Prose vs. Poetry

Can't remember where I read this, but it was just this weekend (New Canon website? NYT Book Review?) -

"A really good line in prose should be as unchangeable as a line in poetry" - in other words, economy, beauty, truth, etc. Like Mill says (and Stephen Daedelus echoes) - some novels are poetry, some poetry is just verse.

Philip Roth on CBS

Here's a link to an interview with Philip Roth from CBS Sunday Morning: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/03/sunday/main6923076.shtml

I wrote my undergrad thesis on "Goodbye, Columbus," which still ranks up there as one of my ten favorite books. I admire Roth's economy of language and his frankness.

The New Canon

I'm not a huge proponent of the traditional "canon," though I can see the reasons why traditionally canonical books are so celebrated. I suppose it depends on what you want to use canonical texts for.

Should we . . .

Put on them on a pedestal, above reproach?
                      
     No.
                      
Use them to understand literary heritage and see progression of ideas through time?
                      
     Sure.
                      
Require 8th grade students and/or struggling readers to read them?
                      
     No.
                      
Use them to build a strong foundation for those who study literature and/or teach english?
                      
     Yes.

I am, despite my tolerance for the "canon," keenly aware of the "dead white guy" syndrome when I select texts for my classroom, and though I tend to side with the NYT in the recent "Franzen debacle," I sympathize with and think about the question of women's place in the literary tradition.

Beloved, clearly, blows this entire debate out of the water. The much-maligned NYT chose it in 2006 as the best book of the last quarter century. Every time I read it, I'm inclined to agree. There's too much to talk about or even think about with this novel. (My brain is in the process of digesting and note-taking now, so more on my thoughts about the book later.)

But to get back to the point of canon: while doing some web-surfing about Beloved today, I discovered a website with a provocative idea: The New Canon. The idea is to take books written in the past 25 years and "canonize" them - books by crotchety guys like Franzen, but also multi-cultural authors, women authors, etc. I'm not quite sure what the criteria is (Harry Potter is included, along with Special Topics in Calamity Physics), but it seems clear that the website creators celebrate these books for canonical reasons, calling them "the new classics" and "widely recognized as fine literature" - though the write-up for Beloved acknowledges the irony of its being traditionally anti-canonical, being post-Colonial, post-patriarchal, and post-Eurocentric. At any rate, this site will be a rich source for finding new reads, and a decent place to begin the sticky process of unraveling what determines a canon, anyway. (Fun fact: I've read nine of the books they list on the sidebar and already have at least five of the others on my "to-read" list.)


Books from the "New Canon" I've read:
Beloved
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The Handmaid's Tale
The Corrections
American Pastoral
The Secret History
Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Empire Falls
Old School


Additional authors from the "New Canon" I've read (but not the book listed):
Haruki Murakami
Ann Patchett
Cormac McCarthy
Michael Chabon (not only read him, but met him!)
Zadie Smith


Books I Will Read from the "New Canon" hopefully sooner than later:
Infinite Jest (my brother just read it)
Bel Canto (on my amazon.com wish list)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (already on my bookshelf)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time


Books I Think They Should Add:
The Life of Pi
The Historian
Straight Man
Kissing in Manhattan
The Kitchen God's Wife and/or The Joy Luck Club (How can there be no Amy Tan in a "new" canon?)

Thoughts on the official first week of book-writing

Monday night, I had that breakthrough moment (driving home from DeKalb at 9 p.m., headlights, brain churning, radio off, insulated in the Hyundai) where you go from two years of best buds saying to each other "We should write a book together!" to deciding to do it and narrowing your focus enough to make a plan. I left myself voicemails (safer than trying to write in the car). I went home and took notes, made two pages of outlines, and emailed my friend my ideas.

Throughout the week, we kept it going. She opened a google account; we began sharing documents through Google Docs. She asked me who my dream publisher would be, then went to their homepage and found all the submission guidelines for authors. I feel like we're on our way.

Since it's going to be a book for English teachers, we're keeping careful track of everything we do in the classroom this year, making lists of copyrighted stuff we'll need permissions for, noting what works and what doesn't, and hopefully finally trying all the stuff that might really work even better.

Surprising to me is that this is the way a book starts - voicemails and emails - not by opening a laptop and typing. And I'm surprised that I'm surprised. Maybe it's just surprising to me that after all this time I'm actually doing it. And I really think we have something here.

On Truth

"The truth of poetry is to paint the human soul truly: the truth of fiction is to give a true picture of life." -John Stuart Mill

"Gonzo journalism . . . is a style of 'reporting' based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism--and the best journalists have always known this . . ." -Hunter S. Thompson

It takes awhile to come to the idea that literature is "truth" - my husband once reported to me that when he was in grade school, he remembered the difference between fiction and non-fiction as being "fake" and "not-fake." How do we bridge that distinction in a child's mind and the place of literature in the adult mind? Maybe is this what sets apart "literary" fiction from other types of fiction? (I'm thinking of the great Franzen debacle of the past few weeks.) 

If books like Beloved are so disturbing to me, is that party because I'm uncomfortable with the truths therein? Is there one truth or many truths? What can I teach students about truth? (It's party an argument for canonical teaching, if in fact the "best" fiction is "more true" than journalism - put down the Jodi Picault and pick up Bleak House.)

Radioworks Documentary and The Turn of the Screw

This is becoming a linkdump, but this is the afore-mentioned "Testing Teachers" radio documentary:

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/testing_teachers/index.html

Diane Rehm is discussing this topic tomorrow. It's suddenly getting so much attention that my blog is in danger of becoming entirely devoted to rounding up stories on the topic of teacher effectiveness. Is it because of Malcolm Gladwell? NCLB? I'm glad for the scrutiny and certainly the pitch can only become higher as the wave catches on in non-urban areas.

Also, many questions re: The Turn of the Screw (via today's entry at 750words.com) -

Is it a ghost story?
Why did Miles die?
Will Flora die too?
Did Miles ever really see Quint?
Did he see Miss Jessup all along?
Did Flora ever see any ghosts?
If no, did she get feverish and have to leave because of her governess saying that she saw the ghost?
If there were no ghosts, why did the governess have Quint and Miss Jessup's descriptions so precisely?
If the kids were playing a trick on her, how did they do it?

Looking forward to having someone to discuss this with. Still mulling it all over in my head: not ready to spout opinions yet.

Even more on teacher effectiveness

I may be a bit obsessed with this theme, but it touches upon such bedrock issues as "Should I be in the career I'm in?", "How do we improve public education?", and "What is best for the students?" that I find it hard to ignore.

There will be a public radio documentary on this theme airing tomorrow night at 6 p.m. I don't know if I'll catch it, because I plan to be soaking up the last warm rays of the waning summer with my family, a beer, and nature around me. But I love that NPR makes it easy to find transcripts and/or recordings of almost anything you miss, so I will definitely be looking it up.