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emys posted:Did you take a break after undergrad? If so, what did you do? Would you recommend it? I did -- a friend of mine and I started a small warehousing business, and I sold out to him after the first year. The way the income curve was looking, it was basically either sell out after year one (once we'd proved the business was viable) or hold for a couple decades. If you've got something interesting or worthwhile to do, might as well give it a shot. I mean, if you don't it'll be dragging on you for however long you're working on your PhD. And there's something to be said for a regular year off if you haven't had a taste of the adult world outside of college. Also, this is a pretty common question from my undergrads. The consensus seems to be that a year or two off doesn't change the odds of your admission to grad school significantly one way or another, unless you do something extraordinary.
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Jul 6, 2009 14:23
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Totally forgot to say thanks for answering my question. Good perspective. That being said, this thread has actually reminded me how much I enjoy in-depth analysis and discussion of literature and spurred me to make plans for my doctorate. Anyone who wants to continue discussing, please do. This thread is incredibly interesting and has given me several new thoughts about pedagogy and a couple of plays I'd written off.
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Jul 9, 2009 06:43
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I'm only on page 6 of this thread, so forgive me if any of these questions have been asked. I've recently turned to the theatre and playwriting as a serious career path and I'm one of those ignorant heathens who worships Shakespeare above all others. I'm going to start carpet bombing my post with questions now. Where should I be looking for Shakespeare in terms of publishers and editors? I've dug through books in my school's library by the dozens, but I can't find any format that is meant to be read first and studied later. When I tried reading Julius Caesar, each page was half-filled, if not more, with footnotes about quarto-folio conflicts and stylistic changes through the centuries and things that don't concern the stage. The other side of that sword seems to be no footnotes at all, which is just as bad. Hamlet was an exercise in frustration. Do you have any opinion on Peter Brook and The Empty Space? And Orson Welles, for that matter? This is the part of the thread where I ask questions about Hamlet. What does lit crit have to say about Yorick's skull? What role does England serve symbolically (it is the place where everyone goes to die) in the play? What about Horatio? Lastly, what do you think about Julius Caesar?
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Jul 9, 2009 09:20
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bartlebee posted:Totally forgot to say thanks for answering my question. Good perspective. That being said, this thread has actually reminded me how much I enjoy in-depth analysis and discussion of literature and spurred me to make plans for my doctorate. Anyone who wants to continue discussing, please do. This thread is incredibly interesting and has given me several new thoughts about pedagogy and a couple of plays I'd written off. Excellent. Glad to know it's done some good. Even if it did drive you to grad school.
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Jul 9, 2009 10:19
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Wolfgang Pauli posted:Where should I be looking for Shakespeare in terms of publishers and editors? I've dug through books in my school's library by the dozens, but I can't find any format that is meant to be read first and studied later. When I tried reading Julius Caesar, each page was half-filled, if not more, with footnotes about quarto-folio conflicts and stylistic changes through the centuries and things that don't concern the stage. The other side of that sword seems to be no footnotes at all, which is just as bad. Hamlet was an exercise in frustration. This is a huge problem. There really aren't reasonably-priced editions of Shakespeare geared toward theater folk. Which is odd, since we're talking about the world's single most popular playwright. The closest I can think of to what you're looking for are the Folger Shakespeares, which do their annotating on facing pages instead of, say, as footnotes or endnotes. That way, the notes are at least unobtrusive. Also, the Folgers orbit their editorial practices around performance, though there's not the kind or quality of performance variation/performance history content that you'd get from a publisher like New Mermaids (which does Shakespeare's contemporaries, but not Shakespeare). Although, if you can find them, the Shakespeare in Performance series from the early 90s are fantastic editions with inclusive and well-edited stage and film histories. Manchester was supposed to reprint them a few years ago and, so far as I can remember, botched the job somehow -- the reprints that are out there are good, but just as rare as the originals. Either way, they're expensive. A quick trawl through Amazon puts the cheapest used copy of the SiP Lear at $20 (and that's the reprint). From what I remember, $30-$50 is more typical. But worth every penny. quote:Do you have any opinion on Peter Brook and The Empty Space? And Orson Welles, for that matter? I like The Empty Space quite a lot, actually. It is to staging what Backwards and Forwards is to scriptreading -- a brilliant and comprehensive review of all the things a theater practitioner should know, but often overlooks. And Welles. Welles Welles Welles. I think his productions date themselves tremendously, so I can't imagine watching them unless you want to sort of interrogate them -- follow his decision making processes backwards from the film, if you get what I'm saying. And if you want to do that, well, you need to see Filming Othello if you haven't already. It's worth it just to see how Micheal MacLiammoir thought through his Iago (my second favorite, after Bob Hoskins's). But good luck finding the motherfucker. quote:This is the part of the thread where I ask questions about Hamlet. What does lit crit have to say about Yorick's skull? What role does England serve symbolically (it is the place where everyone goes to die) in the play? What about Horatio? The criticism I've read is mute on Yorick's skull. I mean, this is one of those places where a certain kind of teaching has made discussion of the skull something close to impossible -- suddenly, people who should know better want to talk about what the skull means instead of what it does. The thing is, I'm not sure the skull, like England, "mean" anything if what you mean by "mean" is "carry a hidden significance." So Hamlet finds Yorick's skull and reflects on mortality in some surprisingly general ways. That's raw material for an actor or a director, since the last time we saw Hamlet he was waist deep in the frantic crazies. So this moment can be a way of showing how Hamlet's changed since he confronted, say, the death of his father at the beginning of the play. But what that change looks like is really a matter for the stage. My reading is that Hamlet's much more comfortable with death at this point in the play -- he doesn't mourn for Yorick, and his musings on death don't seem to touch him very deeply. This isn't Act I's "I know not seems" Hamlet. This is someone for whom death is a philosophical and intellectual, but not an emotional, problem, and who can consequently put his childhood friends to death as an afterthought. What we'd commonly call a sociopath. England, in this equation, doesn't mean much. In fact, it seems to be almost a vassal kingdom of the Danes, which tells us more about what we're supposed to think of the Danes than the English, I think. Back in the day, the Danes had a reputation for savagery, and would occasionally raid and invade England. So Denmark's relationship to England in Hamlet is of some use in establishing the play's setting. Along with other cues, it suggests that these particular Danes are the "quick to Viking-style violence" Danes, not designers of understated furniture who've elected to remarkable income equality. And Horatio's a puzzle. The "what does he know and when does he know it" game works really well in Hamlet with the exception of his character, and I think this leaves some directorial flexibility. There are plenty of productions that practically cut Horatio -- Zeffirelli's, if I remember it right, barely has him (though it's been years since I've seen it and I'm prone to correction on these kinds of things). quote:Lastly, what do you think about Julius Caesar? I wrote a bit about this a couple pages back. To keep the story short, I go back and forth on JC. The thing is, I think JC is maybe Shakespeare's most intellectual tragedy, at least insofar as it's driven by Brutus being entirely unsuited to live in Caesar's Rome because his loyalties are split between the State as a political abstraction and the State in Caesar's person. That makes the play interesting but tough to like. Or at least for me to like. Because it seems like the play can go one of two ways, neither of which are good. Once we find out Brutus in an honorable man, we know he's either going to compromise his honor or die keeping it intact. The stakes don't seem high either way, since the only kind of person that's tougher to like than a hypocritical politician is someone legitimately obsessed with his reputation.
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Jul 9, 2009 11:39
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Brainworm posted:But this also might be because -- at least from here -- it seems like HSE teachers have some kind of aversion to teaching anything written after about 1970. And that leads to some crackrock choices. Arthur Miller is an able playwright, but his moment of political and social relevance has passed. I saw this and thought it would give me an opportunity to ask for a little bit of help. I'm reading The Crucible in English in my final year of high school here in Australia and I don't think my teacher is particularly good, to be honest. Do you have any insights into this play if you've read it? Intelligent stuff I can say if I have to do an essay on "themes" or whatever crap our school system throws at us for the exam? Sorry if this question is a bit vague, I've just loved this thread so far and I'm hoping that you'll have something smart to say about what I'm reading, too. Trying to write that paragraph to the best of my ability led me to another question: any general grammatical tips so I'm above the standard of my classmates (this wouldn't take much)?
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Jul 9, 2009 13:29
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dshban posted:I saw this and thought it would give me an opportunity to ask for a little bit of help. I'm reading The Crucible in English in my final year of high school here in Australia and I don't think my teacher is particularly good, to be honest. Do you have any insights into this play if you've read it? Intelligent stuff I can say if I have to do an essay on "themes" or whatever crap our school system throws at us for the exam? Sorry if this question is a bit vague, I've just loved this thread so far and I'm hoping that you'll have something smart to say about what I'm reading, too. Well, I think everyone in your class is going to cover the history, from the McCarthy whatevers to the Salem ergotism whatevers, so the thing to do is concentrate on plots and characters. Probably the most interesting writerly element in Crucible is what horror movie buffs call "sin factor." In even the most basic slasher movies, there's the sense that the people getting killed somehow deserve it, either because they're outright jerks or do something that everybody knows you should never do when you're a character in a horror movie (e.g. get laid). There's sin factor in Crucible, too, except it's at work on John because of his affair with Abigail. So the most interesting elements of Crucible involve Proctor's interpretation of his own past behavior, and how those interpretations shape his behavior as the plot of the play progresses. If it helps, think of Proctor undergoing a sort of purgation, a kenosis if I might be so bold, as he works out the guilt tied to his affair. He gets "emptied out" by his introspection, and this emptying out is what makes him a worthwhile sacrifice -- a figure whose death is both caused by and atones for the town's collective sins. The parallel here is obviously heavy-handed, but it has all sorts of fiddly bits, too. I mean, we get an opportunistic reverend and witchcraft in play. That's religion flavored. So I'm sure you could do something with that. I'd just try not to do it in blocky terms, like "John Proctor is Jesus because a proctor is someone who does something for someone else like Jesus did for God, also he dies for the sins of Salem." I mean, the more interesting points involve why Miller would toss this parallel into the Salem story in the first place, and how he makes Proctor a complex character even though he's clearly playing in a two-dimensional allegory. quote:
Well, my best advice is not to confuse grammar with style. Writing is really a matter of ear -- of cultivating sound judgment of what sounds right and clear, and then relying on that judgment instead of a set of complicated rules. So I'm going to give you some simple rules: Omit Needless Words. This is straight out of Strunk and White, and worth following. Words are like money. If you spend a word you should get something for it. So if you don't know what your word is getting you, keep it in your back pocket. Revise. Everything you write, read aloud before you call it done. Your ear is a better tool for sorting language than your eye, at least if you're like most people and speak more than you write. So use your ear to spot both suspect and solid phrases. Rephrase the bad ones and move the good ones into positions of prominence, like the beginnings or endings of sentences and paragraphs. Write Simply. Write with a voice that comes naturally. If you're not deeply defective, this will sound better than the affected academic prose that grows in most pieces by beginning writers. I mean, words and phrases are tools. No matter what you're building, you work hammers and saws. Probably, you don't need a laser level. And on the off chance you have one you don't drive a nail with it. So don't write "crepuscule" when you mean "twilight" or "utilize" when you mean "use." Steer by those lights and you'll find harbor. Or at least stay afloat.
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Jul 9, 2009 23:16
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There's been talk of Salinger but it's only about his Paradise Lost, so to speak. I'd like to harp on that a bit more. Catcher was good, but the Glass family is what defines him. Nine Stories, Franny & Zooey, Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters - what about those? *edit* It's more than a bit after-the-fact, but what you said about Arthur Miller a couple pages back was pretty interesting. There's no doubt that the only reason Arthur Miller is getting the kind of exposure he's known for is because of English lit and drama readers. The same kind where the editors shove Trifles into everything even though it should be O'Niell getting that spot and not Glaspell. You don't see The Crucible getting the same kind of exposure as Death of a Salesman. The only reason high schools seem to cover it is because it's a nice Puritan lit shoehorn next to The Scarlet Letter. The McCarthy stuff only ever seems to come up in American history classes. That said, Death has its merits in something beyond the sociology. It isn't about an oldtimer getting shafted because business is changing, it's about a man being completely incapable of coming to terms with his inner delusion - an inner delusion that long predated his senility. It may be read because changing the content of literary readers is like changing the way Jupiter works, but it's performed because it still has a very human resonance at its core. Wolfgang Pauli fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Jul 10, 2009 |
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Jul 10, 2009 00:21
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Wolfgang Pauli posted:There's been talk of Salinger but it's only about his Paradise Lost, so to speak. I'd like to harp on that a bit more. Catcher was good, but the Glass family is what defines him. Nine Stories, Franny & Zooey, Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters - what about those? The only other Salinger I've read is Nine Stories, and I don't remember much about it. I can say for sure that "Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "For Esme" are great examples of the SS form as it was practiced in the decades following WWII, and certainly better advocates for Salinger's talent than Catcher. The problem (and this isn't my problem) is that we're seeing -- actually, we've been seeing -- the death of this short story form, and maybe of the short story more generally. This doesn't forecast good things for the long-term reputations of writers like Salinger and Updike, whose strengths and notoriety are married to the format more than e.g. Hemingway's or Vonnegut's. This doesn't mean that I don't like short stories. I do. But I like pantoums and sonnets, too, and I don't think that even highly literate folks can name a modern writer whose reputation rests on his or her successes with either of those forms. That's where I think the short story is going to end up. I'm not bringing this up to ride the short story horse, but to suggest that Salinger's reputation as a writer is likely to be shaped by forces that have nothing to do with his talents. I don't know enough about Salinger to know whether that's good or bad, but I do know it's interesting as hell, especially if you want to extend that comparison of Salinger to Milton, whose Paradise Lost was elevated more by chance than merit. quote:*edit* I can agree with that. Death is twice the play Crucible is, not least because it's a pretty cool rewriting of Lear. So its mechanics, of that's what you want to call them, are durable and in good working order. The only problem I see is that WL's delusions are in orbit around a sense of entitlement that I like to think was typical of postwar American men. Modern American men are entitled in different ways, I think, that don't speak to WL as closely as I'd like.
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Jul 10, 2009 02:10
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Brainworm posted:the death of this short story form, and maybe of the short story more generally. I think a major reason for this (at least in contemporary fiction) is economic: publishers just won't publish collections of short stories unless the author already has a (successful) novel (or two) that the collection can piggyback off of marketing-wise. Small presses sometimes take a chance, but the fact is that very few people buy short stories, especially from unestablished authors, so publishers just don't bother with them anymore. I'm finishing my MFA right now (poetry, not fiction), but the word on the street from the fiction folk I know seems to line up with the death of the short story more generally (though I suspect it will always be a staple for intro lit anthologies). That said, short stories are still important for journals, but even then I can think of only one other person in this thread who probably reads fiction journals regularly. And authors rarely get paid for contributions to journals, so most short stories written now are for the love of the game. I think I'm being too negative 
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Jul 10, 2009 03:21
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The Last 04 posted:I think a major reason for this (at least in contemporary fiction) is economic: publishers just won't publish collections of short stories unless the author already has a (successful) novel (or two) that the collection can piggyback off of marketing-wise. The endpoint of this is largely true. But the thing is, this hasn't really changed. Publishers have never taken short story collections from unproven authors, even when short stories were steady sellers. What's changed are the proving grounds for short stories. Even thirty years ago, writing short stories was a paying gig. Before Stephen King published Carrie he could pay the bills as a writer by selling pieces to magazines. And as I think of it, he may be the last major American author to either make a living or build his reputation this way. So the way things used to happen, an author would write a short story, get it into a widely-circulated periodical, and be widely read by the time his or her short story collection came out. And with some pocket money to boot. Now, it's tough to call an author professional if he doesn't have a proper novel, since most other kinds of writing aren't moneymakers. The exception that proves the rule here is probably Juniot Diaz, who was considered a serious writer with Drown and not Oscar Wao. But even then I'd imagine Drown was the first time any of his stories made him a penny; the Best American and like anthologies don't pay much, and even non-journal short story publishers like the New Yorker trade in reputation rather than real dollars. You can't get something in there or e.g. Esquire often enough to pay the bills. At least that's how I hear it. I'd be interested in hearing what other folks think about the market for short fiction, and especially how they make it pay. quote:I'm finishing my MFA right now (poetry, not fiction), but the word on the street from the fiction folk I know seems to line up with the death of the short story more generally (though I suspect it will always be a staple for intro lit anthologies). That said, short stories are still important for journals, but even then I can think of only one other person in this thread who probably reads fiction journals regularly. And authors rarely get paid for contributions to journals, so most short stories written now are for the love of the game. That's about the size of it. Though I can't imagine that, as a poet, you're shedding many tears for the short story writers who can't get a steady paycheck out of their writing. Just to toss this in there, the other problem with the short fiction economy is that being a short story reader is loving expensive. Seriously. Choose any good fiction journals you want, and get enough subscriptions that you'll get an issue of something every two weeks.* If you can do that for less than a couple hundred bucks a year, you're a black belt short fiction shopper. If you're a real short story addict, it's cheaper to switch to cocaine. * I'm choosing this because most journals seem to settle at or around the eight-story-an-issue mark, which gives you three new stories a week (or about eight or nine pages a day).
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Jul 10, 2009 04:10
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Brainworm posted:That's about the size of it. Though I can't imagine that, as a poet, you're shedding many tears for the short story writers who can't get a steady paycheck out of their writing. Ha, poetry is about as "love of the game" as it gets right now, so no, not too many tears (though a lot of sympathy). I'm gearing up for a PhD in Rhet/Comp--so about half of my coursework and teaching is rhetoric related--because poetry is awesome (and an awesomely bad way to ever make a cent). To be fair, I planned this coming into grad school, so it wasn't an "Oh God, no money in poems!" thing. And yes, creative journals are way too expensive. My rhetoric journals don't cost much at all, but the poetry adds up big time. Our library went digital-only with about a third of our English journals. Pissed off a lot of old-schoolers, but it makes my life way easier. edit: I guess it's not so much the price of creative journals as the sheer number I need to read regularly to feel up to speed. With rhet/comp there are three or four and the rest I skim at the library. The Last 04 fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Jul 10, 2009 |
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Jul 10, 2009 05:22
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Who's your favorite modern playwright? Modern for you being probably Ibsen/Chekhov on.
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Jul 11, 2009 09:19
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It's now been two years since I did undergrad. I know I want to go to grad school. I majored in Psych because the super-small English program at the school I went to was kind of bland to me at the time. I've spent the last two years either doing ESL abroad or test-prep in the states. I want to write. I've been planning on getting an MFA, since it directly relates to what I want to do and not having an English degree won't hold me back much as long as my writing sample is excellent. I think I'd enjoy research though, especially if I got to specialize in my weird interests. Is it best to stick with the MFA from a skills/funding perspective? With some, but not a ton of undergrad credits, could I even get into an English PHD program? I feel like I'm going in too many different directions for a PHD but that's just been my view of the situation, I'm not sure how accurate that is. Great thread, thanks! Edit: I should have just asked for your views on the MFA versus PHD and spared the personal stuff. So much for Omit Needless Words. Paladin fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Jul 11, 2009 |
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Jul 11, 2009 20:47
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Wolfgang Pauli posted:Who's your favorite modern playwright? Modern for you being probably Ibsen/Chekhov on. It sounds stupid, but I really like Mamet. He tried to redo Faustus, and in blank verse to boot. Sure it's terrible, but that takes some stones.
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Jul 11, 2009 21:00
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Paladin posted:It's now been two years since I did undergrad. I know I want to go to grad school. I majored in Psych because the super-small English program at the school I went to was kind of bland to me at the time. I've spent the last two years either doing ESL abroad or test-prep in the states. Since I am doing both right now, I'm going to thread-hijack. Here is the simplified version: the MFA is shorter, usually not funded, and definitely won't land you a tenure-track job after graduation. You take workshops, write a lot of poems/stories/essays, submit to journals, go to readings, then write a creative thesis that you hopefully turn into a book. The PhD is longer, is more likely to be funded (albeit modestly), and only probably won't land you a decent job after graduation. You take seminars, write a lot of papers, submit to journals and go to conferences in your area, take a bunch of tests somewhere in the middle, then spend a few years researching and writing a dissertation that you hopefully turn into a book. My question for you is, why do you want a graduate degree in English? As someone in the middle of both worlds, I can give you a more detailed response if I know more about your plans. What would you do your PhD in? What genre would your MFA be in? What do you want to do afterward? Do you want to be a professor? Also, you should read our discussion about MFA programs here.
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Jul 11, 2009 22:42
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If you want to be a professor and write criticism get a PhD If you want to write fiction get an MFA An English BA is training you to do the former on a very basic level. Unless you've been taking workshops, at a college with a great MFA program, you're not getting taught how to be a fiction writer. To me the difference between the two was night and day: I never wanted to be an academic.
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Jul 11, 2009 23:12
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Paladin posted:[...] Defenestration and The Last 04 have hit the high points, I think. If you want to know what an MFA program is all about, you should really be asking people like them (that is, people who are in it). But there are a few other things to keep in mind. The first is that this isn't an either/or. There are quite a few MFA/PhDs out there, and with jobs. Colleges that can't dedicate a full line to creative writing still like having someone who can teach it. And, like for any grad program, walk away if you don't get admitted on terms you like. The people who've had the worst grad school experiences are the ones who said "I'm going to grad school next year" and took the best offer they got, even if that best offer wasn't any good. This is especially true for MFA programs, which are expensive and part of a largely unregulated marketplace. Also, you say you want to write. If that's what you're principally interested in, a English PhD may be the wrong degree. Most PhDs write, but for small audiences. You should also know that the majority of professorial jobs don't offer the kinds of research support you'd need to publish eclectically -- that is, they support you just enough to publish everything you need to publish in order to keep your job. So being an unattached writer may be the career path you want to take if you want to write for general audiences about things that you find interesting.
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Jul 12, 2009 00:28
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Thanks all. I've been researching MFA programs the past year and a half now, I just wanted to be sure that I wasn't missing something in not doing the PHD. I do want to do general writing way more than research/academic stuff, so it's the MFA for sure. The big help there was Brainworm's advice on walking away. I mostly just want as much time to dedicate towards writing as possible, though I'd enjoy the instruction and guidance. An MFA seems good if I get into one of the ones with funding, I'm using various funding tracking blogs to find ones that have that. If I can't get good funding this year, I'll just go back to teaching in Korea and try again. Defenestration, I'll read the stuff in the thread you linked! Paladin fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Jul 12, 2009 |
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Jul 12, 2009 02:51
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Paladin posted:The big help there was Brainworm's advice on walking away. I mostly just want as much time to dedicate towards writing as possible, though I'd enjoy the instruction and guidance. An MFA seems good if I get into one of the ones with funding, I'm using various funding tracking blogs to find ones that have that. If I can't get good funding this year, I'll just go back to teaching in Korea and try again. I think this is the right way to approach it. I wouldn't be doing an MFA if I wasn't funded. Neither degree is worth going into debt for, but since an MFA won't improve your job/pay opportunities anywhere, it really isn't worth it. Just keep writing and start sending things out--you don't need a degree to do that! And when a program does offer you a fat 3-year fellowship you can write without fear of the insurmountable debt you'd otherwise be accruing.
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Jul 12, 2009 04:00
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Hey, I was watching Jeopardy and they did a whole double jeopardy category on Shakespeare. I'll post the answers here, see if you guys can get them: $400 quote:GERTRUDE'S ROYAL TITLE IN "HAMLET" (& DON'T SAY "MOM") $800 quote:"MY LITTLE BODY IS AWEARY OF THIS GREAT WORLD", SHE SIGHS IN "THE MERCHANT OF VENICE" $1200 quote:KATE: "IF I BE WASPISH, BEST BEWARE MY STING"; HIS REPLY: "MY REMEDY IS THEN, TO PLUCK IT OUT" $1600 quote:MARINA'S DAD (NEED A HINT? HE RULES TYRE) $2000 quote:FRUITY SURNAME OF PETER IN "A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM" All grammar and words from the orginal (I even put them all in capital letters, just like they're written on the screen). This was from the college edition of jeopardy, in first round of the finals. All were answered (questioned?) except the last one. I'll post the questions when I get around to it. In the meantime, spoiler your responses. j8910 fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Jul 13, 2009 |
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Jul 13, 2009 06:11
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$400 Queen $800 Portia $1200 Petruchio? $1600 Pericles $2000 poo poo. Can't do it without cheating.
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Jul 13, 2009 12:08
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$400 Queen $800 Portia (to Nerissa) $1200 Petruchio $1600 Pericles* $2000 Quince Of course I never see a category like this when I watch Jeopardy. It's all "Woodwinds of the Fourth Century." *Marina's the one who gets kidnapped by the pirate pimps.
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Jul 13, 2009 14:22
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Brainworm got all the answers right. Shakespeare comes up alot of as a source of questions, along with geography and bible stories it's one of their favorite topics. I'll throw up "Shakespeare-potpourri" the February 27th game, because there's not much activity in this thread. After that, I'm out of Shakespeare Jeopardy (not that anyone was asking for it in the first place). $400 quote:THE ORGINS OF THIS SHAKESPEARE TRAGEDY GO BACK TO OVID'S TALE OF PYRAMUS AND THISBE $800 quote:SHAKESPEARE PROVIDED THE FIRST PRINTED VERSION OF THIS WORD, FROM THE SPANISH FOR "LIZARD" $1200 quote:IT'S THE "EARTHY" SHAKESPEAREAN TERM FOR THE LOWER-CLASS SPECTATORS $1600 quote:LYSANDER USES THE WORD BEDROOM WHILE TRYING TO CONVINCE HERMIA TO SLEEP CLOSE TO HIM IN THIS COMIC PLAY $2000 quote:"MEN ARE APRIL WHEN THEY WOO, DECEMBER WHEN THEY WED", EXPLAINS ROSALIND IN THIS COMEDY
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Jul 14, 2009 01:24
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Brainworm posted:So don't write "crepuscule" when you mean "twilight" or "utilize" when you mean "use." Is there every a good reason to write "crepuscule"?
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Jul 14, 2009 02:51
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$800 Must be alligator Yay for historical linguistics!
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Jul 14, 2009 05:40
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Angry Midwesterner posted:Is there every a good reason to write "crepuscule"?
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Jul 14, 2009 06:12
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Dear Brainworm, I noted your recommendation of Titus Andronicus, and have just spent the last few hours reading it. The high atrocity per line ratio kept me riveted and I thought there were not a few lines which stood out quite memorably. The play did read better without my knowing anything of the ending, as you earlier suggested. The ending...was quite surprising. Yet, having enjoyed it so much, I am dismayed to find my liking of the play places me firmly at odds with most critics, for instance Mr. Bloom who suggests the play cannot be taken seriously. While Titus is certainly not Hamlet, to my mind it has an other flavor entirely, zesty BBQ to Hamlet's subtle ranch dressing. But despite the differences, I like this play rather a lot. Is my Shakespeareometer broken? Will I discover my errors after I reread it several times?
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Jul 14, 2009 22:19
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Angry Midwesterner posted:Is there every a good reason to write "crepuscule"? Sure. The biggest obstacle is choosing an audience who knows the word. That aside, "crepuscule" is connotatively different from "twilight," "dusk," "evenfall," "gloam" or other words that describe the period immediately after sunset. "Crepuscule" is generally used to name the moment the last of the sun vanishes beneath the horizon, and connotes a sort of fragility -- usually, for unknown and baffling reasons, associated with either the idealization of beautiful women or "life is like an eggshell" flavored musings on mortality. Sort of like you see you see in Le crepuscule by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Thelonious Monk also used the word well in "Crepuscule with Nellie," which describes the moment his wife was being put under for surgery.* If something's happening at "dusk," on the other hand, you can be pretty sure it's someone's pants coming off. "Gloam" sounds dreamier, and "evenfall" means you're probably reading a bad fantasy novel.** So there are moments when "crepuscule" is a right choice, but they're rare and emotionally loaded. I think most people prefer dusk situations. * The song's not vocal, but I think the image makes some sense of especially the opening and closing. ** Twilight, for instance.
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Jul 15, 2009 03:11
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Quantify! posted:That'd be a great name for like some little microwavable crepes Now that you say that, the word does make me hungry. Also irritated. "Crepe" and "crepuscule" sound like they might have the same roots, but no: "crepe" is from crespe means "curled" or "rolled" (like the paper), while "crepuscule" is from creper for "dark." I mean, gently caress the French. If these shared the same root word, you could eat darkness for breakfast. Villainous. Brainworm fucked around with this message at 12:30 on Jul 15, 2009 |
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Jul 15, 2009 03:20
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So thank-you English Man, Killed a Girl in 96 fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Apr 4, 2010 |
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Jul 15, 2009 06:12
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Barto posted:Dear Brainworm, I think your Shakespearometer is in fine working order. I like Harold Bloom -- he's arguably the greatest critic of his generation if not the 20th century. But he's got this one wrong, like Einstein and his static universe. The "problem" with Titus Andronicus is that it's a good play, but not very Shakespearean. It comes from an early part of Shakespeare's career where he was slavishly imitating Christopher Marlowe -- this is the same period that gives us 1-3 Henry VI and Richard III (but, oddly enough, some of the better comedies and at least one decidedly non-Marlovian tragedy, Romeo and Juliet). So it's fair to say that Titus Andronicus is full of two-dimensional characters, fantastic violence, hyperbole, and occasionally nonsensical scheming. Those things don't make Titus a bad play for the same basic reasons that they don't make, say, Pulp Fiction a bad movie. To try to salvage Bloom's criticism, his mistake is understandable. Most Marlovian tragedy reads like farce; The Jew of Malta is a good example. And Titus Andronicus has moments that seem farcical, like Lavinia writing the names of her rapists using her mouth and stumps, plus all the hand jokes. But those moments don't make the entire play a farce, any more than Richard III's speech before his battle with Henry make Richard III a play about psychological turmoil. Put another way, they draw attention to how ridiculous the violence of Titus Andronicus is, but that's not the same thing as containing, dismissing, or otherwise removing the weight from that violence. I mean, the world is full of ridiculous and real violence, and the only psychologically healthy response is the kind of laughter you get from Titus -- not because the violence is a joke, but because it isn't.
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Jul 15, 2009 15:02
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There's something wrong with me: I actually prefer Marlowe to Shakespeare. And I was an English major.
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Jul 17, 2009 01:48
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Angry Midwesterner posted:There's something wrong with me: I actually prefer Marlowe to Shakespeare. That's a great preference, and you're not alone. I mean, I share it at times. For one, Marlowe's a better poet, hands down. This is especially true when it comes to long poetry -- Hero and Leander is a gently caress and a half better than Venus and Adonis and at least two fucks better than Rape of Lucrece or Phoenix and the Turtle. So score one for Marlowe. For two, Marlowe's a much more consistent dramatist. Granted, he didn't write nearly as many plays since his career was cut short by being stabbed in the face. But all of his plays are at least good if not tremendously entertaining. Even his sequels are good. You can't say the same thing for Shakespeare. He's like Hemingway or Capote. Thirty-eight plays -- a huge output by modern standards -- and there are maybe ten really good ones. Twelve, tops. Best case, Will bats .300. That's actually better than Hemingway or Capote, but not nearly as good as Kit Marlowe or even Ben Jonson (even if you count the plays he wrote after the stroke). For thirds, I think you could make a good case that Marlowe casts a longer shadow than Shakespeare. Harold Bloom wouldn't make that case and would probably stab me in the face for it, but it's there. Marlowe really only has one character: the villain who declares his intentions outright as part of some incredibly ambitious and intricate plan and is undone by his overreaching; generally, this is the kind of villain you root for because he's more fun than the heroes. This character is all over the place -- in fact, it's the pattern for the villain just about anywhere a villain appears. Villains are always schemers, for instance. They have a way of delighting in their plans, especially when they're declaring them to their audiences. They have a flair for the theatrical. That's all Marlowe. I can't think of a single character type of Shakespeare's who shows up as often -- the woman who's smarter than the man she's tricking into wooing her (Juliet, Rosalind, Helena) or the aging man struggling to maintain the dignity he feels entitled to (Lear) are popular, but they aren't villain popular.
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Jul 17, 2009 03:56
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What do you think of Pericles? It didn't really do anything for me. Is there anything deeper going on there? Also, whose song lyrics do you admire the most?
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Jul 17, 2009 10:08
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emys posted:What do you think of Pericles? It didn't really do anything for me. Is there anything deeper going on there? I don't think there is. I've never been a fan of the Romances. Maybe its because the characters, major and minor, are either surreal or stereotypes. You don't get the depth of motivation you'd see in Hamlet or even Lear, which is part of it. Take Marina. She's a virtuous girl. That's all we ever get to know about her, because her morality never poses a real problem like it does for, say, Ophelia. When the pirates threaten to whore her out, turns out she can get out of it by being a really great singer. Since pirates would rather listen to showtunes than get paid in rape dollars. Of course the play's supposed to have this sort of magical quality to it, and that might have worked when theater was fantastic enough (i.e. enough of a cultural novelty) to be a magical place -- that is, a place where people still got a kick out of the idea that you could represent acts that were neither realistic nor freighted with a moral payload. I wouldn't overlook the costuming possibilities for those pirate pimps, though. Worth the price of admission. quote:Also, whose song lyrics do you admire the most? I think the best lyricist I've ever met is Brady Earnhardt. His lyrics outrun his songwriting and performance by some distance, which might make me either to generous about his writing talent or too critical of his composition. Joanna Newsom and Sufjan Stevens (in the State albums) also have their moments. And Thom Yorke, God help us, is actually really good at "describe the situation" lyrics. "Fake Plastic Trees" is a good example of lyrics that cover everything I'm about to rant.* As the same time, songwriters generally either forget or ignore the basics of writing lyrics. A lyric is someone talking to someone else about something and for some reason, like Milton's shepherd talking to Lycidas's other friends about why Lycidas's life mattered. This doesn't mean lyrics need to tell a story, though some do. It just means that lyrics have to describe a situation that's significant because it's attached to the speaker and the spoken-to. Point is, if one of those things (speaker, audience, subject, occasion) is missing, the lyric's inept and the song is generally irritating. A good example is post-Garth Brooks Country Western, which is endlessly formulaic. There's nothing wrong with formulaic music, except that the "storytelling" Country Western Narrative formula (like you hear in "The Thunder Rolls") ignores three of four lyrical corners. That is, you get a story, but you don't have an audience, an occasion, or a speaker -- you don't know who is talking to whom, or why this is the moment the story needs telling. Normally, this kind of writing would be incoherent, so it's stitched together through simple chronological progression and a refrain that changes meaning slightly with each iteration -- that gives the lyric a sort of formal center to orbit (instead of a central question, empathy for the speaker, etc.) I think this form is popular because it's extremely easy to write, since all you need is a key phrase and some story. And the story can be any story, because the characters don't matter. They don't need personalities, because they're not explored in any depth. They're not the ones telling the story or listening to it, so we don't develop a picture of them because of the perspective they bring to a situation. They're just in the story, doing plot poo poo. And a song's short, so you don't need much plot. So, really, you don't need much of anything. Let me bamph out an example -- and, hand to God, I'm making this up as I write. Our key/refrain phrase'll be "there goes my world." That's suitably flexible. And here's our story: Verse One: A high school football player gets his girlfriend pregnant, and for no particular reason but definitely because of this has to give up a college scholarship and marry the girl, and knows he's going to be stuck in a dead end job in a small town thanks to this. So the first chorus goes something like: "There goes my world There goes my heart (why? Who knows. It's vague enough to mean anything.) My future's falling out (?) Before it had a chance to start. There goes my world, etc." You get the idea. So you might be asking, "does our football player resent his girlfriend because their relationship has compromised his professional and financial future?" Interesting lyrics would explore this in an honest way and lead to dangerously complex characterization, so the question has no place in verse one. Verse Two: Turns out the baby's a daughter, and she's going on her first date. Maybe to senior prom, since this is a Country Western song and we need to tell the audience she's not pregnant at fourteen like her gopher-fed whore of a mother. Anyway. Dad looks out the window as she's driving away on her date and sings another "there goes my world," with lines three and four this time pointing to dad's optimism about his daughter's future and budding womanhood. Does he want to tap it? Interesting lyrics would explore this in an honest way and lead to dangerously complex characterization, so the question has no place in verse two. Verse Three: Daughter comes back from college (see the framing?) because Dad's dying of cancer. Since that's what blue-collar heroes die of, I guess. And because in short narrative cancer is shorthand for "death" instead of "manageable condition." Anyway. Daughter goes and holds Dad's hand as he's dying and sings "there goes my world," except this time lines three and four acknowledge how Dad's works will really be responsible for her future success at whatever. (So does Dad resent busting his rear end and dying young to give his daughter opportunities he doubtless felt entitled to himself? Again, interesting lyrics would focus on that, maybe by having Dad sing about this in verse three rather than running out of soap opera's death play.) And then the song ends.** Seriously, you can stamp these motherfuckers out like license plates. And every last one will make you want to goad Harold Bloom into stabbing you in the face, since the problem with this story and how it's being told is that you don't know who's telling it or for what reason, which makes the character and plot flat and arbitrary-sounding. Compare those formula lyrics to Bobbie Gentry's in "Ode to Billie Joe" to see the difference. * Aesop Rock deserves an honorable mention. He's like a high-functioning schizophrenic. ** Attentive readers will note that I've stolen every element in this song (except the daughter) from Stu Redman's backstory in The Stand. I had to add the daughter because I forgot why Stu had to turn down his scholarship, which meant I also had to give him cancer instead of his wife. But it works just as well with Stu singing in the hospital while his wife's dying, I guess.
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Jul 17, 2009 16:03
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Brainworm posted:"There goes my world" This is a really great post! Can you talk more about writing good/bad lyrics?
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Jul 17, 2009 16:41
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drat, Bookworm, you really love the stand, don't you.
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Jul 17, 2009 16:43
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billion dollar bitch posted:drat, Bookworm, you really love the stand, don't you. I do. It's a good example text, since lots of people have read it. It's also the book that first sold me on King as a canon author, mostly because of: Its relationship to Watership Down which I think I've already talked about. Its narrative structure, which is probably the best run of the "weave a large story from the smaller stories of individual characters" play in popular American literature. If you've never tried writing a piece like this, it's hard to appreciate how difficult this is to do well -- much less as smoothly as King does. Just to give you one small, small example, look at how he uses this plot threading to build parallel structures so that the novel's narrative tapestry doesn't unravel. Take Larry. He's got a complicated relationship with his mother, and realizes this guilt he carries about their relationship only after she's basically dead. But that's not the whole "Larry and his mom" story, so King throws in a surrogate mother, Rita. She's exactly like Larry's mom, only fragile enough that his actions toward her have real psychological effects. So we learn a lot about Larry. He feels guilty when his mom dies of the flu (which he had nothing to do with), and he feels guilty about Rita's suicide (which he had everything to do with). This shows us that Larry's confusing guilt and responsibility, and sets up the conflicts he has later in the story with e.g. Lucy and Nadine. But that's not all! You'll remember that Fran Goldsmith is pregnant before she meets Stu. Stu and Fran's anxieties about the baby are basically Larry's anxieties about his mother and Rita, just neatly reversed. Fran's afraid the baby won't survive the flu (Larry's mom, backwards, starring Larry as Fran and the Baby as Larry's mom), and Stu's afraid the baby's birth will kill Fran (Rita, backwards, starring the baby as Larry and Fran as Rita). So you get a set of attitudes that tie Fran and Larry together, even though they don't spend much time in the same plotline. Its those kinds of common threads that give large, complicated plots coherence. You need characters who compliment and contrast with each other, otherwise a well-told story turns into a mess.* But if they compliment and contrast too neatly, you get a highly artificial story -- readers can see the wires, so to speak, and the characters lose a dimension. King balances this really, really well. Speaking of character development: King gets this right more often than not. The way to develop characters is to put them in situations where they feel ambivalent -- that is, where a sane person could realistically choose between different courses of action. The way a bad author does this is by making this moment of decision melodramatic, under the mistaken assumption that the things that define people's personalities are the decisions they make when they're aware the stakes are high, e.g. Do I get an abortion? Do I betray my friend? Do I cheat on my wife? Do I kill a person I don't know to get a million dollars? Good authors develop characters by facing them with decisions that only turn out to be high stakes in hindsight. That makes the decision narratively worthy of inclusion, but avoids the Cop and Hospital show problem where everything's life or death, life or death, life or death. So take Fran's relationship to Harold. Rationally, she could decide to respect Harold -- treat him like an adult, shut down his advances in a way that would be certain but not leave him feeling hurt. Or she could apologize to him for not doing these things, at least for the sake of diplomacy and on suspicion that he might be nursing a grudge. Or she could just be honest with him. She considers all three, but decides that none of them work. That tells us bunches about her. She can't or won't negotiate what she doesn't like (i.e. she's stubborn), she puts her pride or wants above the good of the group, isn't empathetic or sympathetic to the effects she has on Harold (because they're not her fault), and so forth. Of course this ends up mattering a great deal later on. But before these things matter, they spin Fran's character remarkably well. So even though she's not directly involved in the end-of-the-world plot, or even any real melodrama (the most exciting thing that happens to her is that she stays home pregnant while Stu's away), we get a clear picture of her character. Again, if you've never tried writing this way, it's tough to appreciate either how difficult this is or how well King does it. * This is exactly the problem with Tom Bombadil in LOTR, incidentally. He doesn't structurally relate to any of the other characters and so reads as totally out of place. I mean, that and his whole magical gay Paul Bunyan thing.
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Jul 17, 2009 19:18
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Neb777 posted:This is a really great post! Can you talk more about writing good/bad lyrics? I can try. I'm not a songwriter, so there are people better equipped to give advice. But here it goes. On Lyric Poetry A lyric has a limitation uncommon to other poetry or narrative writing. If I'm writing a story, I can pull a quick fade and pretend that I (the speaker) am not there. Writers usually do this by writing in the omniscient, and they can get away with it because readers can build an intimate relationship to a text qua text without necessarily imagining who the speaker is. At least as long as the speaker pretends to be invisible. Lyrics can't do this, since they're spoken rather than read. A listener can't build an intimate relationship with a song without the singer mediating. I mean, they can hear you. Or see you. I suppose you could pretend not to be there, but things would get surreal and probably bad. So the speaker must matter. And if the speaker matters, it stands to reason that whoever he's speaking to matters as well. And it also stands to reason that he must have a reason to be speaking, and (consequently) that he must be saying something. So that gives us our four corners of lyric poetry: speaker, audience, occasion (i.e. why the speaker chose this moment to speak), and subject (what the speaker is talking about). On Narrative These four things are on top of everything else that goes into telling a story or describing a situation. At minimum, good storytelling raises questions that keep readers or listeners interested while, at the same time, answering those questions in a way that keeps them from breeding out of control. (The questions, not the readers.) Best case, these lead the reader to a particularly interesting question that remains unresolved. Hemingway's famous example of a three line short story is useful here: For Sale (OK. What's for sale?) Baby Shoes (OK. Why are these baby shoes for sale?) Never Worn (gently caress. What happened there? Is the baby dead? Did the wire hanger just take its legs? Were the shoes purchased in a moment of hopeful pregnancy that was dashed by accident or biological mischance? Etc.) That's basically how good narrative works. It draws the reader (or listener) into asking questions that keep him interested in what's going on. Hemingway's example shows that this can be done with a minimum of verbiage, and I think I posted Wakeman's "Love in Brooklyn" earlier in the thread -- that poem does a fantastic job of the same thing. Songwise, Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe" is the king of the knockout questions. Just what did she and Billie Joe throw of the Tallahatchie bridge? Why'd he jump after it some days later? Why's her mother so interested, anyway? And why's this story only coming out now that Dad's dead, Mom's senile, and anyone who'd care has moved away? I have no loving idea. But you've got to suspect that any story connecting those dots is American Gothic^Deliverance. Last, you've got characters. And you need at least two: the speaker and the audience. Even if the speaker's talking to himself, he's talking to a different version of himself than the self that did whatever he's talking about (e.g. the "I did a bunch of stupid poo poo and now I'm a sadder and wiser man" song). The thing about characters is that they develop best when they're removed from high drama. Ordinary, realistic, compelling people don't constantly confront divorce, crib death, cancer, impotence, workplace explosions, foreclosure. Ordinary, realistic, compelling tragedies are small and weighty and not terribly clear cut. My ex-girlfrend needs me to take her to Planned Parenthood, because she can't risk her relationship with her husband by surprising him with a pregnancy. A friend I was close to but haven't talked to in a couple years just died and I didn't know he was sick, so I'm sat but mostly angry at him for not telling me, and now I'm drinking all the time and I can't stop. That kind of thing. The drinking might even be over the top. So good lyrics need to strike a balance between telling your listeners the things they need to know and withholding (or raising questions) about things that'll keep them interested, all while painting a compelling portrait of at least two people. I've always thought a great way to do this is another Hemingway method: you imagine a complete story or situation, and find the biggest, most important detail. Then leave it out. Repeat this until your story's small enough to etch on a penny. If you do this right, you'll have a sort of detritus of details orbiting a black hole -- something your reader or listener knows is there, and can infer the size or nature of, but can't clearly see. You've got noises in the basement, but no monster. Because once the monster shows up, everyone's gonna say it looks fake. Or something. A Shameful Example or Those Who Can't Do, Teach So here's an example. And it's going to be a bad example. But maybe if you see the process I'm going through well enough you'll be able to write a better one. First, I think of a story. There's this guy in a long distance relationship with a girl, and since they're young (of course) they've got to be poor, so they see each other only infrequently and at great inconvenience. Because of this, the guy misses something that's going on with his girlfriend, it destroys their relationship, and he feels guilty about it. And now he's talking to her, explaining what he did wrong. This thing that goes wrong is obviously the most important detail, so we're not going to tell what it is. It can't be an affair or similar, because if it is (a) they're probably not speaking and (b) the situation is avoidable and therefore difficult to sympathize with. It can't be like drug addiction, because there's too much sin factor. So (since we're leaving it out of the lyric anyway), I'ma say she goes insane. Like asylum insane. She thinks she's a pear. Nobody to blame there, and I bet the guy would feel like poo poo for missing the symptoms.* Plus, that's a good excuse for how bad I'll gently caress this up. I'm an incompetent climbing Everest here, so I don't mind writing off a few sherpas. OK. Pears. Right. So we start like this: Do you remember How we'd spend the week together At your apartment Up in Harlem? So this raises a few questions. The speaker and the "you" used to spend whole weeks together, but don't anymore. So why's that? And why's he asking whether she remembers? I mean, that's an odd way to phrase weeklong events that happened with some regularity. And why a week? People in normal relationships see each other either infrequently or daily, so if they see each other for a week at a time there must be some reason. So obviously we tackle the easy questions, since tackling the tough ones means giving up our little game: I spent my Fridays on the bus To make time for the two of us Even though it meant working nights. "OK," the listener says. "This is a commuter relationship. That explains the 'week' part. Plus, Dude's taking the bus and working nights, so this is a tough commuter relationship. They must really be attached. But all this is in the past tense. What happened? The commute and poverty catch up to you?" So we, as intrepid lyric writers, answer the question at a slant. With the chorus, I guess (we've already got something like a stanza). That's when you lived on Riverside, And were still free, And you still fit with me. And looking back on it, I Was blind to things I can't deny. "Ah," the listener says. "This relationship is definitely done. Why's he talking to her, then? It seems clear that he's apologizing. But for what?" And so on. Next verse, we raise more questions while pretending to answer some of the old ones. Maybe we reveal that Dude hasn't been in a relationship since, or that Girlfriend's parents won't talk to him anymore, or that friends keep telling him that the whole mess isn't his fault, or that people's attention keeps getting drawn to Girlfriend's increasingly erratic and cryptic Tweets. Whatever. We're cool as long as we don't give the game away by rhyming anything with "Thorazine" or pretending you can get good produce in Harlem. * Or replacing her gourmet coffee with LSD microdots. Let's see if she notices.
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Jul 17, 2009 21:51
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