Category Archives: Things That Interest Me That Do Not Interest You

Books for Perusing and the Introduction of a new Genre: BSRAYDEKWTDWT

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As usual, I’m juggling 4 long-ish books at the moment (and the unyielding commitment to finish Infinite Jest, even if it’s only at a 2-3 page-a-day pace).

However, I’ve also been regularly thumbing my way through a handful of books of shorter material. Thought I’d share some of the highlights of these thumb-intensive texts:

Separations by Marilyn Hacker – Intense collection of poetry from the ‘70s I found for cheap. The slightly torn dust jacket with the creepy Magritte painting makes me consistently pick this up. I usually end up rereading the first poem in the collection and freaking out at the fact that I bought this at the same time that I’ve been listening to a an album that quotes from this collection (that would be the supremely great Alopecia by Why who turns the following line into a dirge-like call to arms: “Billy the Kid did what he did and he died”).

The Most of It by Mary Ruefle – Another female poet, but this is actually a collection of (often very) brief prose. The stories are of the wacky, you’re-not-supposed-to-be-able-to-do-that variety. I’ll admit I was a sucker for the book’s design. That the content is just as solidly crafted comes as a sort of awesome bonus.

Novels in Three Lines by Felix Feneon – Hundreds of single sentence news items that ran in the French newspaper Le Matin during the early 1900s. The power of these sentences (as one demigod Luc Sante describes in a fantastic introduction) is the way Feneon reveals and builds suspense through the end. Each story reveals another aspect from the seedier side of France – sex, drugs, violence, car accidents, abuse, are the norm. Here’s an example drawn entirely at random: “Le Verbeau his Marie Champion right on her breasts, but burned his eye, because acid is not a precision weapon” (page 83). You’ll either love it or you’ll feel the need to read one more to be fully convinced … so here you go: “The tramp Bors, all bloody, was on the road near Acheres. He had been on the receiving end of his friend Bonin’s truncheon” (page 107). There are more than a thousand of these collected. So good.

Hall of Best Knowledge by Ray Fenwick – I’m still not sure to make of this one. Every once in a while you’ll get a book that you just don’t even know what to do with. These get filled into the category of Books So Ridiculously Awesome You Don’t Even Know What To Do With Them (BSRAYDEKWTDWT). I don’t mean that the content is necessarily confusing. I mean that when you pick up the book and riffle through the pages you literally don’t know how you are suppose to use the book. What is the book’s function? How am I supposed to engage with this text? Examples of this include the Dictionary of the Khazars (I actually only own the female copy of this text), the Internet and Everyone (as recommended by Ms. DeWitt), and A Humument (I own two different versions of this one). Usually these become some of the most interesting books in my library. I have a feeling the Hall of Best Knowledge will be joining their ranks soon. From what I’m able to grasp, each page is a dense synergy of design, image, and text. Some are narrative based some are just head scratchers. The collection is baffling. I can’t get myself to read/look at more than one or two of these at any given time. I set the book down frustrated, inspired, and dumbfounded that there’s nothing that even comes close to the originality of this collection.

Things that interest me and probably interest you if you give it a chance

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I finally got around to reading this lengthy article. Considering I’ve been told about it from an artist, a teacher, a bike messenger, and a graduate, the tag for this blog is probably incorrect. However, maybe the implied exclusivity of the tag will spark an innate sense of envy in you, noble reader, and you’ll be compelled to read through the long article. Really, despite an article that predominantly looks at an indigenous tribe’s language structure and outlines the mounting forces between a feud regarding Chomskyean notions of Universal Grammar, this is an article that anyone can take something from. For example, I get why -and am thrilled by the fact that – the article was the only required reading for a graduate design course.

It’s an article that I’d like to look at through a teacher’s lens, though one whose questions it elicits I’d hope to exhume in the company of others rather than the barren void of an under read blog. Additionally, the article made me think about the concept (be it the well-treaded concept) of recursion. What about recursion in politics or in educative practice? Can we frame ours as a recursive culture? I realize that this makes little sense, but I’m not sure how to fully enunciate this…yet. Read it yourself – maybe you can help unravel this thought for me.

Anarchist Puppets, Possibilities, and the Stories We Continue to Tell

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Returned from meeting number two of a focused book club entitled “Planet of the Humans.” The club, its organizer, and meeting location all deserve elaborate, extensive posts; not something I’m going to do quite yet. While books one and two focused on specific relationships with nature, tonight’s discussion looked specifically at human interactions with other humans. Though relying on a yet officially published book, the evening’s participants were provided with a digital manuscript for reading. Specifically looking at giant puppets in today’s protests, the conversation led to discussions of the role of the artist and the teacher as well as the nature of swarm theory and animal behavior in groups. I’m particularly interested in the larger stories being told in today’s protests – at least as described by Graeber. Speaking in generalities that do not do justice to the book’s deliberate pacing, the media and the state (as enacted by police force) are telling a story of activists and anarchists as villains. The image of the smashed Starbucks is symbol of the repugnant behavior that is a detriment to our way of life. At the same time, the other agents in the protest story, the anarchists, are trying to reframe the story – they are creating a carnival and symbolic projection of utopia through puppets and the careful reinterpretation of space; a smashed window is more than just a smashed window: it becomes a portal into other possibilities. As an English teacher, it’s these kinds of stories that I’m interested in telling. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing about the concept of the teacher as griot, something I’ve visualized for a couple years now but haven’t quite framed as something truly coherent. At the same time, I’m gearing up for (re)telling a new story with my students when I go back on track in two weeks. Maybe that story is the same one as the story discussed tonight. Really a remarkable book club and something I’m valuing for its direct application within my classroom and in relation to my own (constantly redeveloping) pedagogy. Six more books to go.

Things That Interest Me That Do Not Interest You #1

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Attended a panel today where one of the presenters from Korea discussed creating a teacher education program with Critical Pedagogy. This guy laid it out like it really is on a global level. It was nice to see a nuanced approach to Freire’s ideas being practiced and discussed in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. The presenter showed TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) as a damaging and hegemonic view of EFL with the marginalized use of the word “other.” And while it was clear what Kiwan Sung meant when discussing Critical Pedagogy, I appreciated his naming of the approach as a way of “mobilizing one’s desires,” especially when pointing out that English is viewed as a global commodity. Sung also busted out the idea of researchers and teachers practicing the “Pedagogy of Indeterminacy,” a term I appreciate and I am still unpacking.

On a related note, at the end of the panel, I asked Sung about hegemonic and governmental resistance to his pedagogy in practice (he’d already addressed other professors and some students’ reticence at embracing a program they felt too idealistic). And while Sung’s response was to the point and what I wanted, I found it interesting that a former presenter who had done something or other on literacy at some small school for her dissertation decided to bring up that it’s hard for first year teachers to openly discuss race and to have these kinds of “real” conversations in a classroom. First of all, “discussions about race” should be happening no matter if you are a Caucasian graduate student or a teacher or a bystander; her answer was uninformed and drew on the kinds of ridiculous assumptions that Critical Pedagogy tries to resist. Further, “discussions about race,” though they may be important and valuable, have nothing to do with Critical Pedagogy. I’ve become more and more wary of these grad students (as well as the professors they inevitably become) who have never spent legitimate time teaching in a classroom or really reflecting on the teaching profession. Not that research for research’s sake is not valued, but where is the real world connection to the work of a preternaturally, misinformed, middle-class, WASP-y, idealist?