Author Archives: Boyle

Thoughts on Presentation and advice concerning bears

It’s interesting. My rehearsal process for presentations is generally similar to my writing process. I rewrite–or in this case, re-rehearse over and over–in such a way that I’m comfortable with how things begin, but I run into problems as they progress. I had a great many ideas that I wanted to reconcile into an overall thesis, perhaps too many; it felt more scattered-brained than I’d hoped. But I believe I conveyed the general ideas well enough.And I was also charming. Humble too.I spent the presentation trying to keep in mind the inherent connection between high and low-minded fare. After all, it’s been said that the only difference between tragedy and comedy is the music. Show a scene where a young girl is stalked by a chainsaw-wielding maniac, throw in some menacing, ambient music, and you have a tense scene. Throw in calliope music and you have absurdity, a situation wherein the character fails to realize her nightmare is actually grist for the audience’s sense of humor.

This theory extends to composition as well. Consider one of the short stories presented in class, O’ Flaherty’s “The Sniper;” it ends with the chilling comment “Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother’s face,” which, if taken for comedic effect, could almost seem like a punch line. How often has something similar happened in a soap opera (“You don’t understand, Dirk! You can’t kill Logan! He’s your long-lost brother!”)

My point, I suppose, is that this stuff is not hard to write, nor are jokes of an oral tradition hard to convey, as long as they are approached from the proper standpoint. Though the emotional impact is often marginalized, it still exists at the fringes of the text, and can be surreptitiously approached in a way that avoids the author’s initial hesitance to tackle dramatic storytelling–which any author, student or otherwise, always worries is beyond their capabilities as a writer. Indeed, they often find it beyond their capabilities as a reader of text, which is why they often consider deeper interpretation to be pointless.

“We Can Get Them for You Wholesale,” superficially, is an elaborate comic set piece, but it’s also a condemnation of the Costco-ification of American capitalism, and the marginalization of the human condition in a world where the ethics of right and wrong are replaced with fiscal responsibility (and possibility). In such a way, the final page is not just the culmination of a clever comic conceit, but also a memorable and discomfiting epiphany of sorts.

My idea was that certain texts lend themselves to being experienced almost as a performance, most specifically those that have connections with oral folklore. And, considering many of the ideas we’ve gone over in class up to this point–popcorn readings, interactive groups, reading texts as plays–it seemed like a good idea to choose a text which lent itself to those aspects.

In retrospect, I should’ve placed it within the context of those ideas: Blau’s most specifically. I also failed to place the presentation within a theoretical context overall. Although there were shades of Graff in the presentation (combating indifference and self-doubt, in writing and interpretation), it was mostly general. Even still, I suppose I was pleased.

This class has been enjoyable. I certainly hope I see those of you still enrolled around campus in the future. As for everyone else, Vaya con dios and all of that.

Also, additional advice: never hug a bear; they don’t like it.

The Use of Athletics in Teaching Both Academic and Personal Voice, a Very Long Title Which I Will Shorten in the Near Future, but for Now Will Leave as Long Because I Am Feeling Whimsical

 Like I said, I owe another post on Graff: 

It’s fascinating to read Graff’s discussion of Hidden Intellectualism in sport and how his experiences in athletics invariably led to, influenced, and developed his intellectual development. I find it interesting because the sports he participated in are those of an accepted tradition, such as football and baseball, whereas I experienced many of the same tendencies, but in the much more marginalized sport of swimming.

In this intellectual context, Graff’s athletic experiences are comparable to the sciences, which in education never need to justify their own existence. And yet he is writing from a cultural context which connects sport to intellectual development in the area of argumentative formulation, most specifically in the humanities, which he—and most other literary theorists in academia—have always sought to raise up to a level of importance on par with the sciences. But my experiences, in a sport which was often derisively referred to as a sport for sissies (yes, swimmers often do wear small suits in anticipation of big meets; no, it does not bother us), are comparable to those of academics continually having to justify their own existences.

Ironical.

The inferiority complex of the humanities—“we are important! Really!”—is bypassed by equating the argumentation learned in English class to those sports which would, in any other metaphor, represent the sciences. In a way, Graff’s argument here is his first chance to get to be the bully, whereas athletes such as myself have to continue to justify the worth of our own sport (Really? You swim? Don’t you guys shave your legs?).

At present, this is just an amusing quirk of circumstance that doesn’t mean much to the overall teaching of academics; however, I plan to expand this post (in scope, but not really in length), to include the personally constructed mythos at the core of sport. Not only does sport—and the arguing over the trivial and/or specific aspects of it—train student’s for intellectual life in a statistical sense, it also trains them in the story-telling aspects of the humanities.

Athletics is an intensely melodramatic medium of expression (why else would we make so many by-the-numbers, inspirational films about it?), and arguing over the merits of its principal athletes is just part of how it can lead a student to join the field of academic discourse. After all, insomuch as Graff is intensely interested in the dichotomy between academic and personal voice, the melodramatic tendencies taught by athletic endeavors influence our personal voice as much as the statistical debates hone our academic ones.

-Matt

Abbot vs. Costello

 I owe some posts, so this post concerns the first half of Clueless in Academe. The second will be posted tomorrow morning. It’s also long, so…sorry. 

On my first day as a high school senior, my English teacher passed out a poem and asked us to respond to it. All I remember about the poem itself is that I kind of liked it. My response to it, however, I have never forgotten.

I formulated a proof: incomprehensible poetry, by and large, is afforded a place of reverence in the canon of literary studies by virtue of the Emperor’s Clothes singularity. Nobody understands it; therefore, everyone affects a suitable level of comprehension/adulation for fear of being exposed as a fraud. Comprehensible poetry, however–and here I referred to the pleasant though forgettable poem assigned–is, to a large extent, marginalized for not living up to the standards of a hypothetically “brilliant” poem. Namely, not making sense.

(I was a bit cruder in my verbiage).

I thought this assertion was exceedingly clever. Brilliant poetry is chosen via mob mentality! Damn the accessible! While a bit smug, it did place the poem in a larger cultural context. At the very least, it was better than saying “I liked it. It was pretty.”

But since my contention was averred with a younger man’s conceit, my teacher thought I was derisively referring to the poem as an example of the “incomprehensible” poetry he was supposedly under fire for worshipping. I tried to reassure him otherwise–I had liked the poem, I had understood it; and, as per my argument, this was why I had never heard of it before, and probably never would again–but he ignored me in favor of demanding evidence as to why I found it incomprehensible.

There’s nothing worse than being asked to defend a claim you haven’t made by a man who’s not listening to the substance of your answers in the first place.

I changed tactics, pointing to the poetry of Emily Dickinson–which I had never been able to understand–as something that “sucked” but was beloved because of its incomprehensibility. At this he almost wept with triumph. Grinning from ear to ear, he told me “Au contraire. I find her poetry to be wonderful,” and then he launched into a rehearsed speech about why poetry was wonderful, and why idiots who didn’t understand it were idiots. Not that he called me an idiot; he just gave me an artificial, condescending smile which made him look like a bloated puppet.

Personally, I would’ve preferred being called an idiot.

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I’d been played for a patsy. My teacher had laid out a path for discussion, but in order to segue to the next movement he needed a foil, a dupe, someone to play the straw man. He put words in my mouth the very same way that I–and many other students–have often taken sources out of context to support our own contentions in research papers. He was trying to fit me into the exemplary mold of the boy who didn’t like poetry because he didn’t “get” it.

It was a preemptive strike against Graff’s “problem problem,” the phenomenon by which academics seem to cultivate–or even invent–problems for the simple sake of argument. The student resists this syndrome, opting to disregard subtext–the invention if which is “profoundly counterintuitive,” since it is a needless complication–in favor of what the perfectly self-explanatory text has to say (45-46).

Or, in my case, what it failed to say.

To extend Graff’s contention, I would argue that, for many students, the very existence of certain texts–especially poetry–seems to be a needless complication. If the student is reluctant to read past the most obvious meaning of the text, it stands to reason that, if their superficial reading finds the text to be meaningless, they will presume the act of reading it to be a cultural prank on a worldwide scale. The student does not wonder “why can’t the teacher agree with my straightforward reading?” so much as they look at the text and say, “They can’t be serious.”

In my case, I wasn’t just saying that the meaning of “incomprehensible” poetry was being lost in a sea of specious reasoning; I was insisting that all interpretations were nothing more than water in that same sea. In short, difficult poetry was worthless.

But then, I was also being facetious. I was making a slightly tongue-in-cheek observation that most brilliant poetry seemed to be incomprehensible, and therefore was automatically deemed “brilliant!’ as a result, not because of its inherent value. I wasn’t attacking the text, merely the culture which taught it.

Which begs a question: how much of what students resist is the artificiality of rubric as opposed to the artificiality of subtext? I would argue that the student is not entirely rebelling against the need to dress the text up in meaning, but more that they are chafing against the methods by which they are directed to do so. A teacher can play devil’s advocate to a discussion about the “obvious” conflict of a text, and in so doing challenge what the student is saying and by proxy what they think.

But, like my senior English teacher, they aren’t interested in interacting, so much as playing the role they’ve already decided to play. The “problem problem” is as much a result of teachers wanting to maintain momentum in the lesson plan as it is an inherent natural desire of the student to maintain simplicity in the text.

Graff acknowledges that, “from a certain commonsense point of view, academia’s cultivation of problems looks manufactured, perverse, and silly,” so much so that it seems “tedious and pointless, an infinite regress that goes nowhere” (46-47). For students and for casual observers, it would be funny if it weren’t so frustrating. But my point concerns something different than the intrinsic need of academia–specifically within the arts–to justify its own existence. Consider an examples of this frustration that Graff offers; it’s almost droll: “the only thing overanalyzing leads to is boredom” (44).

If that particular sentiment couldn’t serve as a straight line, I don’t know what could.

To take the metaphor further, the student becomes the straight man, the feed, the stooge, the guy serving up softballs for the other comic/pundit to hit out of the park. They serve as a kind of collective Bud Abbot, continually trying to assure the professor “Who’s on first.” But they’re not doing so in order to be part of a joke. They’re making a self-consciously facetious statement in anticipation of being informed otherwise. Unfortunately, the teacher seems intent on fulfilling the other side of this vaudeville act, acting so deliberately obtuse that they have no choice other than to reply “that’s what I’m asking you!”

It’s a verbal dance that, once identified, can be better understood. I’d try and make it make more sense, but I’ve gone on way to long already.

 – Matt

Comment on comment on Aliens

This is a response to Prof. Sample’s comment on Aliens, but it’s long and the format doesn’t work very well in the comment section, so I’ll put it here too:

I wasn’t really responding to Scholes so much as I was responding to “Story of an Hour;” offering, in a way, an interpretation for how to teach it. Chopin’s tale isn’t just a feminist parable, nor a lesson about the economy of storytelling in general; it also follows the conventions of an elaborate joke. The reader response can be similar to an interpretation found in Blau of “Any Minute Mom Should Come Blasting Through the Door.” This interpretation found the piece to be an extended verbal joke based on exaggerated forms of hyperbole. In “Story of an Hour,” there is a dissonance between what’s at stake–Mrs. Mallard’s freedom, her autonomy, her happiness, her very life–and the fairness, or lack thereof, of the abrupt finish. Chopin waxes poetic about grief, about misery, about the idiosyncrasies of life that make it worth living or worth exiting. Then, she finishes with a quick “Oops. Her husband is still alive…aaaaaand now she’s dead.” The only thing missing is the soundtrack going Wah-wah-wah-waaaaaaaaaah.

Of course, this reading overlooks the subtext of that final sentence–“When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease–of the joy that kills.”–undermining the duality of the juxtaposed superficial and deeper meanings: she was being rewarded/she was being punished; she died of happiness/she died of misery; her heart broke with joy/she was heartbroken. But those meanings also serve as commentary on the feminist reading. No matter the eloquence of feminine liberation, it’s attainment is still as ephemeral as a dream that evaporates upon waking. Snap of a finger. The passage of a few sentences. The beat before the punch line.

I believe more fiction utilizes this technique than we recognize. As for “Aliens!,” it’s not that good a story, but I do make use of a punch line rooted in human narcissism. When the little purple hermaphrodite informs Dan that he has effectively annihilated an entire species, Dan’s essential reaction is to mourn the loss of what would’ve been a cushy life: “What happens to me?”

It’s also a simple mockery of the human desire for exploration and understanding of our own universe. Here exists an entire culture that Dan can barely fathom–sometimes noble, sometimes petty, bizarre in appearance and action, prone to exploding–and it’s gone before he can even recognize that its destruction was his fault. I suppose it’s a bit too self-consciously irreverent, only showing a small inclination towards that melancholy near the end; but, in my own way, I tried to set it up with a punch line that mirrored what I understood about Chopin’s story, and about storytelling in general.

In a class last semester, we spoke of a technique for understanding a text that involved transcription. Copying the text to see how the author went about writing it. Well, if writing is merely thinking on a page, writing a story that duplicates what the student understood to be the intent of the original is arguably the best way to think about it, regardless of how successful the duplication. After all, inspiration does not mean imitation.

My comment about Scholes was not really connected; I was merely tired and didn’t want to produce a post that would be completely interchangeable with what everyone else was already saying (and therefore get lost in the shuffle). The argument over this kind of theory always seems to devolve into an argument over semantics, the primary contention being how to say “New Criticism bad, Reader-Response good.” Check your ego at the door and teach the student how to learn to learn, not to learn what your telling them.

A fine enough contention. But everybody puts up this specter of the egocentric teaching of yesteryear like one of those blow-up dolls with sand in the bottom that children are encouraged to pummel even though they always pop right back up. Easy targets, but pointless targets as well. A caricature of the real problem. Why else does Laura contend that lectures are not the problem, bad lectures are? Why else does J.J. contend that the five-part-paragraph, while useless in its pure form as anything other than a literary artifact, can still have use as a building block? Everyone in class is looking for happy mediums, but no one’s necessarily happy about the mediums being presented in the readings. The texts just keep preaching to the choir under the guise of saying something new.

I suppose this comment would’ve made a better post. But hey, that just means that the comment is in the post and the post is in the comment; it’s backwards! Hilarity!

Ba-dum-bum.

Aliens!

Sorry, my brain is paste right now. I think of Scholes, I think of footwear. His discussion of literary theory feels like it’s going in circles. Tired. I shall post a story I wrote inspired by “Story of an Hour.” Always seemed like an anecdotal story for strictly introductory purposes; all fiction is an elaborate joke to get to a drawn-out punchline:

One day, Dan Freeman was abducted by aliens. These aliens were gentle but firm. They promised to cook, clean, and provide entertainment for him until such time as their study of human behavioral patterns came to an end. All he needed to do was be himself.

Though angry, Dan was also rather excited. It seemed like a nice gig, especially in light of his recent employment opportunities—or lack thereof.

“Finally,” he thought, as the little purple man who was his host finished gesticulating with his three arms (which might have been feet). “I’m finally getting what I deserve. All my needs will be taken care of, and all my days will be a breeze.”

“Zorsplatt!” the little purple man exclaimed. Dan nodded and favored him with a blank smile. His Splurbian translator operated on a ten-second delay. In a moment, the stentorian tones of television actor and history channel narrator Edward Herrmann flowed into his ears: “And, in conclusion, we shall select a mate for you, engaging in a worldwide search of your home planet.”

“Wow!” Dan said. “You said all that in just one word?”

“Snarf blug, chesekstan. Snedley sploo. Elta fremon che so la la garfnoddle. Deweda dweda ne ne.”

In ten seconds time, Edward Herrmann’s mellifluous tones translated this statement as “Indeed.”

“Huh. My own space girlfriend. Do I get to choose?”

The little purple man did a back flip, or perhaps he stood up—Dan wasn’t exactly sure what part of his captor was the head—and unleashed a torrent of rapid-fire gibberish. In a few moments, Edward Herrmann assured Dan they were counting on his input.

“Man, you guys thought of everything.”

“Flurble!” said the little purple man.

“I am not a guy,” Edward Herrmann translated. “I am a hermaphrodite.”

“Oh.”

A door slid open and a little purple chef with an ample belly—or perhaps an enormous cranium—waddled in. He was carrying two gourmet dishes on his tentacle-arms and he skittered across the room on his hundreds of little legs (which might have been hair). “Splattle!” he said. Ten seconds later the powerful voice of veteran character actor and history channel narrator Keith David said “I have brought forth your sustenance!” He slapped the dish down and removed the top; inside, hundreds of little bugs wriggled.

“Um,” Dan said.

The little purple chef slapped his fat belly—which, as it turns out, probably was his head—and gibbered for a bit. “Oops,” Keith David translated. “My Bad. This meal is not for you.” He handed it over to the little purple hermaphrodite, who quickly dug in. He placed an alternate plate before Dan, lifting the top to reveal a well-cooked steak, mashed potatoes and asparagus.

“Ah,” Dan said. “Much better. Although, for future reference, I’m not really a fan of asparagus.”

The little purple hermaphrodite choked on a mouthful of grub; hacking it up, he/she let out a piercing scream. Edward Herrmann soon joined in. The little purple chef looked stricken (I think), at least until the little purple hermaphrodite pulled out an object that looked like a pencil and fired an incandescent beam of tightly focused energy through the little purple chef’s belly/head, coating the wall behind him in a gooey splatter of purple guts. The little purple chef screamed and fell down dead. I stared at the corpse for a full ten seconds before Keith David said “Aaargh!”

“Splittle splottle fooby booby splay nog,” screamed the little purple hermaphrodite, his/her arms fluttering above him/her like a deformed, waving balloon at a car dealership.

“We do not take kindly to failure amongst our staff!” Edward Herrmann translated huffily.

“Evidently,” Dan said, looking down at the little purple chef—now the little dead chef. He gulped and turned back to his dinner. How would he be able to eat now? He winced and began picking at the mashed potatoes.

Dan and the little purple hermaphrodite dined in silence for a few minutes, Dan careful not to touch any of the offending vegetables. He wondered idly if his voice was being translated into a mildly famous Splurbian celebrity. Probably so. He wasn’t sure why, but the thought actually pleased him. As he began debating which celebrity would be best suited for his voice—perhaps the Splurbian equivalent of Edward Norton—he cut at his steak with greater enthusiasm. He spared a glance behind him and saw that the little dead chef, as well as the mess made by his passing, had disappeared.

“Wow,” he thought. “What service!”

As the little purple hermaphrodite and Dan went over the criteria for his stay—indefinite, but pleasant—they finished their respective meals. By the end of dinner Dan was almost certain that he’d imagined the little purple chef entirely. After all, he was in an alien spaceship talking to a creature whose anatomy he couldn’t even fathom.

Anything was possible.

An hour later, after a delicious dessert of caramel apple pie for Dan, and roaches for the little purple hermaphrodite, the two were looking through the Victoria’s secret catalogue for a mate. Suddenly, a little purple man in a little purple HAZMAT suit rushed into the room.

“Flibble flobble,” he wailed. Ten seconds later, the dulcet tones of Meryl Streep translated this sentence as “Code Seventeen-B!” and then the little purple man—probably a little purple woman—exploded, splattering the inside of her little purple suit with little purple guts.

The little purple hermaphrodite seemed to sigh—or perhaps fart—and put the catalogue away.

“What happened?” Dan asked.

When he/she answered, the little purple hermaphrodite’s voice had a fatalistic quality to it. Edward Herrmann almost seemed to take longer, as if he were reluctant to translate. But translate he did.

“We made an unforgivable error,” Edward Herrmann said, voice cracking. “It seems your species carries a certain bacterium which ours cannot tolerate for a sustained period of time. We are all exposed. Though it takes a variable amount of time for death to occur; sometimes earlier, as in the case of my dear wife Garfsblaggle,”—he gestured to the little purple pile of goo in the little purple HAZMAT suit—“and sometimes a little longer, death is nevertheless inevitable. Honestly, I could detonate at any moment.”

“Oh my,” Dan said. “Is there anything I can do?”

The little purple hermaphrodite sighed, looking not at Dan but into the eyes of the Fourth Horseman, and gabbled a bit more.

“No,” Edward Herrmann translated. “Our race is telepathically linked via brainwave. Your bacterium will destroy us all, even those on our home planet…Splurbia.”

“No!”

“Yes,” said Edward Herrmann.

“But, what will happen to me?”

“You shall be returned to your home planet immediately. I am sorry we did not get to continue our association much longer, Dan. But, in the short time I’ve known you, I feel safe calling you…friend.” He held out a tentacle-arm, the last act of a doomed hermaphrodite feeling the ephemeral breath of some slouching beast upon his neck (or perhaps upon his ankle). Dan reached out his hand, a single tear rolling down his cheek…and then the little purple hermaphrodite exploded. Dan was coated with purple substance that felt like a mixture of jelly, honey, and Jell-o.

Ten seconds later, Edward Herrmann said “aaaah…”

In a moment, lights appeared before Dan’s eyes, a deep thrum hummed in his ears, and he found himself in the food court where he’d been abducted. He looked at the people milling by, so blissfully unaware of the truth behind the curtain of their own consciousness. So sad. So short-sighted. So small they all were, so oblivious to the presence of life beyond the stars.

And then Dan laughed.

After all, there was nothing to be oblivious about anymore.

-Matt (maybe)

Revision at the Eleventh Hour

The most obvious consistency of my posts, from week to week, is how reckless they are. Not in the sense that they’re the posts of a renegade bucking against the establishment; more in the sense that “this-is-barely-a-draft-and-I-haven’t-yet-come-to-a-conclusion.” It’s apparent that the posts were written in the last couple of hours before ten each Wednesday. It’s not that the writing is poor; it’s just that the phrasing is sometimes awkward, the examples can be unclear, and meaning is much less definitive than it seemed on first glance. These are the kind of things you can’t see until you put writing away—for a day at least—before looking at it again.

My weakness is also my code, however. I often exalt the act of eleventh-hour writing in my posts, either explicitly or implicitly. In “Simulated Bomb Defusal,” my post from week 3, I discussed Linkon’s idea of doing away with the final paper in research courses. I demurred because I thought it a better idea to combat the flaws of the research paper—painfully narrow focus, artificial use of sources, erroneous manipulation of theories—with unreasonable time constraints. Giving the student less than a week to write a first draft diminishes the possibility of being able to self-sabotage yourself. It was a dramatic retelling of the writer mythos, where the writer is less a scholar engaging in a methodical process than the hero of a contrived Hollywood blockbuster, finishing his or her work at the razor’s edge of world-threatening doom.

My tendency toward eleventh-hour exaltation can be found in week 4 as well, where I discussed Crosman’s “making meaning” dynamic. However, I began to care less about the possible evolution of specious interpretation and more about creating an amusing example of it (Wordsworth’s ode to zombies). The very thing I warned about in the post happened in the post: more thought was put into what the piece could mean than what it actually did mean. The same thing happens in the subsequent week when I discuss scenes from “The Simpsons” as a lens for the actions of Wilner’s resistant students. Not that the comparison isn’t arguably apt, but it’s trying to be self-consciously irreverent in a way that misses the point: meaning of the readings is understood, but not necessarily responded to.

The first post is somewhat different; it’s overly technical and formal, for a variety of reasons: I’m in my element (the teaching of athletics), and I’m assuming upon the reader’s understanding of certain aspects of swimming that are second nature to me but not necessarily to them; it’s the first post of the class and I’m unavoidably wary about what is expected; and also, it’s just not very good.

A specific conclusion I can come to is that these are perfectly viable rough drafts that require further revision. More often than not I discuss action–how one writes, how one swims, how one thinks— as opposed to theory. This is a side effect of the last-minute process; everything becomes less about constructing theoretically sound interpretations than about creating memorable ruminations upon how that theory is used. Memorable is good. Visceral examples are also useful. But, as the “Simulated Bomb Defusal” post intimated, they are useful more as starting points that undermine stiff writing. The ideas should be flexible and vivid, leading off in a number of directions; however, a variety of open paths leads to the same caveat inherent in reader-response theory: if any reading or interpretation is possible, then pretty soon none of them mean anything, since none of them carry any weight.

In short, I need to revise. This post too.

-Matt

This Bean Looks Just Like The Leader!

It’s fascinating, the dichotomy presented by contrasting Wilner and Blau (while acknowledging Blau’s caveat that compare-and-contrast assignments are simplistic and nigh-worthless). Several of Wilner’s students refused to read certain texts, much less analyze them; anything that contradicted their worldview was anathema. But Blau frequently points to the typical student’s tendency to regurgitate the teacher’s interpretation, maybe just for the grade, or perhaps because it’s just the most recent explanation that they’ve read (not really a case of being armed only with a hammer, therefore making all problems look like nails; more a case that they’ve just read a book on hammers, and all problems have begun to temporarily—if naively—appear as nails). Put these behaviors together and you have a bout of intense resistance followed by near blind obedience. That’s cult atmosphere.

It reminds me of an old “Simpsons” episode from about ten years ago. Homer sold all his family’s possessions so that they could join the “movementarians.” Lisa was heavily resistant at first. What finally broke her down was a very singular form of brainwashing. The answer to every question in her class became“The Leader.” Who discovered Electricity? The Leader. Who invented the cotton gin? The Leader. What is 4 + 5? The Leader. Lisa was initially livid; however, as her frustration evolved, the question of whether the answers were wrong became much less important. What became important was her need for validation, her need to get good grades.

Now, we’re not trying to teach such an absurdly simplistic curriculum (hopefully), but this parody does show that students understand more about what teachers are unconsciously afflicting upon them than we might think. Students who savagely refuse to try new ideas are resisting the breakdown of their personal identity. They understand that they’re being indoctrinated into the very thing Blau warns against: blind obedience to the interpretation that the teacher presents as fact, blind obedience to what will get them good grades—no matter how bull-headed or prejudiced their position.

Also of interest was just how resistant Homer was to the brainwashing at first. This was not necessarily because of his stupidity (although that helped), but because of his extreme inattentiveness. The movementarians initially tried to brainwash everyone with a mind-deadening film sporting Ed Wood-level production values, all about their eventual relocation to the magical land of Blisstonia. Whenever anyone tried to leave the cultists would immediately shine a spotlight on them, telling them they were free to leave at any time…but had to explain why. Everyone was too embarrassed to counteract the cult atmosphere. However, when the cultists asked Homer what he thought about the film, something different happened:

Homer: Wait, I’m confused about the movie … so the cops knew Internal Affairs was setting them up?
Male Cultist: What are you talking about? There’s nothing like that in there.
Homer: Well, you see when I get bored I make up my own movies. I have a very short attention span.
Female Cultist: But our point is very simple, you see when…
Homer: Oh look! A bird! Hee hee hee!
(Homer runs after the bird)

Sometimes tuning the teacher out isn’t just laziness. After all, the student doesn’t have to rail against the breakdown of their personal identity to try and maintain their own individuality. The can recognize the impetus towards blind obedience and ignore it, but unfortunately ignore everything else as well. Their bird-watching becomes their form of protest. Now, is it better to ignore the stultifying lecture and maintain your own individuality, or to copy notes furiously and become nothing more than a sheet of paper upon which the teacher writes. This is an important conundrum that requires a great deal of thought and much discussion, lest we become that which…

Oh look! A bird! Hee hee hee!

-Matt

P.S. How amusing that I put down the punchline and then signed my work.

Zombies!

Since most text is begun without a clear intent as to the eventual meaning or significance of the final product, it’s a fair assumption that meaning is not constructed via meticulous consideration before the pen is even put to paper or finger to keyboard—not that pre-written deliberation is entirely absent from a completed text. Writing is thinking put to paper; subsequent drafts of a poem or story reflect upon this process of evolving thought. Writers let the writing make the meaning; doing otherwise imprisons them within an original line of thought perhaps only on the periphery of what they were originally trying to convey.

This constant self-interpretation affords them a unique perspective on the meaning of their work, but by no means gives them final word. Novels would need no editors if the writer were perpetually capable of perfect economy of meaning—or overcoming the personal shortcomings and biases that undermine that meaning. I don’t believe it to be so much a matter of “making” meaning, however, as it is a matter of “finding” it.

There are, of course, pluralities of meanings that can be found in any text. Wordsworth may be conflicted over the death in “Lucy.” He rejoices, considering his pantheistic views, but as a human being also seems unable to avoid some measure of fatalism. But the act of “making” meaning carries with it the stigma of diluting the initial text by equating it with every conceivable interpretation imaginable. It is this anarchy—an anarchy of pointless, nebulous, even stupid ideas—that I believe Hirsch resists, albeit too stringently. Is Hirsch’s viewpoint to narrow-minded? Yes. But then, was Ezra Pound really writing about dairy farming?

As Crosman poses the question—“Do Readers Make Meaning?”—the answer is that they do. But the worry is not that there should be a suppression of opinion but discernment as to the validity of multiple opinions. I could read Wordsworth’s poem and think, “Why, this is a pre-Victorian presentation of early zombie fiction. Wordsworth is clearly playing upon the fear of social—if not actual—demise, by dramatizing the awakening of a newly created ghoul; he equates death of the individual with the birth of the undead.” I could support this contention with evidence; that does not make it any less ludicrous.

Perhaps just such a contemporary reading—by a George Romero fan for whom zombie films have deep social significance—could speak volumes to an individual. But this is less a matter of making meaning, or even finding meaning, than it is a matter of understanding meaning via personal taste. If the emotion initially intended by the poem is evoked, or even a legitimate alternative, than success is arrived upon. But throw zombies a non-horror fan and they’ll look at you like you’re insane. Meaning should be universal, no matter how you arrive upon it.

My; that post went off the rails.

-Matt

Simulated Bomb Defusal

Linkon points to the tendency of students to be more open-minded when their research is written informally, and focuses her class around the process of research rather the gathering of it. It seems like a fascinating approach that reflects upon a problem I’ve always had with the research process.

In many research courses, the student develops an initial thesis statement or contention. And while these statements are not meant to be static or unchanging—indeed, the professor often insists upon the opposite—the process still encourages narrow research and close-mindedness. The student is loath to cut what doesn’t belong, or to go in directions they didn’t initially expect to tread.

This is less a loyalty to their own words than it is to the meaning they were initially trying to convey with them. It’s much like we saw in the first week of class: a little girl, rather than replacing her erroneous view of the universe with a correct one, instead tried to reconcile the two. Beginning a research course with a formal statement of intent inevitably assures that you’ll have trouble leaving that contention behind should you need to do so. You’re loyal to what you’ve basically stated as fact.

Linkon’s divests the process of these linear blinders by teaching only the process and eliminating the final paper. So if writing is merely thinking, written down and refined, then this course is more for developing inquisitiveness rather than discovering answers.

But perhaps the problem is not entirely that the research paper is too linear a format for scholarly inquiry, but that the process of beginning it is flawed. Supporting one’s initial contentions closes a door on multiple interpretations and becomes like solving a mathematical proof. It leads to, as Linkon notes, the perfunctory search for a few quotes to fulfill the requirement of “research,” or even the fatal procrastination of doing the papers in the last few days or hours before they’re due.

We should keep in mind, however, that completing a paper in this atmosphere can be an inherently exhilarating exercise. The work is not being ignored in such a situation; far from it, it hangs over the student’s head throughout the semester like a guillotine’s blade. Every day, the student frets over the growing 800-pound gorilla in the room, but is still unable to make any real progress because of their own literal beginning. The only way they ever manage to produce good work in this situation is by desperation. Managing to finish the paper in these last moments becomes the literary equivalent of defusing a bomb two seconds before it detonates.

The sense of release, of having survived with your head only moments from the chopping block, can lead to inherently melodramatic prose which—cultivated properly—can be whittled down to meaning which is often divested of the need to write within the lines set up for oneself. So, perhaps, instead of removing the final paper from the equation entirely, we should insist upon its completion before anything else is even attempted. Give them a mere week’s time to work with; it needn’t be research paper length, but half that would be sufficient.

The novelty of having them begin with the ending may inspire confusion, but that would lead to greater desperation as well. And ff necessity is the mother of invention, and desperation is the father of inspiration, why not put the student into a situation where those former states of mind lead to the latter?

-Matt Boyle

Athletics and Literature

I haven’t read TEAPOD (tm Karen) yet, and I won’t have read enough by class time to reliably discuss it in this post. No important reason for mentioning that; it’s just that pretending otherwise via omission would make me nervous.

I mentioned in class that I have little experience in the teaching of literature, writing, or any similar subject. What I do have experience in, and where I can see many applications from the readings and from everyone else’s posts, is in athletics. I’ve coached in swimming for several years, and the idea of expertise failing to translate from instinctive understanding to practical application is one I’m familiar with. I know several world-class athletes who—at least in teaching swim lessons to children 5-8—aren’t the equal of 50-year-old matrons who’ve been doing it for a number of years.

To a certain extent teaching inexperience, combined with the wide disconnect in ability, doom the athlete to teach above the child’s level of understanding; however, this tendency also concerns how strategic patterns—those referred to in How People Learnbecome instinctive. The expert uses patterns that are superior in quality, if not quantity, to the novice. In swimming, this is because the world-class athlete spends as much as four-six hours in the water daily, with supplemental training on dry land. Sets of varying difficulties are offered to the athlete, and they use their advanced training methods to implicitly plan their approach based on any number of mitigating factors (point in the season, overall physical fatigue, level of mental exhaustion).

But this concerns conditioning, which can only be taught to young children on a limited basis, since their physical maturity hasn’t evolved to the point where it’s useful; in fact, more often than not it’s harmful. Technique is different. Rigorous training schedules don’t just condition; they evolve technical understanding to the point where it becomes habit.

However, this is a habit they’re rarely prepared to explain. And teaching it involves understanding swimming on a level far above the habitual. I believe this level of understanding in sport can be similarly applied to the teaching of literature. It’s not just a matter of experts being poor teachers because they lack a certain pedagogical understanding outside their primary area of expertise; it’s a matter of this primary level of expertise being sub-standard—or insufficient—because they do not have that understanding.

Instinct is imperative in swimming. Constantly thinking about technique would fry the brain and negatively affect the intensity of training. But a metacognitive understanding of how to perform something that was long ago instilled as habit allows the athlete to step back at key moments and solve problems with greater skill. In the middle of a long set they can recognize an involuntarily devolving stroke and autocorrect. It’s like rereading a book or short story and being able to understand different aspects of it in a different context. You read it and glean the same understanding, the same interpretation, but that is supplemented by a different kind of expertise.

Incidentally, I know a lot about swimming and not much about anything else. So prepare yourself for a great deal many athletic references in my posts.

-Matt