Today’s theme for ENGL 203-04 is Paul Geremia’s “Henry David Thoreau,” a song about the man who, in his time, was the swingin-est transcendentalatin’ cat alive.
Yes and no
Graff and Birkenstein, p. 63:
“Yes and no.” “Yes, but . . .” “Although I agree up to a point, I still insist . . .” These are just some of the ways you can make your argument complicated and nuanced while maintaining a clear, reader-friendly framework. The parallel structure — “yes and no”; “on the one hand I agree, on the other I disagree” — enables readers to place your argument on that map of positions we spoke of earlier in this chapter while still keeping your argument sufficiently complex.
Compare Martina Navratilova on Serena Williams in today’s New York Times:
Serena Williams has part of it right. There is a huge double standard for women when it comes to how bad behavior is punished — and not just in tennis.
But in her protests against an umpire during the United States Open final on Saturday, she also got part of it wrong.
Read the full article, a model of the approach that Graff and Birkenstein call “Agree and Disagree Simultaneously,” which they also call “our favorite way of responding” (62) to what “they say.”
More meta moves that matter
Last week in “Fluid Readers, Fluid Texts,” we looked at Graff and Birkenstein’s They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. If’s worth noting that in their effort to offer practical guidance on good academic writing, Graff and Birkenstein quickly and naturally make the shift we’ve described in previous discussions as moving “up one level of abstraction.” There’s simply no way they can argue for the value of their practical advice without getting theoretical, without getting “meta.” They don’t call attention to this move, but it’s there all the same. In the first paragraph of their introduction, they describe writing as a particular kind of activity – an activity, like playing the piano, shooting a basketball, or driving a car – that is learned and that can be broken down into a sequence of “moves.” Not all human activities are of this type.
Behind that first paragraph, then, lies the theoretical question “What is academic writing?” – a question to which the answer is no more obvious than the answer to the question, “What is a text?”
Graff and Birkenstein go further: the move-based activity that writing most closely resembles – perhaps is simply a form of – is conversation. To categorize writing this way is to imply answers to some related theoretical questions: What’s the purpose of academic writing? How, exactly, does it work? By what standards can we distinguish effective from ineffective writing?
We can think of Graff and Birkenstein the theorists as looking for a way to represent the activity of writing, as trying to build a model of it. These are useful words in general for thinking about what the activity of theorizing is. (And to choose them is, of course, to theorize about theory. There’s no end to how meta we can get!)
We spent the last part of class looking at the Lindsay Ellis video on film studies that Taylor posted. We saw that Lindsay Ellis’s argument seems to make many of the “moves” Graff and Birkenstein describe – that her argument fits their model of argumentation quite well. We also saw that to make her argument, she, too had to move up one level of abstraction; she, too, had to theorize. Her main theoretical question – What makes a bit of culture (whether a poem or an action movie) worth examining closely? – is one of the most important ones we can ask as practitioners of criticism.
Thursday theme – Waters of March
As we turn to consider Graff and Birkenstein’s They Say/I Say, our theme song for today is “Águas de Março” (“Waters of March”) written by Antonio Carlos Jobim (aka Tom Jobim) and performed here by Jobim and Elis Regina.
For Graff and Birkenstein, academic writing, at its heart, is a conversation, and, more generally, “writing well means entering into conversation with others” (4th ed., xiv). In their introduction, they quote the philosopher Kenneth Burke’s famous description of “the world of intellectual exchange” as a kind of un-ending conversation at an interminable party.
Here’s the full passage from Burke’s The Philosophy of Literary Form:
Where does the drama get its materials? From the “unending conversation” that is going on at the point in history when we are born. Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.
(1941; 2d ed., Louisiana State University Press, 1967, 110-11.)
It’s interesting to consider Graff and Birkenstein’s use of Burke alongside Alasdair Macintyre’s claim, which we discussed in class, that “conversation, understood widely enough, is the form of human transactions in general” (Michael Sandel, ed., Liberalism and Its Critics, New York University Press, 1984, 133).
By putting the activity of conversation at the heart of what makes humans human, Burke and Macintyre are pursuing a line of thought that grew out of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Europe (especially in the writings of J.G. von Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt). Interest in the origins of human language and in the relationship between language and culture led for some during this period to a re-definition of human identity in general: it wasn’t the capacity for reason (as Aristotle, for example, had supposed) so much as the capacity for language that separated human beings from other animals.
(It’s interesting to consider the fluidity of human identity at this scale. Not only does each of us, arguably, possess an identity that changes over time, but the various attempts to identify a defining characteristic of humanity as a whole means that it may be useful to think of humanity as existing in a variety of “versions.” Wikipedia’s list of names for the human species is instructive here.)
Macintyre describes conversations as “enacted narratives” (133), highlighting the way our conversational engagements often represent the unfolding of some kind of story. This way of thinking about conversation fits his definition of human beings as “story-telling animal[s]” (138). Graff and Birkenstein treat the subcategory of academic conversation as a kind of game characterized by a fairly circumscribed set of “moves,” but there are clearly narrative elements in their conception as well, as evidenced by their quotation from Burke and their advice about “putting in your oar.”
But the Regina-Jobim performance perhaps suggests something even more fundamental about conversation than its narrative element, something about the sheer pleasure to be found in conversation’s back-and-forth dynamic, even when it doesn’t involve an exchange of ideas with what Macintyre calls a telos – that is, a projected goal. If you look at the song lyrics (in either English or Portuguese), you see that Regina and Jobim are simply taking turns running down the items in a list; they’re not conducting the kind of conversation Graff and Birkenstein have in mind at all. There’s no advocacy here, just the pleasure of moving the song forward by taking turns. At the same time, they’re clearly singing to each other, not just trading off. You can see it in their gestures as much as you can hear it in their voices.
I get the same sense of the pleasure inherent in the interactivity of conversation – prior to and apart from its intellectual content – watching this video of a nonsense conversation between twin babies that went viral in 2011. As a basic human activity, conversation doesn’t seem to be entirely about the content of the words.
Tuesday theme – Sit Right Down
To balance the high-tech communication tools we’ll be discussing, the theme song for ENGL 203-04 today evokes an older, slower medium of expression. “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” was written in 1935 by Joe Young (lyrics) and Fred Ahlert (music) and was made popular by the great jazz pianist Fats Waller.
Of course, since the singer (let’s call him “Waller” for now) is describing a letter he’ll be writing to himself, he won’t have to watch the mail to learn what’s in it: so maybe this isn’t such a slow-paced communication after all.
This theme song also looks forward to the discussion we’ll have on Thursday about Graff and Birkenstein’s They Say/I Say. The book’s premise is that academic writing typically takes the form of conversation, even if the conversation is one between the writer and an imaginary interlocutor. Waller’s letter will be from himself to himself – but he’ll be imagining it’s from his lover.
I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter
And make believe it came from you
The song’s wit lies partly in the way it becomes a song about writing, and indeed about the singer’s own power as a writer.
I’m gonna write words oh so sweet
They’re gonna knock me off my feet
This amusing prediction of self-astonishment (which is also, perhaps, an expression of authorial self-satisfaction) has tripped up some performers. Listen to Ella Fitzgerald get the pronouns wrong in this version, telling the listener, “I’m gonna write words oh so sweet,/ They’re gonna knock you off your feet.
She also substitutes “you” for “I” twice in what should be “A lot of kisses on the bottom, I’ll be glad I got ’em.”
Sarah Vaughan, too, sings “knock you off your feet,” but then recovers for the “kisses” line.
Both Fitzgerald and Vaughan are more interested in the music of this song than the lyrics, of course; and we might usefully think of them as entering into conversation with Ahlert (and Waller as the song’s canonical performer) through the way they play with the melody. At the same time, their slips are an indication that there’s a bit of psychological complexity to the singer’s situation.
Is this a jaunty, playful song or a sad one? Why must the singer pretend to write a letter in the lover’s voice anyway? Evidently the lover has failed to write. Why? The singer doesn’t appear too hopeful about their relationship, or it wouldn’t be necessary to “smile and say [taking on the lover’s identity], ‘I hope you’re feeling better.’” And, come to think of it, whose smile is it – that of the lover (in the singer’s imagination) or of the singer? If the singer’s, it could be a smile of pleasure (at the singer’s own cleverness), but it could also be a smile of resignation (in accepting the reality that the lover isn’t smiling … or writing).
The air of loneliness that hangs about this song of one-way communication imagined as two-way communication is reinforced, in Waller’s version, by the urgency with which he repeats the phrase “make believe” three times at the song’s conclusion, as if trying to persuade himself that he can be persuaded – if only he tries hard enough – that the letter is from the uncommunicative lover:
I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter,
And make believe – make believe – make believe it came from you.
And for whom are these urgent words intended? For whom is the song itself a kind of love letter? Why, the very same lover who hasn’t written and, for that very reason, probably isn’t listening – assuming the song even reaches them. Perhaps, after all, the song, like the imaginary letter it describes, is merely from the singer to the singer: a perfect and self-contained act of make-believe.
Nanette and theory
Discussing Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette in “Fluid Readers, Fluid Texts” on Thursday, we noted a few points in the monologue where Gadsby shifts naturally and more or less seamlessly from talking about her experience or her performance to theorizing about such matters as identity and comedy. We described this shift as “moving up one level of abstraction.” We also called it moving to a “meta” level or “reflecting” in general terms on human experience or the art of comedy. I suggested that what’s important for us to note about this move, as practitioners and theorists of criticism, is how it simply seems required by Gadsby’s effort to make sense of and articulate both what she’s lived through and what she’s trying to do in her show. She can’t explain why she feels she has to leave comedy without offering a view of what comedy is. She can’t tell her story without explaining what a story is, and how it differs from a joke. At the core of what she wants to tell us about her experience is the difference between humility and humiliation. To spell out that difference is to theorize about experience; to spell out how it relates to her performance is to theorize about comedy.
Throughout this semester, we’ll want to want to be on the lookout for those moments when, in reading texts, we make the same kind of “meta” move. There will be lots of them. When we move up one level of abstraction from a text to some theoretical concept, we’ll find ourselves in a kind of conversation that can be frustrating because thinking abstractly – even about seemingly simple things – just is hard. Simple concepts examined closely often turn out to be much more complicated than we thought. Take the concept of story.
As I mentioned in class, when Gadsby talks about stories having “a beginning, a middle, and an end,” she’s channeling a bit of Aristotle. Her definition does important work in her monologue, but without questioning that work we can note that story is not only one of the oldest but also one of the most scrutinized and contested concepts in literary theory. There is simply no one universally accepted definition or best way to talk about story as a concept. There’s an entire area of literary theory called narratology that’s devoted exclusively to this one elusive idea.
And yet it’s an idea we can’t do without in talking about literature – or, as Gadsby’s monologue demonstrates, in talking about life itself. Some of our readings for Tuesday will reinforce this point.
Thursday Theme – Tomorrow is My Turn
The theme song for today’s class in ENGL 203-04 is “Tomorrow is My Turn.” Here it is performed by Rhiannon Giddens:
As performed by Giddens, it comes across as a declaration of agency that feels very much made for our present cultural moment:
Tomorrow is my turn
No more doubts no more fears
Tomorrow is my turn to receive without giving
To make life worth the living
For it’s my life I’m living
And my only concern, for tomorrow is my turn
(Read the complete lyrics on Genius.)
But the song was originally written in 1962 by Charles Aznavour and Yves Stéphane and was originally titled “L’amour c’est comme un jour.” The original lyrics (read them here in Italian and French) sound a very different theme from the English version (released in 1964 and performed by Honor Blackman, who, as it happens, played Pussy Galore in the James Bond film Goldfinger). Listen to Aznavour sing it here.
It was Nina Simone’s inclusion of the English version on her album I Put a Spell on You (1965) that gave it its present effect of boldly asserting a marginalized identity (perhaps more than one). Listen to her live performance here.
Both “L’amour c’est comme un jour” and “Tomorrow is My Turn” now have independent and continuing lives. Aznavour has performed the French version as a duet with Sting.
You can read more about the history of “Tomorrow is My Turn” in this story about Giddens from NPR.
Is it what it is?
On Tuesday in “Fluid Readers, Fluid Texts,” we discussed some of the ways in which the practice of criticism – the activities of reading and writing critically – can naturally give rise to theoretical reflection on that very practice. This theoretical reflection generates both a vocabulary for engaging in those activities and questions about that vocabulary. Text is an important word in that vocabulary, but there’s no simple, straightforward, universally accepted answer to the question, What is a text?
Too often, we’re led to believe that practicing criticism is simply a matter of understanding some basic critical terms – irony, for example, or comedy – and applying them. If it were only that simple.
The fact is, there’s no way to practice criticism intelligently without also thinking constantly at the next level of abstraction up from practice, where we find ourselves in conversation with other practitioners about what irony or comedy is and how one or the other of them actually works.
Two other theoretical concepts, we said, are representation and symbol. We’ll have lots of opportunities to think about how these concepts can be defined and how they work. For now, it’s worth nothing that both concepts can help us navigate the disorienting fact that in literature, and the arts generally, we’re continually dealing with things that are what they are at the same time that they’re something else, and so not what they are: a skull that’s a skull but also a reminder of death; words that are words but also the stuff from which a character emerges; daubs of paint on canvas that are also strands of hair. An elephant in the room.
Still a favorite. #cartoon RT @new_toon: A post for #WMHD2015. Toon captioned by @NeinQuarterly pic.twitter.com/FzubZKqv2D
— Zen Outtakes (@zenouttakes) July 18, 2018
A little respect
This story about the song “Respect” hits almost every theme we’ll discuss this semester in “Fluid Readers, Fluid Texts”: How and why does something come to be treated as a “text” in our culture? How do such factors as race, class, and gender enter into the equation? What’s “in” the text that doesn’t announce itself explicitly (and so must be discovered through “interpretation”)? How is the meaning of that text affected by its existence in multiple versions? By the identity of the “author” or the “reader”? How are both authors and readers shaped by culture? Where is the line between “identity” as an individual characteristic and a cultural artifact? And finally, what is “due” to each one of us by virtue of possessing an identity? What, in the end, is “respect,” and how do we show and get some?
Alice’s Adventures Underground at the British Library
The British Library holds the manuscript of Charles Dodgson’s Alice’s Adventures Underground (1864), the forerunner to his Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which he published in 1865 under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. On the library’s website, you can leaf through the 90-page book and view Dodgson’s 37 illustrations. How does the experience of reading the story in this format differ from the experience of reading it in a typeset edition on paper, or as plain or formatted text on a screen?
In class, we discussed the 1903 silent film version of Alice. You can find that at the Internet Archive.