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Brainworm posted:I agree wholeheartedly... Thanks Brainworm! I seem to be doing rather well with a combination of: Google Scholar WWW (after having blacklisted most of the SEO spam) contacting folks from the alma mater
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Jun 25, 2011 01:00
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Apologies if this has already been asked (I've read through to about page 18), but have you seen any performances by the Reduced Shakespeare Company? I've seen them perform The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) and All the Great Books (Abridged), and I wondered what someone with a better academic standing (that is to say, any academic standing) would think of them.
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Jun 27, 2011 20:36
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Anything I should know about seeing a play at the Globe? Going to Dr Faustus on the weekend. Also, have you ever been through the repro Blackfriars in Staunton, Va.? edit: Cadged a ticket tonight for the Beggars Opera, out at the Open Air Theatre. Very well done, funny and tremendously bawdy, only disappointment was the audience took a little while getting into the spirit of it. elentar fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Jun 29, 2011 |
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Jun 28, 2011 02:10
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The Goog posted:Apologies if this has already been asked (I've read through to about page 18), but have you seen any performances by the Reduced Shakespeare Company? I've seen them perform The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) and All the Great Books (Abridged), and I wondered what someone with a better academic standing (that is to say, any academic standing) would think of them. I saw Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) a while ago, and I thought it was clever. Any audience for that is going to be at least somewhat academic, I think. I guess I enjoy it on the same level as e.g. Theater of Blood -- that is as a respectable parody of material with which I spend a formidable amount of time. It seems like the kind of material that might be written by a group of talented college students, which is another way of saying that it is clever but not often insightful,* which is perfectly fitting. * This isn't a knock against college students. It's that for the overwhelming majority of the students I've worked with, functional intelligence means that ingenuity and cleverness have totally outpaced certain broad classes of insight. That's not a bad thing. I think it's just a demographic function. It's why there aren't many 20-year-old zen masters.
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Jul 1, 2011 13:27
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elentar posted:Anything I should know about seeing a play at the Globe? Going to Dr Faustus on the weekend. That sounds excellent. I don't have any spectator tips, but I'm curious about whether the performance is A or B-text based. Me, I'd want to see some pope pranking. quote:Also, have you ever been through the repro Blackfriars in Staunton, Va.? I have not. I've heard great things about the ASC, though. Some kind of field trip there is about tenth on my list of things to talk Wife into. quote:edit: Cadged a ticket tonight for the Beggars Opera, out at the Open Air Theatre. Very well done, funny and tremendously bawdy, only disappointment was the audience took a little while getting into the spirit of it. That is excellent. I've never understood why Gay isn't more frequently a part of restoration curricula. I'd never heard of Beggar's until graduate school -- all my reading was straight out of Watt's Rise of the Novel, and Dryden, Pope, and Swift, with Oroonoko representing Behn in her entirety. Anyway. I've never seen it performed. I'd like to think there's some non-stuffy audience for whatever its modern equivalent is.
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Jul 1, 2011 13:33
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Brainworm posted:* This isn't a knock against college students. It's that for the overwhelming majority of the students I've worked with, functional intelligence means that ingenuity and cleverness have totally outpaced certain broad classes of insight. That's not a bad thing. I think it's just a demographic function. It's why there aren't many 20-year-old zen masters. Could you expand on this idea? It's something that I've noticed before, but was never able to put words to. For Brainworm, what is a truly insightful piece of literature?
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Jul 1, 2011 13:42
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Halisnacks posted:So if that's a bad week, what's a good week? On a good reading day -- as in, a day where I do about eight hours of whatever kind of work and typical bits of life -- I'll read about two novels' worth of stuff. Yesterday was a good example. I had a morning doctor's appointment and then packed/cleaned for about nine hours (I'm getting ready to move). Mrs. Brainworm was meeting a friend for dinner, so I had about 1 1/2 hours between when I finished working and when she got home.* That, and a half hour or so in the waiting room, gave me time to read Lev Grossman's The Magicians and Matheson's I am Legend, and start Steve Martin's autobiography. Why that last one, I don't know. * When she got home, we promptly went to Lowe's and bought a hand truck. I've got to move a washer and dryer out of either her basement, my basement, or both.
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Jul 1, 2011 13:43
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Barto posted:Could you expand on this idea? It's something that I've noticed before, but was never able to put words to. For Brainworm, what is a truly insightful piece of literature? I don't know if I can talk about an insightful piece of literature as well as I can talk about insightful moments in literature. And what makes a moment insightful is a little fuzzy. Like SCOTUS on pornography, I'm not sure I can define it, but I know it when I see it. The best I can start with is that an insightful moment has at least three related elements: 1) A recognition that the workings of something meaningful are complex, and some description of this complexity. 2) A situation of this description in the context of some other literary developments (e.g. the progression of a plot), and according to the internal logic that these developments demand. 3) An overall impression -- and here I'm talking politics of reception -- that the complex situation being described is both counterintuitive and deeply persuasive. (3) is really the important one. (1) and (2) are just about literary quality. A koan, for instance, might do (3) even though it barely does (1) and does (2) only according to koan conventions.* (3) is also the tricky one because it's a function of reception. Maybe the best thing to do is a set of progressively insightful examples, (even though doing so means we can't really talk about (2)). So let's start here: quote:Ophelia stood by her father's grave. She was sad, and she cried. That's completely barren of insight. The best way to explain why is, I think, (3). Everyone expects sadness from a woman standing by her father's grave. We can also fail it on (1). Life is complicated. So even though we might expect "sadness" to describe the emotional tenor of a woman standing by her father's grave, we don't expect this to be an exhaustive description. Likewise with crying. I'm not sure what kind of child I'd expect this from. I want to say five, but I secretly suspect that many 15 year olds are here too. So let's step up the insight: quote:Ophelia stood by her father' grave. She remembered a time not long before his death when she had thought him more of a problem than a father, more as an obstacle to be navigated than as a man who had his own feelings and motives, chief among them a concern for her happiness and safety. She knew that she had never credited him for this, never thanked him, and returned his concern for her with a stunning indifference and, before his death, outright hostility. Here, we get an array of more realistic emotions and motives. Yes, Ophelia is sad, and yes, she's crying. But on (1), this passes a sort of basic litmus test -- Ophelia is not just feeling sad, she's feeling guilty. She's focused on what she now wants the future to be like were he alive and in it, and this is of a piece with her reflections on her behavior before his death. This also passes a sort of basic test on (3), too, in the sense that Ophelia's grief as as much about her estimation of herself as it is about the death of her father. Part of her sadness, in other words, is a recognition that she has not been the person she wanted to be and now, as far as her relationship with her father is concerned, no longer has the chance to. I don't think this kind of "insight" is entirely beyond, say, someone who's 20, but I think it's rare. For a person of that age to understand that grief is less about, say, the dead person than about the way the living feel about themselves is, I think, unusual. Not that I'm an emotional prodigy, but I certainly didn't -- I might have known it from reading it somewhere but I would not have understood it through experience.** So, if we're being adults, I don't know that I'd call this "insightful." Maybe "not without insight," or just "competent." I'd be surprised if a 20 year old consistently exhibited that level of competence and disappointed if Mrs. Brainworm did not. So let's step it up again: quote:Ophelia stood by her father' grave. She remembered a time not long before his death when she had thought him more of a problem than a father, more as an obstacle to be navigated than as a man who had his own feelings and motives, chief among them a concern for her happiness and safety. She knew that she had never credited him for this, never thanked him, and returned his concern for her with a stunning indifference and, before his death, outright hostility. OK. So that adds something about grief's perverse timing and its unusual persistence. And while it doesn't qualitatively change the passages other insights, it does add some that I think it is structurally difficult for, say, a college sophomore to appreciate. A person of that age can have a complex and long relationship with someone, or be struck by being affected by that person's death, say, ten years after the fact. But it's not possible to have both and still be 20. I'd also like to point to the last sentence of the second paragraph as a halfway decent example of (3). Even sophisticated understandings of grief are sometimes cast in terms of nostalgia -- you know "we used to do this and we can't anymore because he's dead, and things won't be nearly as good." That, of course, happens. But what also happens, and what most people don't describe (or, I think, consider) are what I've in that passage called "memories of absence," or times that you remember that someone isn't with you, and it catches you completely by surprise. You turn to talk to a missing someone in the passenger's seat on such-and-such a drive, you yell things in the house like someone else can hear you, almost send a birthday card, or whatever. And at some point later you do one of those things and you're surprised that you'd do it however many years after the fact, or -- even worse -- that you've been doing it constantly without realizing it (e.g. sleeping on the same side of a half-full bed).*** That's a peculiar emotional situation, right there. It's also not intuitive, in the sense that the set of memories and emotions that play into it are generally not the types that people describe when they talk about grief. So, probably, someone reading this last passage might see a lot of it in their own experiences. Ideally, though, if it's "insightful," it will either put words to a feeling they recognize but can't name, or suggest a process of grieving that seems plausible but outside their lived or read experience. Even if it's not close to what someone knows, something "insightful" will still ring true. The point? There are classes of emotional experience that take years or decades to develop. I might know how my dad feels when the Cubs lose,**** but I can't approach how it feels for him to have me for a son, or how he would feel if my mom left him. I can imagine how he might feel, or ask him, or ask someone who's been in a similar situation, and I might end up being able to write about them vicariously. But that's an unlikely path to insight, unless I'm asking someone with the facilities to do my insighting for me. And that's the thing. When it comes to meaningful, complex situations, one problem for a 20 year old is that meaningful, complex situations don't show up every day. Another problem is that any sane 20 year old will try to avoid them when they do. A third problem is that there are large classes of meaningful, complex experiences that take a long time to cook. If you're 20, you simply can't have had them. That radically reduces your ability to make sense of them when they happen to other people. I mean, let's pick up that last example. Say my mom left my dad. They've been married for forty years. I have no idea what forty years of relationship even looks like, much less what he (or my mom) would feel if it ended. So what could I say to him that's going to be insightful? Bros before hoes? I've got nothing. Maybe one of my divorced friends could do better, but it's probably going to take someone of his generation, who's had something similar, to say whatever's going to meet my dad where he'd need to be met, even though I know my dad better than anyone on the planet does (with the exception of my mom). There might be other ways to get to insight, but the reason it's called "insight" and not "common sense" or "intelligence" is that not everybody who has an experience generates insight, and that intelligence is -- here, at least -- a lousy substitute for experience. Another way of saying all of this, sans examples, is some version of the adage that good writing -- or good poetry -- is more about careful perception than wordcraft. Sometimes to make this point I'll drop a heavy paperback book (like a lit anthology) to the floor pine down, having asked students what sound they expect it to make. The answer is invariably "thump." When a heavy enough book falls that way, though, there are actually at least two sounds -- the initial thump plus a susurration of pages the book makes as it falls open (which Fitzgerald called a "splash" in describing a phone book dropped the same way). It's perceptive to hear and describe that splash. It's insightful to apply that same degree of perceptiveness to something complex and meaningful. But it's really, really, really, really hard to be perceptive in advance, and there are limits to how much intelligence helps. * At the risk of under-reading the koan form, I'm going to say that "according to koan conventions" means "hardly at all." In a koan, the "master" character (e.g. Joshu, Gutei, etc.) can do just about anything he wants -- cut a cat in half, bite off some kid's finger -- and not worry about the place that action has in the plot or whether that action is character consistent. That's because (a) most koans have basically the same plot and (b) the "master" character's only consistency requirement is that he inspire enlightenment among his monks. ** Of course when I was, say, 20, that (knowledge/understanding) would have seemed like a trivial distinction. If it seems that way to you, think about how your sex life would be different if you had either more or less understanding. If you still don't understand the depth of that distinction and you don't have a sex life, start thinking causality. *** If you haven't had this feeling yet, you sadly will. Or, maybe, not sadly, since I think the only way to avoid it is by either forgoing contact with anything you care about or dying very young. **** He feels that way all the time, ha ha.
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Jul 1, 2011 21:00
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Brainworm posted:That sounds excellent. I don't have any spectator tips, but I'm curious about whether the performance is A or B-text based. Me, I'd want to see some pope pranking. Pope pranking: check. Loved the staging generally, by no means the scariest Faustus put on stage, but highly enjoyable all the same.
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Jul 4, 2011 22:17
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What makes books like "Band of Brothers" and "Citizen Soldiers" (both by Stephen Ambrose) more appealing to be not only A) bought up and read, but also B) made into successful other mediums (namely film), while books like "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Storm of Steel [In Stahlgewittern]", which are clearly more poetic, insightful, and emotional, get the cold shoulder? Is it simply because Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks had more interest in the second world war than the first, or am I missing something literary in the WWII works? EDIT: I really dug your latest post on perception and insight, you have my five's. Jedi Knight Luigi fucked around with this message at 13:06 on Jul 7, 2011 |
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Jul 7, 2011 05:42
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Do you happen to listen to This American Life? It had a show following a group of prison inmates as they rehearsed and performed the final act of Hamlet. It was kind of interesting since, as the narrator points out, these are people who actually have killed playing the role of a man trying to decide if he should kill someone so they have a rather unique take on the whole story.
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Jul 7, 2011 14:07
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:What makes books like "Band of Brothers" and "Citizen Soldiers" (both by Stephen Ambrose) more appealing to be not only A) bought up and read, but also B) made into successful other mediums (namely film), while books like "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Storm of Steel [In Stahlgewittern]", which are clearly more poetic, insightful, and emotional, get the cold shoulder? Is it simply because Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks had more interest in the second world war than the first, or am I missing something literary in the WWII works? The reason behind this I've always thought (from a historian, mind you - not a literature person) is that the first World War is a war of the 19th century. Horses, cannon, garbage cans turned into tanks, trenchfoot and so forth. WWII though is emotionally available though. This was a war that is in many ways the kind still being fought today with small infantry tactics, squad-on-squad combat and things like that. There's also that many people alive today have grandparents who are (or were) veterans of the second World War and so most of us are very familiar with the conflict. The average layman knows very little about WWI simply because it is so distant from our collective memory, as sad as that may be. In addition, the two directors you mentioned, and the books you mentioned, are about American involvement in the war. American interaction with WWI was, again, more limited than the second. There's also the issue of public sphere interaction with the second war. The first was reported in newspapers and on telegraphs and in VERY VERY RARE instances, over-the-air broadcasts. WW2 on the other hand was covered in the movies, on the radio, in the papers and everywhere else you can imagine. As a result, the amount of archival footage that can be cheaply used in reproduction series like Band of Brothers is infinitely more available. Finally, to recall my first point in this paragraph, do you remember what happens at the end of Band of Brothers episodes? Yeah, those gut-wrenching interviews with the men involved. That was a big part of the show, that sense of "really happened, seriously" that you don't get with WWI stuff. People have a sense of the gravity of that war, but without the grizzled old badasses talking about it, it seems more distant, more alien. That said, yeah, All Quiet on the Western Front is definitely better than anything Stephen Ambrose will ever write.
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Jul 7, 2011 14:29
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Platypus Farm posted:The reason behind this I've always thought (from a historian, mind you - not a literature person) is that the first World War is a war of the 19th century. Horses, cannon, garbage cans turned into tanks, trenchfoot and so forth. WWII though is emotionally available though. This was a war that is in many ways the kind still being fought today with small infantry tactics, squad-on-squad combat and things like that. He died in 2002, and it's funny to think that some of the men he interviewed outlived him. Thanks for bringing up those points, it really validates why such a series will probably never happen in an American studio. I still think, however, that a Band of Brothers-esque mini-series could be made during the WWI era. Just as Band of Brothers focused on the campaign of Dick Winters' Easy Company, I believe a successful, German-produced series could be made concerning Manfred von Richthofen's Jagdgeschwader 1, a.k.a. the Flying Circus. There are numerous books concerning the life of the Red Baron (not to mention his autobiography "Der rote Kampfflieger") and surprisingly many photographs of not only him, but also his other squadron mates. Peter Kilduff's biography comes to mind. The reason I say German-produced is because there are a few movies that touch on the life of the Red Baron but don't quite make the mark of being a 'good' movie. In fact many if not all of them are way loving off the mark. My argument for this is because of language. Why is "The Longest Day" such a good movie, but "Valkyrie" is not? In "The Longest Day" the scenes protraying Germans feature them speaking their native tongue. This is a major reason why the most recent Red Baron movie from 2008 is such a piece of poo poo (the other being the wild historical inaccuracies), even though it was German-produced. And don't even get me started on "Flyboys". So, who's with me in gettin' this thing made? 
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Jul 7, 2011 16:28
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z0331 posted:Do you happen to listen to This American Life? It had a show following a group of prison inmates as they rehearsed and performed the final act of Hamlet. It was kind of interesting since, as the narrator points out, these are people who actually have killed playing the role of a man trying to decide if he should kill someone so they have a rather unique take on the whole story. I've heard it, and every time I hear it I think it's great. A couple years ago I taught Freshman Shakespeare-focused class and we were able to bring in Agnes Wilcox (she runs Prison Performing Arts, the group that did the TAL prison Hamlet production). The day before she was scheduled to speak to the class my car got broken into while I was in Philadelphia. It wasn't drivable, so she had to do the class without me. The students who were in that class still talk about her, so I feel like a dope for missing it, even three years after the fact.
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Jul 8, 2011 13:41
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:What makes books like "Band of Brothers" and "Citizen Soldiers" (both by Stephen Ambrose) more appealing to be not only A) bought up and read, but also B) made into successful other mediums (namely film), while books like "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Storm of Steel [In Stahlgewittern]", which are clearly more poetic, insightful, and emotional, get the cold shoulder? Is it simply because Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks had more interest in the second world war than the first, or am I missing something literary in the WWII works? That's a good question that I'm ill-equipped to answer. I'm not a huge reader of Ambrose and don't know much about movies. But my knee jerk is that a book like All Quiet has complex and indispensable characteristics that don't translate well to film. I say that knowing that All Quiet was at one point a canonical movie, too, and one that I've never seen. But I suspect that it's not a movie that works well for modern American audiences, if only because (a) we've chosen Vietnam as the idiomatic context for stories about reintegrating into civilian life, (b) we're categorically critical of high-casualty warfare, (c) we like movies that affirm the importance of the individual (e.g. Forrest Gump). I'd add to this what Platypus Farm wrote, and add to that that WWI differs from WWII in several fundamental moral respects. I don't think most Americans could clearly describe the reasons that WWI began, situate those reasons in a meaningful moral context, or discuss the war as a meaningful conflict of ideologies or as a conflict between heroes and villains. In that sense, it's a really good setting to locate all kinds of losses and confusion (the way it is in e.g. Legends of the Fall), but a hard setting for legitimate heroism. WWII, on the other hand, has everything you could want from an easy-to-tell story. At least in most popular understandings, you've got clear-cut heroes and villains doing incredible violence, but that violence has clear ideological motives that make it either (a) absolutely defensible or (b) completely indefensible. If I were aiming for a blockbuster, I know which setting I'd need to choose. quote:EDIT: I really dug your latest post on perception and insight, you have my five's. Thank you sir/ma'am. My writing's fallen out of practice so it's nice when I can cook up something useful.
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Jul 8, 2011 15:36
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:He died in 2002, and it's funny to think that some of the men he interviewed outlived him. Yeah. Ambrose seemed an unlikely anti-Yankovic.* quote:I believe a successful, German-produced series could be made concerning Manfred von Richthofen's Jagdgeschwader 1, a.k.a. the Flying Circus. I'm partway with you on this. If you made Manfred the most engaging figure in the series -- sadly departing from reality in the process -- you could end up with something dramatically engaging in a Godzilla/Hannibal Lechter sort of way. Turn him into the monster everyone secretly roots for and you're golden. But I don't know if I see you on German-produced. I remember a pretty good German comedy from maybe twelve or thirteen years ago that involved the fall of the Berlin wall and somebody's mom getting cancer. Not that I keep my ear to the ground, and I may unfairly stereotype, but I don't otherwise think of the Germans when I think of good film and television.** * As in Weird Al, whose career has outlasted the careers of nearly every popular musician he's parodied. ** Excluding Werner Herzog, who is fascinating. He's the exception that proves the rule, though -- I'm not sure the world could support a second Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, or a second Wener Herzog. He'd use up all our literal.
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Jul 8, 2011 15:54
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Brainworm posted:I remember a pretty good German comedy from maybe twelve or thirteen years ago that involved the fall of the Berlin wall and somebody's mom getting cancer. Good Bye, Lenin ?
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Jul 9, 2011 00:29
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Brainworm posted:On a good reading day -- as in, a day where I do about eight hours of whatever kind of work and typical bits of life -- I'll read about two novels' worth of stuff. Can you describe your process for reading so quickly? I consider myself a quick reader, but this pace is just astronomical compared to mine, and I'd be interested in acquiring some tips in how to improve my speed.
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Jul 9, 2011 18:50
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Duece Ex Machina posted:Can you describe your process for reading so quickly? I consider myself a quick reader, but this pace is just astronomical compared to mine, and I'd be interested in acquiring some tips in how to improve my speed. I'll butt in again, because doing this is also part of what I do! If Brainworm wants me to shut up, of course, I'll happily bow out. In the meantime though, I'll give you some insight into my process. Depending on what I'm reading (scholarly book, popular historical work, fiction) I take a different approach. Obviously if I'm pleasure-reading an author whose work I enjoy and who has a nice writing style, I'll read every word of every page and relish the power of their words. Umberto Eco is an (extremely cliche) example of someone who I do this with. Edward Gibbon is another, and Voltaire a third. These are the authors who have a way to drip the words off the page into your waiting eyes, like honey, or something that would hurt the eyes less. Let's say Visine. When I approach a scholarly book I first note whether I've read the author before, and if I have then I've already got a head start. If I haven't, the first thing I do is read the introduction to try and get a handle on their writing method. If I notice a writing structure where the first sentence of each paragraph gives me the gist of what they're saying and the rest fills out the argument, I will just read first sentences and occasionally dip into the supporting details. There are a great many historians who write like this, so you can burn through a 700-page book in a couple of hours. Another oft-used method is to have introductory paragraphs at the beginning of each chapter that lay out the main points and argument(s) of that chapter. In this case, I read this carefully and then skim the rest for interesting details or vignettes that bring richness and support to the argument in an engaging way. Again, you can get through a book like this rapidly and grasp everything the author set out to tell you. Scholarly works often do this, and recognizing this style will give you a massive advantage on reading rapidly and effectively. The last one I'll go on about now is to identify key-words. This is especially useful in reading philosophical texts or method-oriented books (Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" is an example here, as is Pierre Bourdieu's "Fields of Cultural Production"). You find the things that the author latches onto (in the case of the Foucault book, "Power") and look for that as you turn the pages. You will pick up the gist of the arguments on the main issues this way without getting bogged down in circular stories and overstated points. There are, however, books you simply cannot do any of this with. Heidegger comes to mind, as do lots of other, usually older authors. If as you begin to read the book you notice points are interspersed at random throughout paragraphs, or you have to read several pages of what seems to be pointless exposition only to have an "A-ha!" sentence at the end of the tenth page, you just have to slog through it.
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Jul 9, 2011 20:03
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Brainworm posted:I'm partway with you on this. If you made Manfred the most engaging figure in the series -- sadly departing from reality in the process -- you could end up with something dramatically engaging in a Godzilla/Hannibal Lechter sort of way. Turn him into the monster everyone secretly roots for and you're golden. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of Downfall when I thought of a German capability to match the earnestness achieved with the Band of Brothers series. Because like I said before, there is no realism or seriousness in the recent films about WWI aviation.
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Jul 10, 2011 03:49
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Minor Mazurka posted:Good Bye, Lenin ? Ha! Yeah, that's the one. I figured it would come to me on its own, but nothing doing.
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Jul 11, 2011 13:05
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Duece Ex Machina posted:Can you describe your process for reading so quickly? I consider myself a quick reader, but this pace is just astronomical compared to mine, and I'd be interested in acquiring some tips in how to improve my speed. I don't know whether I can, but I can try. I mean, this is leisure reading, so I'm not trying for speed. I'm not reading it the same way I would read e.g. an article (iteratively, scanning the structure than re-reading several times to fill in the gaps). I think Platypus Farm has said everything on that front that needs saying. For leisure reading, I can think of a couple things that may be helpful: Devote blocks of time. One reason I can read a lot of pages every day is that I devote a lot of time to reading. That's what I do when I'm in e.g. the doctor's waiting room, breaking from work of whatever sort, relaxing at home, and so on. If I'm serious about reading (or about anything else, for that matter) I also protect my time. That means not allowing interruptions. I don't answer the phone (excepting Mrs. Brainworm), check email, listen to the radio, have the TV on, etc. That might sound severe, but it's necessary given two realities: 1) A trend toward inexpensive and instant communication, plus a increase in available communication time, increases the frequency of communication and sets the threshold for communication pretty low. What I mean is, imagine you had to pay fifty cents a minute to talk to someone on the phone, fifty cents per recipient for email, and between twenty and fifty dollars to change your Facebook status. And imagine everyone else had to do the same thing. Maybe you would make a couple long phone calls every week -- and by long, I mean twenty minutes. Maybe you would get two or three important calls a week. So even if you were always listening to communication from outside, it would be rare for it to interfere with your work. Welcome to 1995, or some point in recent cultural memory when an adult could reasonably assume that a phone call from a trusted source would generally be a matter of some importance. Of course things are not that way. I know people who can spend several hours reading e.g. Facebook, and know a somewhat larger number of people who will be socially contacted by some means, say, every fifteen minutes and will consistently drop what they're doing to respond immediately. Which brings me to my second point. 2) Our etiquette hasn't kept up with our technology. My wife, for instance, thinks it's rude to not immediately respond to any personal communication. She'll keep her phone off at work, but when she's working e.g. on a paper at home, she'll immediately respond to texts, etc.* And she often expects email to be a more-or-less instantaneous form of communication -- like, if you email someone at 9:00 am, you can reasonably expect a response by noon. Because they will naturally drop whatever they're doing at work or at home because their phone or computer beeps at them. I think this is widespread. That is, I think that our culture still assumes that because communication is important, it still makes sense for every instance of communication to be accorded greater priority than other things. That people need to be reminded to turn off their phones in movie theaters (and that they often do not) is a great example. Even if they simply forget to do so, it suggests that they are in the habit of keeping their phones on all the time instead of, say, only turning them on when they want to make a call (or are expecting to receive an important one). That bit of behavior says a good deal about their priorities. So until our etiquette catches up with the rest of our lives (or, put differently, until we accept that the technological ability to contact any person at any time does not necessarily make the practice functional), I've got to protect my time -- not just for work, but for leisure reading, too. Check your foundations. When I say "foundations," I'm thinking of Maslow's hierarchy like it's a physical building, and physiological needs are the foundation for everything else. If you want to read quickly and comfortably, what you're saying is that you want to easily and quickly do reasonably complex cognitive work, and you want to do it by looking at a book or similar. So how's your vision? How are you sitting (or reclining)? How's the light? Are you tired or hungry? Are there other matters affecting your concentration? I'm amazed by the frequency with which people will dismiss these kinds of things, or at least by the frequency that they do not consider them. Just for instance, take a book and hold it as you would normally read it. Read a paragraph aloud, listening carefully to yourself. Now, hold it at arm's length and read the next paragraph, again aloud and again listening to yourself. If your reading of the second paragraph sounded different from your reading of the first -- if you read slower, halted or hesitated, stumbled over or misread words, etc. -- it's likely your vision is hindering your reading. If it's really bad, you'll catch yourself squinting as you move the page further back. The reason I brought Maslow (and the language about foundations) into this is that this is that some things do not have substitutes. There are not skills that compensate for poor eyesight (though there are practices and technologies that allow readers to negotiate the problem). There are not skills that compensate for lack of sleep, inattentiveness, etc.. These same kinds of deficiencies are sometimes perversely worn as a badge of honor. You know, I choose not to get enough sleep, and I think that makes me awesome instad of someone too cowardly to face my limitations or wise enough to manage m time. I choose not to wear my glasses because people will respect my crippling my senses. Like the way people respect chefs who smoke a lot. * As though (from my perspective) the work she does for herself at home is somehow less important than the work she does for her employer. If I were giving advice, I'd say the opposite is a more functional approach.
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Jul 11, 2011 16:47
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:I guess I was thinking more along the lines of Downfall when I thought of a German capability to match the earnestness achieved with the Band of Brothers series. Because like I said before, there is no realism or seriousness in the recent films about WWI aviation. I haven't seen any films on WWI aviation, but your assessment sounds right to me. Earnestness is tricky, and I think that gets more complicated by the usual (American) cinematic treatment of WWI as brutal, romantic, and culturally intrusive.
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Jul 11, 2011 19:06
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I don't have any more questions. I just want to say that people who know you in person (particularly students) and can interact with you on a daily basis are incredibly luck. Your posts are so consistently well thought out and insightful (especially given the fact that this thread is probably, what, your thirteenth or fourteenth priority) that it's way past the border of astonishing.
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Jul 11, 2011 20:26
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I've just finished Cormac McCarthy's 'Border Trilogy' (after first reading 'All The Pretty Horses' years ago) and I loved it. Perhaps not as breathtaking as 'Blood Meridian', but still brilliant. I want to read it again straight away but I have a pile of other stuff that takes priority... what I would give to read as fast as you do! Anyway, it made me think (not very hard) about how the characters compare to the men in, say, Hemingway's 'Men Without Women', or Faulkner's 'Light in August', and want to ask my friendly internet scholar Brainworm - how do you think the portrayal of men/masculinity has changed in American literature over the 19th and 20th centuries?
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Jul 14, 2011 14:04
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So, Brainworm, what did you think of Magicians by Lev Grossman? It's got a passionate love/hate thread over in book barn and was wondering what you thought about it.
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Jul 14, 2011 19:51
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Hey Brainworm, just finished reading the thread. I've enjoyed some of your insights as it reminds me how much room I have to grow as a reader. You've said before you find comics to have two dimensional characters, but when the author, such as Neil Gaiman, transitions to other media do you tend to find the same problem?
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Jul 25, 2011 15:53
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Brainworm, are there any Asian American authors that you're particularly fond of and would like to recommend? Thanks.
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Jul 26, 2011 13:50
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Brainworm, I keep re-finding this thread and feel compelled to thank you each time. Can't believe it's over two years old now! The humanities and social sciences seem to get a reputation as 'easier' disciplines (at least at Bachelor's level) than, say, engineering or hard sciences. First, do you think this is indeed the case? Is it easier to get at BA in English than a BEng or BSc in Physics? And if so, do you think this is a problem that should be addressed? I've met slacker engineers with poor GPAs, but they all seem to know at least something about engineering, and to pass they all had to put in some amount of real effort, at least at certain times. On the other hand, I've met slackers with English or History degrees who can barely write and who boast about reading maybe a tenth of their reading lists, writing their (passing) essays the night before, etc. Why is this possible and why are humanities and social science educators so complicit in letting seemingly anyone who sits through class call themselves a Bachelor of Arts in English?
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Jul 27, 2011 05:37
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Hey Brainworm. Came across this thread awhile back and enjoyed reading through, really interesting. Anyway I only recently joined SA so I figured I'd start asking some questions. To begin with, somewhere in here you mentioned (in reference to Branagh's "Hamlet") that "Hamlet" does need cuts people just tend to cut the wrong pieces. So I am curious if you were running a production what cuts would you make to "Hamlet"?
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Sep 14, 2011 02:18
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I'm currently in a German class devoted entirely to Musil's The Man Without Qualities, and I was wondering if you'd read it / had an opinion about it. It's interesting to me because it's basically claimed as the German-language equivalent of Ulysses or In Search of Lost Time, but unlike those two, there's a very slim chance of most people's having heard of it unless they actively study German/Austrian literature. (In fact, I had not heard of it myself until a couple semesters ago.) Any thoughts on this fate or on the book itself?
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Sep 16, 2011 16:07
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Brainworm, did you intend to let your blog site die? (I noticed because I wanted to link you "The Wrath of the Killdozer".)
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Oct 10, 2011 04:45
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Hello Brainworm. I am an English major. I have a question! I'm a stone's throw away from an associate's degree, and I'm just curious: Will there be any classes down the road to bachelors/masters that REALLY go into detail about the rules of grammar? As far as my lovely community college tells me, there are none. You were supposed to learn and memorize it in 6th grade, and no one else in the world has this information, but will pigeon hold you and you will never ever get a job in your entire life if you don't already 'get' it. It just bothers me because the average person seems to be completely loving clueless about grammar and frankly quite intimidated by it, so where's the education? So far I've only taken essay and technical writing classes, as well as literature.
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Oct 18, 2011 15:30
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How do you feel about computational linguistics as a whole? (Things like Stylistic Analysis and Authorship Studies). Do you have much of an interest in Literature for Digital Humanities?
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Oct 18, 2011 15:41
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Omglosser posted:Hello Brainworm. I am an English major. I have a question! I can kinda answer this for you. If you going to transfer into a college that has a decent program, check to see if there's a class about linguistics. This class would probably cover everything from the rules of grammar and also a lot more. I took a similar class when I was an undergrad and I can say that I did learn a lot from the class, considering that I had to take it as a requirement to graduate. You'll learn a lot about the English language here and also a lot about grammar too.
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Oct 18, 2011 18:06
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screenwritersblues posted:I can kinda answer this for you. If you going to transfer into a college that has a decent program, check to see if there's a class about linguistics. This class would probably cover everything from the rules of grammar and also a lot more. I took a similar class when I was an undergrad and I can say that I did learn a lot from the class, considering that I had to take it as a requirement to graduate. You'll learn a lot about the English language here and also a lot about grammar too. Hey, thanks! I was getting concerned, "oh, an English major? So what's right, this obscure amalgamation of words or this awkward train-wreck of diction?"
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Oct 19, 2011 04:34
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Omglosser posted:Hello Brainworm. I am an English major. I have a question! I experienced a similar situation at my small, liberal arts college. Only two classes existed for the purpose of teaching grammar: a freshman level composition class and the rare opportunity for independent study of rhetoric (with an admittedly awesome professor). From what I understand, many English programs don't offer these types of classes; instead, they focus mostly on literature. The strange part of this to me is that, when looking at potential grad schools, I found numerous institutions that offer an M.A. in composition, rhetoric, etc. Where these graduates are going (edit: aside from homeless shelters), I have no idea.
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Oct 23, 2011 14:49
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Naet posted:I experienced a similar situation at my small, liberal arts college. Only two classes existed for the purpose of teaching grammar: a freshman level composition class and the rare opportunity for independent study of rhetoric (with an admittedly awesome professor). Further proof that college is just a big loving hustle.
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Oct 24, 2011 00:38
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Teaching, advising, publishing, marketing, PR, university writing centers/student services. There you go. Really, today's textual society is quite good for the future job prospects of the lowly English major.
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Oct 24, 2011 04:54
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Omglosser posted:I'm a stone's throw away from an associate's degree, and I'm just curious: Will there be any classes down the road to bachelors/masters that REALLY go into detail about the rules of grammar? As far as my lovely community college tells me, there are none. You were supposed to learn and memorize it in 6th grade, and no one else in the world has this information, but will pigeon hold you and you will never ever get a job in your entire life if you don't already 'get' it. My state university offered a junior-level grammar & usage course for majors, taught by one of the most likable professors in the entire program. Naturally, it was never offered at the right time to work with my schedule, but I heard good things! There is hope!
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Oct 24, 2011 10:25
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