Wallace Elegy September 13, 2008
Posted by kmiddleton in reading.Tags: david foster wallace
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I just peeked at the New York Times for a moment, and was absoutely shocked to see the latest AP news that David Foster Wallace is dead. According to the very short AP story, Wallace’s wife discovered that he’d hung himself. What a tragedy.
I read Infinite Jest in 2000, in the month between finishing my qualifying exams and getting married and moving to a new city. It was the perfect novel for that moment: utterly diverting and weird (buried heads and cross-dressing CIA agents), surreal and sincere by turns. It was the perfect distraction from the endless details and free-roaming anxiety of moving, of beginning the dissertation. It was nothing like what I had crammed in my brain for the preceding months, but an excellent test of all of the theories and interpretive strategies and thus reminded me why I wanted a career in English Studies in the first place.
Infinite Jest is a novel that begs you to read it again the minute you finish it. Wallace peppers the novel with spot-on characterizations of contemporary American life (corporate sponsorship of years, negotiating national ownership of toxic waste, television taken to its logical conclusion), but witholds their narrative origins, hiding them deep in the text. In the weeks it takes to finish the book, you develop a relationship with it (as well as a significant bicep muscle from carrying it around). It makes you a careful reader, an almost paranoid interpreter, a bit desperate to skim through scenes, but afraid that you’ll miss something. Making it to the end is the perfect ambivalent moment: a relief that you’ve made it through, and the simultaneous realization that the conclusion makes the rest of the novel clear, and that you need to begin again.
I’ve since read some of Wallace’s other works (The Girl with Curious Hair; The Broom of the System; his unbelievable, replete-with-footnotes essay on grammar for Harper’s Magazine ), but none of them were able to replicate the same reading experience for me. Periodically, when I’m fantasizing about the perfect class to teach, I imagine that a semester spent with Infinite Jest would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for students—a kind of contemporary literature boot camp. Of course, then reality sets in: can I really justify dragging undergraduates through 1100 pages of weirdness on a whim?
Perhaps it’s time to revisit the idea, or at least to revisit the novel myself. It seems like a fitting tribute to an brilliant author dead long before his time.
***updated to add: Here’s a lovely farewell to Wallace from Times book doyenne Michiko Kakutani.
Twitter-pated August 16, 2008
Posted by kmiddleton in new media, pop culture.Tags: olympics, twitter
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I know people who simply lurve twitter. It’s the new cool thing! It’s a microblog! Follow your friends! It’s internet poetry! I wanted to get it, really, but it wasn’t quite working for me. What would be the circumstance wherein I’d want to read such short, of the minute posts? I like the lengthy, meandering blog post, after all. Preferably with pictures!!
But then (and you knew this was coming, right?), I happened upon Slate’s Olympic coverage via Twitter. You would think that there’s nothing else to be said about the Olympics right now. I love me some televised competitive swimming, but this is just getting ridiculous. The whole world knows Michael Phelps’ torso measurement, as well as what he has for breakfast—because it’s on CNN. Fashion magazines are covering beach volleyball; Perez Hilton is tracking medals and opening ceremony cover-ups, for crying out loud. In this climate of neverending sports-cum-nationalism information flow, what kind of coverage could we possibly be missing?
Enter the fabulous one-liner. A few choice quotes:
Slate’s coverage of Dara Torres informing the judges to wait for the Swedish swimmer to change her torn swimsuit; an event heralded as the apotheosis of sports ethics on NBC, merits this tweet: “Torres pointing out the Swede’s torn swimsuit is the greatest act of Olympic sportsmanship since Lochte gave Phelps half his sandwich.”
On the controversial win for Michael Phelps’, wherein he touched the wall 1/100 of a second before the Serbian swimmer. Some cry conspiracy, and Slate’s tweet reads: “No conspiracy, Phelps just has the ability to alter space-time. That’s what he’s doing with that dolphin kick.”
Suddenly, Twitter makes perfect sense to me. It’s the transcendental medium for the one-liner, and I prefer the ones that are sarcastic shots over the bow, capable of puncturing the balloon of teary-eyed national sentiment and/or athletic fetishism. In feed form, the tweets are reminiscent of those magical conversations with your smartest friends, whose reactions to absurd events reduce you to tears of laughter.
The Twitter folk position their application as one in which users answer the question “What are you doing?” I can help but wonder whether a better use might be to answer the question “What are you seeing?”
Troof. August 2, 2008
Posted by kmiddleton in research, whining.2 comments
I just sent off my article to the patient and long-suffering editor this morning and then immediately jumped in the car to catch an afternoon train to NYC for a family visit. Whew!
It would not be an exaggeration to say that I’ve been thinking about the topic for the article (fan videos and their development of narrative) for 7 months or so. At least I seem to remember that it was a cold dark night in my office finishing up the proposal it.
One might think that with all that time and thought that the article would write itself, or at the very least flow trippingly off my fingertips and onto the page. (That is, after all, what my own delusional brain was depending on…).
Instead, it was days of grappling in the dark, wringing out pages that may or may not be relevant to the argument. When the time came to give a provisional draft to a gracious reader, the main editorial comment sounded somehow familiar: “your argument and energy really starts to emerge here at the end. Have you considered starting with that?.”. And I’m back in the writing bush leagues.
I’m transcribing this rather humiliating scenario becauseI do so love to publicly flog myself for my own shortcomings, but more importantly to remind myself (and the three readers of this blog) that the process of writing and thinking are never as straightforward and fast as I expect them to be. They are, in fact, almost as painstaking and frustrating as typing this entire post with one finger as I await the onslaught of the big family trip in the hot hot city.
Wish me luck.
Read Only July 27, 2008
Posted by kmiddleton in new media, reading.Tags: internet, reading
3 comments
The NY Times today released the first part of a series dedicated to investigating “how the Internet and other technological and social forces are changing the way people read.” Hoo boy. Let the games begin.
On first read, I’d say that author Motoko Rich strives for an admirable balance between two factions dedicated to defending their particular reading practices. For every study of declining test scores and reading for pleasure, she cites online readers’ descriptions of their own practices or new literacy scholars.
From this format, we can see a surprising tone that both boosters and naysayers of digital reading share: a relatively consistent dismissal of alternate format. For instance, Rich cites Dana Gioia of the NEA:“Whatever the benefits of newer electronic media they provide no measurable substitute for the intellectual and personal development initiated and sustained by frequent reading.” At the same time, we have fluent digital readers who have this to say about print books: “The Web is more about a conversation. Books are more one-way.”
The article carefully cites the number of material factors to consider as we weigh a shift in reading habits: the socioeconomic benefits of print literacy, its deep integration into school curricula, the challenges it presents for students with learning differences. But these considerations are buried deep on page 3 of the article, in a way that suggests they’re simply fodder for the bigger issue–the deep psychological investment in the way that reading inflects our daily lives, and that no one is willing to be told that their preferred method is lacking in some way.
I find myself perched uncomfortably between these two ways of reading and the assumptions of superiority they promulgate. When Gioia says: “What we are losing in this country and presumably around the world is the sustained, focused, linear attention developed by reading,” a portion of my heart goes pitter pat. Does reading a novel require that sustained attention? Obviously. And I’m willing to believe (until a neuroscientist tells me different) that there’s a cognitive benefit to it, as well as a pleasure to be taken in it. But I’m also not willing to believe that all digital reading is the short-attention span theater that Gioia assumes and of which Rich provides examples. When Nadia is reading fan fiction stories that run “45 web pages,” we’re talking about focused attention, and we’d have to study Nadia’s reading practices to convince ourselves that it wasn’t sustained or linear. In addition, the statement ignores the sociality of reading a number of digital sources on a similar topic.
On the other side of the fence (here I am, perched on a cliche), I’m taken aback by the digital readers’ characterizations of books. At least two of the young people interviewed take issue with books’ unitary nature–either as a fixed plot structure or singularity of voice. This also seems to be a mis-characterization of what print readers love about books, wherein the process of interpretation makes a book an archive of alternatives. [This assumes, of course, that you include interpretation in your definition of reading, I suppose.]
I’m anxious to see how others perceive the coverage in the Times. For now, however, I’m struck by the gulf between readers, and the very little coverage (and study?) of how omnivorous readers characterize pleasure, benefit and drawbacks of their reading practices across media
Stop the Press! July 24, 2008
Posted by kmiddleton in new media.Tags: iphone, itouch
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Sweet fancy Moses, apparently I can now blog from my ITouch, thanks to a WordPress app that comes via the new suite of iPhone 2.0 software. Hot diggety? Now no subject is safe from my critical eye? Every piece of pop culture shall know my wrath?
Will this make me a more consistent blogger? My guess is no, probably just one with fewer excuses and thus more guilt about my spotty blogging schedule. Of course, if this post is any indication, the new app may well turn me into a one-fingered typist. So long, carpal tunnel syndrome—and good riddance!
Stay tuned for further updates, gentle readers.
Cho, Round Two July 14, 2008
Posted by kmiddleton in asian america, pop culture.Tags: Add new tag, asian america, margaret cho
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I was delighted to see that Margaret Cho is returning to television with a new show on VH1. It doesn’t take a deep knowledge of tv history to know about Cho’s first sitcom (and notably, the first Asian American sitcom), All-American Girl and the debacle it became (all of which she chronicles, with a characteristic synthesis of pathos and humor, in I’m the One that I Want).
The LA Times article above features this description of the new show:
“It’s kind of a cross between Madonna’s ‘Truth or Dare,’ ‘Joy Luck Club’ and ‘Little People, Big World,’” she said. In truth, the series follows Cho and her family as they improv their way through scripted situations. During the first episode, Cho tells her parents that a magazine has named her Korean of the Year, and the show follows the family’s trip to San Francisco, where she’ll accept it.
In some ways, the format sounds more like Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm to me.
Cho’s return makes me contemplate the significant changes that television has undergone since All American Girl aired in ‘94-’95. In many ways, the sitcom seems like such a dead and deadening form, while the advent of reality television has pushed audiences and performers alike to explore new ways of including live footage into shows. Meanwhile, the scrum of channels fighting for niche markets has apparently turned VH1 into the home for nostalgia, forgotten celebrities (hello, two Coreys!), and subcultural icons. Having said that, I’m surprised that Cho isn’t airing on Bravo—can you imagine a Margaret Cho/Kathy Griffin lineup? Perhaps an end of the season smackdown? [Cho has already appeared on an episode of Life on the D List, where she joins Griffin and Cyndi Lauper for the Gay Pride Parade in Australia. If Cho rates a float there, doesn't she seem to belong to the Bravo family?]
Regardless, I have high but cautious hopes for the success of Cho’s new show. In part, it’s personal: I have such a soft spot for her, and am so ready to see Asian Americans on television that aren’t pretending to be from another country (see Lost, Heroes, etc.). Better yet, I think Cho may have a better chance outside the confines of the sitcom structure (which, I speculate, may have been more of the problem of the show than America’s unwillingness to see Asian Americans on television. But perhaps I’m too optimistic).
So let’s hear it for the move beyond the sitcom, and look forward to the August 21st airing. Keep your fingers crossed…
Confronting the Gap July 10, 2008
Posted by kmiddleton in pop culture.1 comment so far
Courtesy of PopCandy this morning comes a link to a short video interview with Ira Glass, host of the transcendent This American Life on NPR. In it, he talks about initial artistic endeavors, and the “gap” between our excellent taste in a medium and our not-yet-up-to-par ability to create something that satisfies our taste level. Take a listen:
Now, admittedly, I don’t read many interviews with writers and creative types, so feel free to confront me on my ignorance. However, this is one of the first times that I’ve seen someone articulate the major impediment to creative work so clearly. Once Glass has said it, of course, it all seems so clear: we want to make the thing that we love, but we love that thing for its best possible representative pieces, to which our own early attempts bear no resemblance. This makes me think of the deep pain of learning a musical instrument. You know, you only want to learn to play the piano because you love Glenn Gould, or Diana Krall, or Chris Martin. But when you first learn to play, you’re of course butchering “The Entertainer” or some such crap, and you’re nowhere near whipping through Mozart concertos with deep pathos. And thus, the temptation is to abandon it forever.
Glass does a beautiful job here not only explaining the need to soldier on, but does so with such compassion for the beginner, and a good deal of gentle mocking of his early self. I love the fact that he pulls out his own early efforts, and is willing to share it. What’s more convincing than hearing the less-than-perfect early attempts of those who have mastered the medium?
Good on you, Ira.
