia where the mountains soar, I am an outmigrant's child. So why I am so tied to a place I never really lived? I think the answer is that these aren't purely genetic ties, but cultural and narrative ties that were strengthened by living in a place that was a fair surrogate for "real" Appalachia, and by sharing this new place with grandmother who sounds as if she never left the hills.

I have lived so many places, and the only non-Appalachian place that has any claim on my soul is Arizona. It has mountains of a very different kind, but they provided a backdrop I could get used to. In between those mountains you can see far too far. The never-ending views between the ranges made the landscape something new and exciting. Most people from grandma's place, if they had ever seen Arizona, would find it stark and barren. (My dad took my grandmother on a truck trip through the state, and when she saw a pointed mountain in the distance, she asked if it was a slag heap...) For me touching down in Arizona was like a trip to Mars. Stark and barren in parts, sure, but fantastic and wonderfully confusing. No where else I have lived, whether beautiful and captivating like California or maddeningly flat and nondescript like Illinois, has ever gotten a hold on me like AZ.

You might say everyone has a connection to their home, how it looks, the type of people who live there -- but I have to argue that this is different. Appalachia is not just a hometown you miss or a geographic region that makes you comfortable. It is, like an island or a lost homeland, a borderland of sorts. Appalachian peoples can be looked at through a postcolonial eye just like any once-colonized people. While the list of who took land from who goes back millenia for any given tract of earth, I think it is fair to say that these first immigrants to the Americas who struck out into the hills mingling with God knows how many peoples who were already living there, were colonized, in the last two centuries by mining and logging empires. Appalachians, you might argue, have an advantage in American society because they are white. They may have an easier time leaving Appalachia and joining the rest of mainstream American culture. But why should they leave? And more importantly, if it comes down to leaving, why should they leave their culture behind? And maybe even more importantly, they're not all white. The concept of Appalachian whiteness is precisely what has made it okay to write them off as a culture, to ignore their poverty, and to make jokes at their expense. While political correctness has removed the humor from all situations and issues surrounding race, it is still quite all right to make incest jokes about hillbillies. Jokes aside (even Appalachians tell them about Ozarkians, and vice versa), the problems of the region are largely ignored. Even Martin Luther King, Jr. thought it necessary to speak about the hungry children of Appalachia alongside the hungry black children of the deep South, as people who have been overlooked.

That was a political aside -- I'm writing to talk about place, remember? When I saw Bloodroot I had to have it. It was everything I'm interested in (women writers, place, semi-matrilineal families), minus the politics! My latest way, then, into Appalachia is through its literature.

So to come back to place, this book has given me what I've been looking for when trying to explain why place is so important to my identity, and even why it sometimes becomes important for success at my endeavors. Not that I need to be in Appalachia to succeed --for I never truly have been in Appalachia. But why I might not go to the first ugly place that offers me a job, why I might consider the place with hills before all the other possibilities, and why I always, always try to think of ways to go home. I was done with Tucson when I left. And when I mentioned I might go "home," an ex-boyfriend told me not to "cut off my nose to spite my face," that "moving doesn't change anything," and other such rhetoric as I have heard spewed from people who don't have their own strong sense of place. Well, as much as some of you don't have a home or even a need for one, there are some of us -- Appalachians and their descendants, in particular -- who will always try to get back to it, and if that doesn't make practical sense (for we are a surprisingly practical bunch when it comes to making our way in the world), we will try to find a place that suits us, even if we're stranded in Illinois, or Ohio, or blessed with some opportunity in the big city. One contributor to Bloodroot found the only hill in the flat Ohio town where she teaches, bought the house in top of it, and put her office in the unfinished attic, so she could envision herself on a ridge. I chose a house by a river, which creates its own natural hills by its banks. You can't even swim in this river and the "hills" are laughable. But that's all the place I could make for myself in Chicagoland, where I moved for the practical purpose of being close to my son's very involved grandparents. Maybe I'm silly, but these women (some natives of the hills, some outmigrants' daughters) have made me realize that that is just what we do. We pine for our place, even when we've got a decent one.

This book has also brought me to a final and startling conclusion that going for a Ph. D. has always partially been my way to get to a different, but more familiar place. Not a meal ticket, but a ride ticket. Some of my school picks have changed since I had to postpone hightailing it out of the flatlands, but I still plan on shuffling off pretty quickly if a school will give me the means. My choices are in Tennessee, North Carolina, the wilds of New York state, etc. You know, places with hills.

I'm going to come back and edit this a little to add in some quotes and facts from the book, to show you that my ramblings are not isolated, but shared by a relatively ancient family of deep eyed, high cheeked women.

One more something...

2010-12-31T22:22:00.000-08:00

This is the last paper of 2009, and though it is not the best paper of 2009 (a rushed term paper with winter stomach flu flourishes), it is from a year ago. And so it reminds me again, to remember that a time of reading and writing will return to me.

Post-Postmodern Intertextuality: The Realm of the Text in Michael Cunningham’s The Hours

“It is New York City. It is the end of the twentieth century.” --The Hours, p. 9

When addressing texts that are actively intertextual, that is, they purposefully interact with specific earlier texts, we often find that we are reading “the other side of the story.” This is especially true of texts written during that blurry-ended period we call postmodernism. In a literary climate where challenges to cultural and aesthetic norms were the business of both the critic and the author, novels such as Grendel and Wide Sargasso Sea attempted to show us the folly of taking their partner-texts (Beowulf and Jane Eyre, respectively) at face value. Through stories that carefully reflect the events of the poem and novel, yet cast them in a new light, Grendel and Wide Sargasso Sea show us the dangers of buying into the cultural and social constructions exhibited by the earlier texts, and, in postmodern fashion, attempt to deconstruct the oppositions in the texts by collapsing age-old binaries such as man/beast, colonizer/colonized, and madness/sanity. While the work of John Gardner and Jean Rhys continues to be illuminating, by the end of the twentieth century creative yet still very theoretical approaches like these seemed to have served their purpose. Theory itself was on the wane in the academy, and certainly in the minds of authors who had in the last half-century of theory-dominance been robbed of their authorial intent and made to question their relationship with their work.

The work of authors like Michael Cunningham began to defy the literary and theoretical “decrees” that would have guided earlier attempts at writing or studying novels, intertextual novels in particular. Cunningham’s novel The Hours is undoubtedly a reply, a dialogic interaction of the postmodern variety, to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. However, it does entirely not fit the mold of a postmodern argumentative “address” to an earlier, usually outmoded sort of text, i.e. the epic poem or the Victorian novel. Cunningham’s novel is different in three main aspects. First, The Hours is not hostile toward the original author or text, hostility usually being one of the unfortunate yet prevalent components of a deconstruction. In fact, the novel is an homage to Mrs. Dalloway and to Woolf. Second, The Hours considers the biographical “other side of the story” rather than the fictional one that, in the spirit of Wide Sargasso Sea, would attempt to tear apart Mrs. Dalloway at the seams. Bringing in biography is huge. Finally, The Hours, while it attempts no careful reconstruction of a storyline to oppose Mrs. Dalloway, sets up two new stories that mirror each other, while both of the stories interact with the original text and with the life of Virginia Woolf as semi-fictionalized by Cunningham. The way these stories interact and talk back to one another, while never forgetting to keep the conversation going with Woolf’s novel, is highly complex and even more impressive than postmodern attempts at simply constructing a story that presents a somewhat predictable (given what we know about theory’s aims) opposing argument to a text. We will see that Cunningham mounts similar deconstructive arguments, yet manages to do so without being destructive.

The Hours opens with an account of Virginia Woolf’s suicide. Already, we are in the realms of biography and tribute. Cunningham immerses us in Woolf’s thoughts as “she us almost distracted by the sight of the downs, the church, a scattering of sheep…one of the farm workers (is his name John?)…she thinks of how successful he is, how fortunate, to be cleaning a ditch…” (5). This stream of consciousness is purposely reminiscent of Woolf’s style in Mrs. Dalloway. Cunningham also includes Woolf’s actual suicide note (6), bringing in a physical connection to reality, to biography, and all this combined with his moving, almost mystical description of Woolf becoming part of the river, tell us we are reading an homage. (That is, if we didn’t already know from the title – "The Hours" was Woolf’s working title for Mrs. Dalloway, and the phrase is repeated in nearly every chapter of the book.) While it would be naïve to assume that, for instance, Jean Rhys does not admire Charlotte Bronte simply because she deconstructs her most famous novel, we find nothing of a direct nod to Bronte in Wide Sargasso Sea, nothing bordering Cunningham’s obvious and open adoration for the author his novel treats both as text and as human. The offensive on which theory places the mid-century author of the intertextual text practically prohibits any magnanimous interaction with the partner text, and explicitly prohibits the sort of interaction with the author that we find in The Hours. Julia Kristeva, coiner of the term intertextual in 1966, would have it (along with many other mid-century theorists) that “the author is dead.” Her theory of intertextuality divorces authors and their intent from the text, and in fact treats the author as a separate but related text, his personal history as yet another set of texts. I would argue that Kristeva’s thoughts on authorship are just a traditional look at authors and texts using theoretical terminology as a device to seemingly distance the critic from the literature and the person who wrote it, to create some kind of apparent impartiality so that the theory can be applied as some kind of science that gives objective answers. Her anti-intertextual detractor, William Irwin, would probably agree with me, and has it that Kristeva’s theories, couched in technical language as they are, are “notoriously subjective” (236). However, we cannot ignore the influence that she had as far as forcing critics and students to consider the text as an ungraspable entity, not a product of man’s mind, but a product of myriad forces of politics, culture, history, etc, that feed into the text from the spaces between texts, the intertext (Kristeva 36). It is this trend in the second half of twentieth century writing, theory, and critical work that moved us away from considering any relationship between an author and her work, and from considering the author as a person attempting to deliver a message (isn’t that the usual end of the written word?). Cunningham’s novel defies these newish conventions by considering Virginia the woman, considering Woolf’s life as a writer, and considering the actual penning of the partner-text Mrs. Dalloway as a mirror story to his new Mrs. Dalloway’s exploits.

Cunningham could have used the suicide prologue to establish his Woolf-fandom, to disclaim any attacks he might make on Mrs. Dalloway, but it instead sets the tone for an homage novel, and it does not have to serve as a disclaimer for anything. Cunningham sustains Woolf’s story throughout the novel, and it interacts with the stories of the two other women, Clarissa Vaughan (the surrogate Mrs. Dalloway) and Laura Brown (the historical and intertextual connection between the novels and the people in them). Laura and Clarissa’s stories do bring up questions about the life that Woolf led in the early twentieth century. Women were not properly treated for mental illnesses and depression, and even those women as talented as Woolf often had a dependence on their husbands’ approval and support that could not be overcome. And perhaps most importantly to Cunningham’s aims (for we know he has them), Woolf’s sexuality was as ambiguous as her characters’, in a time when such ambiguity was not socially acceptable.

Throughout the novel, Cunningham cycles through the three women’s stories, giving a chapter to each before jumping to the next... [analysis of how the stories work together, and how they work differently from pairs like Sargasso Sea and Eyre]

Michael Cunningham’s The Hours was a welcome novel in a time at “the end of the twentieth century” when a suspicion of authors and of great literature had taken over literary study, when theory had spent its momentum deconstructing every construction, whether literary or political or both, and when biography had been dismissed for years as mostly irrelevant to the study and appreciation of literary texts. Cunningham still tackles social constructs, but with a human and psychological insight that is not so explicit in a work like Wide Sargasso Sea, where the characters, from whom we glean so much in The Hours, for Rhys take a back seat to a mostly political theoretical agenda. And while Gardner has all the insight in the world in his treatment of Beowulf (even shares Cunningham’s knack for stream of consciousness), Grendel remains aloof as a text, “objectively” passing judgment on the values of epic poetry. Cunningham, perhaps because of his own genius, perhaps because he’d overheard the conversations about theory’s last gasps, chose to break out of the postmodern intertextual-writing protocol of having an agenda, of maintaining hostility toward the partner-text and all its values, and of turning a blind eye to the author who penned the work he thought important enough to use as the basis for his what would become one of his most important pieces of work. The Hours is a post-postmodern, post-theory novel, addressing a modern novel that was already dialogic, that already had its own doubts built in, that was asking to be spoken to on the same level. It did not need to be bullied into opening up and giving up some of its secrets, some of its contradictions. Cunningham lovingly opens up Mrs. Dalloway for the contemporary reader, and shows how texts can be addressed in an illuminating way that challenges social constructions without necessarily challenging everything an original text stands for. By contrast, it’s as if Gardner does a stand up routine ridiculing the life and times of Beowulf and the Beowulf poet. Rhys mounts a political uprising against everything Victorian, and does not stop pumping her fist in the air long enough to hear any echoes or insights from Jane Eyre or Bronte. Cunningham, at Theory’s wake, at the end of the twentieth century, sits down with Woolf. And they have a really good talk.

Works Cited
Cunningham, Michael. The Hours. New York: Picador USA, 1998. Print.
Irwin, William. “Against Intertextuality.” Philosophy and Literature. 28.2 (2004): 227-241. Print.
Kristeva, Julia. “Word, Dialog, Novel.” The Kristeva Reader. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. 34-59. Print.
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1953. Print.

Something to Remember

2010-12-31T21:50:00.000-08:00

As 2010 closes (it's no longer drawing to a close -- it's 11:54pm), I want to remember not this past year, but the one before it -- the one where I was in school! Of course I had personal experiences worth remembering in these last twelve months, but as far as academics, writing, reading, and even thinking go, I am looking forward to a new beginning. After a spring semester that wasn't a semester but just a collection of months (I had finished a B.A. in December '09, and was in an awkward interim between programs), followed by my first wretched attempt at grad school that left me...

Happy New Year!

...more than a little pissed off and rightly disillusioned with terminal masters degree programs, I have little to show for 2010 as "A Student of English." That said, I must remember that a new beginning is here, not just because Pope Gregory said so, but because as arbitrary as a "New Year's Day" may seem, semesters always begin in January. I must also remember that writing is what I do, and that by most accounts I am pretty okay at my chosen vocation. I present to you the only paper I wrote for my "prose styles" class that received an 'A' grade. Yes I'm still pissed about the Bs and Cs, but just the same here is my one brief achievement (no paper over two pages was allowed), an assignment to write on Woolf's persona as gleaned from her prose style in the Death of the Moth book of essays:

In Virginia Woolf’s prose essays there is a precarious balance between an informal, stream-of-consciousness voice (a journal-keeper) and an almost pretentiously formal voice (a professional writer). Sometimes these voices inhabit different paragraphs of the essay, but often they are present together, sometimes within the same sentence. The inspired used of unlikely metaphors and the fast-flowing sentence structures of the journal-keeper are evidence of Woolf’s genius. The more formal constructions in her professional writer’s prose (i.e. the use of “one” instead of “I” and other characteristics of high diction), however, seem to be hiding something of her character, especially in her more reflective essays (“Death of the Moth,” “A Street Haunting”). Woolf’s persona comes off as one of a sort of sad brilliance, the professional writer in Woolf couching her depression in her confident “highbrow” formal diction, while the journal-keeper lets an occasional glimmer of inspiration shine through. In these reflective essays, Woolf makes observations of herself (which she sometimes claims are observations on humanity in general) that allude to her internal conflicts. But only in her humorous prose (“Professions for Women,” “Middlebrow”) does Woolf’s conflicted persona seem to resolve itself. She perhaps realizes the duality of her voices, and seeks to reconcile them ironically.

Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness constructions and poignant metaphors characterize her genius writing, those times when the journal-keeper bares herself and manages to share a bit of unbridled brilliance with her readers. The sentences in these sections (or the sections of these sentences) that fit the journal-keeper persona often exhibit asyndeton, ellipses, and other syntactical and rhetorical devices that require a filling-in of the gaps, as one would have to do when speaking to a familiar person. Some sentence fragments that exhibit Woolf’s typical stream-of-consciousness are: “beauty and beauty and beauty…” (13), “floating, pausing, the brain sleeps perhaps as it looks” (24), “tree-sprinkled, grass-grown space…” (25), “Lady So-and-So with the curls and the emeralds…” (29). The same journal-keeper seems to be the persona who astounds us or invites us in with metaphors such as: “…one could only offer a thimble to a torrent that could fill baths, lakes” (14), “We are warmly wrapped in a rug” (15), “A nail fixed the whole being to one hard board” (211). Though these metaphors seem to grow out of the same raw Woolf who writes in spurts and commas, they begin to take on some of the diction of her more traditional and formal prose voice. It is as if a self-consciousness creeps into her just as she sees things most clearly, just as she wishes to reveal herself most completely.

Most of Woolf’s prose essays are in this more self-conscious voice, and those that are not humorous seem to belie her sadness especially when she takes her professional writer tone. The very language some part of her hopes will hide her fears betrays them. To speak of the death of a creature so tenderly, yet so detachedly at the same time (“…when there was nobody there to care or know, this gigantic effort on the part an insignificant little moth, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one strangely” (11)) is odd. She has been writing on this “insignificant” moth for three pages, and yet she is only “moved strangely”? The understatement and detachment of her professional writer’s voice, its refusal to commit to a strong emotion or a wild metaphor, or to let itself run on at length until it expires all its meaning (as the journal-keeper does) is indicative of the protection from herself she hopes it will give her.

While Woolf’s wit does help her manage her various writing selves in her humorous essays, it is in her most reflective writing that we really find a window into her persona, “streaked, variegated, all of a mixture” (30). Her writer’s formality is her anchor in a river of troubled consciousness, and she holds onto it as long as she can, to keep from drowning.

What's wrong with Literal?

2010-12-30T16:29:00.000-08:00

I disagree (with qualifications), Diagram.

Writers, directors, and artists of all kinds shy away from the literal. Literal is predictable, it's been done, and it doesn't often give a new perspective to a treatment of, say, a Shakespeare play or a Bob Dylan song. I once told a music man how I envisioned a video for a certain song, and I was immediately reproached: "That's so literal." Well, what's wrong with a little literal once in a while?

By 'literal' I mean the obvious meaning of words or lyrics, the expected (and even hoped for) staging of a play or movie, or an image that might come to mind for a good portion of 'readers' when they first see or hear something. None of these things have the postmodern factor, or even the cool factor -- but that doesn't mean literal interpretations, presentations, and re-presentations can't be effective.

I think artists and writers across many media and genres (and pardon me but my examples today will be from the realm of advertising) have forgotten how to do literal. They have forgotten how a straightforward voice can communicate clearly and quickly, how a solid and expected image can be grounding for the reader, and they have completely forgotten that to be literal does not mean to give up metaphor and all its possibilities. You can be literal and make meanings multiply. You can be literal and be nuanced.

Unfortunately these forgettings have led to the forgetting of how to say anything that means anything -- how to say anything that's even readable. In the following examples, from a sunglass catalog that attempts to create a 'lifestyle' backstory for its products, language becomes more and more abstract, forgets what the product is, and then altogether forgets what was being said in the first place. This is even more unfortunate, or just plain lame I should say, because the products have interesting, mostly concrete names. These could have been used as jumping off points to keep the copy somehow tied to the product. Some of them start out that way, then trail off into oblivion. You'll see. I'll comment on some of this awfulness afterward, and venture a theory that sticking to the literal helps the writer as much as it can help the reader.

Note: The names before the dashes are the product names. The trails of ellipses are really in the copy. Any misused punctuation or apostrophes are there as well.

Clutch -- When you gotta get a grip come through in the clutch! Don't hang on to the past when the future is in your hands..... and on your face. Make it happen while the rest of the world is nappin' and seize the day -- some how, some way.

Kickstand -- Hey you, get on your bike and ride! Better yet, throw down the kickstand and get down to business.... so you can get back to the business of getting down. Ya heard?

Burnout -- Kill the headlights and put it in neutral, pop off the t-top and crank it to 26! The party's just begun... Smokey's on the way and everybody's looking for the burnout.

Modcon -- In this new age of modern convenience, a jet-setting operator can afford only the finest contraptions and contrivances for... their countenance. Make yourself useful in the modcon. The gizmo of choice when it is time to get your gadgets under control.

Checko -- Microphone checko, one, two. What is this? A yes. So fresh. Four lens jam. Sweeter thana frech kiss...it's in the place to be. so what do you do so naturally? Be down by law. The center of attention and take yourself to the 4th dimension. Wurd!

Telly -- Who loves ya baby? ....For the bold and the beautiful and everyone in between ... No need to channel surf when your [your!?] rockin' this big screen.....So flip on your telly and enjoy your show....

Skitch -- On any sunday you can smell it in the air. Tatse it in the atmosphere and see it in the clear....The skitch is not a beer goggle, but the next best thing to one. We've go the facts to prove it....

Giggles -- Isn't life a blast? It's just like living in the past. So let's go downtown. do some shopping.... get all silly and giggle our way to the land of happily ever after. Ha! Ho ho ho, hee hee hee, ha ha ha ha!....

All right, now that that's over can I just take a breath and say WTF? Can you tell what any of that means? In an attempt to speak some kind of hipster language that only vaguely refers to reality, all meaning (and interest, for me) is lost. I experienced a similar vapidity when I worked in West Hollywood years ago, making internet cartoons. It was like that episode of The Simpsons where the writers (I'm so glad they make fun of cartoon writers) throw out all these ideas from pop culture and say "No but it will be different because it will have this other idea from pop culture tacked onto it!" Okay, these descriptions are not exactly like that but they keep reminding me of West Hollywood cool types and their "ideas."

As I vainly attempted to glean something of the essence of this brand and its products by reading the above nonsense, I came across a very few descriptions that had a ring to them. Not a crystal clear, resonant ring, but a ring that is definitely more sonorous than the other junk on the catalog pages. How did that copywriter get his act together (so sexist of me to think it's a him right?) and write such tight copy after all that rambling? He stuck to the name of the glasses, what they actually look like, and got down and dirty in literal-land. Here are a couple of those readable descriptions:

Nessie -- The search for the legendary Loch Ness monster is over. It turns out the highly sought after creature is a sexy beast after all! ...The elusive Nessie has surfaced from the depths as a dark and mysterious Italian sunglass ready to be worn and adorned....

Debutante -- When it's time to make a not so formal introduction, beautify yourself with the Debutante and be the belle of the ball.... Next to the gown and the white gloves, this eyewear masterpiece will most certainly make a mark (if not a scar) on society....

Panzer -- The VZ army wants you! As a recruit in the Von Zipper war against the sun's evil rays. Your protection is our first concern... Standard operating protocol calls for you to armor up with the Panzer and blitzkrieg your way though enemy lines....

Other sunglasses with readable and almost successful descriptions were Absinthe, Southpaw, Comsat, Bionacle, Gamma, Tastemaker. They all took these names and the associated style of the sunglasses, and used those words and impressions to create a product, rather than some nebulous vignette into a too-cool-for-you-to-understand lifestyle. (Because that's what I think bad writers who happen to be cool are doing -- trying to make us think we don't understand their writing because we're not hip enough to fill in the gaps and get all the references, rather than because they just actually haven't written anything that constitutes a sentence or even a Beat poem.)

There are 40 sunglasses.

30 out of 40 descriptions are mostly unreadable and therefore uncommunicative as evidenced by the examples above, and 4 out of 10 readable descriptions are poorly executed. Only one of the readable descriptions is non-literal. A few of the unreradable descriptions may have been literal -- it's hard to tell when you have no idea what the writer is saying! Based on this sunglass catalog, I think there is something to be said for thinking literally when you approach a topic or subject. At the very least, fledgling writers should try to think literally before they go out on tangled and indecipherable limbs at the tippy-top of the meaning tree. Stay near the ground until your wings have matured!

Although I don't think that I personally need to stay on the ground, I used literal meanings of the names of these sunglasses combined with real knowledge of the art movements and styles they emulate to create what I would call very literal descriptions. I used humor and storytelling too, but didn't stray too far from the inspiration the names and styles had to offer. Maybe that's uncool, but I was writing over a hundred sunglass descriptions. If I hadn't gone literal, they would have all started to sound the same. And if I hadn't gone literal, I wouldn't have learned so much about the things I was writing on. German tanks, Jackie O, rap rhythms...I even researched how clutches work! A literal kind of writing forces you to be knowledgeable about your topic. If you just start spouting hipnesses and things you heard in a movie somewhere, along with vague descriptive words you may or may not be using correctly, you will have no idea what you're talking about and neither will anyone else.

So the literal not only grounds our writing, ensuring it imparts some kind of easily understood message, but it (counter-intuitively, perhaps) gives us infinite possibilities. Just think how many people, places, and things are in the world! Good God, y'all! If you decide to base your descriptive writing on things, you will never run out of examples, hip references, and even great metaphors -- that work even better because they too need to be based on things.

Apart from how easy being literal makes getting a good hold on writing, I'm sure literal has something to offer for film, art, even music videos (do those still exist?). There is nothing wrong with occasionally saying or portraying something without some kind of postmodern ulterior motive, or some cooler-than-thou, "I don't have to commit to any one meaning" language of youthful bad writing. Think of how much satisfaction we get from convention. Without it, all art would be chaos. Just write (act/direct/paint) something as it is, for what it is, and if you have a voice that really adds to the "text" of whatever it is you're writing on, it will come through.

NOTE: I didn't include any of my rewrites of the product descriptions here because I don't want you to Google them and find out who I was working for when I was knocking Von Zipper (which I've done twice now). Suffice it to say that my rewrites are very literal, and I laughed a lot while I was writing them. What I can do here is refer you to a website I don't do work for that has good, mostly literal descriptions of all these same products, a website I turned to for help when I couldn't figure out what the hell the VZ catalog was saying. DogFunk.com sells all the VZ sunglasses, and they have some funny and meaningful takes on the shades. They completely ignored the catalog descriptions and I don't blame them.

What really knocks me out is sexist sunglasses

2010-12-20T13:15:00.000-08:00

I recently looked through several catalogs of high end, sporty sunglasses, all marketed toward the same "lifestyle" segment, in an effort to find some mental fodder upon which to build product descriptions for a retailer. Most of the catalogs were great looking, polished, and gave equal time to men and women's glasses, as well as both male and female models wearing those glasses. Lifestyle brands like these sponsor surfers, motocross riders and the like to get their names out there. Lady surfers, boarders, and riders were prominent on the pages of Spy Sunglasses' catalog (see Meghann O'Brien at right, fully clothed). But when I looked through Von Zipper's booklet, all I found were captioned photos of marginally famous surfer men -- and marginally famous men who are famous for no reason (read: Wee Man) -- alongside photos of unnamed women models. Von Zipper sponsors lady surfers, just like Spy, but they failed to include any of them in their catalog. Male surfer models like Taj Burrow and Andy Irons (rest his soul) were used for multiple shots and styles. The women's glasses, and some of the unisex pairs, were modeled only by those unnamed women. And only a few of those styles were even modeled, while all the men's were given face-time.

I don't know why this bothered me so much except that the whole combination of idiotic elements that made up this particular catalog just got to me, after staring at it for hours while writing about these presumably high quality products. (I am about to do another post on the asinine copywriting in this catalog, and on terrible non-communicative writing in general. The bad writing certainly added to the foul taste VZ left me with.)

This would have made some sense if Von Zipper had no connections with women who could model the glasses. But they sponsor women! Why didn't those women model the glasses? Could the industry's belief be that women who surf or ride motocross aren't conventionally good looking enough to photograph well? Spy proves that theory wrong -- while they do feature one very attractive surfer girl three times as often as the more tomboyish surfer they asked to model, they give the girls the same attention they gave the boys. This isn't high fashion, it's lifestyle wear for people who do these sports (or at least pretend to do them). The company's ideal customer is one who wants to see the real surfer chicks let it all hang out, not look at made-up models in static poses wearing men's sunglasses.

Von Zipper features all these wacky dudes living it up on the beach or straddling some graffiti sprayed concrete, with their names plastered on every page. So they not only get the fun of being seen, they get publicity and awareness of their participation in the sport. The women of Von Zipper are easy to find if you look them up on the website, but they never had their day in print. They are not the face of the company as the men are. The women of Spy, however, are back to back with men, all their names emblazoned on the page in a two inch-high typeface.

Some of this may have to do with how marketers think men and women "read" advertisements. Men may need the lifestyle photo more than women. They're visual. Women may do better with just a big honking picture of a product. They're material. (Most of Von Zipper's women's frames aren't modeled they're just huge on the page with names like "Cookie" and "Giggles.")

To name one final difference between these companies, Von Zipper calls their women's section "Girls" and Spy calls it "Womens."

If I ever have the unlikely urge for $180 sunglasses, I'll buy them from Spy. Von Zipper just turns me off. I know there is bound to be sexism of some kind in any catalog that peddles fashion, but Spy does a better job of being classy about it, and a good job of evening the playing field for men and women athletes seeking sponsorships.

Now Face North

2010-11-16T21:35:00.000-08:00

I don't think many people who wear The North Face fleece jackets have ascended the north face of anything. What's more, The North Face wearer announces his superiority of dress, his authority on yuppie sportswear, without ever actually showing his face. I am starting to hate The North Face, because of its lack of a face. All I see is its cold shoulder.

Until this strange positioning of embroidery coupled with the always already "away" positioning of the North Facers faces when in close proximity to non-North Facers faces really started to get to me (which it did, after a cool season of riding the 'L'), I did not even know if there was a logo on the front of The North Face jackets. So often did they turn the other shoulder that I had to visit The North Face dot com to look at a fleece jacket for myself, to determine if it was to blame for its wearers' paradoxical simultaneity of coldness and warmth. The jacket, as it turns out, does have a front logo. So maybe it is not wholly to blame for its apparent one-sidedness? But yet -- could it be that the front logo is intended for the admiration of the sporty affluent fuck's sporty affluent fucking friends, while the back logo is there for the rest of us to covet? The fleece aficionado can keep his power structure of branding in place, without having to gaze upon the pitiable face and shabby woolen garments of the less warmly outfitted citizen of winter.

Have North Facers even seen the commercials for these products? I think the fleeces are so much a part of their cultural code they need not be sold to. The North Face gear, at any rate, is advertised to real outdoor adventure types. Those real outdoor adventure types do amazing things in those advertisements. They don't just stand around on the 'L' ignoring humanity and iPodding their brains to shit. You can do that in a Kmart jacket.

Now I want to punch one in the shoulder blade.

I am not averse to outdoor wear for city use. I am wearing REI pants and a Columbia sweater as I write this on the commuter train. (But those are store-brand and low-end outdoor garments, respectively.) I am also not totally averse to wearing The North Face gear (don't you love how they've built "The" into the name so you can't even write about it properly?). I have an awesome pair of ("The") North Face pants that I got on clearance. They have a logo embroidered on the back pocket. But dammit, if you want to see the front of them, I will gladly turn around. And if you want to say "Hey, nice pants!" I will gladly turn around and say "Thank you!" with my face.

The Splendid Word

2010-11-13T18:32:00.000-08:00

I ended my last post with a line from Woolf, that for many of us is "nuff said" when it comes to why we love our language: "Words, English words..." I thought since I posted two months ago on words that I hate for absolutely no sane reason, I should give equal time to words I love with the same intensity and absurdity. First, here is most of that paragraph from Woolf, with clues to why some words might grate and some might delight:

"Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations -- naturally. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today -- they are so stored with meanings, with memories, that they have contracted so many famous marriages. The splendid word 'incarnadine', for example -- who can use it without remembering also 'multitudinous seas'? [...] Words belong to each other, although, of course, only a great writer knows that the word 'incarnadine' belongs to 'multitudinous seas'."

--from "Craftsmanship," delivered as a BBC broadcast on April 20, 1937, part of a series entitled Words Fail Me

Woolf's points about words and their meaning-baggage are valid, but another approach to thinking about why we love words comes from the "cellar door" camp. Some words may appeal to us because they are sonorous, and for no other reason. Here is an excerpt from what may be the first mention of the "cellar door" theory in print:

“He even grew to like sounds unassociated with their meaning, and once made a list of the words he loved most, as doubloon, squadron, thatch, fanfare (he never did know the meaning of this one), Sphinx, pimpernel, Caliban, Setebos, Carib, susurro, torquet, Jungfrau. He was laughed at by a friend, but logic was his as well as sentiment; an Italian savant maintained that the most beautiful combination of English sounds was cellar-door; no association of ideas here to help out! sensuous impression merely! the cellar-door is purely American.”

--from Gee-Boy, by Cyrus Lauron Hooper, 1903 (and pulled from this NYT article)

For me I think a combination of these things is at work when a word moves me or sticks with me. (For my most-hated hit list, however, I maintain that it is only the sound quality of the words that I find abhorrent, as I have no issue with the meanings. I could make a list of words I hate for the meanings, but wouldn't that just be a list of things I hate?)

So here are some of my favorites, including proper nouns from around these United States:

fauna
boat ride
august
singular
holler*
haint*
tam-o-shanter
succulent
Cucamonga (anglicized Shoshone, so it counts as English)
Kern
Clarksville (any simple name with a "ville" after it gets me...'cept maybe Hooterville and Margaritaville)

*Appalachian. (A "haint" is a ghost.)

There are more. Maybe I'll add them as I come across them in my reading. Feel free to share your favorites in the comments, especially those where the meaning is obviously not why you love the word.

Once it has snown...

2010-11-13T18:00:00.000-08:00

In the winter I start turning all verbs ending in "-ow" into irregular Old Englishy sort of past participles. I think it's because of the snow. It makes me want to say, "Look! It has snown."

I don't think it's too wrong to think of these verbs with the "-own" or "-ewn" ending. Many of the "-ow" verbs still retain what I'm assuming really is an OE ending. Here are some of the ones that really end that way in Modern English:

mow mown
blow blown
sew sewn
show shown
know known

Some of these have two possible endings, like "mown" is most often just "mowed." In fact, proper Modern English lovers probably would not let you get away with "mown" even though it is perfectly proper. It just sounds archaic. But I like that. So here's how we should say the following verbs as past participles when the mood strikes us, and again, grammarians be damned!

snow snown
slow slown
furrow furrown
crow crown

As in...

"It has snown for fourteen days."

"Yes, the snow has not slown down one bit."

"I might have known -- that is why your brow has been furrown."

"Indeed. It is so dark and cold the cock has not crown."

So there. What else do we have to amuse ourselves with when it has snown a fortnight and the cock has not crown?

"Words, English words." -- Virginia Woolf, Craftsmanship

Grammarians, Skedaddle

2010-11-08T19:02:00.000-08:00

I have a serious problem with grammarians. I mean, they always bugged me a little in school, but now that I'm doing a master's it seems like the grammarians should have shuffled off by now to torture high school students or edit online magazines or whatever they're good at. See that's the thing. I think grammarians are the way they are because they're not great at having ideas or writing elegantly or anything interesting. So they correct the rest of us. And yes, their grammar-bolstered confidence is so great, they even correct the authors.

Don't get me wrong, I observe most grammar rules (and I do think most high school English teachers are better than just plain grammarians). But I think that some grammatical conventions are too rigid to allow for creative use of this gorgeous language we're lucky enough to have. It's English for God's sake! It can do the awesomest things if you only let it breathe. In one of my classes I sit through weekly humiliation (oops, I misidentified an expletive...) and discomfort (is that an absolute construction? ...I don't think I'll raise my hand). I'm not targeted or anything, and I don't try to take people on, but it is a generally hostile environment for me. I will provide some examples lest you think my complaints are vague or simply based on some kind of grammar envy.

The Sloppy Proofreader
We looked at an overhead of a letter written by a woman author. She typed a quotation mark before the period when she mentioned the title of a short story. The professor thought this a good time to remind us that quotation marks go after the period, and to show his disdain for this highly respected author's cavalier punctuation. The grammarians grumbled along with him. "That's why she has editors." The letter was typed on a type-writer, so whether the writer made an honest typo or had an orthographic brain fart, she was probably not going to go back and fix it. Yes, that's why she has editors. But it's also not most people's main concern to police their quotation marks when writing freely. We proofread things that lots of people will read, like papers for classes. We might even proof our emails. But most of us don't think of ourselves or our friends as failed writers because of a typo. The rogue quotation mark might have warranted a preventative aside in a freshman writing class, but not two whole minutes of grad student tsk-tsk-ing. (That's not a word! Take that!)

The Permissive Editor
When we got down to the analysis of some prose by the same author, we looked at some sentences containing extremely long and winding interrupters. I like interrupted sentences -- dashes, parentheses, whatever have you -- but some of these had double, triple, confusing interruptions. They sure were great though. But what did the grammarians have to say? "I can't believe her editor let her get away with that!" When told that some of this prose had been printed in magazines, they asked why it wasn't "fixed," why no one "stopped her." Maybe because the editor recognized great writing, even where the occasional verb was separated from its direct object by a parenthetical. (Who cares?! It's all so fucking arbitrary.)

The Sentence You Would Never Write
The first directive in this class is to look for "the sentence you would never write." This is supposed to help us find unique stylistic features. While it may sometimes be an efficient way to do just that, it is presumptuous to assume you have a class full of writers who never successfully deviate from grammatical norms. "Look for the sentence with bad grammar" is the message behind this. And since we all love our grammar, we should be able to identify the sentence straight away. What does it say for our precious stupid grammar if every writer we are studying uses egregiously "flawed" sentence structures? Even if we allow for the flaws because the writers show some sort of genius, a method to their grammatical madness, why assume we would never want to write a sentence like theirs? Should we resign ourselves to mediocrity in prose because that's all that proper grammar allows for? Instead, I think we should be looking for "the sentence you would love to write." Or in the case of the grammarians, "the sentence you would love to write, but can't, so you complain about it."

In Conclusion
I hope there are less grammarians at my next stop on the road to an advanced degree in English. If the GRE subject test in literature is any indicator, we should be more worried about learning our Greek mythology and modern poetry than correcting people's inspired use of English. I don't recall a grammar quiz on that particular test. While I recognize that teaching writing is something we will all do (and do constantly), grammar is just one small part of that. To think of teaching writing as teaching grammar or to think of studying style as studying grammar are incredibly reductive approaches. More on style reduction to come, once the semester has ended.

The Vulgar Marxist

2010-11-05T18:39:00.000-07:00

In Marxism and Literary Criticism, Terry Eagleton describes vulgar Marxism as a reduction of the complexities of Marxist analysis to that oversimplified notion that material condition either makes the man, or makes the resistant man. Eagleton calls for a more sophisticated Marxism that looks at how art (literature) is expressed in many aspects of the superstructure, and is not solely shaped by "means if production," or by an author's poverty or wealth, but by a host of economic influences coming from several contexts (author, the whole of literature, the real world, the implied reader...). In other words, Marxist readings should not merely attempt to show how a work supports its historical conditions, or assume that the work directly challenges those conditions. It's never that simple.

In the first chapter Eagleton clearly puts forth how art is a part of the superstructure that can either reinforce or undermine it, possibly effecting some change at the base. I won't go into it all here, but this was really helpful for me. I'd known all along that Marx, influenced as he was by an aesthetically vocal G. W. F. Hegel, and a cultured (if impoverished) chap himself, would have liked to pull art into his mix, but hadn't the time considering those thousand or so pages of capital-criticism he had to get out. I just couldn't put my finger on how art was such an important part of superstructure, having fallen into the vulgar Marxist mentality sometimes myself.

This was the first time I'd seen the "vulgar Marxist" called out this way. I've seen the term before and I think it's useful, but Eagleton was the first place I'd seen it described so well how when it comes to criticism of art, vulgar Marxism misses the point. But while Eagleton privileges his sophisticated Marxist critic, he does not call for an eradication or a re-education of vulgar Marxists. The word "vulgar" is key here, and I don't think it's pejorative. Vulgar is of the people. Vulgar is what the people understand. If a vulgar Marxism is as far as any proletariat group could be expected to get in their understanding of how economy shapes their consciousness (or, more simply, their "lot in life"), this is far enough to effect some kind of reaction. What good is Marxism if its first application, its praxis as Marx would call it, isn't to help the people see the way to doing something? Eagleton's sophisticated Marxism is the critic's window into the power structures of society as illuminated by art, a window he looks through so that he can critique those structures. Vulgar Marxism might serve the vulgar man just as well. Only he may choose to break the window, and bust some heads.

Workers of the world unite,
Critics of the world . . . untie.

Fortuitous Reading

2010-10-29T10:30:00.000-07:00

I haven't had time to type lately, and sometimes even lack the means (the y is now missing off my personal laptop), so I'll quickly share a piece of Derrida that made me strangely happy. At the end of "Structure Sign and Play" he's talking about how the implications of deconstruction can be interpreted as either positive or negative, as something to be struggled against, or as something affirming, in the Nietzschean sense. This bugger is made up of only two sentences, the second one the more exciting:

"For my part, although these two interpretations acknowledge and accentuate their difference and define their irreducibility, I do not believe that today there is any question in choosing -- in the first place because here we are in a region (let's say, provisionally, a region of historicity) where the category of choice seems particularly trivial; and in the second, because we must first try to conceive of this common ground, and the différance of this irreducible difference. Here there is sort of a question, call it historical, of which we are only glimpsing today the conception, the formation, the gestation, the labor. I employ these words, I admit, with a glance toward the business of childbearing -- but also with a glance toward those who, in a company from which I do not exclude myself, turn their eyes away in the face of the as yet unnameable which is proclaiming itself and which can do so, as is necessary whenever a birth is in the offing, only under the species of the non-species, in the formless, mute, infant, and terrifying form of monstrosity."

Yyyyikes! We read this last part in class and a cluster of us chanted in a weirdly satisfying whisper:

...what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I wouldn't have made that particular connection to Yeats if I hadn't just started reading Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem. Sure, "The Second Coming" is an oft quoted poem, but to pull it out of Derrida was fun. At some point a reader starts to find she's read so much that all the connections begin to make sense. I used to know when an allusion was being made, or some language borrowed from somewhere, and was even able to track down the source sometimes. But that does not give the same satisfaction as being able to hold multiple texts in one's head at once and get positively giddy about all the possibilities of interaction between them.

Besides my first in-class experience of the literature student groupthink phenomenon (we are after all, an "interpretive community"), and what struck me as the beginnings of my finally having read some significant (but still minuscule) portion of all the things I want to read, I know the first time I'd ever read the paragraph, alone, I was smiling like an idiot and not knowing why. Whatever connections I didn't make on my first solo read, I was at least moved in some way, which seems like a funny thing to be when you're reading about structuralism.

Does Sap Sell?

2010-10-16T12:19:00.000-07:00

Buy some shit or I'll make you cry.

It is probably a fact that sex and rock n' roll sell. As much as feminists and other ad police complain, we can't deny our basic urges for sex and ecstatic rocking (or jazzing, or grooving, or hip hopping or whatever it is you do to lose yourself). But who came up with the idea of salesy sap? Lately everything from phones to cars to pills has a commercial with sappy, sort of hopeless music. What are they trying to do to us? Make us more depressed than we already are?

Remember when they'd sell us stuff by rockin' us out? By "they" I mean the current advertising hegemony. A couple years ago I wrote about the abuse of classic rock lyrics in advertising. They always take the lyrics so far out of context that the ad becomes absurd. Well that still pisses me off, but at least the music is good! It's catchy, upbeat, and I can see it making someone want to buy something. Motorola used AC/DC's "Back in Black" a few years back, and it successfully made me buy a bitchin' black Razr phone. It died and I miss it.

In addition to sucking, sappy music doesn't help the consumer remember the product. I can think of half a dozen sappy car commercials, but I have no idea what the hell those cars those were. A vague impression of a Chrysler logo comes to mind for one of them. Snappy, not sappy, helps memory when it comes to products.

If sap does sell for some people, it might be because of a current trend in listening to sappy music, like Jack Johnson. Even if you like that sort of thing, you can't call it catchy or advertising appropriate in any way. The makers of the sappy commercials, knowing their music won't appeal to anyone who doesn't listen to "adult alternative," usually throw in a sappy storyline to help us remember the commercial. That car commercial where the just married couple drive out to a tent in a field (dude, you could have at least gotten a real tent that doesn't melt in the rain), and the girl is kind of funny looking in a cute way with her weird haircut and flowers in her hair... yeah that one. So sweet right, with the sappy music and all? Well, I couldn't tell you if they were driving a Subaru or a Volvo or a Volkswagen. I'll guess that it wasn't a Volkwagen because VW usually has an excellent sense of humor.

Here's that commercial, in case you don't watch TV (you probably shouldn't). The singer sounds like he's dying. I like that it even ends with "We could have gone a more traditional route, but it wouldn't have been nearly as memorable." Wait, what are you selling again? Life insurance?

The worst part about some of the sap songs, like the one in the AT&T commercial that rips off Jeanne-Claude and Christo, is you can't even understand the lyrics. So you walk away from the TV with some vague impression of a vague product (some phone or another...) and some vague lyrics to go along with it, that just sort of vaguely depress you and you don't even know why! I saw some shit or somethin'... and it was beautiful... (The only reason I know that's an AT&T commercial is because I looked up "Jeanne Claude and Christo ripoff.")

I don't like being sold to any more than the next educated person, but I at least like the sales pitch to have ring to it. I don't like to be depressed by advertising. It is depressing enough that advertising even exists, that it is a huge cash cow, and culture shaper. It shouldn't also make us want to jump in the ocean. Advertisers: if everyone kills themselves, no one can buy your shit.

I can think of two commercials that actually make great use of contemporary music. The music is a little saccharin, but it's happy! The Target commercial with the triplets (In a land where the river runs free...Where you and me are free to be you and me!) and the Holiday Inn Express commercial that's made Kyle Andrews famous (You always make me smile...Don't know why I love you...). While you won't catch me riding down the highway or even doing laundry to music like that, I'll at least acknowledge that the marketers of these products understand that making you cry isn't going to get you to buy backpacks or go on vacation. Giving you a little smile and a catchy tune to stick with you just might.

Growing Pains

2010-10-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

Hello blog. Nice to see you. It's been a long time.

Those are nearly the opening lyrics of a Conway Twitty song I grew up with. It always reminds me of another Conway Twitty song, "Happy Birthday Darlin," a song which inexplicably made me cry my eyes out on my fourth birthday as I sat on the dining room floor looking at a catalog of home decor, including owls made of brown and yellow yarn and wooden beads. Because of these admissions, you can probably tell I will be 30 years old tomorrow. I plan on listening to some Conway Twitty.

My growing pains associated with turning 30 are only slight. I need to do something small for myself, like get an actual haircut. That should fix me right up. The more intense growing pains I'm experiencing have to do with grad school.

Friends might notice I took the school name out of my little student bio at the left. I did that not only so I can speak more freely about what happens at school, but because I will be at a different school come Spring semester. I'm in a masters program that is in no way designed for the aspiring PhD student. As I take more and more away from the course materials, it has become evident that I am in the wrong place, a place where there is no room for a student like myself to grow. This has nothing to do with other students (one of them started out super pretentious, then backed off completely). I know there are snobs and egos everywhere. It's just everything else about the program.

I blame myself for not aiming higher when I decided I had to stay local for grown-up practical reasons. Also, not one person I talked to really knew what it was like at this school. After looking forward to this idea I had of "graduate study" all summer, within three weeks I became tortured by it.

But there is something new to look forward to! I'll have a new start in the Spring, in what I have verified through brilliant, trusted former professors is a super-traditional MA to PhD program in literature, with teaching assistantships for all, a program wherein one professor assured me I will "kick so much butt." (Last Friday I went out for drinks with all my old profs and felt so at home. Even if a school occasionally sucks, you should at least feel at home.)

I'm pissed, tortured, disappointed by this fall, (there are still six weeks left!) but so hopeful for next semester. I think about it constantly. I feel like I'm running away or not finishing what I started, but at the same time I have to be an adult about this. So I asked yet another faculty member for advice before making a decision -- "No reason to be more unhappy than usual," she said. The consensus seems to be that there is no ideal place to be for this yucky thing called graduate school. It will probably always be "teh suck" in one way or another. But preventable, protracted misery is not a state in which anyone should spend five years or even two years of their lives. I will be at least 35 before I can be a "professor." And I don't want to look it. Here's to a fresh start at 30.

Art Problems, Partially Resolved

2010-10-08T14:57:00.000-07:00

I found this on the Chicago Art Blog, when I was searching to see if anyone in the art world has complained about the Jeanne-Claude and Christo ripoff by AT&T:

"After all, the avant-garde contains in it the possibility of kitsch and kitsch the possibility of the avant-garde; they are separated by degrees not by kind, it's how they participate in constructing culture that makes the difference."

The blogger was not saying AT&T in particular was producing kitsch. No, that was just a plain old ripoff (I agree). But he discusses some other sort of kitschy recent ads, and their allusions to pop art may be semi-excusable. Maybe. Anyhow this little sentence neatly organizes an idea I've been trying to articulate for months! That same idea was there in a few critics I've read, but never put so clearly. I'm terrible at writing on things like "constructing culture," and I need cultural stuff to be wrangled into some more philosophical order before I can talk about it.

Maybe I can finally finish my Ranciere post now. Maybe.

From Brooks to Fish (and back)

2010-10-05T23:14:00.000-07:00

So I got an 'A' on my very first paper as a graduate student, and in that paper I applied Fish by picking apart Brooks. For me this was blasphemy, but I had to be Fish for this assignment. What better way to explain a critic I don't know much about than by pitting him against a critic I know well? And isn't there knowledge to be gained by challenging one's own critical stance? (Brooks's = mine, usually.)

Two weeks ago I compared Brooks with Bateson, and Brooks came out on top because of what I saw as his heightening of the paradoxes in the text, a Wordsworth poem. Next week, in comes Fish, and he says some of the same things about Brooks (well, about formalists anyway) that I had said about Bateson! In the first section of "Interpreting the Variorum," Fish takes on formalist interpretations of Milton, on whom he is an expert, and shows how the formalists fall flat. They flatten out the paradoxes in the text (I had accused Bateson of that, while attesting to the formalist's paradoxical prowess!) and remove the delight of the indeterminate meanings. Most importantly for Fish, and perhaps this is what I was getting at all along when I was looking for "the critical climax" (and probably projected that onto Brooks as I read him, Fish would argue) , the formalists completely miss that (part of) the meaning of the text is in our moment of hesitation, in the experience of textual confusions, in the experience of the overwhelmingness of the possibilities of meaning! I think I've been reading Brooks affectively, and not very analytically.

Brooks does point out textual cruxes and formal features that I find exciting, but it is perhaps my actual reading of Brooks, as it unfolds in time (flitting back to the text, back to Brooks, back to the text...) that is most exciting for me. You can see how Fish has planted the reader-response seed in my brain (I'm not sure if it's sprouting or festering now), and how I am flinging myself out onto that temporal axis of criticism, where I had once sworn allegiance only to the textual, the spatial. When I presented my paper my excitement about meaning-in-reading was catching -- students thought me a Fish fanatic! But, Fish aside, I can't deny that I have begun to read criticism like it is literature (isn't it?), and interpret and respond to it as such. In a way, I've never been looking for the most rigorous theory or the most provocative argument, but for who can tell the best story.

The way I chose to do this exercise paid off in spades. I come away with a new appreciation for a certain brand (species?) of Fish, and with a refreshed and revised view of what Brooks does to those texts with which the formalists claim a peculiar intimate relationship. I still cleave to formalism pretty tenaciously, but Fish's early reader-response work (forget "interpretive communities" for now -- I'm only talking individual reader's response) helped me to see outside the box (for in our textbook's diagram, the formalists really do live in a box) and look more critically at what Brooks actually does, and at how I read him and the rest.

In the Style of Lyly

2010-09-29T22:46:00.000-07:00

Below is a page-length of Euphuistic prose I'm writing for a Prose Styles class assignment. I'm not quite there with the antithesis and endless lists that say the same thing a hundred ways, but I'll keep editing this until it's Lyly all the way. This version was after reading Euphues on my own, but after class discussion and reading Shakespeare's parodies of this stuff (which are really exactly copied from this stuff -- you don't need to exaggerate it to see how ridiculous it is), I think I understand the style a little better. I don't understand, however, why such a style became a fad -- Shakespeare made fun of it because it had become the 16th century equivalent of Valley Girl talk.

(And after looking at this book cover, I have decided I am going to call myself not "M.A." upon confirmation of this next degree, but forever and always, "Mafter of Arte.")

Anatomy of Appetite

There came bumbling along the avenue a boy of not more than ten, a boy of more heft than health and yet of more health than holiness, thinking the town his grazing grounds and his watering hole, so that he spent these daily walks sniffing the air for familiar wafts – charbroiled burgers, fried chips, fragrant rotisserie chickens; and, if it were Friday, the sweet olfactory evidence of a pig roast. It was whispered that the boy’s mother, whose cooking was worse than her looks, and yet whose looks were better than her maternal judgment, and who had not been seen with a husband in ten years (was not the boy nearly ten?), would send him out of house to procure whatever dishes and dainties his tremendous appetite required, two twenty dollar bills his ticket to more than mere sustenance; a suburban avenue, with all its light-up signs and fast service foods and barbeque joints, his means to a greasy, dripping end.
Preferring meat before sweet (yet still fond of sweet meats) the boy had only to select this evening’s protein; after supper he would loiter in the 7-11, ogling shelves of chocolate things, chocolate-filled things, chocolate-covered things. Finding the pig roast as the fly finds honey or a dirty diaper, and landing upon a plate of flesh without so much grace as the fly, and yet creating a scene just as revolting, the boy devoured hock, nibbled feet, chewed upon pulled pork sandwich. He paid with his wadded bills and took his leave and his change for the shelves of candies, his only care now to select the most winning combination of chocolates and nougats, chiclets and nutbars, that could be afforded for nine dollars and twenty-seven cents. He loved a candy coating; for as the Reese’s cup has its chocolate shell, the M&M its colorful sugary jacket, the gum drop its sweet crystalline glaze -- he himself had none.

The Critical Climax

2010-09-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

The commercial with the fried egg should have said, "This is your brain... This is your brain on Deleuze." And so from my fried egg I give you this rhizome or plateau or something, concerning something completely different:

A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No movement has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

I just read some E. D. Hirsch on historical criticism, from Validity in Interpretation. Hirsch (I keep wanting to call him "Ed") compares two critiques of Wordsworth's "A slumber did my spirit seal." One is by Cleanth Brooks, a Formalist whom I like most dearly. The other is by F.W. Bateson, who I don't know much about except that he doesn't like historicists. So Hirsch is comparing two critics that are not from his camp, and he makes it a contest. Hirsch believes in determinate meaning, so one of these guys (or neither) has to be "right."

Hirsch chooses Bateson as the winner, not because of his optimistic interpretation, but because of the word "pantheistic." Hirsch sees that word as proof that Bateson is taking into consideration the life and times of Wordsworth, a Romantic poet who would have some pantheistic beliefs or motifs. Hirsch goes on to point out how the two critiques are irreconcilable and therefore one of them must be invalid. Pantheism seems like a silly way to determine a winner, but it would be silly for me to complain about his choice since I don't believe in determinate meaning anyway. The contest is the problem. If I ran a contest with these two, I would try to determine who was the better critic, not who gave the right interpretation. Here they are, first Bateson, then Brooks:

The final impression the poem leaves is not of two contrasting moods, but of a single mood mounting to a climax in the pantheistic magnificence of the last two lines . . . The vague living-Lucy of this poem is opposed to the grander dead-Lucy who has become involved in the sublime process of nature. We put the poem down satisfied, because its last two lines succeed in effecting a reconciliation between two philosophies or social attitudes. Lucy is actually more alive now than she is dead, because she is now a part of the life of Nature, and not just a human "thing."

[The poet] attempts to suggest something of the lover's agonized shock at the loved one's present lack of motion -- of his response to her utter and horrible inertness. . . Part of the effect, of course, resides in the fact that a dead lifelessness is suggested more sharply by an object's being whirled about by something else than by an image of the object in repose. But there are other matters which are at work here: the sense of the girl's falling back into the clutter of things, companioned by things chained like a tree to one particular spot, or by things completely inanimate like rocks and stones . . . [She] is caught up helplessly into the empty whirl of the earth which measures and makes time. She is touched and held by earthly time in its most powerful and horrible image.

I was so moved by Brooks and kind of grossed out by Bateson. For instance, the line "We put the poem down satisfied" really rubs me the wrong way. If we subscribe to Horace's miscuit utile dulci, maybe putting a poem down satisfied is what we should hope for? But satisfaction is not exactly the same as delight. Delight doesn't require any thinking. Bateson's satisfaction is not instant or aesthetic, but apparently based on his own interpretation which smooths out any conflict in the poem. On a "reconciliation between two philosophies or social attitudes." That's pretty vague, and it hardly sounds satisfying. Certainly not delightful. It's as if he's saying the poem has satisfied its requirement to come to a resolution (as if that is a requirement of good poetry).

Bateson's pantheism angle turns Lucy's resting place into an Elysium instead of a dead stone revolving in space, but besides creating some nicer imagery than Brooks' darker interpretation provides, I don't think the critique is very effective (or affective). The whole aim of it seems to be, like I said before, to smooth out conflicts, to reconcile differences, and to cancel out oppositions without a hitch. He talks of "two contrasting moods" that are actually "a single mood," without making anything out of how these moods were sublated or elevated. He talks of the dead-Lucy "opposed to" the living-Lucy but doesn't explain the opposition, ending on a bittersweet line, the equivalent of "she's in a better place now." It's almost mawkish.

Two moods becoming one, two people (who are really one) who oppose one another, two philosophies reconciled -- these things all seem pretty interesting, and like they might occur at some climactic hinging point in the text, but Bateson doesn't bring it out of the poem. He just explains it conceptually and we are supposed to accept it. The funny thing is he does mention something that sounds exciting, and even uses the word "climax" in the line at the front of the paragraph, where he claims that "a single mood mount[s] to a climax in the pantheistic magnificence of the last two lines." Sounds so exciting, and then he doesn't deliver on it.

My impression of Bateson's critique is sort of just that -- an impression. And he even calls his own critique an impression of the poem. But even if his prose style moves someone more than it moves me, even if his vague impressions of the poem are enough for someone else to sink their teeth into, there would still be that undeniable attempt to "solve" the poem there, to smooth it over, to get relief from its tensions. What that does is just turn the poem into its interpretation. We have the end result so there's no use in re-reading the text. I may not like Bateson's delivery of his critique, but more importantly I don't like his aim. It's anti-climactic.

Brook's critique may be slightly amiss in its pessimism (even if we're not going to be historical, let's be reasonable -- I would take into consideration that Wordsworth is not a poet of sad, dark poems, so me might avoid going down the "agonized" path), but its strength is that the conflict in the poem is not canceled out. It makes for a better critique when conflicts and tension are pointed out explicitly. And if a claim is made that a text has a climax, something climactic should be brought into focus by the critic. In fact, the critique itself should have a climax.

The first line of Brooks's paragraph has us picturing a cold dead body through this whole thing, a lover looking on in "agonized shock." The "shock" may be a little over the top, but it certainly gives us an image to hold onto while Brooks elaborates on what the text does with the dead girl, and the beautifully understated "present lack of motion" makes the lifeless body even more vivid. Brooks then uses the concrete language of the poem (rocks, trees, rolling...) and shows how the differences between alive and dead, still and moving, are depicted "sharply" by Wordsworth's chosen images. He also substitutes some of his own sharp, concrete words like "whirled about" contrasted with "object in repose."

Brooks drives his images home, perhaps a little more than a Wordsworth poem seems to require. The death in the poem sort of washes over us and leaves us drenched in the weight of Lucy's helplessness. It's not nearly as "horrible" a thing as Brooks makes it out to be. But even if Brooks gets carried away, the tension he points to, and even the sadness he alludes to, is real. Perhaps this contrast between Brooks's pointed prose (which can be quite poetic) and Wordsworth's fluid poetry makes that even more apparent. The poem is not merely translated into an interpretation and left for dead, but complemented and brought to life by a good critique.

In the second half of Brooks's paragraph, things are still "at work" in the poem, not reconciled. Brooks finds similar tensions to what Bateson found (although Brooks focuses on still vs. moving where Bateson focuses on life vs. death), and he magnifies them and explicates them with a close reading on rocks and trees and such. In the last two lines of the paragraph, Brooks combines the poem's concrete images with some abstract and more emotional language to create a critical climax: "She is touched and held by earthly time in its most powerful and horrible image." Wow. That is not a resolution, but a gorgeous predicament. And that makes the reader want to go back and pore over this poem for himself. Or, he can always go back to just drinking in the poem for what it is, the "impression" of it made a little more delightful by the critic's illuminations. Since the poem is never resolved, and it is always at work, it is always worth reading.

Brooks wins!

Against the Titular Colon

2010-09-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

Resist...

One of my professors swears by colons in titles. He tells an anecdote: "I submitted a paper and it was rejected, with no notes. I added a colon to the title, changed nothing else, and it was accepted immediately." He has a sense of humor about this of course. But he still expects colons. The way I see it, the colon is making our titles ugly, and it's making our scholars lazy.

What the Colon Does
Since my papers were long enough and intense enough to warrant colons in their titles,
I've raged against the colon machine. Or at least poked fun at it, sometimes with a colon. Consider this: colons give the reader pause; colons begin lists (and our friend the semi-colon helps us with the listing); colons suggest that thing two explains thing one.

The second function of the colon listed here is not important to titles, because we can see at a glance we're not reading a list. The first function of the colon, however, is hard to ignore. When a title has a colon in it (usually closer to the front of the title than to the end of it), it makes the reader pause a little. We haven't even begun to read the first paragraph of the paper or article, and we've already been made to pause. I think the writer who requires a pause from the reader before he's even said anything meaningful must think a lot of himself. Writers' egomania aside, a pause in a short phrase like a title is not very elegant. If I look at the bibliography from my literary criticism class, there is not a single title with a colon in it. Defence of Poetry, Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Poetics, Biographia Literaria, name only a few. One might argue that these titles are antiquated, that the colon is a modern title expectation or even requirement with a modern purpose. But does it make for a good title? No. These old titles are elegant, they flow, and they don't ask for pause in the middle of a first thought. They build expectations, they give hints, and they keep the reader reading. (I'm in reader-response mode this week, so naturally I'm thinking of the responses...)

"Defense! of poetry! Is literature at war!?"
"Oooh, lyrical ballads that can't be read until we read the illuminating preface..."
"Poetics, huh. Well, that must cover just about everything. I'd better get started."
"Biographia whaaa? I gotta find out!"

The "pause" funtion of the colon may create unstylish titles with bad flow, but the "thing two explains thing one" function of the colon is the real, supposedly useful reason these dots make themselves at home in today's titles. Like the professor's story shows, a reviewer may not be able to tell what your paper is about without that explanatory phrase after the colon. He doesn't want to guess or be given exciting expectations -- he wants to get through the pile quickly. So papers as commodities (both economic and academic) sell better when they have colons in the titles. Why not use these titles fow reviewing purposes only, and use a shorter version for print? I can't think of any other way around the over-explained titles. Certainly if something made it into a paperback for sale it would need a better title. No paying customer is going to stand for colons everywhere. It starts to seem like those old works with the short titles can wield those titles because they live up to the expectations they give us. Perhaps no one today can write anything that lives up to the "epicness" suggested by a beautiful or brief title? Or do the titles just have to get longer and longer, like phone numbers, because we've used them all up?

One big difference between the works in the bibliography and the colon-titled papers is the length and breadth -- most of those older works cover a lot of ground, but academic contributions today are doled out bite-sized. Scholars are writing shorter papers (for better dissemination) and being specific about what's in them is more important. I get all that. But that doesn't make the colon any prettier.

I have read some later pieces that do well with the short title. "On..." or "Against..." usually makes for a good start. So does "In defense of..." as we can see in many of the ancient titles. Irwin's "Against Intertextuality" comes to mind. And Fish's "Interpreting the Variorum," which I have to read this week for a presentation. Both of those titles intrigue me to no end.

What We Do with the Colon
We looked at why the colon might affect the reader, but we also have to consider what the sneaky scholars intended for it. There are several ways that the colon makes for titles that come off as knowing what they're talking about, or as some modern manifestation of style (if you can call it that -- bad style is an oxymoron, so there is disagreement on whether it can exist). The colon is often used in combination with a quotation from the work of literature being discussed, or from an earlier critic's work. Using a quotation is a clever way to make use of the explanatory function of the colon. Most often the quotation is placed before the colon, and after is a description of what the paper is really about. Here's two real examples:

"Telepathic shock and meaning excitement": Kerouac's Poetics and Intimacy

"Go": Milton's Antinomianism and the Separation Scene in Paradise Lost

The first title, as these titles so often do, borrows from Kerouac's style to create a style of its own. The scholar doesn't write like that, Kerouac does. And now she has a ready-made sexy title because she put his words into it. Thanks to the colon. And I don't even think she needed it! "Kerouac's Poetics and Intimacy" is a beautiful title by itself. Now, the second title is just ridiculous. Using a single word from the separation scene that doesn't mean much of anything in a title, the scholar got the "necessary" colon into it. The rest of the title is just clumsy. She might have closed her eyes and pointed to a line of the poem to save her shoddy title. "If I put something in front of the colon it will all be okay!" Neither of these papers are bad. I used both of them in papers I wrote my senior year. I take issue only with the titles.

Another way the colon is used by scholars is for a straight explanation of the short-version title. I already said why I think this has become somewhat necessary in today's market, but it means that scholars no longer have to have any elegance or authority in their titles because the pauses and complications of the colon-assisted title are expected. You can look through any catalog of university press books to find some hideous examples of these. You can just picture the writers of these books and articles smirking as they select the perfect quote to steal from the authors, type their obligatory colons, and sit back knowing they'll be published (or at least read) for playing the colon game so cleverly. I also picture cultural criticism and media studies fans getting giddy reading through these things. The longer the title, the more esoteric words in it, the more excited they get. Here's a clumsy one that's sure to fire up a lumpy subset of readers:
Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games

For some fictional examples of how egregious these titles can get, try this English paper title generator. The results are not far from the real thing.

One more disclaimer -- Subtitles are used in a similar way in the titling of books. There's something different about book titles though. They often have an elegant short title even if it's followed by a subtitle (which would be after the colon in a paper title). Maybe because the thing is actually getting printed in a book the scholar took the time to make a title that doesn't sound like all the others.

So I may or may not use a colon when I write my first paper as a graduate student. It's not going to get thrown out or rejected, since the professor actually has to read and grade the thing. Should I be bold and forgo the double dots? Maybe next week. This week I'll do as the assignment guidelines ask (yes, it's actually on the guidelines).

P.S. I know what "titular" means and the play on words doesn't quite work, but I left it there because I liked the sound of all those body parts in the title.

The Philosophy Minor

2010-09-17T10:46:00.001-07:00

Two weeks of two English classes at the graduate level, and I haven't come across another philosophy minor. English students are naturally curious, and most undergrad programs didn't offer enough English to round out our schedules. So we played the field. I chose to flirt with philosophy (after flirting with history, who turned out to be a bore) and then fell head over heels for knowledge. I may have a curiously intense love of "the love of knowledge," but if you are an English student who doesn't have delusions of being a full-time poet, I can't recommend philosophy enough as your second-study.

I can think of quite a few reasons to study philosophy, but I'll distill that down to three big reasons philosophy will help your English. Philosophy trains your brain for discourse; philosophy helps you write like a scholar; philosophy prepares you for theory and criticism. For me this all boils down to being good at what I like to do. If that's not enough incentive in this economy, these three things also boil down to being employable and publishable.

Some of you might not like the third reason for studying philosophy, so I'll start there. You might hate theory, but you can't get out of being a critic. In my current lit crit class, a first for some of the students in there, the professor reminds us, "You're all critics, whether you like it or not." And when you turn your critical eye toward literature, art, or culture, you need to understand the theoretical background of the type of criticism you are applying. For an understanding of what certain theoretical positions do or don't take into consideration, whether they look at a text up close or from a distance or from someone else's point of view, whether they have anything to do with the real world or are content to stay in the abstract, can keep your thinking clear, keep your arguments unmuddled, and make your job of critiquing much easier. A background in philosophy helps keep you focused in this way, to think things through and write on them with cogency, and most of all to have the intellectual confidence to approach theory in the first place.

If you still don't think theory is important consider philosophy alone -- the first critics were philosophers! On day one of your first lit crit class you'll have to recall Plato's forms and Aristotle's unities. Now, criticism fell to the writers themselves for centuries, though they still drew on early philosophical ideas about art. But then, in the twentieth century, we came full circle with the philosophers snatching up the literature once again (only reading them you might not know they're talking about literature at all) and analyzing the heck out of it, and so came and went "High Theory." Theory might be mostly passe, but like Plato it hasn't been forgotten. If you ignore theory, you'll be writing the criticism of a hundred years ago. Now personally I'd think that was pretty neat, but you'd have to be a damn good critic and writer to pull it off! So if you can't pull it off you'll be writing the criticism of your freshman year: bullshit. Even if you know that theory is not for you (and you may change your mind!), you can't escape theory's importance to criticism, and like I already said (and your professors will reiterate) you can't escape being a critic.

When we introduced ourselves in class, one girl said she would not be a critic, but simply read books forever. I confessed that I probably don't read enough books because I spend too much time writing about them (and everything else). The professor assured me that I would make more money than the book readers. I didn't mean for my confession to come off as a brag, but the professor's comment shows what kind of work you need to be willing to do if you're going to bother with advanced degrees in English. I credit philosophy with giving me the mental patience to ruminate on things in this way -- and to be analytical, not simply interpretive.

I also credit philosophy with giving me the patience and diligence to write more clearly, more cogently, and with more authority than a bachelor's degree in English demands. Sure we had to write a lot, but we weren't graded very stringently or very consistently. A few decent poems and a few insightful sentences per paper can get you a bachelor's degree in English. Since most programs don't require that many classes in the discipline, it's up to you to determine how the rest of your mind gets trained. Languages are helpful, but a minor in Spanish does not give you an entire framework on which to hang your knowledge the way philosophy can. History helps give the literature one kind of context, but for many of us that particular context turns out to be somewhat unimportant. Only in philosophy was I consistently required to produce top notch work and do top notch thinking, only in philosophy was I expected to provide an excellent argument for any claim I made, and only in philosophy did the red marks on my papers provide real assistance in becoming a better writer. There is no bullshitting in philosophy, not past your introductory course anyway. It is a good idea to purge that stuff -- muddy writing, unfinished arguments, irrelevant notions that work their way into your thought-stream, &c. We are English majors. Shouldn't we be the best writers? Philosophy majors score higher than us on the writing and verbal sections of the GRE. English majors/philosophy minors, let's teach them a lesson!

The first reason I listed for studying philosophy is that it trains your brain for discourse. Discussion is a spirited part of upper level philosophy courses (try to take seminars or special topics!) and we know, not just because Socrates told us, that dialogue is how we come by knowledge. Philosophical debate is excellent training for the kind of debate you'll encounter as a graduate student in English, or even in your upper level English courses as an undergrad. You will not only fare better at discussions, and weather disagreements better, but you will have seen how you can learn about something by talking about it with your peers (uh, I think I'm supposed to call them colleagues now). Too often in the English classroom we set our opinions in stone before we let anyone else's ideas do any work upon us. Discussions don't go anywhere. But why get behind an opinion, or even an interpretation if you don't have an argument? Philosophy gives you a mind that generates an argument, adapts the argument when you receive new information or ideas, and builds upon the argument dialectically even when it seems to have been canceled out. Read your Hegel!

Besides the discourse you'll encounter in class, you'll also be entering into some of the discourses that are going on in English. "Join the conversation," they tell you in undergrad, when you first learn to incorporate the criticism of the scholars into your silly papers. Philosophy is indispensible in joining the conversation, for the reasons mentioned above. And this comes back to the criticism --if you want to work, you have to be a critic, and if you want to be a critic, you have to join the conversation. Or start a really good one, with a really well reasoned argument behind it.

You can take my word for all these things, or you can ask a professor who teaches lit crit and theory or who uses criticism along with the texts in his or her courses. There are those who don't do either, and there are those who will tell you they hate theory. They may be creative writers, or they may be dedicated teachers. But the ones who teach theory and criticism, and even some of those who claim to hate theory, will remind you of the importance of both for your chances at grad school, and for your chances at a career in English. In today's competitive academy, shouldn't we try to be good at all the things English-people are supposed to be good at, including criticism, teaching, and writing?

If you think you'll read books forever, lying in the sand, or if you think you'll publish all your collected poems, or if you plan to be a master Shakespearean, maybe all of this will fall on deaf ears (blind eyes?). But if you have any interest in doing the work of the literary critic, which is what all of us are if we've declared that major in English, I highly recommend checking out some philosophy classes or talking to your adviser about how a philosophy minor fits in with your studies. The first step of course is getting some theory into your undergrad plans, so that all that criticism you read (and do) has some kind of meat to it -- and philosophy classes make those theory classes so much easier to deal with! The learning curve will be steep if your first encounter with both happens on your first day as a graduate student.

The only reason not to study philosophy? As far as I know, no one thinks it's cool.

Words, Disgusting Words

2010-09-10T13:33:00.000-07:00

Everyone hates some words.

There are intellectual reasons to hate words and phrases. For instance, I hate "empower" because it got its contemporary meaning from a decade of ignorant usage. I also feel like its overuse has done a disservice to any women's movement that might have survived the '90s. I also hate, for intellectual reasons, businessy phrases such as "Please advise." Commands like that imply authority over someone, and I find them intellectually insulting. Also, due to my Heideggerian anti-technicity bent, I hate many words having to do with technology and media, such as "buzz" and "gadget."

There are stylistic and aesthetic reasons to hate words and phrases. For instance, a person who poo-poos old fashioned things may dislike archaic words and outmoded turns of phrase. I, on the other hand, dislike a lot of contemporary everything, and therefore dislike new words and phrases such as "sea change," as well as old words that have simply become fashionable, such as "deconstruct." And some words, we can all agree, are just ugly. "Defunct."

There are many sound reasons to eschew the use of a word in one's own writing, and we could make good arguments for any cringes we suffer while reading a magazine or a chick lit novel. However, the words and phrases we find most disgusting, the sight of which causes us to defenestrate the offending book, the sound of which causes us to cover our ears and shriek like King Arthur's men under the sonic influence of the Knights of "Ni," well . . .we have no reasonable explanation for our disgust, our almost bodily rejection of these slimy slovos. Some words are just fucking disgusting.

I will share mine, and then I'll share some friends' disgusting words. I'd like to solicit the reader's as well.

Words that kill me:

Smoothie

Softshoe

Trip the light fantastic

Words that kill Erica:

Satchel

Vagabond

Ragamuffin

The list is short but Erica is getting back to me with the others (I angered her just by asking about them!) so I'll add to this soon. I seem to have mentally blocked the rest.

My first two words in the list have similar sounds. Soft sounds. I hate them most when men say them. Perhaps I feel like they can't be soft, so the words are a lie. The second pair of words are both about dancing. I don't dislike dancing. Maybe I dislike epithets for dancing? The "fantastic" epithet here is not how the phrase was originally used. It was reworked and alluded to and ripped off a few times by successive poets and writers, and it is only in this final verbed form of it ("Let's trip the light fantastic, baby.") that makes me barf.

Erica's first two words are both about transients! I know she doesn't dislike transients. Maybe she was a sad hobo in a past life. The third word could even be a child transient.

What causes irrational word hatred? Word phobia even? Is it the sounds? (See Python "Woody and Tinny Words") Is it some repressed association? That seems likely since the words keep having things in common. (It would be easy, then, to put on a play using all of a person's worst words.) All I know is I hates me some words. Some I can explain. Some I can't. And those are the ones that make me want to break things.

Tell us your ugly, hateful words!

Tit!

The (sort of) Genius of Batman

2010-09-01T09:36:00.000-07:00

I'm dealing with some aesthetic conflicts. I've a post in the works condemning some aspects of the postmodern aesthetic such as "camp," yet I've been watching the Batman TV series pretty often this summer, and liking it. In his book Genius, Harold Bloom declares (he's always declaring things), "The study of mediocrity, whatever its origins, breeds mediocrity." I tend to agree, and I argue that way in the anti-postmodern post. Camp works by exaggerating the mediocrity of things for a laugh, but also in order to draw attention to the marginalized mediocrity it lovingly pokes fun at, and ask why it is marginalized to begin with (which is a threat to "high art"). Unfortunately this often goes overboard, and becomes plain old bad taste, which I can't handle. I will, however, grant Batman an exception from my disdain even though some of the show is in bad taste. I have to, since some aspects of Batman's camp are hardly a testament to the preciousness of mediocrity, but just plain good and funny ideas.

The things I enjoy about Batman are the little things. The things which won the show its initial popularity are the things committed lovers of awful camp would bring up as why they dig the Caped Crusader -- they praise the false genius of the shocking colors, the garish costume designs, and the stylized acting (stylized acting can be funny and is usually handled much better on Star Trek). The catch phrases of the show are another type of camp -- "Holy x, Batman!" or "...inside stately Wayne Manor," always repeated the same way, like the stock footage of the Batmobile leaving the cave. These things, along with the repetitive storylines and similarly motivated (and mostly unintelligent) villains, become a formula. The formula was funny for awhile, but camp alone can't carry a series. Batman lasted only three seasons.

The best Batman episodes stick to the formula, mostly, but do things within the formula that are interesting. As Batman might say, "The devil is in the details, Robin." Or, the glimmer of genius is in the details. (Because the main event is always the same.) To give a few small examples, I'll tell you about the show I saw last night, about the villain "the Mad Hatter." He was out to steal the 12 hats (and 12 living bodies) of the 12 jurors who sent him up, and Batman's cowl was to make a baker's dozen. This would be a double prize - getting a rare hat (his obsession) and learning Batman's identity at the same time! The Mad Hatter didn't use this discovery to his advantage though, which was funny. Because the Mad Hatter really was mad, he had no plans for extortion. He was simply going to grind up Batman and turn him into hat felt, so he could wear him ... as a hat.

What I loved about this episode in particular was the dialog. Some of it was funny because of its subtlety. When Batman finally figured out that the 12 hats belonged to 12 jurors, he exclaims:

"How could I have been so stupid!?"

Robin, showing no emotion under his little mask, offers up some dubious consolation:

"All in all Batman, you've been pretty busy."

HA! I don't know exactly why, but I thought that was hilarious. What the hell does Batman do besides fight crime? Bruce doesn't have a day job, that's for sure. And the fact that they had to feed the question "What comes in dozens?" to the super-Bat-computer to figure out who the 12 hats belonged to... that's just priceless. The duo normally deduce all sorts of impossible things from random clues, but in this scene they became super-dependent on the mounds of technology around them -- but not dependent on over-acting, thanks to Robin. Some scenes could gain a lot of humor if they would suddenly switch to subtle line delivery instead of their typical exclamations. (I'm glad I saw this on Chicago's MeTV channel, because a YouTube search just showed that TV Land cut the end of this scene out for time! The whole thing's uncut here at 5:23.)

Another round of funny dialog came when the Mad Hatter was explaining his scheme to his girlfriend/assistant Lisa. She worked at a millinery so she was probably a little mad too. Every time he explained a piece of the plan she would coo in her sexiest voice about how great that was -- only she used the most unexpected words. "How whimsical!" that the Hatter wants to kill twelve people. "It's positively merry!" that Jervis is going to have all those hats. And "How waggish!" that he will steal Batman's cowl to boot. When Jervis shows Lisa his felting machine and explains how he'll be wearing a Batman hat (made out of Batman), she lovingly calls him a "pixie." Yes, a disgusting, felt-poisoned pixie topped with a flesh hat. Throughout the episode, whenever the Mad Hatter goes on and on about his mad scheme, one of the henchmen keeps interrupting him, "When are we gonna eat!?" I have no idea what that was supposed to mean, but the repetition of it was excellent.

Back in the Batcave, the technology that Batman and Robin had come to depend on was all sporting its ever-changing labels. Everything is labeled in the Batcave. I'm surprised the duo don't label their wardrobe: "CAPE." "TIGHTS." "FLOPPY SHOES." Some of the labels around the Batcave are funny because they are a mile long: "GIANT LIGHTED LUCITE MAP OF GOTHAM CITY." Because we needed to know that it's made of lucite? And we couldn't tell it was giant. Some labels are funny because they are meaningless: "INTERNATIONAL FREQUENCY DETECTOR." (This label was sticking up into the frame so we couldn't actually see what the detector looked like... imaginez-vous!) And the best labels are funny because they are completely unnecessary, and thereby make a self-reference to the labeling frenzy: "TELEVISION." So we're not that far off from a label for "CAPE." This was the first season, and they're already making fun of themselves as dutiful agents of camp.

If you look at the backgrounds (before they became awful paper cutouts with Tim Burton lighting shining on them in season three... mediocrity breeds mediocrity), there are always labels hiding, and some help us understand the story. Or, more likely, they help fill holes in the poor reasoning of the formulaic writing. When the Mad Hatter had a French artist (who spoke French in the show -- they must have some culture in the Batman writers' corral!) seal Batman in plaster, there was a helpful sign on the wall: "SUPER FAST HARDENING PLASTER." This explained why Batman couldn't get away from the stupid plaster. If it hadn't been for that darn "super fast hardening plaster" sign, he could have just wiped it right off.

I was trying to imagine the labels working in a cartoon and I don't think they would. Not in a busy looking cartoon like The Simpsons, and not in any cartoon I worked on where machines were a part of the backdrop. There's just too much to look at. It works with Batman because you're not really looking at Batman all that closely since he always looks the same. The only cartoon I could think of that labels might work in (and they might actually use them) is Roger Ramjet. I'll have to write about him next. He is some camp and all genius.

Speaking of camp and its kissing cousin kitch, I'm watching Frasier while I'm writing this, and Niles just butted in on my Batman reverie with some related commentary. Lilith just announced she's getting married in Las Vegas. Niles responds:

"Isn't that delightfully kitschy! Since this is your second marriage you're poking fun at the institution by having the ceremony in the tackiest place you could possibly choose!"

By the way, have you ever seen Batman type a search string into his microfiche sort of machine? (I didn't read the label because I was watching him type. WHACK! SMACK! POKE! FUMBLE!) Check that out. It's campy. But it's funny too.

Email, Communication Letdown

2010-08-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to whine about the death of a letter-writing culture (though I might cry a little on the inside), but I've received some awfully written or just plain awful emails lately that have me wondering if the people who write them realize how they are going to be read. And by that I mean they come off as total asses, and I can't help but wonder if it's intentional, if it's people's general inability to express themselves with the appropriate delivery, or if email is just hopeless at replacing richer forms of communication.

I can separate myself from this because the emails I'm talking about are work or otherwise non-personal emails. The one exception are the emails of a professor whose e-writing is not awful, just unexpectedly curt. I'm beginning to think this is a lame thing to write about, but what fired me up to say something on it was a super bitchy email from someone I'd never talked to before.

So what makes a nasty email, or at least an email that doesn't convey the openness or friendliness that should be there between people doing business together? Here are a few examples...

The Intentional(?) Bitch
Short sentences are the first thing that get to me. The bitchy email started out with no greeting and four short sentences correcting an assumption I had made in my initial email to her, which had been very friendly and only asked for some information we needed to get moving on a project. After the whipping with the short sentences, they got longer and a little more open, to assure me that yes she does want to do business with us. But then she told me to talk to a higher up at my company about it, and ended with a signature block. This was delivered with a "don't bother me, underling" sort of curtness. Sorry lady but you can't just talk to the boss. Do you have an underling you can refer me to so you don't have to talk to me?

Rule number one then, I would have to say, is always use a greeting! Unless you know someone well or are sending an interoffice email, you should greet the person you are talking to, even if you have something bitchy to say to them. If you're mad, just put their name. But most of the time, you are just doing business as usual and a "Hi Robyn," would be nice. I always use "Hi."

Rule number two, based on this email and other curt communications I've received, is don't use a lot of short sentences in a row. It reads as if you are scolding someone. If you need to use a short sentence or be otherwise curt to make a point, don't make a whole email out of it. It's just rude.

Rule number three, if something is being done for you or you are making a deal, you should probably work a thank you in there somewhere. This isn't necessary once you're working with a client or vendor for a long time, or if you're just doing regular maintenance on something. But when you are getting the ball rolling and someone outside your company has to do some work, for instance, to sell your product, maybe you should type "Thanks!" before the signoff. Or don't, and I'll move you to the bottom of the to-do pile.

These are good rules to follow if you don't want to come off as a bitch or a jerk. But I think some email writers revel in the lack of warmth, the apathy, and the distaste they can deliver through the cold medium of email. They wouldn't be able to pull that off in person or on the phone, so they hand it down to you from their office (which is probably in a closet but they want you to imagine it as a penthouse) with their fancy email signature.

The Poor Writer, made Poorer
Sometimes emails read badly because the person writing them doesn't write well in the first place. When letter writing was our written form of communication, poor writers could choose to speak to someone in person. Since the 20th century we've had businesspeople, and they almost always like to speak in person or make a phone call. That works better for sales, but I think this is also because most of them can't write. 21st century communication has gone back to the written, as email, social media, and texting replace phone calls. The learning curve for using these media is quickly surmounted in a world of habitual tech users, but the learning curve for re-learning to write is a little steeper.

I contacted someone with a proposal and he replied from a different email address, using only his name and not the name of the company, and my email was not below his like in a reply email: "Send details." It took me a day to figure out who the email was from. I couldn't help myself -- I sent back a friendly email with the information, but also explained that I can't tell who you are if you don't reference my email or use a subject heading. I used friendly sentences, not short ones. He probably though I was a bitch anyway. But shit like that happens all the time! Anyhow, once our business relationship began I noticed all this guy's emails were short, curt, and terribly written. At first I'd thought he was an asshole. Then I figured out he just can't write. He was very thankful for our services in later emails, and even contacted me again recently to ask for ideas on something. Same bad writing, but after months of emailing with this person I now know he's a good guy.

I don't know what the moral of this story is, except that you should write emails knowing that people will read them, and however you come off (stupid, mean, confused...) could affect how the recipient of your slovenly word pile chooses to do business with you.

Flouting the Email
The final sort of email that always makes me angry when I first see it (then I soften to it) is the email that sort of flouts the coldness and impersonality of email. This could be done in a funny and friendly way if you're emailing someone you know well, but when I read emails from (or facebook comments by) a certain professor I get the feeling I'm watching some kind of personal experiment in writing coldly. There's no way this person doesn't know how to write, and there's no way this person would be intentionally mean or curt. This person is extremely warm and friendly face-to-face. It could be a disconnect in writing/speaking personalities, but I think it's intentional. It's a way to explore being a different type of communicator, which is kind of cool.

End Thoughts
It's funny that many of us think of email as impersonal in the first place. When a good writer sends an email, it can be full of warmth, excitement, subtext, everything we expect from other types of communication, even a letter. So I think the biggest problem with email is just that so many people have to write it. Inevitably, much of it will be bad. These people never wrote letters when they had the chance (we writers could still write letters, but the recipients of our little packages might think us strange), and were thrown into writing by technological and temporal demands. Email is what people do, it is fast, and we can get to it on our own schedules. It is a means to an end, for most. The fact that an email is typed characters on a screen does add some sterility to it, but that can't be blamed for everything. Novels and poems are typed characters on a page, a sterile sort of method of conveyance, especially in the form of a crummy new edition (or on a Kindle!) -- but novelists and poets have the gift that gives words life even without the flourish of a pen to emphasize them or the warmth of a voice to read them. We can't say the same for every wretch who owns an email address.

Self-Help for Grad Students

2010-08-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

Context:
Strange and uncomfortable situations make me want to write. I was taking a short internet-daze break at work (since I didn't feel like driving somewhere to eat fast food), and these chellovecks walked up the stairs and started opening wine bottles on the conference table. They said nothing to me, even though I'm seated outside the offices as if I'm the receptionist. Maybe I don't look very receptive. Anyhow now they've got little sample cups out as if they're ready to give a tasting. Is someone getting married and testing out wines at work? Are they new clients who want us to be intimate with their wares before we market them to the free world? I'm intrigued anyhow, and so I have started to write on something I've been thinking about as I surf the net for grad school information, advice, and related funnies.

(Almost) Text:
I read a lot of blogs and articles about academia. None of them do I read regularly -- I don't bookmark or RSS the stuff, but every day I click on Twitter links that look interesting and always seem to end up somewhere semi-academic. A lot of these blogs end up having a link to some kind of advice column or funny articles about life as a grad student, or life as a pre-tenure associate prof. Most of these blogs and articles (and I haven't figured out why) are by computer science students and professors. They run the gamut from optimistic how-to guides (i.e. "How to survive..." "How to get into..." "How to excel at...") focused on practical information, to cautionary blog posts telling computer science students they'd better forget about getting any more degrees, to student's blog that are both funny and depressing in their portrayal of graduate student life in any discipline.

As a graduate student in the humanities (Holy shit I can say that now! [Holy shit, should I cease with the public cursing?!]), some things stand out to me as different among the graduate computer geeks and scientists. Science students and profs alike iter-and-reiterate how "brilliance" and "smartness" are not all that important in a compsci PhD program, or even in science. One article by a veteran professor cites "perseverance, tenacity, and cogency" as the three traits that define a successful graduate student in his field. He elaborates on each of these traits, and there are some useful practical ideas and advice on attitudes and expectations that apply even to students in the non-sciences like myself. However, he and others come back to the "you don't need to be smart" line so often, you'd think their programs were hurting like hell for new recruits. Or maybe they've just adapted to the new crop of young Americans -- willing to work and bang away at a thesis till they die, but not willing to sit still for an instant to get all enlightened and junk. Either way, I found the call for dummies a little startling.

I'm sure some dummies take English degrees now and again, but it seems to me that being unsmart in this discipline would make a PhD a prohibitive venture. There are very few seats in these programs, even at state schools. Candidates' profiles reek of l'air d'erudition, and it's all very frightening sometimes. If I didn't think I was at least a little smart I'd never entertain ideas of going into a classroom with the likes of them. Maybe the computers department (whatever it's called) is all about camaraderie and geeking out together with the latest RPGs and fluorescent energy drinks.

Another more positive (for them) difference I found between us and them is the sense of humor and openness they have about their discipline and all it takes to become a doctor of it. Do literature students have this humor and openness? I think they're mostly serious and desire some anonymity, at least in public academic blogging. Maybe I am wrong, but it seems that those of us who study an art that often deals in humor, irreverence, sex, and other fun should be a little more conversational about it. Not just the literature but the whole literature student or professor lifestyle, our complaints about it, our fears of it, our--

Context (or, over there):
"We can make custom bottle labels, we even have some custom bottle shapes."
"Can you make bottles shaped like the internet?"

Textish:
--methods of dealing with it, our methods of even getting into it. As I mentioned, many of these blogging compsci folk tell us how they got where they are and think it necessary or at least helpful to reach out to students who would like to be where they are. Even when they have to be discouraging about a certain program or a certain type of student, they remain friendly in their delivery of this bad news. Perhaps literature is too competitive, and we don't want to share our secrets unless we want to scare the competition shitless? Even professors who have their tenure engraved in stone try to frighten us off. Some of them are well meaning, maybe others think we want to force them into retirement. The English department, after all, only has so much cutter, O my brothers.

Last year I blogged about how to do well on the literature GRE, partly because there is a dearth of published guides for this test (like the dearth of internet guides in everything else English), and partly because half the bumpkins who took the test with me looked scared stiff. (The other half weren't bumpkins at all but real competition with all like learned diction. One even wore an ascot.) I was not afraid that I would give someone else my spot by helping them with the test. I'm not yet into the thick of grad student life, but you can be sure I will continue to share my thoughts on it without paranoia, and I really can't wait to have useful advice to give to prospective grad students. It's a hard road, this getting in, and who doesn't go looking for help? So lately, I've just been a little disappointed looking for help with my next step, the PhD program and the application to such, since not many literature students are sharing.

What can you find out about our discipline online? The MLA has good articles on what's going on with teaching, some sites for academics publish articles on the "state of women" in humanities higher ed (mostly undervalued, sometimes "desperate"), abuse of adjunct faculty, etc etc. But none of this stuff is from a specific point of view, and it is not intended to prevent, diagnose, or cure any academic malaise you might be facing, especially as a student. So I've been looking at what the scientists have to say, and taking away the parts that might cure what ails me. Reading this stuff, I also see what all grad students have in common even if most of my kind don't like to talk about it.

Here is a useful and friendly "blog" by a compsci professor, wherein he shares tips on lecturing, getting into school, being successful at school, the academic job hunt, and academic blogging itself. You can apply most of this to whatever non-computer discipline you fancy:

http://matt.might.net/articles/

A detailed PhD survival guide by a compsci grad student (some of it applies to all of us):

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html

A depressing day-in-the-life of a compsci student that will resonate with procrastinators:

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/grad.day

A general guide to grad studenting, not as useful if you're already in it, but offers some wisdom to those who are thinking about it:

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/how.2b/how.2b.html

--------------------------------------------------
The wine-bearing vecks took off. Things are back to normal on the second floor.

Books are Things

2010-08-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

The Kindle commercials have a hold on me. The human-stop-motion commercials that marked Kindle's debut last Christmas rivaled a Peter Gabriel music video, and that sweet song chosen by Amazon to tell you all the things Kindle can do (or that you should imagine it can do) was the icing on the holiday fruitcake. And those don't normally even have icing.

One of last year's spots showed what appeared to be a single mom and her daughter. While daughter went away to school on her stop-motion bus, mom wiled the day away with Kindle, presumably the most romantic partner a single mom could hope for. Kindle, her "favorite one man show," made her daily life a dream.

The other spot I remember featured a gorgeous blond girl falling into and rolling out of scenes from the books Kindle shared with her. Unfortunately for blonds and for reading women in general, the young lady seemed to be reading at the second grade level. She did appear in drag as Davey Crocket and a moustached magician, so while unrealistic at least the commercial was not sexist. (Girls like "shiny things," but we also like "faded maps.") Her pouty lips carried any bad art direction anyway. Kindle, in this world, was both a friend and a toy.

Lastly I remember a Kindle commercial that featured a boy and a girl together. The same song played, with its lovey lyrics, and it became confusing whether we were supposed to fall in love with Kindle, with a boy who owns a Kindle, or with the idea that Kindle brings romance all around. "Will you fly me away? Take me away with you my love." Can Kindle really do that?

This summer's Kindle push is no longer artsy. A couple sit on the beach, reminiscent of a Corona commercial, but instead of sharing a couple beers each holds a Kindle. Are they reading the same thing? Or are they living in two different Kindle romances? To quote a completely different song, completely out of context, "When we [read together . . .] who do you think of? Does he look like me?" And the pretty voice still begs to be flown away, taken away.

As much as these commercials hold my attention, frustrate me, "kindle" something inside me whether I like it or not, they do not make me desire a Kindle. Why not? Kindle is not a book. It doesn't even store books. It stores information. Kindle is a thing, a device. Books are things too. But they don't fit inside a Kindle. What has a book got that Kindle hasn't got? A lot.

Books are never plastic. There may be arty exceptions to that, but in general your books will be paper. Plastic is just about the most unromantic, uninteresting substance you can make a thing out of. Paper is organic, it molds to us, it accepts our oils and smells, it becomes almost a part of us. Smell a book you love. Heaven, right? Smell a Kindle. Nothing. Unless you've mucked it up in some unspeakable way, it probably just smells like plastic.

Paper, precious as it is, is also more approachable than a device. We can leave our mark on it, and it is not altered for the worse. Dog-ear it, write on it, highlight it. How do you even do those things on a Kindle? Maybe they've thought of this. Maybe you can bookmark pages, even make notes? Does it store your marginalia? A book does that quite easily, and you don't fret over what you're writing in it.

Book covers are something special. They come in all sorts of glosses and materials, from cloth bound pre-1950s editions, to mid-century patterned cardboard designs, to graphic and bleak '60s paperback novel covers, to today's aqueous coated anthology covers emblazoned with some famous painting to remind you what period you're picking up. These texts have texture. You can run your hand over the stiff woven ones, or curl up the wrinkly thin paperback ones.

Aside from all the obvious physical differences between a paper book and a plastic device, books, for me anyway, have a kind of fetishism associated with them. We display them on shelves, we prop them up with meaningful or interesting bookends, we choose the one with the cover that speaks to us, sometimes even when it's not the best edition for the job. Some readers simply store them in great heaps or double-stack them on sagging shelves, sideways even, but these readers value the books no less than those of us who showcase our tomes. Their book clutter is a testament to their excitement. We share books and trade books, we send along the "heavily marked" copies hoping someone will benefit from or at least enjoy our marginal scribblings, and we grow familiar with our own copies of favorites, so much that another person's copy in another edition seems quite alien -- as if it is not the same book at all.

I just received the above pictured copy of Prose of the Victorian Period, and I attributed mystical qualities to it before I even looked inside. I judged it by its faded, red, mid-century patterned cover. (I was subsequently not disappointed when I looked inside and found that most of the "prose" is in fact some example of Victorian literary criticism. So it's a double treat.) The book -- the thing -- now occupies a place next to Dionysus, a wooden pineapple, some dead flowers and some handmade owls. So we have, coming to life on my dresser, a stone god, dead plants, a fruit, an animal, and yes, a book. It looks much lovelier than it sounds. And Kindle, if I had one and I chose to store it there, would look quite out of place. I think I'll sing that catchy song to my bookshelves instead.

The Academic Planner

2010-08-07T20:17:00.000-07:00

I bought an academic planner today. Nothing fancy, but it does have bikes on it. I've never had one of these before. As an undergrad I would always write assignments at the end of the day's notes for each class, then I'd leave the spiral folded back on itself to the last pages scribbled on. Term and midterm projects would get their due dates written extra big across the top of some handout, and shoved in a folder. I kept track of all these papers and spirals without any great effort, and kept appointments in my head (philosophy club, play rehearsals).

I always thought the kids who used academic planners must have incredibly disorganized brains, or incredible neuroses. Last spring, during my 20 credit semester of insanity, I sat next to two dedicated planners in my Brit Lit class. I sat in the front row -- I always do because I like to run my mouth. But I think they were in front so they'd never miss a homework announcement. I'd watch them, probably a little too closely, as they'd pull out these huge leather academic planners, a set of Post-it flags, and a rainbow of highlighters. They would spend as much time blocking in, crossing out, and flagging with urgency as they did looking up at the professor.

The planner girls were not identical. At least my confusion and disbelief about them wasn't. I decided, based on these young women's efforts, that there are two types of academic planners: the slow study and the control freak. The slow study really does have to plan, just like she really does have to study (whatever that looks like). The control freak, in this case a communications major who was pretty sharp at literature and also at dressing herself, plans because even though she's capable, she just can't leave anything up to the possibility of being forgotten. She doesn't trust her own memory. Everything that is is what is written in the plan.

Something about starting graduate school, about going to school as a job really, may have made me worry about my own memory. But I think a more likely explanation for my impulse planner purchase (ha! already fighting the plan) was that I think I might actually benefit from planning how I get work done at this level. There's self direction involved, and eventually a thesis. I don't think I'll be a slow study. I've never been a control freak. But I'm a graduate student now. They plan, right? At the undergraduate level a mis-planned paper just meant a long night of coffee and fingerless gloves and feet on the radiator while I tap, tap, tapped out eight or so pages from note piles (seems I only procrastinated in winter). Such a mis-plan won't fly anymore, even in the spring. Such a mis-plan would be a disaster.

So I have this planner. It has bikes on it. It was only $3.50.

Eve's Labor Pains

2010-07-28T15:43:00.001-07:00

Eve deceived Adam and seduced him. Their joint punishment was mortality and a lifetime of work for sustenance. Eve, the instigator, received an extra special punishment -- the pain of childbirth.

Now we all know the Old Testament God, even Milton's God, was something of a hard-ass. But labor pain as punishment? Mere pain seems like petty payback, even for God. (Why, then, did he create Eve with the higher pain tolerance?) Could it be that the real punishment here was not a simple pain, but nine months of marginalization, followed by hours of intense pain and exhaustion, followed by a lifetime of living under the male gaze that sees motherhood as paradoxically both weak and strong, yet definitely as something in the way? This is a much harsher punishment than a few hours of bodily discomfort. But by guaranteeing those few precious, torturous hours, God found a way to put Eve on her guard, to doubt her own strength, to bind her with the double doubt of her very ability to give birth, all this putting her in a position even farther below Adam than she had been in her original "innocence." And Adam, after watching Eve's soft belly deform, after hearing her screams of anguish, after finding her crouched in a warm place with a bloody, blue infant, would certainly never again look at his wife the way he did in that field where they had romped on the day of the fall. Perhaps that is the punishment God intended.

"If a woman views herself as weak, she does not create the image of herself necessary to give birth, for labor is hard work. If a woman views womanhood as strong, but only as long as womanhood does not include childbearing, she is equally in conflict..." -- Gayle H. Peterson, Birthing Normally

Woman's struggle for some kind of equality has led women to separate from themselves what is most feminine -- labor and birth. We must instead recognize the power that labor and birth give us (actual and potential power, for some women may for good reason choose not to have children). The ability to give birth "is a power and strength unique to women alone, and without reference of experience for men [...] out of this evidence comes the recognized birth envy." Peterson's book is the first time I have come across the concept of birth envy, and I was angered and excited by it. It seems like the likely counterpart to Freud's penis envy -- only no one talks about it in those terms. What if birth envy, as Peterson suggests, is the very reason man sought to come up with something for woman to envy back? Such a strong envy of such a fundamental property of womanhood seems a likely trigger for an extreme reaction from men (though still no good excuse for millennia of kicking us around).

Eventually Adam would partially resolve his birth envy by taking charge of the management and procedures of pregnancy, labor, and birth (and even child rearing). Since the Enlightenment rained down its blessings of knowledge, men have scientifically and systematically dealt with their lack by turning the thing to be envied into a thing to be pitied. Pregnancy is a burden, a disability, a vulnerable state, a pitiable malady. Birth is a medical emergency requiring the attendance of a physician, nurses, and myriad life-saving machines and intravenous drips. Through their pity, through their role as savior from the pitiable condition, men bring pregnancy and birth into the realm of male experience.

Where's Mom?

Women have internalized the male attitudes about pregnancy and birth perhaps even more deeply than we have internalized that we are physically inferior, less intelligent, or more emotionally fragile than men. Fortunately feminists of all kinds have stood up against these latter attitudes, striving and creating and keeping it together all at once to show that we are equal in strength, intelligence, discipline, logic. But a woman often arrives at this place of confidence and "equality" by removing the most basically feminine quality from her concept of womanhood. There is room in her picture for climbing corporate ladders, participating in contact sports, or earning doctoral degrees. But none of these things would be possible, she thinks, if she were to give birth.

Feminists of the sort I just described cannot be blamed for arriving at such a flawed picture of womanhood. After three waves (or more?) of modern feminism women do more, say more, write more, take more degrees, and make more money, than ever before. However, the reality of babies as career killers, education killers, even self-definition killers, is still, well, somewhat real. This is no fault of the women who do embrace motherhood and attempt to make a life for themselves wherein that role is only part of the picture.

A junky for literature on "alternative" women's health (don't even get me started on breastfeeding...), I was reading Peterson's birth book when I came across an online article about how mothers simply cannot expect to succeed in academia. The actual act of popping out babies (which Birthing Normally goes into in great detail, with pictures even!) may not seem directly related to a woman's career success, but everything I've been writing here, everything I've been reading in Peterson about attitudes and beliefs, how they affect our ability to succeed at giving birth... well all of this also affects our ability to succeed at life. The author of this article is of the belief that she cannot succeed (read: get tenured) because she is a mother. This is a manifestation of Eve's punishment. As I mentioned above, it would not be enough to rob Eve (or the article writer) of a joyous birth experience. Many of us, denied of such an experience, eventually work through that denial when we see our children grow. The punishment would be only temporary. Eve and her daughters are instead robbed of the hope of attaining a joyous life. Now I do not say here that Eve is robbed of the joyous life itself, but of her hope for it. This is where attitudes, acculturation, bad advice, past experience, the support of loved ones, all come into crucial play. The PhD who wrote the article telling us we can't "have it all" was writing from what she sees in the world. But is what she sees -- her anecdotal evidence of denied tenures and abandoned careers -- really playing out that way because mothers are incapable, or even because men (and childless women) think we are incapable? I think the attitudes of those denying the tenure may sometimes be misguided, but I think any woman who accepts that "that is the way it is," is complicit in her own failure.

There were some statistics in the article as well, but the author used them as prescriptive rather than descriptive. "Look, this chart shows you wont get hired. That's the way they have to do things at the universities." An interesting and somewhat positive statistic was given for men -- having children, even several children, seemed to boost their chances at tenure. The relationship of "kids to tenure" was completely inverted, with women raising more than one child at the bottom of the heap. Men who have children are stable, not a flight risk, probably good teachers. Women who have children? Well, they've just got too much on their minds. How are they going to manage all that?

Some of these statistics must have to do with personal priorities and not just snotty committees. It is likely that a mother may have put some lofty academic goals on hold to enjoy her children. She may be set back several years simply because she has spent that much time not giving herself over completely to her "driven" side (as if raising kids doesn't take drive!). But beyond her small setback due to time alone (less articles published, less conferences attended, etc.), the fact that her body has done something miraculous should not cause her to expect to fail miserably once her time for promotion or advancement does come. She can and should be judged on her merits as a scholar and a professor, not on her familial or marital status. I fully understand why committees have to know these family facts about women (and men) and even use them to weigh a decision. But I'm willing to bet they are keen on attitudes as well as petty demographics.

The saddest part about the "evidence" in this article is that academia, especially once tenure is achieved, seems like a career so well suited to raising children. Summers off with them, the occasional opportunity to travel away from them, an exciting and interesting environment for growing up, and decent pay. The article writer could not recall any such success stories she knew of. I knew one personally. Two children, both born while she was teaching, one before tenure, one right after. She had had a late start at a state school, a miscarriage that set her back shortly after she began teaching, and even lost a job during that rough period. Her resilience, her image of herself as a both a mother and a teacher, and her amazing work as a scholar are all a great inspiration to me. The clincher? Her husband is also a professor, and she has the better job. The article writer was very concerned about women's possible job loss due to brilliant professor-husbands' job offers snatching us away from our incipient careers. I guess she never read about Sandra Gilbert, whose brilliant husband did have the better job, who had three children she left at home with him, and who "commuted" between Indiana and California to keep her position. Nor has she heard of Sandra's friend Susan Gubar, a scholar and single mother who stood in to read a paper for Sandra at a CUNY conference, while breastmilk soaked the front of her blouse. (Their writing on motherhood sustains me!)

So there is no reason for anyone, especially an educated women, to go around writing articles discouraging mothers from doing what they know they can do best. Seriously, what a bitch.

Again, the connection between the "no tenure for you" article and the birthing book might not be so obvious if you've got a penis (which I don't envy by the way -- there are better things to envy in masculinity), but I hope I have made some sense of why reading these things within days of each other set off a reaction in me! (Illogical, I know. Just like a mother.)

If I am accepted to a doctoral program for Fall 2012, I will be about thirty-four years old* when I finish that degree and start my career, hobbling off as it might in the form of adjunct or temporary this or that. This delay (and any subsequent delay) does not affect my attitude about my ability to succeed in academia. Nor does my motherhood, even if it is the main cause of the delay. Now if I can join the pity party for a moment, I pity the mothers who allow negative attitudes (both their own attitudes and the attitudes of others) to dictate not only their birth experiences, but their entire life trajectories. The Eves of the past have suffered enough for all of us, and I think it's about time we cast off that eternal sentence of "pain in childbirth" and all its trappings and potentially pitiable life outcomes, and told the whole chorus of patriarchs (some of whom are in female form) where they can shove it.

*As for my late start, I look pretty young... no one would take me seriously if I didn't wait till thirty-four to introduce myself as "Doctor"!

A Back Road to DFW

2010-07-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

Got paper?

I had never really thought about David Foster Wallace until some ridiculous writing analyzer (IWriteLike) told me to post on my blog "I write like David Foster Wallace." I thought that was kind of fun at first, but then I noticed that it also said Sarah Palin writes like H.P. Lovecraft. No way, unless that just means they're both xenophobes. Right then I knew it was just a crappy sentence length, punctuation count, word length sort of analyzer with no real stylistic connection to the writers it pretended to "know." Bummer. But despite the bummer, I suddenly wanted to find out about ole DFW. Maybe we at least had parentheses in common. I knew he is something of a humorist, writes in a "postmodern style" (whatever that means these days), and that he's a little bit greasy (and quite dead). But I'd never read him.

So on one of those Saturday nights at Barnes & Noble ("the bookstore where they have trains" as my son calls it), I found myself sitting in a miniature Adirondack chair by the kids' train table and picking through DFW's books of essays. Nothing sounded too interesting from the tables of contents, and glances inside revealed the "postmodern style" of excessive footnotes and disjointedness. I couldn't just jump into reading anything because he was all over the place. Finally, on one back cover, some reviewer mentioned that somewhere within the mess of A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again was a single essay on literary criticism. I decided to find that one. I found it to be only five or six pages long with absolutely no intrusive footnotes, and decided that essay, "Greatly Exaggerated," was my way into David Foster Wallace. Whether it was a good way in or not, it was the perfect length for a train table visit! I'd be done reading before any tank engines started flying across the room and before my not-quite-kid-sized ass could become permanently molded to the kid-sized chair.

I was immediately taken in by conversational, semi-outsider writing on the now age-old problem of the death of the author. I immediately wanted to take notes -- I didn't want to buy the whole jumbly book for a six page essay in the middle! Having just cleaned out my purse (it had had about ten pounds of paper in it), I could find no paper to write on. A crumpled Kohl's receipt for "LADIES SUNGLASS" would have to do. So here's my first take on DFW, as transcribed from boy-distracted, boyish handwriting on this poor receipt, and without the text in front of me.

In the essay DFW reviews H.L. Hix's 1990s published dissertation entitled Morte d'Author: An Autopsy. DFW starts out by explaining Barthes' (and basically all the poststructuralists') idea of the death of the author in layman's terms. He also notes how even if he's explaining it clearly, forgetting about authors altogether probably seems pretty ridiculous to the average reader. As a sort of outsider DFW looks into academic criticism from a unique place. He is an English professor, but holds no Ph.D. He earned an M.F.A. for his real passion, his creative writing, and was only convinced to enter academia by an enthusiastic friend. In other words, he's reviewing a kind of thing he would never attempt (or want) to write (i.e. a dissertation).

There are a couple of things going on in the review -- DFW is not only reviewing this particular work of Hix's, but making commentary on the current style of academic writing in general. He enjoys Hix's book, and he is glad that someone is seeking to resuscitate the author, but he is put off by Hix's critical style and wonders why academic writing has to be so inaccessible and boring.

Not being a "hardcore theory weenie" himself, Wallace never quite believed what he read in the author's obit. He lays out Hix's basic premise and objections about the "death," and even suggests that the things Hix will do with deconstruction might be "wicked fun," but soon starts to tell the reader not to bother with Mort d'Author unless the reader is a self-proclaimed "theory jockey." For Wallace, what looked like it would be a whole lot of fun turns out to be not nearly as fun or interesting as Hix's introduction makes it sound. The dissertation is representative of an academic's "obsession with anality that's so common [...] an obsession with the jots and tittles of making excruciatingly clear what he's saying and where he's going." The book runs long for Wallace too, and he wishes some kind-hearted, less academic editor would have snipped away at the published version, to "delete gestures that seem directed at thesis committees rather than paying customers." I don't think the point here is that hint at economy, but rather at how the paying customer is likely to be a more average reader, and once you've defended your dissertation to those in the know, perhaps you should open yourself up a little if you want your work to be at all useful or interesting to students and fans of literature.

What Wallace says about the death problem itself is less important than what he's saying in the review. He is on the fence, leaning toward anti-death. Hix is anti-death, but exposes how the problem is much more complex than just author or no author. I enjoyed Wallace's coining of the "pro-death" (mostly European) and "anti-death" (mostly American) labels, and waited for him to sneak in an abortion reference which he did just once, calling someone's anti-death work a "sneaky pro-life apology." Then lines like "before we whip out the spade or the defib paddles..." put the "death" into perspective. This essay is less humorous than the others in the collection (it was originally printed in a Harvard journal, so it probably wasn't permitted to cause too many grins), but it does put the death of the author into understandable and semi-enjoyable terms for regular reading folk, and explores some of the complexities that Hix brings to the death conundrum, while using humor and lightness as a way to make it all less daunting. I can't say that I understand all the stuff about "Derrida by way of Wittgenstein" (maybe something even Wallace himself should have cut from the "paying customer" version), but I think Wallace is talking about Hix's ability to look at both sides of the death problem by bringing together continental and analytic philosophy to try to solve (or at least better illuminate) it.

I would recommend this essay to someone who has yet to get into the big poststructuralist claims, as a way to prepare one's self for what's to come (or perhaps a way to get frightened away from that stuff if it's not for you!). Wallace shows the seeming absurdity of the theories of the mid-century, but also shows the importance of such jarring theories to the legacy of literary study. Most importantly (for me), Wallace makes it okay to be pissed off by having to read dry, unfun criticism, whether you like what it's saying or not. His ultimate take on Mort is a positive review, but a rather backhanded one considering those paying customers who read this essay will likely steer clear of Mort d'Author and guys like Hix. And students like me who may or may not decide search Hix out, will certainly be more aware of keeping "excruciating" writing out of our own work.

Aesthetics: "the new disorder"

2010-07-09T20:02:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Ranciere on aesthetics (which could mean a lot of things since he seems to be Mr. Aesthetics), and this is my first go at him: Aesthetics and its Discontents. I've posted recently on Romantic German aesthetics and some basic aesthetics history, but sifting through my last two years of class handouts and notes in an attempt to clean house has found me many forgotten aesthetic gems in the way of xeroxed excerpts from books I didn't know existed or can't afford (thanks to my professors for that). I soon got the idea that based on the sheer size of this paper stack (which I had heartily devoured last spring) I might be semi-prepared for reading some more contemporary approaches to aesthetics.

So first, I am really surprised how prepared I was for reading Ranciere! (I mean that to be the opposite of braggy. I've been feeling awfully, awfully stupid.) The style was a little difficult after laying off reading for awhile, but I got through it, and was galvanized for more reading. But only after some near-hallucinatory effects brought on by philosophical vocabulary recall overload coupled with no air conditioning.

When cultural critics and professors talk about Ranciere's writing they call it "incisive" or "trenchant," and lots of other fancy words that have to do with slicing and cutting things. I thought that was interesting, because while Ranciere does cut through a lot of long-held ideas and conventions about thinking about art, you do have to have some heavy reading under your belt to actually see the cutting action. What held me back the most, at first, was that he does not write in parallels -- that is, he will lay out three-ish unnumbered points and rebut them with exactly four numbered points, and so on. This non-parallel style is consistent at least -- his sentences are not parallel either, something that usually gets an American student those red double lines marked on his paper. Perhaps this is a feature of French style. Sentences are perfectly understandable (and shorter) without being forced into parallels, and we are Yankee ninnies to require such a thing at all times. Arguments, however, can be a little harder to follow when you don't know which point counters which or if they are even related points and counterpoints at all. You just read the whole thing and then stand back to see what you learned, then reread it hoping to le Dieu tout puissant it still says kinda the same thing. You can't just tick off notes as you go along. This conversational sort of argument development is probably a function of Frenchness as well. So Ranciere's arguments are in no way disorganized, they are just not "textbook" like we are taught to read and write as undergraduates. His non-parallel is nonpareil! Maybe. But as for the incisiveness? It's more like he lacerates than slices. You're left on your own to interpret a few hanging jagged edges.

Getting past Ranciere's style (which I have to consider in a book on aesthetics don't you think?), I read this book not knowing what to expect from "politics" going in. This is one book of his that actually does not have "politics" in the title, but I knew they'd be a big deal. Aren't they always?! I'm often a keep'em separated thinker (ideas in little TV tray sections, mixed together only if I choose to double-dip the fork), and I don't mix my politics with my art. Gag me with a spoon. But I had a feeling Ranciere was going to explain that popular mash-up in a way I could tolerate or even find palatable, and give politics a better (more complex, less bitter) role than it has in most thinker's aesthetics. Or maybe even deny politics altogether. (Gasp!)

What I'll do here (which might be incredibly boring but it will help me a lot, and maybe even help you if you like aesthetics but fear the heady stuff), is give a quick summary and discussion on the introduction to this book, which does a fairly good job of explaining where the book will go and ties in amazingly (to me anyway) with aesthetic things I've already learned and talked about here. This is all I can do these days.

He had me at the first line, "Aesthetics has a bad reputation," and then I knew we were on the same page. Ranciere discusses a few (unnumbered and they blur together) objections that academics, cultural critics, and aesthetic philosophers themselves have had to aesthetics since its name and initial "purpose" were conceived in the mid-eighteenth century. I tried to pull out and separate these points, even though they could not (in my ability) be made to match the counterpoints he will offer.

First objection -- Aesthetics perpetuates avant gardism, which is, like, baaad.
This one is glossed over because we who study aesthetics know it's a pretty naive and untenable position, one that art or ideas about art are bad just because they are "out there," or self-serving, or make promises and conjectures about something outside of art. All these objections and more could be argued for separately to try to take down certain, perhaps misguided, aims of avant gardism, but a blanket objection to the avant garde would probably only be made today by someone who doesn't even know what avant garde refers to and can't even think of a good example of it, and will likely confuse it with things postmodern. Those who object to what they might call "art for art's sake" might not realize the very art they call by that moniker is really for the "sake" of many other ideas, and they might not realize that they themselves don't even have any consistent criteria for what art is or isn't -- so what the heck is their basis for objecting? It's funny that these objections almost always concern visual art, because those not willing to study what they're looking at probably don't read. You hear many more complaints about toilets turned upside-down than about Finnegan's Wake. Anyhow, Ranciere passes on explaining why this objection has "gone out of fashion," but I'm willing to bet it's still very much on the lips of your average plastic arts audience.

Second objection -- "Aesthetik" the dominatrix.
Like most philosophy, aesthetics came to be seen by some as a system of thought that sought to dominate its subject. This is an especial concern for art, since some of it prides itself on flying under intellectual radar, or on turning rationality on its head. Even more traditional, figural art claims to come from some transcendent place, inspired by muses and other non-corporeal forces, and sometimes seems to object to being analyzed by the aesthetic thinker. Hegel, spirited as his geist system is (I will never get past making Hegel puns and jokes), rationalizes art's apparent power over us and relegates it to a backseat on the geist ride. In the end, it merely serves the progress of man. Kant uses art as a way into discussing morality. Schiller endows art with magical equality-making powers. In each of these instances, "aesthetics came to be the perverse discourse which bars [our] encounter [with art], and which subjects works, or our appreciation thereof, to a machine of thought conceived for other ends: the philosophical absolute, the religion of the poem, or the dream of social emancipation." Our experience of art and the art itself was being marginalized to make way for "bigger" ideas.

Third objection -- Those crazy Romantics!
By the time philosophers and poets really got going on writing on aesthetics (during the Romantic period), there were critics waiting to take them down. Romantic ideas about art are still criticized today. Ranciere discusses Shaeffer's and Badiou's objections to the Romantic approach. They "denounce aesthetics as a confused type of thinking involving a Romantic confounding of pure thought, sensible affects and artistic practices." They are most concerned that art and its "glorious sensuous presence" will be suffocated by the discourse on it. The pith of this concern is similar to that of the second objection, that art will be suffocated or dominated by thought. However, this third objection does not fear the clinical, rational thought of the Enlightenment or even of the 20th century, but the confusion and proliferation of all sorts of ideas in every direction that the Romantics' prolific, fragmented, reflective, and speculative writings might inspire. (I personally think these detractors may just be envious of that Romantic ability to think and create simultaneously, to be artist and critic in one, and to then reflect on the very fact that that is indeed what is happening in one's writing. I'd be envious too.)

Fourth objection -- Where's the politics?!
Some critics find all the confounding and confusing and even the more rational discourse on aesthetics to be useless because it all mostly ignores the realities of class division, the echo of politics in art, and the danger of the aesthetic utopia leading to a real totalitarian utopia (think about the role an "aesthetic" played in Nazi Germany). Some of these critics (the more well-respected critics' "chorus of subcontractors" Ranciere calls them) may want to throw out the baby with the bathwater and can aesthetics altogether. Others want to remind us of the distinctions between the creation, enjoyment, and social effects of art so that we stop being so "confused" by it. Ranciere argues, again and again (and I love this), that this very confusion is a "knot" that holds aesthetics together. Untying the knot wouldn't do. There goes the aesthetics.

Before Ranciere gets to his four "nonpareil" rebuttals (which, funny thing, he labels extremely clearly as "...four points...This is the first point...This is the second point..."), he goes on a little rant about how Schaeffer uses a story by Stendhal to show a distinction between the everyday aesthetic of beautiful impressions from life (Stendhal's inclusion of real sounds and his real childhood impressions of them in his story) and the aesthetic of art (the fictional story). Here's a short paragraph that starts to show the problem with making such a distinction:

"Far from demonstrating the independence of aesthetic attitudes with respect to artworks, Stendhal testifies to an aesthetic regime in which the distinction between those things that belong to art and those that belong to ordinary life are blurred."

And there you have a non-parallel sentence, and there you have the blur! The blur can be likened to the knot, I suppose.

The distinctly Romantic confusions that proliferated at Jena and elsewhere seem to be the perfect methods for seeking to interpret a new (for its time) kind of art like Stendhal's, in which life and art is blurred just like the philosopher's seemingly fuzzy thoughts; a new kind of art which becomes "at once more intimate and enigmatic" just like the aesthetic writings it inspires. (As I type this wonky sentence from notes it seems circular, but NO! It's the knot again. Ranciere will say it: aesthetics cannot exist without art, and art cannot exist as we know it today without aesthetics.) Think of that! Aesthetics as philosophizing that happens because it is inspired by something. Not because it seeks to dominate it or unravel it, but to participate in it. Aesthetik is no dominatrix after all. She is the muse of the art critic, and even an auxiliary muse of the artist.

The anatomy of the knot brings me to the next and final section of the introduction -- Ranciere's four points that promise to turn the "anti-aesthetic arguments...on their heads."

He starts with the point I alluded to above -- that art and aesthetics are symbiotic. He gives it in a one-two punch: "If aesthetic sentiment is to exist, it is not sufficient that pleasure is taken in seeing or hearing [art]work. For art to exist, what is required is a specific gaze and form of thought to identify it." The end of purely representative art was the beginning of a need for some system of discourse to interpret and think through what is going on in art. When art became paradoxical, consequently so did our methods of thinking about it. And the paradoxes of aesthetics should not be mistaken for confusions or "fantasies."

Ranciere's second point is that aesthetics is not really a "discipline" like philosophy, and it can't stifle art or force it in one direction or another. The first aesthetic thinkers did not "invent" or initiate the "slow revolution in the forms of presentation and perception" that they were describing and interpreting. They did not invent the new art forms, "but they did elaborate the regime of intelligibility within which they could be thought."

Ranciere's third point, and this is a toughy, is that the aesthetic paradox, inconsistency and confusion which forms the basis of many of today's objections is already there within the aesthetics as an objection. The Romantic thinkers themselves questioned what they were doing, tried to meld aesthetics with art and keep it from the molding hands of philosophy, and even questioned the very name of the thing, whose etymology denotes something solely about the senses rather than the intellect or the demiurge. The objections being contained within the early aesthetic writings themselves means to Ranciere that "our contemporaries strive in vain" to make the same denouncements. "Yesterday's excuse is as superfluous as today's accusation. The in-appropriation is constitutive." In other words, this very tension within aesthetics is essential to aesthetics. Sounds like a knot again! F. Schlegel, younger of the two "diabolical brothers [ha!] so gravely accused of being responsible for fostering the fatal illusions of speculative and Romantic aesthetics," was perhaps the most conflicted and apologetic about his own thinking. He was also a poet, as were many of his aesthetic buddies. I think the Romantics' personal stake in art makes them an even better judge of what aesthetics can or can't do to it. Today's thinkers are not usually approaching art from within, but from some high up and abstract place.

The final point is that politics does not function with or within art the way the art politicos make it out to. Art is the great political resister, defying association with a class, stirring up feelings of equality, making us remember something like "human nature" (wait, don't the postmodernists deny that there ever was such a thing?!), creating a "suspension of the rules," a "free play," a "promise we could not live without." And for Ranciere, the very loss of this promise (the realization that art is not a political driver, that it won't deliver on the promise) is what makes it so sweet.

And then we are reminded that yes, there will be a lot of politics in this book, and so it begins.
------------------------------------------------------------

This is a fairly new book and not even a huge number of the smarty pants crowd have read it yet (but the only people I saw on Goodreads who've reviewed it besides me were definitely smarty pantsies). So I guess what I'm hoping here is that someone will show up and talk with me about it. 'Cause maybe I don't get it at all.

I want to write at least one more time on this book. The second chapter deals with "critical art" and I really have a lot of things to say about that (rather than just typing up a glorified summary of it), since I like my art with more Dionysus and less Apollo, and since it's a chance to get mad at postmodernisms. And that always makes for a lively evening.

Countdowns and Optimisms

2010-06-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

Everything in its place! I have a shiny new depaul.edu email account. I have all my funds ready for disbursal (see you in September, monies!), and workstuffs mostly figured out. I have a class schedule chosen with care. All I need is a student ID card. Hopefully this one will look less like a mug shot or a janitor's ID card. (Thanks for that, Aurora U.)

All these little things make it more and more official to me that school is starting again. But of course the BIG thing is the classes. I am chomping at the bit to get back to school, and my classes sound so awesome it's making the anticipation agonizing! Here they are:

ENG 402 History of English Prose Style
A survey of alternative theoretical approaches to the study of style, followed by intensive study of changes in the conventions of English prose from the Renaissance to the present.

ENG 472 Literary Criticism
Study of the theoretical foundations of literary criticism, exemplified by major texts from ancient Greece to the present.

I feel a little silly for not taking an actual "literature" class my first term, but these two classes fulfill core requirements of the program and they get me pretty excited. So there. Although, we need five period courses so I can't put off the actual novels and poems after this first quarter!

402 has me excited because I am a sucker for style, and I have never formally studied any "theoretical approaches" to it.

472 has me excited because I have had only minimal directed reading in criticism. I have done so much outside of class, but I've only formally read criticism for two undergraduate courses. To have a whole survey of lit crit that puts everything in its place and calls each thing by its name, well that will straighten out my ping pong brain a little for sure. Plus we will be a group of graduate students who can actually talk about what we're reading. Amazing! Think on't!

As if I wasn't already stupidly excited enough because of my course descriptions and the possibility of much more than a glimmer of intelligence among my classmates (and there's two more months of waiting left even), I just looked up my book lists. Here is a small sampling:

Prose of the Victorian Period (Wistful sigh.)

Death of Moth & Other Essays (Woolf!)

Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Didion, who also had her humble start as a copywriter and shares some of my views on the prose styles of men and women. I haven't read these essays, and I'm excited to get a woman's take on "counterculture" after all the Kerouac I've absorbed.)

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (The flap says it contains a "staggering" variety of criticism, which probably means it weighs 20 lbs. Hopefully the staggering factor won't cause me to fall over backwards on a lurchy "L" ride.)

There are a few more, but not too many. These are 10 week classes. Then we get to take ONE intense class for the whole month of December. Or nothing at all. I think I can dig it.

Exhaaaaaale.

Some comfortable DePaul students, as depicted on the English Dept's website.

The Instant Expert

2010-06-23T11:33:00.000-07:00

"Easy as pie."

As a graduate of a writing-intensive English program, I've certainly learned to quickly evaluate internet sources, and to do swift research using article databases. I've also learned to write in different voices. Even voices that are not my own. This "skill set" has enabled me to make a living of writing articles about some things I should know nothing about, and some other things I might like but on which I am no expert. I just become one, for a day.

I just finished an article on car insurance claims. I also wrote on African Christmas traditions this week, and today I begin building a website's copy (from scratch) all about how to buy the right nursing scrubs and medical diagnostic supplies. All of these things are easy to research, as the information is somewhat static and can be found by visiting manufacturer's sites, government sites, and searching free article databases. Of course the clients know much more than I do about the topics I write on, but they don't have the time to write articles and blogs, and many of them don't have the writing skill. This is why so many companies will outsource articles, site copy, press releases, and even blog writing. Many of them, unfortunately for their businesses and for internet users, will outsource to India. Those copywriters get paid about $10 per article. Per crappy article, that is. A better idea? Send the work to an internet marketing company in the US whose employees not only write damn good English but know all about SEO. Tell them a few points about your company, and turn them loose. That's what most of our clients trust us to do. And we deliver pretty consistently.

My personal favorite (I've written on this before) is writing "History of..." and "How to..." articles, for databases and Squidoo. From an SEO perspective this creates a huge pile of meaningful content filled with many alternate search terms, and Google will like it because it is informative and doesn't speak of any product. That's why I like writing these too. I'm no salesperson. I get to write about history and ideas, not products and services. Plus I get to look up funny pictures of nurse hats and space dogs.

Yesterday, a new social media client turned down the blogging part of our social package -- this was the first time this has happened. They thought a blog written by an outsider could be nothing more than generic commentary on their industry, totally boring and irrelevant. We don't have our fingers on the pulse, and how could we? I didn't take it personally, but I did want to argue with them a little. For God's sake, don't they know I'm the Instant Expert?! Of course, if a company has the resources and time to write its own blog, that is probably best. It will be a uniquely sincere blog. But social media has added another element to the internet research arena, and these days it seems quite possible to keep a finger quite close to the pulse of an unfamiliar industry, even one that is constantly changing, simply by following your Facebook and Twitter communities. Many of your Facers and Tweeters may be idiots, but they post links left and right, and some of the smarter ones post links to informative blogs, which in turn gives you access to the entire niche blogosphere of the industry! I do the whole social package for one of our child companies, and I have learned everything I need to know to keep people excited and "liking" and clicking all day long just by watching what they talk about and what they care about. So even in a very targeted industry, I think the wonders of the internet, including the new constant stream of social information, make it very possible for an intelligent person who is a good writer (and who can write like she gives a damn about chef pants or wrought-iron curtain rods whatever the fuck) to write like an expert on just about anything. Just give me a few hours. You'll see. Instant expert.

I didn't really need the extra work with grad school starting, but the rejection of my proposal for creating some excellent industry-focused bloggery just got me to thinking about this weird thing I do for part of my job. Being an instant expert can be fun, but it can also be exhausting, and somewhat dishonest. All marketing is somewhat dishonest though, I suppose, so the least I can do is continue to deliver the marketing message along with some useful information, some wit, and some proper grammar.

I have to run now. The "blood pressure devices" need work.

Related posts, in case you want to know more about online marketing with words (recent English grads...looking for work?):

The SEO-cret is Out: a very old post, but pretty funny

Can't Buy Me Words: an angry post on the value of good copywriting, after getting dumped by a cheap client

Sweet Pile of Mine

2010-06-22T15:55:00.001-07:00

Summer is not the best time to read things. When you live in a cold place like I do, these three months of the year are the only time to be incessantly out of doors, submerged in water, and/or scantily clad. Summer in nature's nondescript Illinois is not the most beautiful thing in the world, but it is damn better than winter. And reading serious stuff is hard to do when everything's wet, sandy, or smeared with sunscreen.

This summer I have tried my best to keep some books on the table. I mean literally on the table. My coffee table is where my pile lives. My sweet, sweet pile. I mostly look at it, or through it; sometimes I read from it. The result of keeping a sweet summer pile like mine is a bunch of half-read books. Bookmarks, receipts, and random card-like items of sentimental value stick out of each volume, all curiously right about the middles of the spines.

In past years I have written on "summer looking," which I think is what actually happens when we try to "read" in the summer, and on "winter reading," which I think should replace "summer reading" as the title (and intentions) we give our list of need-to-be-read tomes. Let's be honest, unless you have a pressing outside requirement to read things in summertime, like a fall comprehensive exam or a September GRE date, most of us forgo most of our intended summer reading in favor of more shut-eye, more sun, or more of doing nothing. And those volumes we do take up, well, we can certainly absorb some things from them by sweat-aided osmosis, but I highly doubt we are processing the texts with all the proper brain-centers functioning.

Here is my current pile rundown, with some notes.

The Delighted States: A conceptual sort of book on what happens in literary translation. Weird stuff, steamy stuff, it's fun so far. The back cover is even up-side-down, like the back of a manual in two languages.

Rhyme's Reason: A manual on poetic meters and other poetry terms recommended by a grad student friend. I'm hoping it will help me to appear not quite as ignorant as I am, since I'm good at memorizing the vocabulary of a thing (the thing being poems).

Ulysses: I don't think I have to explain why this one is still sitting in a pile.

Great Expectations: I don't have to finish this one I suppose, because obviously at this point I've already read it. But that was fifteen years ago. In 2008 I read some Hawthorne I hadn't read in twelve years, so I know there's much to be gained from rereading as an adult (what was first read as a juvenile semi-delinquent), even just for fun. For some reason I'm finding Dickens really funny.

The Kristeva Reader: I probably don't have to explain why, in summer, this one still sits as well. Heavy stuff man, when your mind's all expanded and shit.

This seems awful, as many of these books have been there for a month or more. Though in my defense, of course there are more books that have been skimmed in the warm months, or re-opened to reference something. The five books listed here are just what happened to be on the table today (sandwiched with an issue of Better Homes & Gardens, and a notepad that has yet to accumulate many notes). With literature students, a good portion of our books are always rotating off the shelves to the tables and desks and back, and in and out of our lives.

Now, I am not saying that it's impossible to read outside, or in repose, or even with one eye shut. I read a bunch of Bishop Berkeley lying in my front yard, meeting all those conditions. Victorian novels, as I've mentioned in the seasonal reading posts referenced above, make for most excellent outdoor reading. It's just impossible to read Kristeva like that. Not to mention the difficulties of making notes while the book is held overhead to block the sun. You'd need a space pen.

When the cold months come back around (and there are so many of them) the books will no longer collect dust, and while they will still form a pile quite often (required reading usually sets about 4-5 books in motion at once), their miscellaneous bookmarks will march steadily toward the back covers, without much interruption. In the fall and winter the body is covered, the mind turns back inward, and the intellect seeks stimulation from books; the same intensity of stimulation which was once sought by the skin from the sun, water and breeze.

I poked around some other readers' blogs while writing this. I am disturbed by all the summer reading lists. Even after blogging on this three years in a row, no one has taken my recommendations! I am sure many of those summer list books will be held over for when school starts again. The more you do, the more you can do. But when there's nothing to do? Enjoy it.

So, what's in your pile?

The Student of Literature: Profiles and Perceptions

2010-06-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

Yes, we really read like this sometimes.

The other day I heard a radio commercial for a phone or cell carrier (can't remember which) where the "main character" was a young lady literature student. The phone people poked a bit of fun at our kind, and I wondered why they would use that tactic. Perhaps mostly young students are interested in phone gadgetry, and the kind of students who would buy a phone that does everything for them short of wiping their asses would most likely be the kind who would get a kick out of making fun of literature students. So they know their audience. But the literature student had that fancy phone, and she used it to do literature student sorts of things, like email a presentation on "17th century literature" and download music from her new favorite fictitious indie band "Windy Horse." She had a little voice, not a hint of a popular girl accent, didn't mention anything about "friends" or "my social life," and sounded shy even though she had the social balls to go alone to a ticket-line camp out. Yep, that's us. Maybe we were the target after all.

The preceding representation of a literature student was pretty accurate in my opinion, even if it makes certain assumptions about us -- in the case of this commercial, about undergraduate English types. Through searches on grad student profiles (it's good to know what company you'll keep if you get into a school) I have seen a lot of the shy-seeming, artsy, Windy Horse fan types (which is probably close to my type), but I have also seen Barbie-esque all-American lit students who surely have more than a hint of that old valley girl accent lurking in their diction, as well as youthful Lilith types with sleek hair and prim clothing and the most proper diction, who look like they would skin you alive with their pearly teeth if you bungled a line from Shakespeare. The Barbies (no disrespect intended, they're just strangely beautiful and blond for lit students) usually mention in their bios something about pop culture and women's lit, nothing too deep, but very culturally relevant. The Liliths usually throw in some Latin along with references to literary obscurities, expertly written with an air of "you should really know what this all means or you have no business coming anywhere near me or this program," and even though I usually know what they're talking about it still pisses me off. These girls probably snicker audibly in seminar when the Windy Horse girls stumble over a pronunciation during their French lit presentations. Finally, there is usually a manish cultural critic chick of some kind, who will at some point go hardcore postcolonial and/or feminist on every WASP male student (and every woman who doesn't "represent").

"I can't believe how she butchered La peau de chagrin. What an ass."

I have to include the boys here too. Besides the average Joe looking fellows who you wouldn't know were bookworms unless you rifled through their messenger bags, there are of course the guys who have looked like nerds since high school, will always look like nerds, and will probably don elbow patches to celebrate their first tenured term. Boys don't give away as much with their looks as girls do, and I doubt their competition takes the same ugly form. I bet they are fierce with their words, but unlike the girls have probably removed ad hominem from their rhetorical arnsenals. But there is one sort of "type" that pops up on some university "people" lists -- the hipster. Hipsters are everywhere, but seem especially rife among the lit student population, and you can spot them a mile away. Half-beards, messy hair, plaid shirts, moody photos and interests always in film or inimitably moody authors who they will try their best to imitate. I hate to use such a well-known stereotype to classify them, but there they are, plain as day, just serious-ing away! There are curiously no jocks to complement the Barbies. Ken is probably over in the engineering department.

"Why doesn't Barbie swoon at my Tolstoy interpretations?"

Of course, my silly characterization of grad student populations is based on looking at the equivalent of literature student Magic cards or Pokemon cards. "My Victorian poetry absorbs and destroys your Marxist interpretations!" "My level three theory skills trump your level one fiction writing powers!" I have to snoop around somehow, or I have no idea who I'll find when I get there. Even if I have misconceptions about who's there, I like to nurture my own reliance on appearances.

So this is how the grad students of lit look from the near-outside. Not so different from how they look in pop culture. But how much of what we think literature students are is just made up? Perhaps some of the biggest differences between lit students and everyone else do not actually lie in our personalities -- because smart people and unsmart people, lit students and science students, probably all share some basic types and traits. Maybe the biggest difference, the difference that causes some people the most anxiety, is just the difference between someone who lives a typical lifestyle (with which we are all familiar through acquaintances and through popular media), and someone who lives the life of a scholar. This is why we are so different. Not because we dress in old clothes or don't cut our hair right or listen to weird music, but because we don't plan on ever working regular jobs again, we spend all our time reading and writing, and we like to be at school! And finally because when we are finished with our own schooling, we will probably stay at school. These few things are strangest things about us to most people.

There are so many jokes in popular culture (and even going around universities) about how useless the English degree is. The truth in this is that if you want to do anything having to do with literature and get paid for it, you will need more degrees. Or you will have to teach high school, which everyone thinks of as a normal job (and they will be so proud of you, and will stop calling you just to ask "When the hell are you gonna be done with school!?"). As some kind of sick but funny icebreaker exercise, an old feller philsophy professor of mine went around the class on the first day and asked us all our majors, so he could tell us what terrible things would become of us. I was told I would be able to ask "Would you like fries with that?" in four languages. If I "take the MA" (as Woolf calls stopping at that degree) with no intention of entering the corporate world or of slaving away at a non-profit, that could happen I suppose.

Another commercial airing around here last year called into question what anyone does with any kind of traditional degree. "Only career degrees can get you a career!" they screamed. They threw some examples up on the screen like "BIOLOGY...what will you do with that? Be a BIOLOGIST?" (Um, yeah probably!) They suggested some similarly obvious but somehow unbelievable outcomes of traditional degrees, and ended with "ENGLISH...what will you do with that? Become an ENGLISHMAN!?" Okay, that was kind of funny. But no, I don't plan on becoming an Englishman. That might hurt, and the paperwork would be mountainous.

So I'm pretty sure the general non-academic, non-humanities-interested population has absolutely no idea what the hell we do. They might be able to characterize us based on appearances, like I've done with my potential future classmates (my characterizations are slightly tongue-in cheek of course...I think some people fully believe in the stereotypes they've made for us), but as for what we A) actually give back to society and B) what we actually do to earn money, they will probably continue to think of as A) completely pointless and B) nothing at all. We're all going to starve.

Literature, painting... it's all the same shit.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DIGRESSION (you know I can't resist): My family is proud of me, and they are luckily so removed from academic life that they believe without question that I have everything under control (and I mostly believe that too). My parents did not attend college and, like me, have worked since they were fifteen years old. I think if they had had some higher education or had entered the corporate world they would be far more concerned about what Englishing can or can't "do" for me. I have friends studying in the humanities whose parents are better off than mine, if not highly educated, and these students are contstantly asked to show some kind of measurable humanities-related "results." They have been discouraged from grad school -- their parents (or spouses) think it's time for them to work, overlooking the possibility that these students' particular types of degrees could serve them far better if supplemented with more degrees. As for me, my dad (a lifelong truck driver) does give me the "What the hell are you still doing in school!?" line once in a while, but at this point he knows that I will be there much longer before I have a job as an "Englishman," and that I'm doing okay getting by in the meantime. It has been a hell of a road (with hairpins turns and even a couple of jack-knifes) to become a first generation college student, and even a graduate student. I skipped a generation with that one. In some ways I feel like some of my fellow students who haven't had to travel quite so far have had a much harder time with familial intervention because their parents are more focused on financial success than mine ever were. (Plus I get to offer up the comeback "I'm paying for it so it's none of your business!" But I haven't had to use it much.) END DIGRESSION.

Popular perceptions of literature students, like many stereotypes about careers and personality types, are probably mostly harmless. The only people who really care about what we are really like are similar people with similar interests, or people in other fields who have some understanding of what we do and perhaps admire us just a little for it (to think!). The only people who really need to know what we actually do and how we will make our little bit of money (for that's still a touchy topic in America anyway) are ourselves and our future families. Most of us know the risks, know the kinds of jobs we can or can't get, and know we will not be paid as much as other people who have been in school for ten or so years. Call us crazy, but we like our literature, and we were prepared to make all these sacrifices going in, even if society sees us as silly, impractical, and kinda far out man.

"Get your hot careers right here!"

2010-06-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

After a three-year stint at a for-profit art school (that ended in a certificate in something nebulous, not a degree), I started telling my friends (and myself) "Never go to a college that has a commercial." At the time, even though my negative recommendation made some big assumptions, most colleges that a "college-bound type" would even want to attend wouldn't have had commercials anyway. The only colleges with commercials were the ones who budgeted for such crassness: for-profit schools. Once I delved into the workings of for-profit schools, whether they had constantly airing commercials or not, I discovered some ugly truths that made me feel certain my continuing campaign against them was a good thing. However, in recent years, advertising (and, similarly, commodification) has become more entrenched in society than ever. Today traditional non-profit colleges as well as some prestigious universities and even publicly funded schools have begun to advertise on TV, radio and billboards.

For-profit schools have commercials because they are businesses. When they are "founded" (or more accurately, started up) an advertising budget is something they already have in mind. Thanks to the high tuition they will charge and the private assistance they will not give out, they won't have any trouble funding or paying themselves back for their commercial spots. Their TV ads reach every level of the population, college bound or not, and convince them they can do anything if they just get a degree in nursing, chefery, fashion, or even better, advertising! Their student populations grow rapidly, but the drop-out rates do too. The students who stick with it will not likely "earn their degree in 3 years!!!" because they will be coaxed (or coerced) into changing their majors more than once, and convinced to take classes they don't need. At some point, many will just leave, degreeless and in debt. The kind of students these schools attract -- lower income, poor secondary education, caught between careers with a family, first generation students with no precedent for what college is supposed to be like (that last category was me) -- do not have the power in their "word of mouth" to do much about all this, especially as the TV ads multiply and accreditation requirements get looser and looser. (My art school, whose credits could transfer nowhere at the time I left, is now nationally accredited to give BAs because they added a shitty Comp 101 and Earth Science class.)

Traditional, non-profit schools, i.e. private liberal arts colleges (where I finally did get a real degree in a real discipline!) do not start up every day, and many of them are already long established. Advertising was not in the original "business model" back in 1887 or whenever, and while these schools have had to adapt to changing educational marketplace (blah!), they usually have done so by hiring real live recruiters, getting a website, using focused, opt-in direct mailings based on SAT or GRE scores, etc. This is all a kind of advertising, but it is very different from a TV commercial. The colleges are reaching college-bound seniors and potential graduate students, not the general TV-absorbing public. The non-profit colleges may not get as high a financial return on their traditional recruiting methods as the for-profit schools will with their radio-blasting ads, but they do get students who match the school well, and who will likely complete a degree there and become a future asset to the school, whether through publications, volunteerism, alumni donations, or just by association. (I wonder if Bard College uses the line "Study at Steely Dan's old school!" Probably not.)

But as I said, the marketplace has forced many traditional non-profit schools to make their break into television advertising. Some of them focus this on adults, some on the general college-bound population. They do not use lines like "earn a degree fast!" or "start your dream career." They focus on personal qualities of the potential students, use more realistic imagery of people in many disciplines (not just "technology" or "nursing"), and they never, never yell at you.

I was surprised when my new school (as opposed to "my old school"), DePaul University, a well-respected and very large private university, began advertising to adults. I will have to break my own rule, I thought, and go to this school with a damn commercial! The commercial was not really aimed at me however, even though I am by most accounts a non-traditional student, because I am in a very traditional discipline. The commercial was for potential returning students and other older people who already have jobs. Continuing education and professional graduate studies are experiencing a huge influx of these kinds of students, and I can't blame DePaul for jumping on the bandwagon. In fact, they are probably doing these people a service, if they can get through to them, by saving them from the for-profit schools that might otherwise snatch them up in a moment of career-change desperation (University of Phoenix is probably the biggest "desperate professional adult" snatcher). At DePaul they can receive all the government aid they are due, apply for assistantships and other student work (or continue their regular jobs thanks to flexible class schedules), and be encouraged by caring faculty to finish their degrees and get back out there, and back home to their families. All of this and a solid degree, for about the same price (less if the student has awards) as a for-profit degree that might cause noses at job interviews to instantly turn up, while the quite probably unsubsidized student loan interest for the U of Phoenix tuition just accrues and accrues...

One Cracked blogger calls it "Asshole University"

So I let DePaul slide with their appeal to professional adults. Then this week, I saw a commercial for Loyola University, another good private school, aimed at potential undergraduates! They talked about doors of opportunity, showed their signature red gowns at graduation, and people both young and old opening the "doors" and trekking along Lake Michigan. It wasn't all that bad. The verbiage, like in DePaul's commercial, was about personal potential, not careers. No one said how long the degree would take, or where you would go afterward. They didn't promise anything but an education.

Perhaps that -- the education -- is where it's at. That is to say, if you are considering school because you want an education, then you will likely end up at an institution that offers just that. Education provides the tools and mindset and confidence you need for whatever "career" you might have in mind, not just the ones that are "hot." And if you're looking for an education, then it's likely that whatever you want to do with yourself you probably don't think of as a career -- I certainly don't. It's more like a life path or something cheesy like that. A bunch of English degrees do not guarantee my future way to make money, but they do give me a good chance at my future way of being. But if you are in this for a career, a way to make money, and nothing more...well then expect to pay a lot of money for that, and to not really be fundamentally changed by your experiences (unless you count becoming someone who's fundamentally pissed off).*

*I shouldn't be such a jerk. I'll qualify that last sentence in the last paragraph by saying this: if you have a definite career goal in mind and nursing school, for instance, will get you there, any school that teaches what you need in any kind of environment can probably give you the tools for your career. I know some successful graduates of design colleges too. Between COD and Aurora I was even offered a swank-ish graphic design job just because of my ad art certificate and portfolio (which I turned down because full time Englishing would not be compatible with 40 hours of corporate work, not to mention the soul-sucking factor). My problem with these schools is that they don't just invite that specific potential nurse or potential ad artist population to apply -- they invite everyone who's ever put on a band-aid or owned a sketchbook, accept every one of them, and then take a lot of their money.

Finally, I have noticed that publicly funded schools, especially community colleges, have begun airing commercials and posting many billboards within their districts. I don't know where to start with the budgetary concerns this might cause some people (our local tax dollars funding billboards!?), but on the whole I think the community colleges are exactly the kind of schools who really need to start advertising. DePaul and Loyola jumped on the bandwagon to corner a certain segment or two that they may have lost to unscrupulous schools. Community colleges, on the other hand, are losing a huge portion of their potential students to these schools, because they have the same target -- students who are not prepared for or who do not wish to attend university. It is true that in some areas the for-profit schools are actually taking on the spill-over that the community colleges are not equipped to handle. This is a particularly bad problem in Colorado, where new career colleges are sprouting up and getting dubiously accredited every day, while the state/municipal schools struggle for funding. But here in Illinois, even during horrible economic times (we are second in empty pockets only to burgeoning California), many of our community colleges are striving to expand by advertising, building up, going after more funding, and making small tuition increases to cover some of this. They don't want the for-profits handling the spill-over, and I don't blame them. The Chicagoland area is blanketed with career colleges, both local and national sorts, and so are our TV airwaves.

One billboard I often pass says, "College of DuPage. A great value." It's kind of funny, but it's true. College of DuPage is one of the best, if not the best, community colleges in the midwest. They are doing their part to let their potential students know that you can go there for little or nothing with aid, and get the same certificates and associates degrees that would cost you your ass at the for-profit school down the street. While C.O.D. ("College of Dreams," "Cod State"...) doesn't have shitty BAs and BSs to hand out like many of the for-profit schools have somehow managed to become accredited to do, they can grant you an AA or AAS that will transfer you right into a state or private school with junior standing -- because the state of Illinois says so. I got my humble re-start at College of Dupage, paid NOTHING to go there for two years and earn all my gen eds (thanks, Uncle Sam), and transferred to a four year college without a hitch, knowing what I wanted to do there. And because Aurora University is a non-profit school, I continued to get every form of financial aid the government allows (not just loans -- some for-profits only give loans), as well as generous private grants from the school. If only the people at home on the couch knew that they could do something like that (or even just go to the community college to get their nursing or electronics AAS!) maybe some of them would give it a go. And not go into debt, even if the whole school thing doesn't work out.

I have yet to see any commercials for Ivy League or sub-Ivy League schools. They are probably resisting as long as they can. The only local schools that make this sub-Ivy category are Northwestern University and The University of Chicago. Their claims to fame are their top-tier traditional graduate programs; programs which don't need advertising. Potential students already know about them, and covet places in them violently! More applications to read doesn't seem like something these schools really desire or need.

So I'll begin at DePaul in the fall, a school that has "a strong emphasis on recruiting first-generation university students [that's me!] and those from disadvantaged backgrounds while striving for academic rigor," and I will strive. While I have some fears that my classes might be a mixed bag of academic English types like myself and publishing career seeking women drawn in by TV commercials, I'm sure it will all turn out okay. They may have run an ad, and it may rub me the wrong way a little, but they are certainly not profiting off of me (unless you count the possible intellectual dividends...ha!). Go Demons.

Viam sapientiae monstrabo tibi