Books I Want (to Read)

In my spare time. . . ;)

Cross-posted at Booknotes from Literacy-Chic.

In Barnes and Noble the other day, I was looking in the nonfiction section to try to find a compelling book to replace the one we are currently using in our freshman composition course. I found one that I will be using in my own comp class next semester: Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. It is a compelling topic that has impact on the life of universities--internet and copyright. Students have been trying to write about NAPSTER since I started teaching, and we are getting to the point where there is abundant scholarly material on the topic. In addition, the book stresses issues of writing and rhetoric and writing. The introduction refers to Lakoff and Johnson, gurus of metaphor and its implications. Another chapter begins with a discussion of use of sources in English papers--perfect! At any rate, I hope so. Of course, the best thing is that these are intellectual topics--subject to some emotional response, but not one that college freshmen (or non-freshmen) will be unable to control--and topics that I wouldn't mind discussing. This should prove to be an interesting book, but not one that I would necessarily read if not for teaching. . .

On the other hand, I found another book in B & N that I would really like to read: Anne Rice's memoir of her return to Catholicism, Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession. I love conversion narrative--though not the early 17th century kind that you find in American Lit textbooks! I love the book Prodigal Daughters: Catholic Women Come Home to the Church, for example. Interesting thing--like the Anne Rice book, it is not really a conversion narrative, but a reversion--except that a conversion is a "turning toward," so indeed, it is a conversion, just not as "conversion" is usually meant. I have seen critiques of Rice's "brand" of Catholicism--that is, her failure to accept Church teaching on prominent social issues. This is hardly surprising, especially given her connection to New Orleans. On the other hand, it is perhaps important to recognize "conversion" as a process for anyone, including those who already see themselves as faithful Catholics. All of us have moments when we drift, even just a little, and come back, the important part is that we remind ourselves of the True Goal. So I am not looking to Anne Rice as a model of Catholicism, which I hope others do not do. I am well acquainted with Rice's novels, having read the first 4 vampire chronicles--repeatedly--in high school and early in my college career. Interestingly, it was Rice that first led me to investigate the meaning of the words "tabernacle" and "Transubstantiation." That alone is reason for me to read of her spiritual journey. I expect to find more than a touch of arrogance, even in her semblance of humility--but again, I'm not reading her as a spiritual guide, and it takes a bit of egotism to write such a book, though humility is a necessary part of the ethos of such an undertaking (a little rhetorical analysis). I am not particularly interested in her Road to Cana, etc. I picked it up once--in SAM'S club, I think--and was a little put off by the whole project. I'm not crazy about the idea of fictionalizing the life of Jesus. It just seems like treading on dangerous territory--theologically speaking. Remember that arrogance I mentioned? Yeah, that too. What I am primarily looking for in Called Out of Darkness is a feeling. And Rice is particularly good at evoking feeling. And seeing how rooted her feelings are in a particular place, and how we share that place as a common background, and share a common (or uncommon) religious experience, well, I think I could really enjoy reading the book. I told my son the other day that when I was a little girl, all little old ladies were Catholic, and their houses were all adorned with statues of saints and holy pictures. And that created a feeling--something that has become meaningful for me in recent years. I want to read about the influences of the beauty of Catholic culture on Rice, and how it influenced her conversion, since I know--on a level--what she is talking about. Perhaps one of these days I will have the opportunity to read it.

There are two others that catch my attention for cerebral reasons. From the New York Times "Notable Books of 2008":

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America by David Hajdu

and

A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books Project by Alex Beam

Because I am sitting down for the 4th or 5th time to try to finish this post, and because interruption seems imminent, I will not give too many of my impressions. After all, I have not actually held these books, I have just seen them online. You can, after all, tell a great deal about a book just from perusing it for 15 minutes--enough to write a decent review! I will say that these are rather predictable choices--being about literacy. Books about books--my specialty!

Sometimes I Get the Feeling. . .

That by choosing to study and pursue what I love, I have lost the opportunity to enjoy what I love(d). To have a mundane job, and to read for pleasure. . . It seems a bit of a luxury.

Some Words about Not Allowing Comments

I like comments. Waaaay too much sometimes. I will sit on the edge of my seat sometimes and wait for comments to come in. Well, not really, but it feels that way. Especially when the comments don't come. I watch and wait for a day or two, then I gradually forget that I've written anything at all. With more controversial posts, it is a bit different. It's not the excitement of having someone contribute to a discussion, it's a morbid fascination--the proverbial train wreck. With anxiety, anticipation, and dread, I wait for the lashes. I do the same when I follow heated comments on others' blogs. I can't help myself. This leads to my not posting on certain topics sometimes, until the bottled-up thoughts come bursting forth. And then, the waiting, and the contradicting, and the endless explaining. And that takes up a lot of time that I should be using for other things. Like class prep. Or the job search. Or sewing. Or cooking. Cleaning. Taking care of my kiddos. (Not necessarily in that order. Sewing is first.) This might look like an attempt to avoid a fight. Well it is, but not the way you think. Had I an endless amount of time, and if I really enjoyed that semi-agitated state, I would engage cheerfully in the debate (well, maybe not cheerfully--that's part of the problem). But I don't. And so I was mulling this over, and I thought about something:

All of this commenting really underscores the differences between print and electronic practices of literacy. Some of the age-old accepted properties of written language have been its relative permanence, its separation from the human life-world, its separation from its creator and consequent inability to answer questions that are posed to the text with anything other than the words that were originally set down (with the possible exception of updated editions, but once updated, they are still silent and static). With online communication, much of this changes. Online communication is certainly not permanent. Content is ever-changing, sometimes according to the will of its author(s), sometimes not. I would suggest that in some ways it is still detached from the human life-world, which is one of the problems or dangers of online communication as well as one of its liberating qualities. When discourse is not taking place in real time with real people, one can disregard all of the usual constraints on the content of our discourses, but we also have the freedom to disregard all of the conventions of civility. People are not people online; we have the ability to treat them--individually or collectively--with contempt, disregard, and intolerance. But the most significant difference is that the author is not necessarily separate from the product of his/her literacy. When we imagine someone reading a book, we hardly expect the writer to be standing next to us, answering our questions and objections, tit-for-tat. And that's as it should be. Because if the author knows that anyone who has questions about his/her work will have only the work itself to consult for the answers, s/he has to be more careful about what s/he writes in the beginning. Unlike speech--when we speak, we usually don't have everything perfectly prepared, logically considered. There's a lot of "off the cuff" discourse in face-to-face interaction. Not so in written discourse. But that is changing. . .

When we visit blogs, we generally know that nothing but a computer screen and a semblance of anonymity separates us from the author--or the reader. The semblance of anonymity protects or exposes us, depending--protects us from being exposed personally for our thoughts or beliefs, protects us from being linked with our words; exposes us to the thoughts of others, for better or worse. The proximity allows access. As an author, I know I can be questioned. That I may be called on to explain myself, argue my position, hash out my beliefs. This can be a good thing. As a reader, I know that I can challenge a position, ask questions for clarity, make my alternate theory heard and demand recognition for my alternate theory. I am also free to support, reinforce, or acknowledge others' ideas. Or not. This can make me (or my counterparts) hesitant, aggressive, timid, bold, or. . . lazy. Discourse that can be questioned, after all, and from which we can expect a new answer, does not have to take itself quite as seriously, to be as complete, as refined, as polished. On the other hand, it can be more natural, more accessible (in multiple ways), more tentative, and more mutable--both in terms of its appearance and in terms of the ideas that are expressed, which might stand to change from contact with others.

So, you might ask, did I turn off comments in order to produce more refined, more complete, more polished discourse? Nope. But it made me think a lot about literacy in an online environment, and I decided to share.

Things I'm Thinking About. . .

Not grammar, clearly. No dangling prepositions here, no indeed! Well, I am packing and preparing for class next week, as the move and the first day of classes are both on May 29, so this isn't really a real post, it's just my way of getting down the things that have been floating around my head as I pack, especially since I have still been glancing at blogs, and even commenting on some, but not writing my own, which means the thoughts are accumulating and have to spill out at some point or another. So to save my husband my 1 A.M. insights into life and the universe, here's a little run-down!

1) The practical stuff: I am actually wondering if getting the UHaul on the 29th was smart. I probably should have reserved it for the 28th, provided they're open on that day, loaded it on Memorial Day and unloaded it on the 29th--the official move-in day. Hmmm. . . This is one of those thoughts that might require further action on my part. . .

2) I'm thinking about gender, though not in the way mentioned here. Actually, I am rather thinking about how my own perceptions of gender relate to the academic writings on the subject (represented very well by M's post, linked above) and the religious discussions on the subject that I have seen in various places, many of which I find disturbing in their characterizations of men's and women's roles. I fall somewhere in between. I can play "gender theory" with the best of them--you should see my paper on “Literacy, Patriarchy and Performance: Pedro Almodóvar on Writers and Writing” (it's a literacy-as-gender-performativity-thing)--but how I view things in the real world diverges somewhat from what I produce for conferences and courses. ADDENDUM: How I view things in the real world diverges somewhat from what I produce for conferences and courses where the subject of gender is concerned!

3) I'm thinking about how pregnancy hormones affect the mind. I've read in books that around this or that month of pregnancy, one can become "forgetful," "absent-minded," etc., but I've never seen anything about paranoia. Granted, I can be rather a worry-wort normally anyway, but seeing as how hormones are powerful creatures, it doesn't seem unlikely that they might be affecting my obsessive worrying about whether the baby is O.K., etc. In the middle of an obsessive moment the other night, it occurred to me how spoiled I am (we are?) by medical technology. It's one of the reasons I haven't wanted, in past pregnancies, to find out the sex of my baby. That and resisting the whole "must-buy-gender-appropriate-stuff" urge--I really resent the marketing push that reinforces the need for people to find out if they're having a boy or a girl, but I digress. . . Basically, I realize that my grandmother didn't have any special assurance that her 7 children were healthy and "normal." The doctors didn't even believe her when she said that she was having twins! (They had hiccups at the same time--out of sync!) My mother had to have an x-ray before delivering me at home to make sure my head would fit through her pelvis--the fit was exact. And that little doppler thing that they use to listen to the baby's heart now--how many women never heard their babies' heartbeats in utero? They just trusted that the heartbeat was there! (And somehow did not doubt that what was inside them was, indeed, a baby.)

4) I am thinking how nice it will be, for the first time, to teach a course that I have already taught--in the way I taught it previously. I have this bad habit of revamping each course I teach each time I teach it--thereby making more work for myself. But when I was pregnant for my daughter 2 summers ago, I taught Intro to Lit with a focus on fantasy as manifested in various literary genres. While I will rearrange the sequence somewhat and pare down the assignments some, I have left the syllabus mostly the same. Yay!

5) On the dissertation front, I am thinking about D. H. Lawrence's anxieties about gender and literacy--basically, if you were a scholar, could you also be a man? He seems to think not. In Lawrence, manly men are ignorant, country men, like his own father whom he hated. He left that background to become a writer. Evidently, he felt that he had sacrificed a vital part of his nature in doing so. I like Lawrence for this reason--in the midst of his machismo, he's so conflicted! Actually, I like Forster because he's conflicted, too, it's just different. . .

6) Another dissertation-related thought is what constitutes "literate activity." It's a central idea for me, which probably means I should keep it well-guarded and certainly not blog about it. Oh well! You see, though, different theorists and historians mean different things when they talk about "literacy." Some talk about the ability to read, while some focus more on writing. Some merely concern themselves with the presence of writing within a culture, whether or not anyone actually has access to the written materials. Some measure the ability to read by the ability to, say, sign one's name--this has been a traditional marker of literacy for historians, though we should be able to perceive some problems there. Then, there's "functional" vs. "advanced" literacy. I admit to bypassing a number of these questions, as "advanced" literacy is more my concern--I know, how elitist of me. But I'm focusing on fiction, after all. There is a certain assumption of literacy on the part of the author, who assumes that someone, somewhere will be reading this work, and writes according to his or her perception of the level of literacy of that reader. Which makes postmodern fiction either completely elitist, or an admission of despair. (I'm teaching Calvino's Invisible Cities this summer. Yum!) So I use the term "literate activity," which means that any time the author portrays someone reading or writing, I'm there. But I also contend that literate conversation--that is, verbal interaction between people that is informed by literacy (especially advanced literacy)--is also literate activity. If you haven't read the same books, you can't exactly talk about them now, can you?

7) And, then, Entropy has me thinking about the Holy Spirit & prayer and the role of the Gentiles in the development of Christianity, and I thank her for not letting me forget that Pentecost is approaching!

Great Moments in Literacy

A video worth watching is posted on the Ironic Catholic blog. I couldn't get the darn thing on my blog, though...

Blog Evolution, Genesis, and Science Fiction

One of the wonders of blogging is the ways that various streams of discourse merge and branch off again, merging, converging, flowing and continuing in other forms. Perhaps its a new version of the immortality that Shakespeare noted with the advent of print--then, the writer was immortal, but preserved in presumably changeless form (unless you consider the horrendous mistakes, printing and editorial liberties, rewriting, etc. that ran rampant in early printing history). In the blogosphere, the evolution of thought--how one influences another, how it continues in new form--creates that kind of monument to the original author, but in a less sterile manner, as the thought inspires creativity rather than existing for itself and the original author alone.

This rather circuitous late-night theorizing is occasioned by my decision to post in response to some thought I gleaned from DarwinCatholic's post on Coulter, Evolution, and Catholicism, which, in fact, I requested because of a post on Roman Catholic Blog.

In the course of explaining the compatibility of evolutionary theory and Catholicism, answering the question that I found most interesting, Darwin explores some of the oddity of Genesis--the items that complicate the traditional children's storybook version of Creation, namely, the presence of humanoid creatures and the question of who Adam's & Eve's offspring married. Darwin writes:

The idea of there being other human-ish creatures wandering the Earth at the same time as Adam and Eve doesn't fit well with the standard Sunday school version of the story, but the Bible itself is slightly odder than the children's version. Recall that at several point in the early chapters of Genesis people are mentioned as going off and interbreeding with other creatures (giants, 'the sons of heaven', etc.) Indeed, after the initial description of the time in the garden itself, one doesn't necessarily get the impression that Adam and Eve are alone in the world. (Why, for instance, does Cain fear that when he is banished people will kill him? He's just killed one of the four named people in the world up to that point, and the other two are his parents.) Rather, Adam and Eve seem to be described tribally: as the tribe of true humans, but not necessarily the only creatures on Earth. Now, the idea of early (ensouled) humans interbreeding with (soul-less) human-ish creatures is unappealing. But then, the idea of Adam and Eve's children having no options other than incest isn't exactly appealing either.

My knowledge of this part of Genesis derives from C. S. Lewis who, in the Chronicles of Narnia, makes reference to the "first wife" of Adam--Lilith, mother of giants and jinns and other human-like or half human creatures. (While Lilith is from the Kabbalah, my investigation of Lilith led to other discoveries.) Interestingly, in Prince Caspian, one of Lewis's characters states that while humans may be good or evil, human-like creatures, things that should be human, used to be human, but aren't, are always involved with evil. I guess that's why it was O.K. for Adam to divorce Lilith! In Out of the Silent Planet, the race of creatures is not humanoid; in Perelandra, by contrast, he creates a race of green (new? fresh? innocent? untested?) humanoid beings who succeed where Adam and Eve failed, and successfully avoid the Fall. This is not a C. S. Lewis post, but I was reminded of Lewis at several points.

Initially, as I commented on Darwin's blog, the intermarriage of ensouled and soul-less humans reminded me of a plot from Star Trek or perhaps the novels of Robert Heinlein--Methuselah's Children comes to mind, and not because of the Biblical allusion in the title! However, this concept was problematized for me by commenter CMinor, who writes:

Likewise I can see why we might find the thought of souled humans interbreeding with unsouled humans unsettling from our position in time, but I'm not sure it's a rational concern. As souls are not externally discernible, there's no reason to assume that souled and unsouled humans would be any different in any other respects, to include intelligence and behavior. The sole (no pun intended--really) difference could be that souled humans had a point of contact with God not available to unsouled humans.

I believe I was more comfortable with the idea of unsouled and souled humans (or human-like creatures, if humans are defined by the possession of a soul) interbreeding when I imagined the unsouled humans being somehow different--lower on the evolutionary scale, perhaps, to which CMinor also alludes by mentioning the evidence that Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens interbred (intermarried?). Considering the idea of humanoids equally intelligent as ourselves who merely had no "point of contact" with God--or maybe a different point of contact with God?--reminds me hauntingly of the destroyed planet in Arthur C. Clarke's "The Star," which (in the story) provided the light by which the wise men found the Christ child (sorry for the spoiler). The story is profound and beautiful, if in a profoundly beautifully troubling way. With the planet, an advanced humanoid race capable of artistic expression and technological development has been destroyed, presumably to provide the light announcing the Incarnation. The narrator and ship's science officer is a Jesuit priest who must decide, at the end and beyond the borders of the story, whether to reveal this calculation.

I once had a heated debate with a professor and a room full of undergrads over whether or not the story makes an ultimate condemnation of religion. Others maintained that in the context of the story, either God did not exist, or God was evil. I felt certain that there could be a theological answer to this that did not include either of the two aforementioned conclusions. Is this the answer?

Theorizing theological responses to science fiction, albeit theologically reaching science fiction, aside. . . What would be the implications of soul-less and ensouled humans (or humanoids, in the case of the former) marrying or interbreeding? In the Old Testament we already have the history of a people who were chosen by God as special, set apart from other people. In the New Testament, it is revealed that the Incarnation of the Son of Man is for all people (see my post on Epiphany!). So, then, is the ensouling of Adam and Eve the first "choosing" of God from among His creation? First, He chose a very select group, from whom we inherit Original Sin; then, He chose a race, the Hebrews, the Isrealites, from among those who interbred with the soul-less humanoids; finally, in a late stage of our development, He chose to give to all people the opportunity to choose Him (I would have to suggest that we already had the capacity to choose, but without knowledge of religious Truth, our Free Will--on which I am not the expert, see An Examined Life on Free Will--was not, perhaps, as relevant as it later became with reference to our spirituality).

Returning to science fiction, then, the planet in "The Star" is peopled with the non-chosen. By contrast, although his fantasy repudiates the humanoid as anthropomorphic evil, C. S. Lewis's science fiction "other worlds" are populated with ensouled beings--humanoid and non-humanoid alike. For Lewis, all are "chosen."

Does this bring us any closer to theological or evolutionary truth? Not really. But it does demonstrate the ways in which literature is a working out of various theories of the authors, and further demonstrates the beauty of reading, and the ways in which literate activity affects the consciousness, opening the psyche to the possibility of things beyond our narrow experience. Literature invites us to come in without wiping our muddy boots, allows us to muck around a bit, trying out our ideas in new context, or trying its ideas on for size. When we leave, we are invited to take what we want before moving on--or not. Now that's hospitality! (So much for the literacy plug!)

Finally, I agree with CMinor, who says that we must "let God be God."

Audiobooks, Books & Literacy

My thoughts have dried up somewhat over the past few days--perhaps in contrast to the wet weather. I have started a few thoughts, but did not finish. This at least may prevent me from being too hard on my composition students this semester, who will be writing blogs as part of their daily/homework grades. To fill in the gaps, a few collections of words. . .

Today, to test out our new DSL connection (yay! no more dialup!), my husband was looking through the iTunes Latino audiobooks store. I found several of the top 10 downloads rather inspiring:

2) Don Quijote
4) Pablo Neruda reading his own work
5) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
6) The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
8) The Illiad
9) 1001 Arabian Nights

The English language top 10 in the U.S. iTunes store are not so inspiring:

1) Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Dinner
2) How to Make People Like You by Nicholas Boothman
3) The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama
4) The Audacity of Hope by Barak Obama
5) Plum Lovin' by Janet Evanovich
6) The Funny Thing is by Ellen Degeneres
7) The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
8) Rich Dad, Poor Dad:What the Rich Teach their Kids about Money - That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
9) How to Not Suck at Sales
10) This American Life: A Very Special David Sedaris Christmas

I suppose both lists may have one element in common: they may demonstrate that those who are downloading them have some kind of impulse toward self-improvement, though I would venture that the term would be defined differently in each case. However, in the case of one of the lists, pure aesthetic enjoyment could as easily be a motive for listening. How few on the second list are fiction! I am struck in particular by number 8. I would like to see the book titled, What Those Who Have Had to Live Without Money Can Teach Those Who Have Had Too Much of It. When it is published, I hope to be notified.

It strikes me that audiobook downloads are a marker of something that is not quite literacy, but is related. Listening to an audiobook requires a different level of time commitment than reading. It may be accomplished during a commute, a road-trip, a cross-country drive. . . My family has developed a ritual for road-trips. Listening to Tolkien. With weeks in between, we listen more or less sequentially to all of the books of The Lord of the Rings, which my husband and I have read multiple times each. At times, I may select a "moment" of Middle Earth and start from there.

Having read the book, I am able to listen to the book; I can not listen to a book I have not read. My first experience of audiobooks was disorienting, at best. Traveling to a conference with a friend and her husband, I listened with them to mysteries--something set in the South and involving lawyers, Grisham perhaps. I admit that this is not my taste in books, but I was literally spatially disoriented. I could not imagine being able to locate a sentence--even a scene!--in a book that was only heard and not read. I believe that the experience is one of "secondary orality," as I understand Walter Ong's term--scripted orality, speech that can be replayed. I confess to be utterly dependent on language made visible.

My other thoughts are also book-related--one disturbing, one pleasing. The first is a Christian teen book titled something like One God, Many Churches. In the future, I will try to avoid titles which, in 'hip' language, try to explain denominational differences. For me, for now, the offending phrase is the equation of "Sacraments" with "rituals."

I have been reading a book I discovered while looking for reading material for my 4th grade son. It is perhaps a bit dark for him, but I am enjoying it--The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau, an odd science fiction that reminds me, vaguely, of the "feel" of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. The city in the book--a city in darkness whose lights are failing--reminds me of one Calvino may have written. It feels real, somehow surreal. I look forward to reading more, which is unusual of late! (at any rate, for fiction)

Words Written, Sounds Heard

It is incredible the thoughts that seem worthy of writing when you know you have a venue for them.

This occurred to me the other day as I was driving and a car near me honked, I believe to let the car in front know that the light had changed. Of course, it could have been to tell the idiot in the car to pay attention. The result would have been the same--a beep or two on the car's horn. What made me consider this is my recognition of the complete inability to know whether the honk was intended as a gentle reminder or an impatient, irate admonition (at least, if the recipient of the honk could not see the facial expression or flailing arms). I must have been in a good mood, or I would have assumed that the gesture was meant to cause offense. Of course, it is easier to think of these things objectively if one is not on the receiving end.

Although the car honk is non-verbal, the issue is one of tone, as it is in written communication--notably, email. Arrangement of words alone is usually inadequate to convey the sense in which the meaning was meant. This comes across in the user profile of The Ironic Catholic, who writes, as illustration of her definition of irony, " I.e.:This is a joke, people." The words themselves do not necessarily communicate the tone of voice in which the sentence would be delivered, but since we are used to hearing this phrase, the ", people" provides sufficient indicator. Ignoring that context on the side of the page, one might take this humorous post literally--and did, until one realized the spoof in the middle of an email to me about the post. Hence, net culture has developed the smilies, and variations on the smilies, to indicate mood, or tags like "(ha, ha)" to indicate jokes. Or we fail to do either, and are misinterpreted.

I assume that I was misinterpreted by the blogger who deleted my comment on this post (link removed). Who knows? I was being sincere, but could not necessarily indicate it. Political posts get so nasty so fast; I usually avoid them completely. Even agreement can be taken as mockery.

The ability to change what you have said, or what someone else has said in response to you, rather contradicts my idea at the beginning of this post that thoughts have to be "worthy" of being written--an idea that can be traced to our cultural impression that writing has a privileged position, and that something, once written, is permanently fixed. With the blog, however, you can delete me, I can delete you, I can delete something that feels particularly vulnerable if I choose to do so. But does that really feel honest? Or genuine? Or do these things really matter, since blogs are, after all, "virtual"?

After the fact, I decided that I would assume "technology failure" from the deleted comment and not give the link. Further calling the permanence of writing into question. . .