Thursday, November 27, 2003
in memoriam
GinaBallz: hey marty- thank for coming to the show!
OweCaptain: sure thing
GinaBallz: hey marty- thank for coming to the show!happy thanksgiving
OweCaptain: um, sure thing
GinaBallz: hey marty- thank for coming to the show!happy thanksgiving
OweCaptain: um, sure thing again
OweCaptain: you too
GinaBallz: ?
GinaBallz: why all the "sure thing"s
OweCaptain: because you sent the same message three times
OweCaptain: GinaBallz: hey marty- thank for coming to the show!
OweCaptain: sure thing
GinaBallz: hey marty- thank for coming to the show!happy thanksgiving
OweCaptain: um, sure thing
GinaBallz: hey marty- thank for coming to the show!happy thanksgiving
OweCaptain: um, sure thing again
OweCaptain: see
GinaBallz: i did?
GinaBallz: my computer's being weird
OweCaptain: it is
OweCaptain: it is
OweCaptain: it is
GinaBallz: or my brother's
GinaBallz: STOP!!!
OweCaptain: help
OweCaptain: help help
OweCaptain: echo
OweCaptain: echo
GinaBallz: NO MORE!
GinaBallz: AUGH!
OweCaptain: echo
GinaBallz: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
GinaBallz: I'm going to start crying!
OweCaptain: you're losing it
OweCaptain: you're losing your ballz
OweCaptain: i saw matt reese and kim last night
GinaBallz: if being ballz means you've lost it...and then you lose your ballz
OweCaptain: then...
OweCaptain: ballzless
GinaBallz: and your name's ballz
GinaBallz: what do you do?
GinaBallz: oh how are they?!
OweCaptain: ballz and ballzlessness
OweCaptain: they are swell
GinaBallz: but if being ballz is havening a lack of it
GinaBallz: anbd you lode your ballz
GinaBallz: lose
GinaBallz: do you get it back again?
GinaBallz: or have the absence of nothing?
OweCaptain: absense of nothing
GinaBallz: NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GinaBallz: i'm going to lose what's left of the absence of nothing
OweCaptain: yes
OweCaptain: i'm framing this conversation, it makes no sense
GinaBallz: hahahaha
GinaBallz: when does
GinaBallz: it
GinaBallz: ever
GinaBallz: you started to fuck withme, so I fucked with you
GinaBallz: bring it
GinaBallz: i can confuse ANYONE
GinaBallz: i wonder if that's what I should be
GinaBallz: a professional confusionist
GinaBallz: it sounds a lot like confusius
GinaBallz: confusionist says, "If being ballz is having a lack of it and you lose your ballz, you have the absence of nothing."
[Thursday, November 27th, 9:55pm-10:09pm]
GinaBallz: hey marty- thank for coming to the show!
OweCaptain: sure thing
GinaBallz: hey marty- thank for coming to the show!happy thanksgiving
OweCaptain: um, sure thing
GinaBallz: hey marty- thank for coming to the show!happy thanksgiving
OweCaptain: um, sure thing again
OweCaptain: you too
GinaBallz: ?
GinaBallz: why all the "sure thing"s
OweCaptain: because you sent the same message three times
OweCaptain: GinaBallz: hey marty- thank for coming to the show!
OweCaptain: sure thing
GinaBallz: hey marty- thank for coming to the show!happy thanksgiving
OweCaptain: um, sure thing
GinaBallz: hey marty- thank for coming to the show!happy thanksgiving
OweCaptain: um, sure thing again
OweCaptain: see
GinaBallz: i did?
GinaBallz: my computer's being weird
OweCaptain: it is
OweCaptain: it is
OweCaptain: it is
GinaBallz: or my brother's
GinaBallz: STOP!!!
OweCaptain: help
OweCaptain: help help
OweCaptain: echo
OweCaptain: echo
GinaBallz: NO MORE!
GinaBallz: AUGH!
OweCaptain: echo
GinaBallz: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
GinaBallz: I'm going to start crying!
OweCaptain: you're losing it
OweCaptain: you're losing your ballz
OweCaptain: i saw matt reese and kim last night
GinaBallz: if being ballz means you've lost it...and then you lose your ballz
OweCaptain: then...
OweCaptain: ballzless
GinaBallz: and your name's ballz
GinaBallz: what do you do?
GinaBallz: oh how are they?!
OweCaptain: ballz and ballzlessness
OweCaptain: they are swell
GinaBallz: but if being ballz is havening a lack of it
GinaBallz: anbd you lode your ballz
GinaBallz: lose
GinaBallz: do you get it back again?
GinaBallz: or have the absence of nothing?
OweCaptain: absense of nothing
GinaBallz: NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GinaBallz: i'm going to lose what's left of the absence of nothing
OweCaptain: yes
OweCaptain: i'm framing this conversation, it makes no sense
GinaBallz: hahahaha
GinaBallz: when does
GinaBallz: it
GinaBallz: ever
GinaBallz: you started to fuck withme, so I fucked with you
GinaBallz: bring it
GinaBallz: i can confuse ANYONE
GinaBallz: i wonder if that's what I should be
GinaBallz: a professional confusionist
GinaBallz: it sounds a lot like confusius
GinaBallz: confusionist says, "If being ballz is having a lack of it and you lose your ballz, you have the absence of nothing."
[Thursday, November 27th, 9:55pm-10:09pm]
New Course Offering
That does not allow any room for the false generosity of any Affirmative Action in the judging of poetry. Printing, praising, and teaching bad poems for the sake of even the best causes is simply destructive for those causes. "We believe in ourselves, as we do not believe in others" is a truth that makes us wince, but no one ever can write a good poem without it. Tony Kushner, who could be a greater playwright but for his obsession with the ideologies of political correctness, ought to ponder Emerson's "Experience," from which I have just quoted. Every attempt to socialize writing and reading fails; poetry is a solitary art, more now than ever, and its proper audience is the deeply educated, solitary reader, or that reader's sitting within herself in a theater. — Harold Bloom
I was allowed by the Incompetencies That Be to offer a new English elective for the winter term, and since I've been home with stable internet, I've been laying the foundations for it. I was easily e-led to the repugnance of this Harold Bloom article, which I believe we read in my American Novel course at Colgate. I'm going to use Bloom as a jumping-off point to raise the question: what is "ethnic writing" and is it legitimate? And also: How does writing become "legitimate"? And finally, we'll identify what Bloom means by "canon" and the alternatives to his icy literary conservatism/snobbery.
I hope to nurture the possibility of "anti-canonism": there need not be "good" and "bad" literature; some writing is interesting for some reasons, some poetry is interesting for others. Some writing might be interesting for its failures. How else do we know what shit is? Bloom decries the rise of "cultural studies" courses in higher education (oh no, and now high school students!), judging them all vapid and deleteriously taking up the space and energy of our professors when they should be teaching the canon. The canon that Bloom so kindly points out to us. Thank you, Harold.
He fails to recognize that each instance of what he might call "ethnic literature" is not neccesarily an attempt to "socialize" art, but instead usually a highly solitary expression of alienation, resentment, or struggle. Solitary. Sherman Alexie's poetry might seem to be written on a macro-level, but that's only because there are fallacies and historical embarrasments revealed in his poetry that might be endemic to the general American consciousness. Reading Harriet Jacobs slave narrative does not tell you what it was like to be an African slave in the American south. It doesn't even exactly tell you what it was like to be a female African slave in the American south. It tells you what it was like to be Harriet Jacobs, enslaved, in the American south. I hope to guide my students towards that verity, although the class is not intended to preach for persuasion. I want them to engage this knot of questions: a tangle of art, culture, and politics to sort out and talk about during the untying.
The syllabus is loose, and I'm open to suggestions.
—The prologue to Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer. The back cover. Maybe the whole novel, too.
—Simon Ortiz's short fiction and essays.
—Harriet Jacob's slave narrative [excerpts]
—Adrienne Rich's poetry and essays.
—Boys Don't Cry
—Martin Espada's poetry.
—Gwendolyn Brooks Maud Martha [excerpts]
—Ralph Ellison, the "battle royale" passage of Invisible Man
—Kerouac On the Road and Dharma Bums [excerpts]
—Salinger "Teddy"
—Le 400 Coups and/or Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Before writing is "bad" it is already "uninteresting." I wouldn't waste my brilliant students' time with art that I found to be devoid of any interest. They may not see what I see yet, or they may find something completely new and of interest, but if a poem is bankrupt, it won't be taught. So what is Harold's problem? Why must there be a "best" literature? Does a young man or woman's intellect gain 40 points for reading and comprehending the conceit of a Shakespeare sonnet and only 2 points for reading and comprehending the narrative technique of Alexie's prologue? So far no neurological/pyschological studies I have seen (although I haven't looked much) establish a gradient for how much smarter certain writers make you. And then it all becomes a game, at which Bloom is winning. That's what his bloated ego desires most of all, to be the winner of his age. He's on top. He will be remembered as a genius-critic. He was the lone voice of sanity, defending the "aesthetic" of writing while the rest of us went PC crazy. Some people have gone PC crazy, but many others have made incredibly relevant and substantive art out of their experience in America as outsider, unwanted, oppressed. I don't see how their art is inferior to that found in his canon.
More to come, now there are orange crescent rolls....
That does not allow any room for the false generosity of any Affirmative Action in the judging of poetry. Printing, praising, and teaching bad poems for the sake of even the best causes is simply destructive for those causes. "We believe in ourselves, as we do not believe in others" is a truth that makes us wince, but no one ever can write a good poem without it. Tony Kushner, who could be a greater playwright but for his obsession with the ideologies of political correctness, ought to ponder Emerson's "Experience," from which I have just quoted. Every attempt to socialize writing and reading fails; poetry is a solitary art, more now than ever, and its proper audience is the deeply educated, solitary reader, or that reader's sitting within herself in a theater. — Harold Bloom
I was allowed by the Incompetencies That Be to offer a new English elective for the winter term, and since I've been home with stable internet, I've been laying the foundations for it. I was easily e-led to the repugnance of this Harold Bloom article, which I believe we read in my American Novel course at Colgate. I'm going to use Bloom as a jumping-off point to raise the question: what is "ethnic writing" and is it legitimate? And also: How does writing become "legitimate"? And finally, we'll identify what Bloom means by "canon" and the alternatives to his icy literary conservatism/snobbery.
I hope to nurture the possibility of "anti-canonism": there need not be "good" and "bad" literature; some writing is interesting for some reasons, some poetry is interesting for others. Some writing might be interesting for its failures. How else do we know what shit is? Bloom decries the rise of "cultural studies" courses in higher education (oh no, and now high school students!), judging them all vapid and deleteriously taking up the space and energy of our professors when they should be teaching the canon. The canon that Bloom so kindly points out to us. Thank you, Harold.
He fails to recognize that each instance of what he might call "ethnic literature" is not neccesarily an attempt to "socialize" art, but instead usually a highly solitary expression of alienation, resentment, or struggle. Solitary. Sherman Alexie's poetry might seem to be written on a macro-level, but that's only because there are fallacies and historical embarrasments revealed in his poetry that might be endemic to the general American consciousness. Reading Harriet Jacobs slave narrative does not tell you what it was like to be an African slave in the American south. It doesn't even exactly tell you what it was like to be a female African slave in the American south. It tells you what it was like to be Harriet Jacobs, enslaved, in the American south. I hope to guide my students towards that verity, although the class is not intended to preach for persuasion. I want them to engage this knot of questions: a tangle of art, culture, and politics to sort out and talk about during the untying.
The syllabus is loose, and I'm open to suggestions.
—The prologue to Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer. The back cover. Maybe the whole novel, too.
—Simon Ortiz's short fiction and essays.
—Harriet Jacob's slave narrative [excerpts]
—Adrienne Rich's poetry and essays.
—Boys Don't Cry
—Martin Espada's poetry.
—Gwendolyn Brooks Maud Martha [excerpts]
—Ralph Ellison, the "battle royale" passage of Invisible Man
—Kerouac On the Road and Dharma Bums [excerpts]
—Salinger "Teddy"
—Le 400 Coups and/or Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Before writing is "bad" it is already "uninteresting." I wouldn't waste my brilliant students' time with art that I found to be devoid of any interest. They may not see what I see yet, or they may find something completely new and of interest, but if a poem is bankrupt, it won't be taught. So what is Harold's problem? Why must there be a "best" literature? Does a young man or woman's intellect gain 40 points for reading and comprehending the conceit of a Shakespeare sonnet and only 2 points for reading and comprehending the narrative technique of Alexie's prologue? So far no neurological/pyschological studies I have seen (although I haven't looked much) establish a gradient for how much smarter certain writers make you. And then it all becomes a game, at which Bloom is winning. That's what his bloated ego desires most of all, to be the winner of his age. He's on top. He will be remembered as a genius-critic. He was the lone voice of sanity, defending the "aesthetic" of writing while the rest of us went PC crazy. Some people have gone PC crazy, but many others have made incredibly relevant and substantive art out of their experience in America as outsider, unwanted, oppressed. I don't see how their art is inferior to that found in his canon.
More to come, now there are orange crescent rolls....
