March Madness, erudition edition

I'm about to introduce the final paper assignment for my Studies in the American Novel course.

Here's what it is: Students will treat the final two books of the semester, Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and Ben Marcus's Notable American Women, as though they are competitors in an NCAA-basketball-style tournament of books.

vs.

There's a precedent for this kind of thing: It's called, surprisingly enough, the Tournament of Books and it's totally fun and I totally owe my colleague Dr. Margot Stafford lunch for introducing it to me. 

Here's what students will do: 

1. Determine a "bracket" of the tournament. Something like this:

Students are going to have to look back at the novels published during the 2001-2002 academic year. Could there be a more turbulent, poignant period of time in contemporary American history?

2. Determine the "seed" of each book in the bracket. 

Side-note: I only recently learned of this agrarian metaphor "seed." I guess I'd always assumed the word was "seat." That's the more intuitive (less inventive) metaphor. A team acquires a "seat" on a particular ledge of a bracket. But, no. Jocks be taking liberties with figurative language. Guess what, jocks. The literary people are back and we're taking all our metaphors. We'll plant them and care for them and their fruits will nourish the young and the curious and these fruits will not be stamped with corporate sponsorships. (Nevermind that Oprah logo on Franzen's book.) 

3. Determine the criteria for such a thing as a national "tournament of books" (How do you decide who advances? The better book? What's "better" mean? The more important book? "Important"?) 

My guess is that some students will try to rig the game--basically write the criteria to fit the book they prefer. That's a high crime that only the President of Columbia University circa 1921 would get away with. (That's right, an inside joke, literary-history-style.) 

4. Judge which of the two books (Franzen's or Marcus's) should advance to the next round.

Now, this section will be the most English-papery part of the project. Here, students will flaunt their interpretive acumen--they will 360 dunk on some analysis of specific content from each novel. 

5. Pair up with another student and, during final exam time, write a "commentary" dialogue on some third student's judgment. 

I'm excited, and a little anxious, about this paper. I normally don't assign final papers that are not assertively rigorous, let alone that seem mildly fun. But bear in mind--this is no game! 

Why, just last month an Ann Arbor man was punched during a literary argument. Literary interpretation is getting serious.

Yeah, yeah. I know that last week, two dialysis patients came to blows over the upcoming Kentucky-Louisville game. Fine. We have a way to go to match the sincerity of basketball fans. But we're getting there. We're punching now. 

Here are the English-professory reasons why I like this paper idea: 

1. It will make palpable the civic engagement and intellectual synthesis that comes from debates about what constitutes “good/important literature.” 

2. It will make reading an overtly social activity and not a solely individual one. 

3. It will represent some of the grunt-work that it takes to earn cultural authority.

If successful, students will leave the course confident that they have the chops to do the difficult, rewarding work of caring about the world they live in, of wanting to see it enriched by the very genre of literature that evolved out of the many courageous, crackbrained commitments that novelists have made to the worlds they've lived in. 

At least that's my hope. But I'll settle for a student who learns how to spin a novel on the end of his finger, like a basketball. 

Take it to the previous level

Way back in the twentieth century, I read this essay by George Orwell and it changed the way I talk forever. The essay's called "Politics and the English Language" and it's the bomb. Here's why:

Orwell is crazy mad at clichés. He doesn't want anybody using any analogy without at least having a clue as to how that analogy works. That kind of prohibition is hard to implement.

It means you can't ever say "I'm going to take it to the next level." Well, not unless you're in a stairwell and you're carrying a box up the stairs and responding to the question, "Where are taking that box?" 

I have to admit it, I hate the next level. Why not take it to the previous level? Or better yet, take it outside, give it some fresh air and sunlight. That's what Orwell wants us to do with the language we use. He wants us to freshen it up. Bury our dead metaphors and hope that they have enough compost-nutrients to grow some vitamin-packed way of expressing ourselves.

When we give zero thought to what that "next level" is, we end up with this Guy-Ritchie-dierected Nike commercial:

At the start of the commercial, the meaning of "next level" is pretty tangible: the difference between an amateur and a professional soccer team can certainly be understood in terms of "levels." But the commercial undermines the logic of its own message when it includes such incongruous actions as losing a tooth and signing an autograph in an inappropriate manner as both signifiers of "the next level." 

At this point, some of you are thinking, "What's the problem with 'the next level'? It is what it is." And if you are thinking that, I thank you because you just named the other cliché that if George Orwell were around he would put a Chuck Norris-style smackdown upon.

No sentence has less meaning than "it is what it is." In fact, the equivalent speech act to saying "It is what it is" is to say nothing at all, to stand with lips pursed for the 2.5 seconds that it would take to say that sentence. Indeed, the only reason why this sentence is ever spoken is to fill dead air with a human sound that resembles a thought, which is why this sentence is so common among athletes and coaches who suddenly find themselves standing behind microphones. 

So why do people and corporations use such meaningless sentences as "take it to the next level"? Indeed, why do those who use such sentences tend to value them so much that they hire Guy Ritchie to direct the commercial based off of the empty sentence? Here's why: When one uses this sentence, he gets to gain the agreement of his audience without actually revealing the concrete terms of that agreement.

So be careful before you agree to take anything to the next level. You don't know where that level is. You probably don't know what "it" is. And (most importantly) you don't know who'll be doing the schlepping.

Guess what, it'll probably be you.

Where are the bands (from)?

I recently had a conversation with my Journeys, Voyages, Quests class about bands.

I said that American Idol had killed bands in America (not wanting to consider the possibility that rock music, a typically band-centric genre, may simply be losing favor). 

I asked students to name the bands they liked. I got two responses: Red Hot Chili Peppers, a band that was popular when I was in high school, and Foo Fighters, popular when I was in college. 

Then I looked up the 2011 Grammy Nominees and found that, of the 25 nominees for the top 5 awards, only 2 are bands: Foo Fighters and Mumford & Sons.

Are bands over? 

Are they simply the curios of such culturally-marginal things as documentary film festivals? Maybe. But, man, are they alive and kicking at documentary film festivals.

Dubb Nubb (folk/roots trio from Columbia, MO)

The bands at this year's T/F fall into two categories:
(a) bands that mentioned where they were from and
(b) bands that never mentioned where they were from.

Dubb Nubb is is in category b. They were great. Like if Davendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom had a baby and named it Bjork.

Pearl and the Beard is in category a. They totally rocked, and they totally mentioned five times in a 20-minute set that they were from Brooklyn, New York. That's right, flyover people. Brooklyn. Don't forget it.

I also saw the band, Run-On Sentence. They let us know they were from Portland, OR, both in words and in the resplendent beard of the lead singer.

Nick Jaina and his band

This band never mentioned once that it was from Portland. It also didn't have a band name. Coincidence?

The Toughcats were from Maine, but I had to look that one up. I could not believe how much energy that drummer had. Holy cow. Even during a solo acoustic number, wherein the guitar player sang and played by himself, the drummer started playing the guitar player--slapping him and his guitar. My friend Jeremy said that that kind of energy probably made for a great drummer and a not-great friend. He also sweat a lot. He was the best person I saw on stage all weekend. And I saw some awesome people on stage: 

Like Morgan Spurlock and a woman wearing
a video-game-character-inspired costume.   

And the very cool directors of Undefeated. I think that's them.
I still had tears in my eyes from the movie, that way emotional movie. 

T/F

must pack!

This is one of those blog posts that acts like it’s about one thing but is actually about something totally different. I’m acting like it's a post about film, but it’s actually about how cool the woman I married is. (Skip four paragraphs to get right to the evidence of coolness.)

I’m teaching a film course in the fall. It’s called “Literature and Cinema.” It’s about “adaptation”—the process of translating a verbal narrative (i.e., a short story or a novel) into a visual narrative one (i.e., a movie). I’m excited about the course. I have a million ideas about which films to include, and I haven’t taught film in a couple of years.

When I last taught film, I lived in Columbia, MO, home of the Mizzou Tigers, sure. But it’s also home of the True/False film festival. It’s like the Sundance for documentary filmmakers (which I am not) and documentary lovers (which I am). I always required my film students to attend that festival. They always complained before they went and then thanked me afterward. The experience of being outside of the undergraduate comfort zone always proved fruitful.

And the T/F has consistently awesome films. It’s kind of a bellwether festival—only once the past five years has T/F not screened the film the later, or in the case of this year, already, went on to win the Oscar for best documentary.

But the films are only half the fun. The musical acts that play before the films and the droves of non-midwesterners walking around downtown Columbia is the other half. The third half of fun (?) is the Herculean task of actually attending 10+ movies in 2+ days. The films’ directors are always present at the films, and they answer questions after, which is pretty cool.

And I'm lucky. My birthday falls during T/F season. This year, I totally scored: 

T/F themed birthday!

... complete with personalized itinerary ... 

... and dossier on each film (printed on letter stock).