Many years ago, I read The Great Gatsby. Which class and for what purpose is mysterious to me--maybe it was college, maybe it was high school. I honestly can't remember. I do recall thinking that The Great Gatsby was not my favorite thing. In fact, I couldn't really see why people liked it so much.
A year or two later, I reckon, I was asked to teach a junior Socratic Seminar class, which included reading The Great Gatsby. I don't have many memories of that experience, either, but I know that we stretched it out over nine days (because I still have my sticky notes with the schedule penciled into it) and surely talked about the green light on the other end of the harbor, or the eyes of Dr. Eckleburg. Had I the inclination, I could dig out my notes from the time and try to recreate what I did, assuming I was interested in wasting my time. It's been over a decade, and while I'm teaching The Great Gatsby now to my Concurrent Enrollment class, we're interested in gleaning something else from the text. And that's been hard. I wrote a few pages in my reading journal, but in the interest of thinking about something else, I decided to dedicate page-space to other pursuits. Still, there's always something more to say about The Great Gatsby, which is one of its indications of merit, and so I thought I'd toss out one idea that's specifically stuck in my mind's craw: The way in which heat is used to underscore bad ideas. This is not an idea that comes about simply from the text. Back in high school, I read Albert Camus' The Stranger, and I remember my teacher, Miss Bodily, emphasizing the way that Camus describes the temperature on the day that the narrator (whose name I can't remember) kills a man. The existentialism of that text is much clearer, but I think both The Great Gatsby and The Stranger utilize heat at crucial dramatic moments. Camus' novel is a generation later, written in the throes of the Second World War, while Fitzgerald's masterpiece is (in my mind) a direct response to the hedonism-as-solution response to the survival of the First. Still, The Great Gatsby's use of heat stood out to me enough that I was able to dredge up that similarity from my pre-9/11 life to now. That tells me that there may be something there. The heatwave is discussed in detail throughout chapter VII, particularly on page 115. The conductor on the train says, "'Hot! […] Some weather!...Hot!...Hot!...Hot!...Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it…?'", and Narrator Nick notes that the "commutation ticket came back to me with a dark stain from his hand. […] In this heat, every extra gesture was an affront to the common store of life". No one is willing to move, no one can handle the heat. It's in this milieu that we see the dissolving of the façades that have been carefully constructed--and, to a degree, believed in by those of the story, if only because they don't want to consider the alternative--around the entire Gatsby/Buchannan party. Almost as if their lies to each other can't handle the strain of the heat, Tom confronts Gatsby, who retorts all sorts of lies and truths. The "outing" of the affair between Gatsby and Daisy comes as a revelation to none (save, perhaps, Tom, who may or may not have actually wanted his suspicions confirmed). The metaphor we might think of as the heat of the adulterous passion--if that's even an appropriate way to describe it--turns into the literal heat of the day, where the cooling presence of mint julips, spiked with alcoholic heat, does little to douse the ardor of the proclaimed loves and wounded prides. This heat is disorienting; the text itself, mirage-like, starts to yield to the temperature: "'The master's body!' roared the butler into the mouthpiece. 'I'm sorry, madame, but we can't furnish it--it's far too hot to touch this noon!' What he really said was: 'Yes . . . yes . . . I'll see'" (115). What is actually being said? Can we trust either version that Nick gives? (My instinct says that Nick is an unreliable narrator in an unreliable narrative, which leads me to think that we rather ought not to give too much authority to Nick.) This disorientation leads toward uncomfortable conversations, to angry driving, to casual slaughters. It breaks the image of glamor that Gatsby, in particular, has striven for so long to maintain. If The Great Gatsby is a cautionary tale about the dissolution of an American Dream founded on hedonism, then I find it telling that the moment where America cracked is when the most amount of heat was applied. Our own political rhetoric and clamor is getting hotter than it's been for a quite some time--I listened to the proceedings in the House of Representatives as they began the process of moving forward with additional impeachment hearings, and there was much heat in the voices of those who'd defend the president via nitpicking procedure, much smoke in the representatives who sought only to hold up their Constitutional duty. If The Great Gatsby is a cautionary tale about the dissolution of an American Dream, then heat is the catalyst that brings about the fracture. What kind of heat can America truly take? Back in college, I had to take a handful of American literature as part of my English major. I didn't have any defined taste when it came to the large swaths of literature--British or American--and so, when I first took one of the classes, it was fine. Whatever. A class that wasn't math or science but just about reading and talking about books? No problem.
Part way through my survey course of American lit, though, I started resisting the texts that we had to read. There was some gnarly anthology that weighed down my backpack--it was one of the few books I sold back, mostly because I wanted the cash for my mission--and I distinctly remember not being too thrilled by what was inside of it. For the most part, the literature was from the 1800s, which is one of my least favorite times in the past seven hundred years*, particularly in American letters. At the time of college, if it wasn't fantasy related, I was scarcely interested, though science fiction was still a large fascination to me. And the 1800s--with the notable exception of Moby-Dick, which I didn't study until I was an upperclassman--saw, in my view, a lot of less-than-impressive writers whom we admire because there's no one else. Yes, yes, there are exceptions throughout, but I'm not kidding when I say that very little of American literature really scintillated me. As the years marched on and I took more classes about literature from both sides of the pond, I realized that I very much preferred the British approach to writing than the American. As I had yet to fall in love with Shakespeare, I can only read this as the result of enjoying the variety** of British writing that America has consistently failed to match. During an advanced section on American literature, I realized something: Almost all of America's masterpieces deal with adultery, murder, or both. And while Shakespeare does the same thing for a lot of his plays, he has other things that attract his attention. But few American novels do. Of Mice and Men? Both. The Awakening? Adultery. The Great Gatsby? Both. As I Lay Dying? Both. Pretty much anything by Hemingway? Both in spades. And I'm not saying that those topics aren't fit for literature. In fact, literature is a really important part of our understanding of those topics. It's just that there is more to the human experience than these two ideas. Because so much of American letters orbit around these topics, I quickly became fatigued with the "classics of American literature", if only because they told the same story but with a different skin. I didn't really feel a strong pull to explore the Great American Novels after a while, as I felt like the other important questions about being an American were left untouched. This is probably one of the greatest reasons why I don't teach American history, which my school has broken up as the curriculum for juniors and seniors. I stick with the sophomores because then I don't have to pretend that I like Hemingway (though, for my money, I'd say Steinbeck is the best of the top-tier American writers, followed by Fitzgerald; I've no interest in Faulkner, and the transcendentalists simply irritate me, so Whitman and his ilk have no allure). In my current course, I get to talk about Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo, Austen, Achebe, and some minor writers in between. All of that is much more interesting to my heart and soul than the tradition of my own country. I don't know how deeply to read into this. I've been frustrated and disillusioned with America for a long time--pretty much once I became politically aware, I realized that there was a massive disconnect between what I'd been led to believe about the country and how it really behaved. The relearning of this American mind was not a pleasant experience. When it comes to other countries, I'm more comfortable giving a balanced look--what they did right, what they did wrong; when they perpetuated violence and inhumanity and when they resisted it--without the attachment of having felt one way about the place and then learned how I was wrong. That detachment (if that's even the right word--it isn't, but it's all I've got right now) allows me to love the art that's been made without it necessarily saying something about the country whence it came. And maybe that's the biggest thing about American literature: Regardless of its topic (adultery, murder, both…or the rare "Other" option), it's always about America, too. I could say that it's the narcissistic vein that runs deeply which provides this impulse, but that's too superficial***. Everyone looks for themselves first in the yearbook, right? With two oceanic moats and only two neighbors to worry about, America has never had a strong reason to see others in the yearbook of history. We've always been quite content with our version, thank you very much, and that's reflected in our literature. While the great export of the American mythos in the form of superheroes is currently the pop culture mainstay, even that is so distinctly American that it's almost embarrassing. Just look at the first Iron Man movie to see how we view ourselves--embodied in Tony Stark--and you'll start to see that we're still telling ourselves the same stories over and over again. I guess it's just a story I got sick of a little bit faster than others. --- * The 1300s has Dante; the 1400s the Wars of the Roses and other Shakespeare-discussed eras; the 1500s has the Tudors and, of course, Shakespeare himself; the 1600s have Milton, plus the English Civil War; then there's the dearth of interesting to me 1700s and 1800s, with a couple of highlights thrown in--some revolutions and Jane Austen; then the 1900s have some fairly intriguing wars and, hey, that's the century in which I was born. Not coincidentally, it is this segment of time that I teach, so it's also the times I understand the best; pre-1300 anything is fuzzy to me. ** I guess it's worth pointing out that my taste heads toward British literature for a lot of reasons. They, too, fixate on certain themes--power structures and obedience are, unsurprisingly, more important to many of the kingdom's preoccupation over the centuries--and that, too, can be tiring. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be British, but that, I think, is a matter of taste. While that should go without saying, I figured I'd say it just to ensure there's no misreading of what I mean. *** Easily as superficial as saying that American literature is only concerned with adultery, murder, or both, perhaps--is it possible?--even more superficial. In Mark Edmundson's Why Write?, he talks about a lot of stuff. In fact, I've already chatted about him (and in other places, too) and how he's a really good writer and I love the way he writes and thinks. Even though I finished Why Write? back in February, I've decided to reread it is a decompression from Paradise Lost and because I still don't want to start Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows just yet. (Lots of reasons for that, not the least of which comes from the fact that I want to keep using my new pen, which I can't since I'm reserving the last few pages in a different reading journal for HP #7.) Edmundson is clearly a fan of Milton--he alludes to him a couple of times in the first twenty pages alone, which is a fast way of a writer getting me on her (or his) team--but he isn't focused on the prophet-bard, which is the perfect way to finish up a heavy read like Paradise Lost.
Not only that, but NaNoWriMo starts on Friday--which means that there will be, again, a dearth of nonfiction essays, though my website has my NaNoWriMo story, posted as I finish each chapter (which will be about 32 chapters long, at this point…so, ideally, they'll come out one a day, rough and raw but (I hope) readable)--so having a pep talk from Edmundson every day is going to be a good thing for me. I mean, I'll probably finish his book before I finish mine. Nevertheless, starting with momentum will help me. I hope. Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because he writes how there are, essentially, two types of overcoming the wall of writing: Over or under. He says that the caffeinated, slam-your-head-against-the-keyboard kind of writing will get it done, that the writing will come by going over the wall. But the kind of writing he advocates is writing under the wall, tunneling beneath it. This is done, he says, a myriad of ways, including meditation and some sort of ritual or routine. Sharpening a half dozen pencils, he says, may be it for one writer, while a walk around the backyard works for another. I don't write with pencils, and my backyard is filled with chicken poop, so neither of those will work for me. And I got to thinking: What is my ritual? I realized that I don't have one. I mean, sure, I have routines that, when I have my druthers, I get to do. Those usually involve my writing retreats, where I don't have anything else on my plate but writing as much as I possibly can. And, even then, that's not the ritual--that's going over the wall, not under it. Sometimes, when I've been writing long enough, I get a kind of writer's high, one where I feel dissociated and so absorbed by the words that I hardly recognize the world around me. Those are times, I think, when I'm flying over the wall--better than either climbing or burrowing, I daresay. But, for the most part, writing for me is very much a scaling process, working with words to clamber to the top of my thoughts by the bottom of my page. So I'm thinking about what I may be able to do to try to change that. The reason is straightforward: I don't much care for my writing style. Oh, sure, I get a good line in once in a while--whatever my other shortcomings may be, I am smarter than a bunch of monkeys slapping at a keyboard, and we all know how even they will get Shakespeare, if given enough time--and sometimes I even put down something with a worthwhile weight, a burden of the soul that can only come through words. But it's a blue-moon chance, something I'd like to improve. In other words, how can I write better? Maybe it's by writing under. And if Edmundson is right about this being one of approaching the wall contemplative, carefully, respectfully--as opposed to full-speed, anxiously, violently--then I need to figure out a way to get to that spot. But, because my time at the keyboard is limited, I think it's fair to say that I need to know how to get there faster than a mosey. What, then, should my rituals be? Well, I haven't figure that far ahead. It isn't music--I have plenty of music that I like that kind of gets me ready to write, but it's unreliable at best, and has diminishing returns. I don't think sharpening pencils will really be right for me. Maybe some sort of mantra? Something that I type that isn't about the words but the action, the movement of the fingers on the keyboard without worrying about what it's supposed to say? Something really affirming? I don't know. I'll have to think about it. I do know, however, that it has to be done in a way (or in a place) where I don't get interrupted. Nothing quite like a call for dinner to shock me out of that tunnel. And then I've nothing but dirt to breathe. I'd rather not die that way. Have you heard of Artstation? It's a website that, like DeviantArt, allows users to upload their art in order to share, show off, gain work, and archive the vast amount of talent that the art world has. Today, as I was browsing through the "Shakespeare" search query on their site, I stumbled across a picture by Stephanie Ross (pictured above). It is a mashup of Shakespeare and Overwatch characters and I think it's pretty awesome. While Ross' style isn't my number one favorite, I love the concept. She has a couple of others, including Sombra as Puck and Mercy as Titania, which got me thinking about how much further I could push the idea. What about Wrecking Ball as Yorick's skull? Doomfist as Othello--or Aaron the Moor to do a deep cut? Zarya as Viola from Twelfth Night, dressed as Cesario? Junkrat as Malvolio or Feste or any of the other fools (he already has a jester skin)? I'd love to see someone make these--or anything like them--as more fanart. As the ideas percolated in my brain, I thought, Why don't I just make some of these? And the instant response was, I don't draw that well. I'm not being falsely modest when I say this, either: I'm not a very good artist, and much of what I conceive in my head gets lost between the skull and the fingertips. True, I can cartoon pretty well: I've been drawing Calvin and Hobbes knock-off style since I was in seventh grade, and I have memories of cluttering up worksheets in elementary school with my drawings (of Wolvemato, a mash-up of Wolverine and a tomato…man, I was a weird kid). I teach my Socratic classes with drawings all of the time. In fact, here's a copy of one of the sections of Paradise Lost that we discussed this past week. I made this painting of Pennywise a few weeks ago, using a still from the movie as a reference--so it's really more of a trace than a painting, I would say. So when I say I don't draw that well, I'm not saying that I'm relegated to stick-figures and explanatory arrows. I'm good enough at drawing to know and recognize my shortcomings.
Now, could I change that? Could I have my own Inktober (or participate next year) and see myself improve? Duh, absolutely. It is, as is so often the case in grown-up life, a matter of time and energy. Could I fit in Inktober efforts for October, then NaNoWriMo for November? Probably not; just in terms of my own limited emotional and physical resources--mostly patience and energy--I couldn't do that and all of the other things that are expected of me. The point is, I would wish for a brush of fire so that I could paint the thoughts that are in my brain…but I don't think I'm willing to get there. The amount of effort that drawing requires is staggering. Good art--that is, art that a person finds pleasing, even on a casual, quick-glance basis, rather than a lengthy argument about what "art" is or what "good" may mean--is a massive investment of time by the artist. Yet how long does one spend looking at the art? How long did you look at the pictures in this post? The writing of this particular essay took about thirty or so minutes, though the time to find those links and format the webpage added a few more than I normally need for an essay of this length. And it probably took between three and seven minutes (I'm guessing) for most people to read this whole thing. In other words, the amount of time it takes for someone to read this is a visible percentage of how long it took to write it. Art, on the other hand, can take multiple hours and will get an appreciative glance that lasts fewer than ten seconds--probably closer to two or three. That's less than one percent of the time it took to make. Obviously, the art isn't just for the viewer, nor are my writings just for the readers--there are lots of reasons why a person sits down to make art, regardless of the medium. I don't have the same artistic talent as a great many millions of people out there, and the time it would take to develop a style that I like (my own really irritates me, which is part of the reason that I don't like putting more time into my drawings) isn't going to happen. But that doesn't mean I don't wish that it would. Instead, I have to focus on the kind of art that I can make, which means finishing up this essay and doing something else with words. Who knows? Maybe I'll even write something worth reading… I have a love-hate relationship with short stories.
Back in high school, I took an entire class that was nothing but short story analysis. We'd read one in our thick textbook anthology, then talk a bit about it for a day or two, then move on to the next. In my AP English class, we would do a similar thing--though we read more high-brow short stories (Hemmingway, you know, or something like)--with plenty of analysis about symbolism, color-coding, or allusions tucked in. For my science fiction class in college, we had The Science Fiction Century (an anthology that still sits on my shelf to this day, near 2041, a book I bought in 1992 and have kept so that I can read it in another twenty-two years and see how far--or how close--we are to the predictions of my childhood) that provided the fodder. Looking through my own writing folder, I have been fiddling with the form for over a decade, with most of my short fiction coming out when I was still in college. There are maybe twenty or so stories from then, some of them quite short, many of them incomplete. I have, in other words, some experience with the form. But I've shied away from short stories a lot nowadays, and not just in my own fiction. I have a book called Dangerous Women that has female protagonists in the short stories, as well as Songs of the Dying Earth that has, I guess, songs or something about Earth as it dies…? I haven't ready anything from that one, so I don't know. I have a zombie anthology, and a Stephen King book called The Bazaar of Bad Dreams that has been enjoyable enough. Of course, looking at it this way, it seems like there's a lot of short fiction in my house, but the truth is, it's probably only four or five percent of my total book ownership that's in this form. And I think I have a reason why… They're short. Yes, I know, that's the point. But in terms of what I want out of a story, about getting to know characters and be immersed in their world, the short story doesn't really do that. The focus is much wider in novels, the view bigger. Also, since I write fantasy fiction (most of the time), there's so much world-building that short stories really strain that "short" appellation when I try to develop the world. Another reason? They're too long. When I sit down to write during the school year--for essays such as this one, for example--I have enough mental energy and patience to write a few hundred words, maybe a touch over a thousand. On rare occasions, I can hit a thousand and a half. (This is, incidentally, one of the hardest things about NaNoWriMo for me: It's just out of my typical range.) So, when I sit down to write a short story, I don't have the mental energy to simply write it and be done all in a single go. I have to write it over the course of multiple writing sessions. This is unfamiliar and uncomfortable to me, as I'm used to putting in as much time as I can and then wrapping up the writing and going on with my life. A short story demands a bit more time than I can usually afford to give in a single sitting. In fact, with the first DeviantStory, I found myself losing focus and interest as I entered into the 3,000 plus word count. I didn't want to stop--I've started, stopped, and not returned to two other DeviantStories--because I wanted the story done, but I also didn't want to continue because I was tired. This uncomfortable "not-quite-right" feeling to the stories makes me dislike them, but, at the same time, there's a lot to commend them. Their size allows me to have a single idea, explore it, and then set it aside. I could--if I ever bothered--use them to improve my editing, putting me into a better practice with that side of writing that I tend to neglect (mostly because I hate it). As far as reading them goes, they tend to only require a half-hour's time, rather than the greater commitment of their larger brethren and sistren in the novel format. And that's why I say that I have a love-hate relationship with short stories. One of the things that surprises me as a teacher of Paradise Lost? Students would not want to live in the Garden of Eden, according to how John Milton presents it, because "it would be boring."
I know that they're fifteen years old ("I'm sixteen!" That One Kid™ is always quick to irrelevantly point out) and still getting a grip on the world, but it really is shocking to me. Here's the deal with Milton's Eden, in case you've forgotten since the last time you read the poem: The Garden is filled with every conceivable fruit and vegetable--indeed, inconceivable fruits and vegetables are also available. There are bounteous rivers, crystal clear, that are healthful and delicious. Animals live there with no danger, including lions that play with lambs, snakes that coil around harmlessly, and tigers prowl through herds without the latter getting freaked out. It's not unusual to see an elephant writhing his "lithe proboscis" to entertain Adam and Eve. The days are warm enough that a constant cool breeze is needed--and provided--and beautiful scents fill the air around flowery bowers. At one point, the amiable angel Raphael says that Eden is patterned after Heaven, which, he tells us, has variety and change because it's nice. I take that to mean that something approaching seasons is possible there--though Adam and Eve don't stay in Eden long enough for us to see for certain. Additionally--and this is crucial for me to explain to my predominantly LDS students--Eve and Adam are fully expecting and waiting for "additional hands" to come to them. That is, Milton doesn't conceive of a sexless or childless Eden*. And, since there's no pain in Eden, childbirth is (we can assume) essentially painless. Death, of course, is completely foreign there ("Whate'er Death is," says Adam when the topic comes up (425)), and wickedness is likewise unavailable. In short, the Garden of Pleasure** is truly a paradise: All of the things that make life beautiful, none of the weaknesses that make it miserable. Milton, I think, does this on purpose: If we as readers are to feel like we've truly lost something, it can't be a conditional paradise. Eden must be a place that we long to be in, so that when it's lost (the spoiler is in the title, people), we care. So when I ask the kids if they'd want to be Eden, their number one critique is that it would be boring--and I don't get it. A lot of kids argue that without opposition, there's no growth. No growth is, essentially, uninteresting (or, rather, boring). And while I understand that from a postlapsarian point of view, Milton goes to show that there's plenty to do in the Garden--gardening, as a matter of fact, to say nothing of exploring all of the cool and beautiful things in Eden--because, again, Eden has to be a place that we'd unreservedly want to go to. "But you wouldn't have anything to do after a while," the children groused. "Eventually, you would waft yourself heavenward," I rejoined, "refilling the celestial halls with humans-turned-angels to refill those numbers lost by the fall of Satan and his Atheist crew!" "What would you do, though? Just, like, tend a garden?" "Yeah." "Nothing else?" "There's an elephant who writhes his lithe proboscis…" And what they're saying--or, rather, what I'm hearing--is that they don't realize just how monotonous life really is. You'd think they would: They are, after all, students. There is a constant grind of schedules, bells, expectations, and repetitions. But they have summer to look forward to, or graduation, or a job… …but that's where I am, and I have to say, it doesn't feel like there's a lot of growth here. There are small lessons here or there, but life has hit the this-is-life-for-the-foreseeable-future-and/or-until-you-die plateau. I've been teaching the same curricula (with some noteworthy exceptions) for over a decade, going through the same jokes, asking the same questions, pointing out the same cool things. I get quite a bit of satisfaction from that, but when I zoom out, the monotony of day-in-day-out living is grinding. Living becomes habitual. Mountain peaks of the past fade into rolling hills of the present and it gets to the point where speedbumps give me nosebleeds. Part of the reason that I can see so far into the future is because there's nothing to climb between here and death. In other words, this brave new world that is filled with so many possibilities--more possibilities than I can ever hope to touch--will collapse until there's variety in the names I memorize and that's about it. Oh, sure, there are changes. My children are still at home and in school, so watching them grow and learn and burst out into the world will be moments to look for and savor. I don't deny that there will be changes, of course, and new joys--and also new sorrows. A life in Milton's Eden would omit that last part, which is why I'm still baffled by my students' responses to the question "Would you want to live there?" When they answer, in effect, "I wouldn't want to live a boring life that's the same every day," I realize that I need to refrain from telling them that I ask myself almost daily: Is this all there is? --- * In LDS doctrine, our First Parents were told that they had to "multiply and replenish the earth"--which is interpreted to mean that this "commandment" was in effect at the same time as the prohibition on the fruit. Where Mormonism and Milton differ is that LDS doctrine claims that childbearing was impossible whilst Eve was in Eden. Until she and her husband departed from the Garden, they couldn't have kids. Milton just assumes that, had Eve not partaken of the fruit, all of humankind would still be in the Garden all the way up to present day. ** Eden in Hebrew means "Pleasure". Just today, I noticed something weird about my right hand: It's more muscular than my left hand.
Being right-handed, this isn't really much of a surprise. I mean, my right arm always feels stronger, my right hand more dexterous (except on the guitar strings, of course). But I've been writing by hand quite a bit lately, which means that I've been massaging my right hand more than usual. It does hurt--I'm logging a minimum of two pages a day as I'm rereading Paradise Lost, to say nothing of drawing for a couple of hours during class periods--so the massaging isn't unusual. What took me off guard was the noticeable difference in the abductor pollicis brevis (the fleshy part of the palm closest to the thumb…at least, if I'm understanding the Google Images of the hand correctly) between my hands. My right hand is noticeably thicker, and it aches. Maybe part of the strangeness here is the idea of me having developed muscles. While I have enough to get around, I stopped playing quidditch years ago and, likewise, stopped exercising all together. The idea of muscle-mass acquisition is strange for me to consider at all. I just don't normally put on muscle. Of course, if building up muscle is off-brand for me, building it up on my writing hand tracks pretty much spot on. Part of why I think my hand is hurting--why I'm gaining more muscle there--is because I changed my handwriting. Normally, I write in an all-caps mode: I developed this back when I was in seventh- or eighth grade and I thought that I was going to be a comic book writer and artist. Because I made everything by hand back then (Photoshop was not a household name yet, and even if it were, I probably wouldn't have been allowed to experiment with it on the sole family computer), I recognized the fact that I would have to write all of the captions, speech-, and thought bubbles in ALL CAPS, just like the pros did. So I set about changing my handwriting--a process I've gone through a number of times throughout my life. I would write out, say, a homework assignment in the new handwriting, taking pains to go back and rewrite something when I slipped into my old style. As the years went on and my comic book writer/artist aspirations faded, I started loosening up my way of writing, allowing me to still write in all caps but with some shortcuts that give my writing a distinctive look. For example, I write "of" in cursive, and I use lower-case letters for most anything that starts with a "th". A sentence that I would write might look a bit like this: WITHOUT A DOUBT, the BEST WAY of WRITING IS IN the CONTINUAL PRACTICE of IT. Okay, it looks ridiculous in print, but when I've actually written, it isn't too bad. At least, I don't cringe when I see it. (I don't bother asking the students what they think, as the alternative is not something worth dealing with.) Still, it's the way I write, for good or ill. Because I purchased this new Moleskine+ Pen that I already linked above, I decided to switch to lower-case writing. This is less practiced and I don't have as much recent experience with it; however, I wanted to be able to easily transfer over the handwritten stuff to my computer as needed, in case I want to put what's in the pen onto the computer screen or essay post. Now, I use Microsoft Word* for my essay writing, so while I could import my all-caps writing into Word and then change it into a "Sentence case" version with a click o' the button, there would still be things that the program missed: Paradise Lost, for example, is capitalized in title case. Word, I daresay, wouldn't know the difference. My thinking was, if I'm going to be importing the text from my pen, I should write in such a way that simplifies what I'm importing--cut down on what I'll need to pretty up, as it were. Well, now that I've had the pen for almost a week--and used it every day, for multiple hours sometimes--I realize that I have made a mistake. Since I went ahead and switched my handwriting styles for my thoughts on Paradise Lost, I'm committed (in my mind, at least; there's nothing external that is forcing me to do this) to writing the whole section about Paradise Lost in the lower-case style. But it uses my muscles differently--in a way that I'm not as familiar or comfortable with. Result: My hand is bigger than it was, and it hurts. See, one of the ways that I cut down on hand-fatigue with my other reading journals was to write from the shoulder as much as I could. Since all-caps writing uses a lot more straight up and down lines--and requires slightly less precise movements (consider, for example, how "d" and "D" insist on different degrees of accuracy to make the swoops)--I can alleviate some of the pain in my hand by letting my shoulder take on some of the effort. The way I write my lower-case letters doesn't really allow this, which is why I have this issue. So, in a sense, I'm giving an update on how my new notebook is (I like it a lot) as well as giving you over a thousand words talking about my handwriting. Yeah…really high quality content up on stevendowdle.weebly.com today. --- * I know, I know, software as a service is madness and I shouldn't support those rotten practices that Microsoft money-grubs into existence. But…still. I need something more reliable--and off-line available--than Google Docs. This goes along with what I said in the Moleskine Pen essay: I'm spending more on the tools I use to write, not because others are inferior or won't suffice (I mean, I still use yWriter and that's free), but because it's part of how seriously I consider my craft. So while OpenOffice (or whatever its successor is) served for writing my earlier novels, I just prefer Word and its features over anything else out there. One of the ways that I help fill my creative well is by flipping through DeviantArt. The website showcases artists from around the world, with a lot of really interesting styles and approaches. (There is--unsurprisingly--a lot of weird stuff on it, too, so discretion is advised.) Professionals and amateurs alike use the site to both bolster their own work and be part of the larger artistic community. Not being particularly artistic (I have my cartoons that I doodle, and I like to use my Surface pen to draw during church on Sundays), I don't add to the website anything substantial. Instead, I just look.
Because of that habit, I noticed that some (very few, in my honest experience) of the pieces of art feel like they're a snapshot in the middle of a story. Among the pencil sketches of hands, yet another Fursona, fanart from the latest Netflix hit, fractal art, and anime characters of sundry shapes and sizes (and clothing options) lurk the occasional piece of art that has a sense of momentum, of dynamism, of being part of something greater than just a practice. These little snippets of a broader story sometimes make me wonder enough that I've decided to start writing what I call DeviantStories. I've so far started three of these (with only finishing one), each one coming from a picture that I spotted, favorited, and let germinate in my brain. One is a picture of a couple in a truck. Another is a cloaked person in an autumnal forest. Another is a mother hugging her son after giving him a bath, or a father helping tie his son's tie. The point is, I see potential for more than what's on the screen or in the frame and then want to explore it. This has been harder than I expected. I can sit down and weave some thousand words or so into an essay and feel content enough with what I've written to send it out into the world. It's not the best way of writing--it certainly doesn't teach me about anything more than nonce editing, for example--but it's what I've the bandwidth to complete most days. When it comes to fiction, however, I expect more of myself…enough that I think that I should probably polish, edit, and improve the original product. Not only that, but my original product as an essayist tends to be a single-shot (that is, I sit down, write the thing, and then I'm done). While there are exceptions, those tend to be because of scheduling constraints--I start an essay, need to do something else, and come back to it--than because I have to let the idea fully form. In a lot of ways, the point of writing the essay is to help form the thoughts. The point of writing the story, however, is to tell the story. And, for some reason, I feel like I'm doing something wrong if I can't get the story out in a single go. I rarely write chunks of chapters--I push through until the chapter is as long as it's supposed to be, only stopping when I've finished that scene. This matters with the DeviantStories because I'm not really adept at seeing the image, "hearing" the inspiration, and then completing the project. It's a lot harder, in other words, for me to put down the story this way. All that being said, I have finished one of the three that I've started. (It was inspired by the picture that's at the top of this post, made by PrismoTheSmoke.) I do feel like I need to read it over before adding it, but I think it's fair to say that, every once in a great while, I'll be posting a piece of short fiction on the website instead of an essay. When possible, I'll add a small behind-the-scenes of why I picked the story, what stood out to me in the picture enough to want to put the words down, and any other thing that strikes my fancy. Who knows? Maybe I'll get practiced enough at this that someday I can look back at my short story collection and feel something like a flash of pride. Maybe. Today at school saw me talking. A lot.
This isn't in-and-of itself too unusual, as I often look for things for students to talk about and, as a result, join in on the conversations. Today, however, was a bit ridiculous. In my Socratic Seminar classes, we're studying an abridged version of Paradise Lost, and it requires a lot of heavy lifting on my part. The poem's complexities and nuances need attention, and the tenth graders I teach don't have the wherewithal to pick out much of those. Sure, there are a rare few who manage to gain a lot by virtue of reading carefully, but the majority don't. I feel as though my job, then, is to make the opaque moments clearer. In my Concurrent Enrollment class, we're starting a new style of paper (sadly, we're leaving Milton's Areopagitica behind, which gives me all sorts of sads; since I'm teaching Paradise Lost, however, the pain doesn't linger). To get the seniors ready to write the paper--and to give them greater guidance than what I gave them for the last paper--I had to talk. A lot. In fact, I even broke out my Wooden O Symposium talk and showed them some of what I talked about in that as an example of a (more granular) rhetorical analysis paper. All of that meant that I was using words, words, words all day long, and while that is my job--to an extent--it's given me pause. How can I change that? How can I still get them the information I want them to have without talking myself hoarse? On one hand, I don't know what else to do; lecture-style learning works well for me. I, of my own volition, will listen to lecture series or podcasts. It clicks inside of my head. But my students aren't me (thankfully). Not only do they not necessarily learn well that way, but their attention spans don't allow for even fifty minutes of direct instruction. Three of my seniors, despite my teasing of them, fell asleep whilst I tried to talk to them about their new paper. Here's the irony: I teach Socratic Seminar, which utilizes a different style of Socratic teaching than ye olde Socrates would do, but still operates on the principles of discussion and questioning. Yet I can't seem to get myself out of these situations. When it's something that we all understand--something that I've explained and the students can grasp the topic--then I can turn over the class, as it were, to the students. But when it's all new information? All new ideas? How else do I get them to understand at the same time? I do use Chromebooks in my classroom on a pretty regular basis. Could I send them on a websearch for information? Yeah, but then they're all looking at different areas. Should I use the time straightening out misperceptions and errors that they find on their own? We know that false ideas have a tendency to stick in minds; do I want to run the risk of misinformation and then correction? And what if I miss someone? Not only that, but I personally get frustrated repeating myself (I only teach one section two times a day--my other sections are different than the others) and I lose patience more easily when I have to say to the fifth group what I've already said to groups one through four. This has been something that's been plaguing me for a good six or seven years. My wife has a very different instructional style, one where she tries not to talk for more than ten minutes per class period. I…don't know how to get to that level. Yes, there are different activities that we can do--I'm stewing on some right now, as a matter of fact--that will provide some variety to the day's work, but "different activities" isn't the same as figuring out how to shut my fat face long enough for them to assert themselves more fully. Maybe I've encountered an insoluble problem. Maybe it's not possible to teach Paradise Lost without something as didactic as a quasi-lecture for fifty minutes. But I don't really think that's right; I'm just blind to what the answer is. Like most bibliophiles, I have more books than I've read. The aspect of owning a book, simply for the joy of owning it, is rather important to me. So I do buy more books than I can actually read (unless, of course, I put a moratorium on purchases and sit, satisfied, with what I have already purchased; then, in a year or two, I might catch up).
I have another reason why I purchase books, even knowing that I have others at home that need attention. It comes from a desperate hope for some sort of karmic reciprocity between me and the unknowing author that I have done her (or him) the courtesy of purchasing her (or his) book and, provided the blessed day ever arrives for me, she (or he) will happily part with some of her (or his) hard earned money by buying one of my books. This is one of the primary reasons why I don't frequent the used bookstore as often as I do Barnes and Noble. It isn't that I dislike the used bookstore format or what they're trying to do. Not only that, but there are rare and unexpected gems that one can find on the shelves at used bookstores. I do harbor a couple of exceptions: If I'm there and there's a book that I want, I'll go ahead and buy it at the local place rather than digging around online to purchase the used book; and if the author is no longer with us, then I don't feel the possibility of that author buying one of my future books, so I'm okay going used. Now, this isn't a perfect system--I order used books online all of the time, though I usually do so with a twinge of conscience--and it's predicated on a future that is looking about as likely now as it did fifteen years ago when I was working on my first post-high school novel. I'm over 1.6 million words away from that time, so in that sense I'm different, but there is nothing--not even a nibble, though a couple of extra rejections--that indicates that I'm going to be finding an agent very soon. Not only that, but it's a system that assumes that karmic balance, which may just be a way of justifying to myself my decisions. I also carve out exceptions for buying, say, a Stephen King novel (though I usually buy those new because I'm in the mood for one when I'm at Barnes and Noble), where I'm perfectly content to buy one that's a loss-leader for a store, since I figure Mr. King isn't in need of the money anymore. Same goes for people like Sanderson and Rowling and Martin--though I tend to buy those new anyway because I don't want to wait for a used copy to become available. I spend too much on books, is what I'm saying. So what are some of the twinges to my reading conscience that are currently languishing on the shelf, giving me condemnatory (albeit understandingly condemnatory) looks? Well, on the easy-to-read side, I have Attack on Titan Vol. 28 that I bought the day/week (can't remember now) it came out. Unfortunately, I've misplaced Vol. 27 and there are some details in that one that I need to refresh m'self on, which makes me disinclined to pick up the sequel. Also an easy-so-why-are-you-complaining purchase is Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (not Thomas Hobbes; this is an easy read I'm talking about here). It's a steampunk novel that piqued my interest back when Gayle and I were doing more steampunk-related costumes and characters. I've yet to even crack the cover. A third on that front would be Macbeth by Jo Nesbø. It's one of the Hogarth Shakespeare offerings, sitting next to Hag Seed by Margaret Atwood. Oh, and speaking of Atwood, I started the first couple of chapters of The Handmaid's Tale, but lost interest when I put it down and haven't picked I up again. I also have two of Brandon Sanderson's Alloy of Law spin-off books to read, to say nothing of the fact that I've had Oathbringer for multiple months and haven't bothered getting past the one-quarter mark. I've two short story collections edited by George R.R. Martin, neither of which I've finished. There's still an unread Mark Edmundson on my nightstand. Oh, and a couple of King novels, a Mull novel, and even one by Naomi Novik that continue to shame me. On the more complicated reading front, I've yet to finish Plato's Republic, and I've three really interesting philosophy/theory books that gather dust: The Parallax View by Žižek, Molecular Red by Wark, and Society of the Spectacle by Debord. I've done basically nothing with Tatum's Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? As far as hard-even-though-it's-fiction level, I'm not much farther through Jerusalem by Alan Moore than I was two and a half years ago when I forced my way through the first half (approximately) of the story. I read maybe twenty pages of Don Quixote. I struggled to even start The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. I've stared at the cover of The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang longer than I've put eyes on her words, and I have scarcely looked at the art on that one. I get it that I wanted to support some of these authors, or my interest when I bought them was high but has since faded. That's natural and normal, I suppose. But it doesn't change the fact that I'm embarrassed by how many books are on my shelf that I failed to read. I'm going through Paradise Lost with my students right now, so I have a reason to be returning to Milton, but other than school-demands, why do I often revisit what I've already read? Why aren't I more inclined to branch out and really challenge myself with complex texts? Why don't I put my money's worth in my mind and actually read what I've bought? I don't have answers for these questions. They're part of the weird inconsistencies that comprise a person, and though it's frustrating, I don't think that my problem here is unique. We all do this, I think, though what it is we buy may differ: Blu-rays or video games, albums or cookbooks, streaming services or magazine subscriptions. With the plentiful bounty of what's available, it's understandable that we try one thing and then flit to another. But just because it's natural and understandable doesn't mean that it's what I should do. The new year is creeping up on me; since I so spectacularly failed at what I planned on doing with my reading for 2019, perhaps I should set a reading goal to really dive into the "to be read" pile during 2020. That, at least, is an option. And, hey, if I finish those already-purchased books, it gives me an excuse to go buy more, doesn't it? That sounds like a win to me. |
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