2 October 1879: Poet Wallace Stevens was born just up to road in Reading, Pennsylvania. Before beginning his career in poetry, Wallace worked in journalism, attended law school, and worked for an insurance company in Hartford, CT. Even after obtaining moderate success as a poet, he continued to work, saying: “It gives a man character as a poet to have this daily contact with a job.”
Here’s one of my favorite Stevens poems:
Anecdote of the Jar
I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. The jar was round upon the ground And tall and of a port in air. It took dominion everywhere. The jar was gray and bare. It did not give of bird or bush, Like nothing else in Tennessee.
Also on this day:
Pirate poet Shel Silverstein was born in 1930.
Graham Greene was born in 1904. Greene is notable for me because of his mention in Donnie Darko. The film enticed me to read Greene’s 1954 short story “The Destructors” and it remains one of my favorite pieces of short fiction.
As you may know, I have been busily working to complete my master’s thesis over the last several months. The paper, in general, is about graffiti and its practitioners who use street art to reclaim public space from corporate advertisers. Though the thesis is theoretically grounded in the works of Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard, much of my research concerns heretofore little-studied artists and techniques; as a result, many of my sources are flickr streams, blogs, and internet discussions. Having been taught for years that internet sources aren’t wholly kosher for research, I’ve had a difficult time justifying to myself that a large portion of my research is, indeed, valid. After convincing myself (because what else could I do?), I began questioning the validity of the internet.
Are blogs valid sources of research?
In recent years, notable scholars such as Stanley Fish and Paul Krugman have been blogging actively and I can’t see why their thoughts on the blog are any less relevant than what is published in journals or the Yale UP. It’s not as if their words, printed on the web, are less scrutinized than their academic publications. If anything, their blogs have more fact checkers than any peer review panel. Scholars today, for the most part, cannot publish nonsense without being called on the carpet for it.
Less famously, though perhaps more importantly, many contemporary scholars are opening up their research and putting much of it on the internet through their blogs, rather than reserving all their thoughts for scholarly journals. Mark Sample, professor at George Mason University, used his site Sample Reality, to discuss the literary hoax previously discussed here involving David Foster Wallace and Jay Murray Siskind. Along with cracking scholarly codes and jokes, Sample champions opening up his research and consequently shares his Zotero library for the world to see. It is his thought that the humanities can only benefit from a more open approach to research, and I agree.
All of that serves to say that I believe blogs and other writings published only online do, in fact, work for the purpose of academic research. I would never advise a student to rely on the internet (e.g. Wikipedia) as a sole research tool and I cannot say enough about the value of the library–using actual books!–but our academic culture is moving more and more toward open sources and we cannot allow our research to suffer by excluding wonderful sources from consideration.
As you may or may not have guessed from the title (which is taken from a Joanna Newsom song) and the associated image, The Treachery of Images by Magritte), today I want to talk about structuralism.
Earlier this summer, I was given the opportunity to teach a class session at Harding University’s Honor Choir for high school students. For the subject matter, I was given carte blance and was, more or less, sent to town. Since this was, in fact, honor choir and was attended primarily by chorus geeks (I a self-professed member of their ranks ) I reckoned that it would be best to stick to music related topics. Blending my love for music and all things literary, I put together a section on the importance of song lyrics.
My primary goal was for the students to realize the importance of the words they are singing and hearing in their daily music consumption. Too often I hear that listeners don’t pay attention to the lyrics of song, especially in regards to hip hop (the phrase “It’s not the words, it’s the beat!!” irks me to no end). To achieve this goal, I juxtaposed songs that have decided poetic value with more contemporary songs that may not be deemed too important.
Because I so enjoy the musical stylings of Sufjan Stevens, I couldn’t resist putting him in there. I placed his song “Flint (For the Unemployed and Underpaid)” in dialogue with Robert Burns’ poem “Afton Waters” (as performed by Nickel Creek). I tried to set up both Burns and Sufjan as poets of the working class and draw parallels between their subject matter, sentiment, and end goals.
During the week, the students were learning seven different songs to be performed at the end of the week. One of those songs was “Jabberwocky,” written by Lewis Carroll. Having encountered this poem, and subsequent explication given by Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass, I decided to connect the students to this song through structuralism! With “Jabberwocky,” I connected the song “This Side of the Blue” by Joanna Newsom and threaded together the notion that both poets (Carroll and Newsom) are, more than anything, playing with language and having a good time of it.
I didn’t get too in depth in regard to structuralism because a.) they’re high school students and b.) I haven’t studied it too deeply for a few years and I didn’t want to strain myself too much with research on top of my thesis work.
It may be wishful thinking, but I think they understood the general concept of the slipperiness of signifiers and signifieds. And really, that’s all I could ask for; that, and getting to force high school students (who, in general, listen to terrible music [I know I did, much to my shame]) listen to both Sufjan Stevens and Joanna Newsom. Overall, it was a pretty great week.
As of late, I’ve been working to raise my ranking in the realm of coffee geekiness. I have spent probably far too much time at Coffee Geek and similar sites, but I’m not ashamed. Due to my coffee geekiness, I was quite excited to be visiting Chicago, the home of Intelligentsia Coffee. They have three shops in Chicago and, as strange as this is, I visited all three in only two days.
One of the highlights of Intelligentsia is that all their stores feature the Clover coffee machine that we’ve all read so much about. My first cup of Clover-brewed coffee was a single-origin coffee from El Salvador at the Monadnock location that was, frankly, underwhelming. I’m fairly certain that my palate was tainted by a night of driving while consuming high energy drinks and bad gas station coffee, so I’ll not count this taste as legit.
Luckily, my second taste at the Millennium Park Coffeebar was much tastier. It was Guatemalan Soledad and was delicious. I also sampled a regular espresso which (to my delight) was pulled on a semi-automatic machine–not super automatic like Starbucks. Perhaps the best part of visiting this particular coffeebar was that they were playing the full album Guitar Romantic by The Exploding Hearts.
Last of the three is their flagship shop on Broadway. The trip there was interesting because I knew nothing of Chicago and got fairly lost. It’s a wonder that mass transit maps aren’t superimposed on street-level maps more often. I’m no cartographer or director of tourism, but that just makes sense. Again, I sampled the suggested espresso blend and also got a latte that was delightfully presented with a rosetta (quite similar to the one pictured above) prepared by America’s best barista. Both were delightful, but I did manage to spill a pretty good amount of the latte on the floor–sorry Intelligentsia employees.
Overall, my high expectations of Intelligentsia Coffee were met. My only regret is that I did not get a pound of beans to bring home. Maybe next time.
Last Wednesday night, I had the good fortune to drive to Chicago to spend an excellent extended weekend with my good friend Aaron. Due to a coworker’s maternity leave, Aaron was not able to miss work which meant that I would get to entertain myself in America’s third largest city for the better part of two days. I figured that the city had enough to offer that I would not grow bored (I didn’t) or tired (I most certainly did–but that was due to driving through the night then not sleeping before I tried to tackle the city, full on).
In a few hours on my first day there (I rolled in at about 7 CST Thursday morning) I was able to get through most of the essential touristy things a visitor must see: Sears Tower, Millennium Park, Buckingham Fountain, etc. Having seen those sites, I was free to spend most of Thursday at the Art Institute of Chicago. My only regret in going there was that I was a bit too exhausted from the drive to fully enjoy its offerings. What struck me most about this museum was its modern and contemporary art collections. With a few oversights, they present a nice overview of the 20th into the 21st century of art. Off topic a bit, but if I hear the phrase, “And why is this art? I could do that!” one more time, I may harm someone. In addition to their 20th century collection, the Art Institute has a great selection of Impressionists, including Seurat’s beautiful “Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte.”
To ease my fatigue, I found that the parks on either side of the Art Institute are wonderfully shaded and peaceful–a little sanctuary right off of Michigan Ave. In the evening, we grabbed some wonderful Chicago-style pizza off Broadway and not much else.
Friday I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art and was a little less than blown away. It seemed as if much of their collection is not displayed and only carted out if it fits the theme at any particular time. I suppose this is desirable from a curator’s standpoint, but for the average visitor, it is disappointing. Despite my disappointment, the museum has some incredible works. The current main exhibition is Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson and features some incredible conceptual pieces by the Danish-Icelandic artist. Eliasson is best known for the installation of a waterfall under the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City.
Beyond the museums and tourist attractions, I got a very good feel from Chicago. It’s much cleaner than Philadelphia (sorry Philly), less hectic than New York, and we had great weather while there. I’ll hold off complete judgment until I’ve been in Chicago for the winter.
Last week, Starbucks issued a fact sheet about their newest venture: 15th Ave. Coffee and Tea. The gist of this new store is that it is a Starbucks (that happens to sell beer, wine, and ice cream) without the branding of a typical Starbucks.
The company is attempting to replicate the feel of a locally owned and operated coffee shop and many don’t believe that is possible. The images from inside the shop are pretty stunning. The Starbucks corporation has obviously thrown its corporate designers and, more importantly, corporate dollars behind this “local shop.” The ambiance is folksy, yet clean and efficient–the best of what one wants from a local coffee shop. Unfortunately, I doubt this model will be able to effectively replicate the vibe of a local shop. Peter Merholz agrees, writing:
Your favorite local coffeehouse is the product of someone’s passion, dedication, and probable borderline craziness. 15th Ave is the product of corporate product design and development.
What is most interesting to me, however, is that the opening of this store indicates the failure of Starbucks as a brand. They have spent decades and millions (if not billions) of dollars to solidify Starbucks as your first thought upon hearing ‘coffee’ and it appears to have backfired.
Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, has been concerned with the over “commoditization of the Starbucks experience” for years but this shift seems to run deeper than corporate decisions that moved the coffee chain from an experience to a money making venture. Instead, Starbucks has over-saturated their ideal market and, as a backlash, many people have–again–sought out the comfort of a locally owned, non-corporate coffee experience. For many, the Starbucks brand holds no cache.
Might we again see items sold for use value instead of the label on the packaging? Could this be the death knell of our wholly branded consumer culture?
With that being said, my Starbucks doppio espresso at lunch was delicious.
As has been reported widely all acoss the internets, David Cronenberg is moving toward adapting Don DeLillo’s novel Cosmopolis for film. Along with this project, a film version of DeLillo’s second novel, End Zone, is in production starring Josh Hartnett as Gary Harkness–the protagonist runningback featured in DeLillo’s narrative of paranoia, football, and nuclear war.
Though it may deserve a second reading (and weighing in at only 224 pages, it wouldn’t be a massive undertaking), I did not much care for Cosmopolis. The concept–a 28 year old multibillionaire traveling across Manhattan in his limo to get a haircut and the various troubles and impediments he encounters–is intriguing enough but I feel that the book falls flat at times, though you may certainly disagree with me. Despite my general dislike of the book, I feel like it may make a quite good film. The narrative nicely follows Aristotle’s classical unities and–unlike other DeLillo works–can most likely be well covered in the space of one film. Hang-ups aside, I’ll surely be watching out for its release.
If directors would consider my opinion, I’d much rather see an adaptation of White Noise, Libra, or (despite its length) Underworld–or perhaps just “Pafko at the Wall,” Underworld’s prologue. Either of these works weave a much more compelling story that, I think, would better draw in an audience.
Texts have a curious way of affecting their readers differently at different points of their lives. (I’m tempted to take this off toward a discussion of Stanley Fish’s notion of interpretative communities, but I’ll resist–though I’ll link to the wiki that is decently comprehensive on the matter)
Never have I thought about my shifting tastes as a reader, but upon reflection my preferences and emotional availabilities have most certainly changed through the years. During my younger years I was pulled toward stories of action and adventure because, I can only imagine, as a child your future is wholly an adventure. Nothing is set and your personal story can take an infinite number of different shapes. Moving through middle and high school, I was most affected by narratives that worked through shifting familial roles, especially between father son. It’s not as if my relationship with my dad was strained (in fact, it was [and is] quite the opposite), but as I grew toward manhood our relationship shifted closer and closer to a friendship, more than that of authority figure and subordinate, and any story that allowed me to better identify those emotions was particularly stirring. Now that I am married and more-or-less an adult, I am more often struck by stories of marriage, family, and career. I think it’s only natural that the stories that I can best identify with in the moment stand out most to me.
This afternoon, I had the pleasure of reading “An Open Letter” written by Kathy Rhodes to her husband, shortly after his unexpected passing. There is an openness to her prose that simply gutted me at my desk; since I am in public I had to maintain a sense of propriety but it took all the force of my will to keep tears at bay. Her honesty, love, and still-nagging guilt read clearly throughout the letter and her personal bravery is certainly apparent.
Though the letter was originally found on her blog, it can also be found in The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 3 published by The Creative Nonfiction Foundation.
28 July 1844: English poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in Stratford, England. Hopkins’ posthumous 20th century fame secured his place among the most highly regarded Victorian poets. His innovations in his style, most notable sprung rhythm, shook the establishment of poetry and the density of his verse leaves scholars still less-than-certain in their explications.
He was raised in the Anglican church but converted to Catholicism and–indeed–decided to become a Jesuit priest. His poetry is largely devoted to devotion. Throughout his life, Hopkins suffered what might today be diagnosed as unipolar depression but, in his last moments said, “I am so happy, I am so happy.”
One of my favorite Hopkins poems is “God’s Grandeur.”
“God’s Grandeur”
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs–
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
One fantastic advantage of our contemporary age is the relative ease with which we can can contact those we admire. A quick anecdote:
My father, a life-long fan of The Who, tried to call Pete Townshend on his birthday (which, incidentally, is May 15th) to wish him many happy returns. After extensive searching, he was able to speak to an operator in London, but said operator would not divulge Mr. Townshend’s phone number and, sadly, my father’s hopes to wish his rock idol a happy birthday were dashed.
In the present day, however, we have much better lines of communication–even to those that, in the past, seemed unreachable. As an undergraduate, I read a great article by Keen Butterworth on Deliverance but needed further explanation on some fine points. Instead of lamenting my inability to get an answer, I quickly found his e-mail address, sent a message, and got a reply all within a few hours.
Even more recently, I read an interview of Harold Bloom in which he describes the Judge from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian as “evil incarnate” and found myself thinking, “Hmm. 2666 deals pretty directly with evil, but the evil therein goes completely unnamed and–for the most part–unexperienced. I wonder what Professor Bloom thinks of it.” Thanks to the magic of the internet and Yale University’s Web site, I was able to find his e-mail information with no difficulty, send him my inquiry and get this response:
Dear Mr. Thomas: I suspect Bolano is another period piece. His excess attracts but flows away. Harold Bloom
Sure, it’s brief, but Harold Bloom answered my inquiry. While I certainly don’t take everything he says or writes as gospel, his distaste of Bolaño sours my enjoyment of the novel. Even before the tepid response from Professor Bloom, I wouldn’t venture to say that 2666 will be an important novel a generation from now, but I’m certainly willing to bet that it will be academically important for at least the next decade or so. It may flow away, but it’s viscous enough to stick around for awhile.
