The Cuckoo Titicut Nest

Three points from me today:

(1) Nice forking around Kafka yesterday. Appreciations for in-class discussion, as always.
(2) I have on the course website for next week some "Madness Discussion Ideas," which I hope can spur some blogs from you (particularly those of you who've not yet written one). Ergo, I won't get long-winded here. Suffice it to say that we will be talking very directly about the narration in these texts (whence and how we get the info we get).
(3) If you have some thoughts about such, shoot me an email or an anonymous note giving me some feedback on (a) how you think the course is going, (b) what foci you would like me to bring to the class, and (c) suggestions for making it a more productive 2 1/2 hours, specifics I can change (no, we're not going to get out 45 minutes early!).

Kafka and THX

Alright, I appreciate the good commentary many of you added to our discussion of Virgin Suicides. I would also encourage more of you to add your contributions to these discussions. I will get better at uploading more current notes online so that you can be forewarned when I am going to call on you to discuss your posting to this blog. All apologies for the clumsiness I failed to avoid on that front yesterday.

When you read “In The Penal Colony,” you may find yourself tripped up by the prose and the lack of clarity of description. That is, it may not make any sense to you. Stay with it, however, so that you can at least ask informed questions about it (either over this blog or in class). Perhaps, its intentionally obscure language adds to the disorientation the reader feels toward the text. You may also find yourself wondering what these texts have in common, why I would have put them together for discussion: "Geez, THX is a dystopian, cautionary sci-fi film and Kafka's thing...well...it's..a...hmmmm..." Legit frustration. I assure you, though, that there is no “hidden” connection that I want to see if you can find, and there will be no big revelation in class about such. There are, though, ideas that link the two. I encourage you to look at the discussion questions on the class webpage (near the link for the reading), which should point to some such. And, I strongly encourage you to strike out on your own with ideas and questions (to which you should offer some sort of response, no matter how underdeveloped).

Virgin Suicides

First, nice class yesterday, me thought. Beowulf really can teach us a lot (and none of it has to do with reading it as an allegory, a religious cautionary tale, or distant, stale, dead thing! Nice!)

Here are some started questions/ideas, some with partial/incomplete address regarding Virgin Suicides. I promise not to speak in anything but standard, contemporary English, though I would like to here the phrase "stone cold fox" used in some non-satiristic manner. 

(1) This is our first time to discuss specifics types of narrators doing the narrating within the narrative (notice that these differences are more than semantic; they are consequential). IN the novel, there is a quite new type of narrator, one who is both present and not present: he is the narrator in the (plural???) first person, yet he doesn't seem to be a character in the story (he is never directly addressed. How might we begin to account for this?

(1a) Connected to above, we could talk as to how the filmic version handles the odd narration of the book. Can you make an argument about the challenges for and responses of the film to the novel's narrating? 

(2) When texts use first-person narration (as the book does in a weird way), we might expect that voice to guide us through the story (to be sure), but we might also expect it to guide our responses to the story (i.e., to tell us how to feel or react to events). I will make the claim that the novel never does this. Defend or refute.

(3) We can also talk about the texts as being "about" nostalgia and memory every bit as much as they are stories of these girls.  Take an intellectual leap and address this idea.

Intro to Course Bloggin' (from a dummy)

So, here’s what I’m thinking about this blogspace, which I am tentative in developing for fear that I will reveal that I am not as hip as those of you who are already cool enough to have created, joined, and/or contributed to other blogs in the recent past. Regardless, here it goes.

In the past I have managed this ongoing online assignment via a google-group, which sort of mass emails everyone in the group the contributions of other members. Clumsily, the groups got the posts to everyone. However, that technology, I think, didn’t achieve the efficacy of the assignment as I designed it. In fact, it was exactly the technology, and not the students, that limited effectiveness. Hence, the blog. The goal/objective of the online posts is supposed to be a sort of pre-class discussion of questions and ideas that we have as we encounter the semester’s texts. The blog, I am hopeful, will more “naturally” allow the posts to present themselves more like a conversation than individual emails with limited connection.

For the first couple of weeks, I will have “notes” and “discussion ideas” links on the course webpage. In reading these, envision critical engagements with the texts that are bold, risky, and thoughtful, even if they are ill-developed or under-refined. The posts are meant to be a breading ground for in-class discussions and a way for you to follow other students’ thoughts and ideas, including those that some might be tentative to raise in our class discussion. In, like, eight sentences, you should be able to introduce a critical idea or engage in midstream a thread created by others. Feel free to take more (digital) inkspill to explore ideas and be confident in your ability to think into and through an idea/thought/concept.

I hope this introduction hasn’t bored, confused, or otherwise flustered you in any way. If you have questions of concern about topics I’ve not covered, ask

test posting