Literature in a Wired World

This was in my e-mail in-box this morning, and I thought it might interest some of you.

Vantage Point, UVM’s art and literary magazine, is looking for submissions! If you’re into writing poetry, stories, or any form of prose, or if you’re an artist, we want you to see your work. You could see your writing or art in the next edition! Just e-mail your submissions to vantagep@uvm.edu, or bring artwork directly to the folder in the Art Office in the Williams building.

We are also looking for people interested in joining our staff. Help design and publish an excellent magazine, meet some great people and learn what it’s like to produce a quality publication. Meetings are one night a week, Wednesdays at 7 PM in the John Dewey Honor’s Lounge on 5th Floor Old Mill. No previous experience necessary. Please feel free to email us at vantagep@uvm.edu with any questions. We hope to see you soon!

Codex, by Lev Grossman
Due: IN CLASS October 3rd

“See, I’m a 21st century digital boy,
I don’t know how to read but I got a lot of toys.
My Daddy’s a lazy middle-class intellectual,
My Mommy’s on valium, so ineffectual.
Ain’t life a mystery?”
Bad Religion – “21st Century Digital Boy”

Pick one of the following topics:

TOPIC ALPHA:

In a way it was idiotic. He was treating these books like they were holy relics. It wasn’t like he would ever actually read them. But there was something magnetic about them, something that compelled respect, even the silly ones, like the enlightenment treatise about how lightning was caused by bees. They were information, data, but not in the form he was used to dealing with it. They were non-digital, nonelectrical chunks of memory, not stamped out of silicon but laboriously crafted out of wood pulp and ink, leather and glue. Somebody had cared enough to write these things; somebody else had cared enough to buy them, possibly even read them, at the very least keep them safe for 150 years, sometimes longer, when they could have vanished at the touch of a spark. That made them worth something, didn’t it, just by itself? (57)

Well? Does “that” make them “worth something … just by itself”? Agree or disagree and explain your reasoning.

TOPIC BETA:

At first Edward thought he was looking at a photograph, frozen and digitized. The scene was strikingly realistic. It was like looking through a window into another world. The light was green, and there were trees around him, a grove of slender birches and aspens with sunlight falling between them. A light breeze ruffled their tiny leaves. Beyond the delicate scrim of trees was open air and green grass. (46-47)

There was something weird about the game. The images moved perfectly smoothly, with no cartoonish jumping or stuttering. The colors were drawn from an intense, hyperreal palette, like a green landscape seconds before a thunderstorm, and the level of detail was impossibly fine. Focusing in on a nearby branch, he saw that one leaf on it had a tiny, irregular half circle nibbled out of one of its edges. It was less like a movie than an old master painting come to life. (47)

When did he finally go to bed? God, he was no better than Stewart and his GameBoy. (50)

Well? Is Edward “no better than Stewart and his GameBoy”? Agree or disagree and explain your reasoning.

Here’s an interesting new graphic narrative I just came across: Shooting War, by Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman.

Set in a future in which John McCain is president and the war in Iraq continues to grind on, this one isn’t for kids.

Online now is the first part of a longer book that will be published in hardcover next year. Somehow, I think that will have a very different feel than these parts do online.

As always, check it out.

Hey, the Calendar has been updated to make space for us to finish our discussion of Forms & Meanings.

If you’re wondering what’s due and what to do, check it out.

ARRRRR!!!!

It be Talk Like a Pirate Day again!

Fer all ye land-lubbers out there who don’t ken what Talk Like a Pirate Day be, here be a pirate chest full o’ links for ye:

• Talk Like a Pirate Day
• Talk Like a British Pirate Day
• Wikipedia’s Arrrr-ticle on Talk Like a Pirate Day
• Talk Like a Pirate Day’s Arrr-ficial Anthem
• Talk Like a Pirate Day’s Arrficial Anthem Lyrrrrics

And thar she blows — the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose noodly arrr-pendage touches us all.

Fer more on Talk Like a Pirate Day, check out me Talk Like a Pirate Day blog post from last year. Ye’ll be glad you did.

P.S. Ye can shut yer traps! Aye, these images all be stolen. It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day, me beauties!

I’ve updated the course calendar to remove the duplicate Exploration 4 assignment. (Now there is no exploration due on September 26th.)

Forms and Meanings, chapter 1
Due: 5pm Monday, September 18th

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can’t say
People just liked it better that way

So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can’t go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks

“Istanbul Not Constantinople” by They Might Be Giants

In Chartier’s admittedly challenging first chapter to Forms and Meanings, he spends a fair amount of time discussing various historical approaches to, and perspectives on, the development of written language and then the evolution of forms of writing technologies from stone and clay tablets to scrolls to the codex.

For this exploration, you are to compose a brief snapshot (I know “brief snapshot” is redundant, but remember: you only have 1 page!) of what your life would be like (and what everyone’s life would be like) under one of the following scenarios:

• Written language had never been invented
• The scroll had never been invented
• The codex had never been invented

What would a typical day be like? What would be the most important or interesting differences between our world and this imaginary one?

Every year the English Department throws a beginning-of-the-year party featuring lots of food and live music for all of its majors.

This year’s event will be on Tuesday, September 19th, from 6pm-8pm in the Old Mill Annex Courtyard on the South Side. (That’s the side facing the Royall Tyler Theatre.)

I hope to see you all there!

For Thursday’s class, delve deeply into the experience that is “lonelygirl15.” You’ve already dug up some info and maybe even had a chance to watch a video or two. These links should help you find out more:

• lonelygirl15 - her videos on YouTube
• The Los Angeles Times finds “the Creators”

We also discussed viral videos and viral marketing. Here are some examples we mentioned of viral videos. You should check them out — they’re insidiously entertaining.

• The End of the World
• Star Wars Kid
• Chad Vader, part 1
• Chad Vader, part 2
• Numa Numa
• More on the Numa Numa thing, including song lyrics and the story of what happened to this kid
• The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny

Have fun!

Frag-men-ta-tion & Multi-modality
Due: Tuesday, September 12

Pick 1 of the works we’ve focused on so far (“An Ode to Pants,” “The Neverything,” or “Lovely By Surprise”) and answer the following question about it:

Is this work literature?

All three works begin in medias res, a Latin phrase that means “in the middle of things.” This is a good way to approach your inventions, too. Rather than beginning with a long exposition about how there has been literature since the dawn of time (i.e., the infamous “dawn of time” introduction, which should be avoided in this and all other college classes at all cost), think about jumping right into your argument. Stake out a position and then work your expository thoughts in to your discussion of why the work you have chosen either is, or is not, literature.

You may wish to consider the following questions as you compose your answer:

• If you chose one of the Kirt Gunn films, does it make a difference when considering both films?
• What is literature, anyway?
• How do you know literature?
• Is film even capable of being called literature? Should it be?
• Does the term “literature” imply a value judgment of some sort?
• If so, what is that judgment? Should we take it seriously?
• If you decide that your work isn’t literature, what is it?

While these questions are intended as a starting place for your discussion, you do not need to answer all of them, nor should you use them to structure your essay. Make sure to cite in parentheses the passage/film chapter/whatever where any quotations you use can be found.

Your invention should be between 4-5 pages long, double-spaced.