In IL (Intro to Lit) today, we went back to basics asking about motive, impulse, life and death, winners and losers, science and the speculative.

Always tough subjects, especially when we’re talking, hypothetically, of course, about “impressions” one makes about people who walk into class late or otherwise break rules or do something that draws attention from cultural norms. Then, of course, someone walks into class late and the word LOSER is written up on the board and everyone laughs, and then things must be explained and you hope for a strong sense of humor. Lucky, the class is loaded with it.

We talked some about the “blueblack” cold of Robert Hayden, such an important cold. The quality of cold and experience, waking up in it. The shape of human experience as expressed in language.

We’ll continue with this. To ask questions like, “Where does fire come from?” and “Why are we warring again?” Those words from McCarthy are recalled: “. . . and the night will not end.”

So the new semester begins. Literature, writing, and more writing. Why all this writing? Is this some sort of joke? Do modern people fear the blank page so much that we need to scribble it gray? This year Im going to be trying something new, having students put all their ideas down in ketchup or using mustard as the medium for settling on things. Or just ink.

In composition were going to write laterally, up and down, not in the common method of across and across. How does the way we write; how do the tools we use effect the process of coming to conclusions? This seems to be a human geography question; the page is all around us, now the screen. We could ask how much does the ink on the printed page weigh, the twisted light on laptop screen, the uttered word, then read Tim OBrien.

Or we could just write across and across.

But to the subject: Literature. And an essay, a trying out. Just some thoughts. Why do we read and study literature? I dont think we should. Im against this. Its a political thing. Reading and hearing good stories and poems (and writing them) is an experience first, an experience that cant be paraphrased. If we attempt to paraphrase the story, to talk about the movie, were moving away from the story and the film, into reaction or description or analysis. We like to do this. We experience The Milagro Beanfield War and want to tell people about it. I saw this really cool movie. It was beautiful. Then come other criteria. The music was great. The acting splendid, the visuals sensuous. Then come the examples of all of these. None of this is, of course, the movie. Bits and pieces of a comic in analysis are merely examples that support an essays overall point, page or screen or space dependent.

We have an urge. We want to write it. That urge may come in the form of an image, a bit of dialogue (You have this way with a wine glass. The way you turn the wine reminds me of the passing of time.), a shoe on the floor (how did it get there?), a memory (why that one?), a turn of phrase, such as, I saw the sunset and it reminded me of grilled cheese. Or an argument, creative essay. The process that moves to the completed product is complicated, if even a final product is the result.

The good story or the good poem is a particular kind of discovery. These may be repeated or unique attempts. Odysseus or Spiderman. A good ghost story (see Silent Hill II) can open understand to why something is scary or disturbing. What is the connection between what scares and what shapes our everyday our experience? The discoveries arent overt, because theyre embedded in the narrative. Thus understanding the narrative is key to unlocking understanding, which, hopefully, will lead to confusion or more questions. Is this true, possible? Theres something in Fitzgerald. What? Once you act you put something into motion. Actions are. Scary.

How do they ripple out?

Whenever I read Garcia Marquez’ Chronicle of a Death Foretold, an odd thing happens. CDF tells the story of Santiago Nasar’s murder, a murder committed because of a misunderstanding. The novel begins with Nasar’s murder and then “chronicles” how the murder came about. The narrative, therefore, is circular. But here’s the odd thing: even though I know Nasar dies, murdered by essentially good people, I read through hoping that the outcome will be different. I know there can be no other outcome. Yet, I read the novel expecting there to be another outcome: that Nasar will not be killed.

How does an author generate this “reader response”? The same goes with King Lear. Every time I read Lear I hope the text will end differently. I’m hoping for the play to change, for Edmund to open his mouth. But he never does. I know he won’t. But I read “hoping” that he does.

We’ve just come off talking about Raymond Carver’s story “Cathedral” in intro to lit. The discussion came down to the eye and the question of sight so important to Wyatt, Moore and Gibbins, Shakespeare, and Bacon.

“‘Take a look. What do you think?'” Robert asks Bub, the protagonist of “Cathedral,” after they’ve drawn a cathedral on paper.

“But I had my eyes closed,” Bub responds. “I thought I’d keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do. . . . I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.”

Here’s where Bub resolves his problem. The story ends with “insight.” In the story Bub’s blind to lots of things and in the end he looks inside. As Bacon would claim, there are problems with a reliance on the sense of sight as a means to draw conclusions. Case in point is Lear who point blank asks Goneril and Regan in King Lear to confiscate his eyes, a metaphor for judgement. He is blind to their trickery.

Likewise, Satan appeals to Eve’s sense of sight as she “eyeballs” the fruit of the forbidden tree. Watchmen tests our judgement in the graphic tale by building multisequential narrative lines into single panels.

Sight is a complex metaphor. It’s drilled into the language that we use.

Here’s a question: do we “see” music?