First Project Follow Up

As part of my attempt to move us all away from a traditional model of  writing in schools (where you write only to the teacher, an audience of one; then throw away your thinking and work put into the essay, if not the essay itself, when you get it back), I plan to have us follow up each writing project in a couple ways.

1. I will be posting here some reflections on what I am seeing and noticing–strengths as well as some collective weaknesses we can add to our to-do lists. For this first time, I saw strengths throughout in how writers introduced the theses/focal points of their essays using a basic ‘template’ of some sort. To get right away to the ’so what’ and the ‘why you should care about this essay and my perspective on reading/writing.
   1. To consider just two examples (there were many more): Max effectively uses a version of the I used to think this/now I think this–complete with the template from the Graff’s (“Although my old self would disagree…”). I think it works very well and in fact allows him to be creative in his voice and style while still offering a clear thesis; Carolyn effectively uses Birkerts on the privacy of reading to set up and highlight her contrasting vision.
   2. One presentation (mechanics/punctuation) issue I saw frequently concerns run-on or fused sentences: basically, when a sentence has more than one sentence in it, incorrectly joined by a comma when it should be a period. This is one of the hangovers from the transition from oral to print: a sentence that in our head or in conversation can fit lots into it, but in print comes out sounding hurried, rushed, confusing. The page on run-on sentences at the Guide to Grammar and Writing is very good–includes strategies for repairing them and some self-quizzes. Take a look. This is a basic use of commas that you need to get control of so we can move on to some more complicated ways of putting commas (and other punctuation) to work for us in more stylistic ways.
2. A second way we will follow up on the projects you have completed: on the Wednesday following each project publication date (this Wednesday, for example), I will assign you to read through the essays of the writers from one of the writing groups. After reading, I will ask you to comment, briefly, directly on the writer’s blog (at the bottom of the essay posting). Your comment should respond to the following: Good writers are never fully satisfied; in the case of this class, each of the four projects could lead to something larger, different, hopefully stronger (namely, the final project in which one or more of these essays will be revised, expanded). If the writer were to go back to this essay at the end of the course, what might they do, where might they go further? What is here that you would encourage them to stay with, develop, build upon?
   1. You will be reading the writers from group #1
      1. 1.2.30 class: alex a., mike, tyler, kat cohen
      2. 1.30 class: cbevans., mallory, jcragle, claire

Stitching Birkerts: Coda and critical application

Critical Application: Stitching Birkerts into our thinking and writing.

 

Birkerts concludes The Gutenberg Elegies focusing on an opposition between “the solitary self” and “the collective.” For Birkerts, a true self is solitary and a true sense of self exists only in solitude; this condition of selfhood is cultivated best through the pages and linear lines of books. Birkerts sets against this condition of solitary selfhood the “condition of connectedness” that he associates with what he terms “the ever-expanding electronic web.” “They are not only extensions of the senses,” he argues about the technological improvements of the electronic age in his “Coda,” “they are extensions of the senses that put us in touch with the extended senses of others.”  In other words, the problem is not so much that we are, in the age of overwhelming information, overloading our senses by extending their range and reach; more troubling for Birkerts, we are extending ourselves and our senses into and among the extended senses of others. “Others” is the real pejorative term here (224).

This is where I disagree most strongly with Birkerts’ understanding of the “amniotic environment of impulses,” to use his telling metaphor of the web. I think Birkerts aptly characterizes the effect of this environment of impulses. He gets the technology right; the uncited echo of Marshall McLuhan’s defintion of technology as the “extensions of man” brings that home. We have, as McLuhan shows, always used technology to extend our senses–long before the age of electronic communication. Birkerts could be more precise in recognizing that such “extensions” would include the technologies of writing and print and bookmaking that informs the books that thus inform the selfhood he fears we are loosing. Books are part of an earlier hive of information and communication network. But no matter; he elsewhere in this book admits that his beloved book is, of course, a form of technology–even if that view is kept to a minimum. Birkerts gets not the technology wrong nor its implications (the extension of senses); he misses the point in fearing the connection to others. That is to say, I am troubled most by the “condition of connectedness” that Birkerts, it seems, forbids the act of reading. Why is connectedness the problem and solitariness the goal of our selfhood or of the creativity of reading and writing that informs it? Why must we think of creation in solitude?

Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein before it, suggests that Birkerts’ problem is to see connection as the problem…  

My example of a critical application of Birkerts, stitching in, through paraphrase and direct quotation, a key idea from his conclusion to then set up the focus I will use to read Patchwork Girl: in effect, using Birkerts’ own terms and language (connectedness vs. solitariness) for my own thesis, though reversing his view, drawing distinctions.

It is worth noting that I have only recently discovered a thriving community of blogs out there that focus on books–passionate readers of books who blog about the books they are reading, want to read. A community of readers using the “condition of connectedness” of the web and blogging technology to extend their interest in book reading. What would Birkerts think? Here is a link to one such blog, So Many Books, which offers in its blogroll quite a list of book blogs. I look at this blog with interest in the social connections it makes between readers and books, through its “amniotic environment.” I am overwhelmed not by the electronic impulses, but by the reminder of the sheer number of books out there that we can, it seems, never catch up with and fully read. 

On the Virtues of Preexisting Material, by Rick Prelinger: A recent article that takes up the problem of originality in the digital age, and proposes that we think instead of collage and patchwork. He speaks of orphaned works of creationg and quilts: the echoes of Frankenstein and Patchwork Girl are noticeable.

Thesis/Remediation

Conference reminder: I will be expecting each of you to meet with me for an individual conference (about your writing, your to-do list, the third project, questions from the reading) at some point before Friday April 3. You can stop by during my office hours or schedule a time to meet with me.

For the third writing project, ‘Remediated Wreading,’ we will continue to focus on developing and maintaing an effective and provocative thesis in our essays. With that in mind, you can go back to your second project and think now about how you might remediate the thesis–revise it, make it stronger, state it more clearly. One way to play with this: go to thesis builder and input the relevant information for your second essay; see what kind of thesis and essay structure it comes up with. It is a template, not the only way to construct a thesis–but for the purposes of learning, might be useful in highlighting some key components that might be missing from your thesis.

Another way to learn, to remediate, is to look at other, relevant models. Don’t forget to browse some of the essays from your peers (by way of the blogs). 

A third remediation we will be working on in the third project: how a new medium (film) takes up and ‘remediates’ an older medium (writing, print novel). The focus of the third project is to explain the ‘thesis’ (a key argument or idea or interest) that you see in the film you have chosen (its thesis about Frankenstein) and how the film, as a film (and not a book) shows/develops/elaborates that thesis.

thesis re-building tools

1]Mapping the thesis. To go back and re-vise the thesis as it is threaded (to see if it is threaded) through the essay. Re-sketch or outline the essay. Can do this in a list, outline form; if interested, you can play with this mindmap tool for a more visually oriented approach.

2]They Say / I Say template: Borrowed from Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, a template or model for how to build a basic thesis or critical argument–recognizing that the basic academic argument makes explicit reference to what others say or conventionally think and then what you say in contrast or in response to complicate the traditiona view.

X tells a story about/argues _______ to make the point that ______. My own experience (in my view) with _______ yields a point that is similar/different/both similar and different. What I take away from my own experience with ________ is  _________. As a result, I conclude __________.

3]Thesis builder: a tool that offers a similar view for building a thesis based upon making your focus explicit and how that differs/relates to other views.

4]Screen-writing template? Details to come.

close reading template

A follow-up from our discussion in the workshop Monday–a way to visualize close/slow reading in a paragraph where you are bringing in a quotation from the text. How to avoid the drive-by quoting and the resume. The basic template I put up on the board

1. Set-up: Introduce the quotation briefly: context; who is speaking, where; don’t throw the quotation at the reader. Can also begin to integrate/anticipate the interpretation you will be getting into after the quotation. Examples: While traversing the Alps Victor echoes the words of the poem “Mutability” in saying, “…”;  or even better: Victor’s fear of change is particularly evident when he echoes the lines from Mutability, “…”
2. Close-up: The quotation. Choose a portion from the text that is not just relevant but rich, worth focusing on for your interpretation.
3. Follow-up: Put the quotation to work and explain/elaborate how it speaks to and supports and develops your critical vision (thesis). Highlight key words, phrases, images. Don’t assume the quotation speaks for itself. Make it speak to your vision and how you want your reader to see it. Use suggestive imperatives: Notice that Victor (or Shelley or Walton) uses the word….  This is the place for interpreation, not summary. Slow the scene down and look at a specific frame. Think 4-7 sentences or more of good follow-up to the quotation.

To consider one example, Denise from my class last semester, writing about the intertextual link with “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Here is a specific paragraph that is effective in its close and slow reading–notice how she notices the particular word ’serpent’ and puts that to work.

The plots, themselves, are inherently similar: an older man tells a younger man about something tragic that has occurred in his life in a first person, story frame format. The stronger tie, however, is the distinct air of warning that pervades both tales. In anticipation of his narrative, Frankenstein says, “I had determined, at one time, that the memory of these evils should die with me; but you have won me to alter my determination. You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been” (18-19). Frankenstein has been stung by a metaphorical snake in his past – and not just any metaphorical snake, but a metaphorical serpent. The connotation of the word “serpent” calls to mind certain evil; this word choice was very deliberate.  The ominous, cautionary nature of these words immediately strikes both Walton and the reader. This nature primes Frankenstein’s audience to listen carefully to his tale and take what moral each can. The Ancient Mariner, too, stops the wedding guest of his tale to relate his own morbid experiences, in the hopes that the guest will, like Walton, become wiser.  Both stories are told to impart a specific message to both their internal and external audiences. The Mariner warns that one should love everything that exists, something that clearly does not happen in Frankenstein. This negligence allows horrible events to occur in both stories; thus, Frankenstein echoes the Mariner’s warning. Likewise, one of the messages of Frankenstein seems to be on the dangers of knowledge, both in general and in its misuse. Like Frankenstein, the Ancient Mariner abuses knowledge by using it to kill an albatross and is then punished for it. 

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