AP Final Essay: Intros and Thesis Statements

Defining Hamlet is not necessarily about providing a list of adjectives. Hamlet is a complex character; your list could be quite long and provide few organized ideas about the man. Instead, defining Hamlet is more about moving one characteristic or role or title to the head of the line. Hamlet the Son or Hamlet the Avenger or Hamlet the Lover. Better yet, qualify these titles. Hamlet the Honorable Son; Hamlet the Lazy Avenger; etc. Remember, we still want the list of adjectives because we do not want to ignore the complexity. Instead, we want to filter these descriptions through your provided title.

Ex: If Hamlet is a lazy avenger, then we will observe the many times he procrastinates. That's easy. In addition to this, however, we must qualify the moments where Hamlet shows progress, good old-fashioned forward momentum, and perhaps the central ideas in the second and fourth soliloquies.

Now, gentle student, all of this leads us to our opening paragraph. How to begin? What to say in that very first sentence? Some suggestions:

DO NOT begin this essay with a generalization announcing how complex characters can be many things to many people. They can; we know; you can do better.

DO announce your central idea in general terms. (Ex: If Hamlet is lazy, then you may begin with a comment on laziness; if Hamlet is dishonorable, then you may want to comment on dishonor, etc.)

DO NOT begin this essay remarking how Hamlet the play or William Shakespeare the author is known far and wide as the best of the best, and how you agree with this. They are; we know; you can do better.

DO announce both the title of the play and its author somewhere before your thesis.

Finally, DO create a thesis that clearly states what your chosen definition (your characteristic, role, title, etc.) is, perhaps why it emerges as the primary defining trait.

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

"Define Hamlet"

Maybe it is a rotten prompt for an essay. But maybe not, gentle student. Outside of the fact that any writing prompt this time of year is awful, maybe not. Because this one allows for a lot of wiggle room, because Hamlet is vast.

Does he contradict himself? Very well then, he contradicts himself. He is large. He contains multitudes.

Thank you, Uncle Walt, well said. Because the truth of the matter is: Hamlet has much depth. There are several character traits, both strengths and flaws, consistent and irrationally not, to discover and discuss. There are mountains and mountains of scholarship dedicated to this very thing, that of all Shakespeare's creations, Hamlet just might be the most human. And, therefore, for our services, the best character to plumb.

And before we get swallowed up by the options, let us organize. A few tips to get you started and thinking in the right direction:

1. If you had to describe Hamlet in a word, what's the word? How about for just Act 1? How about for just Act 1 scene 5 while talking with his ghost-dad? How about a second word (or synonym) for just Act 1 scene 5 while talking with ghosty? How about for his second soliloquy? How about for his third? And a synonym? And another synonym? Make a list.

Finally, how about organizing all of these words? Which words corroborate? Which contradict? Is it a contradiction? How can we qualify these contradictions? If we take this tip seriously, then the connections you make here will write the paper.

2. Visit the "Hamlet" tab on this blog. It's more than just the full text of the play; embedded within are several clips from several different versions of the play. Drama is meant to be seen. Go watch.

Next up: introduction paragraphs and thesis statements

Top Ten Things We Want to Hear Hamlet Say to his Ghost Dad

1. "You know what else is most horrible? Thy breath. Tic-tac, sir."

2. "Do you think I'll get two Christmas gifts from Claudius this year?"

3. "Can I get some money to go see Mockingjay?"

4. "Yes, they made it into two parts. This is only part one. Yes, just like Harry Potter. And The Hobbit."

5. "Wait, you're a Harry Potter fan?"

6. "Did you know how to pronounce Her-my-oh-knee before you heard it in the movies? Me neither, for like three books. Man, that was a murder most foul."

7. "See the thing is, I like Claudius better."

8. "What's a Lethe wharf?"

9. "If there's something strange, in the neighborhood, who ya gonna call?"

10. "I didn't understand a thing you just said. Hold on, I've got my footnotes right here..."

Lear's Lament

Somewhere in Act 3 Lear claims that he is a "man more sinned against than sinning." And I suppose he is, considering that his daughters (at least two of them) prove to be terrible, terrible people who are married to terrible (Cornwall) or passive (Albany) men, which only strengthens the machine that torments the king. Clearly we have plenty of details to fill out both the "sinned against" and the "sinning" sides of this matter.

To be fair, let us not forget that Lear brings this on himself. I can't seem to shake the idea that Lear is kind of whining right here. After all, he is out in the storm that rages both onstage and in his head. But that doesn't make this statement false. At least not entirely. Perhaps Lear is really, really culpable here, but if we stack up his personal guilt against everything else, everything else still tips the scales. Right? Shakespeare's exploration into suffering focuses on internal and external causes, and while King Lear is tormented from within, he is e'en more so from without.

Doesn't this sound like poor Willy Loman? Both Lear and Loman find themselves staring down an awful loaded gun of circumstance. Make no mistake, they load the gun themselves, but it is their environments that take the safety off and cock the hammer. The real question, and the really good analysis, is in what comes next: How do these two men, one who is common and the other a king, handle it all? How do they react to a circumstance stacked against them, partially (or greatly) of their own doing? Do they dig themselves out? Can they? Do they attempt noble action? Can they?

Struggle defines us. Whether we bring the struggle to our doorstep or not is of no consequence. Struggle defines us. And we know that it breaks Willy. What about Lear?

Come not between the dragon and his wrath.

What a great line. Am I right? It's just a phenomenal line. Thanks Will. It's the bees knees.

It's what really good literature provides us: reminders of the fantastic elasticity of language. Images so clear they must have been carved out of bedrock. Phrases so subtle they recede before us like vapors, crinkling our brows into that frown that means: I don't quite get it, but I actually do, somewhere in the deep and pleasant places of my brain/heart/soul.

Got line? Share a favorite in Comments.

Up next: Death of a Salesman

Willy Loman, beware. We are headed your way next week, valises in tow, big foamy football-fan fingers waving in the wind.

A gentle reminder, gentle reader: we begin Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman on Monday. Please have Act 1 read, thought about, and ready to discuss.

Guiding question: Is Willy Loman, i.e. a common man, an apt subject for a tragedy?

Our esteemed author has some thoughts on this idea, and we want yours as well.

Lesson #37

Never trust the milk sitting out on your counter.


Or the clowns ringing your doorbell. Halloween, indeed, gentle reader.

If I were writing the Grendel essay...

...I would discuss isolation, suffering, and the human position of such ideas as it pertains to my passage. Remember Auden, gentle reader, from Musee des Beaux Arts, when he posits that suffering, as it is observed by the old Masters (who are never wrong!) "takes place / [w]hile someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along."

Suffering happens! It "occurs" (to graciously steal from a first hour student) without us caring, without us granting permission, without us.

Us includes Grendel. Suffering, like the rest of the world, doesn't ask for his permission. Doesn't consult him at all. And he doesn't like that. Doesn't know what to do with that fact. Like walls.

Consider this: Auden's poem, like Brueghel's painting, positions suffering and tragedy so that it is not the center of attention. Which means something else is at center. Like life. Normal, routinized, humdrum life. So when suffering occurs, while it may be at the center of your life, it's not necessarily...

You get the idea.

The Nature of Art, the Deletion of Gatsby

What would the world be like without The Great Gatsby? I am thinking absolutely here. If we took Gatsby out of the world entire, what would the world look like?

Would the world notice? Would it truly be impacted?

After all, there are other stories about the American Dream, other protagonists that go for it all and fail due to a tragic yoking to the past. Right? Nick Carraway doesn't corner the market on a friend who cares too little too late; Tom isn't the only jerk; Wilson not the only man swallowed by life's circumstance; Daisy isn't the worst (she is the worst, but for the sake of argument).

What makes Gatsby so blasted special?

Isn't it the very heart of the book, the very fact that Mr. Fitzgerald somehow captures, like bits of the Skittles rainbow, the essence of Gatsby's fantastic capacity for hope and somehow translates it onto the page, to stand as cool and poignant and refreshing as Gatsby himself?

Isn't it because, despite ourselves, we love Gatsby and also we love what props him up? Isn't it because of the hope?

We want hope. We want to know where it resides, how to get at it, what to do with it once we have it. The tragic component here, I believe, is the fact that Gatsby's hope fails him. Or rather, how he commends himself to life based on that hope fails him. Gatsby is a dreamer, a Romantic, a man in love trying to sustain the best parts of himself in a world that devours sustainability. Gatsby doesn't change, but, then, neither does his hope.

Yet as good as that sounds (and I don't know how good it sounds, not at all...), let us not forget, gentle reader, that Gatsby fails. He goes down. Hard. Life gets him. Tom Buchanan wins. Gatsby, and his life and his figurative goodness all get exploded by brutish acts. No shiny veneer then. The Great Gatsby is about the failed American Dream; it is about how Idealism is Naivety; it argues against the notion that a person can cling to good and make good happen. What then? Where do we go from here?

Shouldn't Gatsby be driven out of the world? It is a book of lies, of awfulness packaged in million-dollar wrapping paper. It is a book that causes hope. And hope is dangerous. Because hope is not sustainable. Right?

And so we beat on, ... oh you know the rest.

Suggestions for the Grendel Essay

So. You have to write an essay about Grendel. And then I have to grade it.

Make no mistake, gentle reader-writer, we are both in this thing together.

Allow me to provide you with a small list of suggestions. Tips to consider. Some of them are things to do; some of them are things to avoid. This list is not so much my personal preferences for how you should write this essay, but rather, data gathered from past essays.

For your consideration:

1. It's spelled G-R-E-N-D-E-L. Do not deviate.

2. John Gardner is the author of the book, not a character in it. So, avoid constructions that go like this: When Gardner says... or What Gardner is actually saying is...

3. Instead of those examples from #2, just try to discuss THEME, which causes you to use constructions more like this: With this dialogue, therefore, Gardner suggests... or These details imply [enter theme here]...

4. Grendel is the nihilist.

5. Albeit, not a very good one.

6. Beowulf is not. (Remember the walls, the hardness of walls? Sing of walls and know that Beowulf is not a nihilist.)

7. #4-#6 are non-negotiable. Because accuracy counts. Personal opinions do not.

8.  Do not generalize. There is no space for it. Your passage needs to be addressed. Specifically and exhaustively.

9. Your passage lives in a context. Be sure to build that context. Referring to important details elsewhere may be important, so long as those details are specific and you connect them to your ideas.

10. Respect your details. Remember, one point of analysis cannot contradict another point in your essay. Likewise, one idea that lives in your passage should not contradict another idea found elsewhere in the novel.

11. Quote often. And then be sure to elaborate on the text in the quote. Example: If you are going to quote Grendel observing that "Beowulf was insane" but then proceed to elaborate and never directly address the word "insane," then you must go back and revise. "Insane" seems like an important word. Treat it like one. Talk about the connotations, tone, and speaker's point of view. Then connect it to a theme. If you can do this, you are on your way to an A.

12. Edit, edit, edit. Remember, grammar matters. Many, many students submit papers with A content but C grammar and mechanics. That equals to somewhere in B-land.

Good luck. No accidents.

That doesn't sound normal, so now what?

#1: The man is sad.

OR

#2: Sad is the man.

Same words, different order. Which one sounds more natural? Correct, gentle reader, #1 is the winner. Man seems to be the natural subject of this sentence; sad, therefore, stands as the predicate adjective modifying the man. The man is sad. Check. #2 sounds, well, funny. Stilted. Not normal. Again, I get it. It sounds funny because the syntax is out of whack. Done and done. Well, now what?

Well, nothing, if you are the writer and your mission is to revise that sentence for clarity. I would strongly advice using #1 and moving on.

What if you are the reader/analyzer? What then?

In our most recent timed write covering Li-Young Lee's poem "A Story," the opening line reads:

Sad is the man who is asked for a story / and can't come up with one.

So there is more to it than the first four words. Still, I get it. My job is not to rearrange the word order but to observe it and analyze it. What I observe is that the syntax is funny. Or, more specifically, the syntax is inverted. More specifically still, the noun and the adjective are inverted. And so is the emphasis. Sad gains prominence because Lee leads with it. Sad is a word I need to pay attention to, with all of its denotative and connotative meaning. More on that in a second.

Actually, not more. Let's stop right here. We have noticed that the syntax is worth analyzing. This is a huge step forward. Also, we have recognized the function of inverting the syntax, which in this case is to draw attention to the word sad. Another huge step forward.

Where do we go from here? We read the rest of the poem, looking to build connotative significance from the context. A tall order? Maybe. But very doable, because we nailed the first steps.

Grendel Trick-or-Treats at Hart: Text-based Inferences

One of the hardest parts of my job is selling my students the idea that I am not making things up as we go along. After all, gentle reader-student, isn't that what we think of English teacher questions? Especially the ones that land on quizzes? I know I did.

Well, let me assure you that we aren't making it up as we go along. We are stealing it from study guides published by professionals. And they're the ones making it up...

No!

English discussions are driven by questions. Some of them are surface level, plot-based questions with firm, definitive answers. Black and white answers. Like Scout Finch is a girl. Boxer is a horse who is turned into a bottle of glue. And Gatsby isn't his real name.

Fact, fact, fact. I like those quiz questions, don't you?

Inferences don't work that way. They demand our ability to intuit information from the facts. We need to assemble bits and pieces that span sentences, paragraphs, pages, even whole chapters. We must discern among these details which are the important ones without ignoring the rest of them. In fact, without ignoring any of them. Remember, good authors don't give us fluff. The fluff died on the editing floor long ago. What remains must be useful, somehow. This process, inferring, is harder than finding explicitly stated information. But even inference work is still grounded in the text.

Consider Grendel's trick-or-treating nightmare from chapter 4. To be clear, he shows up as a non-human carrying a human corpse. Whatever his reasons, however pure his motives, Grendel presents a frightening image. He must appear monstrous to the Danes as they are jamming out to the Shaper's song.

But is he a monster? Are we meant to view him as one?

Not here.

But in my opinion...

No. Stop. Not here. And not because I say. Because John Gardner, our esteemed author, says. He says many, many times all over the page. Providing quotes from Grendel ("Peace!" and "Mercy!" and "Friend!" and "Friend!"); writing Grendel into a position of submission and vulnerability (on his knees); supplying him with tears ("Waaa!"); causing him to run away and curse at the wind (supply your own four-letter words here...). To be sure, there is more than sufficient evidence to NOT view Grendel as a monster. Naïve maybe. Innocent probably. But not a monster. John Gardner writes this scene to elicit sympathy for this character in this moment of the book.

Still not convinced? Reread. That is our best tactic here. When it comes to inferring, we only have the words on the page. Return to the text! The proof is always in the pudding.

Poetry 1, Grendel 0

Late in chapter 3 of John Gardner's Grendel, our young creature-narrator is drawn in by the Shaper's song. Like everyone else in the room, Grendel is swept up in the art of the Shaper's craft, the weaving of music and mythology, with little bits of fact stuck here and there as decoration. Yet, unlike the Danes who roar with approval after, Grendel is stricken.

He claims to be "torn apart by poetry."

What a ridiculous sentiment, gentle reader! After all, poetry is, well, poetry. And we tend to hate (too strong... whole-heartedly disdain?... strongly dislike?) poetry. But it's not poetry Grendel means. It is the Art, capital A. It is the inspiration that seeps forth from the art, the inspirado that motivates men and women to do great feats afterward.

It is the jam tape before the big game.
It is the favorite playlist during the jog.
It is the comfort movie played at the end of a rough day.

It is the Art that tears Grendel apart. Check that. It is one step further: for Grendel, it is the content of the art which moves him to stress.

The Shaper is lying. Transmuting history. Changing names and dates and outcomes. Minimizing faults and exaggerating honor. He is changing Fact. And he is doing it so well as to raise his story up to the level of Art.

If only the rest of the audience could make that distinction. But maybe they do. Which causes this to be a very dangerous notion. After all, stories are important. And whether they are fiction or not, they have the chance to stand as Art if they are told well enough, by someone with the power to elevate it. They have the chance to endure. But do we not also have the responsibility to look into what we are allowing to endure? I don't know. Do we?

Poetry can tear nothing down (or build anything up, as it were) unless it has the teeth to do so. Do we not supply the teeth?

Inverse Relationships: Narrative Limits = Universal Themes

Back in August 2012 I wrote about J.R.R. Tolkien's thoughts on the narrative structure of Beowulf and the poem's lack of "steady advance."

(to read that entry, click http://mrguimondnondoer.blogspot.com/2012/08/beowulf-clunky-perfect-legend.html)

Tolkien takes this criticism head on, concluding that the epic does, in fact, fail to live up to the modernized version of Point A to Point B narrative arcs, but that it is this very failure that enlivens the tale with enough nuance, enough layering to elevate Beowulf the Story from mere tune to "composition." Indeed, Beowulf the Man benefits from this layering; we see him travel home, we hear him retell his own story, we witness him interacting with his uncle-king, Lord Hygelac, back in the safety and comfort of his own land. In short, we see Beowulf in his sweat pants with his hair down. Only, he never, ever wears sweat pants, and his hair is of no concern. Too heroic.

A second fascinating observation made by Professor Tolkien centers on Beowulf's universality. He comments that the poetic structure is "not a perfect vehicle of the theme or themes that came to hidden life in the poet's mind," and proceeds to observe that Beowulf the Hero should stand as the quintessential hero for all humanity in all time, but that he would be more easily seen as such if only he would have stayed home, if he would not have sailed to Denmark for Grendel's head. Beowulf staying put, Tolkien asserts, makes the "stage not narrower, but symbolically wider." One people, one set of problems, one hero to overcome them. With limits come just the one focal point: Beowulf the Hero. Like Bernoulli's Principle of pressure and volume: squeeze a water balloon and you elevate the liquid's pressure.

Consider:
*Batman dominates Gotham City. The streets of Gotham = universal justice.
*John Proctor fights for the soul of Salem. Salem = universal gossip.
*The Sneetches have their fight on just the one beaches. Those beaches = world community. Those Sneetches = one humanity.

As it stands, Beowulf does travel across the sea; he does help the Danes (i.e. not his clan); he does step outside of the easily defined literary town limits of Geatland and gerrymanders right on over to a second set of problems. So I suppose this second set of problems threatens the universality by flooding the story with too many elements. Too many moving parts. Only, Beowulf is Beowulf. He overcomes, resolves, and comes home. And then he retells his story. He reestablishes himself at home by recounting what he did abroad. This benefits the characterization of Beowulf the Man as well as provides nuance to Beowulf the Hero. Which is precisely Tolkien's point. In this case, the epic poem's "clunky" narrative structure allows for this digression and is actually helped by it.

In short, it is true to life. Beowulf the Man looks human; Beowulf the Hero isn't perfect, which in turn makes him more compelling. The flaws allow a conversation. They demand it.

So, I suppose Beowulf is awesome. But not perfectly so. And so his story endures.

Tips on Writing: The Function of Figurative Language

Writing is hard work. It doesn't always have to be difficult, but it is always challenging if you seek to do it well. Because good writing requires good thinking. Consider, gentle reader:

Good writing is 90% good thinking done before the writing.

I just made that up. That percentage is totally arbitrary. Gardner and King and Strunk would quite possibly cringe at it, but I don't think they would disagree with the idea here: that good writing derives from quality thinking done fully and done well before the writing begins.

One of our biggest challenges in AP Lit. is analyzing the function of figurative language. We can identify literary devices, can categorize them into their proper rhetorical tropes and schemes. We can articulate themes in broad strokes. We can characterize people and things as good or bad, as positive or negative. But can we analyze what the figurative language actually accomplishes in the text? Can we connect the definitions of these terms with the context of the poem or novel surrounding it? Can we qualify our themes and characterization? And finally, can we write about it?

Let's take a quick look at Seamus Heaney's poem "Blackberry-Picking," from lines 15-16:

"Our hands were peppered / with thorns, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's."

Heaney provides us with a reflection on the memory of the childhood madness of over-picking a blackberry field to the point of wastefulness. In their euphoric glee, the children cut themselves to pieces on the thorns as they lust for more and more bucketfuls of blackberries, so many, in fact, that most of berries later rot in the barn. Yikes! What awful little whelps these children are, their hands peppered with thorns, their palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

Sticky as a murdering pirate's.

The children are murdering pirates.

Murderers!!!

No, gentle writer. Let's back up and quickly discuss the function of the figurative language in this line. At first glance, I notice two pieces of figurative language:

1. the simile palms sticky as Bluebeard's
2. the allusion to Bluebeard the Pirate.

Ok. So we have identified the figurative language. Check. And we know the definition of both terms, simile and allusion. Check again. What next? Here's what. Answer the following questions:

How does the simile function in the context of the poem?
How does the allusion function in the context of the poem?

A quick sidebar: so far, all of this stuff is thinking. Sure, you might be annotating things along the way, providing yourself with notes to consult later, but let's be clear: none of this belongs in your essay. This is all pre-writing info, stuff to clarify in your head before you attempt to organize it in your paragraph.

For the sake of brevity, let's tackle question #2: how does this allusion to Bluebeard function in the context of the poem? Now, since you've read this poem already, I will briefly highlight that Heaney organizes his poem into 2 stanzas, and the first stanza is exclusively about describing the manic act of children picking berries. And the kiddies are out of control. But out of control as children are out of control. They aren't looking to pillage and plunder literally, there is no real threat of violence, but they are acting like it. Because they are kids.

When Heaney inserts the line about Bluebeard, he is alluding to the fact that these crazy kids are like that crazy pirate who murdered his wives. Now, the moment of truth:

Crazy how? How can we qualify the word "crazy" in our analysis?
Murderer how? How can we qualify the word "murderer" in our analysis?

Well, how do we? We revisit the text. Remember, these are kids Heaney is describing, and none of them belong in a juvenile detention center. They are crazy excited and crazy wound up and crazy immature but crazy dedicated to the task of picking and so they become crazy cut by thorns that they don't notice until later. They are children acting crazy. Not crazy psychotic or crazy unsettling like a creepy Boo Radley.

Crazy how? Crazy, qualified by the context of the poem. The allusion to Bluebeard activates the ideas of murder and danger. But we're still describing children. Or at least childish behavior.

Crazy, qualified.

This is challenging stuff. And this is quite a lot to process for 2-4 sentences worth of analysis. You might be questioning to cost-benefit ratio of this. Perhaps it is small, but only for now. Only here at the beginning. Because we get good at this. Very good. And you will do much of this in your head, naturally, without formally going through the steps. At that point, the only thing we will have to do is write it down as clearly and concisely and accurately as possible.

And that will be a good day.

Summer Reading Program

What are you reading, gentle reader? Anything other than the ticker feed at the bottom of ESPN? Something longer than 140 characters at a time? Perhaps a chunk of text that comes above the COMMENTS section?

What?

How about Vince Flynn's The Last Man or Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach. How about that one book you've read every summer since you were twelve. Those count, you know.

What?

How about Gatsby. Again?

What?

A Very Guilty Pleasure

So I found myself watching Bloodsport on TV a few nights ago. You know Bloodsport, that 1988 action thriller starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Frank Dux, the "American" trying to win the Kumite. What's a Kumite? I can't help you. Perhaps in another blog, gentle reader. Anyway, Bloodsport has all the ingredients of a late '80s movie that makes my wife roll her eyes in polite, I-suffer-this-awfulness-on-my-television-because-I-love-you-but-you-can't-make-me-watch-it disdain:

1. a backstory about loyalty, impossible odds, and crazy non sequiturs
2. a terrible Belgian accent from the American protagonist
3. characters wearing tank-tops tucked into khakis, on purpose
4. an inspirational 80's pop rock song about 2/3s of the way into the film
5. really fantastic and absolutely realistic kung fu, complete with back to back roundhouse kicks in slow motion that would make Pat Swayze from Roundhouse blush

I have no excuse. It's a terrible movie. And I can't not watch it. Like Roadhouse, or Gone in 60 seconds or Happy Gilmore. I am a grown man. I should know better. But I don't care. In light of it being July 5, I am feeling incredibly patriotic and free, so I want to celebrate myself. Like Whitman, I want to loaf and celebrate me. Do I contradict myself? Oh well.

Some favorite lines:

"Ok USA!"

"What the hell's a dim mack?"

"Very impressive. But brick not hit back."

That last one comes from the fighter-villain Chong Li, a non-English speaker, so don't hold the poor syntax against him. He's trying to intimidate Van-Damme's character. Of course, we all know that Van-Damme's characters can never be intimidated. They don't threaten. Because of the roundhouses.

I'm curious. What are your guilty pleasures? I love this topic, because it gives us a chance to breathe easy, side-step any literary or Hollywood heavy lifting, and just kick around some titles of entertainment. How summer is that?

By the way, I am finishing Ian McEwan's Saturday. Because reading in the summer is allowed...

College Tip #14

"Find your study spot early."

Claim it, like a plot of soil in a Wild West land grab; like a hunting territory to be protected against orca and bears; like an ancient burial ground that brings things back to life only imbibed with mystical powers.

Like your college GPA depends on it.

You see, gentle reader, it does. Your study spot will dictate your staying power in college. It is non-negotiable. You will either make the grade or you will not, and you will not if you don't carve out a quiet, sustainable place to lay your books and your technology and your caffeine about you, a wall of academia to firmly push the world back with, to be pushed upon by the world.

For the record, your dorm room (or other living situation) cannot count as your study spot. Because other people are there. The math is that simple:

[All things ready to be studied. A knock on the door. Enter any other human.]
HUMAN: "Hey, what are you doing?"
YOU: "Nothing, wanna do something?"
HUMAN: "Uh huh."
[You and other human exit room. Or stay in room, doing things not studying. End scene.]

 

As for me, I went Underground. To IWU's old Sheean Library, basement level, English literature side, southeast corner carrel. I had a carrel! Now this was pre-phone, gentle reader, and I did not yet own a laptop, so I carried nothing with me but books and pens and such. Antiquity, I know. But that is where I carried my stuff. And I sat there, staring at books and notes. I sat there and studied. And studied. And I wrote. I reorganized. I churned things over. I also daydreamed, and fantastically, I went wandering up and down those rows of literature. I read Yeats. And Frost. Yes, I was wasting time, but I was wasting time reading Poe and Steinbeck.

I became a student down there.

Listen, this isn't about pretention. Or impeding your social agenda. I don't care where your study spot is, or what decorations hang near it, or who else shares it, or how severely isolated it is, or what tree you had to fell in order to supply the fuel to heat the room, or other such madness. This isn't a contest. But it is about the very real reason why you are attending college in the fall. To do college-level academics.

You can't accomplish those without your study spot. Mine was in the basement. There were no windows, it smelled like old books, the carpet was clean but old and trampled, the lighting was poor, the desk had a weird rut burrowed into the right-hand side which made writing on single sheets of paper tricky, but it was mine. I had to find it out. And I still remember it, among other things.

Happy hunting.

It's time to graduate, seniors!

To conclude, gentle reader, please continue. Onward and upward. With awe and excitement and whatever else you prefer. Just continue.


The single greatest lesson to extract from your years stationed at your English desk, like a grizzled Army Commando posted at a missile silo, is to respect the laws of inertia. You want to be an object in motion, because they tend to do stuff. Sometimes the stuff is ridiculous, and most of the time imperfect, but it is stuff. Your stuff. Gardner tells us that life is all conjunctions, one damn thing after another, a perpetual list of ands. Art deals in the subordinate, the because. But only about things that are doing. Like your stuff.


So go do your stuff.


In case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening and ---.


There is nothing either good or bad but ---.


Make it a great day or not, the choice ---.


The river is moving. The blackbird must be ---.


That which we are, we ---.


And so we beat on, boats against the ---.


Have a great summer, and then a great fall, and then a great winter.


And then.

No, I haven't read Divergent,

and that is perfectly okay. You see, Divergent and its other series books are not "up my alley" as they say. I want to be crystal clear with this: Veronica Roth has done something tremendous, and her books must be good. You simply don't garner the following she has without tapping into something powerful in the reader's mind.


The reader's mind. Just not mine.


You see, gentle reader, I am not the target audience. And rather than diverge (you see what I did there?) off course and into a hoity-toity discussion on literary merit, substance, endurability throughout the ages and epochs of all time, let us all stop and appreciate what Roth has accomplished:


She made it awesome, once again, to read.


Let us consider the timeline, starting at present and moving backward in time and space:

Divergent

The Hunger Games

Twilight

Harry Potter

That is over a decade of fans wanting to read the next installment. Waiting. WAITING. ON BOOKS! TO COME OUT!!! I can still recall visiting my local Border's Bookstore (shed small tear here...) at 11:something p.m. to grab my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, waiting in line for an hour, standing next to kids and adults alike dressed in long robes and funny hats, and then driving home to read it. Actually, I was delivering it to my lovely wife who was nine months pregnant and desperate for distraction. I believe she finished it in one hour flat. Potter is her thing, you see.


Back on point: Divergent is not my thing. Neither was The Hunger Games if we're keeping score. But really, we are not. I love the idea that all the pockets of readers out there have their thing, and that they fight over it, and call the other things lesser things. That we get hoity-toity and territorial about our things. For the record, I am a Tolkien man. LOTR is my thing, and all other things listed here pale in comparison to hobbits and Nazgul and seeing stones and old kings with weird names. Avada Kedavra that, Voldemort.


No, I haven't read Divergent. I may, if only to see what all the fuss is about. And there is a bunch. But that's okay. And the next time I swing by and arrogantly point out that your taste in literature isn't as good as mine, it's also okay to fire back. After all, one could do worse than be a swinger of birches.


Or a fighter of taste in books.

THE UNFERTH ACCIDENT in print

It's here! Forgive me, gentle reader, for a moment of self-collection. Like Rob (John Cusack's character ) from High Fidelity, I, the critic, the professional appreciator of all things literary, am putting something out there into the world.


I am very proud to present The Unferth Accident available in print:

 

Keep emailing those folks at SparkNotes.com. Because we want to see this book placed squarely between a hyperlink for Catcher in the Rye summary notes and a TSwift Look-a-Like poll. It belongs there.


Immediate orders can visit HERE. Official release date on Amazon has actually come and gone, with links on B&N to follow. There is an issue with how the author name is displaying a bit weird on Amazon at present, but we are fixing the glitch.


"Alright, let's get in there." (I need to go. My daughter has just finished her Saturday morning fort and has been waiting patiently. And I have been summoned.)

The Bee's Knees

Do you ever wonder, gentle reader, where in the blue blazes certain phrases come from? What in tarnation do we mean by these slangy turns of expression? Are they slangy? By George, I just don't know.

What I do know, as an official language appreciator -- and, therefore, professional non-doer -- it that using these types of phrases is the bee's knees.

The bee's knees!

Apparently, this harmless little nonsense phrase was thrown around a little during the late 18th century to denote "something of a small nature" or just plain old "smallness." The initial thinking behind this phrase derived from a literal bee and its literal knee and the pollen caught there. The tiny bits of pollen. Small amounts. Smallness. The bee's knees.

That little yelling match I had with the sandwich artist at Subway about the correct way to cut my sandwich bread was the bee's knees. It won't lead to any trouble. I'm a regular there. They know me. And if they didn't know me before, they certainly do now. Besides, I can watch to make sure nobody spits in my sandwich. Clear Plexiglas.

(Were there sandwich artists in the 18th century? A bee's knees issue.)

Fast forward to the Roaring '20s and we observe the flappers instituting their sense of cool upon this almost-forgotten kenning. Sans hyphen, of course. (No offense to Beowulf or his bard.) The bee's knees was thrown in with other nonsense phrases to simply mean cool. As in groovy or sweet or rad or boss.

As in cool. No antonym for warm, no verb for to decrease temperature. Just cool.

That monster truck Harley with the shark fins and the fireworks and the bacon. That thing is the bee's knees.

That sandwich artist reference above sounds illicitly bad, redundantly so, like a Daisy Buchanan screw-up, which, in its offending awfulness, is the bee's knees. The awfulness, not the deed.

The what?

The bee's knees.

Good Advice from a Bad Guy?

"You can say that things could have turned out differently. That they could have been some other way. But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are this way. You're asking that I second say the world. Do you see?"

So says Anton Chigurh, the chilling, pseudo angel of death nihilist that haunts the pages of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. He says this right before killing the possibly most innocent character in the book, killing her for some logical reason completely disconnected from her. Killing her after conceding to the fairness of a coin toss, which she loses.

Killing her. But not before responding to her pleas of how things could have been different. Pleas which are meant to challenge Chigurh to alter his course, to reconsider, to deliberate. To choose a different path.

There is no other path. There is this path.

But you have the power to move elsewhere. To do something else.

No. This is how the world is. This is reality.

Nuh uh.

Yeah huh.



I want to side-step the metaphysics here. Messy, those. I want to instead focus attention on this unwavering view of the actual world as it actually exists. Who among us possesses the ability to take this view, this absolutist stance?

It would be ludicrous, gentle reader, to tackle the idea of defining reality in this tiny little blog. So let us consider the moral toughness, the grit that is required to look upon your life, to set down all the things that you wish were there, that you had expected to be there, that ought to be there, and see what actually is. What kind of discipline does that take? What kind of self-effacing humor? What kind of potential shame?

Chigurh is a psychopath. But the method to his madness allows me to examine my own fortitude, my level of stick-to-it-ness, under the most extreme literary microscope, and from a safe distance. I can put the book down at any time, and Chigurh isn't killing real people. But his commitment is real. To his Ideal. To Himself. To a true, unbiased, uncomplicated version of his World.

Good advice from a bad guy? I'll say yes. With the qualifier that I want to better apply such an absolutist view to the world. Sing walls says Beowulf to Grendel as he plows his head into the wall. Sing of the hardness of walls. The walls exist. And they are hard. And I want to be able to acknowledge both whether I am Beowulf or Grendel. Whether they help me or hurt me. Whether I want to or not.

Virtue exists in such moments.

Don't Criticize Aunt Emily

"She lived in an attic."

"Yeah, she was the whacky cat-lady."

"Didn't she wear all white all the time?"

"She never left her room."

"She was crazy."

Why, gentle reader? Why do we react this way? Why is this the all-the-time response to being presented with Emily Dickinson poetry? Is it merely because no one else lived the way she did? Or that we know so little about all the other poets? Is it something deeper, some humanly natural urge to cast down those things that are not like ourselves, feeling safer inside of our criticism? She's a weirdo, I am not; therefore, I feel good.

Why is Emily Dickinson reduced to her lowest common denominator?

We side-step her with incriminating notions about her craziness. Dickinson lived in her attic, she had a lot of cats, she never got out. Dickinson used a lot of hyphens, too many hyphens.

Too many hyphens??!! Since when did any of us care at all about the number of hyphens used by poets??? Come on, she must be kind of important, sort of regarded. After all, she is one of the seven revolving screen-savers on my Kindle. That must count for something.

Let us not devolve, gentle reader. Let us breathe in:

The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—

The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As Sponges—Buckets—do—

The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—       

 

 

Do you smell the wisdom? Can you taste the nuance? Don't you sense the truth?

 

I don't get it either. (All right, maybe I do. At least, perhaps, better than the first-time reader) But "getting it" is not the endgame. We are asking the wrong question when we read a poem and say "So what's it about?"

 

Because poetry isn't "about" things; instead, let us consider poetry to be a way of things.

 

A way of seeing, a way of hearing, a way of knowing, of experiencing, of imagining.

 

Dickinson's assertion in the final stanza that the Brain and God "differ if they do as Syllable from Sound" implies very little difference at all. The difference between the raw, naturalness of sound and its definable segment, the syllable. It is the distance between a thing and itself again, before and just after being named, or categorized, or defined. By us. Our brains have infinite capacity, like God, to contain and absorb and also to define and label. We can allow for unrestrained rawness and in the same breath call it so.

 

But which is bigger, the Brain or God? Which is better?

 

I don't know either. Not according to this poem, and not for myself. (All right, maybe I do for myself, but to hint at it here would be to potentially influence your own reading, and that is not what non-doers do) But if I read this again. And maybe again.

 

And I start to get a sense of things. 

Hello darkness my old friend

I've come to talk with you again.

If only I were listening.

And why would I want to? It's March Madness season, which means I have no less than three apps open right now, each one tracking my seven different brackets, along with the requisite play-by-play score updates, analysis, Giant-Killer tracker, Bracket-Buster warner, Insider predictor, and the constant flow of the Twitter feed push alerting its way onto my screen.

I also have text conversations simultaneously going with 4 different groups of people -- all told numbering 31 individual friends/acquaintances -- discussing the tracking of my seven different brackets, along with the requisite play-by-play score updates, analysis, Giant-Killer tracker, Bracket-Buster warner, Insider predictor, and the constant flow of the Twitter feed push alerting its way onto my screen.

Meanwhile, I am playing 14 games of Words with Friends with 14 people, some friends, some acquaintances, some perfect strangers (2 of whom must be a robot, because their vocabularies are insanely, frustratingly perfect). My Facebook page is dinging, because I posted my infant son holding a copy of my brackets. Because he is so adorable, I have 10s and 20s of people Liking this photo because he is adorable with another 10s and 20s of people ignoring the kid and commenting on the actual brackets themselves. To which I am compelled to reply.

The television is on. Basketball on no less than 4 channels. Non-stop analysis on another two. Commercials playing on all 6 at once (I know this because I flip between all 6 to make sure, while trying to watch Gone in 60 Seconds, because I can't not watch that movie when it's on). I have music playing in the background. At least I think I do. I remember turning the music on. But I may have lost track of the background. It is buried deep at the moment.

My phone is vibrating. And dinging. I wait. It is now playing music, my ringtone, Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" which means that if there is still music playing in the background, it is now competing with the speakers on my iPhone. As well as the music from the commercial playing on my television. And the different-sounding dinging alerting me of my robo-opponent playing more impossible Words. Also, the chirping of some weather report I forgot that I set. Rain coming.

I think I hear my infant son crying. Is he still upstairs? Huh.

In his 1946 essay "On Silence" Aldous Huxley identifies that monumental technological achievement, the radio, as the new and pervasive medium for noise, calling it "nothing but a conduit through which prefabricated din can flow into our homes."

I wonder how much harsher Mr. Huxley would assess the newest tech wonder, the smartphone, against the radio. How much more devastated he would claim our personal worlds to be because of it. How much noisier our personal headspaces are because of it.

I wonder. And I can only do so by turning it off. All of it.

The vision that still remains in Simon & Garfunkel's song exists -- wait for it, gentle reader -- within the sound of silence.

And I think the silence exists not by looking down, to my screen, but rather up, to my world.

I think.