The Salt-Box

Steve Jobs on why the Amazon Kindle doesn’t matter:

Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading.

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

If I weren’t giddy from the prospect of getting a TimeCapsule this summer, or dizzy from watching my phone’s icons jiggle, I might be disappointed in this line of “argument.”

This is from Jess Nevins’s amazing A Blazing World: The Unofficial Companion to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II, which includes separate interviews with Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill.  It’s as if Moore is describing my nonmajors class this semester:

. . . we seem to be gathering a lot of people who don’t usually read comic books, but who are interested in nineteenth-century literature or Rider Haggard or Conan Doyle or people like that.  Which is very gratifying. This is not to despise the comic readership at all, and there are an awful lot of comic book readers who also have a very solid and good literary grounding at the same time.  I’m very happy to think that we’re drawing readers of literature, people who are really familiar with these characters in their original form.  To me, the test is, do they like what we’re doing with it?  The comic book readers, yes, their point of view is important as well, but they’ve got no idea who Allan Quatermain is or whether we’re handling him right, or anything, whereas, people who have read King Solomon’s Mines or things like that, they’re going to be much more critical, presumably, in that they are going to actually know the works of literature that we’re referring to, and they’re going to be able to see if we’ve travestied them.  So far, I haven’t had very many complaints.  I think most people feel that we’ve been at least as faithful as anybody else has been, and more faithful than some, to the original sources of these characters.  I think that even for the more traditional comic readers, I would think that League is quite refreshing because, for one thing, it takes place in what has got to be the best comic book or fiction universe of all time.  The Marvel Universe, the DC Universe, how could they possibly be a patch upon the Fiction Universe? (266)

The first class is a week from today!

(This is shaping up to be exactly like my cyberpunk class: a large # of intense fanboys; a sizeable contingent of indifferent nonmajors taking the class because it fits their schedule and keeps them from having to take the survey; a tiny # of people who like 19thC thrillers; and me. I fall into camps 1 & 3, and want to keep all 3 groups focused on improving their ability to analyze literature.)

With the start of classes next week comes one of my 2 brand-new preps this semester: ENG 481: Digital Literary Studies, which is sort of an English-focused intro to humanities computing.  (Texts: Landow’s HyperText 3.0; Amerika’s Meta/Data, and Hayles’s Writing Machines, plus the Blackwell Companion and a variety of material on reserve.)  A draft version of the syllabus is here; I’m still tweaking the order in which “how stuff works” material (xml, etc.) will be presented.  (And even the extent to which it will be presented formally, given concerns over turf with other departments.)

The watchword of this course is going to have to be flexibility:

• I need to be flexible about differing levels of experience/comfort with technology
• I need to be flexible about differing levels of familiarity with the conventions of literary analysis (not all students are majors . . . not all students are upper-division).
• The students need to be flexible about pursuing certain kinds of questions and about reflecting on their practice.
• Students will need to be flexible and patient with technology that’s balky or alien, and to trust that I won’t punish them for experimenting.
• We will all need to be flexible about expertise.  This isn’t a class on the Victorian novel, or the survey.  I know that there are a couple of students in the class who have more experience in certain elements (programming, design, games) than I do, and I suspect there are a couple of others.

Having said that, I’m very excited about this class.  We’ve just done some curricular redesign in order to free up some credits in the major for courses that aren’t time- or nation-bound.  I proposed this course, rather than a (frankly, *much* easier to prepare) course on, say, psychoanalysis, because I think *all* our students will need to have these skills.  So, a bit anxious/worried, but also eager to get started.

My first reaction to “war against boys” rhetoric is to roll my eyes a bit–somehow, the war on boys doesn’t seem to be eroding male privilege overall in America. But, since–as you may have heard–we have a 4-yr-old boy, I do pay attention to such arguments a little bit more closely than I once did.

For example, this nugget in the new issue of Parents made me want to start slapping people (probably due to an excess of violent movies while growing up):

Boys who watch violent TV shows or movies (like Star Wars, Spider-Man, and Power Rangers) between ages 2 and 5 are more likely to be antisocial or aggressive at ages 7 to 10, according to a new study in Pediatrics.

I’ll let pass right by the obvious point that the three movies named aren’t equivalently violent, and the equally obvious opportunity to sneer at the vagueness of “watch” (under what circumstances? how often?) or the fascinatingly powerful causal mechanism implied here. (NB: I’m not necessarily indicting the research itself, which I’m too lazy busy to look up, and which I’m sure was voiced with at least some more nuance.) No, the point I’m after is coming up:

Surprisingly, violent programming had no effect on girls’ behavior patterns, possibly because the “violent” shows that girls chose to watch had more hostile language and threatening behavior than physical violence.

WTF? I love how the girls’ shows’ violence is bracketed in scare quotes. But, more seriously, anyone who thinks that the language of 7-10 y.o. girls isn’t “antisocial” or “aggressive” either needs to spend more time with 7-10 year old girls (or their former victims), or needs to re-think their definitions of aggression.

A pointed out that, in her experience, the only way this could be true–i.e., that violent programming has “no effect” on girls–is that girls in that age group are already maximally antisocial and aggressive, as necessary training for high school. (And she was popular in high school!)

I read the paragraph aloud to The Little Man: His take: “Violence *is* great. But you won’t let me watch Spider-Man, and the Power Rangers seem silly, so I’ll probably be ok. It’s just Star Wars. Star Wars can’t hurt. Plus, I’ll be 5 in May. Did you hear Mom’s thinking about buying me camo for my room?” So that’s nice.

Update: This picture from the Lego Store in Chicago seems relevant.

In general, I’ve been getting a lot of excited feedback about the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen class, which starts the 23rd.  Certainly I’m excited, but more than a few students have been getting in touch–more than 5 different students e-mailed me about these cool figures.

But today a student went to the bookstore, then sent the following question (among others):

 There are 12 books ordered for your class.  Will we be reading them all?  I don’t want to buy books we’re not going to read.

On the one hand, I definitely understand that motive.  On the other hand, here’s the booklist.   3 comic books, at least 4 other books under 200 pages, and some under 100.

But, as a service to future students enrolled in my classes: The answer is always yes.  Always.  I know other professors sometimes order books using a “better safe than sorry” approach, but I just believe in tons of reading.

For my Thursday post at Bookslut this week, I’ve got an interview with the astonishing Jennifer L. Knox about her new book, Drunk by Noon.  Here’s a taste:

It’s obligatory, I think, to describe your poems’ humor as transgressive. What’s uncanny about them is their precise knowledge of our national id–my favorite example of this is when you translate the cliched phrase, “blood on my hands,” with “or worse: dead kids / stuffed in the reeds–sans underpants.” It’s like a root canal for our national fascination with child sexual abuse. Do you see your humor as having a particular point or agenda?

I’m interested in people who do and say stupid, insane or compulsive things, and finding respect for them despite that. I’m not interested in pointing out how wrong people are—-even the President-—it’s way too easy—-like watching Cops. Take the biggest yahoo on Dr. Phil and discover your common humanity. The dark side’s real, and it’s something to stand against. But nobody is all one thing. I was in a class with Gerald Stern who said that every human being-—unless they were raised in a cage or got kicked in the head-—has the standard set of feelings that everybody else has: hate, love, fear, loneliness, hunger, etc. He said, “Adolph Hitler was a vegetarian who loved his dogs. In other words, he was a man who cared deeply about the sanctity of life.”

Definitely read the whole thing!

The PsychoSlut is very disappointed that no one had alerted him to these splendid-looking confections until just now.  (Thx, Taylor!)

A bargain at ~$1.15/lollipop!

(But why watermelon?)

There’s no PsychoSlut column in Bookslut this month, a combination of MLA, end-of-semester crises, and a snafu involving an interviewee.  It’ll be back in February!

I did, however, get a review in on time: Mark Jarman’s Epistles, a book of prose poems modeled, as the title suggests, on the epistles in the New Testament.   Here’s a taste:

Mark Jarman’s new book of poems, his ninth, is a collection of prose poems modeled loosely on Paul’s epistles. This is a rather remarkable challenge, for a variety of reasons: Pauline letters are addressed to specific Christian churches and communities — indeed, their universality arises from this deeply-felt sense of community (see Badiou). But Jarman isn’t really addressing a community of believers, or any other community save “the assembly of the lost.”

The other challenge Jarman faces is a formal one: The prominent New Formalist has set himself the task of writing in prose poems. Not for the first time in his career, but certainly this is the most sustained exploration of the form.

Read the whole thing!  (And stay tuned for tomorrow’s poetry-related post over there, where I’ll have a very entertaining interview with Jennifer L. Knox.)

Today I went to the campus bookstore for the ritualistic pre-semester check of my book order, and–ZOMG!!!–all the books are ordered in the correct editions!  And almost all of them are in!

You’ll pardon my excitement, but this is the very first time this has happened.  It hasn’t always been the bookstore’s fault (one semester there was a cockup at the publisher’s end regarding a special bundle), but nevertheless: Every single semester there’s been something.  Until now.  I guess it really is a fresh start this year.

One slightly curious note: The bookstore had used copies available of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, both vols 1 & 2.  How is that even possible?  Who are the poor souls re-selling their Alan Moore comix?

A final point: I’ve started pulling the syllabus together and otherwise getting ready for my course on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and I realized one of the reasons I’m so excited: It’s been a Very Long Time, Indeed since I read some of these books.  It’s been at least 20 years since I read War of the Worlds or Invisible Man, and coming up on 30 years since I read 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.  I’ve not read King Solomon’s Mines in 12 years.  Some of the material–Dracula, Jekyll/Hyde, Sherlock Holmes, She–is more familiar–but otherwise it’s like a fresh dose of youth serum.

(Between today’s post and yesterday’s, I sound pretty old, huh?  1971.)

A disclaimer at the start: I have terrible handwriting.  (Privately, I blame my old-skool 3rd grade teacher, who was inclined to have me switch hands from left to right, which both was unsuccessful and exacerbated the fact that I skipped most of 2nd grade.)  It’s one of two* reasons why I switched to electronic receipt of papers.   Even if students weren’t reading my comments on their papers, it seemed only decent to give them a fighting chance of doing so.

Having said that, I was delighted by Laurie Fendrich’s recent post about handwriting and traditional writing pedagogy**in the Chronicle’s Brainstorm blog.  I do believe that writing by hand is more important and useful than many people seem to think, in part because it’s so slow.  One of my favorite resources in composition and other writing classes is Edward P. J. Corbett & Robert J. Connors’s Style and Statement (Oxford UP, 1999).  I like it in part because of the handy list of rhetorical figures, tropes, and schemes, which forms the basis of one of my favorite writing assignments.  But there’s also the long section on the virtues of imitation, including “copying passages, word for word, from admired authors.  This may strike you as being a rather brainless exercise, but it can teach you a great deal about the niceties of style” (88-89).  The bit that’s relevant to discussions of handwriting is rule 2:

 You must do this copying with a pencil or pen.  Typing is so fast and so mechanical that you can copy off whole passages without paying any attention to the features of an author’s style.  Copying by hand, you transcribe the passage at such a pace that you have time to observe the choice and disposition of words, the patterns of sentences, and the length and variety of sentences. (89)

From a certain point of view, one of the goals of first-year classes is usually to get students to notice: to stop and unpack or analyze things that had previously seemed self-evident or not worth considering.  And I’m inclined to agree with Fendrich, Corbett, and Connors, that the very monotony and apparent pointlessness of certain kinds of tasks actually has cognitive value.  The key to such assignments is that they’re slow–they disrupt our customary inattention to matters of style.

If I start trying to get students to switch hands, though, please slap me!

–

*The other is disease.  Fewer hard copies = fewer germs.

** Yes, I also teach sentence diagramming in writing classes.