WRITING I'VE ENJOYED RECENTLY

Recently, in addition to the brief return to life of K-Punk (!!), I've enjoyed two posts by Mark Richardson on his relationship to the work of David Lynch. The first is on Lynch on Lynch, the inspiration for Eraserhead, and the dread of responsibility, while the second is on The Elephant Man and its intersection with Richardson's family and life. I'm not a huge Lynch fan--I've seen Blue Velvet and I think it's a good movie, and what I've seen of Twin Peaks has been pretty great--so the draw is mostly the writing itself in the pieces. Both of them aren't exactly new ground for him--in fact, they're variations on a theme that he's pretty much made his own at this point through his "Resonant Frequency" column at Pitchfork--but they are perfect illustrations of what I love about his writing. I guess it's actually just a feature common to all good writing, in a way, the ability to start from a small moment and, through a gradual accumulation of details, to arrive not at a big revelation or a capital-t Truth, but an understanding of the way those various small moments and experiences come to bear the weight of our everyday lives. For whatever reason--there are probably several--I find that what he writes often feels right to me. And, in a way that I'm not sure I could articulate very well, his writing feels very contemporary to me beyond the level of strict content, which very often is of-the-minute music. It engages with those bits of culture in a way that I recognise as a common way of engaging with culture at this moment, I guess.

In a "Resonant Frequency" column that feels like a companion piece to the one I've cited a bunch on here about music-making-as-reblogging, Richardson outlines his goal or process with writing, and the conundrum which proved its impetus: 

I've always felt a bit off in my own world, which sometimes is a point of pride and other times feels like a kind of social failure. These days, for me, the greatest tension when writing about music is trying to bridge the gap between music as a private or a public experience. So part of me envied those who could join the conversation about Nicki Minaj and connect her music to the broader culture, because so much of the music I love and have interesting ideas about means almost nothing to the world as a whole. . . . And in the larger scheme of things, Alog [a band Richardson has had difficulty connecting with other people about] don't matter. At all. Unlike Nicki Minaj, if their music didn't exist, the world would be virtually no different. So when writing about Alog, I have no choice but to write about how this music might work for a single person (me), and how these abstract sounds might enrich a single life (mine). That's where the meaning is found.

While those final sentences might suggest a certain of solipsism, and while the opening could be misread as a kind of too-hip pretension, it's in establishing the connection between 1) the single listener/viewer/experiencer, 2) the moment in which he/she encounters the music/video/experience under discussion, and 3) the response to that music/video/experience as pre-conditioned by 1 and 2 that Richardson's writing (mostly) escapes those traps.

In the first piece on Lynch I linked to, for example, the moment in question, what you might call the point, is his experience of being in Yellowstone with his wife and:

laying in the tent. I felt like I could hear so much going on outside. Things rustling, sticks breaking. It was pitch black out and you couldn't see a thing. And I had a strong sensation of fear and dread. And I think it was partly because I was afraid of the responsibility that came with being in a relationship. If something happened and we were confronted by something dangerous, I was going to be the one to deal with it, primarily.

Of course, Richardson doesn't leave it at this point. There's been a perfectly good set-up for this moment already given--a series of killings in the park, an encounter with another hiker giving off strange vibes--but Richardson goes back to why at that moment he might be feeling fear and dread, why this responsibility suddenly and in that moment feels like such a terrible burden. And it's in that tracing back that he works in how Lynch on Lynch and Eraserhead fit into this psychic moment, how those works come to both explain and bear some of these emotions. I think it's an elegant move, as it doesn't impute an overly simplistic causal relationship between object and viewer/listener. That is, it doesn't limit the object to simply an explanation of the viewer/listener's experience of the object, but it does illuminate how certain aspects of the viewer/listener's experience activate (for lack of a better verb) parts of/meanings in the object. At the same time, the object retains a separate existence and can effect the viewer/listener because it is distinct from him/her. It's a tough balancing act. Going too far either way usually means bad writing.

The second piece, the one about The Elephant Man, does a good job of illustrating the separateness of the object from the viewer/listener. All of the significant details in the story are about Richardson, about the personal context of elephantiasis and John Merrick for him. Lynch's film is a spectre, a force that crystallizes all of those moments in Richardson without ever really being there. In fact, the closing paragraph which addresses the film most directly--though it is quite interesting and nicely pensive and wistful without being grasping--isn't even necessary for the piece to work. The way that bits of culture become ambient objects that structure and reflect our inner worlds has already been illustrated by the image of a ten-year-old boy listening to radio because he's too scared to turn on the TV, the device that brought something he'd already been afraid of to a fever pitch.

Cs AND THE ARBITRARINESS OF FORMS

While re-reading Houston A. Baker, Jr.'s excellent Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, I came across this humourous (and true!) passage:

When the cubes of ice intended for a refreshing lemonade (or a more severe potable against academic malaise) melt while we are explaining to a student who has telephoned that his or her "C" is only a letter, a convenient form explaining nothing deeply relevant about his or her psyche, we grasp a notion of the arbitrariness of form.

If there is a solution to this problem, I'd love to know it. On a slightly more substantial note (though not much of one), Baker's book is excellent not only because of the quality of his argument, but also because it is filled with passages like the above that demonstrate his lightness of touch even with his most complex material (this passage appears in the midst of his definition of the strategy of "mastery of form"--exemplified by Booker T. Washington's mastery of the minstrel mask, enabling him to sound "back and black" to whites). The combined effect is to tun what could be a slog into a rather enjoyable read that balances impressive readings of texts with some heavy duty theorizing without sacrificing the author's character and personality. 

 

REFLECTIONS ON ALBUMS OF THE YEAR COUNTDOWN

I spent the past eleven days cataloguing my favourite albums of 2011 (it was supposed to be ten days, but I was in no mood to sit in front of my computer and write on Christmas Day). All told, it worked out to a little over 7750 words on fifteen albums. If you add in the two pieces I wrote on eleven songs I really liked in 2011, the count is up to almost 9500 words. That is a lot of words (if you've read your Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that clause should prove I am human. I will also say to you if you are very tall, "Oh, you're very tall!"). Anyway, the point here is not to toot my own horn about writing a certain number of words about music (akin, I suppose, to telling someone just how long you danced about architecture). Rather, I just wanted to think out loud a bit about my experience writing this list.

I. Format

I am surprised at how easy it was to decide on a format for the write-ups themselves. Basically, I knew that I wanted to avoid a general discussion of a particular album's strengths (cf. Pitchfork's Top 50 Albums of 2011, not that there is anything wrong with that approach, necessarily). This was to be my list and it had to explain my understanding of the album (I made a conscious effort fairly early on to avoid the second person. I don't think it appears in anything after the Neon Indian write-up). Of course, entirely subjective and personal criteria do not necessarily make for great evaluations--a point I try desperately to make clear to my students--so I wanted something slightly more objective/universal and review like to accompany my own relationship to the album. Thus, the two paragraph structure seemed ideal. It was flexible enough to shift with albums whose place on the list owed more to the explanation accompanying the more objective components and with those whose place on the list owed more to my own encounter with them than anything else. Hopefully, if one paragraph wasn't engaging for the reader, the other paragraph would be. If neither paragraph was engaging, well, maybe the links to YouTube videos proved satisfying.

In terms of the actual number of albums, I picked ten (with five honourable mentions) partly to force myself to evaluate albums rather than picking a number large enough to allow me to just list every album I listened to this year and partly for practical reasons: ten seemed like a good number that would keep this doable and lend some weight to the selections. I kept the albums separated into the top ten and the honourable mentions rather than top fifteen for much the same reason. It seemed important to have a demarcation between "good albums that I enjoyed" and "the best albums of the year" (I guess this is my own personal good record/important album distinction). Before I actually sat down to do the list, I assumed that several albums from the honourable mentions list would make the main list and I was somewhat surprised at how easy it was to separate the two lists once I started working.

II. Schedule

I anticipated that writing something every day for a set number of days would be difficult. I don't tend to work that way on anything. Doing the list this way proved to be both challenging and rewarding. There were a few entries on the list for which I had some notes written in advance (Neon Indian, Kode9 & the Spaceape, and Tim Hecker), but I tended to avoid using them. As much as possible, I wanted this to be a process of sitting down to the computer each day as the desire came over to me and writing the piece while listening to the album in question. In two or three cases I found my way into the write-up the night before, and wrote a few sentences or a draft paragraph, but largely these were drafted as I listened and then edited/expanded. Sometimes this task seemed daunting and unpleasant, with the desire clearly not about to come any time soon (My thought process: Another one? Really? Whose stupid idea was this? Oh, wait...), and at other times, all the desire in the world couldn't produce a useful sentence. During the second half of the list, my own schedule for this became increasingly rigid--generally, it was wake up, start working, finish and post by mid-morning. I'm not sure I really achieved this with any of the entries, but it gave me a structure within which I could work.

What made this worthwhile was not that it built in a sense of obligation or anything like that (though it did just that), but rather that these write-ups fed off each other, illuminating connections I'd never noticed or, at the least, never articulated to myself. If I'd just written these in a concentrated burst over a couple days or haphazardly as I felt like it, I doubt those themes would've emerged. In a similar way, I found that shared aesthetic properties (and the aesthetic properties that ultimately led me to pick these albums over others) became clear for me in a way that I think I was only subconsciously aware of prior to writing. Though I didn't take advantage of this at all, I also appreciated that doing the write-ups one album at a time allowed me to reconsider the list as I wrote it. There were a few minutes of dithering at times about the place of an album (especially 6/7 and 3/4), but I decided to stick with the order as I initially determined it.

III. Overall Reflections

Despite some complaining at times on my part, this albums of the year list was by far the most fun I've had with this blog. It felt like a simple and straightforward way to get back to why I started this blog, to have a place to write and think about music. In an age of such widespread access to music (via YouTube, Spotify, torrents and P2P, etc., etc.) there's bound to be at least a whiff of genre tourism to any list outside of one with a specialized focus. I don't really know a lot about the genres (hello, bass music!) out of which many of my favourite albums emerged, so I'm probably more of a tourist than most who are writing these lists (this was also part of my reasoning in focusing so heavily on my response to albums as the contextual framework, even when discussing an artist's past work and the new work in relation to that corpus). I hope, though, that the aesthetic and thematic connections that emerged in the write-ups offered something like a picture (if not clear, at least muddy) of my own aesthetic preferences. That is, I'd like to believe that taking into account the things I very clearly like (via what I said in the write-ups), nothing on this list should be too surprising or out of keeping with the other entries. This is the second year I've done an albums of the year list* and I plan to keep it up for as long as it remains a fun activity. It will be interesting for me (if for no one else) to see if the aesthetic concerns that are already apparent after two years of this continue to crystallize or if there is a radical shift.

Anyway, if you read any of the list, I hope you enjoyed it. If it introduced you to any new music, or reintroduced you to an artist you'd lost touch with, or just made you reevaluate--for even a second--something you dislike, then I think the list proved its worth. Onward to 2012 and more great music!


*Last year's best album (in my opinion, of course) was Cosmogramma by Flying Lotus (paired with the Pattern+Grid World EP). The runner-up was Four Tet's There Is Love In You.

IT BEATS CHRISTMAS CARDS...

For the past couple years, a friend of mine has put together a small booklet of stories, poems, and pictures and mailed it out as a combination Christmas card/present. The people whose work is in the book do not necessarily know each other, but we all know her, and it makes for an interesting collection of work and people. I think that the whole idea trumps any kind of form letter or standard Christmas card. The deadline for getting stuff to her is in a few days and I just sent off my submission. If having deadlines and things like that sounds a little draconian for this sort of thing, well, she's smart enough to realize she won't get anything without them (to say nothing of the logistics of printing all of the booklets up and mailing them out to all the contributors). She's also involved in more serious publication of creative work here, if you are so inclined.

I'm not by any stretch of the imagination--and I'll never claim to be--a creative writer, and this is probably about the exact level to which anything I write should be shared: among friends and without any pretensions toward being "art."* Anyway, this is what I submitted. No points for guessing what it's a description of (the title is a pretty big tip-off):

Pleasures

A crack in the void.

Then, sound:

a balloon in the darkness,

four taut wires,

spectral hands pulling a crinkled sheet flat,

snaps, frozen.

The myth of the world in black and white

before the movies invented colour.

Like I said, I labour under no illusions re: the ultimate value of this little piece, but writing it was a fun half hour. Thankfully, there's nothing that requires the submission to be cheerful or to be about Christmas or anything like that. 

*For those who would make the argument that all writing is creative writing, I will respectfully disagree. I see what I do as inherently different from creative writing (I would be happier, though still not satisfied, with critical writing as a descriptor), and the distinction is, in fact, quite important to me in terms of purpose and goals.

COLLOQUIUM = SUCCESS!

There have been a number of stressful occasions over the course of my academic life. I would say about three of them qualify as having been especially stressful: taking the GRE, taking my senior comprehensive exam in undergrad, and my MA thesis defense (to list them in chronological order). The presentation I gave yesterday at the October installment of our department's colloquia series can officially be added to that list. The actual presentation itself wasn't very stressful (all I had to do was read what was in front of me), but given that I had 20 minutes to present and the colloquium itself was to run for an hour and a half, even with a brief introduction I was potentially facing an hour of questions. I was assured this would not be the case, but the colloquium went the full time, and I had to deal with my hour of questions.

After I'd finished reading, there was a moment of calm, and it seemed like I might end up with only a few token questions. Thankfully, it was just a moment, and then the questions started. I felt a little flustered by some, and it always seemed to me that I wasn't doing a very good job of answering questions or making my answers coherent, but a number of people said that they thought I handled the Q and A well, which was a relief (here's hoping they weren't just being polite...). Actually, there were a number of times when I was tempted to pull up my blog on the computer at the podium and just start reading from a few posts.

Overall, it was a good experience. I didn't have to deal with a hostile crowd by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a very smart one, and I'm glad to have had the experience of fielding questions from a very smart crowd that was not hostile (in case I have to face questions from a smart, hostile crowd sometime in the future).  I tried to enjoy the experience as much as I could. When else am I going to get a chance to present my work to the entire department (almost) and have them pay attention, offer feedback, ask questions, etc.? It certainly felt nice to offer a piece of work that I think is representative of my best abilities as a scholar--kind of show off-y, but in a good way. One of the most satisfying bits of feedback I've received is that the presentation was very easy to follow for people who haven't read Giovanni's Room. It's always a drag when you're unfamiliar with a text, so that is something I tried to be very conscious of as I finished up my presentation.

I woke up this morning to a nice message in my inbox from the professor whose class I'd originally written the paper for (and with whom I'd been discussing some of the issues I brought up in my paper over the past few months). Now, a few more revisions of the full version (to go along with the fifteen or so of the short version I presented) and it should be ready to go out. Not a bad way to end the week, I guess.

FUN WITH WORDCLOUDS

(click to embiggen)

A wordcloud of the presentation I'm giving on Friday (via wordle). I rather like this. No real surprises in terms of what shows up most frequently. I've read this paper aloud enough that at this point I could probably almost give you an exact count for most of these words. I remember a friend of mine telling me that he would often end up memorizing large chunks of the stories he wrote (particularly first paragraphs) from incessantly going over them to get the wording just right. I'm not quite there yet with this, but it's awfully close.

Some statements from Zizek's appearance at Occupy Wall Street (which I mention briefly in the paper) seem to run parallel to my argument in a rather satisfying way:

[W]e are the beginning, not the end. Our basic message is: the taboo is broken, we do not live in the best possible world, we are allowed and obliged even to think about alternatives. There is a long road ahead, and soon we will have to address the truly difficult questions--questions not about what we do not want, but about what we DO want. . . . People often desire something but don't really want it. Don't be afraid to want what you desire. (via Verso and NY Observer)

Sounds like someone's been reading his Capitalist Realism, based on that first part. I'm operating under a time limit, and this version of my paper comes right up against that limit, otherwise I might start with Zizek. Another time, I guess (or maybe in the actual full version of the paper). Perhaps it'll come up in the Q&A afterwards.

BASIC DISPLAYS OF COMPETENCY

I spent a lot of time yesterday working on an abstract and a rationale for a panel I'm putting together. In and of itself, neither task was that difficult (although I was a little concerned at first that there weren't quite as many points of intersection between the three arguments as I'd hoped, in the end I found a solid through-line), which was a happy discovery. It could just be that my mind is looking forward to the readings I've assigned my students for the next few weeks, or it could be that the extended discussion on the purpose and value of scholarly work in class on Monday night is continuing to hum away in my brain, but I kept imagining how writing this abstract and rationale would have gone a year ago, or two years, or five years ago. This is, of course, not the first time I've wondered about such things.

One year ago it would have been difficult--I could have managed it, though I doubt that the finished abstract and rationale would be of the same quality as what I produced yesterday. Two years ago? I'm not sure I was ready to produce the rationale: I think I would have been able to write one, but I'm not convinced I really understood how to make it do what it needs to do (basically, the whole creating a conversation that the papers are each contributing to would have been okay, but getting across any kind of "So what?" or "Who cares?" point was not my greatest skill). Five years ago? Not a chance. Five years ago I'd never even written a conference length paper for an English class. It's shocking now to look back and realize that, but it wasn't until the very end of my third year of undergrad that I wrote a conference length paper for an English class. Most English classes I took required essay exams, not papers.

In a meeting I had with a professor a couple weeks ago, when I mentioned my anxieties re: my lack of publications--specifically, that I'm starting to feel like I'm falling behind the rest of my cohort in that regard--the response I got was "it's not a race." I don't entirely believe it, but I desperately hope it's true. In a lot of ways, I feel like it took me a year of work in my MA program to wind up where the students with whom I'd entered program had started. By the time I'd finished my MA and was ready to start my PhD, I think I'd reached the point at which most people are starting to apply for PhD programs. A year into my PhD program, it seems like I'm where a lot of people were a year ago. Being able to spend a few hours yesterday afternoon and write those two documents seems to me like a good demonstration of some basic PhD student (and perhaps graduate student at any level) skills. If grad school and professional development aren't a race, that's a good thing, because I think I just managed to get my shoes on. If it is a race, well, I was always better in the second half of my races, anyway.

Now, next test: I need to have a paper ready for presentation to the department three weeks from Friday. If this presentation goes well--and if a few people give the new draft of the whole thing (rather than the condensed version I'll present) a thumbs up--this will be the first thing I send out. Fingers very much crossed, here. Of course, one sop to my confidence: I've been made co-organizer of a panel at ACLA (the same one that had been shot down by MLA). If you'll be at ACLA in March, come say hello!

STUDENT SURVEYS AND COMMON ANSWERS

Well, school has started once again. The campus is humming and buzzing with activity now. It almost defies belief to remember how quiet it was on campus at the end of summer when you come face-to-face with the hordes of freshmen barreling down on you from one direction or another.

Teaching at 8 am is more of adventure this time than it was in Corvallis. Of course, there I lived about a ten minute walk from the building I taught in. Here, it's a half hour bus ride (assuming no traffic and few stops). My students are, predictably, sleepy and, equally predictably, tentative. Any statement I make seems to be greeted with outright terror by half of the class at this point. The first couple days are the worst, of course, but they don't know that fact yet. Starting with Friday's class, our first chance to really discuss a reading that isn't a fairly abstract introduction to the concept of "college writing,"* I think what I've set out for them to do over the next fifteen weeks will seem much less daunting. I've tried to a spend a great deal of time situating our entire class within the abstract concepts we've been discussing so far (which accounts for some of the terror: they're encountering the entire course as some type of monolithic mountain and they think I'm asking them to climb it in one fell swoop, rather than knowing that we might not get to that mountain at all this term and are instead going to spend a great deal of time practicing our techniques on relatively flat ground and small hills) under the assumption that an understanding of the larger structure of the course will make each individual day seem more useful and meaningful. If they can understand the end goal and what it entails, they'll probably be able to understand why we're doing the particular task we're focused on that class. I understand this is probably not the case, but I figured it was a worthwhile experiment.

A more interesting experiment, and one I might start conducting over the remaining semesters I'm teaching here, suggested itself to me after I received some of the first day surveys I handed out to my students. These are meant to supplement whatever introductions we do in class on the first day and to provide more in-depth data on their attitudes towards writing, their ability to self-assess and accurately diagnose what works and what doesn't in their writing, their level of comfort with the class, etc., etc. One of the questions--and the purpose of this question is simply to gain some information that will allow the student to stand out in my mind and make learning names a quicker and easier process (I've got about 2/3 of them down after two classes)--is "What is the most interesting thing about you?"**

This is a fairly bland question, I'll grant that, but it amazes me how little information it generates. I can understand that students may not be comfortable sharing personal information out loud in class on the first day, and I give them the option not to answer that question during their introduction if it will make them uncomfortable (I've noticed that a tendency to answer the question seems to correlate pretty well with the student's level of participation throughout the semester). I have assumed, though, and maybe this is where I'm going wrong, that students would feel far more comfortable answering the question in the "privacy" of the survey. I'm the only person who sees these surveys. I will never bring up any information a student shares with me on the survey with the class or with another student unless it is information that the student has already volunteered in class him or herself. Nevertheless, every semester I get answers of the "I like to run" or "I have a dog" variety. Sometimes students have information that could be interesting and useful, like the always popular "I like to travel," but unless they attach specifics to their fact--"I like to travel and have visited four continents," for example--it remains largely useless. These questions might have inspired Barthes to write Writing Degree Zero they're so flat and colourless and neutral. It's almost impossible for students to offer information that says less about themselves.

I was complaining about this fact today on Facebook and Twitter (tongue firmly in cheek; I was asked to do this same activity the other night and my mind went totally blank--although, this was partly due to the fact that I have few interests outside of my academic interests that I can state without the need to burden them with thousands of qualifiers and clarifications). I had a thought, though: are students reluctant to provide actual information, or are they incapable of providing the kind of information I'm seeking? If it's the former, does this reluctance have something to do with privacy concerns or their overall comfort level? Is it too difficult or uncomfortable or scary to share information about one's self with a person who is, essentially, a complete stranger and who one assumes will be judging one's self throughout the coming fifteen weeks? If it's the latter, is this inability the result of currently unrefined skills (i.e. students can't write about themselves because they don't yet understand how to write effectively)? Is it due to a misunderstanding (or incomprehension) of what the terms "interesting" or "unique" mean? Or, and this bridges the two sides, does this have something to do with a culture that tells young people that they are all unique in the same way? Is this related to the rise of social networking and lure of appealing to a group by demonstrating you think the same/feel the same/like the same/desire the same (conveniently symbolized and actualized at the same time by the Facebook "Like" button)?***

Another issue that emerged from the first batch of surveys I received today (I'll get the rest on Friday) has to do with students' expectations and attitudes toward writing. When I first started giving this survey (which was not that long ago), the majority of students' answers to "What is the best experience you've ever had with writing? The worst?" usually involved an anecdote about working hard on a project in high school (quite often a "senior research paper" or similar assignment) and receiving a high grade. Sometimes they would mention winning a contest or publication of some of their work. Their worst experiences also tended to relate to unpleasant high school projects, most of which had been left to the last minute and that the students felt reflected poorly on them.

While there's an obvious connection between good experience and rewards in those anecdotes, the anecdotes themselves have been simplifying over the past few semesters to become "I worked hard on a paper and got an A (or some equivalent, like 100%) on it." Today's batch of surveys featured the most blunt statement of this kind of attitude yet. To paraphrase: "The best experience was every time I got an A on an assignment. The worst was every time I didn't get an A." It is tremendously difficult to get students to see the value in work that they're doing in this class (and in other classes, I would imagine) when they tie success/good writing experience solely to the grade they receive. Similarly, it becomes even more difficult when they assume that effort (regardless of whether or not that effort is directed in fruitful ways or produces work of any quality) must always be rewarded with an A. Thus, for the student, effort is only rewarded if the piece of writing is successful, and a piece of writing is only successful it receives an A.

I disagree pretty fundamentally with both of those statements, largely because lots of writing that students put plenty of effort into is "unsuccessful" by this measure, but is "successful" in more important ways. I'm obviously not stating anything revolutionary here. Unfortunately, the above attitude seems to be becoming the hegemonic student orientation toward not just writing, but university (and education as a whole) in general. I'm not even lamenting for the decline in the "I love learning for the sake of learning" types--frankly, I think their numbers have probably always been drastically overstated. What I am lamenting is the decline in estimation of honing a craft among students, of putting into practice new skills, regardless of whether or not the end result is "exceptional" or "superior" or any of the other terms I (and others) use to describe A work. I'm not sure I even understand how to communicate this to students, though, without them thinking it's only a tired version of "hard work is its own reward" (which it is, but it's so much more than just that).

Anyway, some thoughts on teaching and students after a couple of days back at it. I have no answers to any of the questions I've asked, which I'm guessing is actually something of a good thing, for the most part. I imagine that it's beneficial to have these issues as live questions while I think about teaching and plan my lessons each day.

To lighten the mood some: keep watching this and this. They both just get funnier and funnier.


*As a term, "college writing" causes me no end of cognitive dissonance: to my mind, the term to describe our class should be "university writing," as, thanks to the differences between Canadian and American applications of the term, colleges and universities are quite different things. While there is nothing wrong with colleges in Canada--indeed, they are far better than universities for certain kinds of programs and disciplines--I have a certain residual snobbery attached to the connotations of the term because in high school designating a course as "college" signified that it was less difficult than those courses designated as "university." Perhaps an all around less problematic term would be "academic writing?"

**They also had trouble providing an kind of useful information (in the sense of information that provides any insight into the student's character or motivations) with the question "What is, or what do you expect will be, your major and why are you interested in this field?" Though every student in my class has a declared major, only one could offer any sort of explanation for their interest in their chosen field. I'm not sure I could have articulated any kind of fluid or coherent narrative about my interest in English when I started my undergrad, but I think I could have done better than what my students offered.

***In deliberately crafting their responses to appeal to this communal uniqueness, perhaps the students engage in literary craftsmanship (as Barthes describes it here):

"if not the reconciliation of the writer to a universal condition, at least the conferment upon him of the responsibility for his form, the transmutation of the writing handed down to him by History into an art; in other words, into an obvious convention, a sincere pact which would enable man to adopt a position he was familiar with in a nature still made of ill-matched realities. The writer then gives to society a self-confessed art, whose rules are visible to all, and in exchange society is able to accept the writer."

CONFESSIONS OF A FAILED SUMMER BLOGGER

I had something of a plan to blog more regularly in July; obviously that hasn't happened. Of course, I pictured my July as a non-stop workfest in which I would wake up, leap to my computer, and frantically type away until I could type no more. Other than typing some 140 character bursts for Twitter, though, I can't say I've spent much time at the keyboard. Or working. Or thinking about work. About the closest I've come to work so far is a conversation with a friend (he's a grad student in the sciences) in which he kept asking me (in a polite and friendly way, I should note) to explain the rationale for what I do (and, by extension, what English Studies as a whole does). His point was essentially "what I work on has the potential to contribute to a cure for cancer. What do you do for anyone?" It was an interesting conversation. Maybe I'll write up some of my thoughts and post them here to see what people think.

What have I been doing so far this month? Well, since you asked, not a whole lot. I've been playing a lot of guitar, listening to a lot of music, and reading. I went to a racetrack and watched harness racing. I went swimming. I went to EPIC LASER TAG.* None of these things are helping to get the tasks I wanted to complete in July accomplished, but I guess something in me wants more of a break than I would consciously like to allow myself to have. I've decided to crack the whip, though. Starting Monday, I will be up and writing when my alarm goes off. It's time to produce and not just to laze about. There's nothing to stop me doing work and enjoying myself, so I just need to start working on the former as much as the latter.

On the plus side, I've been slowly getting back into shape, and, after getting lost that first time, I've managed to keep my bearings while out running. I've realized over the past two months or so how much I've missed having running as a way to structure my days. Now, on the days that I don't run, I feel a little aimless. I'm even considering finding my spikes and going down to a track to work out. We'll see if I manage to get that far.


*It was fun, but three games was definitely excessive. The building was not air conditioned and we were all doused in sweat by the end of the night.

WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION

I had some friends visit last week, which should explain my total absence from blogging (and the internet in general). Anyway, I feel the need to put something up here so that it doesn't seem like I've entirely abandoned the blog. To that end, a brief list:

1. While my friends were here, they convinced me to read Neil Gaimon's American Gods. I'd read the first two Sandman graphic novels and enjoyed them, so it wasn't exactly a hard sell. I'm happy to note that American Gods was wonderful. It reminded me a lot of Douglas Adams' The Long, Dark Tea Time of the Soul, though slightly more serious. What impressed me most about American Gods was its originality and ability to surprise me: I never felt that I knew what would happen next in the novel and the characters (even those with theologically/mythologically pre-determined natures) were unique and memorable.
2. Also, my friends convinced me to rent and watch Thank You For Smoking while they were here. Again, an excellent call on their part: the movie was fantastic. I don't think I've laughed so much while watching a movie in quite some time. I'm already scheming up ways to show parts of the movie to my class in the Fall.
3. Inspired by a ridiculous comment by the teacher of the German class I just finished taking ("When you think of the Industrial Revolution, you think of Pittsburgh"*), my friends and I spent the past week making increasingly ridiculous statements as we wandered around the city ("Pittsburgh invented Christopher Columbus;" "Pittsburgh invented America;" "Pittsburgh invented Elephants;" etc., etc.).
4. I've been unable to get to work on any of the stuff I "need" to be working on--like those papers I said I wanted to get ready to send out--because another idea has popped into my head and won't let me go. Taking the advice I've received from the Object-Oriented Philosophy blog, I've decided to strike while the iron is hot and get to work on this idea. There will be plenty of time to get a rough version of this paper together and to work on those other things. Given that this is the first paper I've ever written without any outside prompting or context (like a class or a conference), I'm really anxious to get some feedback.
5. Two short books I'm enjoying working my way through right now: Roland Barthes' Writing Degree Zero (although the chapters on "Writing and the Novel" and "Is There Any Poetic Writing?" are something of a slog) and Dick Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style. The former is helping me re-think some sections of one of the paper's I should be working on and the latter is helping me think through some problems I'm facing in the paper I am working on.
6. I'm heading home for a month or so this coming week. I'm looking forward to being back in Canada and seeing some friends. I don't know if I'll have the chance or not, but it would also be nice to see my sister and my brother, his wife, and my niece. 

That's all for now. Here's hoping for a more productive July (though I've enjoyed my pretty vacation-esque June).


*For the record, when I think of the Industrial Revolution, I think of English cities like Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool.

ADVICE, PUBLISHING, ETC.

I've spent a good deal of time during the past few weeks reading the advice posts over at Graham Harman's blog Object-Oriented Philosophy.* They are, I think, incredibly helpful, both in terms of offering useful and immediately applicable practical advice about writing, professionalization, publishing, etc., etc. and in terms of keeping up one's morale, finding happiness in one's work, and avoiding the soul-crushing despair of life as a graduate student. Also, it's just nice to read someone who is knowledgeable about writing discuss how to get better at writing: how to write more effectively, how to write with greater speed, how to remove barriers to writing.

I find the constant encouragement Harman offers to simply do work--and to do it as often as possible--a wonderful spur to productivity. However, what I find most useful are his posts on publishing and the ins and outs of academic writing (minus some of the points focused specifically on the discipline of philosophy). I will be the first to admit I know nothing about publishing. In my MA program, the general approach to the issue was don't think about it, don't worry about, and don't try it (this might have been different from the advice given to the MFA students with whom I shared office space and classes. They seemed to be forever in fear of not sending things out for publication often enough). Even as I made my transition into a PhD program, the advice I left my MA program with was "don't even think of publishing anything before you finish coursework." My advisers suggested I focus on conferences and leave publishing to the advanced stages of my PhD (there was a practical consideration here; as one professor put it, a bad article will never go away, but no one knows about a bad conference paper after you give it).

So there I was, happily entering a PhD program with no worries about having nothing on the horizon in terms of publishing. I hoped to get into a few conferences, but I was generally focused on doing well in my coursework. Of course, once I started the program, I discovered something quite different: everyone was obsessed with publishing and having things ready to send out. Several people I met already had publications (and had not followed the no-publications-during-coursework guideline I'd received); others had things under review or were preparing things to be sent out. I was a little bit confused and a lot scared. What was I to do?

Full disclosure as to the extent of my naivety re: the professional aspects of my discipline: I didn't (still don't exactly, to be honest) even know how to send something to a journal. I didn't know how to find a journal to send something to. I didn't know you had to wait for a decision while your article was under review (I assumed you sent it in, someone read it, and you heard a “yay” or “nay” pretty soon after). Now it can be a painful, embarrassing, and quite scary experience to ask a professor you've just met (and whose approval you desperately want to receive considering your own painful self-doubt re: your abilities, the reasons you were accepted into the program, your relative merits w/r/t those of the other students in the program, etc., etc.) about those kinds of things. Mostly, I didn't ask those kinds of questions. Some answers I managed to pick up by piecing together various remarks from colleagues. Some answers I managed to guess by doing a bit of research. The vast majority of my questions are still unanswered, though, and it's difficult to make myself as vulnerable as I know I will feel when I ask those questions to a professor, so I don't ask them. I remain ignorant of these things (not a good policy, clearly). The advice posts at Object-Oriented Philosophy are answering some of those questions, and the answers are written in such a sympathetic (though not condescending or patronizing) style, even when they are dealing with the harsh realities of life in the academic world, that I'm beginning to feel a little better about things.

Anyway, my reading of these posts is quite timely: one of the posts mentions that presenting a paper at a conference and then not at least attempting to transform that paper into a publishable article is a waste of one's mental energies. Considering I've not looked at the last paper I presented since I read it, I guess it's time to dig that out and take a look at it. I'm actually fairly confident that I can turn it into a decent essay in a relatively short amount of time. I have no idea if anything will come of working on this paper, but I have to think that it would be better than leaving it rotting on my hard drive. Besides, if I don't try and do something with it (and, at this point, I've been working on this paper on and off for over a year), what am I left with? Certainly no prospects for scholarly success. It would be nice to go from zero to two pieces of work to send out in one leap. After all, as the advice posts I've been reading keep saying, going from nothing to something is the hardest step.

Well, it looks like I've just talked myself into another project this summer. My father has asked me to pressure wash and stain the deck he's just finished building when I get home, so I will presumably (after some physical labour) have a nice place to sit and work for a month or so. I've also got some concrete goals to work towards and I look forward to a productive (but enjoyably so, productive on my own terms) summer vacation before school and teaching start up again in August.

*I was introduced to this subject this year in Louisville at a presentation I'd decided to attend on a whim. I don't pretened to understand the real heavy-duty philosophy that Harman (and others in the loose constellation of philosophers working on similar themes and issues), but this is a nice example of how chance encounters can sometimes lead to the most productive new areas of information (a point Harman himself makes over and over again in the advice posts).

ANOTHER SCENE FROM MY ONE-ACT PLAY ABOUT THE RAPTURE

 I've been working on and off on this for a few weeks. I had fun writing the first scene and I wanted to continue writing (I have no pretensions as a creative writer, but it is nice to indulge those creative impulses every now and then). I realized, though, that the first scene was far too “jokey”--not to mention that the joke was very much one-note and basically beaten into the ground by the end of the scene--so I set about making the rest a little more serious. Anyway, enough hemming and hawing about my “writing process” (I say that like I have one . . .). Here we go:

Scene II

Scene

PERSON EXPECTING RAPTURE and his ROOMMATE's apartment.

[Enter PERSON EXPECTING RAPTURE]

PERSON EXPECTING RAPTURE: Hey, I'm back.

[Enter ROOMMATE]

ROOMMATE: Oh, sweet. [Looks past P.E.R.] So you . . . you, uh, went to the store? I don't see any bags or anything.

P.E.R.: [Not listening] Yeah, I went to the store. And I ran into Jesus outside.

ROOMMATE: OK, that's cool. So is there stuff in the car? Do I need to go outside and help you bring it in?

P.E.R.: No, dude. Don't you understand? I saw Jesus outside the store. He was just hanging out there like it was no big thing!

ROOMMATE: [Nodding] I do understand that. I do. But I don't see why seeing Jesus outside the store and getting stuff at the store are mutually exclusive things. They seem sort of like very related activities to me.

P.E.R.: But he was just standing out there. I mean, I went to . . .

ROOMMATE: Because, like, I've been really craving doritos while you've been out, and I told you before you left if you were going out to the store to get me something. So I just don't see why you would come home from the store and not have anything at all to show for it. Kind of doesn't make sense why you'd go out in that case.

P.E.R.: [Waves ROOMMATE quiet] Shut up and listen. Jesus was there and I talked to him. I asked him all about the Rapture thing and how come he didn't show up and was he still planning on taking people up to heaven and all that. And he said no and that he wasn't really into the Rapture but just said he was to be polite to me.

ROOMMATE: [Sits down] OK, yeah, so? I dig that, I mean, it makes sense, sort of.

P.E.R.: [Walks over to where ROOMMATE is sitting] No it doesn't! No it doesn't make sense at all. He just made me look like a huge asshole in front of everyone!

ROOMMATE: Yeah, but look at it from his perspective. I mean, you can be sort of really intense when you're into stuff, right?

P.E.R.: [Shakes head] What are you talking about? What does that have to do with . . .

ROOMMATE: [Holds up hand to silence P.E.R.] Just listen for a sec. So, you can be super intense about stuff. And Jesus, like, he seems like a pretty cool bro. So, I figure that he didn't want to make it a big thing when you said you were into all this Rapture stuff and kind of just went along with it. But then you started making an even bigger deal of it than usual. Like, you called all those newspapers to tell them about it and stuff. I've gotta be honest, it was sort of weird, man.

P.E.R.: [Angrily] How was I being weird? The guy's dad is in charge of the universe, right? He says he can Rapture people. I say that sounds like a good idea, how soon can he do it? He says anytime he wants and I say how about next weekend and he says yeah. I mean, that's a big deal right. [Waves hands around] THE RAPTURE? THE END OF THE WORLD? That's not so weird that I'd be kind of interested if the guy who can make it happen says “Oh yeah, how about we do that next weekend?”

ROOMMATE: No, I get you, man. I do. I see what you're saying and all, but, like, you kind of pressured him into saying it.

P.E.R.: No I didn't, he . . .

ROOMMATE: Hear me out here. It was kind of just a thing he was saying. But then you put him on the spot about it and he felt like he had to like show he could, or something

P.E.R.: He's omnipotent! He didn't have to prove anything. I knew he could do it!

ROOMMATE: Yeah, but the way you put him on the spot it made him, like, feel like he had to. Do you see what I mean?

P.E.R.: [Shaking his head with disbelief] But if he didn't want to do it, why did he make plans with me for this weekend?

ROOMMATE: I don't know. He's a chill guy, maybe he just didn't want to upset you? Maybe he was too embarrassed to say that he already had something going on. You were really into the idea, man.

P.E.R.: I wasn't “really into it.” I just thought it seemed like a good idea. Like it would be kind of cool, you know?

ROOMMATE: So, your idea of thinking something is a “good idea” and “kind of cool” is to write in to newspapers and go on national television to talk about it?

P.E.R.: Uh . . .

ROOMMATE: Like, I'm not trying to be critical here. I'm just calling it the way I see it. You came off as kind of weird and creepy about all this, dude.

P.E.R.: So, great. Now, on top of being a stupid asshole who was wrong, I'm weird and creepy.

ROOMMATE: [Smiles] Nah, it's all good. You're a decent guy, you're just really intense about the stuff you're into sometimes.

P.E.R.: And that's probably why Jesus said he was having people over tonight. Because he wanted to let me know I was being weird and creepy about this and normal people just have relaxing Saturday nights.

ROOMMATE: [Looks up at P.E.R.] Wait, he said he was having people over? That's kind of cold. But that probably explains it all. He must have just got the days mixed up. Maybe he thought the Rapture was tomorrow or next week or something?

P.E.R.: How do you mix up the dates on the END OF THE WORLD?!

ROOMMATE: To be honest, man, I kind of forgot it was supposed to be today, too. I mean, I know you'd been talking about it a lot lately, but I just sort of tuned it out, I guess.
P.E.R.: I left a note on the refrigerator! [Walks over and points to note]

ROOMMATE: Yeah, and I thought that was strange. I guess it seemed like some passive-aggressive thing about the electric bill or something. Like stop watching TV so much or something. I don't know.

P.E.R.: [Points to note again] It says “REPENT. THE END IS NIGH.” in big block letters!

ROOMMATE: So you see what I mean? That's ambiguous, right?

P.E.R.: How is that ambiguous? It's a general command! Everyone is supposed to repent when the Rapture is coming!

ROOMMATE: Yeah, see, that's what I mean. That's, like, the whole passive-aggressive part. You're trying to boss me around, but you're being kind of sneaky about it.

P.E.R.: [Under his breath] Idiot. [Out loud] Anyway, what am I supposed to do now? Jesus made me look like an asshole.

ROOMMATE: Whatever, man. I'm telling you, it's not like anyone cared or remembered about this thing other than you.

P.E.R.: [Desperately] People cared! They remembered! I was in the newspapers! I went on television!

ROOMMATE: [Smiles and chuckles] Heh, right. Yeah, you're pretty much screwed. You probably look like a crazy bastard.

P.E.R.: You're not helping right now.

ROOMMATE: Well, whatever. Look on the bright side. Uh, you're famous now?

P.E.R.: Famous for being the crazy guy who said the world was going to end and then it didn't.

ROOMMATE: Hey, it worked for Nostradamus. I mean, the Weekly World News used to print his stuff all the time, and no one made fun of him.

P.E.R.: Nostradamus lived in the sixteenth century. He wasn't alive when all his predictions failed to come true. Also, the Weekly World News wasn't a real newspaper. It was a tabloid printed for entertainment. Plus, tons of people make fun of him all the time.

ROOMMATE: Oh, I guess that explains why they kept printing him. Like that weather guy on the radio. I can't figure out how he keeps his job because he always gets the weather wrong and he said this weekend was going to be rainy, so I stayed in, but it's been sunny all day, so I don't know.

P.E.R.: [Holds up his hand to silence ROOMMATE] Did you ever actually look at the Nostradamus articles in the Weekly World News?

ROOMMATE: To be honest, I never read the articles, I just saw them in the checkout lines. But they usually put them next to, like, some magazine with a picture of some bangin' chick on the cover or something, and I'd get distracted.

P.E.R.: I never would have guessed.

ROOMMATE: C'mon, man. Don't be like that. Anyway, I'm starving and since you didn't bring back anything from the store, I need to get food. You wanna come? I think I'm going to hit up Denny's or something.

P.E.R.: No thanks. I'm just going to sit here and think about what a colossal idiot I look like to the rest of the world.

ROOMMATE: OK . . . well, don't wait up, I guess. See ya.

P.E.R.: Yeah, see ya.

[Exit ROOMMATE]

P.E.R.: [Shakes head] Man, I can't believe he said I get too into stuff. I don't get too into stuff. I wasn't being creepy and weird. It was the END OF THE WORLD. I'm not crazy, right? That's a legitimately big deal. Like, anyone would be kind of excited about it, right? [Sighs] Whatever. No Rapture, and now I'm stuck by myself on a Saturday night again.

[Exit P.E.R.]

BORGES' PHANTOM CLASSROOM

I volunteered for an event being held on campus today and, as I had been warned it might be quite dull, I took a book with me, Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings. I find reading Borges to be a lot like working out after a period of not doing so: it takes time to limber up and for the first few pages or stories, like the first few minutes of a run, I struggle to find the rhythm that I'm used to. After awhile, though, I'm able to find my rhythm and start moving pretty solidly through the pages (usually just in time for Borges to turn my mind inside out). After the usual period of struggle today, I found myself enjoying the bizarre worlds Borges conjures up seemingly out of the leftover scraps of other stories. I spent most of the day reading through the book, when I wasn't directing high school and elementary school students to the classroom they needed to find.

One passage in “The Circular Ruins” made me sit up and take notice, and I haven't been able to get it out of my mind since. During the lunch break, I'd sat with a friend and some visiting high school teachers as we ate the pretty terrible pizza that was on offer. The high school teachers asked us about our own teaching and wondered if we might be able to recommend some books, stories, or poems that we wish all high school students had read before they entered out class and to suggest the most important writing skills students could bring with them to university. Needless to say, this was a fun discussion. What made it so pleasant was that the high school teachers treated my friend and I like real teachers. We were not just grad students teaching the classes that tenured faculty couldn't be bothered with, nor were we some kind of bumbling apprentice who would someday figure this teaching thing out. The high school teachers we sat with regarded my friend and I as peers and colleagues, people who could share knowledge about the business of teaching and who had expertise to impart w/r/t to the classroom and the curriculum. After returning to my post and picking up Borges, I came across a description of teaching that damn near nails what I think is so magical about the encounters you can have in the classroom:

The stranger dreamt that he was in the center of a circular amphitheater which in some way was the burned temple: clouds of silent students filled the gradins, the faces of the last ones hung many centuries away and at a cosmic height, but were entirely clear and precise. The man was lecturing to them on anatomy, cosmography, magic; the countenances listened with eagerness and strove to respond with understanding, as if they divined the importance of the examination which would redeem one of them from his state of vain appearance and interpolate him into the world of reality. The man, both in dreams and awake, considered his phantoms' replies, was not deceived by impostors, divined a growing intelligence in certain perplexities. He sought a soul which would merit participation in the universe.

Cosmography and magic (and any number of other subjects) are all part of what comes out of a literature class at its best, I think. I know there are classes that I've taken where I've come home so charged with ideas, so full of newness, so disturbed, that it's been impossible to stop thinking and has taken me hours to settle down enough to do any work or to go to sleep. In the proper setting, new worlds are birthed, new horizons of understanding glimpsed, new perspectives found, new arguments raised, and new questions asked. This event is one of the reasons I find teaching freshmen to be exhilarating: that moment when suddenly nothing is the same for them anymore, when they've come further than they ever have before and cannot help but think new thoughts and entertain new opinions. It doesn't happen with every student, unfortunately, but I see it happen with enough of them to keep me engaged and interested. I want to help them find those souls that merit participation in a universe that is more difficult to live in than the one they live in now because I think life in that universe is richer than the one they live in now and they deserve to live in a richer universe (provided they work to get there).

At the same time, though, I understand why many of them get frustrated and choose not to head for this new universe. Everything is more complex there: no one will make their decisions for them anymore, no one will tell them how to think or what opinion to hold. Even the things they thought they knew how to do become defamiliarized. Reading can make things more confusing; writing can lead to mazes of uncertainties and doubts. Of course, there are positives to go along with this: reading can open whole new areas of existence and writing can offer the thrill of working right at the very limit of one's knowledge. I know it's those two sensations I'm always looking for and trying to introduce my students to. I love that sense that every word I put down is a step into darkness, into a place I've never been and that I'm creating as I write, or that every page I turn somehow makes the world, brighter, louder, more vibrant, more complex, more ambiguous, and more mysterious.

I felt something was missing from my teaching over the last half of this past semester. Somehow, I tried too hard or pushed in the wrong directions or something, but the experience was less “cosmic” and more tedious, I think. The promise of the circular amphitheater in which the stranger lectures was just not there. Borges' character ultimately abandons his dream of the classroom. However, I'm not ready to abandon the parts of his dream that I share just yet. He considers it a failure, a hallucination that will fail to bring about a new soul he can bring into existence. I don't know that I disagree entirely; I do think, though, that it helps to create the dreams that can do it, if nothing else. It's been nice this past month to have a break from teaching, but I'm starting to get excited again for fall and to return to the classroom. I'll be teaching at 8:00 am on MWF, so I will be the first teacher my students have in their university careers. This is the first time I've had this opportunity, and I can't wait. Maybe I'll read them that Borges passage on the first day and tell them how much we have to look forward to together.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY...

I finally got around to reading David Lodge's Changing Places today. I'd been meaning to for some time, and after finding a cheap copy in the used bookstore near me the other day, I could see no reason to put it off any longer. Part of the impetus behind my desire to read the novel came from the fact that it is, by far, the book I'm asked most often if I've read. This mainly has to do with my answer to the dreaded questions "What are you interested in?/What do you study?/What is your research area?" I never quite know how to answer those kinds of questions, so I usually mention that I'm interested in novels about the academy. The next question, almost without fail, is "Have you read Changing Places?"* Now I can say I have.

The novel was as funny and charming as people assured me it would be, and I enjoyed reading it. One particular passage early on in the novel detailing the scholarship (or lack thereof) of Philip Swallow describes a problem I often run into (though nowhere near to the extent of Swallow):

"Philip Swallow was a man with a genuine love of literature in all its diverse forms. He was as happy with Beowulf  as Virginia Woolf,** with Waiting for Godot as with Gammer Gurton's Needle, and in odd moments when nobler examples of the written word were not to hand he read attentively the backs of cornflakes packets, the small print on railway tickets and the advertising matter in books of stamps. This undiscriminating enthusiasm, however, prevented him from settling on a 'field' to cultivate as his own. . . . Seldom, indeed, had he drawn up a preliminary bibliography [for a project] before his attention was distracted by some new or revived interest in something entirely different. He ran hither and thither between the shelves of Eng. Lit. like a child in a toyshop - so reluctant to choose one item to the exclusion of others that he ended up empty-handed" (17).

I think we're to laugh at (along with?) Swallow here, but this seems to me like more of a description of a lively and active mind. As a professor once told me at a department party, "it's nice to be able to talk to people about something other than your own research." I have more or less settled on a field--or at least a time period--but I do genuinely love literature (along with various other cultural texts) and can get distracted rather easily by the next shiny thing that flies past my face. There are too many interesting things and not enough time to read them all, let alone talk about write about them.

Besides, it can be kind of fun to just let one's intellectual wheels spin and explore whatever appears. Rigour, discipline, and focus are important, too, but literary analysis is fun (or at least it is for me). I think anytime one analyzes something it can be useful and beneficial (if only to keep one's "mental muscles" in shape), even if just to serve as a reminder of how fun and pleasurable this can all be. That's what makes a book like Barthes' Mythologies so readable: his pleasure and amusement with his own work is there, transparent on the page. Now, this sense of fun, of pleasure, of (the word cannot be avoided) play, can be infuriating (as Derrida makes all too clear far too often, in my opinion) if it lapses into smugness and self-satisfaction--or if it ends up fostering or encouraging a kind of solipsism--but, by and large, I think it's a good thing. Cultural texts and literary analysis are tremendously powerful and serious things, but they are also bright, shiny toys in a toystore. I think I spend more than enough time working from the former position and not nearly enough working from the latter. I'm going to try, though, in the next year to recapture my sense of play. We'll see how this goes.


*Sometimes they can't remember the title of the book and can only vaguely describe the plot (and I can then guess the book because of other, similarly vague descriptions of the novel's plot), but they're almost always asking me about Changing Places. Occasionally, they'll ask about Richard Russo's Straight Man or Philip Roth's The Human Stain  (both of which I've yet to read), but 90% of the time, they want to know if I've read Lodge.

**If these are my two options, I'll take the back of the Cornflakes box, thanks.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN MY APARTMENT: HOW I SPENT MY WEEKEND

I had something of a minor existential crisis over the weekend. While this is not that rare of an occurrence, I'm usually pretty good at getting over any such crises and moving on to more productive things (usually this means the reading or grading I've been busy putting off). This one was more persistent than my standard-issue existential crisis, though, and what is worse, it was just silly. It ruined what was otherwise a nice weeked: sun to enjoy, movies to watch, and books to read.* Unfortunately, I spent more hours than I'd like to admit to feeling sorry for myself in ways that I thought I'd left behind with my teenage years (in all honesty, I'm pretty sure even my teenaged self would have made fun of my moping and pouting). 

Some background to the crisis: I had been feeling a little bit of concern/anxiety (though not a great amount, because it required me to think about the future beyond immediate tasks at hand, which I generally refuse to do) about the fact that the end of my first year of PhD coursework was rapidly approaching and I had yet to produce any piece of writing that anyone had deemed worth working on further and trying to publish. Why was this, I wondered. Did I not have any good ideas? Was my writing not good enough? Was I somehow missing a really important point about the things I write about? I couldn't answer any of these questions. I also didn't feel comfortable talking about them. They come across (at least to me) as so ridiculously self-absorbed and whiny that the idea of discussing them with anyone causes me (even now, in the comfort and privacy of my bedroom) to blush and shake my head.

While browsing through some journals, I came across a call for papers that seemed to fit a paper I was writing for class. Thinking that this might be the best chance I ever get to dip my toe into the bizarre and confidence-destroying world of academic publications, I resolved to revise said paper and send it off for consideration. At about the same time, I received word through the grapevine (read: the social networking websites of which I am a member) of a friend of a friend of a friend who was enjoying quite the streak of academic success lately. I generally am not a jealous and competitive person,** but this streak struck a nerve. I don't know the person in question very well (we've never gone to school together and my experience is limited to mainly social encounters). I've never been impressed by descriptions of the work this person does, though.*** Coupled with the already present anxieties described above, this news caused me to feel just a bit frantic. Now I definitely needed to get something sent out.

I was still convinced that the paper I was in the process of writing was my best bet in terms of producing something that could eventually be sent out. Once I'd turned it in, I waited for the paper to reappear in my mailbox so I could get to work on revising it. The paper never appeared, though, and--as any feedback I can get at this point will be helpful--I sent an e-mail to the professor asking for my paper. I also mentioned that I was hoping to use any comments I received on the paper to revise towards submission for publication. When the response came the next day, I managed to misread the professor's comment ("I made some recommendations about that on the paper for you," essentially) as a pretty firm dismissal of the idea of my pursuing publication of any form of this paper.

Needless to say, I was crushed (this was on Friday afternoon). My anxieties suddenly loomed large. I began to wonder what I was doing in a PhD program if I couldn't produce work that anyone thought was worth publishing. I was angry and disappointed with myself: I knew the paper was good (I'd received an "A" in the class), so the only possible scenario seemed to be that I'd produced yet another paper that was good coming from a student but wasn't the kind of work an actual scholar produced. I wondered if I'd ever be able to be anything other than a good student. I spent Friday night, Saturday, and most of Sunday consumed with disappointment, frustration, and self-loathing. I sulked and pouted. It was all melodramatic to the extreme. I've pined for girls in less embarrassing ways.

I knew my paper was going to be dropped off in my mailbox at some point today, so I came to campus early (I didn't have class until 5, but I got to the office at around 11) in the hopes of catching the professor and explaining why I thought the paper was worth working on further and sending out for consideration. I did not manage to do this: despite sitting in the office all day, the paper appeared when I wasn't looking and without the professor ever materializing. Once I had the paper, I looked at the comments. I will quote the second sentence of the comments, as I think it most accurately explains both how terribly I misread the e-mail I received from the professor and what a waste of time my existential crisis was:

"I highly recommend you submit some iteration of this work for publication."

Whoops. I guess I called that one wrong. I went back to reread the e-mail I'd received on Friday. What had seemed like a dismissal now was revealed to be a simple note about the content of the comments: the professor wanted me to know I was not alone in thinking this paper had merit and should be pursued further.

Anyway, I feel slightly ridiculous now about wasting my weekend over all this. Life as a graduate student is already full of crushing blows to one's self-confidence without manufacturing further crises. I still feel incredibly anxious re: the whole publication issue when I let myself think about it (which I try to avoid doing as much as possible), but at least now I know I can produce stuff that I could conceivably send out.


*I finally finished The King in the Tree by Steven Milhauser this weekend. All three novellas in that book are excellent. More on this later.

**At least with my friends and academic work. I like helping my friends, and I enjoy celebrating with them when they reap the rewards their hard work deserves. I am, however, extremely competitive in other areas, especially the board game Risk. While playing Risk, I once managed to cause a former girlfriend to say she hated me (on my birthday, no less) because of my cutthroat approach to the game.

***I should probably come out and admit that I have a less than charitable view of this person's scholarly abilities based on the conversations we've had. Yes, I am a bad person. I am trying to rectify this.

BEING SOMETHING IS SCARY, PART I

I imagine this will have several more parts over the coming four years.

Tonight in class we discussed our proposals for our final papers. The proposals were collated by the professor and sent out in advance of the class so that we had a chance to read and comment on them. I found it quite interesting to read through the ideas, although at first I felt that my proposal didn't quite fit in with the general tone of the rest of the class. I drew on my discussion in this entry in crafting my proposal (this blog just proved itself useful!), and it seemed like I was, for the first time, presenting not just an idea for a paper, but an articulation of my scholarly persona and intellectual project.

The format for class tonight was simple: after some introductory remarks from the professor about several common-to-us-as-a-group critical and rhetorical moves to avoid in our writing, we spent about 15 minutes on each student's proposal, offering feedback and asking questions to help the author develop/clarify/strengthen/support his or her ideas. When it was my turn, I was a little nervous. As I said before, my proposal seemed slightly different in terms of presentation, end goal, and framework, and I was worried that I might not get useful feedback because of those differences. I need not have feared on that count, though, as my classmates (and the professor) were quite helpful and very supportive. What I should have feared (and what I quickly became terrified about as I spoke about my idea for the paper) is the nature of my project. As people asked questions and got me to clarify my goals for the paper, my claim seemed to get bolder and bolder and to take on an increasingly polemical tone. I kept thinking “Trying to get this published would be the end of me before I've ever started!” (I know, I'm counting ridiculous numbers of chickens before they hatch). At the break, though, the professor and I spoke briefly about where I was coming from, and the comments were largely positive and motivational: “As you kept talking and the stakes kept getting higher, I became more and more interested in what you're doing. Maybe there's something to be said for just putting your head down and going forward with this.”

I appreciate the support, but I'm still a bit daunted by what I've set up for myself. I guess it was a different experience articulating just what the stakes of my project are from writing the words on a page. As I made my way home on the bus, I wondered if there might be a smaller, easier way to dip my toe into everything before I dove in the deep end. A classmate's paper, though, dealt with arguably an even more difficult (and potentially explosive and controversial) idea with some grace and elegance. The author didn't shy away from the potential for negative reactions to the argument. She understands her scholarly identity and its potential pitfalls, and she's willing to put her head down and go forward with her work. I'm kind of in awe. Perhaps it's just that she's older than me, but I envy her calm and poise when tackling a thorny issue. I don't necessarily agree with her work (nor would I necessarily read novels in the same way that she does), but I appreciate what she's trying to do and why, and I'm glad I could see the way she handled questions about her project. I hope that as I grow into my scholarly skin (now that I seem to be gaining a sense of what that is) I will become more confident and less terrified, because right now I feel terribly unsure and as if I'm inviting doom upon myself.

HANGING LANTERNS

I was re-watching some Futurama last night (for the millionth time, it's my fave), and while listening to the commentary (I really, really love their commentaries), I heard an expression from one of the show's writers: “hang a lantern on it.” Apparently this is a writing term that refers to a specific way to solve a plot problem (particularly one that stems from faulty logic): call attention to that problem in order to suggest it is intentional (like hanging a lantern on a piece of furniture that doesn't go with a room's decor, I guess? I don't know anything about decorating, so I don't quite follow the analogy). Futurama commentaries are great for little bits of trivia like this, and the writers often tell quite interesting anecdotes about how the storyline for a particular episode came to be. For example, David X. Cohen, one of the show's executive producers and the writer of quite a few episodes, mentions during the commentary for an episode that the false ending for that show came about by imagining a storyline that was “just one notch” below the quality of the rest of the series. They were then able to use the “good” storyline to resolve the questions raised by the “bad” storyline.

 

Anyway, the point is that the phrase “hang a lantern on it” caught my ear—I do like the sound of it—and I did a little poking around on the internet to find out more. This site goes into great detail about the practice and its motivations, but it doesn't mention the part I'm interested in: where did the phrase come from? I'm assuming, of course, that all phrases like this have a literal first embodiment, but hey, it's true about “It was a dark and stormy night,” so why not for this one? I have a particular interest/fascination with this idea of the literal origin of phrases like “hang a lantern on it” after I was told that idea of a “cliché” comes from typesetting, where it referred to commonly used phrases cast as blocks of words rather than as individual letters in order to save time. So, where did “hang a lantern on it” come from? Anyone? Bueller?

FILE UNDER: CELEBRATING THE SMALL STUFF

So, the man from whom I have been attempting to get some sort of sign that he doesn't think I am a complete idiot (because I hope/fear he will be on my exam and dissertation committees--more fear, at this point) nearly let slip a compliment today when I spoke with him. In response to a question about whether he wanted me to use many secondary sources in the paper I am writing for him, he said “No, you don't need to. If you weren't good at working with theory, it would be tempting to use them [secondary sources] to sort of prop up your argument. For you and your paper, you don't need to bring them in except to support what you're already saying about the texts.” It's not overt or explicit by any means, but I think that means he a) thinks I'm good at working with theory, and b) thinks that my ideas are (somewhat) valid. He even smiled at me and invited me to come in and sit down when I knocked on his door (not his usual response to me knocking on his door). Of course, he could have been speaking in generalities and he could still think I'm an idiot. I prefer the first reading of the conversation, though (for obvious reasons).

Now, no one said being an academic was going to be pretty, but is this really what I'm getting excited about? I don't think I was this pathetic even in high school when the girl I had a crush who sat behind me in chemistry would occasionally condescend to speak to me while we waited for the bus (ah, to be fifteen again, when that meant BEST. DAY. EVER!*). Truly, grad school will do terrible things to a man. The definition a former professor offered to his young son when, upon encountering me sitting at a table outside a cafe doing work (for that professor's class, I might add), the toddler asked “what's a grad student?”--“Someone who really likes punishment"--seems more apt every day.


*I hated being fifteen. I don't ever want to be anything like being fifteen again. Or sixteen. Or really, most ages up to about what I am now.

READING PAPERS WITH MY YOUNGER SELF

I found out last night that the MLA panel I was helping to organize with a few other people got shot down. Unfortunately, I found this out after the deadlines for other MLA panels' CFPs had passed. Such is life, I guess. We're shifting our focus to ACLA and hoping the panel will run there.

On the brighter side, my prof liked the paper I wrote for him over spring break. It's nice to get some positive feedback after the feedback I received on the last piece of writing I turned in (for a different prof). I much prefer reading "The main stylistic item is the use of 'I/me.' While it isn't a mortal problem, it does weaken the authority of your voice" to "Ugly sentence," to take examples from the feedback I received on the two.

I've read back over the paper twice (I will obsessively read over anything when I get it back), and I'm a little happier with it now than I was when I turned it in (ah, the power of getting a good grade). What struck me as I read, though, was how different my writing is now than it was when I started grad school and before. I would love to be able to take a time machine back to three or four years ago and allow my younger self to read this paper. What would my response have been? I can only speculate, but I imagine it would involve some of the following:

• Confusion: I had a (how to put this?) limited grasp of literary theory at that point. My knowledge of postcolonial theory was nonexistent. Poststructuralism was similarly outside of anything I knew. I have the feeling that my younger self might have been a little bit lost during the first half of my paper (and not because the writing makes the ideas obscure. I literally didn't know anything about the stuff I'm talking about in this paper). My grasp is still limited, but I've come a long way since those dark days.

• Anger: My younger self would have had no patience reading through any of the theoretical stuff at the start of the paper. At that point, I considered the only worthwhile thing in any writing on a text to be a close reading of that text (yes, there are universities that are still pushing the New Critics as the vanguard of literary studies in the 2000s. I was at one of them). This is connected with the feelings above and below, but my younger self would have wondered what the point is of the parts of my paper that address what the (extratextual, larger, and more important) point actually is.

• Fear: My younger self was a pathological abuser of using critics to prop up what he said so that he never really had to advance an argument (I imagine this is why I'm trying so hard to prevent my students from forming this habit). Everything my younger self said came with citations to prove someone had already been there and to suggest that if you had an issue with an idea, take it up with the cited critic. To be making bold claims in a paper that are the product of my own thinking? I can hear my younger self whimpering.

• Pride (I hope): This last one is dicey. This paper really is so different from what I knew about literary studies and what I was writing three, four, or five years ago (hell, even last year, really) that it's debatable whether or not my younger self would have recognized any value in this paper. I like to think, though, that my younger self would admit that it's better written than anything I was then capable of. I would also tell him it's better argued and infinitely more interesting, but I doubt he'd concede that point. He's a stubborn bastard, my younger self is. 

Sometimes it's little victories that matter. I can definitely measure and see my own growth as a writer and thinker reading through this paper, especially when I think back to papers I wrote in undergrad (and even when I first got to grad school). This might not amount to much (it might only show how bad my writing was back then and still is now), but it is a tangible sense of progress, something that can be all too rare in this environment. I've decided to take this paper as an opportunity to celebrate small successes (something I constantly coached the members of the dissertation writing groups I ran to do but rarely have practiced in my own life). I'm not done with this paper by any stretch of the imagination. Now comes the painful and mystifying part: turning it into an article. Before that, though, comes a brief moment of celebration.

SPOILER ALERT: THIS NEXT PART IS EVEN LAMER THAN THE PRETENTIOUS META-REFLECTIONS ABOVE

My good friend wondered recently how to be happy in grad school. I don't know if I'm happy, but thinking about how far I've come and how hard I've worked to get here, I feel accomplished. I feel pride. It's a rare and kind of new thing for me. I know my friend has stuff just like this to feel proud and accomplished over (even if she would laugh this off or tell me I'm crazy). This is uberlame, but I hope that she takes a moment to feel proud and accomplished for all the times she's kicked butt. I'm glad I told all my dissertation group members to celebrate the little things because it turns out they do matter, and it feels kind of nice to do that sometimes.