Monday, October 29
2:00 Midiyna, 2:30 Allyson, 3:45 Lewis
Tuesday, October 30
1:00 Sara, 1:15 Heather, 1:30 Andrea, 1:45 Maria, 2:00 Luis
Wednesday October 31
1:15 Ashley, 1:45 Paris, 3:30 Jay, 3:34 Roshell, 5:45 Laurelle, 7:15 Jameelah, 7:30 Arlette
Andre? Claudia? Be in touch.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
10.25 Lies and more lies
Web publishing internship. I announced that there will be a web publishing internship offered as a course through the English Department for Spring, 12. This is the link for what students are doing this term. Mia Zamora is the person to contact if you are interested.
Feedback for Draft 2. Along with your draft you posted some specific requests for what you wanted from your readers. In addition to your requests, I asked the class to:
Feedback for Draft 2. Along with your draft you posted some specific requests for what you wanted from your readers. In addition to your requests, I asked the class to:
1. state or "sayback" what the essay is about
2. identify the emotional high point(s)
3. any suggestions for organization
- focus + what needs to come first to set up what the essay is about
- story arc
- emotional arc
4. anything else you might like to say.
Feedback groups:
Jameelah, Lewis, Arlette, Jay, Andrea
Sara, Laurelle, Paris, Claudia
Luis, Maria, Ashley, Midiyna
Heather, Allyson, Roshell, Andre
Jameelah, Lewis, Arlette, Jay, Andrea
Sara, Laurelle, Paris, Claudia
Luis, Maria, Ashley, Midiyna
Heather, Allyson, Roshell, Andre
You got a good start on this, and we had some follow-up talk about giving comments. Finish writing to your group members for homework.
You have scheduled conferences to talk over how you would work further on this draft = and to discuss which essay, 1 or 2, you are going to revise for a grade.
Lies. The writing prompt was about lies. We listed the kinds of lies we are told and classified them, and came up with the observations that while we tell lies for many different reasons, there are certain clusters of reasons for lying to others.
1. to manipulate or get a person or group to do or support ideas or actions (usually associated with the liar's interest); these include enabling lies.
2. to preserve freedom (for the liar); as we discussed in class these lies can be self affecting - or the deception can have concrete consequences on the autonomy or well being of the person lied to
3. to create/get others to support a worldview that the liar wants to believe in
These lies are all done with the purpose of deceiving others - although the last one - often not so much..
We also noted that there were lies where the liar didn't necessarily consider what they were doing as lying. These included:
Delusional lies were lies where the liar cannot accurately interpret what most people agree upon as "fact;" (we included supertitions in this one). Ideological lies are lies that are true in one set of assumptions (as in religious or political beliefs) but considered untruthful by individuals who have other beliefs. Ideological lies can shade into manipulative or freedom preserving lies - depending on the liar's level of awareness. Playful lies would include the kinds of embellishments and exaggerations in storytelling; and unintentional lies are simply when individuals do not have enough information; as our discussion unfolded it became clear that sometimes unintentional lies could shade into manipulations associated with enabling => when individuals are not really aware of the ways they are perpetuating/misrepresenting what an outsider might see as "really" going on.
So while we got a classification system up there on the board - it was clear there were overlaps among the categories.
Lies and power.
This led to a discussion of who has the most power = the liar or the truth teller? the lie or the truth?
We had proponents for both sides of this discussion - and again it was not clear cut. Liars have the advantage that they are not bound by reality - they can "invent" support for their position. Truthtellers have the advantage that they will not get "caught" in a lie.
At the same time - if we consider the case of President Obama's birth certificate => these two principles do not seem so clear cut. Who got caught? Who proved what? What counts as proof? Is anyone INTENTIONALLY lying in this situation. . . ?
We also raised the ideas that "truth always comes to light" and that truth's power is in its Truth (once you see it you recognize it. Again - in real life examples this gets messy.
James Frey and the responsibility of CNF writers. This conversation provided some background for our talk about James Frey. We listed all the different lies that he told, and you observed that the majority of his lies were directed toward (re)creating his life so that it matched a larger than life literary genre = the bad-boy with a heart of gold = James Dean in Rebel without a Cause, John Wayne in The man who shot Liberty Valence, Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, and countless other stories of criminals, gang members, and outlaws who are larger than life examples of self destructive behavior and being outsiders, but are there for their loved ones or "do the right thing" in terms of "what really counts."
We also noted in class that these changes were about $$$ => about selling a book. And that is certainly true.
The last part of class discussion was about doing some reflection on the temptations of telling such lies - even when it is not (intentionally) about making a better story.
The last writing exercise was to make a list of the kinds of lies you are (tempted) to tell. We didn't get to spend as much time on this as we needed - but one quick generalization is that we want to tell lies to assure ourselves that we are OK, that the world is a "good" place, that the people we love are all right (and good people, and will be there for us). And this set of self deceptions sounds if not the same - at least similar to the class of lies Frey was selling => even very bad people are, inside, "good" = they will be "there" for you (if you are the right kind of person = some one special).
The point of the evening was to;
think about the kind of damage misrepresentations can do (we needed to spend a little more time on this with our list from Frey = but should catch up on this one next week)
think about the kinds of lies/misrepresentations that tempt us to tell them (and why)
and begin to decide on the stance we will take with respect to "truth" in our writing (each one of you will have your own individual position on this).
Great discussion!
Next week will be one more class on truth and lies.
You have scheduled conferences to talk over how you would work further on this draft = and to discuss which essay, 1 or 2, you are going to revise for a grade.
Lies. The writing prompt was about lies. We listed the kinds of lies we are told and classified them, and came up with the observations that while we tell lies for many different reasons, there are certain clusters of reasons for lying to others.
1. to manipulate or get a person or group to do or support ideas or actions (usually associated with the liar's interest); these include enabling lies.
2. to preserve freedom (for the liar); as we discussed in class these lies can be self affecting - or the deception can have concrete consequences on the autonomy or well being of the person lied to
3. to create/get others to support a worldview that the liar wants to believe in
These lies are all done with the purpose of deceiving others - although the last one - often not so much..
We also noted that there were lies where the liar didn't necessarily consider what they were doing as lying. These included:
- "delusional,"
- ideological,
- playful,
- and unintentional lies.
Delusional lies were lies where the liar cannot accurately interpret what most people agree upon as "fact;" (we included supertitions in this one). Ideological lies are lies that are true in one set of assumptions (as in religious or political beliefs) but considered untruthful by individuals who have other beliefs. Ideological lies can shade into manipulative or freedom preserving lies - depending on the liar's level of awareness. Playful lies would include the kinds of embellishments and exaggerations in storytelling; and unintentional lies are simply when individuals do not have enough information; as our discussion unfolded it became clear that sometimes unintentional lies could shade into manipulations associated with enabling => when individuals are not really aware of the ways they are perpetuating/misrepresenting what an outsider might see as "really" going on.
So while we got a classification system up there on the board - it was clear there were overlaps among the categories.
Lies and power.
This led to a discussion of who has the most power = the liar or the truth teller? the lie or the truth?
We had proponents for both sides of this discussion - and again it was not clear cut. Liars have the advantage that they are not bound by reality - they can "invent" support for their position. Truthtellers have the advantage that they will not get "caught" in a lie.
At the same time - if we consider the case of President Obama's birth certificate => these two principles do not seem so clear cut. Who got caught? Who proved what? What counts as proof? Is anyone INTENTIONALLY lying in this situation. . . ?
We also raised the ideas that "truth always comes to light" and that truth's power is in its Truth (once you see it you recognize it. Again - in real life examples this gets messy.
James Frey and the responsibility of CNF writers. This conversation provided some background for our talk about James Frey. We listed all the different lies that he told, and you observed that the majority of his lies were directed toward (re)creating his life so that it matched a larger than life literary genre = the bad-boy with a heart of gold = James Dean in Rebel without a Cause, John Wayne in The man who shot Liberty Valence, Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, and countless other stories of criminals, gang members, and outlaws who are larger than life examples of self destructive behavior and being outsiders, but are there for their loved ones or "do the right thing" in terms of "what really counts."
We also noted in class that these changes were about $$$ => about selling a book. And that is certainly true.
The last part of class discussion was about doing some reflection on the temptations of telling such lies - even when it is not (intentionally) about making a better story.
The last writing exercise was to make a list of the kinds of lies you are (tempted) to tell. We didn't get to spend as much time on this as we needed - but one quick generalization is that we want to tell lies to assure ourselves that we are OK, that the world is a "good" place, that the people we love are all right (and good people, and will be there for us). And this set of self deceptions sounds if not the same - at least similar to the class of lies Frey was selling => even very bad people are, inside, "good" = they will be "there" for you (if you are the right kind of person = some one special).
The point of the evening was to;
think about the kind of damage misrepresentations can do (we needed to spend a little more time on this with our list from Frey = but should catch up on this one next week)
think about the kinds of lies/misrepresentations that tempt us to tell them (and why)
and begin to decide on the stance we will take with respect to "truth" in our writing (each one of you will have your own individual position on this).
Great discussion!
Next week will be one more class on truth and lies.
Read: Jill Talbert http://brevity.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/border-crossings-fiction-and-the-literature-of-fact/
Dinty Moore http://brevity.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/what-is-given-against-knowingly-changing-the-truth/
Blog 8: Discussion of how you would work more on Long Essay 2 + discussion of which essay you are going to revise.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
10.18 Real-life experience, the experience of reading, and what writers need to think about in terms of representing the "truth"
We started class with a discussion of what makes us cry - and why. As we created the list we noticed that some experiences were "real-life" experiences - like getting lost, realizing we had accomplished something we wished for/believed in, not being understood, feeling alone - and others were what I'm going to call "literary" experiences - watching a movie, reading a story, hearing a song.
As we characterized the lived-experiences that made us cry we noted clusters of features that were similar to a number of different reasons for crying. Lack of control was a frequent component in "negative" instances when we cried = for anger, loss, or frustration; and the surprise of a heartfelt wish unexpectedly (impossibly) fulfilled was a frequent component of instances where we wept from happiness, satisfaction, or relief.
When we compared the kinds of things that we cried for in literary experiences - we seemed to engage more deeply when we wept for positive reasons. In some sense - if the literary experience was TOO bad - instead of weeping with empathy (connecting to the fictional events/ideas) we withdrew or became angry or annoyed with the material. This is interesting. For lived-experience - there is not a choice to disengage and crying seems in some ways to be a response to the frustration at that fact that we can NOT disengage. With literary experiences that take us into very frustrating negative places - we break away, because we can, and while we may cry, the connection to the experince can be lost.
So what does this suggest about the experience of emotions in life versus writing. Well, lots of things - and we only began to scratch the surface of how we might use this information as we think about writing.
In the middle of this discussion we talked about emotions being "learned" = that in some sense we are socialized in how to be sad, or happy, or angry. So that we "perform" emotions in terms of the expectations of our family, social groups, or the culture at large. With respect to this observation, it seems that our written representations of emotion will draw heavily from those representations - and we might need to do some careful reflecting and checking to make sure we are accurately (honestly) representing what we experienced => rather than the story for what we were supposed to have experienced.
Another observatino might be that what Lott said about CNF's important function for "making sense out of chaos" is not just a feature of CNF, but a necessary characteristic of any writing that hopes to have an audience. If we present experience "raw" (without reflecting on or presenting its relationship to the emotions we are "supposed" to feel in terms of cultural stories)=> without making sense of it - and/or moving traumatic experiences toward the "surprise of a heartfelt wish unexpectedly (impossibly) fullfilled' - we run the risk of our audience withdrawing. Audience withdrawal may be especially risky for "true stories" (like the Hotel Rwanda, or American History X) or CNF - were we are going to cut off our feelings if there is no hope of making reality more understandable or tolerable.
And from this point on = "representations" of experience and "experience itself" and "Truth" get all mixed up. We didn't really have enough time to talk all of this through - but to boil it down to one usable reflection:ALL experience (even experience as we live it) is a perception/representation, but literary experiences seem to have certain restrictions on how our culture will tolerate their representation.
Truth and MD (code for you know who, I don't want another email so I am not posting his name) in China
We spent the second half of class characterizing the kinds of misrepresentations MD set forward about his trip to China, and discussing whether and how they mattered in terms of a discussion of truth in journalism, fiction, theater, and CNF.
In general, we observed that MD lied not about the working conditions and the kinds of things that had happened at some time and in some place in China suppliers for Apple, rather he had misrepresented his own experiences. In particular, he claimed to have been places he hadn't been and to have talked to people he had not talked to. He also misrepresented what the people he talked to said and did, and he was inaccurate (or lied) about what he actually saw and did.
The general consensus of the class was that this was unethical for a journalist, that it undermines the authority of the theatrical piece because it places the audience in a position where it does not have accurate information to distinguish between truth and fiction. Also, it misrepresents the truth about China in important ways. Because the particulars are untrue - the generalizations made from those particulars - even if they coincide with generalities that are true - remain untrue in important ways. First, it "lies" about the pervasiveness of the use of hexane, the prevalence of unions and the relationship of the government to unions, the prevalence of underage workers, and the extent and kind of "victimization" of workers from the workers' perspectives (which, ironically, is what he claims to represent).
His justified his lies in terms of telling a compelling story. Audiences identify more strongly with individual cases (particular people who say specific things in particular situations), and as Heather put it - he was an opportunist in terms of creating stories that matched cultural stories that an American audience will respond (be vulnerable?) to.
So there you have it - are writers/performers justified in messing with facts to tell a "larger" truth? Can it still be the truth if facts are tampered with? If it is not the truth, what does it become? What is the role of fictional works in critiquing "real world" situations? And are there features of CNF that put it in a better position to offer strong, compelling, and useful critiques? Or can each genre - fiction/nonfiction - bring different strengths?
For next class:
As we characterized the lived-experiences that made us cry we noted clusters of features that were similar to a number of different reasons for crying. Lack of control was a frequent component in "negative" instances when we cried = for anger, loss, or frustration; and the surprise of a heartfelt wish unexpectedly (impossibly) fulfilled was a frequent component of instances where we wept from happiness, satisfaction, or relief.
When we compared the kinds of things that we cried for in literary experiences - we seemed to engage more deeply when we wept for positive reasons. In some sense - if the literary experience was TOO bad - instead of weeping with empathy (connecting to the fictional events/ideas) we withdrew or became angry or annoyed with the material. This is interesting. For lived-experience - there is not a choice to disengage and crying seems in some ways to be a response to the frustration at that fact that we can NOT disengage. With literary experiences that take us into very frustrating negative places - we break away, because we can, and while we may cry, the connection to the experince can be lost.
So what does this suggest about the experience of emotions in life versus writing. Well, lots of things - and we only began to scratch the surface of how we might use this information as we think about writing.
In the middle of this discussion we talked about emotions being "learned" = that in some sense we are socialized in how to be sad, or happy, or angry. So that we "perform" emotions in terms of the expectations of our family, social groups, or the culture at large. With respect to this observation, it seems that our written representations of emotion will draw heavily from those representations - and we might need to do some careful reflecting and checking to make sure we are accurately (honestly) representing what we experienced => rather than the story for what we were supposed to have experienced.
Another observatino might be that what Lott said about CNF's important function for "making sense out of chaos" is not just a feature of CNF, but a necessary characteristic of any writing that hopes to have an audience. If we present experience "raw" (without reflecting on or presenting its relationship to the emotions we are "supposed" to feel in terms of cultural stories)=> without making sense of it - and/or moving traumatic experiences toward the "surprise of a heartfelt wish unexpectedly (impossibly) fullfilled' - we run the risk of our audience withdrawing. Audience withdrawal may be especially risky for "true stories" (like the Hotel Rwanda, or American History X) or CNF - were we are going to cut off our feelings if there is no hope of making reality more understandable or tolerable.
And from this point on = "representations" of experience and "experience itself" and "Truth" get all mixed up. We didn't really have enough time to talk all of this through - but to boil it down to one usable reflection:ALL experience (even experience as we live it) is a perception/representation, but literary experiences seem to have certain restrictions on how our culture will tolerate their representation.
Truth and MD (code for you know who, I don't want another email so I am not posting his name) in China
We spent the second half of class characterizing the kinds of misrepresentations MD set forward about his trip to China, and discussing whether and how they mattered in terms of a discussion of truth in journalism, fiction, theater, and CNF.
In general, we observed that MD lied not about the working conditions and the kinds of things that had happened at some time and in some place in China suppliers for Apple, rather he had misrepresented his own experiences. In particular, he claimed to have been places he hadn't been and to have talked to people he had not talked to. He also misrepresented what the people he talked to said and did, and he was inaccurate (or lied) about what he actually saw and did.
The general consensus of the class was that this was unethical for a journalist, that it undermines the authority of the theatrical piece because it places the audience in a position where it does not have accurate information to distinguish between truth and fiction. Also, it misrepresents the truth about China in important ways. Because the particulars are untrue - the generalizations made from those particulars - even if they coincide with generalities that are true - remain untrue in important ways. First, it "lies" about the pervasiveness of the use of hexane, the prevalence of unions and the relationship of the government to unions, the prevalence of underage workers, and the extent and kind of "victimization" of workers from the workers' perspectives (which, ironically, is what he claims to represent).
His justified his lies in terms of telling a compelling story. Audiences identify more strongly with individual cases (particular people who say specific things in particular situations), and as Heather put it - he was an opportunist in terms of creating stories that matched cultural stories that an American audience will respond (be vulnerable?) to.
So there you have it - are writers/performers justified in messing with facts to tell a "larger" truth? Can it still be the truth if facts are tampered with? If it is not the truth, what does it become? What is the role of fictional works in critiquing "real world" situations? And are there features of CNF that put it in a better position to offer strong, compelling, and useful critiques? Or can each genre - fiction/nonfiction - bring different strengths?
For next class:
Read: Smoking gun expose of A Million Little Pieces
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/million-little-lies
Blog 7: Due Draft long essay 2
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/million-little-lies
Blog 7: Due Draft long essay 2
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Conference schedule
All conferences will be in my office: CAS 324
Oct 11
12:30 Paris
1:00 Maria
1:15 Luis
1:30 Sara
2:30 Andre
October 17
4:15 Andrea
Laurelle - be in touch.
Oct 11
12:30 Paris
1:00 Maria
1:15 Luis
1:30 Sara
2:30 Andre
October 17
4:15 Andrea
Laurelle - be in touch.
10.10 Starting on Draft Essay 2
Hopefully, by the end of today (10.11) I will have conferenced with each of you. In this conference we talked over how you might go deeper/further with the material from your first draft, and we also spent some time talking about what you would do for your next draft. As stated in class - the plan is for you to write two drafts, then do some talking/reflecting to decide which one to revise. That means - this next draft is a NEW essay on a NEW topic. You worked some of opening up ideas at the beginning of class - and it sounded to me (and from looking at your blogs) like you are going to have some good material!
For journaling you wrote some family stories. Family stories - when told to a public audience or written in a journal - can be seen in a new light. All of a sudden the "insider" meaning they carry for the family tellings might sound a little different. As you told your stories - we sometimes suggested names for the "type" of story that they were -a blonde moment story, or a difficult (biting) child story, or a naughty but talented child story (the story about my father and the electricity), or a family identity story - and so on. These names connect your stories to "types" of stories told in other families = often for similar purposes and to accomplish similar ends in terms of defining the relationships within their group. When and how and to whom they are told often has to do with power relationships. These relationships (and the roles of stories) are things writers can notice -and turn into essays.
We spent the second half of class looking at some of the ways CNF writers use segmenting and sets of parallel or metaphorically connected story lines to develop a focus. I think the consensus was that the Cofer essay was a more pleasurable read for you - and maybe also that it illustrated more in terms of how to use segments. We spent some time looking at the different typographical cues she used to set off the different voices in her essay: italics for the film, regular print for the historical back story, inset paragraphs (no quotations though) for the voices of the individuals who were IN the flim. We noticed the movement between the film clips and the backstory - and how the two chronologies commented on each other.
We also talked about the metaphor of "silent dancing" = and how it connected to/set up the focus for the story. Just as the family in the film was dancing to music the present day viewers could not hear = weren't the family members in the backstory sections "dancing" to values and "traditions" that were from some place else and another time, and in many ways were "silent" = thought they still had the power to make the actors behaved in terms of their values. That works, doesn't it? Just as The Patch - was a metaphor for the consciousness in his father that McPhee was casting his story to - silent dancing was a metaphor for the powerful force of tradition to direct people's behaviors - even when the traditions are patterns from another place and time that no longer are "heard" in a new or changing context.
Good discussion of these two pieces. It is important to look at how these essays are built so that when you revise your writing - you can draw from the structures and ideas we see in this work.
For next week:
Read: Mike Daisey's report on the Apple factories in China, and NPR's retraction regarding their presentation of that report. These documents are available on NPR's web site at Mr.Daisey and the Apple Factory
Blog 6: More brainstorming for Essay 2.
In class you will brainstorm the draft you post on Blog 6 with your classmates. And we will use Mike Daisey's "creative" piece on sweatshops in China as a starting point for our discussion of "truth" in creative nonfiction.
See you next week.
For journaling you wrote some family stories. Family stories - when told to a public audience or written in a journal - can be seen in a new light. All of a sudden the "insider" meaning they carry for the family tellings might sound a little different. As you told your stories - we sometimes suggested names for the "type" of story that they were -a blonde moment story, or a difficult (biting) child story, or a naughty but talented child story (the story about my father and the electricity), or a family identity story - and so on. These names connect your stories to "types" of stories told in other families = often for similar purposes and to accomplish similar ends in terms of defining the relationships within their group. When and how and to whom they are told often has to do with power relationships. These relationships (and the roles of stories) are things writers can notice -and turn into essays.
We spent the second half of class looking at some of the ways CNF writers use segmenting and sets of parallel or metaphorically connected story lines to develop a focus. I think the consensus was that the Cofer essay was a more pleasurable read for you - and maybe also that it illustrated more in terms of how to use segments. We spent some time looking at the different typographical cues she used to set off the different voices in her essay: italics for the film, regular print for the historical back story, inset paragraphs (no quotations though) for the voices of the individuals who were IN the flim. We noticed the movement between the film clips and the backstory - and how the two chronologies commented on each other.
We also talked about the metaphor of "silent dancing" = and how it connected to/set up the focus for the story. Just as the family in the film was dancing to music the present day viewers could not hear = weren't the family members in the backstory sections "dancing" to values and "traditions" that were from some place else and another time, and in many ways were "silent" = thought they still had the power to make the actors behaved in terms of their values. That works, doesn't it? Just as The Patch - was a metaphor for the consciousness in his father that McPhee was casting his story to - silent dancing was a metaphor for the powerful force of tradition to direct people's behaviors - even when the traditions are patterns from another place and time that no longer are "heard" in a new or changing context.
Good discussion of these two pieces. It is important to look at how these essays are built so that when you revise your writing - you can draw from the structures and ideas we see in this work.
For next week:
Read: Mike Daisey's report on the Apple factories in China, and NPR's retraction regarding their presentation of that report. These documents are available on NPR's web site at Mr.Daisey and the Apple Factory
Blog 6: More brainstorming for Essay 2.
In class you will brainstorm the draft you post on Blog 6 with your classmates. And we will use Mike Daisey's "creative" piece on sweatshops in China as a starting point for our discussion of "truth" in creative nonfiction.
See you next week.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
10.3 Monopoly and the middle class
Feedback. You started class by writing feedback to 3-4 classmates in your group. Before getting to work, we had a conversation about the kinds of feedback that might be useful. After some general discussion, we set up the following prompts for feedback
1. state or "sayback" what the essay is about
2. identify the
emotional high point(s)
3. any suggestions for organization
- focus + what needs to come first to set up what the essay is about
- story arc
- emotional arc
4. anything else you might like to say.
You got a good start on this, and we had some follow-up talk about giving comments. Finish writing to your group members for homework.
List of topics you would never write about
Next you wrote a list of topics you would never write about. As you continued to work on your lists - we put together another list => this one characterized the REASONS you would never write about the topics on your list. These reasons included:
- open old/unresolved wounds
- potential to end relationships
- have to explain yourself
- conflict with who you are
- being seen as weak
- information harmful to others
- betray a promise
- people will think you are bad
- embarassing
- have life consequences
- change the way people think about you
- too painful
- shameful
- personal - afraid to share
- be judged
- aren't sure what you think = haven't yet processed the material
- not fun to write
After looking at this list for a while - and talking about it - we classified the different kinds of reasons and came up with the following classification for the reasons we might not want to write about a particular experience.
- outward projection of self (not a representation of how we want others perceive us)
- inward perceptions (don't want to explore these particular features of self)
- still processing (not ready to come to the kind of closure provided by writing)
- involves a relationship
- ownership (writer doesn't feel s/.he owns the story)
- culturally controversial
- not interesting
We noted that materials in the first 3 cateorgies are in some ways exactly the kinds of writing subjects we would (in some ways) like to read about - and that even though we are not willing are ready to write about these materials, we have been moved by and grateful to writers who take the risks to put the issues in these categories out there. Points four and five are more about boundary issues - and raise problems associated with our relationships not just to others - but to our own experience. Like the first 3, they involve both risks, and they add an additional need to examine/reflect on our motives or the ethics of the writing.
So what is the point of thinking about what you would never write about? To identify your conflicts? To find high stakes material? To think about what kind of writing you DO want to put out there? To share? To reach out to some reader who might be in the same place as you? Yes to all of those. And to anything else the exercise might have brought up for you.
Marvin Gardens.
4 kinds of segments. Playing monopoly (illustration of the dynamics/ethics of the game). The state of a real world urban center built on the ethics/dynamics of monopoly (illustration of real-world consequences of "playing monopoly in Atlantic City and engaging the reader in a search for Marvin Gardens - a real place, that seems to be missing from AC ). The history of Atlantic City (posing connections between a system for play and the building of cities). Reflections (several sections toward the end that connect & explain the relationships among the game play, AC's current condition, and Marvin Gardens.
These segments are arranged in terms of multiple relationships listed in Root's essay, and they are not in an entirely systematic order. As you worked on "reading" this essay in class - you noticed how the way the essay was built was also the way it built its meaning. The title sets up the overall focus = prompts the reader's attention to the central metaphor for the middle class (Marvin Gardens), the first section sets up the game play = an economic system; and the second places us in a world where that game has been played = the ruined Atlantic City of 1975. The parallels & the juxtapositions cause the reader to make connections in language and ideas the lead her/him to the last paragraph = where McPhee presents his "thesis" = that a stable economic system needs a middle class.
One more thing. Why do you think he presented this message so indirectly? Where was it published? Who are the readers for that publication? Would they be inclined to agree or disagree with a direct presentation of these ideas? What do you think?
For next week - we will be doing some more in-depth study of how segmentation works to create part of the story for the reader.
Read: Cofer,
p.54, Silent Dancing (in your book); and
"The Patch" by John McPhee, published in The New Yorker, February 8, 2010.
The essay is available through the Kean databases. Go to the Periodical list, type in The New Yorker, go to the magazine and search the February 8, 2010 issue for
John McPhee, Personal History, “The Patch,” The New Yorker, February 8, 2010, p. 32.
Blog 5: Brainstorming for Long draft essay 2 => write into your ideas AND develop some scenes (for the idea you plan to go with), and/or a map for the presentation.
Finish your comments to classmate's essays.
I will be giving you comments on your Long draft essay 1 in conferences. You get full credit for your blog if you posted an appropriate word count/approximation of the essay by the due date.
In class we will continue to talk about segmenting - and you will do some work to develop ideas for your second essay.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
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