When the hurly-burly’s done

UPDATE: I’ve given up on the book.  It’s way too nice out to be able to focus on something like this.

I just read a post on The China Beat about Wolf Totem’s reception among Western reviewers.  I haven’t read more than a couple of pages of the book, which I found out about through the Very Short List*, but I feel like I’m going to be into it pretty soon.  Anyway, without knowing a whole lot about the book, it’s interesting to see how varied the response to it is.  Over on Paper Cuts, Jennifer Schuessler calls the reviews of the novel “strangely fevered, if not always appreciative.”

In my own classroom, I’ve just distributed copies of The Odyssey to my sophomores.  For some reason, I always end the year with it, even though it’s the toughest read of our three district-required works (the others are Macbeth and Huck Finn).  I’m not sure why, but every year I feel the need to really sell The Odyssey to my sophomores.  I find myself engaging in some serious used-car-salesman-esque hucksterism (”It’s so good–there’s action, adventure, romance, sex, the works. I can’t believe you’re refusing to even open this book.  You’ll love it!”) to convince my students that a 400+ page epic from almost four millenia ago is going to be fun, or even interesting, to read.

I guess part of the problem is that I feel the need to convince my students that reading a book is going to give them a similar experience to watching a movie or playing a video game, when that couldn’t be any less truthful.  We read books for very different reasons than we watch movies, and that’s okay.  A movie is a two hour commitment, give or take.  It is meant to be consumed in one sitting (I only give five stars on Netflix to movies during which I don’t get up to go to the bathroom or anything).  We can get a lot from watching movies, and some even go as deep (or deeper) than do our greatest books.  TV shows like The Wire, too, can play out as almost Dickensian, introducing us to characters and subplots that boggle the mind.

But reading a book requires a different mindset.  And when I try to communicate this to my students, they tend to shut down.  So I’m asking if any teachers who are reading have any metaphors, allegories, parables, etc they use to explain how and why we should read.  Please post them here, if you don’t mind.

* Why haven’t you subscribed to this yet?  You really should.

Sweet. Clay tagged me. Let’s knock out the rules, then on to the meat of this thing:

• Select and briefly review one teen novel, classic or modern, which is a sure antidote to the daze of high school.
• Title your post Meme: High School Daze to Praise.
• Include an image with your post.
• Tag four blogger colleagues

Okay. So I want to start by saying that there’s no such thing as a “sure antidote to the daze of high school.” Because, y’see, high school’s “daze” is due to so much more than the novels selected by some English teacher. Can I assign Slaughterhouse-Five and then sit back and assume that my work is done, that my little angels will proceed to meet their academic potential in all of their classes? Will On the Road encourage Ryan to shed his conformist exterior and embrace life? Will The Bell Jar prevent Beth’s becoming another teen suicide statistic?

Nope.

So I don’t buy this thing at all. I don’t believe that literature has that kind of power, or at least the kind of power we English teachers hope it has. I’m not going to pick a universally interesting book; instead, I’d like to write a little bit about the book that woke me up a little when I was in high school.

Entering my senior year in high school, I figured I was a pretty fancy reader. English was the only class I really paid any attention to–why bother with math or science or even history when I could focus my attention on Mr. Decker’s rambling discussions about Shakespeare, St. Exupery, and Gogol? Why bother balancing chem equations when I could explicate a poem? And what was all that business about showing my work?

For my senior year, I enrolled in AP English. As a professional educator now, I believe that the AP system is a load of crap. It exists, as do so many pieces of our educational system, to make money for the testing companies. Why should anyone have to pay money to take an exam? The AP courses themselves, though, serve as a place to collect the students who really want to take that course, who proclaim themselves willing to put in a lot of extra effort to do some higher-level work in a particular subject. It’s become a prestige thing, which is unfortunate, and a way to boost students’ GPAs (at our school, at least, Honors- and AP-level courses are weighted). That’s another post.

In my AP English class back in the ‘94-’95 school year, Mr. Leonard gave us a hot mess of good and engaging literature to read. Nobody who took that class will ever forget the day he climbed up on a desk to demonstrate the bark of a dying dog in a poem; likewise, we’re all scarred by the Swedish TV version of Hamlet that rivaled the Black Knight scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail for absurd bloodiness.

For me, though, the best memory of that class came from struggling with, and eventually loving, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. James Agee and Walker Evans’s masterpiece, Famous Men is a multigenre study of Alabama sharecroppers during the mid-1930s. Agee’s prose and Evans’s indelible photographs combine to make the book the most visceral reading experience I’ve ever had.

Who are you who will read these words and study these photographs, and through what cause, by what chance, and for what purpose, and by what right do you qualify to, and what will you do about it; and the question, Why we make this book, and set it at large, and by what right, and for what purpose, and to what good end, or none: the whole memory of the South in its six-thousand-mile parade and flowering outlay of the facades of cities, and of the eyes in the streets of towns, and of hotels, and of the trembling heat, and of the wide wild opening of the tragic land, wearing the trapped frail flowers of its garden of faces; the fleet flush and flower and fainting of the human crop it raises; the virulent, insolent, deceitful, pitying, infinitesimal and frenzied running and searching, on this colossal peasant map, of two angry, futile and bottomless, botched and overcomplicated youthful intelligences in the service of an anger and of a love and of an undiscernible truth, and in the frightening vanity of their would-be purity; the sustaining, even now, and forward moving, lifted on the lifting of this day as ships on a wave, above whom, in a few hours, night once more will stand up in his stars…

The book began as an assignment for Agee, a journalist, and Evans, a photographer. They were to find out about the living conditions of white sharecroppers in the midst of the Depression. Overwhelmed by their experiences, though, Agee and Evans turned their notes and photographs and interviews into a hefty book that is impossible to characterize as belonging to one particular genre. Some sections read as straight journalism. Some sections are nothing if not beautifully executed poetry. The whole thing has the feel of the postmodern in its willingness to challenge existing forms, in its eagerness to include the author and photographer as characters, in its direct appeals to the reader. This is a book that demolishes the fourth wall and brings the reader in.

This is not a book for everyone. This is a book that could fall victim to what Clay calls “schooliness.” There’s a temptation, I’m sure, to have students extract all the vocabulary words and write context-clue sentences. There’s a temptation to do other, even stupider, things to our students. That’s part of why I’ve never tried to teach this book (I’m sure if I wanted to, I could scrounge up the funds to buy a class set or two. My school has a lot of money). But mostly, I’m afraid that if I did teach this book, there wouldn’t be any students who were like me, ready to be challenged and changed by a book from 70 years ago.

Oh, and I tag these folks (not all of them are high school English teachers, which I hope is okay):  Tree, David, Kim, and Adrian.

I’ve been looking through my old del.icio.us bookmarks recently, pruning away the ones tagged “toread” that I’ve already read, eliminating stuff that’s no longer useful to me, and generally trying to simplify the list. I’ve been doing something similar with my iTunes library as well, jettisoning music I haven’t listened to in a while, freeing up hard drive space for more photos and Garageband recordings. I’ve brought four boxes of books to the used book dropoff place since the summer, have brought three garbage bags full of old clothes to Goodwill in the same timeframe, have been working to simplify my life and eliminate the unnecessary. Middle-school health teachers from the late 80s, I am afraid, will assume that I am suicidal.

I am not. I am just trying to get to the essence.

There’s something about accumulation of items that is both amazingly enjoyable and horribly depressing. We live in a society in which things are bought, sold, acquired, given, desired, and forgotten. And maybe it’s just the time of year–I have yet to find a magazine that doesn’t include a “Holiday Gift Guide”–but I’m noticing it more and more.

Last week, my Essay Writing students watched Say Anything. There were several reasons for this activity. For starters, I wanted them to write a movie review, so they’re comparing and contrasting it with The Graduate. But beyond that, it’s a great movie for anyone who is directionless and a bit worried about it. Lloyd Dobler, the sort of Everyman protagonist, spends most of the movie floating. The only thing he is sure about is his love for Diane Court.

I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.

This is a quote that I’m sure strikes horror into the hearts of high-powered suburban parents everywhere. Lloyd is a likeable character with no future, and you know what? Things work out for him. That’s not the way it’s supposed to go. He’s supposed to be miserable until he gets into a Top 40 college, gets a job, and retires at 50. That’s how things work. That’s what we do.

But no. I say the disconnection, the dislocation, it’s okay. Not just okay, but part of modern life, and something we need to embrace. In the del.icio.us sweep I mentioned at the start of this post, I came across Chris Lehmann’s “Connection and Disconnection in the Digital Age” reading list and course syllabus. The note I left for myself (and for my colleague and friend Jill, with whom I have managed to make del.icio.us for:tagging into a communications tool to rival Twitter with its simplicity and seeming inanity), says this: “How much do I want to teach this course?”

We’re in a disconnected and decentralized world, and that’s okay. It’s fine. It’s got to be fine, as there’s no choice. What do I mean by “disconnected and decentralized”? Wars on non-state-based military organizations. The rise of Twitter. Outsourcing. $300 laptops. Pico Iyer.

So look at Chris’s reading list. The books and stories and poems he’s selected all deal with the uneasiness of living in rapidly shifting times. The shifts that we think are so new–decentralization and mechanization of the workplace! faster communication with far-flung correspondents! the decline and fall of Western civilization as we know it, as evinced by loosening moral standards!–are not new. They’re all in Joyce, Dos Passos, Eliot, and Beckett. On the Road was shocking 50 years ago, with its depiction of young people without direction who want to do nothing more than travel the nation, get eyeball kicks and other kicks, listen to bop and talk all night with friends, making every night a reunion of sorts, and a celebration of other sorts.

And then came Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan: No Direction Home is about nothing but dissociation, decentralization, floating. The film takes as its central idea the animosity between Dylan and the folk-music scene that developed as Dylan’s sound and lyrics evolved. The folkies felt that Dylan was one of them, and that he turned Judas when his music turned “commercial” (not entirely sure how “Desolation Row” could be considered a sell-out move, but that’s just me). Dylan, meanwhile, felt that he had been unfairly pigeonholed and ought not to have been claimed by any particular scene to begin with. It’s in his lyrics. Relationships change quickly. Listen to the last verse of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and try not to imagine Dylan justifying his “unfriending” of a former lover:

I’m walkin’ down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I’m bound, I can’t tell
But goodbye’s too good a word, gal
So I’ll just say fare thee well
I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

Tenuous relationships, tenuous existence. We’ve got technology today that both exacerbates and tries to ease the transience of our modern lives. Is using Facebook to keep in touch with friends in Israel, Iran, Australia, Greece, Canada, Indiana, etc. encouraging this disconnect? Today I had a lunchtime conversation with some colleagues about social networking, the decline of face-to-face communication, the fact that kids don’t play outside as much as they used to. The room was pretty much split between those who praised Facebook for being a relatively safe way for people to stay in touch with others in faraway places and those who thought it was bringing about the end of human interaction. I fall firmly on the side that says it’s not doing away with human interaction, but it is making possible a new kind of human interaction. The fact that I can leave a note on the Facebook wall of my friend Alek in Serbia letting him know that I’m okay, that I’ve recovered from Nasal Death, that I played a good gig with my band, is not the end of a way of life.

Or isn’t it?

David’s comment reminds me that I haven’t blogged in a few days, and that in the intervening time I’ve experienced a pretty wide swath of the Fringe. Basic quick rundown follows, as I’ve got 2,500 more words to write if I want to hand in this draft:

Saturday night: A Midsummer Night’s Tree. Nothing to do with Shakespeare, as Heather and Jaki and I thought it would have, but still great. Breakdancers, trapeze artists, a singer, and a comedian (whose bits went on a bit too long, though he was pretty funny) performed separate pieces on a stage beneath a gigantic tree in the middle of a park on the outside of the New Town. I think they might be the world’s strongest people.   The whole night was nice, despite the midgies that came out when the drizzle subsided.

The evening ended at a famous pub called the Hebrides, where Martin, who is one of the tutors here, was playing Scottish folk music with one of his two bands. In addition to the folk songs, some of which I knew (and which turned out to be Irish, actually), they performed that Edinburgh classic “(I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles,” and some sort of very localized political parody of “Billie Jean.”

Sunday afternoon: (Aine) Tigone, basicle Sophocles’s play adapted and re-set in Belfast, 1972. I think the performers were local high school students, and they didn’t give the most even performance, but the script was amazing and I left feeling really moved. I don’t know very much about Antigone, having never read or taught it, but this actually made me a little interested in the original.

Monday afternoon: Bouncy Castle Macbeth. Forget Kurosawa. Forget Polanski. This is the way the Scottish Play needs to be done. An hour and fifteen minutes, a cast of fewer than ten (Banquo was played by an inflatable doll wearing a kilt), and a big purple bouncy castle as the stage. Not sure why Macbeth used an inflatable Tyrannosaurus Rex as his sword in the final battle scene, but I’m sure it was a necessary piece of stage business (or the balloon sword he’d had earlier in the play popped). Magical. 

Tuesday night: The Ballad of James II. Douglas Maxwell, Scotland’s most prolific young playwrite (his words), wrote this show about truth and mythmaking in the lives of nations. James II, an ugly, schizophrenic, and asexual king of Scotland, must make a decision that might lead to a civil war. The cast of five did a remarkable job with the complicated emotions involved, and the staging (in the famous Rosslyn Chapel) made the performance even more special. This is the show I’d recommend most highly of the four, though the others have a lot to recommend (especially Bouncy Castle Macbeth). But there’s something about great theatre, and a great script, and great actors, that transcends gimmickery. James II would’ve worked anywhere–I could see it being done at the GHS Black Box, for example, or on Broadway, or anywhere there’s a performance space. I left that play wanting a copy of the script and another opportunity to see the show. Alas, last night was our last off night until next week, as we’re pretty heavily programmed here.

And now I really need to write this story. It’s easy to forget why I’m here–Edinburgh’s not a good city if you’ve got ADHD that’s triggered by impending deadlines.

Rather than speak to you of what I have written, perhaps it would be more interesting to tell you about the problems that I have not yet resolved, that I don’t know how to resolve, and what these will cause me to write…

Italo Calvino’s book Six Memos for the Next Millenium is my current obsession. My dad got it for me a couple of years ago, back before I was ready to read a major work of literary criticism (I was knee-deep in figuring out how to teach, where to live, etc). Leave it to a nor’easter, though, to make me want to do nothing more than to sit in my room, listen to quiet music, and hunker down with a book like this one.

Six Memos consists of five lectures–Calvino died before he could complete the sixth one–on what makes good literature and why we still need it. Although the lectures date from the mid-1980s, they’re still highly relevant today. The first pieces, “Lightness” and “Quickness,” describe exactly the kind of writing I hope to achieve on this blog. Lightness, Calvino writes, can mean more than one thing: the lightness achieved through using words carefully, imparting an airy, floaty type feeling; and the lightness that we need to find in our lives to avoid our world’s “slow petrification, more or less advanced depending on people and places but one that spare[s] no aspect of life.” This heaviness is something I feel in the constant bombardment of media signals and consumer pressures: YOU MUST CARE about Anna Nicole Smith’s baby! STOP QUESTIONING WHAT I SAY and pay attention to my intent! BUY a new iPod! YOU NEED an SUV! It is only through literature, argues Calvino, that we can order the heaviness of the world, remixing it into something lighter, more ethereal, and more beautiful.

Anyway, back to Calvino. The quote in the beginning of this entry neatly fits into the ideas about writing I’ve been working with.  Having spent all of last week reading, pro bono, my sophomores’ history research papers, I think I am qualified to say that the great majority of student writng–even honors-level student writing–is boring.  There is a tendency to build pyramids of hard facts and minutiae until, it is hoped, the entire essay is unassailable and the teacher gives an A.  “Whee!” we teachers yell, high-fiving each other.  “Scout found out everything about the Battle of Gallipolli!  And look!  Young Jem knows, through the acquisition of irrefutable evidence, that the case of the Lindbergh Baby’s kidnapping was an unfair media circus!  What great work!”

Sadly, no.   Students, writers, intellectuals, all–there is nothing more boring, more soul-crushing, than to read pages upon pages with no questions, no uncertainties, only heaviness and slowness.  When you fail to make a reader think, you have failed to engage that reader.  And making him or her think doesn’t mean doing the thinking FOR the reader.  This should be obvious by now.

More on this later, I am sure.  Right now, though, I’ve got more reading to do.  Quickness and light, people.  Quickness and light.