Universal Denizen

Nurturing Mothers and Indulgent Grandmothers: Why College Students are Academically Adrift | Education Matters

2011-12-31T18:23:00.000-05:00

Nurturing Mothers and Indulgent Grandmothers: Why College Students are Academically Adrift | Education Matters

'Academically Adrift' Students are not learning because they don't read.

2011-12-31T18:15:00.000-05:00

Provost Gary L. Miller's discussion of the book Academically Adrift, Wic...

2011-12-31T18:13:00.000-05:00

EWA Interview: Richard Arum on "Academically Adrift"

2011-12-31T18:07:00.000-05:00

Using Viktor Shklovsky « BIG OTHER

2011-12-13T20:15:00.000-05:00

Using Viktor Shklovsky « BIG OTHER

"...Let’s start at the start. Viktor Shklovsky (1893–1984) was one of the founders of the intellectual movement we today call Russian Formalism (along with Boris Eichenbaum, Roman Jakobson, Vladimir Propp, Yuri Tynianov, others). Broadly speaking, they wanted to understand artworks by breaking them down into their constituent parts, or devices (“priem”)—what we might call tropes or techniques or mechanisms. Different members of this circle studied different devices, and there was not always a clear consensus as to which devices mattered the most. Rather, what unified the Russian Formalists was their dedication to identifying devices, and to explaining how they worked in concert with one another—as well as how those arrangements changed over time. (Forgive me this oversimplification.)

Here is one such example: they distinguished between a narrative’s fabula (story) and syuzhet (presentation). The two need not line up exactly. If someone asks you what the movie Fight Club (1999) “is about,” you might say, “Well, it’s about a guy (Edward Norton) who invents an alternate persona, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), in order to give himself the courage to break out of his mundane white collar existence.” But of course that’s not at all how Fight Club presents itself to the audience. The narrative’s presentation begins at its climax, which is interrupted, and only then proceeds to the the story’s chronological beginning. From that point on, the film contains a mix of chronologically-ordered scenes and bits of narrative exposition (Northon’s voiceover) that allow us, ultimately, to return to and understand the climax, which is then resolved in the final minutes of the movie. Furthermore, the narration conceals from us for most of the film’s running time the fact that Tyler Durden is the psychological creation of the nameless narrator/protagonist.

Formalism helps us explain this kind of narrative phenomenon. By separating story from presentation, we can begin to speak of them independently from one another, as well as to understand how they relate. From this follows many other concepts: for instance, we can see how exposition is back story that gets related (narrated) in the narrative present, whereas a flashback is a scene that’s chronologically embedded in the narrative present. And so on...."

“We the people” vs. “us the people” | The Grammarphobia Blog

2011-10-20T14:23:00.000-05:00

May 12, 2011

“We the people” vs. “us the people”

Q: Populists often stress democratic values by invoking the phrase “we the people,” but lately they’ve taken to using it not just as a subject but as an object as well. Thus: “We must never allow [insert villain] to trample on we the people!”

A: “We the people” is a subject; “us the people” is an object. Here’s how they look in sentences:

“We, the people, elect our leaders. Our leaders are elected by us, the people.”

In both of those noun phrases, “the people” is an appositive. It identifies or explains the preceding noun or pronoun by using a different term (like the name in “My son, John”).

We’ve written on the blog before about appositives, which are sometimes surrounded by commas, as in our examples above.

An appositive never changes the case (that is, subject or object) of the pronoun it follows. That’s why the entire phrase “we the people” is always a subject and “us the people” is always an object.

The words “we the people” resonate with Americans because they introduce the preamble to the Constitution:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

If ever a phrase deserved proper handling, it’s “we the people.”

It’s demeaned when misused as a grammatical object (as in, “Don’t trample on we the people!”).

Check out our books about the English language

Permanent Link

“We the people” vs. “us the people” | The Grammarphobia Blog

Florida Studies: Proceedings of the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Florida College English Association

2011-10-16T16:38:00.000-05:00

Florida Studies: Proceedings of the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Florida College English Association
Editor: Paul D. Reich and Maurice J. O’Sullivan
Date Of Publication: Oct 2011
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-3275-5
Isbn: 1-4438-3275-8
This volume contains a variety of essays about Florida literature and history by scholars from across the state representing every kind of institution of higher learning, from community colleges to small liberal arts institutions to large universities. The first section, Pedagogy, explores the challenges facing Florida teachers at both the high school and undergraduate levels. The essays in Old Florida take on a myriad of texts that provide evaluations of Florida and its culture from the 1540s through the 1950s and include evaluations of Zora Neale Hurston, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Pat Frank. The final section, Contemporary Florida, continues to identify the state’s place within larger literary, cultural, and political traditions.

Paul D. Reich is an Assistant Professor of English at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. His areas of teaching and research include late 19th and 20th century American literature, African American literature, the American West, and popular culture. His work has appeared in Teaching American Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, and Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction.

Maurice J. O’Sullivan is a Professor of English and the Kenneth Curry Chair in Literature at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. In addition to articles on literature and pedagogy, he has published The Florida Reader (1991), Crime Fiction and Films in the Sunshine State (1997), and Orange Pulp (2000).

Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)

Home - Cambridge Scholars Publishing

David Von Ancken Interview, Seraphim Falls - MoviesOnline

2011-10-12T21:59:00.000-05:00

David Von Ancken Interview, Seraphim Falls - MoviesOnline

Native americans in movies - Native Americans and Cinema - actor, film, born, director, producer, scene, role, book, story

2011-10-11T18:05:00.000-05:00

Native americans in movies - Native Americans and Cinema - actor, film, born, director, producer, scene, role, book, story

Frontline Ministries - The Church's Need for Polemics in the Postmodern World, Ch. 2

2011-10-11T11:32:00.000-05:00

Frontline Ministries - The Church's Need for Polemics in the Postmodern World, Ch. 2

CriticalThinking.org - 31st International Conference

2011-09-06T09:49:00.000-05:00

CriticalThinking.org - 31st International Conference

The Center and Foundation for Critical Thinking have together hosted critical thinking academies and conferences for more than three decades. During that time, we have played a key role in defining, structuring, assessing, improving and advancing the principles and best practices of fair-minded critical thought in education and in society. We invite you to join us for the 31st International Conference on Critical Thinking. Our annual conference provides a unique opportunity for you to improve your understanding of critical thinking, as well as your ability to more substantively foster it in the classroom and in all aspects of your work and life.

CONFERENCE OVERVIEW

Choose from the following sessions when registering. Choose one for each day section. See preconference and conference schedule and sessions for full titles and descriptions.

PRECONFERENCE

Developing a Substantive Approach to Socratic Questioning Through Critical Thinking
25 Weeks to Better Thinking and Better Living: Using the Tools of Critical Thinking to Take Charge of Your Life
Three Historical Approaches to Critical Thinking and Their Significance for the Design and Assessment of Post-Secondary Curriculum
CANCELED How to Work Together with Colleagues to deepen Your Understanding of Critical Thinking Through Extended Book Studies

DAY ONE

Teaching Students to Think Within a Field or Discipline
What are Intellectual Traits and How Does One Teach for Them?
Understanding the Relationship Between Critical Thinking and Emancipating the Mind
Fostering Critical Thinking in the Secondary Classroom
Advanced Session: ‘On the potential of the critical vocabulary of the English language as an academic lingua franca’ (for returning registrants)

DAY TWO Morning

The Role of Administration in Creating Critical Thinking Communities
Using Peer Review on a Typical Day to Foster Substantive Critical Thinking
Teaching Students to Distinguish Strong and Weak Sense Critical Thinking
Fostering Critical Thinking in the Social Disciplines

DAY TWO Afternoon

Using the Tools of Critical Thinking to Teach Students How to Study and Learn
Why Transfer of Learning is a Common Consequent of Teaching for Critical Thinking
Teaching for Intellectual Autonomy and Intellectual Courage
Sociocentric Thinking as a Barrier to Cultivating the Intellect

DAY THREE

Concurrent sessions - choose at the conference

DAY FOUR Morning

Teaching Students Fundamental and Powerful Concepts
Why I am Ashamed to Belong to the Human Species
What I Think of When I Design Instruction
The Art of Close Reading and Substantive Writing

The conference begins with 4 options for preconference sessions. These are for both new and returning registrants. The rest of the conference will consist in approximately 40 sessions offered over four days. Participants will choose in advance the sessions offered during the preconference and on days one, two, and four of the main conference. On the third day of the conference participants will choose from approximately 30 sessions.

All conference sessions are designed to converge on basic critical thinking principles and to enrich a core concept of critical thinking with practical teaching and learning strategies. For a fuller explanation of core critical thinking concepts review the Thinker's Guide Series or articles from our library.

Throughout our work we emphasize and argue for the importance of teaching for critical thinking in a strong, rather than a weak, sense. We are committed to a clear and "substantive" concept of critical thinking (rather than one that is ill-defined); a concept that interfaces well with the disciplines, that integrates critical with creative thinking, that applies directly to the needs of everyday and professional life, that emphasizes the affective as well as the cognitive dimension of critical thinking, that highlights intellectual standards and traits. We advocate a concept of critical thinking that organizes instruction in every subject area at every educational level.

From: http://www.criticalthinking.org/Conference/2011_Conference.cfm

Using the Socratic Method by Rick Garlikov

2011-08-30T19:15:00.000-05:00

More About the Socratic Method

Using the Socratic Method

Rick Garlikov

Bryan Bloom, President of Deal Management Systems, Inc. came across "The Socratic Method: Teaching by Asking Instead of by Telling" and wrote to ask me to explain further how to use the method. In particular he sought a step-by-step recipe for generating the questions. I cannot imagine such a recipe because each subject is very different and the background of each student or group of students may be very different from that of other students or groups. Also, I thought I had explained it about as well as I could in the original article, but he wrote back saying that though I had given an example of its use in that paper, I had not explained it. So I responded to that with the following e-mail, which he replied subsequently that he found very helpful. I am posting it here in case others might also find it helpful. The italicized remarks following the brackets are from his e-mail:

> Rick - thanks for the reply. Actually, you didn't explain it, but you did give an example.

I am going to quote a couple of passages that I considered to be an "explanation" though you might not have, and then I will try to elaborate on them a little.

> As it is called a "method" I am assuming that it can be coded and learned/taught somehow.
> Maybe I am incorrect. However, the word method would indicate something repeatable and
> identifiable.

Interesting. Not sure. It is very identifiable, but not easy to originate; perhaps like a composer's style in that regard. You can identify Beethoven's works generally but not easily produce one as great because content is as important as style, and the content takes some expertise. But since you have raised the issue, I am going to see whether I can come up with a generalized methodology of some sort for you.

> How did you learn how to do it?

It sort of comes naturally to me because I learn by analyzing things. Once you have analyzed something into its essential logical components, it is easy to see how to proceed, or lead someone else, from one to another. And, especially if you have taken wrong paths and made errors in your analyzing the thing, it is real easy to notice when others are going down a wrong path, and to know what they need to focus on in order to bring them back to the right path.

Second, I read many of Plato's dialogues in which Socrates is portrayed as using the method in many different cases. That was not particularly helpful at first, however, because the problems and comments in those dialogues do not make much sense to the modern reader who is not a philosopher and who is not aware of the signficance of the problems today; and while I recognized what Socrates was doing, the particulars did not make much sense because the questions and answers seemed bizarre or "tricky" instead of logical.

First, the following are the passages from the essay which I thought were explanatory:
"These are the four critical points about the questions: 1) they must be interesting or intriguing to the students; they must lead by 2) incremental and 3) logical steps (from the students' prior knowledge or understanding) in order to be readily answered and, at some point, seen to be evidence toward a conclusion, not just individual, isolated points; and 4) they must be designed to get the student to see particular points. You are essentially trying to get students to use their own logic and therefore see, by their own reflections on your questions, either the good new ideas or the obviously erroneous ideas that are the consequences of their established ideas, knowledge, or beliefs. Therefore you have to know or to be able to find out what the students' ideas and beliefs are. You cannot ask just any question or start just anywhere.

"It is crucial to understand the difference between 'logically' leading questions and 'psychologically' leading questions. Logically leading questions require understanding of the concepts and principles involved in
order to be answered correctly; psychologically leading questions can be answered by students' keying in on clues other than the logic of the content."

So let me give another example, this time from teaching the technical details of photography.

Lens' apertures and camera shutter speeds each are based on letting in either twice as much or half as much light depending on which direction one goes. Not a particularly difficult concept once you see it, but the trick is getting people to see it and to appreciate what it signifies then. So I start out by asking people if they were watering their garden for five minutes, at a constant hose pressure, how much water they put on their lawn. The correct answer is that they don't know, if they were not measuring. But the next question is, if they watered for 10 minutes at the same rate, how much more water they would put on in that 10 minutes compared with how much they put on in just five minutes. The answer is "twice as much" -- even though they do not know HOW much that is in either case. Then I show them, the aperture sizes of the lens -- the whole openings, and ask them which lets in more light, a big hole that I show them, or a small hole that I show them. The big hole. Then I show them, with the back of the camera open (no film, of course) which lets in more light: the shutter being open a long time or the shutter being open 1/1000 of a second. Clearly the shutter's being open a long time lets in more light if the amount of light is contant throughout the time the shutter is open.

Then I explain that the amount of light by making the hole one size smaller lets in exactly half as much light. And making the shutter stay open half as long does the same thing. So you can decrease the light by half that hits the film EITHER by decreasing the aperture one amount or by increasing the shutter speed by one amount.

Then to test whether they understand the full force of that, I ask: what happens if you decrease the aperture by one amount and then increase the amount of time the shutter is open by doubling it; how much have you changed the amount of light that hits the film? The answer should be that you basically have not changed it at all.

So, if different combinations of aperture and shutter speed do not change the exposure of the film, how do you decide which combination to use? Or does it not matter?

They won't know that, but they see it now as a puzzling question, so you are half way there.

Well, I can devise questions to get them to see how shutter speed works -- e.g., what if you take a picture of someone that takes 30 seconds to shoot, what is likely to happen?

They can answer that. The picture will be blurred because either the subject will move or you will shake the camera because you cannot hold it steady for that long [without a tripod].

But I have no questions I can ask about aperture, because most of them will have had very little experience with using different apertures for something, unless they are lens specialists. The only likely experience many of them have, if they use bifocals, is that outside in the sunlight they probably won't need them, whereas in dim light, they particularly need them. Sunlight narrows your pupils, and a narrower opening gives more depth in focus. But that is not worth trying to ferret out of people by the Socratic method of asking leading questions and hoping they will have had the experience and be able to remember it, etc.

At any rate, in order to employ the Socratic method, you have to first know the logical sequence of steps from one point of knowledge to another. That is not easy to begin with.

Second, you have to be able to recognize wrong answers and come up with a question so logically related to their answer that they see right away their answer was mistaken. E.g., you ask someone "What do you want your newspaper ad to do?" And they say "I want them to see we are having a sale." Well, you have to know first that is NOT what they want their ad to do. If that is all they wanted their ad to do, they could simply have the ad say "___ company is having a sale". What they want is for the ad to get people to come to buy stuff. The question is then how to get the ad to do that. Well, it will depend on the store; it will depend on what they have to entice customers with; it will depend on who their potential clientele is, etc.

The Socratic Method is easy, if you understand the logic of what you are explaining; it is impossible if you do not.

So, if you understand that logic, what you do is you ask questions to see how much your "student" understands first. That way you know where to begin any explanations, Socratic or otherwise.

Once you know the starting place, you have to know what the "next" thing you want them to know is.

Then you have to come up with a question that leads them there. It has to be a question that is specific enough to be helpful. It is like playing charades, however, in that you will go down dead ends sometimes. What seems like a really clever way to get a word across in "Charades" doesn't always work.

If the person gives a wrong answer, you have to decide whether there is any merit in showing them why that answer is wrong, or whether you just need to show them that it is.

I begin teaching my ethics course by asking students when it is right to break a date and why. Well, they might come up with 15 different answers, and what they say may or may not prompt a response question in your mind. One time a girl said that she thought it right to break a date if the guy didn't own a car. I said "So if Ralph Nader, who doesn't have a car, and, I think, doesn't even have a driver's license, showed up at your door with a helicopter and a qualified pilot and was going to fly you to Paris in a private jet, you think you should break the date?" She amended her requirement to her date's needing to have transportation. When I asked about public transportation, she added that she meant with regard to the rural area in which she lived at the time because without transportation there would be no way to get to anywhere interesting for a date that involved more than just being together.

Once, in the early 1970's, I had a whole class of kids say that you should break a date whenever you wanted to because honesty was always the best policy. So I asked "What if it were for the prom, and the guy had rented a car and a tux, and just as he is walking up to your door, you decide you don't want to go?" or "What if the girl had bought an expensive dress and was really looking forward to going, etc., is it right to call her 15 minutes before and say 'forget it, I don't want to go'?" Would that be right? These kids all said "Yes, because honesty is the most important thing." So then I asked "What if you honestly want to kill someone? Would that make it right to do it?" They all said "Yes, if you are willing to suffer the consequences." I wasn't getting anywhere with this sort of line of questioning with these students.

So the next day I gave them a really terrible assignment that made them all angry. Then I told them I lied and that they really didn't have that assignment. That really made them angry. And they wanted to know why I had tormented them. I asked whether they thought it wrong for me to do it just because I wanted to. They did think that wrong. I reminded them of their own principle from the previous day. They gave up that principle.

You have to know what the logical ramifications of their wrong answers are, especially where it leads that they are not likely to want to go. Then all you have to do is to ask a question or to that uses their own logic to get them to a place they are unhappy with, and they will give up their wrong answers.

Then, to get them along the right paths, you have to know what experiences are likely to give them good insights, and focus your questions about those experiences or ideas.

There is a methodology to this, but it is so general when talking about any content or subject matter area, that it is almost impossible to describe in a specific step-by-step manner. The questions you would ask about flying a plane are different from what you would ask for baking a cake but the general principals of what you are trying to do are the same.

Finally, it doesn't always work. Socrates used to tick off people doing this; they thought he was mocking them by asking them stupid questions or tricking them into being confused because he was clever. They brought him to trial, convicted him, and executed him. While execution is not as much a potential problem today, the method still really irritates people when you (as it seems to them) "show them up" in subjects they think they are expert. Illogical people do NOT like this method used "on" them; and they cannot see it as a method that is being used "with" them in order to help them.

FROM: http://www.garlikov.com/teaching/smmore.htm

Keyboard shortcut for screensaver

2011-08-30T09:21:00.000-05:00

From: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/24811-45-keyboard-shortcut-screensaver

It's easy as 1, 2, 3...

Click Start, Search

click All Files and Folders

Click Look in: (drop down arrow)

Click Browse (in the box that opens)

Click My Computer, Local Drive C:, Windows, (scroll down) press System32

Now, Look in: will read System32

click in the All of part of the file name: box and type *.scr
(screen savers have the file extension of .scr, the * means you want every file that ends with .scr.)

The names are a little cryptic, but somewhat legible. The marque is ssmarque, pipes is sspipes...you'll figure it out.

Now, right click on the one you want, let's say it's ssmarque. Click Create shortcut. XP will ask you if you want to create the shortcut on the desktop. Click OK.

Now the fun part (it's easy, don't let some smart ass "guru" tell you it can't be done!)

You'll see your new Shortcut on the desktop. Right click it and then click Properties.

You'll see a box that reads Shortcut key: that reads 'None'. Click in the box...you'll see your cursor flashing next to the word None. Simply hold down the Ctrl key and then press any key you want to use. I use "M" for the marque so my shortcut keys are Ctrl + Alt + M to immediately open the screen saver. Just press Ctrl to go back to whatever you were doing (and hope the boss didn't notice!).

As far as I can tell you have to have the Ctrl + Alt as part of the shortcut keys.

dan50m50@yahoo.com *Write if you have problems with this.

From: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/24811-45-keyboard-shortcut-screensaver

Start the default screen saver in XP with NirCmd command-line tool

2011-08-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

NirCmd - Freeware command-line tool for Windows

Start the default screen saver nircmd.exe screensaver

How to Make a Computer Screen Go Black With Powerpoint

2011-08-30T08:45:00.000-05:00

How to Make a Computer Screen Go Black With Powerpoint - wikiHow

Steps

1
Open PowerPoint. You can do this by searching in start menu then all programs folder.
2
After you have opened up PowerPoint, press f5 to view the show.
3
Press b while the show is up.
4
Watch your screen goes black.
5
To make it go back, press b again then hit space bar until you have finished the slide show.

From: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Computer-Screen-Go-Black-With-Powerpoint

Lies ELA Teachers Tell Themselves - #1: "Correcting student errors teaches them better usage."

2011-08-28T12:00:00.000-05:00

FROM: Tim Fredrick's ELA Teaching Blog:

Lies ELA Teachers Tell Themselves - #1: "Correcting student errors teaches them better usage."

This really is one of my biggest pet peeves about ELA teaching - over-correcting student writing mistakes. What do I mean by "over-correcting"? Let me back up a bit and describe how I avoidover-correcting.

When dealing with usage problems (and this includes punctuation, grammar, mechanics, etc), it is important to deal with one problem at a time and spend a lot of time on it. I'll spend a month or more helping students with one problem (not every lesson or for a whole period, mind you). A big one for my students - one that usually takes more than a month - is subject verb agreement (SVA). At the beginning of the year, I'll cover basic SVA. Students will practice in groups, those who have the down helping those who don't. After spending a few lessons doing group work, I'll move students into individual work. Now, on writing assignments, I only correct SVA errors as that is the only problem we have dealt with as a class. I don't correct run-ons and fragments even though my students have problems with those. When I conference with students about their formal writing assignments and they have SVA errors, I will spend some time in the conference focusing on those errors. If in a final draft of a paper the student has those errors, I will mark the error with a reiteration of why I'm marking it. This process may take a month or more in order to really focus on SVA.

The next step, after I feel that we've spent enough class time on SVA (again, usually a month or more - not all lessons during that month - just here and there as needed, once or twice a week mini-lessons), I'll move on to run-ons and fragments. The process is repeated with group work then individual work and then in conferences. The difference is that now I'm helping students in conferences and in my written comments with two skills: SVA and run-ons/fragments. Even if I see loads of comma errors, I don't mention them or mark them. I put them in the back of my mind for later areas of study.

This represents teaching and learning about mechanics that is focused and effective. Why? When students reach the secondary level, we can assume two things. First, they've probably received grammar instruction before (no, you aren't the first teacher to notice they have grammar problems). Second, many of their errors are so ingrained in how they use language that one mini-lesson or mark on a paper is not going to do the trick in reprogramming their brain and how it understands the use of language. At this point, they've been making the mistake so much that it looks and sounds correct to them. This will take time and focus to switch.

In addition, I don't correct errors that we haven't discussed in class. Yes, I can assume that students have had grammar instruction before, but I don't always know the topics that were covered or whether this grammar instruction was good. In the best of scenarios, I would be able to ask the teachers who had the students before me what they covered and how, but we in education are used to not having the best of scenarios.

Actually, let me highlight something ... I don't even correct errors on papers. I mark them. There's a difference. Correcting is when you put the 'correct' answer on the student's paper; marking is when you mark that they made a mistake but do not give them the 'correct' answer.

There is this distinction (and this gets me back to my original point) because correcting student mistakes is not instruction. Correcting their mistakes is editing, and if that is what you enjoy you should have gotten into book publishing. We are teachers and our job is to teach students how to use the English language. Correcting mistakes on their paper - and worse, over-correcting every single mistake we can find whether or not we have covered it in depth in class or not - is not teaching. If you correct errors on their papers on a first draft, they will go back and fix them on their computer mindlessly. They then turn in a paper that is 'perfect,' and you feel good about yourself. But, did they learn? Some would argue, yes they did. So, how? Osmosis? They learned just because they fixed the mistake? If that is learning, then they would never make that mistake again. How many times have you corrected an error on a student paper and that student makes the same exact mistake over and over? (Now, there are situations in which the student made a silly error and you 'caught' it. The student really knows what to do but was just a bit careless. There, your problem is not grammar knowledge it is proofreading skills. That's different.)

I heard a teacher at the end of last year say, "I'm sick of fixing all their mistakes. After twenty, I'm going to stop." I laughed to myself because everyone is so impressed with how well her students write, when in fact her students write so well because they have an incredible editor - her! We are not editors; we are teachers. We need to be focused with our instruction on mechanics. One topic at a time for a significant period (when I say significant period, I mean that we take 20 minutes once or twice a week for a month or more if needed - not every day all day for weeks on end) and work with students on conferences to explore their errors. Marks on a paper are not instruction. Teacher-student interaction - either whole group, small group, or individually - is instruction.

Focus on grammar instruction, not correcting mistakes on paper.

FROM: Tim Fredrick's ELA Teaching Blog:

Report on Readercon

2011-03-13T08:41:00.002-05:00

Reposting of a blog entry from The Mumpsimus:

10 July 2005

Readercon: Day 3

Today was the end of Readercon, and everyone looked a bit dazed and even bedraggled, though happy. Corrections to my earlier posts have already begun to appear in the comments -- please feel free to correct anything you think I mistyped, misperceived, or missed. (Thanks to Kathryn Cramer for doing so already.)

First, the Rhysling Awards have been posted and the winners announced to all the world, not just Readercon attendees. Congratulations all around.

Now to today: I arrived in the morning to see Greer Gilman read from the third story in her series begun with "Jack Daw's Pack" and the World Fantasy Award-winning "A Crowd of Bone". I'd heard Greer read other pieces of the story last year, and it's as vivid and unique an artifact of language as the other two, so I wasn't about to miss another sneak-peak. Her writing can seem, on the page, almost opaque, but when she reads it doesn't feel the least bit difficult or obscure to me. I told her this, and she said the stories really should be read aloud, they're designed that way. There were only a few of us at the reading, but it was 10am on a Sunday morning, and it didn't really matter, because it was an appreciative group, and engagement matters more than numbers. ("The average literacy in that room," Greer said to me, "was thrillingly high." Indeed. But that's been my experience of the whole convention, and one of the things that has made it so much fun.)

I dashed from the reading to the only panel I went to today: "Experiencing Sense of Wonder for College Credit: Teaching SF in the Classroom", where the panelists were: Fred Lerner (moderator), Samuel Delany, Theodora Goss, Leigh Grossman, and Suzy McKee Charnas. The participants gave their backgrounds first -- all teach or have taught science fiction and/or fantasy classes at universities, though in various ways and forms. Things got off to a lively start when Samuel Delany said he's against teaching a historical overview of science fiction, that such an overview is impossible and a waste of time, and that he's also against trying to define "science fiction" (he explained the reasons for the latter briefly, but I'd recommend reading his comments on defining SF and the various histories of SF in Silent Interviews, because this idea wasn't really picked up and discussed much during the panel.)

Suzy McKee Charnas said she always starts with a historical overview of SF, because most students' notions of what science fiction and fantasy are comes from movies. She said she starts with Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, because it's old, but full of energy and invention, which many students don't think old things can have. Delany replied that he often does exactly the same thing, and usually starts with Bester, too, but he just doesn't call it history.

Leigh Grossman said he often starts a course with definitions provided by students answering the question "What is science fiction?" or "What is fantasy?" (he teaches separate courses on each). The responses can be illuminating and good ways to begin discussion, and without doing it the students would become frustrated because so much of what they encounter in his courses defies their expectations of what SF is and does. He said he draws across all majors, even though it's an upper-level English course with 6,000+ pages of reading per semester and 150 pages of writing (although summer class participants can get out of one paper if they go to an SF convention).

Theodora Goss said that her university is fairly conservative, and that she teaches mostly 19th century fantasy literature, because, alas, that's what easiest to convince the administrators is worthwhile for study.

There followed a lot of discussion of the lack of respect that SF gets from the academy, though most of the panelists said they've experienced more hostility from creative writing teachers and programs than from academic ones. Suzy McKee Charnas suggested the condemnatory attitude derives from ignorance of the SF field, and therefore a feeling that it's impossible to assess student work related to SF. Theodora Goss said that people in academic programs are looking for new territory to explore, since so much has been written about so many of the major literary figures. Leigh Grossman said that even though his classes aren't exactly creative writing classes, he gets refugees from other creative writing classes where the instructors pretended The Iowa Review is the only respectable market for stories.

Samuel Delany said he uses a series of single-author modules in courses, rather than a historical overview, with eight modules per semester. By using a couple of novels and some short stories by one writer, students get to see what specific writers do, rather than becoming confused by all the paradoxes and conflicts in the history of SF.

Leigh Grossman said he likes to destroy the Norton Anthology view of writing as "this writer followed that one" by talking about how writers work, their worries about money and contracts, their friendships and animosities across generations. This can illuminate and humanize past writers, writers who we think of as godlike, but who were probably just trying to figure out how to pay the rent or get an audience.

Theodora Goss said she tends to teach thematically, for instance with the theme of "the double", to show how writers take central ideas and play with them, for instance "Beauty and the Beast" as seen through Angela Carter's "The Tiger's Bride".

Leigh Grossman said he often has to spend the first day scaring away people who signed up for the course because it said "science fiction" and so they assumed it would be an easy A. Theodora Goss said that happens to her, too, but there are also plenty of students who already are interested in fantasy and science fiction, truly want to be there, and are passionate about the work -- something a bit rarer in a class on Emerson.

Samuel Delany said that bringing science fiction into a creative writing class is no more difficult than bringing people of diverse backgrounds, nationalities, ethnicities, etc. At the beginning, he says that all genres of writing are welcome and taken seriously. After all, eventually most writers want to try their hand at SF, as did Hawthorne, Poe, and Twain. It's part of the American traiditon. On the subject of preconceptions, he said he asks students who haven't read SF to list its themes (the students who have read SF are told to be quiet). These prejudicial myths -- utopias, space battles, etc. -- are written on the board, and inevitably turn out to be a fairly accurate description of a lot of SF. He said that he then bans any talk about these subjects in general, forcing the students to focus on the actual texts without their preconceptions.

Someone made a comment about many administrators saying students won't read more than a few pages for any class, and Delany pounced on this, proclaiming the idea of "teachability" as something that has made classes of all sorts meaningless and boring. If teachers get too caught up in trying to convert people to reading, science fiction, etc., this tends to control the canon in the humanities, and not in a good way. He said he prefers teaching graduate seminars for this reason.

From the audience, John Crowley asked what some of the modules Delany uses are, and he said Alfred Bester (the famous works, plus things like "Hell is Forever"), Theodore Sturgeon, Thomas Disch, Joanna Russ, Barry Malzberg, and he's even putting together a John Crowley module. He went on to say that he avoids writers that the students would encounter if they develop any sort of interest in SF -- no need for Isaac Asimov, for instance -- and that one of the best things teachers can do is introduce students to superb writers they might not otherwise encounter. He said his selection is based entirely on his own conflicting ideas of "quality", and that he lays these ideas out for the students to discuss and argue about.

Suzy McKee Charnas said one of the reasons she likes teaching SF is that she likes to talk about the edges of ideas, the edges of culture, and that SF is very good at doing that.

Theodora Goss said that SF of various sorts often investigates and represents things realism doesn't -- for instance, 19th century fantasy could often be seen as a discussion of the fallout from Darwin's ideas, with things like Dracula raising questions about the relationship between humans and animals.

And then time ran out.

I was going to go to another panel, but got caught up talking with a few people, because rumors that publisher Byron Preiss had just died in a car accident were, sadly, confirmed.

At one o'clock, though, I went to hear Samuel Delany read an assessment of the tenth volume of The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, an essay that has just come out in The New York Review of Science Fiction. If I'd been thinking well, I would have picked up a copy of the new NYRSF, but the dealer's room closed after Delany's reading. I'm just going to have to finally break down and subscribe, because it's an excellent, insightful essay. In it, Delany compares Sturgeon to Chekhov, and an audience member afterward asked him to elaborate on the comparison. He said there is a similarly large range of characters in Sturgeon's work as in Chekhov's, though Sturgeon tends to focus more on the working class, while Chekhov had peasants and aristocrats (because that's what existed at that time). Both writers have a strong connection to landscape in their stories, and, a real humanity to their perspectives. Someone asked him what his favorite Sturgeon story is, and he said that he couldn't answer that any more than his favorite Chekhov story, because he likes their sensibilities, and, as with any writer who is of great quality, their work as a whole creates a sensibility that he likes being immersed in.

After that, I went to hear Kelly Link read part of "Magic for Beginners", the title story of her new collection, and then Dora Goss read a magnificent story that will be appearing on Strange Horizons soon, as well as some poems.

And so ended Readercon. If I find more reports from the convention, I'll post links to them. Please keep corrections, emendations, different interpretations, etc. coming in the comments sections. If you're more visually oriented, check out Kathryn Cramer's photos from the convention. She even got me, though the camera exploded immediately after. (That's Sonya Taaffe behind me, by the way. I was walking toward Kathryn to introduce her to Sonya, because David Hartwell had asked to meet Sonya, and Sonya didn't know either of the Hartwell-Cramer duo of fabulousity.)

On my way out of the convention, I picked up a registration form for next year, because it announced the guests of honor for 2006: James Morrow and China Mieville.

Tattoo, torture, mutilation, and adornment [electronic resource] : the denaturalization of the body in culture and text / Frances E. Mascia-Lees

2011-01-08T13:17:00.000-05:00

Title

A (Not So) Complete History of Literary Tattoos

2010-12-29T13:29:00.001-05:00

Interpreting Japanese Culture in Tanizaki's “The Tattooer” by Clifford J. Kurkowski

2010-12-28T22:31:00.000-05:00

Interpreting Japanese Culture in Tanizaki's “The Tattooer”

by Clifford J. Kurkowski

The reader-response theory illustrates that people often use a table filled with a vast wealth of knowledge in order to decipher a text, and, whether or not their interpretation is correct, critics generally offer their reactions to those who have read it. When one examines a work from only an emotional perspective, it does not always involve the professional methodologies necessary for one to read effectively, resulting in hidden meanings, imagery, or an interpretation implied by the author. David Bleich, in his essay, “Feelings About Literature, “ suggests that “the habit of objectification is fundamental in human mental functioning, and no one does with out it” (1270). In other words, when examining a work, it is natural to associate an emotion with it immediately, but as readers continue deciphering it, they may “respond to some form of “objectification” in order to “depersonalize the response” (1270). Not only does Bleich propose that most works do invoke an emotional response from the reader, but as he or she analyzes it more carefully, the brain begins processing certain elements of the text, often resulting in a more viable interpretation.
Bleich claims that an “associative response” such as this often reveals a “perception, affect, associations, relationships, and finally a patterned presentation” of how a reader organizes the work, illustrating an interpretation focuses on their own “ personality at the time of the reading” (1270). This “associative response” theory may be useful for those interpreting strictly American literature, but, if one uses this method to examine literature from another country, can his or her criticism help them gain a better understanding of the intent by the author? Would a reader be able to properly analyze a text and come up with a critical interpretation? To apply Bleich’s “associative response” theory we will interpret a translated short story from Junichiro Tanizaki, called “Shisei” or “The Tattooer.” Since this story is based on Japanese culture it will be interesting to note how an American reader, like myself, will be able to interpret a text like “The Tattooer” and base a critical response on my knowledge of the culture. My goal is to give a brief synopsis of what I have read then try to interpret some of the Japanese cultural aspects in the story. In turn, my “associative response” should give readers a useful interpretation of the author’s intent.
Junichiro Tanizaki’s story, “The Tattooer” begins with the narrator illustrating the ancient art of tattooing. He vividly describes that Japanese men, who were performing in the Kabuki Theater, received tattoos in order to satisfy their upper class audiences and enhance their beauty. This story is about a young tattoo artist named Seikichi who trained as an ukiyoye painter in his youth but dropped in social status and became a renowned tattoo artist. For years, Seikichi perfected his tattoo artistry on many clients. To him they were his body canvases which came in all different shapes and sizes, but he yearned for something more, he wanted the perfect canvas to paint his masterpiece on. Then one day, while passing a restaurant, he caught a glimpse of a beautiful woman’s foot and fell madly in love with her. A few days later, the beautiful woman appeared at his door carrying a package from one of Seikichi’s friends. He gazed at her beauty, she had the facial features that he desired, and her body was the perfect canvas he wanted to paint his greatest masterpiece on. Unfortunately, the young woman did not share in his dreams and was frightened by his gestures. As much as he tried to convince her, she still refused his offer to be his greatest masterpiece. In order to get what he wanted, Seikichi drugged the young woman and enslaved her.
The next morning Seikichi started his masterpiece on the sleeping woman. He did not stop until he finished his work of art. After Seikichi finished, the woman started to move about, the spider that Seikichi tattooed on the woman’s back moved as she did. His artwork was now alive and this gave him great pleasure. As the woman slowly gained her composure, she asked to see the tattoo but the artist refused and made her bathe in hot water first in order to bring out the colors. The hot water made her suffer horrific pain as it made her skin sting. She screamed at the artist to wait in the other room because she did not want anyone to see her in so much pain. An hour later, the woman emerged from the room beautifully dressed and with a twinkle in her eye. Seikichi was amazed at what he saw. She was beautiful. He gave her some art and told her to leave but she refused. Seikichi asked to see the tattoo once more. The woman slowly turned around and took off her kimono. A ray of light from the window caught the spider drawn on her back, and it was engulfed in flames.
As I read this story, several details surfaced about the Japanese culture that I did not understand but it did prompt me to research Japanese culture more. The first detail that I encountered, which is also the leading subject in the tale, is that tattoo artistry is a social art form dating back centuries. In fact, tattooing men was an act to beautify them; “people did all they could do to beautify themselves, some even having pigments injected into their precious skins. Gaudy patterns of line and color danced over men’s bodies” (1). As an art form, tattooing was considered a sheik item for people in the theater and for samurai men, it was part of the entertainment and the audience loved it. Though tattooing one’s body is still considered an art form today and almost any one can get one, the art of tattooing someone’s body was considered a social art form in the Meiji Era of Japan between the years 1868 and 1912. Junichiro Tanizaki wrote this story in 1910 during a period in Japan when tattoo artistry was banned because it was considered “barbarism” and the Japanese people wanted to show the world that they had other forms of culture and beauty besides tattoo art (Yamada 3). This bit of history shows us that Tanizaki wanted to reveal a part of Japanese society to readers and that the art of tattooing was being suppressed in some fashion. If we were to interpret this, after knowing some of the history, we could say that the enslavement of the woman is a political statement against the suppression of art in Japan. We can also state that Seikichi’s actions and temperament could symbolize the reaction of the Japanese government to suppress the art.
Another piece of Japanese culture that surfaced during the story is the class system for artists. It seems that Seikichi was trained as an “ukiyoye painter” at the “school of Toyokuni and Kunisada” but for some reason fell out of favor and he was “declined to a status of a tattooer” (1). A “ukiyoye painter” is one that paints from the soul and to move up through the ranks from tattooer to “ukiyoye painter” is considered to be a ritual rite of passage for an artist in Japan (Tanizaki 1). Only skilled professionals taught by mentors can do this, but for some reason, Seikichi fell out of grace with his mentor. This could be the reason why he was so demanding and controlling with his clients. His “secret pleasure, and secret desire” to watch “men in agony” as he “drove needles into them” was probably because he was bitter at being a tattoo artist who had aspired to be something else. From my reading of the text, I interpreted that a decline in social status for an artist meant less money and a dishonor to one’s family, thus Seikichi’s emotions would be justified. The way he treated his clients and the woman reflected his bitterness and contempt for the way the social system in Japan treated him. The pain and agony he made them suffer through was a mirror of how he felt as an individual in Japanese society and he wanted to make others suffer for his misfortunes.
One last piece of Japanese culture that stood out in the text is the relationship between Seikichi and the young woman. In the story, the young woman was beginning her studies as a “geisha” under the tutelage of her mistress. A geisha, in Japanese culture, is a professional hostess and entertainer. In order for a geisha to learn her trade, she must go through many years of extensive training and be tutored by a mentor. In addition, a geisha is taught to be an independent woman of means in Japanese society. In American culture, we view a geisha as a subservient woman, and we add to this myth by depicting it in our movies and books, but in Japan, the role is reversed, a geisha is highly respected for their talent and independence. In this story, the narrator does not really describe the woman’s emotional state nor is there any kind of character profile. Only at the end of the tale does the narrator reveal that she has some sort of independent streak. She does tell Seikichi several times that he does not want to be his masterpiece but he refuses to listen, “No, you must stay—I will make you a real beauty” (Tanizaki 3). However, the woman’s vengeance at the end does bring a new beginning to the woman’s independence and her actions make up for any lack of voice in the tale.
Drugging the woman in order to fulfill his destiny, the artist tattoos his masterpiece, a spider, on her back. We could interpret the spider tattoo as an ironic foretelling of a prophecy that is yet to come for the artist and the woman. Since the story does not mention what kind of spider is on her back, I would take a leap of faith and state that the artist tattooed a black widow spider. A female black widow spider is a deadly, venomous creature that eats the male after mating. If Seikichi did tattoo a female black widow spider on her back, it would explain why the woman took on the characteristics of that particular spider. Though they did not physically mate, as a reader I would consider the art of tattooing a creative mating ritual between the artist and his canvas. I feel that she symbolically trapped him in her web of vengeance and planned to make him the “first victim” (Tanizaki 3). In my opinion, Seikichi let his vanity for art take over his world and he sacrificed everything to create his masterpiece, but in the end, his own creation turned against him and he lost it all. In a way, he is fulfilling his own destiny by tattooing a spider on her back. If it is a black widow then Seikichi sealed his own fate if he knew what the black widow spider symbolized.
In order to “de-personalize” the text I did not look at this as an erotic tale, though other readers may notice the underlying images very quickly, I feel that interpreting this story as an erotic tale would have been an “emotional perception” and not a “professional criticism” (Bleich 1270). There are several sadomasochist images in Tanizaki’s story that would drive the reader to a psychosexual response. However, I feel that Tanizaki has more to offer his readers than to give us a tale of erotic sadomasochistic pleasure. I believe that the author wants his readers to understand Seikichi’s stream of consciousness and piece together the inner workings of an artist’s mind. By doing this, Tanizaki reveals to his readers how art affects an artist and how the love of art can lead to a man’s destruction.
Peering into Japanese culture with Tanizaki’s tale, I am reminded of what Bleich pointed out in his essay, as an American reader we need to have some sort of “perception” to what we are reading. In Tanizaki’s tale, we now have an understanding of the character, Seikichi, and what he may symbolize. He is an artist that clearly represents a social class structure in Japanese society. He is also Tanizaki’s political character that reveals the oppressive Japanese government and their stance on suppressing tattoo art in the Meiji Era. The woman also has a symbolic role in the tale. She represents the suppression of art through enslavement, the emerging independence of women in Japanese society, and the diminutive beauty of a geisha.
In order to comprehend a story from another culture we need to bring to the table a vast wealth of knowledge, take a leap of faith on interpreting what we do not comprehend, and associate past readings of other stories to the tale. In following a formula like this, a reader can offer a sensible interpretation of the story and produce a credible response. That is why it is important to “associate” what we read in this story to other texts and points of references in American culture. Though the cultures are different, I was able to reveal some aspects of Japanese culture that I did not understand and “associate” them with reference points and past readings of texts in American culture. This helped guide me to a conclusion of what Tanizaki’s text meant to me as a reader. Bleich is correct in stating that as readers we may not be clear of all the underlying images in a text, especially one from another culture, but in some way a reader will “represent a combination of the aggregate self-image, and the self-image at the time of the reading” once we “de-personalize” the text (1270).

Works Cited
“Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965).” Online posting:
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/tanizaki.htm
Tanizaki, Junichiro. “The Tattooer.” Photocopy handout. 1-3.
Yamada, Mieko. “Japanese Tattooing From the Past to the Present.” Online posting:
http://tattoos.com/mieko.htm
Yoshida, Hiroshi. “Japanese Wood-block Printing.” Online posting: http://www.woodblock.com/encyclopedia/entries/011_07/chap_3.html

Ryan's Daughter

2010-09-15T15:49:00.000-05:00

Title

Has anyone seen this (or, remember seeing this)? I'm thinking about assigning as an extra credit possiblity for my Irish Lit. course. Our library has a copy of it (one of only a few Irish-themed films it has in the stacks).

The Magical Realism Page

2009-09-13T12:47:00.001-05:00

Reposted from: http://www.geocities.com/athens/4824/magreal.htm

The Magical Realism Page
Date last modified: 30 Apr 2006 (minor addition 11 May 2009)

This page grew out of the continuing discussion of magic(al) realism and the eternal question: "Is magical realism just another term for fantasy?"

Contents
A Beginning
One Perspective
Other Perspectives
A Practical Approach
An Exchange
A Long List
Links

A Beginning

The term "magical realism" was coined by a German art critic, Franz Roh, in the late 1920s for painters trying to show reality in a new way. A Venezuelan literary critic, Uslar Pietri, first applied to it to Latin American literature, but it was when Miguel Angel Asturias used it to describe his novels when he won the Nobel Prize that it really caught on, and then it was "used and abused in the 1960s by just everyone in Latin America" (according to Marcial Souto).

(Someone else notes that in 1926 Massimo Bontempelli used the Italian term "realismo magico" reagrding his book SEPARATIONS. It is unclear [to me] if Roh preceded Bontempelli or vice versa.)

Roh described it as a form in which "our real world re-emerges before our eyes, bathed in the clarity of a new day" (according to Brian Evenson in "Magical Realism," New York Review of Science Fiction, March 1998).

Note: The terms "magical realism" and "magic realism" are used interchangeably here--and just about everywhere else.

One Perspective

Felix Grant (FelixGrant@POboxes.com) says:

Magical Realism is, like all such categorisations, impossible to define precisely. It also overlaps other genres -- including "fantasy" and "science fiction." Watertight agreement on a "canon" is difficult to obtain, and I wouldn't claim it for my list. Perhaps the first seven titles below could be said to belong within the canon; beyond that the borders are hazy.

These seven are generally accepted and quoted by a range of authorities as definitive examples of Magical Realism:

* Carey, Peter (Australia) Illywhacker
* Carter, Angela Nights at the Circus
* Kundera, Milan (Czech) Immortality
* García Márquez, Gabriel (Colombia) One Hundred Years of Solitude
* Rushdie, Salman (UK/India) Midnight's Children and Shame
* Swift, Graham (UK) Waterland

A lot of fiction which predates the term Magical Realism is nevertheless recognised as falling within its definition. The most obvious example is Kafka, and in particular:

* Kafka, Franz (Czech) Metamorphosis

I teach my own lit courses on the basis that the following are indicative examples of the range covered by the Magical Realism label, and my immediate colleagues are in general agreement, but they are not sanctified by universal acceptance! I've limited myself to one book per author only for brevity and clarity.

* Allende, Isabel (Chile) Of Love and Shadows
* Aitmatov, Chingiz (USSR) The Day Lasts More Than A Hundred Years
* Doctorov, E L (US) Loon Lake
* Eco, Umberto (Italy) Foucault's Pendulum
* Fowles, John (UK) A Maggot
* Gearhardt, Sally M (US) The Wanderground
* Golding, William (UK) The Paper Men
* Greenland, Colin (UK) Other Voices
* Le Guin, Ursula K (US) Threshold
* Hesse, Herman (Germany) Magister Ludi
* Hoban, Russell (US/UK) The Medusa Frequency
* Hoeg, Peter (Denmark) The History of Danish Dreams
* Hospital, Janette T (Australia) The Last Magician
* Lessing, Doris (UK) The Memoirs of a Survivor
* McEwan, Ian (UK) The Child in Time
* Read, Herbert (UK) The Green Child
* Ransmayer, Christoph (Austria) The Last World
* Saxton, Josephine (UK/US) Queen of the States

William Gibson's novels have been widely suggested to fit Magical Realism, but I haven't found the consensus broad enough to include them here.

Other Perspectives

Gene Wolfe's definition: "Magical Realism is Fantasy written in Spanish."

John Clute and John Grant have a broader category--fabulation--which includes Absurdist SF, Fictionality, Magical Realism, Slipstream, and Surfiction. In Clute's words: "a Fabulation is any story which challenges the two main assumptions of genre SF: that the world can be seen; and that it can be told."

Why Jorge Luis Borges Is Not a Magical Realist
Other Ideas

Joe Bernstein (josephb@tezcat.com):
As best I understand it, much of the literary project behind magical realism is explicitly an effort to create new traditions, to merge the Spanish, African and Native American heritages into something original. (For the South Americans anyway.)

[Ray Girvan (ray.girvan@zetnet.co.uk) replies, "That may be specific to a particular branch of magic realism, because I don't see "creating new traditions" as underlying all of the examples I know. There's a lot of recycling of authors' personal mythologies, but it might equally lie in modern influences: for instance, Rushdie draws a lot on motifs from Asian "Bollywood" cinema."]

Giles Boutel (boutel1g@wcc.govt.nz):
My own definition would be somewhere along the lines of:

The reality of magical realism must be recognisably ours with the addition of the magical element.

So no dragons, no orcs, and no talking animals. This immediately separates it from much fantasy.

The magic of magical realism must be natural, inexplicable, and uncontrollable.

This is not magic in the sense of casting spells or manipulating reality - it's magic in the sense that it exceeds the boundaries of the purely realistic setting--becoming part of a new setting. So no dread lords or talking swords--the magic is either innate within people (the most beautiful girl in the world--the best pool player in the galaxy) or purely environmental (raining flowers, racing blood). Those who experience such magic are not its initiators--they merely exist within a world, described in realist terms, where magic is part of the reality and is described as such. It could be used as a metaphor to illustrate an internal pyschic landscape, but that a reading on that level isn't a necessity. The magic is not derived via scientific or quasi-scientific explanation, from sleeping demons, or from arcane knowledge--it is simply there--part of the world.

Cambias (cambias@heliograph.com):
Magic Realism is what highbrow readers call fantasy when they want to read it. Consider: the chief criticism levied at both SF and fantasy is the old canard "when anything can happen, nothing is important." (The phrase originated with H. G. Wells, who was explaining why he rigorously based his stories in reality.) In Magic Realist stories, anything can happen, but the writers manage to convey a sense of importance anyway.

Suzy Charnas (suzych.@highfiber.com):
My sense of magical realism is that it incorporates as "real" elements of folklore and folk history specific to the locale/culture/mythology of the story, as "real". That as certainly true of the first work of magical realism that I ever read, The Palm Wine Drinkard, by Amos Tutuola, of Nigeria.

Frossie (frossie@jach.hawaii.edu):
I believe "magic realism" is mostly a description of style whereas "fantasy" is mostly a description of content. They need not overlap, but they often do.

Debbie Gascoyne (dwg@bc.sympatico.ca):
If I could dare venture what I think is the difference: one (fantasy) relates to plot: genre, setting, conventions, even characters. Quite apart from the fact that magic realism is grounded in the "real" world, which I think is a red herring, I would suggest that magic realism is a thematic device, what someone said about it representing the imagination at work in the "real" world.

Ray Girvan (ray.girvan@zetnet.co.uk):
The "magic" in magic realism generally isn't that in the usual fantasy/SF sense of spellcasting. "Magic realism" seems to me a label for a (broadly) real-world literary novel where you get diversions from normal reality--things like impossible events, transformations, or untrue history--that happen unremarked and unexplained.

Nancy Lebovitz (nancyl@universe.digex.net):
In my humble opinion, magical realism is mostly fiction set in consensus reality, but with non-logical intrusions of fantasy. I've heard one definition of magical realism which requires that all the fantastic elements be explainable as dreams, hallucinations, lies, etc. I'm not sure that this is sound. I've read a magical realist novel in which the main character is a centaur. There's no good explanation of why there should only be one centaur (apparently) in the world, but unless I missed something, the guy was quite literally and physically a centaur.

And later:

Magic realism is fantasy for people who don't want to deal with world-building. Or, fantasy is fiction for people who want to doodle around the edges of the unconscious without acknowledging its chaos.

Kevin J. Maroney (kmaroney@crossover.com):
Gabriel Garcia Marquez ("Gabo") has said in at least one interview that there is no magic in One Hundred Years of Solitude, just realistic events depicted as if they were magical. The two that stand out in my mind are:

1. the ascension into heaven of the girl who was too beautiful for Earth; and
2. the stream of blood racing across the village to tell the woman of the death of her husband.

Gabo was quite explicit in the interview that neither was literally true even within the world of Macondo. The ascension is a story made up by the girl's mother when the girl runs away from town; the blood is a metaphor for how bad news spreads like a flowing stream.

In this way, One Hundred Years of Solitude is actually closer to the original sense of Franz Roh's phrase "Magical Realism" (in which "our real world re-emerges before our eyes, bathed in the clarity of a new day") than most modern uses: Gabo uses magical imagery to help us rediscover the real world.

Ethan A. Merritt (merritt@u.washington.edu):
I predict that drawing a hard border between "fantasy" and "magic realism" will be just as non-productive as the periodic attempts to draw the same sort of boundary between "fantasy" and "science fiction". You can make up definitions all you want, but that doesn't ensure that the interesting books will fit any of them.

And later:

The discussion in this thread has reinforced my impression that magic realism was dreamed up as a label with the intent of applying it to a specific group of writers. The works written by these writers clearly share many features, of course--that was the point of it. The original definition seems to me to have been by its very nature exclusionary. It was intended to apply only to a certain body of work, not to other fantasies that coincidentally embodied many of the same literary elements.

Debbie Notkin (kith@slip.net):
Magic realism is about magic woven into reality in such a way that the boundaries between the two are either fluid or nonexistent.

Anton Sherwood (dasher@netcom.com):
In magic realism, the characters don't notice that there's anything unusual about the fantastic elements.

[Glen Engel-Cox (MrWrite@ix.netcom.com) replies, "That's always been my contention for magic realism, as well. This differs from fantasy in that the setting looks and feels like our 'reality', but things are just a little off and the characters don't feel it odd."]

Old Toby (plainair@mindspring.com):
I think you are overdoing it with this "nobody finds it strange" stuff. Is this really a requirement for Magic Realism? Does it really distinguish it from Fantasy?

I haven't noticed it as a prominent theme in my (admittedly somewhat limited) exposure to agical Realism. For instance, Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh centers on the life of a man who ages at twice the rate of ordinary men. While this occasions somewhat less comment then one would expect in real life, there are several occasions in which people simply refuse to believe it is true.

On the other hand, much of Fantasy features magic that is integral to the world, which everyone knows about and no one finds odd.

As I have said before, my view is that the difference between Magical Realism and Fantasy is not in the quality of the magic, but in the other elements of the book. Here are some criteria to distinguish between MR and Fantasy:

Magical Realism Fantasy
== =======
"Real" World Imaginary world
"Realistic" characters Heroic or Archetypal characters
Murky morality Good/Evil dichotomy
Personal and Interpersonal Social, Political, or Cosmic
Conflicts Conflicts
Denigrates or marginalizes Focuses on Grand Passions and
Grand Passions makes full use of them

Obviously not every book in each category will meet every criterion. but nobody said there was a clear line between the two. Also, I feel that Magical Realism probably needs a higher threshold then Fantasy.

Doug Tricarico (trike@ix.netcom.com):
I've often considered Magic Realism to be a subset of Contemporary Fantasy (fantasy which takes place today), where the magic takes place just out of sight and you can only catch glimpses from the corner of your eye.

[Brenda Clough (clough@erols.com) replies, "But then can older works be magical realism? This definition would easily cover the works of Charles Williams, for instance. Or The Man Who Was Thursday.]

Graham Wills (gwills@research.bell-labs.com):
Has anyone pointed out that the very name of the genre "magic realism" is paradoxical? It is this paradox that, I feel, gives the genre its identity. When I read a story which contains a situation that is presented as a realistic story, but with magical elements, I think "magical realism". The paradox is that otherwise mainstream, normal people are walking down a street talking to an ape in a suit as if this were an everyday event.

If they expressed surprise, or wondered where this ape appeared from, then the story becomes fantasy (or, possibly science fiction). If the bulk of the story is clearly not realistic, then again, it's fantasy or science fiction.

The key element for me is a paradoxical juxtaposition of magical elements in a world of realism; "magical realism".

And later:

1. Does your novel take place in a world which, apart from any magical elements, would be regarded by you as the very close to the real world?
2. Does your novel have elements that transcend natural laws (i.e., is there magic)?
3. Do these transcental elements surprise the inhabitants of your world because of their magical nature? In other words, is the magical nature itself surprising, as opposed to their effects?

Match your answers to this grid:

NN?--Lots of possibilities: Science fiction, fanstasy, alternate history .. NYN--Fantasy NYY--Hmm. Tricky. Probably science fiction or science fantasy (e.g., Wild Cards) YN?--Mainstream fiction YYN--Magical realism YYY--Fantasy, probably urban fantasy

As you reply to this, think about the possibility that this might be just a vague indication, not an absolute rule...

Jo Walton (Jo@bluejo.demon.co.uk):
In fantasy everything makes internal sense on its own level. There is magic, and strange creatures, but the logic of their own reality is carried through in context. In magic realism there is no such obligation. Dream logic is sufficient. It doesn't have to make sense.

A Practical Approach

Pete McCutchen (pmccutc103@aol.com):
Surely you don't think that there's going to be a right answer to such a taxonomic question? I mean, the people on this group can't even figure out the difference between fantasy and science fiction, though there does seem to be some agreement regarding paradigmatic works (The Lord of the Rings = paradigmatic fantasy; Mission of Gravity = paradigmatic science fiction.)

I suggest that you look at this as a marketing question, rather than something to which there is a right answer. Do you want to be liked and respected by the literati? Are you looking to win the Nobel Prize for literature? Well, then, label your work "magic realism" and go forth. If anybody accuses you of writing science fiction or fantasy, get a sort of sick look and suggest in a contemptuous tone that your interlocuter obviously didn't understand your work, which may look like science fiction but is really something far more profound. If you don't yourself want to do the background reading neccessary to construct your argument, well, hire some graduate student or unemployed English Ph.D. to do it for you and prepare a list of talking points.

If, on the other hand, you are interested in appealing to the hard core genre science fiction/fantasy audience, then label your work fantasy and say, "I'm just interested in telling good stories," whenever somebody uses the words "Magic Realism" in your presence.

If you want to appeal to the literati and the genre audience, you've got a somewhat tougher task. It helps if you have lefty-feminist-green politics, little interest in putting much "science" in your science fiction, and no understanding whatsoever of basic microeconomics. Being a really good writer doesn't hurt, either.

An Exchange

Debbie Notkin (kith@slip.net):

[Randall] Garrett was writing from a perspective that goes something like this: "Since we live in a world that depends on science and denies magic, what if I wrote a book in which magic took the place of science? What would that magic look like? How would it be like science? How would it be different?"

García Márquez is writing from a perspective that goes something like this: "The world we live in is continually full of underappreciated and, in fact, underacknowledged magic. Miracles happen every day, and yet the mass of people persist in denying their existence. What if I wrote a book that laid bare the miraculous in everyday life, so people would be better able to see it?"

Both of these are, of course, vast oversimplifications. But do you see the difference? Garrett is "making something up" for fun and profit and, were he alive today, would be the first to tell you that the Lord Darcy magic is completely fictional. García Márquez is (or, more certainly, says he is) writing from the depth of his heart about something he believes to be figuratively true, and perhaps literally true.

I think that begins to define the distinction.

Elizabeth Moon (elizabeth.moon@sff.net):

[Since García Márquez contends that his books are about an entirely real and plausible world, in which he believes] , could it be that the key to the whole thing lies in that phrase "...in which he believes..."? That the difference lies in the writer's *belief* about the reality of the magic in the world he writes about, and not in the seamlessness or inextricability of the magical/realistic interface? Randall Garrett did not (to my limited knowledge) believe that the magic about which he wrote was real. He made it up; he knew he was making it up. But if García Márquez believes that the kind of magic he's writing about infuses the real world--our world--that's very different.

If this is what's going on, then the difference is that if the writer believes the magic is real, then it's magic realism, and if the writer believes the magic is not real, then it's fantasy. And that begins to look like the difference between a sane writer who can keep the difference between reality and nonreality straight, and the writer (one hesitates to hint that any writer is actually insane) who can't. Similarly for readers. If you know the writer thinks the magic is real, and you think the magic is real, then you both think it's magical realism--real magic. So writers and readers who agree that magic exists also think magic realism is distinct from fantasy--and would probably classify folktales of magic as magical realism ... or would they?

And writers and readers who do not regard magic as real are less likely to see a difference between magical realism and fantasy, though they may easily see a difference between the quality of writing of a García Márquez and (name your least favorite fantasy writer...) If they see a difference, it will be hard to define (as it has been for me.) They might be more likely to classify folk tales involving magic as fantasy.

Christopher Pound (pound@is.rice.edu):

The key to the whole thing is that magic realism is always recognizable as social critique: whether you're talking about Latin America (e.g., García Márquez, Allende, Rulfo, Fuentes, and many others, since that's where the genre originated), India (e.g., Rushdie's Midnight's Children), or Russia (e.g., the movie Burnt by the Sun), the inexplicable becomes embedded in otherwise historical circumstances to offset the painfully heavy-handed stories we would expect of those circumstances. The allegorical effect is to open up various structures of feeling that our expectations might have elided, but which may be important for a more careful interpretation of the real life events to which the story relates.

The contrast to magic realism isn't fantasy but rather social realism, which is depressingly coherent. Would you prefer to imagine those folks living through colonialism, Stalinism, or whatever as experiencing the subtle, intangible wonders of life alongside their brutal social reality, or do you like your brutal social reality straight? I don't just mean gritty--I mean abject Salaam, Bombay! or Houseboy kinds of brutal social realism in which nothing good can possibly happen to anyone. Magic realism occupies the same ground, but has a lot more room to maneuver in.

Fantasy novels can of course be allegorical, in which case they usually wind up sugar-coating the heavy-handed story a magic realist would have wanted to avoid in the first place. "Sugar-coated" and "heavy-handed" are, in fact, good approximations of the dictionary definition of allegory, though the term has many wider applications. But most fantasy novels are more realistic than allegorical: the world makes sense, and not only is interpretation of it considered optional, what there is to interpret is merely symbolic/thematic (e.g. forces of light and darkness; stuff that's "internal" to the story, thus preserving the illusion that all you need to think about is there in the book). Note that that covers Lord Darcy pretty well (except for the odd in-joke or two for mystery fans).

I guess I've heard people sometimes use "magic realism" the way we now use the word "surreal," i.e., to talk about phenomena that wouldn't fit even a generous set of criteria based on the first use of the term, and that's great for making nifty phrases more relevant to our common experience. However, it makes definitional discussions like this thread seem insoluble, because those who've read García Márquez know it's different from Lord Darcy but can't pin down why (probably because they diverge on an axis largely irrelevant to fantasy fiction but well- developed in the mainstream section), and those who haven't read any original sources hear the term applied to just anything where there's magic in the real world, which seems ignorant if you're a fantasy reader because the word fantasy has covered that for such a long time.

Ethan A. Merritt (merritt@u.washington.edu):

These are both fascinating ideas, and I am delighted to see discussion of both of them. Of course, one problem with Elizabeth Moon's suggestion is that in general the reader doesn't know what the writer believes in his/her innermost heart. So by that view it's not possible to unambiguously recognize magic realism. (That's fine by me, I started off by saying that I find such attempts at distinction to be pointless.)

Christopher Pound suggests that magic realism is the use of surreal elements to render examination of a depressing social state less painful. That seems promising, but there remains the problem that one can point to "fantasy books" which do the same. Consider Megan Lindholm's Wizard of the Pigeons; it's an extended portrayal of a social underclass, the homeless population of Seattle, interspersed with a look at post-traumatic stress repercussion in Viet Nam war vets. Sounds pretty grim, eh? But it is dramatically turned into a much lighter story by narrating the story as if the homeless people had surrealistic powers. Can the protagonist really call upon the powers of the air, or is he just delusional? Is this grim reality or escapist fiction? Or, more to the point, is this magic realism or is it fantasy?

When Wizard first came out, I discussed it with a good friend who claimed to have hated the book. Since we had generally similar tastes in SF, and I really liked the book, I was curious as the the source of his strong negative reaction. Well, it turns out that at the time he was working at the VA Hospital giving psychiatric care to delusional Viet Nam vets. "Look", he said, "if I take this story at face value then I'm spending my life debunking the only thing that makes life livable for these vets. I'm trying to cure them of being delusional, but Lindholm is showing a view in which being delusional is the only thing making their life worth living. So I hate it, and wish I hadn't read it."

So, by Pound's definition I'd conclude this is definitely magic realism. But I have yet to see Megan Lindholm put forward as anything but a writer of fantasy. So even if one concedes that Pound has put forward a workable definition, it isn't being universally applied. There must still be a large component of Wolfe's remark also ("magic realism is fantasy written in Spanish"), and also the "ghetto-ization" of fantasy writers to the point where they are simply not considered eligible for mainstream classifications such as magical realism.

Christopher Pound (pound@is.rice.edu):

[Lindholm is a] good example. I wouldn't dispute either categorization of the book you described, though I haven't read it. But, it does bring into view a couple of points that could support a more dogmatic conclusion. First, the "Is it real?" theme with respect to insanity is older than magical realism. Second, homelessness is a widespread social problem, but I can't tell from your description if it's supposed to point up to capitalism (etc.) as a general sociopolitical condition of domination or dissensus (like colonialism, Stalinism, or the post-Independence affairs of a deeply divided nation). The question may be how bounded the problem is vs. how relevant to the most general state of affairs. Having briefly lived in India, I can tell you that it makes a difference when a problem seems not just overwhelming but total, and India's okay these days compared to a lot of places and times you can read about ...

But I suspect generalizations made from those points would quickly lead to the exclusion of "accepted" magical realist texts.

It's totally true that magic realism is strongly associated with "Third World" or "post-colonial" literatures. You can probably find plenty of syllabi on the net that lump it together with social realist novels from Africa, India, etc. So the term isn't universally applied, but the difference is presumed to be one of perspective as well as language, e.g. "magic realism is a post-Imperial realism that uses fantastic elements to stand in for unknowable possibilities of ordinary experience under pervasively sad sociopolitical circumstances," not just "fantasy written in Spanish." Sometimes, it does make a difference where you're coming from when you write something, so there's no reason to expect genre labels to be universally applicable.

But that's a very academic definition that conceals, I freely admit, the way book reviewers (and others who casually search for the bon mot to describe what they've read) might use the term to ghettoize fantasy and/or "rescue" a favored text from the fantasy label.

Moreover, that definition still doesn't necessarily exclude Wizard of the Pigeons from being magical realism. I'm fine with that. :-)

Doug Tricarico (trike@ix.netcom.com):

If magical realism is categorized as a reaction against a grim reality, then the social and political aspects (and intent) of a story must be taken into account when trying to serve up a definition.

I suppose a definition of magic realism should include some hint of "political satire" or "social commentary" to make the cut, since those are the roots of the movement. Combined with the notion that it takes place in the author's present (which allows us to include works of yesteryear) and has some sort of fantastical goings-on around the edges, it gives a thematic (or at least tonal) separation from more mainstream, stereotypical fantasy which can be sketched as "escapist literature." (I sort of like that idea: classic fantasy is escapist while magic realism isn't. It opens another can of worms we've seen before--"Was Lord of the Rings a sociopolitical commentary?"--but it does serve as a jumping-off point.)

Elizabeth Moon (elizabeth.moon@sff.net):

But ["if magical realism is categorized as a reaction against a grim reality"] is a big "if," and one I'm not comfortable with yet. This has been asserted, but has it been demonstrated--and if it has, has it been demonstrated to be uniquely true of magical realism? Many other kinds of fiction, obviously not magical realism, could be considered a reaction against a grim reality.

But [your definition works] only if you accept the validity of the original assertion. And if it is true, again, then "political satire" or "social commentary" are very broad, shallow tints which don't seem to define magical realism clearly.

Hmm. Anything that isn't magical realism, and is fantasy, is "escapist?" No, I think it's a false dichotomy, at least from my reading experience of some of the "central" works of magical realism as listed here. I'm particularly uneasy with the tone of comments suggesting that serious writers with real issues in mind produce magical realism as a response to grim reality, and it's full of wonderfully deep and convoluted social and political commentary, while the people who write fantasy are shallow fluffheads who avoid any social or political commentary while spreading sugar icing with a lavish hand. This prejudges both groups (would anyone with this attitude find social or political commentary in a non-contemporary fantasy if it were there? And could not some social/political agenda be fabricated to support the notion in something a reader wanted to call magical realism?)

In this context, I think it may be significant that no one so far (in the posts I've seen, which is surely only a fraction of the whole) has mentioned Keri Hulme's The Bone People as an example of magical realism. Marquez affected me as escapist (in the same way that Poe is escapist)--I can wallow in Marquez by the hour, and come out feeling gently bruised, like a gardenia petal. (That has been my general reaction to things considered magical realism--I come out of the book feeling vaguely nostalgic and melancholy, but with no inclination to *do* anything.) Hulme's effect was very different--and I wonder if that different effect (despite the book's fitting every other criterion I've seen mentioned) explains the lack of mention.

In the interests of educating someone for whom magical realism (as listed here) is an occasional indulgence, like French silk pie, leading to a feeling of lethargy, I hope someone will discuss Hulme in terms of magical realism.

Jo Walton (Jo@bluejo.demon.co.uk)

What I'd really like to do is *defend* The Bone People from this charge of MR. It's very hard to quite see where to start when it does actually fit all the criteria--even the one about the author/author's culture seeing it as something that could be real.

But it doesn't feel like magic realism at all either, it doesn't have that horrible existentialism dreamlike significance, it's just that the gods are real, the spirit of the land can be called back into it by those people.

I know people who have read The Bone People and apparently entirely missed the end, for whom the end has glanced off somehow and who seem to see it as a tacked on "happy ending." They are people who do not generally read science fiction. So I could claim it needs to be read as science fiction to be understood, but although Hulme (or at least Kerewin but I think Hulme too) has read Tolkien and Lewis and Peake, this is not a book coming out of 20th century fantasy. At all.

So I give in.

It does not have magic and magic events, it has the gods and genii loci being real in the world--ah. It isn't magical realism by Graydon's definition because things don't happen with the logic of the interior world, they don't reflect inner realities or anything.

Can anyone do better than this? Can anyone think of anything else the would say is in the same genre as The Bone People?

Neile Graham (bryer@serv.net)

I don't get that feeling from magic realism--at least most of what I've read. I'm not a Garcia Marquez fan, which might be the difference. His novels are the only ones I've seen mentioned in this thread that do give me that feeling and I now avoid them because of that, though I like much of his short fiction, particularly "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" but that's neither here nor there.

I don't like that feeling, so I avoid it.

Keri Hulme's magic realism is like to that of Salman Rushdie for me, where everything feels very feel [real?], especially the magical elements.

I claim The Bone People as my favourite novel, and I've read it at least three times over the years since I discovered it (before I started reading science fiction and fantasy seriously) and ever time I read it, it feels just a little bit more real and a little bit more revelatory to me. And the relationshhips between the characters feel just a little more powerful, as does the ending.

But it's hard to talk about books in terms of feelings, at least when you're trying to discuss them in a way that makes sense to other people. I'm not sure I'm capable of that with this particular book.

[Responding to: "I know people who have read :The Bone People: and apparently entirely missed the end, for whom the end has glanced off somehow and who seem to see it as a tacked on "happy ending". They are people who do not generally read SF. So I could claim it needs to be read as SF to be understood, but although Hulme (or at least Kerewin but I think Hulme too) has read Tolkien and Lewis and Peake, this is not a book coming out of C.20 fantasy. At all."]

I agree. It seems to come out of itself only. Which may be why she had so much trouble getting it published.

They are more aspects of the exterior reality come real. Like books with personified genii loci, though hers seem less elfy welfy than the rest because she doesn't feel the need to make the palatable in that way.

But try Eva Figes' The Seven Ages. Very different, but there's something similar in the texture. It about a midwife from the Dark Ages to the modern era.

Or just try it because it's a brilliant book on its own if you don't know it already.

Other books I consider in the same league as The Bone People both in quality and the same kind of unmagic/magic feel also include Frederick Buechner's Godric (the life of a reluctant saint) and David Malouf's An Imaginary Life (an imagining of Ovid's exile to the Black Sea where he meets a wolf child).

All of these books have a similar darkness/bleakness that is somehow transcendent.

I wish I could describe it better than that. If it's magic realism (which I've always thought of it as, having a pretty loose definition in my head) it's a particular flavour of magic realism very anchored in place and time and an earthy kind of beyond-what-we-call-real magic. Though the word magic sounds too flighty for it.

Sometime I should probably re-read all of these books at the same time and try to articulate just what it is about them that seems similar and of that particular power to me.

Please someone do better than this. I still would call it magic realism for lack of a better term. Realism made magic by being viewed with a certain clarity that makes it transcendent.

Blegh.

Joe Bernstein (josephb@tezcat.com)

In my alleged history of fantasy, I hope to find a dividing point at which "fantasy" as a literary tradition in English emerges, which is where "tradition" in some sense becomes an issue. I'm not at all sure I can get away with it, but I do think the fantasy tradition (what y'all are calling "genre", a word I'm really uncomfortable with) is profoundly conservative if not reactionary at its heart, and that its original and most common move is to hark backwards.

It's quite clear to me that fairy tales are part of what they hark back *to.

In contrast, people like Lewis Carroll and Franz Kafka, to my mind, are doing something very different, where the unreal is also absurd. They're using the tools of fantasy-as-unreality to react against tradition in some sense.

I tend to think of the magical realists as falling in this latter camp, but they are by far its least plausible residents. As best I understand it, much of the literary project behind magical realism is explicitly an effort to create new traditions, to merge the Spanish, African and Native American heritages into something original. (For the South Americans anyway.) Perhaps I've been blinded by Borges' importance to them - for he's certainly absurdity/originality full blown - because the project I've just described is, with minor changes in proper nouns, exactly Tolkien's also.

Very confused,

but thrilled to have read, if not contributed well to, one of the best threads I've ever seen on Usenet...

Joe Bernstein

Oh, detail note. I've seen various claims that fairy tales were invented, in their literary form I mean, by courtiers of Louis XIV looking for safe ways to argue politics. (Louis not only didn't like people who disagreed with him, he disliked certain arguments themselves; one of the first fairy tales had to do with the banned quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns.) Later they got sanitised into children's stories, not by Disney but by various 18th-century writers. Everything happens over and over...

A Long List

* Aitmatov, Chingiz (USSR) The Day Lasts More Than A Hundred Years [fg]
* Alexie, Sherman (?) Reseration Blues [np]
* Allende, Isobel (Chile) House of the Spirits [np]
* Allende, Isobel (Chile) Love and Shadows [fg]
* Banks,Iain (UK) The Bridge [cq]
* Beagle, Peter (US) A Fine and Private Place [ew]
* Bell, Douglas Mojo and the Pickle Jar [ew]
* Billias, Stephen The Quest for the 36 [ew]
* Bisson, Terry (US) Talking Man [ew]
* Blaylock, James (US) All the Bells on Earth [ew]
* Blaylock, James (US) The Digging Leviathan [ts]
* Blaylock, James (US) Night Relics [ew]
* Blaylock, James (US) Paper Grail [ew]
* Blaylock, James (US) The Last Coin [ew]
* Blaylock, James (US) The Rainy Season [ew]
* Blaylock, James (US) Winter Tides [ew]
* Bradbury, Ray (US) Dandelion Wine [ew]
* Bradbury, Ray (US) [others] [ew]
* Bulgakov, Mikhail (Russia) The Master and Margarita [sm]
* Byatt, A. S. (UK) The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye [ew]
* Cabell, James Branch (US) The Cream of the Jest [ew]
* Cabell, James Branch (US) [others] [ew]
* Calvino, Italo (Italy) Numbers in the Dark [ew]
* Calvino, Italo (Italy) The Watcher & Other Stories [ew]
* Carey, Peter (Australia) Illywhacker [fg]
* Carroll, Jonathan (UK) [ew,gec]
* Carter, Angela (UK) Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories [soh]
* Carter, Angela (UK) Nights at the Circus [fg,np,soh]
* Castillo, Anna (?) So Far from God [np]
* Chamoiseau, Patrick (?) Texaco [np]
* Charnas, Suzy McKee (US) Dorothea Dreams [ew]
* Cheever, John (US) "The Swimmer" [rm]
* Chesterton, G. K. (UK) The Man Who Was Thursday [ew]
* Crowley, John (US) Little, Big [ew]
* Crowley, John (US) [others] [ew]
* Davidson, Avram (US) [ecl]
* De Lint, Charles (Canada) "Newford" stories [dt]
* Delany, Samuel R. (US) Dahlgren [ts]
* DeMarinis, Rick (US) Cinder [ew]
* Doctorov, E L (US) Loon Lake [fg,np]
* Eco, Umberto (Italy) Foucault's Pendulum [fg,soh]
* Esquivel, Linda (Mexico) Like Water for Chocolate [dt,rh]
* Finney, Charles (US) The Circus of Dr. Lao [ew]
* Fowles, John (UK) A Maggot [fg]
* García Márquez, Gabriel (Colombia) One Hundred Years of Solitude [everyone]
* Gearhardt, Sally M (US) The Wanderground [fg]
* Golding, William (UK) The Paper Men [fg]
* Goldstein, Lisa (US) Dark Cities Underground [ew]
* Goldstein, Lisa (US) The Red Magician [jn]
* Goldstein, Lisa (US) Tourists [dn,jn]
* Goldstein, Lisa (US) Walking the Labyrinth [jn]
* Grant, Richard (US) Tex and Molly in the Afterlife [ew]
* Grant, Richard (US) [maybe others] [ew]
* Greenland, Colin (UK) Other Voices [fg]
* Groom, Winston (US) Forrest Gump [ecl]
* Herrick, Amy (?) At the Sign of the Naked Waiter [np]
* Hesse, Herman (Germany) Magister Ludi [fg]
* Hoban, Russell (US/UK) The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz] [ew]
* Hoban, Russell (US/UK) The Medusa Frequency [fg]
* Hoban, Russell (US/UK) [others] [ew]
* Hoeg, Peter (Denmark) The History of Danish Dreams [fg]
* Hoffman, Alice (US) Illumination Night [np]
* Hoffman, Alice (US) Practical Magic [rm]
* Hospital, Janette T (Australia) The Last Magician [fg]
* Hulme, Keri (New Zealand?) The Bone People [em]
* Ishiguro, Kazuo (Japan) We Were Orphans [cq]
* Kafka, Franz (Czech) Metamorphosis [fg]
* Kathryns, G. A. The Borders of Life [ew]
* Kinsella, W. P. (US) Shoeless Joe [dt]
* Knudtsen, Ingar (Norway) [son]
* Kotzwinkle, William (US) The Bear Went over the Mountain [nl]
* Kundera, Milan (Czech) Immortality [fg,np,rh]
* Lafferty, R. A. (US) [ew]
* Le Guin, Ursula K (US) Threshold [fg]
* Lessing, Doris (UK) The Memoirs of a Survivor [fg]
* Lindholm, Megan (US) Wizard of the Pigeons [ew,jn]
* Machen, Arthur (UK/Wales) The Hill of Dreams [ew]
* Machen, Arthur (UK/Wales) The Three Imposters [ew]
* Martel, Yann (?) The Life of Pi [cq]
* McCammon, Robert (US) A Boy's Life [ba]
* McCarthy, Cormac (US) Blood Meridian [das]
* McEwan, Ian (UK) The Child in Time [fg,np]
* Millhauser, Steven The Barnum Museum [ew]
* Millhauser, Steven In the Penny Arcade [ew]
* Millhauser, Steven The Knife Thrower and Other Stories [ew]
* Millhauser, Steven Little Kingdoms [ew]
* Morrison, Toni (US) Beloved
* Morrison, Toni (US) Paradise [das]
* Morrison, Toni (US) Sula
* Naylor, Gloria (?) Bailey's Cafe [np]
* Nordan, Lewis (US) Lightning Song [das]
* Nordan, Lewis (US) Wolf Whistle [das]
* O'Brien, Flann (Ireland) The Third Policeman [ew]
* Okri, Ben (Nigeria) The Famished Road [je]
* Parsipur, Sharnush (Iran) [jb]
* Peake, Mervyn (UK) Mr. Pye [ew]
* Powers, Tim (US) Earthquake Weather [ew]
* Powers, Tim (US) Expiration Date [ew]
* Powers, Tim (US) Last Call [ew]
* Puig, Manuel (Argentina) [rh]
* Ransmayer, Christoph (Austria) The Last World [fg]
* Read, Herbert (UK) The Green Child [ew,fg]
* Ruff, Matt The Fool on the Hill [ew]
* Rushdie, Salman (UK/India) Midnight's Children and Shame [fg,np]
* Saramago, Jose (Portugal) [das]
* Saxton, Josephine (UK/US) Queen of the States [fg]
* Scott, Jody (?) I, Vampire [cq]
* Singer, Isaac Bashevis [vs]
* Skibell, Jospeh A Blessing on the Moon [np]
* Smith, Thorne The Lost Lamb [ew]
* Smith, Thorne Rain in the Doorway [ew]
* Stewart, Sean (US) Galveston [ew]
* Stewart, Sean (US) Resurrection Man [ew]
* Swanwick, Michael (US) Stations of the Tide [frossie]
* Swift, Graham (UK) Waterland [fg,np]
* Tepper, Sheri (US) "Marianne" books [eam,jw]
* Tepper, Sheri (US) Beauty [eam,jw]
* Thornton, Lawrence (?) Imagining Argentina [np]
* Tutuola, Amos (Nigeria) The Palm Wine Drinkard [sc]
* Vargas Llosa, Mario (Peru) [rh]
* Warner, Sylvia Townsend Lolly Willowes [ew]
* White, T. H. (UK) The Elephant and the Kangaroo [ew]
* White, T. H. (UK) Mistress Masham's Repose [ew]
* Williams, Charles (UK) [ew]
* Winton, Tim (?) Cloudstreet [np]
* Wolfe, Gene (US) The Devil in a Forest [ew]
* Wolfe, Gene (US) Free Live Free [ew]
* Wolfe, Gene (US) Peace [ew]
* Wolfe, Gene (US) Soldier of the Mist [dn,jn]
* Wolfe, Gene (US) There Are Doors [ew]
* Woolf, Virginia (UK) Orlando [ew]

[ba=Benjamin Adams, das=David Alan Sellers dn=Debbie Notkin, dt=Doug Tricarico, eam=Ethan A. Merritt, em=Elizabeth Moon, ew=Eric Walker, fg=Felix Grant, gec=Glen Engel-Cox, jb=Joe Bernstein, je=Jonathan Evans, jn=John S. Novak, jw=Jo Walton, ma=Matt Austern, nl=Nancy Lebovitz, np=Nancy Pearl (in "Book Lust"), rh=Rich Horton, rm=Randy Money, sc=Suzy Charnas, soh=Sean O'Hara, son=Svein Olav Nyberg, sm=Steve Magura, cq=Chris Quirke, ts=Tom Scudder, vs=Vince Storti]

Links

Chicon V: "What the Difference Between Magical Realism and Fantasy?"

LoneStarCon 2: "Magical Realism: Fantasy from the Other Side of the Border"

Chicon 2000: "Surrealism and the Fantastic: Magic Realism and Beyond"

Windycon XXIX: "Magical Realism and Fantasy"

Lecture on García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

Description of Magical Realism, a collection of critical essays about magical realism

Margin: Exploring Modern Magical Realism

Copyright 2006 Evelyn C. Leeper

Evelyn C. Leeper (eleeper@optonline.net)

Reposted from: http://www.geocities.com/athens/4824/magreal.htm

What Is Magical Realism, Really?

2009-09-13T12:28:00.001-05:00

Reposted from: http://www.writing-world.com/sf/realism.shtml

What Is Magical Realism, Really?

by Bruce Holland Rogers

"Magical realism" has become a debased term. When it first came into use to describe the work of certain Latin American writers, and then a small number of writers from many places in the world, it had a specific meaning that made it useful for critics. If someone made a list of recent magical realist works, there were certain characteristics that works on the list would share. The term also pointed to a particular array of techniques that writers could put to specialized use. Now the words have been applied so haphazardly that to call a work "magical realism" doesn't convey a very clear sense of what the work will be like.

If a magazine editor these days asks for contributions that are magical realism, what she's really saying is that she wants contemporary fantasy written to a high literary standard---fantasy that readers who "don't read escapist literature" will happily read. It's a marketing label and an attempt to carve out a part of the prestige readership for speculative works.

I don't object to using labels to make readers more comfortable, to draw them to work that they might otherwise unfairly dismiss. But by over-using the term, we've obscured a distinctive branch of literature. More importantly from my perspective, we've made it harder for new writers to discover the tools of magical realism as a distinct set allowing them to create work that portrays particular ways of looking at the world. If writers read a hundred works labeled "magical realism," they will encounter such a hodgepodge that they may not recognize the minority of such works that are doing something different, something those writers may want to try themselves.

So what is magical realism?

It is, first of all, a branch of serious fiction, which is to say, it is not escapist. Let me be clear: I like escapist fiction, and some of what I write is escapism. I'm with C.S. Lewis when he observes that the only person who opposes escape is, by definition, a jailer. Entertainment, release, fun...these are all good reasons to read and to write. But serious fiction's task is not escape, but engagement. Serious fiction helps us to name our world and see our place in it. It conveys or explores truth.

Any genre of fiction can get at truths, of course. Some science fiction and fantasy do so, and are serious fiction. Some SF and fantasy are escapist. But magical realism is always serious, never escapist, because it is trying to convey the reality of one or several worldviews that actually exist, or have existed. Magical realism is a kind of realism, but one different from the realism that most of our culture now experiences.

Science fiction and fantasy are always speculative. They are always positing that some aspect of objective reality were different. What if vampires were real? What if we could travel faster than light?

Magical realism is not speculative and does not conduct thought experiments. Instead, it tells its stories from the perspective of people who live in our world and experience a different reality from the one we call objective. If there is a ghost in a story of magical realism, the ghost is not a fantasy element but a manifestation of the reality of people who believe in and have "real" experiences of ghosts. Magical realist fiction depicts the real world of people whose reality is different from ours. It's not a thought experiment. It's not speculation. Magical realism endeavors to show us the world through other eyes. When it works, as I think it does very well in, say, Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony, some readers will inhabit this other reality so thoroughly that the "unreal" elements of the story, such as witches, will seem frighteningly real long after the book is finished. A fantasy about southwestern Indian witches allows you to put down the book with perhaps a little shiver but reassurance that what you just read is made up. Magical realism leaves you with the understanding that this world of witches is one that people really live in and the feeling that maybe this view is correct.

It's possible to read magical realism as fantasy, just as it's possible to dismiss people who believe in witches as primitives or fools. But the literature at its best invites the reader to compassionately experience the world as many of our fellow human beings see it.

There are three main effects by which magical realism conveys this different world-view, and those effects relate to the ways in which this world-view is different from the "objective" (empirical, positivist) view. In these other realities, time is not linear, causality is subjective, and the magical and the ordinary are one and the same.

Consider the structure of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. As readers sense from the first first page which begins with a firing squad and then a very, very long flashback, time does not always march forward in the magical realist world view. The distant past is present in every moment, and the future has already happened. Great shifts in the narrative's time sequence reflect a reality that is almost outside of time. This accounts for ghosts, for premonitions, and the feeling that time is a great repetition rather than a progression. In Garcia Marquez's novel, certain events keep returning in the present focus, even as time does gradually wind through generations.

As for causality, the objective view tells us that one person's emotion can't kill someone else. We believe this so strongly that a world view in which emotion can kill won't convince us---we'll write it off as fantasy. So magical realist works put causally connected events side by side in a way that doesn't appear to violate objective reality, but attempts to convince us by details that the events described are linked by more than chance. In Ceremony, for example, there is a scene in which a spurned woman is dancing very angrily. Miles away, the man who betrayed her is checking the commotion his cattle are making in the night. Descriptions of the woman's heels stamping the floor are alternated with descriptions of the cattle trampling the man to death, back and forth from one to the other. No assertion of causality is made, but the dancer's heels and the animals' hooves become linked so powerfully that the reader doesn't just "get it." What's conveyed is not a symbol or a metaphor, but the reality that a woman can be so angry that when she she dances, her lover dies.

The third effect is my favorite. If your view of the world includes miracles and angels, beast-men and women of unearthly beauty, gods walking among us and ceremonies that can end a drought, then all of these things are as ordinary to you as automobiles, desert streams, and ice in the tropics. At the same time, the whole world is enchanted, mysterious. Automobiles, desert streams, and ice are all as astonishing as angels.

To convey this, magical realist writers write the ordinary as miraculous and the miraculous as ordinary. The ice that gypsies bring to the tropical village of Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude is described with awe. How can such a substance exist? It is so awesomely beautiful that characters find it difficult to account for or describe. But it's not just novelties such as a first encounter with ice that merit such description. The natural world comes in for similar attention. The behavior of ants or the atmosphere of a streamside oasis are described in details that match objective experience, but which remind us that the world is surprising and seemingly full of design and purpose.

The miraculous, on the other hand, is described with a precision that fits it into the ordinariness of daily life. When one of the characters in One Hundred Years of Solitude is shot in the head, the blood from his body flows out into the street in a path that takes it all the way to the feet of the character's grandmother---a miracle. But along the way, the path of the blood is described in great detail, and the miraculous journey is rooted in the day-to-day activities of the village and the grandmother's household. An even better example is the character who is so beautiful that she is followed everywhere by a cloud of butterflies. This extraordinary trait is brought to earth somewhat by the observation that all of the butterflies have tattered wings. The miraculous, looked at closely, is mundane.

I've written this essay from memory, without consulting the novels to which I allude. I may have a detail or two wrong. My point remains valid: Magical realism is a distinctive form of fiction that aims to produce the experience of a non-objective world view. Its techniques are particular to that world view, and while they may at first look something like the techniques of sophisticated fantasy, magical realism is trying to do more than play with reality's rules. It is conveying realities that other people really do experience, or once experienced.

As a tool, magical realism can be used to explore the realities of characters or communities who are outside of the objective mainstream of our culture. It's not just South Americans, Indians, or African slaves who may offer these alternative views. Religious believers for whom the numinous is always present and miracles are right around the corner, believers to whom angels really do appear and to whom God reveals Himself directly, they too inhabit a magical realist reality.

While I don't expect the words "magical realism" to revert to their specialized use, I hope that writers won't lose sight of the special literature those words once pointed to exclusively. Magical realism is fascinating to read, and I hope to see more writers exploring its possibilities and conveying to "mainstream" readers ways of thinking that can help all of us to somewhat re-enchant the world.

Copyright © 2002 Bruce Holland Rogers.
This article originally appeared in Speculations.

Bruce Holland Rogers is the author of Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer, published in the spring of 2002 by Invisible Cities Press. Some of his short-short stories can be read at http://www.shortshortshort.com.

Reposted from: http://www.writing-world.com/sf/realism.shtml

The Hairless Chimpanzee - How Much More Human He Appears

2009-04-17T10:45:00.000-05:00

The Hairless Chimpanzee - How Much More Human He Appears

Everyone Run, The Scarecrow's Gotta Gun!

2008-12-24T20:23:00.000-05:00

Scarecrows Gotta Gun

NWSA Journal--Revolting Bodies: The Monster Beauty of Tattooed Women

2008-12-01T20:16:00.000-05:00

NWSA Journal--Revolting Bodies: The Monster Beauty of Tattooed Women

ENGL 301 Psychological Novel--Tattooed Souls and Damaged Psyches in World Cinema and Literature =

2008-12-01T20:08:00.000-05:00

ENGL 301 Psychological Novel--Tattooed Souls and Damaged Psyches in World Cinema and Literature =

In the Labyrinth: The Literary Tattoo

2008-12-01T20:07:00.000-05:00

In the Labyrinth: The Literary Tattoo

AbeBooks: Authors with Tattoos

2008-12-01T19:53:00.000-05:00

Authors with Tattoos

Kitchen, hearts are open - St. Petersburg Times

2008-11-23T09:43:00.000-05:00

Kitchen, hearts are open - St. Petersburg Times

WANTED: A New Patron Saint for England

2008-10-28T21:39:00.001-05:00

WANTED: A New Patron Saint for England

No "SCHOOL" Child Left Behind? -- Why Proofreading is Still Needed

2008-10-26T10:27:00.001-05:00

No "SCHOOL" Child Left Behind? -- Why Proofreading is Still Needed

'What I have Learned to Feel': The Pedagogical Emotions of Holocaust Education

2008-10-13T10:55:00.001-05:00

'What I have Learned to Feel': The Pedagogical Emotions of Holocaust Education

The dreaded summer reading list

2008-06-17T10:20:00.001-05:00

The dreaded summer reading list: "Many high schools students — and their parents — are wringing their
hands these days over that yet-to-be-finished required reading. But
perhaps these lists are, well, boring. We English teachers, in the face
of stiff competition from iPods, Facebook and video games, need to be
more open-minded as we seek to pry open young minds."

WikiAnswers - How do you block cell phone numbers

2008-06-12T10:48:00.000-05:00

How do you block annoying callers on your cell phone?

CLICK HERE to find out

Mego Batman Superheroes Commercial Batcave

2008-04-21T10:47:00.001-05:00

NO PARTICULAR REASON for posting this. Just because I like(d) it.

US Baptist group urges action on global warming

2008-03-11T20:52:00.001-05:00

US Baptist group urges action on global warming: "Prominent members of the Southern Baptist Convention said that
the church, the largest US Protestant denomination, has been too
timid to speak out against global warming and must start taking
strong stands.

The statement marks a significant shift in the way one of the
country's most conservative churches regards climate change."

Film and TV shows analyzed in the classroom - News

2008-02-10T19:16:00.000-05:00

Film and TV shows analyzed in the classroom - News

Make My Way: On the Road - Langston Hughes - Discriminating Interpretation

2008-02-02T15:23:00.000-05:00

Make My Way: On the Road - Langston Hughes - Discriminating Interpretation

The Definition of a Narrative? « Narrative Expression in the Digital Age

2008-01-25T09:25:00.000-05:00

The Definition of a Narrative? « Narrative Expression in the Digital Age: "“narrative[na-ra-tiv], a telling of some true or fictitious event or connected sequence of events, recounted by a narrator … consist[s of] a set of events (the story) recounted in a process of narration (or discourse), in which the events are selected and arranged in a particular order (the plot).”"

Read Comic Books to Improve Your Reading Skills

2008-01-18T10:05:00.000-05:00

Readable Blog: for English learners (EFL/ESL) » Blog Archive » Read Comic Books to Improve Your Reading Skills: "Wowio’s Comic Books and Graphic Novels section has quite a few legal, free comic books and graphic novels. You’ll have to register to use Wowio, and they require you to prove your identity using a photo ID, credit card, or “non-anonymous” e-mail address (such as a school e-mail address). I haven’t used this site, so I hope that if you try it, you’ll let me know what you think."

5 Reasons Why People Become Teachers - Associated Content

2008-01-16T17:33:00.000-05:00

5 Reasons Why People Become Teachers - Associated Content

Why is literature important?

2008-01-16T12:42:00.000-05:00

Why is literature important? - Yahoo! Answers

YouTube - A Day in the Life of an English Literature Student Part 1

2008-01-14T00:41:00.000-05:00

YouTube - A Day in the Life of an English Literature Student Part 1

Learning to Teach Tech-Comm: Eleven Things You Could Start Doing Today for the Benefit of Your Students' Writing

2008-01-11T12:35:00.000-05:00

Learning to Teach Tech-Comm: Eleven Things You Could Start Doing Today for the Benefit of Your Students' Writing: "Eleven Things You Could Start Doing Today for the Benefit of Your Students' Writing' to the WPA listserv. I wanted to comment on it, but this is the first time I've had the chance because of the conference, as well as just keeping up in general. I'm not going to reproduce the e-mail comments under each item, but instead reproduce the items with my own thoughts."

splash

2008-01-05T15:49:00.000-05:00

splash

Rank My Professor | Educated Nation | Higher Education Blog

2008-01-04T16:28:00.000-05:00

Rank My Professor | Educated Nation | Higher Education Blog

Wordsmiths, avoid these words.. | Oddly Enough | Reuters

2008-01-01T17:18:00.000-05:00

Wordsmiths, avoid these words.. | Oddly Enough | Reuters: "Such phrases as 'post 9/11' and 'surge' have also outlived their usefulness, they said. Surge emerged in reference to adding U.S. troops in Iraq but has come to explain the expansion of anything. Continued..."

Student wins lottery, leaves school | Oddly Enough | Reuters

2007-12-27T14:11:00.000-05:00

Student wins lottery, leaves school | Oddly Enough | Reuters: "The Communist Party abolished lotteries in China after taking power in 1949, denouncing them as a practice of decadent capitalists. But the country launched state-run lotteries in 1987 amid market-oriented reforms."

How to Be a Good Teaching Assistant - wikiHow

2007-12-27T14:09:00.000-05:00

How to Be a Good Teaching Assistant - wikiHow

[X] : Students: Grade My Picture

2007-12-27T14:06:00.000-05:00

[X] : Students: Grade My Picture: "A new photo feature on a student-rated Web site for evaluating professors now allows its users to upload pictures of listed teachers to accompany their profiles.

Taken in the classroom unknowingly via camera cell phones, or uploaded by the teacher�s themselves, users of Ratemyprofessor.com can now put a face with a name, along with their 'hot' or 'not' rating."

The Loneliest Articles of 2007 | So You Want To Teach?

2007-12-23T11:00:00.000-05:00

The Loneliest Articles of 2007 | So You Want To Teach?

Non English Posts make up over Two Thirds of Total Blog Posting

2007-12-20T13:24:00.000-05:00

Non English Posts make up over Two Thirds of Total Blog Posting: "What is the most common language used by bloggers?"

Writing the Dissertation: The Three-Pass Process for Writing Efficiently

2007-12-09T14:46:00.000-05:00

This from Dr. Rachna D. Jain of Complete Your Dissertation:

I’m often asked how it is that I’m able to write content so quickly. After all, I support several blogs, several newsletters, and I create products very regularly. So, while I like to write, I know that doesn’t mean everyone else likes to. So, I’d like to share with you what I call the three-pass process for writing efficiently.

The three-pass process depends on a couple of assumptions. One is that you actually know you want to write about or you know what you need to say. The second assumption is that you are willing to draft and let it be imperfect, and the third is that you’re willing to go back and revise anything that you write or create, again at a later time. So, the way the three-pass process works is like this...

Please click HERE to read the rest of this post.

Fast-food Filmmaker Flings Fatty Facts to Freshmen

2007-12-05T21:31:00.000-05:00

This from Stephen Catanese of IUP's The Penn:

...In the turkey-heavy fog of that "tryptophan haze" that follows a decadent, filling Thanksgiving feast, what thoughts typically cross your mind? Sleep? Football? More food? Well, probably not more food - but you're probably not Morgan Spurlock, director and star of "Super Size Me," one of the highest-grossing independent films of all time. Spurlock, who explained his work Monday night to a near-capacity Fisher Auditorium crowd, said he was inspired on Thanksgiving Day 2002 to make the film. Sitting on a couch and watching the news after his meal, Spurlock saw a report about two women suing McDonald's Corp. for damages caused by the fast-food giant's fare. At first, Spurlock said, he found the lawsuit laughable -Â another example of litigious American society. As he watched McDonalds Corp. defend the quality of its food, however, inspiration struck. "There was a basis for an argument and a contradiction," he said. Spurlock decided...

Click HERE to read the rest of Catanese's article.

Quarterlife Crisis Hits Many in Late 20s

2007-12-01T14:29:00.000-05:00

This from Keturah Gray of ABC News:

...Sara Freedman has recently been dreaming of a life as a country club mom in the suburbs of Atlanta. After four years in the workplace, the thrill of buying "work" pants and standing in the Starbucks line is gone. "I keep thinking I'm just in a rut and I'll grow out of it, but thinking about...

Click HERE to read the rest of this story from Keturah Gray.

Croatian Dead Man Rides on the Tram All Night Long

2007-11-28T15:16:00.000-05:00

This from the "Oddly Enough" section of the Reuters News Service:

...A Croatian man who boarded a night tram and died in his seat rode through the city for more than six hours before the driver discovered he was dead, a Croatian daily reported Monday. The 61-year old, identified as Tomislav K., boarded a tram shortly before midnight Friday. He soon fell asleep and died as the tram...

Click HERE to read the rest of this Reuters news story.

Polish Coma Patient Awakens 19 Years Later

2007-11-24T15:15:00.000-05:00

This from NPR's Morning Edition:

...Back in 1988, Jan Grzebski was hit by a train. He fell into a coma, and if that wasn't enough, doctors found cancer in the Polish railroad worker's brain. Doctors said they couldn't do any more for him, so his wife took him home. She cared for him for 19 years — until he woke up. She noticed Jan Grzebski trying to talk earlier this year. When he was last awake, Ronald Reagan was...

Click HERE to read the rest of this story from NPR's Morning Edition.

Teaching in the Wireless Classroom

2007-11-20T16:25:00.000-05:00

This from Marjorie Perloff of the Digital Humanities Group:

...“If it doesn’t exist on the Internet,” Kenneth Goldsmith, the conceptual poet who founded and administers UbuWeb (www.ubu.com) recently quipped, “it doesn’t exist.” As scholars and teachers of literary and cultural studies, many of us will scoff or at least wince at these words: we define ourselves, after all, as people who read and write books, essays, reviews. Our status in the profession still depends primarily on...

Click HERE to read the rest of this article by Marjorie Perloff.

Notable Quotables: Books: The New Yorker

2007-05-20T21:20:00.000-05:00

Notable Quotables: Books: The New Yorker

Job prospects good for college grads in US

2007-05-07T13:04:00.000-05:00

Job prospects good for college grads in US

Dickens and Words

2006-08-03T16:11:00.000-05:00

Lines and phrases in classic literature sometimes take on new, unintended meanings over the years because of changes in the meaning of words. "Knock up" is one that turns up a lot in English literature, and causes an unintentional giggle now (it used to mean just to knock at a particular person's door). And while I am not the first person to point this out, David Copperfield contains one line that has taken on an unintended meaning that arguably makes more sense than the original. It's in the big confrontation between Little Emily, Steerforth's ex-mistress who still loves him even though he ruined her reputation, and Rosa Dartle, Steerforth's ex-mistress who still loves him even though he scarred her face:

“What is there in common between us, do you think?”

“Nothing but our sex,” said Emily, with a burst of tears.

Please click HERE to read the rest of this entry

Composition - Bizarre English Metaphors (and Similes)

2006-07-21T12:07:00.000-05:00

Hi Readers,

Earlier, I did a review on a lesson I did this Spring semester with writing students on similes and metaphors HERE. I thought my students did fairly well.

What I’ve reprinted below (including the intro paragraph) came into my mail today: these are NOT from my students (can also be found HERE--thanks, Femmebot). Note that most of these are really analogies.

I found some of them hilarious though and, as some commenters have pointed out, covertly ingenious is some cases. Anyway, I thought some of you might enjoy seeing examples of--what I assume to be--unintentionally silly / mixed metaphors. My colleague suggested that it would be nice if writing students would at least indulge in this much creativity from time to time!

*Every year, English teachers from across the USA can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year's winners . . .

*[Please click HERE to read the rest of this blog-entry]*

Expatriatism! Easier to spell than antidisestablishmentarianismistically!

2006-07-05T18:48:00.000-05:00

The expatriate in Asia is often a complainer: things are so different there from the way they are in wherever he thinks of as home that he feels aggrieved, ripped off, patronized or left out. The complaint takes different forms in India, Hong Kong and Japan, but the expat often stresses the ex part, as if he’s more aware of what he’s left behind than of where he’s landed. The foreign observer is likely to be happy only if he sees his foreignness as an adventure, and recognizes that he has given up a sense of belonging for a sense of freedom, traded the luxury of being understood for that of being permanently interested . . .

[Click HERE to read the rest of this article]

American Expatriatism in Canada

2006-07-05T18:28:00.000-05:00

Currently, the United States is experiencing a slight national obsession with Canada. Between 10,000 and 20,000 Americans were ready to pack up and head to the land of the maple leaf after November’s election, reported U.S. News and World Report in February.

A traveler prepares to enter the boarding area of Dundas subway station.
The Canadian immigration Web site, which usually gets about 20,000 hits a day, got 115,000 hits from Americans alone the day after the election, said Rudi Kischer, a British Columbian immigration lawyer, to the Associated Press.

But it’s all talk, Farish says . . .

[Click HERE to read the rest of this story]

A Bit About Expatriatism

2006-07-05T18:23:00.000-05:00

The floating head to your left is Ernest Hemingway. He is sort of your penultimate American expat - he enlisted to serve in the US ambulance corps in World War I and never turned his back on that continent. Hemingway's Europe of the 1920s appealed to his generation much the same way the Europe of the 90s and 00s appeals to mine - it's a new frontier, particularly "East" Europe, that is former communist Europe (because Vienna is farther east than Prague is). In the 1920s, the frontier of America, which had sustained America's adventurers for 300 years, was dead. Defeated. But in the cafes of Paris - well, there was a new adventure brimming . . .

[Click HERE to read the rest of this entry.]

How to e-mail a professor

2006-06-23T15:04:00.000-05:00

I've read enough e-mails to know that many college students could benefit from some guidelines for writing an e-mail to a professor. Here they are:

UCLA International Institute :: The Russian Coup of 1991

2006-06-01T13:09:00.000-05:00

UCLA International Institute :: The Russian Coup of 1991

Lifehacker, the Productivity and Software Guide

2006-05-29T19:54:00.000-05:00

Lifehacker, the Productivity and Software Guide

Tell your mother thank you!

2006-05-27T13:47:00.000-05:00

From: The Crow's Nest by Alyce Baker Putt

Despite her small stature, she entranced me. All I could do was stare at her—even though I know it is impolite. No one else seemed to notice her. They were busy chitchatting and eating. I was busy looking at her.

My passion for Toni Morrison’s works began during the summer of 1999 while taking a major author course at Shippensburg. Prior to this course, I had never read any of Morrison’s works. By the end of the five-week course, I had read all six of her novels. She has published two more, which I, of course, bought and read immediately. I have also read her non-fiction and much of the criticism about her works. And I have read practically every interview she has ever given.

People have asked what lures me to Morrison’s works. Most often I reply . . .

[click HERE to read the rest of this article]

Discussing Truth: Is There a Factual Definition?

2006-04-23T12:00:00.000-05:00

This month there has been a lot of discussion about the concept of "truth." Do you recall the film Dekalog 8 by Krzystof Kieslowski? It had everything to do with telling "the truth," remember? So did the documentary Strongwoman. Several of you, I might add, expressed that you did not believe Justyna's testimony (which seemed to horrify Maria Z. who, in fact, did!)

In our last exercise we looked at Henry Adams's (1838-1948) admonition to learn as the prime directive. In other words, the ability to learn or the process of learning, above all, is the most important thing of all since it gives a person "enough" to get by in life. If we take this statement for granted, are we then to assume that we should be learning "truthful" things? Would Adams sound nearly as clever if he told us to go out and fill our heads with "untruths"? It seems important, then, if we are to learn let it not be wasted on lies and propaganda (useless data) but on knowledge that we somehow know to be true . . .

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Google's Top 15 search words last week

2006-04-21T11:35:00.000-05:00

Google's Top 15 search words last week

How Do I Remove The Blue Border Around My Hyperlinked Image?

2006-04-11T12:50:00.000-05:00

How Do I Remove The Blue Border Around My Hyperlinked Image?

Awesome Cartoon Strip: "The Trek Life"

2006-04-06T14:08:00.000-05:00

Hilarious comic strip about three trekkies who make the Star Trek world the focus of their life.

STARTREK.COM�:�Article

George Carlin's New Rules for 2006

2006-03-30T14:34:00.000-05:00

Yahoo! 360� - What's really going on??? - George Carlin's new rules for 2006.....

Roy Foster: Yeats emerged as poet of Irish Revolution, despite past political beliefs : 4/01

2006-03-26T16:08:00.000-05:00

Roy Foster: Yeats emerged as poet of Irish Revolution, despite past political beliefs : 4/01

[the] English-Blog [.com]

2006-03-05T20:03:00.000-05:00

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2006-03-04T20:02:00.000-05:00

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2006-03-03T20:00:00.000-05:00

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2006-03-02T19:33:00.000-05:00

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The Global Citizen

2006-02-10T02:10:00.000-05:00

http://burgsbee.tripod.com

Definitely NOT a site for Nationalists!

Peaceful Earth Dynamic

2006-02-09T02:09:00.000-05:00

http://leehobbs.livejournal.com

Search for Sanity beyond the Self!

Universal Denizen

2006-02-08T02:07:00.000-05:00

http://universal-denizen.blogspot.com/

One Planet / One People. Need more be said? National boundaries are an insane, outdated, counter-productive concept.
Let there be peace, sanity, prosperity and serenity. Let there be goodwill.
This teacher's mission: to promote values that embrace education, progress, tolerance and understanding.