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The Unholy Ghost posted:Hi, Brainworm. I've been reading your amazing thread for a while, and I've finally thought of a question to ask. I've really gotten into Shakespeare recently, and I'm planning to read most, if not all of his plays over the summer. Thanks! And reading/re-reading all the plays isn't exactly an ordeal -- if you do an act a day it'll take about seven months, and if you double up on the really short acts it'll take less. I'm sure you've already done the math, but (for anyone who hasn't) reading Shakespeare's over the Summer would mean one play every two days, which means splitting them up at about Act III. That's a sane pace, too. If you can get your hands on the "new" (mid-1990s, I think) Arkangel audio productions, you can read along with them. I still do this sometimes because it forces me to slow down and think about how the actors choose to pitch their lines -- stressing one word over another can help straighten out an especially tangled phrase or (as in the Archbishop of Canturbury's speech at the beginning of Henry V) give you some idea of what a speech means. (In the A of C's case, it's clear that his long speech on Scalic law is important because it's a weak, weak pretext, not because one or the other of its details ends up being reversed or revised later on.) quote:What would you say is his: On this best/worst thing, I'ma break these up to keep things short. And it's going to be really clear that I like mid-career Shakespeare. If you think of Shakespeare's career as running about 24 years (roughly 1589 to roughly 1613), he writes what I think most people consider his best work during the middle twelve. I start that period with Richard III/Taming/Romeo and Juliet (in about 1593) and end it with Lear/Macbeth/Antony and Cleopatra (in about 1605). And there's an apex point, between about 1599 and 1602, where Shakespeare seems to have written or produced plays very rapidly -- roughly three per year, as opposed to the two per year during the rest of the 93-05 window, and the lower output during the first and last six years of his career. Of particular interest is 1599, which I think produced As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Henry V, and Hamlet. Not just four plays (which is a lot of writing for Shakespeare) but four of his best. There's another window, 1595-97, when he wrote Richard II, Midsummer, Merchant, and Henry IV (1 & 2). Of course all those dates are approximate, but I think the arc's clear as long as you're dating the plays reasonably: in or around 1595, Shakespeare starts writing really good stuff consistently, and continues to get better until about 1599-1600. After that, his writing slows down and becomes less consistently strong. And that could be due to a lot of things: age, other career demands, family matters, competing professional interests, or what have you. Anyway. Comedies. I'm no fan of Shakespeare's really early comedies -- when it comes to the sort of systematic and symmetrical classical comedy Shakespeare tries for in e.g. Errors, Jonson really did it better in e.g. Alchemist. I like my comedies a little darker, too. Less like the late-career romances (e.g. Tempest or Pericles), where the world's too full of magic, wonder, and coincidence. So I like Midsummer, which has magic and coincidence, but refreshingly little wonder).* And the humor translates well -- it's less "pun for the sake of pun" and more "small-minded characters learn very little from the pain they cause themselves and others," which I think is the (or one?) essential quality of really good comedy. You get this in a couple other comedies, too -- Merchant and (arguably) Taming. But I also think Taming is a damaged text -- as in incomplete, as in the induction's relationship to the rest of the play is wonky. There's something that needs to happen after Kate's submission to Petruchio, and I think a return to the plot of the induction is it; you get different characters reacting hilariously differently to Kate's turnabout, maybe, and change the focus of the ending from Kate's value as a human being to the impossibly and hilariously vexed politics of romance. But of course the play doesn't do that. That, for me, leaves Merchant. And Merchant cuts a little too close to the major arteries for me. At the end of the play, Antonio's and Shylock's defeats have a bit too much of a human cost. It's funny to see one-dimensional, farcical characters have terrible things happen to them, but another to see characters who have real flaws but also real depth pay a real human price according to a comic formula. It's sort of like the romantic comedy plot where some woman's about to marry a total douchebag but then leaves him at the last minute for the guy she really ought to be in love with in the first place (e.g. Crocodile Dundee). As long as you stop the picture there, you've got a comedy. But if you cut away from the moment where the authentically-in-love couple flees the scene, back to the douchebag stockbroker and his family cleaning up at the reception, and he's explaining that he understands why his bride-to-be did what she did but just wishes she'd been honest with him, that he'd been putting in extra work because the wedding she wanted was so expensive but he wanted her to be happy, and so on, well. That's something else. And I think Merchant is close to that. That makes is a pretty neat play, maybe, but not necessarily a great comedy. And the worst comedy? That's a hard one, too. The late comedies are sometimes grouped together as Romances, because they're an altogether different sort of comedy from the early ones -- a lot less classical, a lot slower moving, and a lot more wonder-filled. Tempest is probably the best of these late ones, and it's hard for me to make a case that, say, Pericles, Prince of Tyre is better or worse than Winter's Tale. Neither is very good, really, though both can be interesting. But Shakespeare does make a truly awful return to form in 1611's Two Noble Kinsmen, which is particularly awful in that it recycles the same Chaucerian story that Midsummer does, except as a straight-ahead tragicomedy that tries -- and is totally unsuited for -- the kind of fast-paced systematic confusion that holds the earlier comedies together. So it's bad the way a bad sitcom is bad: it tries to do something completely derivative, and doesn't do any of that as well as whatever it's derived from. * What I mean is that the magic has a sort of hard-edged, practical quality. In e.g. Winter's Tale and some of the other Romances, there are moments that remind me of Spielberg at his worst: something magical happens, and the characters on stage make it clear that the audience should be gasping in awe and wonder. Think "Welcome [dot dot dot] to Jurassic Park" or Eliot's bicycle silhouetted against a full moon. Midsummer doesn't do this. In fact, it does the truly disturbing fanfiction thing where most of the magic ends in rape. Flowers that make people fall in love? Rape magic. Bottom with his donkey's head? That's just a way to make the flower-powered rape magic worse. And why does he want to do that? She has this boy. To hear Puck tell it: quote:A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king; And the way Titania tells it: quote:His mother was a votaress of my order: And when Oberon asks how long she intends to stay in the woods with the kid, she says: quote:Perchance till after Theseus' wedding-day. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Puck stresses (a) how good looking this boy is and (b) that he's old enough to be a knight. Titania, for her part, tells the story of how she got him in (a) a way that pretends sex doesn't happen and (b) that makes it sound like this boy is more like an infant. So. I think we all know what Titania's talking around. Think about how this would sound as a monologue: quote:So. My friend got pregnant and she died, so I'm taking care of her kid. I took the long way to church on this one, but I think where I'm going is pretty obvious. Midsummer's magic isn't exactly wonderful. It's more like a solution to a problem, where the problem is something like "how do I get my wife to stop sleeping with the hot kids she kidnaps?" and the solution is something like "drug her enough that to get raped by a donkey-headed monster." That way, her attention's directed somewhere else.
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Jun 4, 2013 19:03
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I've really enjoyed reading this thread; I'm on the academic job market at the moment, and it is frustrating. The reason I'm posting, however, is to ask a question: I have been given an opportunity to review a new book (an edited essay collection) in my liberal-arts sub-subfield (what it is does not really matter); it is the sort of assignment that is prestigious and a big deal to someone in my position, but not to anyone else (a 3000 word review for a journal that only matters to a very small group). I'm curious what advice you might have for approaching the book review itself? Aside from actually reading it, of course (which I am very excited to do).
El Miguel fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Jun 5, 2013 |
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Jun 5, 2013 01:27
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Hey Brainworm who are your favourite essayists? I know the British have a rich tradition of prose writing but I don't know of many beyond Francis Bacon from the period you specialize in. Do you have any cool recommendations?
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Jun 5, 2013 10:10
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Brainworm posted:
Hamlet is one of my favorite pieces of literature because of the close reading my excellent teacher was able to guide us through. I've been meaning to read some more Shakespeare, specifically Midsummer's (because I loved it when I saw it), but have hesitated because I don't have this level of insight. Which resources besides being generally excellent are best for gaining the level of understanding you're demonstrating here?
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Jun 5, 2013 14:40
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El Miguel posted:I've really enjoyed reading this thread; I'm on the academic job market at the moment, and it is frustrating. The reason I'm posting, however, is to ask a question: I have been given an opportunity to review a new book (an edited essay collection) in my liberal-arts sub-subfield (what it is does not really matter); it is the sort of assignment that is prestigious and a big deal to someone in my position, but not to anyone else (a 3000 word review for a journal that only matters to a very small group). I'm curious what advice you might have for approaching the book review itself? Aside from actually reading it, of course (which I am very excited to do). OK. When it comes to book reviews, I have a few Gallants and (I think) one Goofus. Gallants The first thing about writing a book review is to think about why people would read it. What they're looking for, I think, is usually some combination of "what is this book's central insight/contribution to the field?" "should I read it?" and "under what conditions would I be expected to know something about it?" So when you write your review, what you're really doing is writing something like Sparknotes. You tell your readers what's in the book, and which aspects of the book a person in the field thinks are significant for one reason or another. Consequently, do:
Goofus Most of the time, it's a mistake to argue with the book you're reviewing. Probably, if your opinion about the book's scholarship were important enough to matter and of general interest in the field, the publisher would have brought you in as a referee or peer reviewer in the first place. But they didn't. That ought to be pretty straightforward. It means don't disagree with the book. But people do that all the time, or write about how their own research relates to the book, and otherwise use reviews as a forum for some kind of self-promotion. Don't do that, or any version of that, or anything that smells slightly like that. The way you promote yourself is by doing the job you're asked to do, doing it well, and putting your name on it. That's different from, say, pointing out that a book is thinly researched, that points are overstated, or that the conclusions drawn from the data aren't warranted -- that is, it's possible you'll find a book, or part of a book, that isn't up to scratch. That does matter, but the last place anyone should read this is in a review. That is, anyone who's going to read or hear something like that should read or hear it through other channels first. Book review deadlines, especially for new and forthcoming books, usually give you a long time to write. If you read a chapter where the research seems thin, or there's a clear case of e.g. academic dishonesty or something not being up to the basic standards of the profession, you ought immediately talk to (a) your editor, (b) the book's editor/publisher, or (c) the author to find out what's going on. The idea is that if you find a real problem with a book, you can tell your editor what the problem is, get his or her permission to convey this problem to the author/editor/publisher, and let them do whatever they need to. Maybe the book's editor will decide to cut an offending essay. Maybe you have an advance copy and whatever you see is going through another draft. Maybe your editor will want a second opinion on whatever you think's an issue. Those are all possibilities. On the off chance you find a problem (again: not a difference of opinion but a problem), you do everyone a favor by finding it sooner instead of later. That means reading your review copy when you get it instead of the week before your deadline. I'm belaboring that point because the review you write is one thing, and how you build relationships with editors and publishers is another. One reason I think I have good relationships with both is that when I work for them, I work for them. And that means more than just thinking about what will work best for them; it means that when I write, review, edit, or referee, I take whatever responsibility I need to in order to keep them out of the frying pan.
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Jun 5, 2013 20:32
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Great thread, Brainworm! I was wondering what you think makes a great short story? If you have a few authors you could name whose short fiction you really appreciate, I would love to hear that as well.
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Jun 5, 2013 21:39
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Brainworm posted:OK. When it comes to book reviews, I have a few Gallants and (I think) one Goofus. That is extraordinarily helpful; thank you.
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Jun 6, 2013 01:24
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Boatswain posted:Hey Brainworm who are your favourite essayists? I know the British have a rich tradition of prose writing but I don't know of many beyond Francis Bacon from the period you specialize in. Do you have any cool recommendations? This is an interesting one. The first response I think you'd get from most people is to read Montaigne (if you haven't already) despite his not being English. There's a quality to the essays that is somewhere between "reflective" and something sappier (such as "deeply human") that I think owes a lot to Montaigne's process of revising the essays steadily over much of his adult life. So the Essays themselves demonstrate a kind of deliberate, reflective intelligence that I think is incredibly uncommon, and a pretty powerful example of what essay writers lose when they try to fit experience into whichever idea they want to hand off to the rest of the world. The second place to look is Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, which genre-wise (i.e. "generically" in the literary sense) is a lot of things but is also intelligible as a set of long essays on what end up seeming like nothing in particular. Those are great because they're a window into a kind of "commonplace book" way of thinking -- that is, into the way a person makes sense of the world and communicates when he or she sees the expression of an idea as inseparable from the text where it was first encountered. I don't know exactly how do describe the effect without using the word "expansive," since whenever Burton talks about an idea (depression, extraterrestrial life, and so on) he brings in what seems like everything that's ever been written about it in a way that seems completely organic, like he remembers most of it word for word. So whenever I read it, it's another sort of case study in what a specific and unusual kind of exceptional intelligence looks like.* A third place to look for interesting essay-like material is Pepys Diary, which is also very like an essay collection -- a hell of a lot of what Pepys writes is thesis driven or very near it. And while Pepys isn't as reflective or eclectic as Burton or Montaigne, he makes up for it with an oddball set of entirely human problems (he feels guilty about spontaneously masturbating in church while thinking about his friend's pregnant wife, Betty Mitchell). So some guided reading there is probably worthwhile. A fourth place: Milton's disputations. These were actually speeches given in Latin to a university crowd, but they're translated in most complete Miltons (e.g. the old Hughes edition or the Riverside). Among other things, Milton delivers what has to be the best fart joke I've ever read -- if someone's not laughing at his jokes, it's because their teeth are all jacked up or: quote:[...] ne praecinenti ori succinat, et aenigmata quaedam nolens affutiat sua non Sphinx sed Sphincter anus, quae medicis interpretanda, non Oedipo, relinquo; [...] quote:[to keep] not his Sphinx, but his sphincter, from cracking some riddles that I think a doctor would answer better than Oedipus. My Latin's not great (I'm trying for tone as much as literal phrasing), but you get the idea. But for actual, proper essayists, I'd bring out Sam Johnson and (to a lesser extent) Defoe. Collections of both are on Gutenberg, and Johnson's best moments are as good as or better than anything else you're likely to find. * Not that I've read the thing cover to cover. I have a paperback version of the old Gass edition, and my favorite way to read it is by opening to a random page and starting at the beginning of that section.
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Jun 19, 2013 13:55
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That's a tremendous breakdown on book reviews. I've had to write them and had about 4 different people teach me how to write one--each a bit different--but that's probably the best succinct summary I've seen. I do really hate the reviewers out there with an axe to grind or use the review as a platform to gripe about things. I just read a review that was 1000 words+, while all the others were about 300-400 words. He broke down every instance of mistranslation he could find of the book in the review, including a lot of extremely petty things that could go either way. The review got through because the reviewer has been in the field for 40+ years and used to be an editor for this journal, but it's still ridiculous.
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Jun 19, 2013 18:30
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Another teaching question for ya, if you have a second. The situation:I teach freshman comp, two sections per semester. In the fall I teach Intro to Composition, and in the spring I teach Writing from Research. The backstory: Writing from Research is exactly what it sounds like, using primary and secondary sources. I'm pretty happy with the assignment sequence I designed for this class: the first major assignment is a proposal (I allow the students to pick their own topics, and the proposal is my way to make sure they're viable); the second is a secondary source research paper (books, internet, journals, etc); the third is a fieldwork paper, where they do interviews and observations, and the final assignment is a presentation, where they present their primary and secondary research to the rest of the class via Powerpoint/Prezi/whatever. I'm really proud of this design--it gives students a fair amount of freedom to pick their topics, (I rarely get any duplicates), everyone learns something new as a member of the audience, the papers are generally better because they're about things students are interested in, and I figure that this kind of research/presentation is something they'll likely use in future corporate jobs. In addition, each assignment leads into the next and has a culminating project, so there's a nice bit of cohesiveness to it. The problem: my assignment sequence with Intro to Comp. By design, it doesn't involve any kind of research, and I'm required to put a focus on rhetoric. One of my major assignments for the class is a rhetorical analysis of an advertisement (I think it's important to learn how to rhetorically/critically analyze ads), but past that, I can't think of any good assignments. The last time I taught this class I did a movie review and a position paper, both of which most students liked, but I generally felt that the class lacked any kind of cohesive quality. The question: While keeping the focus on the (required) rhetoric, do you know of any good major assignments that lead into each other (and, preferably, have a culminating project) without being repetitive? I'd like to make this class into one that teaches students different ways to think, but I'm really just drawing a blank here. Asbury fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Jun 25, 2013 |
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Jun 25, 2013 05:52
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Reading your post about comedies got my brain clicking over on the so-called 'problem play' tragicomedies. I specifically wanted to ask you about Measure for Measure and in particular Vincentio who to me is totally a problem character, as in he does my head in. I would love to hear your take on him because to me he is one cold hearted, cruel rear end in a top hat who is even worse than Angelo and yet he is also the beloved, all wise golden boy who oversees the generically 'happy' marriages at the end (which I view as weird punishment weddings for everybody involved except Vincentio and maybe Mariana). Where do you stand on him as either a good or bad guy, and what do you think Shakespeare was up to when he created such a problematic character?
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Jun 25, 2013 07:23
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3Romeo posted:The question: While keeping the focus on the (required) rhetoric, do you know of any good major assignments that lead into each other (and, preferably, have a culminating project) without being repetitive? I'd like to make this class into one that teaches students different ways to think, but I'm really just drawing a blank here. I know I'm not Brainworm, but I'll chime in with a similar experience and how I'm working around it. My basic tip for the TL;DR here is: to try to find very small, seemingly insignificant ways that independent research can be deployed either as a springboard for class discussion, or as tertiary materials for student assignments you already have in your hands. The long of it: I have a basic class structure for Intro to Comp, handed down to me, so the changes I can make are slight. Still, I noticed one big issue: by my third unit (a free research unit), the course had worked out so that I'd actually not made the students do any research at all. The rest of the course is set up so they work from primary materials the class provides, so like, eg, springing JSTOR on these poor freshmen a month from the end of classes was actually kind of harrowing. I've started making changes on this with the second unit I have to teach, which is film. I introduce all the research databases a third of the way into the semester, and the students spend some time looking for reviews of the films we've watched. The point is initially to look at the textual qualities of the reviews (which we'd covered with argumentative and critical essays in the previous unit) and the new thing: how to "read" film analytically. I've changed the assignments so now they're more independently and ever-so-slightly research oriented. First, students in groups spend some time formally analyzing a music video they've chosen and presenting their interpretation of it to the class; I always make them do this independently of the lyrics and music, driving home the point that visuals communicate all on their own. This is partly for fun, and partly because it gets them to think about music videos in a way they've never considered them before. They become great little test beds for ideas like mise-en-scene, color, lighting, framing, etc. Second, for the final unit essays, students individually write an analysis of one of the class films that specifically responds to points made by reviewers they've read. This is because film reviewers love to talk about how, eg, The Silence of the Lambs is something that sounds smart, like "Electra Complex nightmare" or something, but not really explain what the hell that means. So the students find places where the reviewer is unclear, intentionally vague, or seems to overlook something, and then turn back to the film itself to clarify, complicate, or extend the reviewer's claim -- for instance, the student who found that "Electra Complex nightmare" review of SotL was suddenly able to cotton onto how the camera looked differently at male characters than female characters, and scenes dealing with gender relationships were thrown into starker relief and seemed to take on more importance. The point the student makes is still rhetorical, but rather than simple disagreement and clashing opinions, it's a type of measured dissent backed up with a specific kind of evidence, and it requires them to think about not only films but especially the rhetorics of film reviews in a different way than they're accustomed. Despite the widely implicit ragging on it I just did, I think the intro to comp architecture my institution employs is actually pretty good (if in need of some overhaul, which I am slowly and stealthily implementing) so if you want a better sense of a class engineered to out-of-the-box "fit" together shoot me a PM and I'll provide some more notes.
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Jun 25, 2013 13:59
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Not sure if this has been asked before, but what would you say is your "best of the best" list? For example, if you had to pick one short story, one novel, one play, and one essay that you most speak to you personally, what would they be? Might be kind of an odd question, but it comes up any time I talk to people that are really passionate about literature and the answers always tend to surprise me. I've had a lot of people that are very well-educated with a ton of published work in their respective fields tell me some random piece of airport fiction is their favorite book. Not that there's anything at all wrong with that, but it's kind of funny, I think. I've always wondered if people involved in academia get so fed up with "serious" literature that they just want to have some kind of guilty-pleasure reading to fall back on, or what. On the other hand there are people like DFW that specifically included airport fiction and bestsellers that might be considered poor "art" just to show how they still tell an effective story and have very complex themes whether intentionally or not.
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Jun 26, 2013 04:34
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Thanks for all that! I'm fortunate in that I can design my own class, so long as it hits the learning outcomes and major assignments in the course description. I was having fun with my film review (I use AV Club reviews as models, and it's a good way for them to learn uncomplicated, declarative, and insightful writing) but I always felt it was lacking a sort of critical thought component, so I'll definitely look towards using your approach. The other things you pointed out have made me think about designing a course based around the analysis of media. Like I mentioned before, having the ad analysis/movie review/position paper gave me that Sesame Street vibe. You know. One of these things is not like the others. Dropping that position paper and replacing it with something similar to your music video visual analysis? That adds the kind of course cohesion I was looking for. edit: Now just to figure out how to work in the required group presentation.  I like your approach, but I also like having the presentation be the capstone assignment in the course like it is in my research class.
Asbury fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Jun 26, 2013 |
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Jun 26, 2013 04:50
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protip: quote is not edit. That one's tuition free.
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Jun 26, 2013 04:54
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3Romeo posted:[...] OK. First, I like what Shivcraft brought to the table on this: anything that you can do to narrow the students' focus to a small set of formal elements is probably good, especially at introduction. I don't think that can be overstated. As good as it sounds to give students a lot of choice, choice can also paralyze them -- especially the nervous or anxious ones who still think about "getting the right answer" instead of "doing it well" (i.e. like the teacher's an arbiter of what's good and bad work rather than, say, someone coaching them to do good work). So. When I first started teaching comp courses back when, I focused on a lot of discrete skills like research, writing clear and engaging prose, and logic-based critical thinking. And I drove myself batshit trying to sequence them. One of the things that makes that kind of sequencing so difficult is that bringing in that many discrete skills give you too many moving parts. Another is that while it's easy to pretend that there's a natural sequence according to which these skills develop (e.g. rhetoric before research), I don't know that there's much other than longstanding tradition backing the usual comp-course progression from Narrative to Definition/Exposition to Argument. So now I organize my writing classes according to a basic rhetorical thesis: texts only mean something in relationship to other texts. I've written a lot about what that means when you're reading literature (in terms of innovation, etc.), but it also means something when you're looking at rhetoric and writing. The first thing it means is that interpreting the rhetorical elements of a text, whether it's a poem or a music video, means asking how that poem or video uses similarities and differences to build relationships between itself and other poems and videos. One of my favorite examples of this is actually one that came up in this thread a few years ago -- Led Zeppelin's "Communication Breakdown." When you play it against Eddie Cochran's "Nervous Breakdown," the sonic relationship between them's pretty clear. The upshot, I think, is that Zeppelin evokes Cochran just enough to tell the listener what they're differentiating themselves from. So when a student looks at "Communication Breakdown" rhetorically, one of the statements it makes is something like "we have listened to Cochran-style music and decided to do something different, and we want you to know how what we do is different in very specific terms." In other words, the focus I bring to rhetoric isn't something like "this text employs ethos/logos/pathos/phatic language in such and such a way." It's "this text wants to be interpreted in relationship with these other texts, and differentiate itself in the following ways..." That's a different way into the usual naming of parts that I used to teach, except I think that this relational view puts that naming of parts under a useful umbrella. Anyway. The second thing you get out of this relational approach is a "They Say / I Say" approach to writing, research, and presentations.* What I mean is that I try to help students think of writing and research as a contribution to a conversation rather than a demonstration of expertise. The most lucid example I have of this is the way a certain kind of conversation works.** Say you're at a cocktail party, or something like it, and walk up to a group of people (Alice, Bob, Claire) who seem to be having an interesting back and forth. So you listen to that conversation for a while, and maybe Claire's nice enough to say "hey Doug! Alice, Bob, and I were just talking about how we teach Hamlet -- we all teach it, but Alice thinks it's about a young man's discovery of his mortality, Bob thinks it's a political thriller, and I think it's about both of those, something like coming to terms with adult responsibilities in a necessarily dangerous environment." That, in a nutshell, is research. It's not becoming an expert on all things Hamlet. It's learning whatever it is you need to know to join a specific conversation about it. In that sense, writing means introducing Edgar to this group in the same way Claire introduced you -- by giving a rundown of the conversation so far, the positions people have taken during, how your position relates to them, and what the current "active questions" are. At least for me, that way of thinking about rhetoric, writing, and research (as primarily concerned with relationships rather than with competence in a bunch of discrete areas) is a pretty good generator of assignment sequences. So as a knee jerk, I'd bring that to your sequence in a way that looks something like this: quote:1) Rhetoric: Tell me about a text you're really interested in, why you're interested in it, and how you think it's different from other texts of the same type. Close read a piece of your text and a comparison text to show me how or why these texts are of the same type, and how or why yours is significantly different and therefore more appealing. (e.g. Text: The Avengers; Text type: Superhero Movie; Close reading claim: the most engaging moments in the movie are driven by characters rather than effects.) These all need some tweaking: they're close to fitting an EELDRC sequence as a single arc, but they're not quite there as individual assignments -- I think they'd need short pieces at the front and back end to make that work, and you'd probably need to join (2) and (3) pretty tightly to make them coherent. * That is, from Graff's They Say, I Say. ** I for some reason call this a "cocktail party" conversation, though I don't think I've ever been to a cocktail party and I doubt my student have, either. But we somehow have a shared idea of what a cocktail party involves.
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Jun 27, 2013 15:10
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Brainworm posted:I for some reason call this a "cocktail party" conversation, though I don't think I've ever been to a cocktail party and I doubt my student have, either. But we somehow have a shared idea of what a cocktail party involves. Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. - Kenneth Burke, "The Philosophy of Literary Form"
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Jun 28, 2013 17:42
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Brainworm posted:Awesomeness
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Jul 1, 2013 06:32
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Pollos Diablos posted:Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. This is one of those times. I know I've read the quote before, and that I'll probably read it again and again. And every time I re-read it I'll recognize it, then realize I've read, heard, and forgotten it countless times before. About a second later, I'll further realize that this is one of dozens of loops of repeating and highly-specific memory lapses that has spanned years -- nay, decades -- of my adult life. And then I'll wonder whether corkscrew-shaped bacteria are eating my brain, whether I'm getting enough oxygen,* or whether these moments of surgically-precise amnesia are the rosy glow of my temporal lobes' sunset into some kind of inert meat jelly. I was going to go on about how this drives me to ask a set of basically existential questions about my life and my place in the universe. Really, though, that I'ma forget that this Burke quote ever existed in a matter of seconds is really more of a novelty than anything else. * Like Space Ghost used to ask his interviewees.
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Jul 3, 2013 16:42
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Clever Gamma posted:Hamlet is one of my favorite pieces of literature because of the close reading my excellent teacher was able to guide us through. I've been meaning to read some more Shakespeare, specifically Midsummer's (because I loved it when I saw it), but have hesitated because I don't have this level of insight. Which resources besides being generally excellent are best for gaining the level of understanding you're demonstrating here? One place to start: regardless of whether you're reading a poem or a play or a novel, you don't develop insight by reading. You develop insight by re-reading and reflecting. That sounds like a niggle, but it's not. Just for instance, I've read Glengarry Glen Ross exactly once. And I saw the movie about fifteen years ago. There's a lot I can say about it (or that I could have said about it immediately after reading it), but most of those things are basically technical observations -- you know, "the dialogue looks this way instead of that way." Nothing approaching an interpretation of the play, and certainly nothing approaching insight into, well, anything. I couldn't say anything about, say, the characters or the plot that isn't technically apparent or a relatively clear-cut matter of form. In those matters, I'd be more precise than a first-time student reader, but that's only because I have a grammar for that in one hand and a lot of well-known texts to differentiate GGR from in the other. But anything that's insightful (read: persuasively interpretive) has got to come from a couple different places. One of them, and probably the easiest, has to do with learning other readings and seeing where they're persuasive (and where they're not). So you can watch a pile of different Hamlet productions and use what works in them (and what doesn't) to come to some reading of the play you find persuasive, which is another way of saying that you can use your own ingenuity, inventiveness, and talent for stealing other people's good ideas to make your Hamlet the most compelling of all possible versions.* That's not a small point, either. This is an undercomplicated distinction, but some things in a text are there to be discovered. Maybe a metaphor, or a poem's rhyme scheme. And some things are interpreted such that a reader essentially creates them in partnership with the text. Maybe the meaning of a metaphor, or the aspects of a poem that its rhyming emphasizes. But I think this is consistently true for characters, especially in drama (where characters speak and act, but their motives aren't revealed by the form). So. The second place insight comes from is specific to characters. I don't know a better way to say this, but over time you (hopefully) develop a powerful and experience-driven understanding of how people behave. That's not "people" as a whole, or "types of people," or "theories about people" as much as it is "the spectrum of specific, possible, likely, and unlikely human responses to an event or condition." And for those texts that are basically character-driven, that understanding is a powerful interpretive tool. To the extent a text is "character-driven," it's interperable according to two assumptions: (a) The revelation of characters' natures and development determines every significant element of the text, and (b) Characters' natures and development are mimetic (i.e. imitate real life) in every significant respect. In that respect, understanding people means a lot for the insight you can bring to a text. Weak understandings of people and characters usually involve putting them in categories or thinking they act according to a logical "type." In a play, as in real life, categories are useful for some things and hopelessly inadequate for others, and there's a real art/science/talent/learning involved in knowing which is which. So when you look at a stock character -- whether it's from that Wikipedia list, from Theophrastus, or from Hall's Characters of Virtues and Vices -- is basically a category. Most of the time, that "stock character" breadth of category is basically the broadest of all possible categories (i.e. something that could describe a person's social station, such as a career or identity) but with one differentiating factor. That "category/differentiation" form is the most basic of all possible functional definitions -- you know, "a spoon is a utensil (category) that has a bowl, rather than tines or a blade, at the end of the handle (differentiation)." And that's great for talking about spoons, but insipid when you're talking about a spoon, right? So take the braggadocio. He's a soldier (the category) but a coward (the differentiation). Hooker with a heart of gold? Same thing. And you could write these all day: self-hating Jew with aspergers? Check. Chemical Engineer who loves painting sunsets? Check. High-powered CEO who loves taking his arthritic golden retriever to dog parks, just to sit? Check. That's a sort of litmus test for character reading. If your thinking about a character can be made to fit the C/D formula, the combination of the text and your interpretation haven't yet produced an insightful reading. You're still co-authoring stock characters. That's a long way to church, but what I mean is that certain ways of thinking about people tend to produce C/D characters (or C/D interpretations of characters). And when you're interpreting character-driven texts, that's not the right tool for the job. You need to be able to work up from the details of what a person or character does or says to some picture of how he or she thinks or feels at the moment that those details becomes salient, and stitch all that together into something that looks like a person, and that has some coherent relationship to the text in which that person is a participant. So I don't have a how-to there, other than foreclosing on C/D ways of thinking about people and characters and, maybe, thinking about characters in ways that favor complexities of thought and action over simple, consistent motives. * To you. I'm also putting this here because I want to make the similarity between interpreting a text and writing one as strong and compelling as I can, just to separate out the kind of "interpretation" that's definitely creative from the technical types of "interpretation" that basically involve a naming of parts.
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Jul 3, 2013 19:22
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Brainworm posted:A long and insightful post Reading this, I can absolutely see how my (relatively old) teacher had a deeper understanding of what was going on between and within the characters, then. He had more life experience, and he must have read and seen it hundreds of times, to say nothing of whatever insightfulness inherent to him. I was also thinking I wouldn't pick up on the cultural context of parts of the play, though. I have a disappointingly narrow background because of the time constraints of my education thus far. Would you say understanding the shapes of the characters/relationships and the general elements of the plot are more important in appreciating these plays? I'm lacking a specific example of a place where missing a cultural cue could lead to a shallower understanding or misunderstanding altogether, but that's what I'm worried about now.
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Jul 4, 2013 03:05
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Hi Brainworm, thanks for this thread -- it's super insightful and going through it has been a total delight. I just saw Joss Whedon's adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing and loved it. First of all, have you seen it? I appreciated how smooth and effortless the whole production was. As much as I have enjoyed the various plays that Kenneth Branagh has put to screen, the period sets and costumes and lines enunciated with such gravitas can sometimes make them seem heavy. Can you recommend any stagings or films that have a similar feel to them?
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Jul 7, 2013 17:39
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ceaselessfuture posted:Great thread, Brainworm! Thanks! For some reason, I almost wrote "thanks, brother!" That's either Buster Bluth or Hulk Hogan, I guess. quote:I was wondering what you think makes a great short story? If you have a few authors you could name whose short fiction you really appreciate, I would love to hear that as well. Basically, I think there are two things that a good (or great) short story qua short story needs to do well, and both of them are very, very hard. The first is explore an interesting idea. The second is define complex and interesting characters. Short stories do this with plot. I was going to try to make up something about why or how, but I don't know why or how. They just do. And more often than not, good short stories also limit themselves to the simplest plot structures. I think the three most popular are: a) a question is raised and then answered (or not), b) a character discovers and explains an object, idea, or system, or c) some stasis or status quo is broken to immediate effect. A short story can (and maybe should) do more than one of these, but for reasons of length generally needs to to them at the same time. That's another way of saying that long-form stories (novels or scripts) can have subplots, changes in focus, chapters, and so on. A short short story generally can't (though there are probably exceptions). Anyway. We have interesting ideas and interesting characters, explored and defined primarily through plotting. So here we go: Interesting Ideas Short stories work well to express and pursue ideas that can be explained in clear, direct, and specific terms -- say, something like the theory of relativity or a single well-defined speculation about the nature of the afterlife. The story pattern Harlan Ellison follows in "Hitler Painted Roses" (man dies, discovers afterlife is mismanaged) does (a), (b), and (c) (that is, "answer a question," "discover a system" and "break a stasis to immediate effect") all at once. In the case of that story, you could spend a whole afternoon talking about the way it does (a), (b), and (c), because it does each of them several times in several different ways and more-or-less simultaneously. Just for instance, the question that gets raised and answered (a) can range anywhere from "what happens when we die?" to "does death give life meaning?" or "to what extent does the conventional idea that justice is meted out in the afterlife affect the ways we experience injustice directly or indirectly while we're alive?" I don't mean for a second that a good short story is just a vehicle for answering these kinds of questions -- a sort of philosophical statement in a different form. Just that the process of raising interesting questions and providing some compelling answer is a way of keeping a reader interested and, by and large, the more and better a story manages to do this, the more interesting it's going to be. It's doesn't necessarily matter if the question is abstruse and philosophical (like "what happens when we die?") or ordinary and tangible (like "who killed Mr. Body?"). All that matters is whether the reader's interested in the answer and satisfied when he or she gets to it. I'm far, far from the first person to say this, but if you're looking for a writer who is extremely technically adept at doing this "simultaneously raise and answer an impossibly diverse set of questions in the arc of a single short story" thing, Harlan Ellison is your guy. This doesn't make all (or even many) of his short stories and scripts good -- he wrote a lot of them, and under a huge set of pseudonyms to boot. It just means that when his stories succeed, they do so almost entirely on that basis. When it comes to this specific aspect of short-form storytelling, Ellison is a writer's writer. That makes him especially worth mentioning because Ellison is the only writer's writer I can name who could honestly say something like "Character? That's not something I do." In all seriousness, it is amazing. You can completely describe most Ellison characters with one word (e.g. "everyman"). Especially complicated ones from his most memorable stories might take two words (e.g. "dead everyman" or "ethnic extraterrestrial"). At the very edge of his rarest and most experimental visions of psychological depth and complexity, you need three (e.g. "misanthropic telepathic dog" or "horny, idealistic teenager"). I am saying, with no hint of irony at all, that (a) Ellison belongs in any catalog of artistically and commercially successful short-form storytellers and (b) a faithful rendition of the most psychologically and emotionally complex character Ellison has ever written did not test the acting abilities of a young Don Johnson.* There’s an entire class of good/great short stories that do this on a slightly broader basis -- that is, focus on idea development to the exclusion of nearly everything else. Discovery plots work well in this format. So do “novum” stories (which chronicle the effects of a single idea, innovation, or unusual event), and stories that rely on a single, well-structured plot twist. Examples: Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories are all “discovery” plots. They raise a question (like “who committed this crime?”) and then answer it, and along the way Sherlock and Watson also explain certain elements of their science of detection. In short, they give us a lot of (a) and a little of (b). There's character definition, but only in brief (though one of my favorite things about the stories as a whole is the Holmes/Watson/Lestrade relationship, which is delightful).** Greg Bear’s "Blood Music" or Bradbury’s "Sound of Thunder" (and most other non-adventure s.f.) are all “novum” stories. They introduce some stasis-breaking technology, event, or system, and explain whatever consequences it has. In short, they give us a lot of (b) and (c) and sometimes a little of (a). T.C. Boyle's early work (from e.g. Descent of Man) is worth mentioning here, too; he works his "novum" moments toward the absurd -- you know "what if someone's spouse was having a workplace affair... with an animal?" Anyway. Anything by O. Henry, or from Isaac Azimov’s Azazel stories, (which are close to long-form jokes), or classic short stories like Shirley Jackson's "Lottery" or W.W. Jacobs's "Monkey's Paw" are "twist" stories. I called O. Henry and Asimov's Azazel stories long-form jokes because that's really what they are -- you could have a trumpet go "wah-wahhhhhhhhh" at the end and it'd be totally appropriate. And (for the record) that's a feature, not a bug. O. Henry is arguably the greatest short story writer in the English language, and his characterization literally amounts to something like "even mean people are basically nice, and sociopaths are hilarious." Which, to be fair, is a completely legitimate move when you're writing comedy, and one O. Henry obviously executed really well.*** I chased that rabbit pretty far into the woods, but I think the upshot's clear. A great short story can be completely idea-driven, with impossibly thin characterization and extremely simple plotting. It can even be a single, long-form joke. In fact, all of these "can be"s are arguably assets, not liabilities. I can't overstate that this is just not true for long-form storytelling -- think movies, novels, and plays. It just doesn't scale. Of all the writers I mentioned here, only a few wrote anything like a good novel. And for all but a few of those I'd have to throw down as asterisk. Asimov, Bradbury, and Bear, for instance, wrote in a genre where it's possible for a successful novel to be entirely idea-driven, and where what other genres consider strong characterization is often a liability. The same thing is probably true for Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House. It's the best haunted house story there is, and by a wide margin (unless you want to muddy the waters and throw in Turn of the Screw), and in haunted house stories, the house, not the people, are the complex and central characters. That sounds like a lot of rear end-covering, but I have a litmus test. Read Greg Bear's "Blood Music" (the short story). Then read Blood Music (the novel). "Blood Music" is a really great short story. If I were teaching a class full of aspiring writers how to write short stories, I would point to it and say "do this! Create suspense by asking a terrifying, urgent question!" But Blood Music is only a good novel if you accept the genre values of science fiction. It's like the haunted house story, except the alien microbe is the primary character, and the human beings play bit parts. There are genre's where that's acceptable and subgenres where that's even the point, but in the broader category of "novels" that's just not a place an author can hang his or her hat. Interesting, Complex Characters So. Good characterization in a short story is very, very, very hard. I think this is because character is already hard -- like running a marathon -- and so characterization in a short story is like running a marathon in, say, one hour instead of three or four. And that with the caveat that it's entirely possible to complete the marathon without having to run it in the first place; because a short story can stand on ideas, your writer could just as easily get to something like the same place by taking a cab. Just about anyone can create a complex character by having that character undergo some kind of revealing, detailed, change and reflecting on his or her past behavior. A novel in which a woman’s mother dies and she (the woman, not the mother) has to come to terms with the unresolved elements of their relationship is, frankly, a pretty loving easy place to develop complex characters.**** A short story just doesn’t have that luxury. If you have one of those "simple" (a), (b), or (c) plots I mentioned earlier, that means you can only fit a limited number of cause-effect transactions into a single story, and you can't easily create the distance between event and reflection that allows for character complexity. At least not without giving up something else. For instance: One powerful way to build reflection into a piece of short form story telling is to have it narrated in reflection (that is, have the story told by a character at some point after the events of the story have transpired, and include moments in the telling that indicate some distance between who the character was when he participated in the events of the story and who he is at the moment he tells it). David Sedaris, for instance, does this really, really well. If that's a writer's technique, other things get more difficult or even impossible. For one, you've turned the story into a memoir, which means that you've set the bar for successful characterization very, very high. For another, you've made it very difficult to invest the action of the story with any real urgency -- that is, the more reflective a piece of prose is, the more character complexity you can deliver to the reader. At the same time, this reflection means that the storyteller, rather than the story, is the site of emotional immediacy. So David Sedaris, by dint of his narrative stance, decides in advance that his stories are not going to have plot-driven forms of suspense, because reflection means that the past-tense plot is only significant because it reveals the distance between the past-tense character and the present-tense narrator. The meaningful question isn't ever "is his mother going to die?" It's "what sense will this present-tense narrator make of his response to his mother's death?" Other types of short story character definition involve a situation in which complex relationships between complex characters are revealed quickly and in something close to their human depth and complexity. And you can read a lot -- I mean a lot -- of short stories before you see this done well even once. In fact, if you read just about any lit. magazine you’ll see tons of short stories in which things like the plot and events are transparent occasions to do this and this alone, and I seriously think that whichever conspiracy of editors choose short stories for anthologies and "best of" collections gives away too many points for effort on this front. These stories end up being bad in two ways. The first looks like the pretentious litmag story where some kind of surreal and possibly-symbolic nonsense is a pretext for characters to reveal the natures of their relationships to one another. Sample quote: quote:Sally, now that the sky has turned into a slowly-descending block of translucent plastic, and we only have exactly one day until it destroys everything we know, I’ve thought about why our marriage never worked. I never saw you. I just saw the ideas I had about you. The second bad thing is John Updike’s "A&P," which is the same as the pretentious litmag story except the surreal and possibly symbolic nonsense is a "realistic" non-event, and a pretext for the narrator to speak to the reader for no other reason than to indirectly reveal elements of his or her character that are (in the worst cases) impossibly contrived. Sample quote: quote:So I say to Joey, that fat gently caress, I say 'no, I don't have none of them.' Because I see the way he looks down at my pocket, like boom, like quick, and he knows I got them with me. So I act like I'm trying to hide them, like I'm scared. Like I'm some stupid gently caress out here by my loving self. Like he caught me. So when Vinnie gets that wire around Joey's fat pig neck, what I see is some genuine loving surprise.***** Other people disagree with me on this, but I don’t think that this kind of character exploration, on its own, makes a good short story. Not to get back on the “characters are like people train,” but characters, like people, are interesting because they do interesting things. Complexity helps give those interesting things some coherence, but it's not interesting by itself -- after all, boring people are complicated, too. A + B != OSM After laying both of those things out, you'd think that a short story writer who could do both interesting ideas and interesting characters would be fantastically great. And that might be true. But I think that short stories that do both tend to be memorable rather than really great, though I can't say why for any good reason. So take Stephen King, who I've said before now doesn't get anything near the type of critical attention he deserves. One thing that's outstanding about his best short stories is the way he can deliver character. It's like those late Picasso sketches that use one line to draw, I don't know, a flamingo: complete, and absolutely minimal in a way that doesn't draw attention to its own minimalism. This is especially true when King gives you someone that, in any other short-form (and even some long form) texts, would be a stock character. Say your Overworked Single Mom (OSM). OSM does whatever -- pumping gas or whatever -- and she does it all for her kids and even though she's capable of so much more, and all just out of either Pure Bad Luck (e.g. dead husband who was a great guy) or the One Bad Decision She Learned From (e.g. the jazz-musician husband who ran off with their life savings and his piano student, which she would have seen coming if she'd just Listened to Her Feelings). Probably, when you see OSM, you see a conversation between her and Exposition Buddy (EB), who can actually be anything from a childhood friend to a total nobody who, say, stops by the gas station for a pack of Twizzlers and a pointlessly in-depth conversation with a complete stranger: quote:EB: These poems are incredible. What's someone like you doing working at a gas station? Did I enjoy that? I did. But you get the point. We have seen OSMs before. And one reason I like the OSM as a character type is that it (she?) is so familiar. A sort of late-20th century avatar of noble poverty. So take a look at how King sketches out his single mother characters, especially when he doesn't have much space to do it, and especially in stories where they're side characters and you would expect them to OSMs up and down because they're afforded maybe -- maybe -- fifty words of character definition because the story's focus is somewhere else. The story "Gramma" (in Skeleton Crew and maybe other places) is a good example. I don't have my copy handy, but a couple things should be clear. The first is that the story, in terms of plot, would be basically the same if the mother were an OSM, and in another writer's hands the conversation she has with her younger son at the beginning of the story would be an OSM conversation -- you know, establishing that mom is a faultless woman in a bad situation. Instead, we get a totally different dynamic. Just to refresh everything, the situation is that mom is caring for two sons and her own invalid, senile mother ("Gramma"). The older son, who I think is maybe twelve or thirteen, has just broken his leg playing baseball, and mom is rushing to the hospital where he's being treated. She's therefore leaving her younger son, who's maybe nine or ten, alone in the house with Gramma for an unspecified period of time -- several hours at the shortest, and maybe longer because mom's car is something like a POS Dodge Dart, and who the gently caress knows if it'll actually make it to the hospital and back. So mom starts her out-the-door conversation with something like "you're sure you'll be ok?" and starts going over what he ought to do if anything strange happens. And younger son, wanting to look like the more responsible of the kids, keeps reassuring her that he's fine with this. Even though he's terrified of his grandmother, and with good reason. And mom buys this, completely uncritically, and heads to the hospital. This is not the focus of the story, really. It's what happens after mom leaves that gets our attention. But in that opening snapshot we get some real character complexity. Mom is of course worried about her older son but also exasperated because she chalks up his injury to being irresponsible or stupid. Younger son buys into that pretty wholeheartedly, since that jibes with his read of his brother (which is probably spot on). But it also means that younger son knows what happens when he doesn't do the responsible thing, right? Mom's disappointed, and that's sad because she already has a pretty tough life and needs at least one good son. You get the idea. The whole family has a "fake it through the tough times" attitude that ends up being what I'll call the "real" problem. Younger son isn't going to say he's afraid of Gramma because that'll cause problems for mom. Mom's not going to, say, take a more responsible course of action, like ask a neighbor to come over and watch son and Gramma for the afternoon, because that'll cause problems for them. Gramma, of course, has done her own thing. And over the course of the story, it gets real clear that this is an important pattern -- even though it takes a back seat to the more conspicuous action. I'ma spoiler this, even though it's predictible, but Gramma dies, and when that happens, younger son spends a lot of time trying to think about how to tell someone so that the situation will be minimally distressing for mom and the rest of the family. And then something else happens. Point is, by the end of the story, you start to think that mom is a world-class incompetent parent, and that this is going to have some serious consequences for the relationship between the two brothers. It's that set of character relationships, not the events of the plot, that actually make "Gramma" work as a story. What's completely mind-blowing is the efficiency with which King paints those relationships clearly. Remember, this stuff is all sideline. It's all context. But it takes the story from being an OK idea-driven horror story one to a pretty loving good character-driven one. Again, that's the long way around. But it got me thinking back on some good King, so clearly worth it from my end. * With all apologies to Don Johnson, who like most actors is probably capable of a much greater range than his most popular roles would give him credit for. ** Following that up: Think of Holmes/Watson/Lestrade as the A-Team. Except Holmes is the wild card, the muscle, the brains, and the looks, while Watson and Lestrade are foils for his obsessive crankiness and emotional eccentricity (Watson) and his professional competence and intellectual stability (Lestrade). That is, Watson is capable of empathy in a way Holmes isn't, which is a bad thing. But not as bad as being a giant, vain baby like Lestrade. *** If you're a fan of shock comedy, you owe a lot to O. Henry. Everyone knows "Ransom of Red Chief" here, but check out "The Cop and the Anthem." **** Just so we’re clear, that complexity of character doesn’t make a novel good. I’d expect that particular novel to be a pretentious self-indulgent piece of crap written by an overachieving single mother whose keenest intellectual edges were crafted by the painstaking process of choosing glasses that convey exactly the right shade of middle-aged urban sophistication. ***** I can't even imitate that without having things happen. Also, "A&P" by itself isn't as bad as I'm making it out to be. It's OK. A sort of OK version of stories that do the same thing but are genuinely terrible. Think New Yorker, 1950-1970.
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Jul 10, 2013 20:47
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Dr Scoofles posted:Reading your post about comedies got my brain clicking over on the so-called 'problem play' tragicomedies. I specifically wanted to ask you about Measure for Measure and in particular Vincentio who to me is totally a problem character, as in he does my head in. I would love to hear your take on him because to me he is one cold hearted, cruel rear end in a top hat who is even worse than Angelo and yet he is also the beloved, all wise golden boy who oversees the generically 'happy' marriages at the end (which I view as weird punishment weddings for everybody involved except Vincentio and maybe Mariana). Where do you stand on him as either a good or bad guy, and what do you think Shakespeare was up to when he created such a problematic character? Not to get too far into real life, but this is one that Shivcraft worked on for a while a few years ago. So this is one that I'd bet he could talk about in greater and more interesting detail. I think that Shakespeare developed a kind of thesis about kings and magistrates that reached maturity as he was writing the second tetralogy, (Richard II, 1 & 2 Henry IV, and Henry V), and shows up in various forms in plays like King John, Midsummer, Tempest, and of course the two history cycles and Measure for Measure. The upshot of it is that the personal traits of a good person and a good ruler are both completely different and mutually incompatible. This is a response, I think, to an earlier dramatic form (typified in older plays like Mankind and King Johan) where the thesis about kingship is something like the complete opposite. In both of those plays, you have a monarch who's approached by a menagerie of morality-play virtues and vices (like "Flattery" and "Good Counsel") and eventually accepts or rejects them as you'd expect on the logic that a virtuous person makes a good ruler. You can see Shakespeare start working against this in King John. There, you have the novelty of a bastard hero (as in "not antihero"), and in Midsummer, where the marriage between Theseus and Hippolyta is clearly one of political convenience, and both of them have some difficulty negotiating the role that romantic love ought play in it. But this really comes into its own in two of the histories -- well, really one sequence and one play. In 1-3 Henry VI, the adult Henry is constantly reflecting on his failures as a monarch but also completely incapable of taking any meaningful action to correct them, and it's clear he feels a serious tension between what he feels are the best things he can do and the practical choices forced on him by the civil war. The best example of this is in the part 3, II.v., where Henry sees two soldiers dragging corpses to a place on the battlefield where they can be more conveniently looted. One discovers that the corpse he's looting is his dead father, and the other discovers the one he's looting is his dead son. And some lamentations ensue. I think that moment isn't supposed to be a literal event that occurs on the battlefield as Henry watches, or not just a literal event. It's a drama playing out in Henry's mind that neatly captures some moral quality of what he thinks he's done, and brings home the idea that the political situation he's in forces good people to do horrible things regardless of their political allegiance and regardless of whether they happen to be king. You see this again in Richard II, where Richard is himself a mix of virtues and vices -- one read might be "intelligent and kind, but ineffectual." When he's deposed by the soon-to-be Henry IV, he has occasions for several pretty impressive speeches, e.g.: quote:Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood Generally, your Shakespearean characters don't have this kind of humility at their bad moments. Yeah, this speech is self-pitying, but it's also genuine and pragmatic -- Richard doesn't want any of his former followers to come to harm by falling into expressions of loyalty as minor as giving him preferential treatment. And that is, overall, an expression of some positive personal traits that are also not fit for the throne. Finally, you see this all over the place in Henry V. I'll keep this short, but my read on Henry is that he's as good a person as a person can be and still be a good king. Does he kill tons of innocent people, betray his old friends, and get up to all kinds of deceptive and politically sleazy activity? Yes. Does he understand that he does this? Yes. Does he let guilt or attachment to this dictate his political decisions? Not for a second. Good kings conquer France, and good people don't kill their friends or, for that matter, hundreds of civilians. Henry's aware of both of these points, but he understands that the consequences of being a bad king are worse than the consequences of being a bad person, so he takes "good king" every time and doesn't sweat any auxiliary moral issues. So when it comes to Vincentio, and to the problem marriages at the end of the play, I think you're left with a read of the character that seems contradictory but is actually consistently Shakespearean. First, Vincentio understands that he can't be both a good person and a good ruler -- his little moral improvement vacation just ended in something approaching political disaster -- so he's gotten the memo that being a good person is just not a luxury his job allows. He's going to be as pragmatic as he can, have people make whatever sacrifices they need to for the good of the state, and he's not going to give any of the costs that come with that a second thought and demand they do the same. So by that logic, what he does at the end of the play makes a lot of sense. Does Vincentio need a wife? Yes. Whatever his sexual habits were before the play started, anything less than straight-up non-adulterous marriage has shown the potential to be personally and politically dangerous. Does Isabella need a husband? Yes. She's proven that, unmarried, her combination of attractiveness and integrity are also politically dangerous. Does he love her? Does she love him? Is this fair to all the parties involved? Doesn't matter. Marriages solve all the political problems this little episode's caused, and do it in a way that keeps anybody from being executed, keeps Vincentio well-loved, and keeps Vienna politically stable. So in that sense, the usual question about whether Vincentio's a good person misses the mark a bit. Of course the question matters, but I think you can go into it assuming that there's some tension between what it means to be a good person and a good ruler, and that the conditions of Shakespearean drama are that characters can't do both.
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Jul 11, 2013 17:55
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Brainworm posted:Awesome short story post. Jesus, thank you so much! If you feel like returning to the topic, what are your opinions on some of the 'masters' of the form? I'm thinking about Hemmingway, Borges, O'Connor, Poe, Carver, Munro, etc. How do they fit into your observations? Really though, that was an invaluable post 
ceaselessfuture fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 19:53
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Dr Scoofles posted:Reading your post about comedies got my brain clicking over on the so-called 'problem play' tragicomedies. I specifically wanted to ask you about Measure for Measure and in particular Vincentio who to me is totally a problem character, as in he does my head in. I would love to hear your take on him because to me he is one cold hearted, cruel rear end in a top hat who is even worse than Angelo and yet he is also the beloved, all wise golden boy who oversees the generically 'happy' marriages at the end (which I view as weird punishment weddings for everybody involved except Vincentio and maybe Mariana). Where do you stand on him as either a good or bad guy, and what do you think Shakespeare was up to when he created such a problematic character? Following Brainworm's invite above, I'd say his thesis is pretty sound for looking at the character and Shakespeare's rulers generally. I'll only elaborate it by tossing in two pieces of historical context, one long and one short. 1) A good bit of the Vincentio plot appears to have been taken from Machiavelli, specifically one of the parts of The Prince where he describes the rule of Cesare Borgia. The short version is this: Borgia's subjects were grumbling because they thought he wasn't a good leader; in response he contrived a reason to leave for a while and appointed as his lieutenant a guy he knew to be a real sonuvabitch; this guy indeed proved to be a real sonuvabitch, and was terribly selfish and cruel as a ruler. When Borgia returned, the people complained to him as he expected they would, and in response he had his lieutenant put to death. From then on his subjects were more grateful for Borgia than they had ever been, and his power was consolidated. Good job, Cesare. Now, people in Renaissance England hated Machiavelli. Calling someone a "Machiavel" then was very roughly equivalent to calling someone a "Nazi" now -- it was an incredibly broad catch-all political insult that pointed to the then-supreme evils of duplicity, tyranny, and cruelty (with shades of Catholicism). What's worth noting, however, is that Shakespeare changes the Machiavelli anecdote in a few key ways. First, Vincentio's initial problem is that for whatever reason he cannot interface with the public effectively enough to enforce the marriage and chastity laws. He admits he's let the laws be disregarded for nineteen years, and it's suggested that he doesn't get out much to actually do any ruling. But rather than do anything differently himself (because he probably rightly fears the people will hate him if he suddenly starts prosecuting for premarital sex after two decades of laxity), he decides to retreat from his duty even further and appoint a lieutenant, Angelo, who he believes will pick up the slack. As a "Puritan" (not a wholly positive term itself) Angelo is both abstemious and a stickler for the rules. It seems that Vincentio's original plan is to get Angelo to bring the laws back to the forefront of people's minds, and then the duke himself can just kind of step in and continue to enforce them as if he'd never forgotten. Of course, this goes off the rails as Angelo proves to be strict beyond common sense and simultaneously is corrupted by his own human lusts. Vincentio has to step up his Machiavellian scheming in order to clean up the mess he's made, and for what it's worth, he manages to get through it with minimal bloodshed. The end of the play is, on his part, a validation of everything the morality plays and associated literature would have you believe about kingship: in opposition to his earlier reclusiveness, Vincentio orchestrates a very public spectacle where the grace of the king "corrects" all social dysfunction. However, the play demonstrates that the mechanisms of this performance are both Machiavellian and to a great degree pretty slapdash, thus disallowing any strong confidence in the whole affair. The second notable deviation from Machiavelli is that Vincentio doesn't kill his lieutenant, but instead forces him to get married. That is, he literally orders a comic ending to the play. I think Measure for Measure is partly about Vincentio, a guy not really cut out for being the duke, finding the resolve to become a more public and gracious ruler. But whereas, eg, Hal in Henry V ends up very successful as a king, his methods notwithstanding, Vincentio is not afforded such an obvious payoff. The play lays bare the machinations of a very desperate monarch, and while his tactics basically succeed the nature and long-term effects of the tactics themselves remains ambiguous. 2) There's some good evidence that Measure for Measure was partially rewritten by Thomas Middleton after Shakespeare's death, and this edited text is the only one that persists. Having an edited text might explain some of the weirder, inconsistent, or confusing features of the play. It's an older critical stance to attribute Vincentio's awkwardness to Middleton's emendations, because Middleton is a "lesser" playwright and so of course would write such a poorly constructed character, or delete whatever brilliance Shakespeare had pumped into him. I don't personally like this tactic, since it's just a way to reify Shakespeare and disparage his peers, but if you take the Middleton thesis and assume his flattening or "weirding" of Vincentio was intentional, then it plays somewhat into his reputation of being more of a blatant political cynic and poo poo-stirrer than Shakespeare usually was. In conclusion, my very anachronistic way of explaining this play has always been that is the Shakespeare that the Coen brothers should adapt, because it is often farcical, often dark, and deeply concerned with doing the right thing, though it'd be very drat difficult to deduce an actual ethical program from it. H.P. Shivcraft fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 21:18
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This is not at all hermeneutical, so I apologize, but it's something that has been bothering me. I used to love reading. I've been an avid reader for as long as I can remember, and completed an English Lit degree about five years ago. I read (almost) every book that was assigned cover to cover, was engaged in discussion, got very good grades, etc. Now I can't get through anything. I've probably completed a book a year since I graduated, and the first 50 pages of a hundred others. I just can't do it. I don't know what happened. I still have the desire to read, but as soon as I pick up a book I start leafing to the end of the next chapter in anticipation of putting it back down. I'm beginning to realize how integral reading was in shaping my perception of the world -- instilling empathy, explaining the human condition, developing humor -- and without it I genuinely feel less connected to... society, or people, or whatever. I don't have a specific question but wanted to know if this is a common "phenomenon" and if anyone has insight into it. I figure English professors might have the most exposure if it is, so that's why I'm posting it here. I realize it is very much situational and could be linked to stress or something random like that, but it has been like this for years and I just want to enjoy reading again.
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Jul 16, 2013 10:55
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Great thread Brainworm. This fall I'll be back in school studying for a BA in English after 8 years working random jobs, and as you can probably guess my grammar has pretty much atrophied into nothing. Is there anything I can do in a 1 1/2 month timeframe to brush up on it? Any recommendations for books/work exercises?
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Jul 17, 2013 07:25
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Hipster Occultist posted:Great thread Brainworm. I'd actually like to field this one, if no one else minds. I mostly gave up on teaching grammar the way it used to be taught (as a series of seemingly arbitrary rules) because it hampered the important part of learning how to write--being clear, concise, and graceful. It's hard to get your ideas down on the page, and get them down well, when one part of your brain worries that it's constantly breaking one commandment or another. I've found that when I focus on teaching style over grammar that my students end up learning grammar anyway. They may not know the exact rules and the exact terms (e.g., comma splices), but they do learn by ear--they know when something's wrong or right even if they don't know why. When they've hit that point, then I introduce the rule as verification that their ear is working. So my advice is to focus on good style over good grammar. If you're eight years out of any kind of school, chances are you've picked up a decent understanding of style just by listening to others or by reading any kind of material associated with your old jobs. Usually you've learned what sucks (confusing instruction manuals, over-written memos) instead of what's good (clarity and precision), and that's exactly what you want. You've learned what not to do, and that's a huge thing. All that said, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White is a good little primer. Brainworm's mentioned it at some length earlier in the thread so I won't harp on it, but I'd recommend picking up a copy and putting it on the back of the toilet. You know. For something to read in five or six minute bursts. It's short, it's precise, and it lists rules in easily digestible chunks. Honestly, though, I think you'll have more luck learning grammar just by reading whatever you can get your hands on; lessons come through in a kind of osmosis. My advice, at least for a start, is to go read movie reviews. Seriously. Go to rottentomatoes and find a movie you've seen and look at the reviews. Compare how the AV Club or Christoper Orr (over at The Atlantic) generally pull off a mix of summary, insight, and analysis, while some other reviews just kind of lie there on the sidewalk and stink like turds. It's an easy way to start learning what is, and what isn't, quality writing. It's always good to have models. (Caveat: Brainworm and Shivcraft will probably roll up here and totally sack my advice; I just started teaching a couple of years ago and I'm still learning as I go.) Asbury fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Jul 17, 2013 |
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Jul 17, 2013 16:56
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Thanks, I'm just worried that somewhere down the line I'll end up getting slapped by my Prof because I can't use a semicolon or whatever.  I actually picked up Elements of Style and just cracked it open a few days ago. Good to hear that it comes so highly recommended.
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Jul 18, 2013 06:16
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Now I'm curious, how does the OP (or anyone else teaching English courses) feel about the criticisms of The Elements of Style, as written in things like this piece. I haven't read it myself in a long time, so I don't have a personal opinion.
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Jul 18, 2013 13:54
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I can't speak for actual, you know, professors in this regard (I'm a GTA, which means I'm still learning the ropes), but I've seen articles like this pop up once every year or so. And, for the most part, they do make some good points; EoS came out not long after World War 2, and its advice has a kind of geriatric touch to it. It's like listening to old men talk about how things used to be and needed to be and, by gum, had anyone actually listened, the world would be a better place. That said, EoS has something that very few books on grammar have: brevity and directness. Most of the others I've read, even Lessons in Clarity and Grace, are longer than they need to be, and unless grammar and style is really your thing (and it isn't for most of my students), they work better as Sominex than they do as text books. That article comes off largely contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, and it's written by a head of Linguistics to boot, which is vaguely like having some colonel come to your foxhole and ask why you took a poo poo in the grenade sump. That is, the guy knows how things should be, he's read all the books and he's done all the work, but he doesn't understand how sometimes it just isn't cool to drop trousers somewhere the whole goddamned platoon can see you. Point is--and if I can keep running with this conceit--there's a huge difference between the theory of writing at the upper echelons of things and the actual writing process down in the trenches of the college classroom. What gives EoS its quality (and longevity) is that it's a field manual. Do this. Don't do this. The rules are general orders, short enough to memorize, and simple enough that there really isn't any room for ambiguity. But they're general orders. The author of that article calls the advice in EoS "vapid," which, for a guy who's not only the head of Linguists and English at Edinburgh but who also wrote a book on English grammar, I'm sure it is. But the book wasn't written for him. It was written for students who are just beginning to wade into formal writing, and the advice it gives, vapid or not, is something most people need to hear at least once. Asbury fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Jul 18, 2013 |
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Jul 18, 2013 19:27
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That's not really a fair characterisation of his article though. He's not just saying that Strunk and White is grammatically incorrect, but that it's incoherent and therefore prescriptively unhelpful, the authors themselves being apparently incapable of following their own advice. What could be more relevant to a student trying to apply those rules "in the trenches"? Rejecting the whole thing on the basis of some incredibly vague ad hominem isn't much of an answer (and has a whiff of the anti-intellectual).
Vinz Clortho fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jul 18, 2013 |
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Jul 18, 2013 23:21
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wshngmchn posted:This is not at all hermeneutical, so I apologize, but it's something that has been bothering me. Huh, are you my alternate self? I used to be able to plow through books as a kid and really enjoy it, but now I just can't do it. I remember reading some cool stuff too and it was fun. Now its one big case of  and kinda sucks. I swear I'm getting stupider as I get older.
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Jul 18, 2013 23:37
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Honey Badger posted:Not sure if this has been asked before, but what would you say is your "best of the best" list? For example, if you had to pick one short story, one novel, one play, and one essay that you most speak to you personally, what would they be? This is a hard one. On one hand, I don't even know how I'd start dividing things up by genre -- any way I get started leaves me with something more like 300 genres and less like a list of five texts. Also, things change quickly. What I mean is that sometimes, for whatever reason, I'll read something that really speaks to me, and then -- for whatever reason -- I'll read it for the Nth time a year or two later and it won't speak to me the same way. It's a weird thing, and every time it happens it seems like it happens differently. And there are some genres -- and here I'm specifically thinking short stories -- where I can't even pick a favorite. Honestly, there are short stories I like and and short stories I think are well-crafted, but the experience I get from reading a best-of-the-best short story is different from (and less emotionally intense than) the experience of reading a really good poem. And I'm sure that for some people it's the opposite. That's a lot of preamble. But there's a short list of texts that have held up for me for more than, say, a decade. Pretty much every Shakespeare play I've talked about is there, with Hamlet, Lear, Midsummer, and Romeo and Juliet near the top of the list, and for reasons that are probably buried all through this thread. Novel-wise, my decade list includes Slaughterhouse Five, White's Once and Future King, King's Cujo and (to a lesser degree) The Stand, Ellis's Lunar Park (though that one may be falling off the list shortly), and Ellison's Invisible Man. Atwood's Oryx and Crake just barely makes the ten-year cut. And there's space in there somewhere for H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds and Moreau, and for Shelly's Frankenstein. It feels a little insipid to just lay these out as favorites, so I'ma add a few quick notes. The first one is that Invisible Man, Oryx and Crake, and Slaughterhouse Five are funny in the same kind of way that Coetzee's Michael K is funny. They have this thread of borderline farce that's somehow woven into a tapestry that includes characters of considerable depth and complexity, and the effect in all three cases is pretty powerful. Lunar Park does something similar, except the farce is more moment-by-moment and scene-by-scene. That might be one of the reasons it didn't stand up well to a tenth or twelfth reading. Second: King, Wells, and Shelly are of course horror writers, but what makes what they do work is character. For all three of these writers, whatever uneasiness comes from my reading has everything to do with the people involved in the story and not the conditions or events to which they're subject. The Stand does this particularly well, and to the point where I think the book could have been much better if the Good Guys/Bad Guys conflict had the volume turned down even more than it already does, since it imposes a kind of direction on a cast of characters who don't necessarily need it. Whenever I read the book, I can feel it happen -- it goes from being "really good" to "pretty OK" at about the moment the characters take sides. Also, I drat near choke at including Stand here -- it's not a great novel. It's just one I've had a consistently good relationship with. There are others I don't know as well or read as often (Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, for instance) that are arguably better.
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Jul 19, 2013 19:16
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Chemondelay posted:That's not really a fair characterisation of his article though. He's not just saying that Strunk and White is grammatically incorrect, but that it's incoherent and therefore prescriptively unhelpful, the authors themselves being apparently incapable of following their own advice. What could be more relevant to a student trying to apply those rules "in the trenches"? Rejecting the whole thing on the basis of some incredibly vague ad hominem isn't much of an answer (and has a whiff of the anti-intellectual). You have a point about examples breaking their own rules, but that doesn't invalidate the rules themselves. What needled me about the article was its tone of dismissal. A lot of those rules, for first-year writing, are absolutely worth discussing in a classroom, especially the harmless ones. But if it wasn't obvious, I'm pretty heavily prejudiced toward EoS--I've never had the book make a student into a worse writer.
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Jul 20, 2013 05:34
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Hipster Occultist posted:Thanks, I'm just worried that somewhere down the line I'll end up getting slapped by my Prof because I can't use a semicolon or whatever. May I offer a perspective from somebody who is not a teacher but starting out at the bottom? I'm 30 and am at university for the first time doing a BA in English, before that I worked mostly practical jobs that required zero writing skills and before that I flunked school with bad grades. I came into my degree with incredibly poor grammar skills, to the point where I would have to look up what a verb or a noun is when I got out of a lecture. Also, I can't spell so without a PC I'm pretty sunk. Despite that I still get very acceptable grades on all my work and nothing ever below a 2-1. Personally I use these little pocket guides when I get stuck: http://www.palgrave.com/products/SearchResults.aspx?s=POCKET&fid=1038 In particular the one on writing tips and the one on how to plan your essay. I'm certain these will get laughed at as being too simple, maybe even babyish (they have cartoons in them to act as an aide memoire), but if you're an adult who has almost no grasp of formal English grammar being presented with anything too far beyond your capabilities is enough to depress and overwhelm. No harm in going back to the very simple basics if that is what you need. I've also been told by a few professors that my lack of formal English education can be helpful at times. I had no bad essay writing habits ingrained into me from school so I was picking up good habits from day one at university. Also, because I shy away from being overly flowery or academic in my writing style I am told I put across my thoughts and ideas much better than some of the other students who feel the need to dress up their essay with needless complexity. In class discussions I am consistently graded far higher than all the other students for participation because I am incapable of reeling off long, intellectual sentences. I just say what I mean in basic, clear speech. Professors seem to like that. Of course I've also been told by other professors my essays lack elegance, so I'm always working hard to improve my writing and grammar as I go along. My biggest piece of advice to you though is learn how to structure a good, clear essay first then worry about tarting it up with semi colons second. As they say, you can't polish a turd, so if you write a bad essay to start with no end of fancy writing is going to save it. Oh, and good luck! If you're anything like me you will love every moment of your degree
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Jul 20, 2013 09:12
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3Romeo posted:You have a point about examples breaking their own rules, but that doesn't invalidate the rules themselves. What needled me about the article was its tone of dismissal. A lot of those rules, for first-year writing, are absolutely worth discussing in a classroom, especially the harmless ones. But if it wasn't obvious, I'm pretty heavily prejudiced toward EoS--I've never had the book make a student into a worse writer. Don't you think that has more to do with the woefully inadequate grammar/style educational approach in American schools than in the virtue of the book?
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Jul 20, 2013 17:52
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Duece Ex Machina posted:Don't you think that has more to do with the woefully inadequate grammar/style educational approach in American schools than in the virtue of the book? That's kind of a loaded question that I really don't have the expertise to answer. I can't indict an entire school system using forty freshmen as a sample, especially when they come from diverse backgrounds, economic levels, and locations (and often entirely different countries; for whatever reason, I get a disproportionate number of ESL students in my classes). I mean, I'm sure there's a ton of data out there that proves the American education system, at least at the public high school level, needs a lot of work. But I don't know enough about the problem to have any kind of educated opinion concerning it.
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Jul 20, 2013 20:54
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Lately, I've been preoccupied with associative memory. Do you have a magic jockstrap*? *superstitions and rituals. I'd like a peek at 'em, no matter how silly, mundane, or scholastically helpful. Tonsured fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Jul 21, 2013 |
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Jul 21, 2013 02:57
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