Our good friend Mark Anastasio has a write up at the Bristol Observer. A very nice spread for a deserving weblogger and comics writer.
Author Archives: Steve
Metacognition and Storytelling
A workshop on metacognition run by our own Marguerite Yawin ended with a wonderful conclusion: the backbone of thinking about process and problem solving is storytelling. If you want to figure out how you got from point a to point b, you are essentially putting together the cognitive narrative: telling the story. Showing the work in math bears this mark as does a portfolio or any other sort iterative sorting.
In our outcomes assessment work, Francena Dwyer says we have to start “writing the paper”: putting it all together will reveal a story and perhaps other things.
(most people don’t know that I have an odd interest in shaving technology commercials and so I just learn about the Gillet Fussion, an implement with 5 blades. Why don’t they just put ten blades in the wacky thing and be done with it)
SnarkSpot
Disbelief
I often leave a story with questions I don’t want to ask. For example, I’ve been reading Emily Raboteau’s “Eye of Horus” and have certain complex reactions that go to Emma’s reactions to events and to her voice. In the story, Emma experiences disruptions to her family and personal life that leave her empty and without direction, and she ends her tale waking up to her mother. The direction of the narrative isn’t the problem for me. I simply don’t believe Emma’s telling. It’s difficult to explain this personal reaction. Here’s an example
During the third week of my recovery, the phone rang and my mother answered it. I could hear her from the porch where I sat eating a nectarine, watching the neighbor’s cocker spaniel dig a hole underneath our rhododendron bush. I admired the dog’s single-mindedness.
I have known a hardy rhododendron in my day (should I say this?). This focal knot of an image is nice and clear but I don’t follow why Emily would observe the dog’s action as single-minded. The dog appears busy digging a hole, sure, but Emma is trying to deliver beyond the act. The dog is digging single-mindedly. Or perhaps the dog is digging. There’s a difference. I’m left wondering if she in fact does admire this or whether this is just something to add because the image isn’t enough.
Other areas of the story perplex me. Emma finds herself in a relationship with Poresh, a dashing scholar and ex-student of Emma’s father. He’s not good for her. He says things like, “You’re sulking” and “Don’t be rude.” She describes him this way: “Because of his melodic multi-continental accent and his eyes, which were the color of maple syrup drenched in sunlight and dressed with lashes thick as pine needles, we all had a crush on him . . . ” No, I don’t buy this language: it’s too eager to please. The eyes become sloppy, the pine needles amazingly strange. Yikes.
When the relationship ends, Emma’s sickness is unconvincing. The primary reason develops from the relationship I’ve developed with Emma. Emma seems to want us to know that she’s headed towards a realization that her mother is more than what she allows; the narrative commits to this. But this inevitability feels like this question sounds: “What’s that bob doing in the water?” Answer, “I’m fishing.” Raboteau isn’t quite fishing, but Emma reads too much like a lure. I think this adds up to a story whose character is still deeper than the story permits the reader to go at this point.
P.S.
Many of the stories in the current StoryQuarterly read this way. They read as too much and unfinished.
Writers on the Screen
It was a wonderful Saturday. Dinner with Susan, John and Maggie, then a trip Bushnell-way to visit with Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jennifer Weiner at The Connecticut Forum (link to CivilTango). What a crowd, number one. The Bushnell is a massive theater space and every seat I could see was occupied. Yet, a huge screen on stage was good enough to bring the images of the writers on stage up to us in the mezzanine. This was an odd, new media experience, in that the writers shared the room with us, yet watching them was like watching a movie or TV. I took to leaning through the shoulder gap in front of me to watch the actual bodies.
Oates spoke a little about “Where are you going, where have you been.” It’s her most anthologized story and I really don’t mind this, given my fondness for it, which goes beyond what can ne “said” about the story or much of Oates’ and Vonnegut’s fiction. We have relationships with the “content” of books that is hard to explain. Slaughterhouse-Five, for example, evokes more than its story in the public square. Most of our young will recognize the name and not Billy Pilgrim.
But there is a lesson: these writers are excellent novelists and story writers, and that’s what they apparently do with bells on. They may be wise through their characters. Colin McEnroe’s questions did not probe far enough into potential.
What a fantastic time, though. Thanks John and Maggie.
Writers on the Screen
It was a wonderful Saturday. Dinner with Susan, John and Maggie, then a trip Bushnell-way to visit with Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jennifer Weiner at The Connecticut Forum (link to CivilTango). What a crowd, number one. The Bushnell is a massive theater space and every seat I could see was occupied. Yet, a huge screen on stage was good enough to bring the images of the writers on stage up to us in the mezzanine. This was an odd, new media experience, in that the writers shared the room with us, yet watching them was like watching a movie or TV. I took to leaning through the shoulder gap in front of me to watch the actual bodies.
Oates spoke for some time about “Where are you going, where have you been.” It’s her most anthologized story and I really don’t mind this, given my fondness for it.
But there is a lesson: these writers are excellent novelists and story writers, and that’s what they apparently do with bells on. They may be wise through their characters. Colin McEnroe’s questions did not probe for the interesting, however.
What a fantastic time, though. Thanks John and Maggie.
Con Jobs
“The officers made a good faith, but mistaken, effort to enforce an old unwritten interpretation of the prohibitions about demonstrating in the Capitol. The policy and procedures were too vague,” Gainer said. “The failure to adequately prepare the officers is mine.”
This is a con and a misuse of the language, just like the latest state of the union load, whose use of words fails to point to things that are real in the world. Again, the opposite of poetry.
The Sublime
Carianne Mack has supplied me with documentation on a show she will be involved in soon that organizes it’s art around the sublime. This is very nice because in BL we’re currently involved in Blake, Wordsworth, and Keats. What would the sublime have to do with the idea of the spritual and the physical, as these two have come to influence us in the course (this is, of course, a question for the students and me to to think about) in terms of the real matter of Blake’s work?
As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity.
From Blake’s Marriage
The sublime, I would argue, runs counter to questions. The sublime happens; can it slowly wash over the eyes and into the mind? I’ve read a few poems this past year that deal with the notion of the size and mystery of the world and have struggled with the imagery myself in a few stories. I’d like to see more.
In the vision, the speaker survives the fires and already the imagery of history becomes a template for play.
More play, more play.
In an upper right circle, the eye wanders into Old Sage, circles slowly looking for something (maybe an anchor). There’s a knot there and several versions or variations on it. The painting is a verb and it doesn’t end.
Student Writing and Games
Gamasutra is asking for student writing
As part of its expanding video game student-related coverage, which will be featured on the Gamasutra education homepage, the editors of Gamasutra are looking for new features written for and about video game educators and students.
Some of the topics that we are particularly looking for in order to expand the student section of Gamasutra include:
– A ‘Day In The Life’ article, chronicling a typical day in the existence of a video game student or educator, in a similar style to recent articles in the main Gamasutra feature area. We are particularly keen to run these regularly.
– Postmortems of student games, describing the ‘What Went Right’ and ‘What Went Wrong’ of creating them.
– Soapbox-style opinion articles that are specifically related to game education or student-related concepts.
– Instructional articles on the best ways to teach game development with regard to teaching or tool approach (preferably presented as a comparative search, rather than promoting one particular institution.)
Mechanical Dramatics
So what if a story is written from the perspective of the story machine.
Henry entered the dark room. He heard a low tone that reminded him of the heartbeat of an underground beast. So he knew he should be scared.
Henry smiled, stomping enslippered out onto his porch. The music rose like yellowmeadow butterflies. So he knew he should be happy.
Henry’s head fell to the tabletop. The music seeped in from the left, easing down darker scales, which suggested to him that something about sadness had or was soon to happen.
Henry just couldn’t stop chuckling to himself. As he moved room to room he couldn’t get it out of his head that a laughing crowd saw everything he was doing and this just gave him all the joy in the world.