Mid-winter Reading? Dubious.

Currently Reading (and deeply disturbed by) The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus.

Truthfully, I had to take a break from this book and read the first four chapters of A Passage to India just to just to feel like myself again. The Flame Alphabet begins with a mother and father, Claire and Samuel, fleeing their home to escape the toxic effects of their child’s speech. Esther, their obnoxious teenage daughter, has the potential to make one slightly queasy without the poison voice problem. She sneers and scorns her parents for all she’s worth. Meanwhile entire neighbourhoods empty as the voices of children and teenagers become like so much thrown acid to the shocked and ever-weakening adults. The effects of hearing a child speak (or sing or laugh) include crushing pain, faces that shrink and harden (‘facial smallness’ Marcus calls it, in one of many cringe-worthy descriptions), skin that turns to paper, fatigue, vomiting, bruising, blood… and, as in the worst of plagues, victims linger. Additionally, Marcus includes a parallel plot. Claire and Samuel are Jewish, and in Marcus’ creepy world, they worship in hidden forest huts (“an entirely covert method of devotion”), where sermons are piped in to be listened to, but never discussed. Sheesh.

According to my Kindle I have read 63% of The Flame Alphabet. Should I continue? What would Mrs. Moore do? Respond softly, gentle reader.

Week Two of Winter Semester 2012

Tips for My Students

1.       Look at me. My face and eyes will tell you half of what you need to know to succeed in my class. Your face and eyes will tell me almost all of what I need to know to help you.

Actually, that’s it. See you in class

Currently Reading: Stephen King’s 11/22/63

and

 Sa’adi’s The Rose Garden http://www.omphaloskepsis.com/ebooks/pdf/rosegar.pdf

Planning for Winter Term: A Study in Procrastination

Currently Reading: The Nether World by George Gissing

I received confirmation of my classes for next term. I’ll be teaching advanced reading, writing and a vocabulary elective. These are exactly the classes I wanted, and I have more than a month to organize materials, review new resources, create lesson plans, and take care of some administrative details. So, this morning I began as follows: get darling daughter off to school, return home, make tea, start up Mac, clean stove top, read Facebook updates, look for advanced reading binder (unsuccessful), try on new pants – fit!, eat rye toast with peanut butter, put pajama pants back on, read email (check links to MTF Price Matters Flyer, Banana Republic, and Coudal Partners), tidy up stuffed animals, take photo of self with Mac Photo Booth, edit blemishes from photo,  email photo to friend for feedback, wait for feedback, post photo on Match.com, rearrange mantle décor, shower, tweeze, put nice pants back on while watching Restaurant Impossible, google ‘Kermit origins’ and read Wikipedia entry, fetch mail, read Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue, and pick up my daughter from school.

Time wasted: Approximately 5 hours

Work Accomplished: None

Plan of Action for Tomorrow: Proceed directly to university office and locate advanced reading binder, and try to do it without being distracted by pants, grease, or knick knacks. 

Books about Books

 Currently Reading: Cullum by E. Arnot Robertson

Nathaniel Philbrick’s  (http://nathanielphilbrick.com/) new book, Why Read Moby Dick? provides excellent reasons to read, not just Ahab’s tale, but any great fiction, from any era. He praises the story that is much itself and also another: “The book is so encyclopedic and detailed that space aliens could use it to re-create the whale fishery as it once existed on the planet Earth in the middle of the nineteenth century.”  And yet, the book is also about “America racing hell-bent toward the Civil War...”. 

This duality is exemplified by Nicholas Nickleby, “…when he thought how regularly things went on from day to day in the same unvarying round – how youth and beauty died, and ugly griping age lived tottering on – how crafty avarice, and mainly honest hearts were poor and sad – how few they were who tenanted the stately houses, and how many those who lay in noisome pens, or rose each day and laid them down at night, and lived and died, father and son, mother and child, race upon race, , and generation upon generation, without a home to shelter them or the energies of one single man directed to their aid – how in seeking, not a luxurious and splendid life, but the bare means of a most wretched and inadequate subsistence, there were women and children in that one town, divided into classes, numbered and estimated as regularly as the noble families and folks of great degree, and reared from infancy to drive most criminal and dreadful trades – how ignorance was punished and never taught – how jail door gaped and gallows loomed for thousands urged toward them by circumstances curtaining their very cradles’ heads, and but for which they might have earned their honest bread and lived in peace – how many died in soul and had no chance of life – how many who could scarcely go astray, be they vicious as they would, turned haughtily from the  crushed and stricken wretch who could scare do otherwise, and who would have been a greater wonder had he or she done well, than even they – had they done ill – how much injustice, and misery, and wrong there was, and yet how the world rolled on from year to year, alike careless and indifferent, and no man seeking to remedy or redress it – when he thought of all this, and selected from the mass the one slight case on which his thought were bent, he felt indeed that there was little ground for hope, and little cause or reason why it should not form an atom in the huge aggregate of distress and sorrow, and add one small and unimportant unit to swell the great amount.“, and yet sometimes, one must be thorough and proceed.    

Are you with me still? 

For contemporary students, hauled at pen-point from their app-encrusted sedation devices, the work of reading such a passage must seem ludicrous. “Whatever for?” they might say, or more likely not say but simply indicate with evermore upward lifting brows.  What will I tell them? To begin, that the story is about tenacity and triumph, and that they will be inspired by young Nicholas and his struggles (or Ahab and his). Oh yes, and that next week there will be a quiz.  Sigh.

Usefulness and Desirability: Is Reading and Writing Well a Waste of Time?

“This thing that I made would be useful.” The Knife Maker

I began my day by watching this short film about knives made by hand (via Coudal Partners): http://thisismadebyhand.com/film/the_knife_maker

For me, a significant challenge I face as a teacher is convincing my skeptical students the usefulness of reading and writing well.  I sometimes lean to the practical – impressing upon them the importance of written communication skills and the ability to interpret and distill ideas in the digital age.  I’ve also rested my philosophy upon more personal considerations: that honing these skills will make one more interesting to peers, even popular, and as a last resort – that chicks dig it. The effects of my gambits, as much as they are measurable, are usually negligible.  (In any case, I am not sure that the popularity notion isn’t a bit of an untruth).

Is it useful and desirable to read and write well? Consider W. Somerset Maugham on reading:

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”

He ought to know. According to one biographer, Somerset Maugham was orphaned at the age of 10, stammered and was cruelly taunted by classmates, practiced medicine, a career he despised, in London’s slums, contracted TB, fled the Nazi’s in a coal barge, was unhappily married, and so on. During his lifetime he produced twenty or more novels, in addition to short stories, plays, and essays. His most famous novels; The Razor’s Edge (1944), and Of Human Bondage (1915), explore transcendent themes such as spiritual awakening, and the value of happiness. 

Should we read him now? Should my students spend time considering the plight of a club-footed protagonist, or the intimidating visage of a maharishi? OF COURSE THEY SHOULD! How to convince them? That is the question.

I have tried allowing them to select their own readings, and will save that debacle for another day. For now, I beg you dear readers to submit your suggestions.

 Happy Monday (note to self: buy handmade knife)

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" - Alice to Cheshire Cat

My Dear, if few, readers,

As you know, I've had significant change in my life recently. My husband, the unfairly clever (see his fanpage on Facebook: Smartest Man in the Universe) Robbie Charles Fry, passed away from cancer on August 31st of this year. He didn't believe in an afterlife, but my daughter and I like to imagine him in a world with unlimited access to chalk, Springer-Verlag publications, and 24hr free pizza delivery. We miss him terribly; no one can replace him, and yet we must keep living, and even writing.

To that end...

Today is the beginning of Eid Al Fitr - and a fasting day for Muslims. Tomorrow, many of my students will celebrate their New Year, and the end of Ramadan.  I am not Muslim, nor fasting, but I feel a sense of solidarity with the Muslim world on this day. My own culture (Canadian) and religious tradition (Christian - in my case, agnostic, but still like to think about Baby Jesus at Christmastime) - would benefit from a little more emphasis on austerity - at least a day or two when we rest from acquisition and display. That word, austerity, is much in the news these days. 'Austerity measures', enforced by governments to try to rescue faltering economies, seem to be de rigueur. But what would it mean to actually live more simply and less adorned? What would it mean to give something up - even for a day?

We 'celebrated' Halloween last week. Candy, costumes, and on my street, houses (including mine) covered in all the trappings Wal-Mart can provide: battery operated spiders, sparkling inflatable pumpkins, day-of-the-dead style purple skulls, etc. And soon, well actually yesterday, the race to Christmasize (my new word) the city, my neighbourhood, will begin. There is no day of self-sacrifice, nor one moment of 'austerity' prescribed by my 'culture'. Someone had a go at a 'buy-nothing' day - good try, but a bit limp.

So, here is the thing. I suddenly find myself somewhat free of financial worries. I can buy more stuff. I can pay to have someone hang the Christmas lights, and someone else to microderabrase (also mine) my sagging skin. Yet, there has not been a day of fasting, if you will, to make the promise of abundance taste sweet.  Instead of decorating the house, or myself, this November, I will endeavour to do the opposite - subtract from the cache in order to share, simplify the routines in order to have more time for real productivity, and real connections. Maybe there will even be time to write!

Just remembered, I'm taking a holiday to West Edmonton Mall later this month. Dang it.

Happy Eid everyone. It's good to be back.

PF

Unfunny Search Tools

I typed 'short fiction' into the university library search tool. I had selected 'key words', and was hoping to be directed to anthologies (guess I shoulda typed THAT) or single author collections. Instead, I was presented with one item - a biography - titled The Story of a Midget. Even if I was kidding, it wouldn't be funny.

When I attended the Teaching Practices Colloquium last week, I knew what I was looking for - collegiality, inspiration, criticism, and direction. The keynote speaker, Dr. Frank Robinson (University of Alberta), provided enough inspiration to light a fire under the most dampened spirits among us. You can find out more about his inspiring approach to teaching here: Heifer In Your Tank - Origins and watch a cool video of a student project here: GnRH Says Go Gonad: The Musical . He was worth the price of the ticket.
I had no trouble finding collegiality either. From beginning to end, the atmosphere was polite, supportive, and encouraging. Criticism though, and direction were in short supply. Maybe the medium I chose to present my work was a problem. The conference posters, numbering less than 10, were relegated to a shabby classroom next to the shabby classroom/lunchroom. During the hour that I was asked to be 'with' my poster, 3 or 4 individuals stopped to look at my work, and to 'read' the poster (this is a curious process - they stand there, eating a sandwich, reading. I stand there, trying not to look uncomfortable or to interrupt them). I wondered if I had too much text on my poster, but looking around my work seemed both approachable and appropriate. However, few questions came my way, and the generous dish of free pencils next to the questions and comments book, placed invitingly on the table, remained full - the pages of the booklet empty (well not entirely, an obliging art historian, also a poster-monger, wrote a kind message, as did a psychologist, who must have come by while I was getting a sandwich of my own). Maybe I don't really understand the way an academic poster presentation is supposed to work. Or maybe, as someone close to me is fond of saying, my expectations were too high. In any case, next time I will talk instead. People were more interested in the fact that I had a blog (How did you set it up? Can you show me?) than in the topic of my research. Still, everyone liked the cartoon. ( Dan Piraro - with permission. ) Leave your questions and comments here - sorry, no free pencils.