Assignment #3: Divide and classify

First I had my students write a descriptive paper: you know, sensory detail, gripping adjectives and rousing verbs. Then came the illustration paper: use examples to develop your point. Lesson one: have a point.

Now we approach the division and classification paper. This is my favorite.  My literature/sociology training used this approach to life — to “others” in particular.  “Character study” was often the assignment for lit classes, and sociology examines group behavior. (Admittedly, I classify too early and use categories that I make up.  If we’ve met, you’re in one of them.) Hopefully the students will go beyond “There are four kinds of teachers” and “the three best pizzas.”

In a new biography of Warren Buffet, richest man in the world, (though rich isn’t a useful category) a friend calls him to say that her hotel room’s bathroom holds a real Picasso. Buffet replies that he has stayed in that room and hadn’t noticed the painting, but had noted the free shampoo.

That’s the point. He’s not an art man. He’s a money man. At the age of 14, he deducted his bike as a business expense. Some people always notice the art in a room; some never do. Money people are calculating –adding and subtracting the columns. Markets excite more than a fiery sunset ever could. He might sell your painting of it for a profit though. And a commission.

How can we classify a person? Should we? We note talk and artifacts. Of what does someone’s conversation consist primarily?  In a small group, to what will he turn the conversation (or monologue,)  given a chance? How austere or ornate are the living quarters or vehicles? Cluttered with what? Absent of what?

Some people are consumed with family — their talk, their desktop, their refrigerator door, their floating down-time thoughts — are about the spouse, the kids, the extensions. Understandable and expected. Many include their pets — animal people. They’re in their beds, cars, workplaces. (Who loves whom, I always wonder?)

Others like themselves. A lot.  They focus on what they are doing, saying, thinking, wearing, having done. What is acceptable supersedes all for this category. Homes are an extension of the self and give good insight. “Have you started decorating for fall yet?” a fairly new friend asked yesterday. I responded, “I didn’t know we had to.” See? Different sub-categories. Many bloggers fit here though many are publishing for the welfare of others.

One fun thing is to nail somebody’s category and then mess with her. For example, when a friend told us that she needed to lose five pounds “big as a barn,” (she is a size 0. I said that I was trying to gain a few. It wasn’t funny to anyone but me. Couldn’t relate.

We could go on: religion people, entertainment people, philosophy people. Subtle combinations. I must add here that opposites might attract or repel. It depends on where we are in life and in the soul. (This may not be the accurate location.) It depends on temperament, geography, biology, and we can cross classifications and embrace. Literally and figuratively.

I was thinking about Abraham Maslow – famous man of classification and division. Remember the hierarchy of needs? This system of classification is said to be behind Jesus’ filling the empty bellies of the people before he taught them. It also would explain that it’s hard to be an “art person” when you’re broke. Maslow’s pyramidal diagram says that the bottom needs must be met before one can move up the pyramid to more cerebral, humanitarian exploits and concerns. The basic needs of survival come before service to others. Love needs,  before self-development and personal growth.

Maybe that’s the answer after all to people categories. Maybe we can read the chart, look at ourselves and others, and see where we might be stuck, thus causing those who classify to slot us as they do. Socrates (philosophy type) mentioned the unexamined life. But can we examine in truth? (“I’m one of the most thoughtful people I know.”)

On the other hand, there’s the group that doesn’t care about most things we might list, let alone what label we use. The “off the charts” category I call them.

The Parable of the Gnat

When the young gnat was born, also the day of his death since gnats have a life span of one day, he asked his father and mother what he should do. They were about to die and so had little time for instructing him, but they did manage to say, just before the end, “See how we hover and spin just above this burberry bush?”

The young gnat, who was already much older, had indeed seen how all the gnats he knew of were whirling and whirling in a furious swarm just above the purple bush behind the small, yellow house.

“Ah, he said. “So that is it then.”

The young gnat got into the bottom ring of the whirling swarm of gnats and began to spin. Faster and faster, more and more frantically he flew and as he did, he rose higher and higher.

This he did until the sun slid below the top of the cherry tree across the street, and then he fell, pulled to the ground, and landed in the red clay pot that in the summer held white petunias.

Interview with a vampire reader

Chastened for criticizing a novel I had not read, I set out to read said novel, Rice’s Interview with a Vampire, and thus be able to discuss it from an informed point of view. ((See my post s on must reads and/or what constitutes a literary classic along with the comments.)

I’ll start with a positive. Rice is a good raconteur. Her narrative style is the right blend of dialogue, narration, and description. The disturbed, repellent characters are depicted in great detail and carefully drawn. Places, too, are vividly portrayed.

I’m forcing myself to finish the book. The subject matter is lurid and objectionable, dark and macabre. But this isn’t just a ghost story. Its insidious side is evinced in that the vampires are attractive, naturally, and the act of sucking blood is depicted as highly sensual — the ultimate experience.  That’s disgusting and for me offensive. Descriptive tales of how a person is tracked down and drained of his life blood, often with great pleasure in a spirit of fun, is reprehensible and appeals, as does such prurient literature to the basest nature. 

I’ve read 200 pages and I can’t find anything to take away from the book, nothing here enriches, elevates, informs, or pleases. It’s like falling deeper and deeper into a dark bottomless hole. What is Rice’s purpose?

I’m waiting to read any criticism until after I’ve finished, sometime Monday maybe. I’ve been told that there is heavy-duty philosophy here and perhaps I’ll find it in those remaining 150 pages.

“1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die”

Or else what? Objectionable use of the word “must” it seems. Of course the editor, Peter Boxall, wants to raise our literary antennae because he knows we haven’t read these books, not most of them, and so with the implied inferiority of cretins like us, the challenge to our education, we read his list. We are weighed and found wanting. Score one.

A vampire book, Mr. Boxall?

According to William Grimes in the Books section of the NYT, (RSS to right)  Boxall wants to critique “canonicity.” Academics subscribe to a long-standing list of must reads of their own: what an educated person should have read to be considered well-read, having encountered significant ideas well expressed that are life and possibly world changing. The classics.  They are under scrutiny if not attack. Interview With a Vampire is on par with Nineteen Eighty Four these days.

And the point can be made:  So if I haven’t read Macbeth, I don’t understand overweaning pride and ambition? Minus Huck Finn I won’t ever comprehend racial injustice or the painful initiation into adulthood and self reliance? 

No one “must read” anything. And I suspect that good common sense, humanity, pathos and social conscience may be bred without any reading, especially fiction, which comprises most of the 1001.

Having said that, I’m a Canon-ite. I believe in the value of certain agreed -upon fictions in providing illumination, clarity, appreciation, and joy regarding the human condition, all areas.

What I object to is the cocktail party game of one-up everybody with what we’ve read. Using classic literature for snobbery and denigration is ironically unfortunate. Somebody missed the lesson in all those pages.

Deconstruction fun with “There was once”

Margaret Atwood’s poetry and fiction are among the best.  My first encounter was The Robber Bride,  followed by The Handmaid’ Tale, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and Oryx and Crake in that order, I think. Most of these were published in the ‘9o’s. They are not “light” reads. Atwood’s worldview sometimes conflicts with mine, but she is insightful and tells her captivating stories with masterful style. 

She’s often satirical as in the terse “You fit into me:”

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
A fish hook
An open eye

I like her penchant for the unexpected, the unconventional, the twist. Her ear for speech is superb. And in this dialogue poem — “There was once” —  she’s at her best. She employs the humble fairy tale to satirize political correctness and more. It’s not public domain, but I’ve linked to the Mississippi Review’s online copy, right after the “Bad News” short. Read it in the characters’ voice, and I promise it will be worth the extra click.

(I’ve posted on her “Siren Song.”)

 

 

We’ll miss you . . .

. . . when you’re dead. Of course we will. Rest assured.

A. E. Housman’s poem “Is my team ploughing?” presents a dialogue between two friends, young males, one living, one dead. The recently deceased has questions about how it’s going now that he’s gone. His friend answers every question but one. Stanzas are structured as Q & A. The poem reprinted from the Project Gutenberg edition of the collection, A Shropshire Lad, which has never been out of print, is included below.

A. E. Housman is one of our most loved English poets probably because of his accessibility (he isn’t obscure,) his conventionality (his verse is traditional.) and his subject treatment (life.) These characteristics distinguish him from other soon-to-come modernist poets like Pound and Eliot. Something by Housman always makes the anthologies. 

His best qualities are his tone, which is often wry, and his sophisticated insight masked in a common-man humility.  At times he is melancholy, but it doesn’t turn to despair. Most often he’ll sigh. Charming.

From A Shropshire Lad, 1896

XXVII
“Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?”

Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.

“Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?”

Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.

“Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?”

Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.

“Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?”

Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.

Life after teaching

Dear Paisley and Plaid (are you one or two?),

I majored in English, and by your erudite commentary and precise, exquisite style (and lots of time to blog) I suspect that you, too, may be an English major. I recently resigned my position teaching eighth-grade speech and rhetoric because of, well, it was the principal of the thing!

What do I do now?

Well, English Major,

Here are some jobs with real possiblilites for people like us — lovers of literature and all things written or verbal. Starting pay may not be up to scale with what you are used to as a teacher and therefore the greatest influence on the nation’s future, but as they told us in Intro. to Education I,, II, and III,  ”Money isn’t everything!”

Many of these TOP TEN jobs can be done concurrently.  Good Luck!

Bohemian artiste — with a perpetual scarf — make commentary on the bourgeois masses
Novelist writing from personal experience — make that a novella-ist – you only taught eighth grade
Ghost writer for people with experiences
Elopement planner — It’s much more than just load up and go!
Student at  Online Law School — Go OLS!
Guru — field TBD
Consultant  — all trades (How hard can it be? You’ve read Dostoevsky.)
Amish clothing designer
Torch singer – You enter, late of course, 9:20, sing, sleep till noon
Academic advisor –pass out free t-shirt s–  ”For Heaven’s Sake Major in Computer Science”
Mansion sitter — 15,000 sq. ft. and up

Out of the question list. You should stay away from this field:
Anything medical including dental work — the sounds, the smells, the sick people, mouth insides, nurses

And be sure to check out this link to 25 very odd jobs that you might pursue as well –
http://blog.sixwise.com/blogs/vaszily-brian/archive/2007/03/08/the-world-s-25-oddest-jobs.aspx

 

Digitized reads – a plug

I discovered Manybooks,net four years ago when I was venturing outside the publisher’s literature anthology in search of readings that would better suit my students’ needs. The site is clean, only a few ads, and easy to navigate. Matthew McClintock maintains the site as a service to the Internet’s reading community. He reports that most of the works come from Project Gutenberg.  Amazing — no library card or gas, no time linits, no late fees, and 20,259 free texts from classics to dictionaries to pulp.

Users can search for a particular work or browse by author, title, categories, recent downloads, most popular, reviews, or new additions.  I find that “categories” is useful as it lists 56 areas such as science fiction, history, banned books, biography, and philosophy.  There’s mystery, poetry, psychology, young readers, and reference. The Harvard Classics is its own category.

Once you locate your ebook, you’ll need to either download it or read it online. Downloads are available in formats for your cellphone, iphone, Kindle, Palm, Blackberry, PDF, and many more. Most of the books are public domain or Creative Commons. Visit the “About” and the “Site News” links for more information.

Manybooks is completely free, but it does have a donations button. Why not? Another way to serve is to volunteer for Digital Proofreading. There’s a button for this program, too, and it’s an interesting read on how a text gets read, edited, and finally delivered. They ask for as little as a page a day, but readers may do a little or much.

I should note that in casually browsing through 20,000 texts, I’m unfamiliar with a most. Still, intriguing titles and sheer volume are compelling to a reader. But as you browse, some of the “household words” emerge: Shakespeare, Bacon, Freud, Barnum, Huxley, Webster, Franklin, Doyle, Montaigne, and more.

When people discuss etexts, the subject of comparison to traditional print formats arises. Articles abound. How often do you read electronically? For what types of reading: information or pleasure? What advantages or disadvantages do you see?

 a few articles
http://www.readingmatrix.com/articles/horning/article2.pdf 

http://www.unf.edu/~tcavanau/presentations/SITE/ElectronicTextsasCourseTextbook.htm

http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0096.html

 

http://www.eastgate.com/HypertextNow/archives/Electronic.html