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He's a modern poet, so sort of removed from Shakespeare, but have you ever read Henry Reed's "Lessons of the War" poems, and if so, what do you think of them? I guess, to link it to Shakespeare, he also wrote "A Map of Verona", which includes the line quote:Again, it is strange to lead a conversation Epicurius fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Dec 18, 2017 |
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Dec 18, 2017 04:58
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Stabbatical posted:I'm not exactly getting what that phrase means, I've never heard it before. Is it something to do with having a big idea about how to do a play without thinking through the details, something like that? Something very like that. "Long on concept" is shorthand things that go wrong when a show's first loyalty is something other than the audience. There's a whole category of self-indulgent novels and drama and poetry like this. Some of it is built around adherence to a process (like devising) or to a value (like anti-imperialism), and some of it is just narcissistic. Trademarks of "long on concept" pieces include heavy use of black in costumes and set pieces, whole or partial nudity, actors speaking in unison, statements about politics or social issues that are not confined to the perspective of a specific character, use of labels on costumes, interpretive dance, silences longer than three seconds, post-apocalyptic settings and/or settings unconfined to a specific place and time, generalized humorlessness, and (in Shakespeare) the inclusion of scenes or imagery without precedent in the script. During these kinds of productions I often feel like the director is trying to get met to eat my vegetables but, like, in a moral sense. I also leave under the impression that the director thinks they're smarter than Shakespeare. quote:Also, I just finished reading Frank Herbert's Hellstrom's Hive, having not read any other Herbert, and I'd just like to ask if you'd read it and what you thought about it if so. I was genuinely surprised it wasn't more well known because I found the first 2/3rds or so of the book gripping and fantastically executed. Uh, yeah. I'm ashamed to say that -- as an avid, lifelong reader of science fiction -- I didn't read any non-Dune Herbert until a few years ago. I haven't read Hellstrom's Hive, but Herbert is good in ways you'd never expect. I think it's fair criticism of both Herbert and Dune to say that his storytelling's at its best when its built on definite intrigue (where he's a master) and when he gives the spiritual or mystical or supernatural elements of his stories limited and definite boundaries.
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Dec 18, 2017 16:56
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Epicurius posted:He's a modern poet, so sort of removed from Shakespeare, but have you ever read Henry Reed's "Lessons of the War" poems, and if so, what do you think of them? Like every other lit. student, I read "Naming of Parts" and other postwar poetry before I had a handful of pubic hair, let alone the emotional or psychological grounding to make sense of it (the poetry, not the pubic hair). I remember writing something about "Parts's" use of anapests (which speaks to the critical aptitude of young Brainworm), but also remember thinking the poem was a suicide note (which doesn't). In college, when I picked up the bad habit of thinking every poem was a riddle, I homed in on the "easing the spring" bit; obviously the point of "Naming of Parts" was that the education of a soldier re: his rifle feels like a fifth grade sex ed class. (Like, everybody's got a thing and some don't know how to handle it.) Now that Henry Reed's thirty years gone and I'm twenty years past saying anything like "the point of the poem," the only thing I've got to add is that "Naming of Parts" is on PoemHunter, and comments on it are (bafflingly) enabled. Here's the first one: quote:Dear Mr. Reed, The concept of this poem was very interesting to me in the fact that it is not just a set of rules for war. The fact that it is all about how to build a gun and naming a gun is the most interesting part. Thank you for sharing you poem. I'm not about to assemble a variorum edition of "Naming of Parts," but if I were I'd nest this comment someplace in the footnotes. It's like a civilian performance of the absurd ineptitude that postwar writing spills so much ink to document.
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Dec 19, 2017 17:20
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Man, that's hysterical. "Dear Mr. Frost, Thank you for sharing your poem about wall building. It was very informative." "Dear Mr. Yeats, Thank you for your poem about eastern Mediterranean cruises." I remember freshman lit too. They always stuck "Naming of Parts" next to "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner". For all that Naming of Parts gets so heavily anthologized, though, while I like it, I think it's the least of the six poems, and I feel sort of bad that the lit anthologies never include any others (although maybe they're scared to put Psychological Warfare in there, which never got published until after he died. I think I like Reed's stuff because he's able to be both funny and emotionally deviating at the same time.
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Dec 19, 2017 18:44
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I thought it was hilarious when all the public-facing lit-crit types went bonkers for "The New Seriousness" when no single author of that quasi-school can approach the heartbreaking earnestness of a single dumb one-star Amazon review.
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Dec 20, 2017 23:08
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elentar posted:I thought it was hilarious when all the public-facing lit-crit types went bonkers for "The New Seriousness" when no single author of that quasi-school can approach the heartbreaking earnestness of a single dumb one-star Amazon review. What's "The New Seriousness"? All I can find on Google is some just after 9/11 articles, some piece of marketing claptrap, and some upcoming work of cultural criticism about the UK (plus general use in a number of articles). Anyway, thanks Brainworm for the reply. Hive is mostly intrigue and switching character perspectives skillfully within a single scene so it's sounds like it's Herbert playing to his strengths. It just doesn't stick the landing in a way that felt like it actually finished its plot rather then just ending. By the way, not to sound rude as you've been really busy and, as my philosophy thesis 'progresses', I'm now really appreciating just how damned hard it can be write stuff, but did you ever decide to write your book on 'how to read' (for lack of a better phrase)? I rememeber you spitballed the idea of writing an alternative to the symbolism-unlocking guides like 'How to Read Literature like a Professor'. Just occured to me as Amazon suggested that I buy the revised edition of that book.
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Dec 21, 2017 00:01
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Stabbatical posted:What's "The New Seriousness"? All I can find on Google is some just after 9/11 articles, some piece of marketing claptrap, and some upcoming work of cultural criticism about the UK (plus general use in a number of articles). Probably The New Sincerity, per poet Adam Kelly's "David Foster Wallace and the New Sincerity in American Fiction." There was a critical moment a few years back that basically defined Metamodernism (the thing that comes after Postmodernism) as characterized by a new emphasis on sincerity or authenticity. That's useful if you think our cultural moment is partly defined by Whole Food's ability to sell a $8 loaf of bread by telling a story about where it came from. But, like most criticism, "New Sincerity" says more about the backgrounds and experiences of academics than anything else. quote:Anyway, thanks Brainworm for the reply. Hive is mostly intrigue and switching character perspectives skillfully within a single scene so it's sounds like it's Herbert playing to his strengths. It just doesn't stick the landing in a way that felt like it actually finished its plot rather then just ending. That is also signature Herbert. The sometimes disorienting thing about him is that he's good at writing intrigue but less good at the wrap-up part. I don't mean that in the Chris Carter/X-Files/Battlestar Galactica way (i.e. that he creates the illusion of well-plotted intrigue by raising questions to which he doesn't have an answer). I mean that he's less good at describing the resolution of a conflict than its development. Both Dune and The Matrix have something unlikable in common, and that's a midpoint where the story prematurely shifts from problem mode to solution mode. I'll spare you the Dune spoilers, but basically -- basically -- there's a storytelling device in which the introduction of a new character or characters presents a simple resolution to interesting and complex problems. When imperfectly executed, that arc feels like the point where (at least for me) The Matrix goes seriously downhill. Morpheus shows up, tells Keanu Reeves he's the chosen one, and presents him (and us) with all the information we need to answer every interesting question we've been given. The problem is that we're like a third of the way into the story and the tension's gone. After that, it's just car chases and kung fu. Dune has a less-severe version of the same problem. It sounds like Hive might have it in reverse -- that is, the interval between the moment you see the ending coming and the moment the ending actually happens is too short and consequently disorienting. quote:By the way, not to sound rude as you've been really busy and, as my philosophy thesis 'progresses', I'm now really appreciating just how damned hard it can be write stuff, but did you ever decide to write your book on 'how to read' (for lack of a better phrase)? I rememeber you spitballed the idea of writing an alternative to the symbolism-unlocking guides like 'How to Read Literature like a Professor'. Just occured to me as Amazon suggested that I buy the revised edition of that book. That's not rude at all. I decided not to write it mostly by deciding to write other things, and most of those other things are novels. I think I mentioned this a few posts ago, but the novel-writing learning curve is longer than I thought (although maybe not any longer than I should have thought), and it's taken like two years of daily work and like two complete books to get to a point where I can write something that I'm not full-on ashamed to read. That might feel unprofessional but my writing isn't work. It's a hobby. I get raises and job offers because I manage programs and faculty well, not because people dig on my scholarship. Maybe that's because I'm a better administrator than a researcher, or maybe because the market needs competent deans more than it needs narrow-readership articles about representations of commodity scarcity in Elizabethan drama. Point is, if I'm going to write as a hobby I might as well write something that a feels less like work.
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Dec 21, 2017 14:51
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brainworm do you have a list of lit crit works that you think are essential for all lit students? e: nvm, found the one you posted a ways back chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Dec 22, 2017 |
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Dec 22, 2017 04:30
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What are your opinions on Kipling? People only ever talk about Jungle Book so I'm wondering if he's aged well.
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Dec 22, 2017 09:41
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ceaselessfuture posted:What are your opinions on Kipling? People only ever talk about Jungle Book so I'm wondering if he's aged well. Sorry to jump in, but given the non-response from Brainworm, I thought I might give my thoughts. It would be wrong to ask if Kipling has "aged well" in this context because he was never much examined by academics. Kipling is undeniably less popular with headmasters, vicars, aldermen, newspaper correspondents, and YOUR DAD than he was eighty years ago. But there is probably more lit-crit written about Kipling in the last decade than in any earlier one.
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Dec 27, 2017 19:42
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I've taught English abroad, but I'm ESL myself, and reading about the process of learning English writing is very interesting to me, I liked the story about the student who literally couldn't parse his own sentences as he actually wrote them and instead "autocorrected" them in his mind. I'm always vaguely worried that I do that all the time unknowingly, or that my writing is strange or "off" in a way I can't perceive. Now I'm doing my MA and I have to do a lot of peer reviewing of other people's essays. It always kind of annoys me how cliche-ridden academic writing tends to be. Loads of essays start with "much has been written about", have vague terms like "problematic" or "dynamic" (even respected professors like to do this, but these words get on my nerves and I want to avoid them), and always with a sprinkling of "thus" and "hence". I like academic writing that dares to be a bit more natural and doesn't hide behind conventions like that. Do you have any writing pet peeves or cliches you wish people would avoid?
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Dec 28, 2017 15:55
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Brainworm, you probably posted about this ages ago, but I'm currently a graduate student and am curious what advice you have on time management or on maintaining focus on long-term projects. Do you run your life by a strict schedule day-to-day? How did you learn to follow the workflow of intense focus of a few things at a time in grad school, and then later on, transition to the more multifaceted lifestyle of being a professor (juggling dozens of obligations with the same number of hours in the day)?
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Dec 29, 2017 16:50
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In fancy-pants literature speak, what role does quidditch really play in Harry Potter?
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Dec 31, 2017 04:17
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Baron Porkface posted:In fancy-pants literature speak, what role does quidditch really play in Harry Potter? A lot of posh English youths wearing dresses, getting high, and grasping long rods while swatting balls around: I'll let you write the paper. e: oh, I thought I was in the talk-poo poo-about-lit thread, which I also have bookmarked. I'll let the actual English prof. answer, but since I'm here you might be interested in a review I just read by Geoff Dyer of some other book about soccer. He doesn't like the book, but he does sketch some of the ways people might look at sport symbolically/philosophically. Eugene V. Dubstep fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Dec 31, 2017 |
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Dec 31, 2017 05:46
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ceaselessfuture posted:What are your opinions on Kipling? People only ever talk about Jungle Book so I'm wondering if he's aged well. If you don't like Kipling, you've never Kippled with the right person before.
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Dec 31, 2017 15:43
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chernobyl kinsman posted:brainworm do you have a list of lit crit works that you think are essential for all lit students? I'm glad you found the earlier one, because I sure couldn't. Not in five minutes on my phone, anyway. There's probably an anthology or overview volume that belongs on that list: Graham Allen's Intertextuality. It has its flaws, but is also the most lucid discussion of midcentury French Structuralism I've ever seen. That's not gonna shake the ground out from under you, but it beats the hell out of reading Palimpsests.
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Jan 4, 2018 02:04
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ceaselessfuture posted:What are your opinions on Kipling? People only ever talk about Jungle Book so I'm wondering if he's aged well. I think we talked about "If" a few years ago, and I still think it's good. Like a lot of Kipling, it's good in a "this guy is a keen observer of humanity" way more than a "this guy knows the craft of poetry" kind of way. I don't think that's a liability. The opposite, actually, since the world is full of well-schooled poets whose advice I wouldn't take if you paid me. That said, as a poet Kipling is mostly meh. I don't think you're missing anything if you haven't read "Gunga Din" or "City of Sleep." But Kipling's stories and -- especially Kim -- are another thing altogether. I haven't read Kim since graduate school, and mentioning it makes me want to pick it up again, since I remember it being an intrigue-driven bildungsroman on par with (and probably better than) Dune.
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Jan 4, 2018 02:25
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Shibawanko posted:Do you have any writing pet peeves or cliches you wish people would avoid? Yes. God in Heaven, yes. There's a whole family of academic offensiveness born from confusing pretension with genius. There's no banishing "problematic" back to whichever circle of hell conceived it. Same goes for the more general habit of substituting "impact" for "affect," which -- at least in my reading -- has been spreading like herpes. And "thus." loving thus. You've got no license to use that word unless you wear a suit of armor for a living. I could go on, but like most pet peeves mine are serial-killer specific prejudices against perfectly fine conventions. Ellipses, for instance. Stephen King is the only writer who gets to use them. (After a lifetime of writing horror he's earned the right to an ironic sinister pause.) But ellipses never ruined a piece of good writing, either. It always has some more severe but less tangible problem. The ellipses are only a symptom, like a Nike swoosh tattoo or body glitter.
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Jan 4, 2018 03:00
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Baron Porkface posted:In fancy-pants literature speak, what role does quidditch really play in Harry Potter? I can't go fancy pants. I'd love it if critics spilled ink on highly-specific terms for the ways characters get established and developed. As far as I know, nobody has. So: the Harry Potter books use quidditch as a kind of character-building shorthand -- basically the same way the original Star Trek series uses Kirk's philandering: to establish the quintessential excellence of a character whose virtues are otherwise difficult to define. That sounds like a storytelling cop-out, and when its done badly it is. We've all read stories where the protagonist is the protagonist -- and allegedly special -- for no good reason. It's why people make fun of Twilight and Mary Sue fan fiction; a protagonist who's not special has to become special. They have to earn it, like Luke does by training in the swamp with Yoda and getting slapped around by Vader. When a character doesn't earn the right to be the center of the story, we feel cheated. Also: When I was a kid, I used to watch Star Trek and think, "Wait. Spock's the smartest, strongest person on the ship. Why isn't he captain?" And that's a good question. Hermione is the smartest kid at Hogwart's. Why isn't she spearheading the fight against Voldemort (or whoever)? Isn't being the best wizard really just a matter of knowing the most magic? Isn't she the one who's earned the right to be the hero? So -- basically -- a story needs to establish the qualities that make a special character special. The trick is that some qualities are easier to establish than others. It's easy to show that someone's the smartest or the strongest or the best looking. It's harder to demonstrate the actual qualities that contribute to ordinary success. Those qualities emerge from (or are synonymous with) sustained patterns of balancing a lot of complicated things.* So in both Star Trek and Harry Potter, that work gets done by analogy. What you get in both worlds are familiar situations (sex and sports) where success is definite and repeatable but isn't directly attributable to any simple, single quality. The best boxer isn't the one who knows the most about boxing, and the most successful sex-haver isn't the one who wears the most Axe. So in Harry Potter, quidditch is the place where the story can demonstrate -- or imply -- the combination of quick thinking, impulsiveness, daring, and whatever else makes Harry a worthy and interesting hero. * Example: In the real world, you build wealth by balancing priorities, making consistently responsible decisions, and executing a well-informed strategy of risk management over the course of several decades. In good storytelling, a down-on-his luck community college adjunct finds a backpack full of meth in the parking lot. It's also possible to write a story about a character who is (or, more interestingly, was) the best at something, but even when well-executed those characters are limited. There are a lot of good stories with characters like that -- the Sherlock Holmeses, the Miles Vorkosigians -- but I can't think of a great one.
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Jan 4, 2018 04:00
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Brainworm posted:That sounds like a storytelling cop-out, and when its done badly it is. We've all read stories where the protagonist is the protagonist -- and allegedly special -- for no good reason. It's why people make fun of Twilight and Mary Sue fan fiction; a protagonist who's not special has to become special. They have to earn it, like Luke does by training in the swamp with Yoda and getting slapped around by Vader. When a character doesn't earn the right to be the center of the story, we feel cheated. Using your professional judgment, is Rey a Mary Sue? I the First Order a Villian Sue? Baron Porkface fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Jan 5, 2018 |
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Jan 5, 2018 03:34
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Is there a literary term for a story that intentionally leaves out details or plot points so that readers are encouraged to "fill in the blanks"? I know it's not literature, but I've been playing games like Bloodborne and Dark Souls and the writers intentionally don't give all the details so you basically have to infer or come to your own conclusions as to what's going on.
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Jan 5, 2018 16:52
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Vargatron posted:Is there a literary term for a story that intentionally leaves out details or plot points so that readers are encouraged to "fill in the blanks"? This isn't exactly what you're asking about, but a similar term, from Keats, is negative capability. The basic idea is that the author etc leaves things unresolved, mysterious, and uncertain, and that's ok. So, less of an implication that the reader will fill in the story properly, but more that there's value in things being uncertain and incomplete, and value in accepting that.
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Jan 6, 2018 20:14
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RIP ZEEZ
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eveyrone i know hates palimpsests. why does everyone hate palimpsests? ive never read palimpsests
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Jan 15, 2018 04:13
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Baron Porkface posted:Using your professional judgment, is Rey a Mary Sue? I the First Order a Villian Sue? Using my professional judgment, and not having seen Last Jedi, Rey and the First Order seem like less vibrant imitations of Luke and the Empire. Like, how does Rey need to change? Luke was a whiny, impatient, entitled mess and while that makes him occasionally irritating that's also the point. Characters move from innocence to adequacy by negotiating well-defined emotional obstacles that stand in the way of their competence. Not by just learning how a lightsaber works. That kind of character arc (innocence to adequacy) makes for good storytelling because it's a mirror to human experience. For the most part, everyone's smart and talented enough to do anything that doesn't require actual genius. Very few people learn to navigate the emotional and psychological obstacles that keep them from realizing whatever their potential would otherwise be. That's the ordinary struggle, and why there are way more stories about overcoming addiction than about passing standardized tests. That's not a problem with Rey, exactly. It's a problem with storytelling. J. J. Abrams has strengths as a writer and director, but his characters don't change so much as you just find out more about them. That works well for traditional TV and for projects like Star Trek (where character development is practically blasphemy), and lord knows that the deep dive into the story of Anakin Skywalker birthed three Star Wars installments that make Force Awakens look like Citizen Kane. And it's also possible that I didn't pay enough attention to the right parts of Force Awakens. But come on. The difference between Star Wars and its thousands of imitators is a cast of characters will well-defined flaws who figure things out. And yeah, sometimes it's blocky and hamfisted (like when Han shows up to blast Vader off of Luke's six), but that's okay. Not everything has to be subtle. The Beatles can have Ringo and still do fine. Anyway. I'ma watch Last Jedi eventually and hopefully end up eating my words.
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Jan 16, 2018 16:41
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foutre posted:This isn't exactly what you're asking about, but a similar term, from Keats, is negative capability. The basic idea is that the author etc leaves things unresolved, mysterious, and uncertain, and that's ok. That's as good as I can do, although I know I'm missing something obvious. Another tool that might help is the dramatist's basic distinction between plot and story. Story is the sequence of events as they occur in chronological order. Plot is the reordering of those events in order to maximize their dramatic effectiveness. That's what you're supposed to get with flashbacks and forwards and jigsaw-puzzle storytelling, although I've come to think of at least flashbacks as signs that it's time to cut the date short -- like Nike swoosh tattoos or pet rodents. A retreat to the past is the first sign a writer doesn't know where they're headed. That's different from using a narrator to recount the events of a story after the fact. That's one sign of a good read -- at least when it means the writer knew the end of the story when they wrote the beginning. I overuse Stephen King as an example, but here it goes anyway: He has a problem with endings.* But not always. I'd bet a finger that King is a beginning-to-end writer, and so when he writes a first-person opening I know he began with the end in mind.** That's not surefire. Gerald's Game's ending hangs on like a lamprey, but 1922's is craftsman. * That's overstatement. The right statement is someplace closer to "Stephen King's endings do not betray the consistent strengths otherwise characteristic of his writing." Really, his worst endings are about Toni Morrison level. ** I see it more in his short stories and novellas than his novels, for sure. Kinda sucks that the short story is a dead form.
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Jan 16, 2018 17:14
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chernobyl kinsman posted:eveyrone i know hates palimpsests. why does everyone hate palimpsests? ive never read palimpsests Everything that makes the French insufferable congregates in their academic writing like pinworms in a dog turd. Brainworm fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Jan 16, 2018 |
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Jan 16, 2018 17:26
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Style question I've somehow never come across before (and as a bonus, my grammar nomenclature is about three years rusted, so this might come out like a freshman trying to sound cool but eating poo poo): is it kosher to use a pronoun if the antecedent is inside an em dash clause? Like,Questioning Quinn posted:Cuba Libre is about man named Ben Tyler -- a reluctant gun-runner who falls in love with a woman named Amelia Brown -- and his struggle to take back money stolen by her ex-lover. I know that wouldn't work as a parenthetical because they're (generally) for incidental information, Turgid rear end posted:Cuba Libre is about man named Ben Tyler (a reluctant gun-runner who falls in love with a woman named Amelia Brown), and his struggle to take back money stolen by her ex-lover. but I don't know if em dash clauses (is there a term for them?) work by the same set of rules since they're generally meant to emphasize information.
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Feb 22, 2018 02:16
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3Romeo posted:Style question I've somehow never come across before (and as a bonus, my grammar nomenclature is about three years rusted, so this might come out like a freshman trying to sound cool but eating poo poo): is it kosher to use a pronoun if the antecedent is inside an em dash clause? Like, You mean the antecedent to her? My grammar terminology is also rusty, but that sentence is using dashes to set off an appositive phrase—they could just as easily be replaced with parentheses or commas depending on how you want the sentence to read. In that use case, they mark the phrase as non-restrictive, which it isn't. If you remove the phrase, the sentence no longer makes any sense: "Cuba Libre is about [a] man named Ben Tyler and his struggle to take back money stolen by her ex-lover." Wallet fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Feb 23, 2018 |
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Feb 23, 2018 23:21
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Great, thank you. I've been playing this by ear for so long I've gone senile on the rules.
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Feb 24, 2018 20:33
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3Romeo posted:Great, thank you. I've been playing this by ear for so long I've gone senile on the rules. FWIW, Strunk and White Rule 16 (Omit Needless Words) has guidance on what I think is this exact issue: quote:The subject of a sentence and the principal verb should not, as a rule, be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning. [This is what I think you think sounds wrong. I could be really wrong about that.] I think this means that in Strunk's world of style, you could set off your appositive with commas or parentheses as easily as em dashes. But I'd follow your lead and use either em dashes or parentheses in this case (depending on how much you want to emphasize the appositive). Too many commas pulling too many duties in a sentence gets confusing.
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Feb 25, 2018 14:02
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I got an MA in creative writing a few years back, adjuncted for a bit, and then when I didn't get into any PhD programs with funding I went corporate and I've been tech writing for 4 years now. I'm dead tired of it and I really miss teaching. I loving love teaching. From an English professor's point of view, should I go back and get PhD, or is there a different path I should take? I'm actually thinking of going rhetoric/composition and maybe seeing if I can get into teaching media literacy and/or professional writing, that kind of thing. My main concern is that I really would be in it to teach, and I've been out of academia for long enough that I don't know how realistic that is anymore. I have no problem doing a lot of teaching-adjacent stuff, being on committees and advising and all of that, but I have little to no interest in having to publish constantly to justify my employment. I know a lot of smaller schools are more likely to hire professors to teach rather than research/publish, but I'm guessing there aren't a ton of those jobs out there.
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Mar 8, 2018 17:39
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Harrow posted:I got an MA in creative writing a few years back, adjuncted for a bit, and then when I didn't get into any PhD programs with funding I went corporate and I've been tech writing for 4 years now. I'm dead tired of it and I really miss teaching. I loving love teaching. The job market, even for adjunct spots, is extremely competitive. Your best angle will probably be to leverage your experience as a tech writer to get a position teaching tech writing in some kind of vocational program. There is far more demand for that kind of teaching than for anything else. Start applying. The PhD probably won't improve your ability to get those positions, and the positions for which the PhD will qualify you are either not worth the opportunity cost, or they're more or less lotteries with a 4-6 year commitment as a ticket price. The best reason to do the PhD is because you want to do it and you have enough funding that it won't put you into debt. I discourage pursuing the PhD for a job opportunity, and that goes double if you don't have funding.
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Mar 8, 2018 21:06
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I have an avid yearning e-adventure aboot English et. al. Writing papers in college about satire over the boring lessons they taught gave me new insight on how I literally hate all English professors tbh Please enlighten me on the juiciness of this bit - as my highly acclaimed youngest sibling quotes as, "A novel idea." [A Step Too Far] "One Mans Quest for Pizza." Amy Solenberg, late as usual.. The boss is going to go ballistic over her tardiness once again, I hope she has a semi-decent rhetorical .. "Johnson!, where is that partner in time of yours?!!" Me being blissfully unaware of the situation. "Tony there's only one of two places she could possibly be!" (Well, three if you count my gently caress two timing colleague assistant editor for the San Fransisco Yellow Pages.) "I remember her telling me her cat was ill, boss..." She later shows up to work with a box full of kittens That's all I've gotten so far As an English Prof. You must humor the first paragraph of this enthralling tail of investigative reporting with a sinister review/critique
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Mar 9, 2018 00:54
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Harrow posted:I got an MA in creative writing a few years back, adjuncted for a bit, and then when I didn't get into any PhD programs with funding I went corporate and I've been tech writing for 4 years now. I'm dead tired of it and I really miss teaching. I loving love teaching. If I were in your shoes, I'd build on that MFA in Creative Writing. It's just as marketable than a PhD in rhet/comp or lit. Creative Writing is a growing field; if you can land a PEN or a Pushcart you'll have job offers. Six years' work getting a couple books out, or publishing some stories, is a lot less expensive and has a lot more upside than six years in a PhD program. That said, teaching Creative Writing requires a tolerance for poetry and fiction written by 20-year-olds. I don't know how CW people do it. I judge a poetry contest once a year and it's all I can handle. They write about sex like they're the first people to figure it out. If you go rhet/comp, you can expect to find a lot of positions built on three- and five-year renewable contracts. The AAUP acts like this is the end of the world, but it's the same thing as tenure if you're not either totally insane or an inveterate slacker. Whichever route you go, your median base pay as Assistant Professor (rhet/comp or Creative Writing) is like $56K. That's $3k lower than the median salary for high school teachers. A professorship is a better job, in the sense that it's more flexible, but only if that level of pay makes sense for you. Honestly -- honestly -- a professorship in the humanities is a hobby that happens to carry an income. I make about three times as much investing, and it takes about a third the time. If you do go for a PhD, do it in a top-25 program, don't pay for it, and do it with spousal support. That support doesn't need to be financial; if you're good, you can expect to get a good job at a good college if you're willing to move. I've seen a dozen marriages end over that last point.
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Mar 9, 2018 02:59
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Brainworm posted:If I were in your shoes, I'd build on that MFA in Creative Writing. It's just as marketable than a PhD in rhet/comp or lit. Creative Writing is a growing field; if you can land a PEN or a Pushcart you'll have job offers. Six years' work getting a couple books out, or publishing some stories, is a lot less expensive and has a lot more upside than six years in a PhD program. You know, I'm surprised that creative writing is actually marketable--that certainly wasn't the attitude in my program when I was around. It was also an MA program, though, not an MFA--Ohio University has an MA and PhD, but no MFA. Still, from what I remember, creative writing jobs likely care a lot more about your writing and publication than what specific kind of degree you have. I've actually never taught creative writing, but I have very clear memories of my own college-level writing workshops and what sort of writing my fellow students were submitting. And I really wasn't much better. I was probably worse, because I thought I knew what I was doing. Still, I probably have a higher tolerance for that kind of thing than most. I'm one of those weird people who actually likes teaching first-year composition, for example. Granted, that's a very different kind of writing, but still an avalanche of bad essays from 18-year-olds who are convinced they've finally cracked the code on <insert hot-button issue here>. Brainworm posted:Whichever route you go, your median base pay as Assistant Professor (rhet/comp or Creative Writing) is like $56K. That's $3k lower than the median salary for high school teachers. A professorship is a better job, in the sense that it's more flexible, but only if that level of pay makes sense for you. Honestly -- honestly -- a professorship in the humanities is a hobby that happens to carry an income. I make about three times as much investing, and it takes about a third the time. This part drives home that I should probably be looking at other options, too. That salary level is about where I am now, and honestly I don't know how much more I expect to make with my education and experience--technical writing has a decent amount of jobs available, but enough supply of applicants that we don't really command high salaries--but the idea of going back to school just to come back and make less than I would if I'd just become a high school teacher and taught for that amount of time is pretty daunting.
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Mar 9, 2018 16:12
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Harrow posted:[...] That salary level is about where I am now, and honestly I don't know how much more I expect to make with my education and experience--technical writing has a decent amount of jobs available, but enough supply of applicants that we don't really command high salaries--but the idea of going back to school just to come back and make less than I would if I'd just become a high school teacher and taught for that amount of time is pretty daunting. There's also the long game. The Chronicle's salary survey data peg the average salary for an Associate (tenured) English professor at about $63K -- which is still high-school teacher money. A Full Professor pulls about $80K (average) though. That's 12-15 years in, assuming everything goes well, but it puts you ahead of HS teacher pay (unless you're in NYC or some corner case like that). That's assuming a Tenure-Track job, but if the ceiling for your tech writing pay is in the $50Ks it might be worth exploring. And -- I can't stress this enough -- teaching at a college beats the hell out of teaching at a high school. The facilities are nicer, there's scheduling flexibility, and the students are terrible shots. Also: You're right that CW jobs care more about publications than degrees. If you want a Tenure-Track Creative Writing job, you've got to have some awards on your CV. I've seen a few writers land their first Tenure-Track job the same year they get a Pushcart nomination, if that gives you any idea.
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Mar 9, 2018 18:26
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KingBomber69 posted:[...] Amy Solenberg, late as usual.. The boss is going to go ballistic over her tardiness once again, I hope she has a semi-decent rhetorical .. "Johnson!, where is that partner in time of yours?!!" Me being blissfully unaware of the situation. "Tony there's only one of two places she could possibly be!" (Well, three if you count my gently caress two timing colleague assistant editor for the San Fransisco Yellow Pages.) "I remember her telling me her cat was ill, boss..." That paragraph reads like it was generated by a Markov chain.
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Mar 9, 2018 18:31
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Brainworm posted:That's assuming a Tenure-Track job, but if the ceiling for your tech writing pay is in the $50Ks it might be worth exploring. And -- I can't stress this enough -- teaching at a college beats the hell out of teaching at a high school. The facilities are nicer, there's scheduling flexibility, and the students are terrible shots. I think as one of the tiny minority of phds to get a permanent academic position your perspective might be somewhat skewed here! It is extremely unlikely that doing a phd will result in getting the job you describe, even if you assume that phd is from a relatively prestigious program.
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Mar 9, 2018 20:34
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:I think as one of the tiny minority of phds to get a permanent academic position your perspective might be somewhat skewed here! It is extremely unlikely that doing a phd will result in getting the job you describe, even if you assume that phd is from a relatively prestigious program. I don't disagree with you. I'm definitely not advising Harrow to get a PhD. There's no sense in it. There are more Tenure-Track CW jobs than there are in any two lit. subfields put together, and Harrow already has a terminal CW degree. So -- just assuming Harrow wants to change careers to chase their love of teaching -- publishing a bunch of stuff is a low-cost strategy to become a candidate for a TT CW job. If that fails, they can always step into High School, but since the long-term prospects there aren't better than their current tech writing job, that sounds like it ought to be Plan B.
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Mar 9, 2018 21:43
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Yeah, don't worry, I'm not reading any of this advice as "totally get a PhD, you'll definitely get a job." If nothing else, I know enough to never go to grad school in the humanities without 100% funding and a stipend. Ever. Ever. But even beyond that, I'm well aware that the job prospects aren't that great. Of my colleagues from my MA program, most have left academia like me. A couple went into PhD programs and quit after a couple years because they were miserable. And I think three actually finished PhDs and got jobs, only one of which is tenure track, and all of them are living in places I'd never want to move to. I'd love to get back into teaching but it's an unfortunate reality that it's not a career that's ever going to pay well. I'd hoped that something like rhet/comp would still be interesting and provide a better chance at getting a good teaching position than other areas, but at the same time I'm not especially surprised that isn't the case. The other thing I'm considering is going and getting an MS in speech-language pathology so I can practice speech therapy, which one of my friends from my MA program did. That's lower investment than a PhD (both in time and money spent) and drat near guarantees decent-paying employment just about anywhere in the English-speaking world, but that's a discussion for a different thread, because that's got plenty of downsides too 
Harrow fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Mar 9, 2018 |
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Mar 9, 2018 22:01
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