Adventures in teaching...

After attempting (for the first time) to teach Wordsworth's Intimations Ode to two back-to-back intro to lit. sections, I had the unshakable sensation that I was Don Quixote speaking to a roomful of Sancho Panzas. What could I have been thinking? What dope was I smoking? What blow was I sniffing? What line was I buying? What web was I weaving? What fantasy was I reliving?

As I sat in my office grading papers, I got the idea for a new composition theory, inspired by Jorge Luis Borges's library of babel. In this class, the students would write one paper. It would be a five page paper of infinite revisions and thus indeterminate total page count. As a writing enriched course, it would have to meet the 25 page requirement, and surely it would do so, for over the course of 15 weeks, its endless revisions would constitute an infinity of possible essays, each essay expanding and contracting the legacy of its parent and grandparent essays. In one revision, the student would fix the spelling of a single word, e.g "trump" for "turmp". In another, the introduction would be changed from first person singular to the plural point of view of the extinct Anasazi culture of New Mexico. In another revision, definite articles would revert to indefinite. In yet another, the tenses would shift from past to future pluperfect. Another paper would consist entirely of transition sentences, transitions swiftly transforming into new transitions of transitions. Another would spend five pages introducing a topic, leaving the reader to determine the thesis. Another would consist of endings without beginnings. Another would be a rough translation of the dreams of rhesus monkeys. Another would be written in dingbat font symbols. Another would render its persuasive arguments as the synopsis for a novel yet to be filmed. Another would be a research paper citing only itself. Another would plagiarize the conjunctions from a version of the essay three revisions back. Each revision would receive its own provisional grade, the final grade being a holistic aggregation of the sum total of all revisions, which, being theoretically infinite, means the grade would have to be quantum in nature, partaking more of a probability than finality. A quantum A paper might, under certain indeterminate conditions, come out as an F in the transcript. Perhaps the only truly fitting grade appropriate to the new method would be Incomplete. Students, however, would get full credit for the incomplete coursework, having in their five pages analogously captured the essence of every text written in all past and future societies. In some distant year, students schooled in Borgesian rhetoric, might enroll in new classes and read their textbooks as they composed them in real time. This would, after successive generations, lead to the creation of a single university consisting of no students or professors, only of essays writing themselves from other essays, inventing students to read and write them and professors to grade them.

Site updates

Lately I've been busier working on pages in the turk's head review library than on new blog entries. In particular, the new Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray, and Decadence notebooks have been worked up, and frequently updated. They're not final versions by a longshot, but enough is in there to be of use to somebody, I hope. I've also tinkered with the css sheets so that now when you print a webpage from the library; it automatically formats the page without the sidebar. You simply print from the browser to see the results.

Hey dude, don't like your prof?

Having trouble with that "biased" professor who "controls the classroom like a dictator"? Is your prof "indoctrinating the next generation" (that means you, right?) with his own pathetic lefty views? Do you have profs who "think they can do what they want"? Like they're the "boss." Well, it's time to let your profs know they can't "be a dictator and control that room" like their own little "totalitarian niche"!!! It's time to litigate! And stamp out leftist totalitarianism now! Hey, is this what they mean by "academic freedom"? Cool!

Ten CSS tricks

Nothing very new here, but these Ten CSS tricks are still useful. The print-friendly css tip, for instance, gives you a neat way to format your website for banner- and nav-free printouts.

Identity formation

I'm going to be touching on themes of self-understanding with my classes and found this helpful Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology backgrounder on identity formation, which covers the highlights: the carving of the personal identity as unique individual and as social persona based on group affiliations. The article emphasizes Erikson's theories of developmental stages. Adolescence is the critical period for identity formation and identity crisis, though adulthood has its crisis points too, such as the late 20's/turning 30 phase, midlife crisis, menapause, etc. Also mentioned is J.E. Maricia's idea that adolescents confront identity formation in 4 basic ways: identity-achieved (those who confront and resolve their crisis), identity-foreclosed (those backdown into conventional, prefigured identity without a fight), identity-diffused (those who avoid the struggle and remain in arrested development, unable to commit), and the "moratorium" group, who can't make up their minds and experience a long struggle to find themselves.

Another gem of a find from a student paper

Ah, the unintentional irony ... a student's translation evades the spellchecker routine: carpe diem = "cease the day".

Decadence timeline

DECADENCE -- A CHRONOLOGY is a brief but helpful tracing of the historical lineage of fin de siecle or decadent art. It'd be fun to use this skeleton as an outline for a multimedia presentation on the subject.

The age of the fake

SpinWatch article by David Miller sums up recent truth violations by government, military, and corporate interests. Distortion, fabrication, deception, lies, spin -- combining to erode the truth. Does anybody even know the truth anymore? It's starting to sound like such a quaint term. The truth. Welcome to the brave new dark age....

Priceless hermeneutics

Slacktivist satirizes biblical exegesis of a typical "gorilla at the bar" joke: Hermeneutics

Morphic Resonance

A few odd connections as to how I got to this introduction to Morphic Fields by Rupert Sheldrake. First, I bought a couple gifts for my wife's birthday: DVDs of I Heart Huckabees and West Side Story. On Friday night, after watching West Side Story, I sauntered into the middle room and sat by the stereo. From sheer idleness I turned on the stereo beside the Lazy-boy and on NPR at the very moment was the music of Leonard Bernstein from West Side Story. Weird, huh? The next night we screened the Huckabees movie, and afterwards listened to some of the director's running commentary, in which he mentioned the fact that he is friends with Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, studied under him, and had many philosophical discussions with him that wound up in the film. Today, while thinking about how I'm going to get my teaching arms around The Picture of Dorian Gray this week, and wondering a lot about self image, identity, shadow selves, doppelgangers, and other suggestive themes, not to mention the conviction I had before, after watching Huckabees, that the actor Jude Law would make a perfect Dorian Gray should a remake ever be undertaken, until I realized that Jude Law had already starred as Bosie in Wilde, the film bio of Oscar Wilde -- a role for which he was well cast, and in which Lord Alfred Douglas the real man, in many respects, imitated his artistic forerunner, Dorian Gray -- while these meaningful connections sprouted in my mind as I reclined on the bed, my gaze was directed to the bookshelf, where the book Inner Revolutions by Robert Thurman caught my attention. I began reading it, and in the first chapter, Thurman mentions the concept "morphic resonance," which is an attempt to explain such phenomena as how your dog can sense you're coming home before you ever get near the house, and how we sometimes think of a person right before they phone us, and other potential epiphenomena of the collective unconscious. I don't know if Sheldrake's a good scientist or not. He's clearly in the alternative/holistic spectrum, and for some wielders of Occam's razor, that's not where a real scientist should be shaving. But for what it's worth, the chain reaction of coincidences (cf. the protagonist of Huckabees and the Dustin Hoffman character's blanket metaphor) led to this point of light in the Internet galaxy.

The A-schlock-alypse

Save yourself the trouble of reading the Left Behind series and go directly to this incredible review by Gene Lyons in Harpers. It's the most insightful piece I've read on the Left Behind phenomenon (although Slacktivist's close reading is certainly worth your time too). Perceptive, witty, and sharp, the article seeks to understand how such wretchedly conceived cornball fiction could be so popular. Lyons captures the essence of the rapture mania with perfect epithets like "messianic narcissism."

Beatles song review: "Any Time at All"

source: allmusic.com : "'Any Time at All' expresses a familiar teen love theme: the earnest yearning of a singer reaching out to a loved one and asserting his total dependability ('any time at all/all you gotta do is call/and I'll be there'). Ringo Starr kicks it off with a thundering snare drum slap followed by a moment of silence, then John Lennon's signature vocal with a Byrds-like guitar hook as accompaniment. Curiously, the song launches the refrain before the verse -- a songwriting trick the Beatles used more than once (as on 'She Loves You'), yet which is relatively rare in pop music of the rock era. Lennon's excited, edgy vocal leads the way: yet another standout performance on an album filled with definitive performances. The gutsy refrain is counterbalanced by a more formal, stately verse melody over a descending bass line. The singer is reaching out with his honest best 'you can call on me' pitch.

'Any Time at All' may be little more than a driving, vibrant rock number to flesh out the album, yet the song's irresistible catchiness is evidence that the Beatles' album filler was generally superior to most of what came out of the British Invasion. As fans of the Beatles would soon learn, all was not as simple as it first seemed. The instrumental bridge, for instance, goes off in a new direction: a doubled piano/guitar part ascending in a sweeping tide of expectant melodic triplets that peak in harmonic resolution, bringing you back to the edgy refrain (always kicked off by Ringo's snare attack). While not as adventurous a bridge as will be found in subsequent albums, it does show the band eager to invent and play with song form, even in its early work.

On each recurrence of the chorus, Lennon's energetic plea begs to be sung along with. The catchy refrain appears four times in the song -- at the beginning and end, and after the two verses -- in effect setting up a nice structural advertisement for the lyric. At "any time" in the song you're likely to latch onto the chorus; its very repeatability is itself dependable.

The song appears on A Hard Day's Night [UK]: amazon -
barnes & noble

Is there anybody out there?

No Syrian troops to mess with democracy over here, so what's our excuse? Luckily there are still a few people who care about voter fraud.

Giving Ibsen his props

Translator of Hedda Gabler discovers the power of Ibsen. Guardian Unlimited

Digital Dorian Gray

Computer system predicts future appearance of people: newstarget.com.

Questions conservative nabobs should have about social security privatization

Do I really want "big government" forcing me to invest in the stock market? Shouldn't that be my free choice? Why does the government have to invest my money for me? Why make social security worse than it already is? Why do I need another "big government program" to manage "my money"?
Won't this "big government program" make the deficit worse? Is that fiscally conservative? Isn't this "big government program" going to risk the "security" part of social security? It seems too risky. At least social security guarantees a benefit. Why not make sure the program is fiscally sound before adding a new, expensive, risky component to it?
Why are we privatizing just a part of social security? Why not privatize it all? And if we want total privatization, then why have social security? In our brave new free republic, let freedom ring, let it be every man for himself, dog eat dog, man on dog (bulldogs on top)....
OK, I'll stop now. I don't see how this idea can make any sense, even to the sporadically thoughtful conservative. It is what we call in liberal fifth columnist covens "a dumb idea." Maybe on that, everyone can come together.

Horace Odes I (11)

Do not ask, you cannot know what the gods will give to me, to you, Leuconoe.
Don’t look up the numbers in those Babylonian horoscopes either.
How much better it is (whatever will come) to accept what is,
whether Jupiter allots us many more winters or a final one,
now breaking down opposing pumice cliffs with the force of Tuscan seas.
Wise up! Strain the wine, trim back spacious hopes to the short term
Even now, while we talk, jealous time is flying past:
seize today, don’t put much credit in tomorrow.

[new translation by Jim]

How many degrees of separation?

For a couple years I have heard second or third-hand, of military servicemen and women in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, usually family or friends of students. I'd catch passing mentions of a guy whose arms were blown off, of a buddy who came home changed, withdrawn, of a middle-aged reservist father getting called up, of a boyfriend being shipped to Iraq, of a friend who bragged about messing up the ragheads.
This semester, the circles are shrinking. I have an Afghanistan vet in one of my classes. Nice guy with a lilting Louisiana drawl, he drove a truck with a civil engineering unit. His unit could be called up again for Iraq duty and he doesn't want to go.
Today, at a college where I work, I learned that the brother of a student was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. The degrees of separation collapse steadily, like a death march.

Damn them Italian commie journalists...

Typical expressions of rightwing goodwill and Christian compassion for those who think differently, like wounded reporter and ex-hostage Giuliana Sgrena: see posts at free republic (scroll down). Sample quotes: "Proof positive our soldiers aimed poorly." "Sorry but I'm rather disgusted over this whole shooting. Disgusted tehy didn't use larger millimeter rounds and more of them." "Yeah, I've got to say that I any synpathy I may have had for this annoying bint has evaporated. Shut up already, comrade. Just be happy your empty head wasn't sawed off." "They should have whacked off her head instead of Nick Berg's, despite Berg's father." "This woman is a LIBERAL-Communist-Socialist. There is no redeeming Social Value to a commie-Lib." "Screw her and the people like her. Maybe she just needs to blow herself up....in the middle of her "newspaper" office."
Feelin' the love yet?

Christian fear as spectacle

Ethan Blue's National Trauma, Church Drama: The Cultural Politics of Christian Fear (at Bad Subjects) tours three haunted theater settings in the heart of Jesusland. "This Hell House was scary, because the performers took the facepaint, and the "evil roles" they played so seriously. I recall seeing a muscular student slamming a shovel into a tree, noticing that the tree was worse for wear for the hits it had taken. My perceptions are my own, and were shaped by my situated, and disoriented perspective, but I sensed no small amount of adrenaline and even rage in the students. I thought that the one with the shovel could really hurt someone by mistake. He, like many of the students, seemed fully jacked-up on adrenaline and on the power and pleasure of scaring people."

Architecture of a doll's house

Brian Johnston's Realism and A Doll House at his ibsen voyages site, is an indispensible formal analysis of the play -- illuminating and fine-tuned to Ibsen's artistic mastery. Johnston's site gives voice to his original thesis that Ibsen's 12 mature "realistic dramas" constitute an epic dramatic cycle. They can be read as an interlocking tripartite superwork, on the order of Wagner's Ring cycle, the Divine Comedy, and the ambitious achievments of modernist literature. Intriguing, to say the least.

Kapow! Journalists are not being targeted

Point: Central
Command spokesman in April 2003: "we don't target journalists." "We know that we don't target journalists," said Brigadier General Vince Brooks, deputy director of operations in 2003.
Counterpoint: After insurgent violence against journalists, "US military fire is the second-leading cause of death. At least nine journalists and two media support staff have died as a result of US fire in Iraq in the last 23 months," says Joel Campagna of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Campagna says it's not so much a matter of journalists being targeted as one of "negligence or indifference." Victim of checkpoint shooting, Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena: "there was suddenly this shooting, we were hit by a hail of gunfire" (bbc).
Danny Schechter commentary at common dreams includes quotes from ITN's Terry Lloyd's whose marked TV vehicle was shot up by soldiers, and Nik Gowing of BBC World: "[t]he trouble is that a lot of the military-particularly the American military-do not want us there. And they make it very uncomfortable for us to work. And I think that this is leading to security forces in some instances feeling it is legitimate to target us with deadly force and with impunity."

Band of the Week: The Moody Blues

allmusic overview ... classic albums (@ amazon): Days of Future Passed, In Search of the Lost Chord, On the Threshold of a Dream, To Our Children's Chilldren's Children, Question of Balance, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Seventh Sojourn.

Doll's House

Currently I'm teaching Ibsen in my lit classes. 4literature.net has the William Archer translation of A Doll's House online: full text with a decent introduction. I'm amazed at this play's intricate dramatic linkage, assembled with enviable skill, abounding in situational and dramatic ironies and dramatic foils and smart stagecraft wedded to theme. Here we experience an art form that explodes the face off social convention. It exposes the clash of individual against middle class society, freedom vs. convention, independence vs. conformity, honesty vs. deception, truth and lies, the private, authentic self buried by the public persona. The play strips the middle class of everything they thought they valued. It questions the traditional basis for marriage. It shows us the materialisic demands forced upon people and spotlights the desparate measures they will take to regain a reputation or save one. And even though women have come a long way (baby) since Nora slammed that door at the end of Act III, the play continues to unsettle. Why? We're still preoccupied with middle class virtues, we still have plenty of stocks in the law and authority, in keeping up appearances and saving reputations, in getting ahead, in the ideal trophy wife at the side of the buff rich man with the bronze tan, in the righteousness of money, the productive grace of the protestant work ethic, in the defense of a man's honor and the right to be kings of the castle (or as Bernard Shaw called them, suburban Kings Arthur). Ibsen's social problem play feels all too realistic. The pressures points are still there. A little bit of progress in women's rights doesn't keep it from cutting to the bone.
To reduce A Doll's House to feminist propaganda is to do it an injustice. Certainly, the play champions the cause of women, and feminists are right to sing its praises. There is nothing trivial about that. But it reaches beyond womens' rights. Ibsen is defending the rights of individual self determination. You (man or woman) have the right, even the obligation, to figure out who you are, what's important to you, to exercise your freedom and independence, to educate yourself, learn from experience, and only then will you be prepared to accept someone else into your life, in what Nora calls a true marriage. That would be "the most wonderful thing." What makes the play sociallly explosive is the realization that even the socially powerful, the Torvalds who are in charge, the rich and famous and respected, are no more self-realized than the powerless. Torvald by play's end, is a mess. Mr. middle class has been cut to size. He has been found wanting and is left in shambles. He is not the man he thought he was. He's been pretending, and he's been blinded by his own platitudes and attitudes. His middle class virtues haven't made him truly happy. As Nora puts it near the end of the play, she has never been happy in this marriage, only cheerful. There's a huge difference between cheerfulness and happiness. Middle class wealth might bring good cheer, champagne and Cuban cigars, but it won't get you any nearer to the truth of yourself. The middle class emperor has no clothes.
don't think audiences have really come to grips with the suggestiveness of this play's themes. For if bourgeois values are nothing more than false fronts, the moral equivalent of a Hollywood backlot, then a different kind of society is needed to foster true freedom for individuals. Ibsen doesn't hint at a clear answer to the question of what such a society would look like. He's too good an artist to proscribe a solution. It's not his job.
I would suggest it'd have to be the kind of society where people were free from the necessity of money grubbing, where they weren't living in constant fear of financial ruin, where all had equal rights under the law and equal access to education, and where everyone who wanted to work, could. A society founded on basic human dignity, that valued common humanity above almighty profit.
A Doll's House is not an exhilirating nor liberating play. It is a gut wrencher. It is, arguably, tragic. Nora abandons her family for a future that can't lead to much good, at least by middle class standards. Nora, however, IS free. And that for Ibsen is preferable and a necessary prerequisite. On the ruins of the Helmer's marriage, something better could be born. The seeds of that birth are in the play itself, in the relationship between Krogstad and Linde. Ibsen isn't against marriage at all, but he's certainly struggling to redefine it.
OK, I've spit out enough rambling, idle thoughts for now. Ibsen.net is where you'll want to start exploring the master's work.

Barbarians at the White House gates

FishBowlDC is finding it harder than expected to get a daily press pass into the White House.

Analysis of Bankruptcy Reform Bill

At Angry Bear. My hunch is this bill will probably pass with ease. The credit card companies will rejoice. We in the debtor class will be chagrined. Start thinking dialectically, comrades. You have nothing to lose but your chains.