Post (tofu) Turkey ramblings....

Hey all:

Hope you all had a great gobble gobble day. We are at the finish line of our semester, so get your sneakers on and start your final sprint towards the finish line!

Once again, I want to remind you all of your presentation on Wednesday night. For those of you who have been keeping your blogs all semester, I am really looking forward to hearing your presentations--remember, you only have five minutes, so be prepared to wow in only a short amount of time. Keep in mind the requirements and suggestions I posted in my other blog posts, but above all: BE CREATIVE!!!!!For those of you who have not been keeping your blogs throughout the semester, I suggest you take my option and write a paper instead of doing the presentation; you will get more point if you do (it well).

THIS IS OUR LAST CLASS, let's make it a good one!

I will not have office hours on Wednesday (I am taking part in a Professional Grant Development Workshop) at CUNY but if anyone wants to talk about their presentations, I will be in my office after my classes on Tuesday (circa 4:30). Stop by and we can chat.

ONWARD!

Your (SOON TO BE FANTASTIC) presentations

Hey all:



Okay, when I told you during midterms that you should think of it NOT as a test but rather as a "celebration of knowledge," I was afraid that some of you would have to see an eye doctor because you rolled your eyes so hard to the back of your head. But, and I am being serious here, I do not think that tests should be "gotcha's" as in, "You thought you were doing well in this class but "gotcha" you didn't know I would ask you this question (and then I would do a long evil laugh). Not my style. I really think that a Humanities class is about communal learning that allows you to take your own paths through the material helping you grow and mature as a critical thinker. Now I do expect you to do certain things--I expect you to read the material, to think through it and to come to class ready to talk through your ideas. In this class I also expected you to write three weekly blog posts that offered insights into the readings of that week but also some thoughts about your experiences and ideas about 21st century literature.

And many of you did a FANTASTIC job . Seriously. And so you should think about the presentation on Wednesday as a celebration, a coming out show that allows the rest of the class to see what you have been doing all semester.

Besides celebrating, there is an incentive to do a really good job. 10% of your final grade will be about this presentation. So take it seriously and do a good job. I want you all to do well in this class, so make sure you put forth your best effort here. There are TWO things you must do to do well on this presentation: 1)YOU MUST FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS EXACTLY and 2)YOU MUST BE AS CREATIVE AND ENERGETIC AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN.

Here's what you must do:

******Before coming into class. I want you to write a two page summary of your experiences writing a blog. This can take any form that you want but you must have the following ingredients: a)your feelings at the beginning of the semester about blogs in general b)your feelings about your blog at the end of the semester c)the usefulness of blogs in a 21st century literature class d)something you found surprising when writing your blog this semester and e)something that you would have done differently with your blog if you had to do it again.

This needs to be uploaded onto your blog by the day of the presentation AND you must bring in a printed out copy to class to hand to me.


******The night of your presentation. You need to have a printed out sheet that has the following details: 1)Your name. 2)The name of your Blog with it's link. 3)The exact number of posts that you have done all semester. 4)Anything that you want to tell me to look for specifically in your blog. 5)The Phrase "Comments." So it looks like this:


**************

John Lennon

21st Century Literature Class http://21stcenturyliteratureclass.blogspot.com/

53 posts (as of November 24)

Dear Dr. Lennon: As you can see, while I did all of my posts the first three weeks of class and I think I did a really great job my last seven weeks of class, during three weeks at the end of September and the beginning of September I didn't do three posts every week. Things were crazy and, as I told you already, I was really sick with the flu. But as you can see, I made up for it the last few weeks posting five posts and responding to three other people.......



COMMENTS:






**************

This all goes on a piece of paper and you hand this in BEFORE you begin your presentation.

For your presentation, then, you will have five minutes to show us your blog and impress upon us what you have discovered while doing this blog over the course of the semester. How you do this is up to you but be professional and creative. Here are somethings that you want to make sure you do in this presentation:

1)You want to creative a narrative for your blog. Give us insight of what you thought about blogs in the beginning of the semester and at the end (be honest--if you hated blogs in the beginning and hated them at the end, tell us. But make sure you explain WHY). Be clear in your thoughts and detailed.
---Show us specific blog posts that will hep us visualize this narrative.

2)What did you learn about yourself when writing these blogs? (If the answer is, "I hate doing blogs," think harder. Did you learn that by writing these blogs it forced you to think about the literature three times a week in a concrete way? Did you realize that you started reading other people's blogs because you found yourself confused when you were doing the reading? Did you find that you became a lot more personal in your blogs than you thought you would? Did you find that while at first all you were writing about was the reading, you started connecting it to your everyday life in ways that you never thought about before? Be creative and thoughtful here).

3)What was your blog personality? Was it sarcastic? Funny? Serious? Angry? Forthcoming? Did you feel loose when writing or restricted? Did you just talk about the material or did you talk more about your life outside of the classroom? Does your blog personality fit your personality or do you find that it is somewhat different (i.e you are fairly quiet but your blog was opinionated and loud)?

4)Was there a blog that you followed and that you learned from? The blog that you would visit every week to see what s/he was doing? Why? What was it about that blog that made you want to read it?

5) What was your best blog post? What did you do really well here? Did you have any cool links that you think were surprising/ interesting? What was your worst blog post? The one that after you sent it you wish you hadn't? The one that you have thought about erasing? (You don't have to do both but again, be imaginative and creative here).

6)Any closing remarks on 21st century literature and its relationship to your blog?
**********
Again, you have five minutes and you want this presentation to be snappy, exciting and informative. You do NOT want to just go down the list of six questions and answer them one by one. Be creative! If your blog was an image, what would that image be? If your blog was an animal, what type of animal would it be? Have your links and images ready. Do you want to have music? Do you want to have powerpoint? Do you want to have video? Do you want to have another person collaborating with your presentation? Do you want to sing a song? Do you want to have anarchist cheerleaders (ala Nirvana's Smells like Teen Spirit video)? Again, it is up to you.

I will be in my office Tuesday and Wednesday. If you want to stop by those days and talk about your presentations and work through some ideas with me, feel free. But, also, help each other.

I am very much looking forward to your presentations. Do a good job and good luck!
!!!!!!HAVE A GREAT THANKSGIVING!!!!!

If your blogs have left something to be desired......

Hey all:



So I have been looking through your blogs again and I am really impressed by what many of you have been doing this semester. You have such good insight into the novels, you have built a community by commenting on each other blogs and you have infused your posts with your humor, personality and intelligence. Really superb and it has been a pleasure to read through them week in and week out. I hope that this large chunk of your work load this semester wasn't just "busy" work but that it helped you actively work out your thoughts in this class. I am very much looking forward to your presentations in class.



Some of you, however, really dropped the ball. I realize that you all have extremely busy lives and that work/kids/other classes/life issues/etc/etc all add to a week where time is limited. I get it (in fact I get it too well). But I made sure everyone in this class from the first day onward realized how much importance I was putting into your blogs. I talked about it every class, showed blogs in class, had time for you to work with other students in a class if you were having trouble with them, met with every single one of you to talk about your progress, etc..... So 30% of your final grade is your blog and you will have to just deal with this grade.

However, there is another 10% up for grabs in your presentation. And if you give a presentation in which you only have a handful of blogs and you don't really have anything to say about it, you will lose another 10%. And while you have been completely aware from day one that this was going to be the case, I want to give you another option so that you can redeem yourself and get a better grade. So instead of doing the presentation, I will give you an option of doing a paper instead.

In this paper, you need to take 4 texts that we have read so far in this class. Your job is to write a one page reaction to EACH one of these texts. In these reactions, you do not want to write whether you liked the text or not but rather you want to write, as specifically as you can, what the text was centrally about. After you have done this, I then want you to do a close reading of at least ONE section of the text and show how it is connected to this central idea. Each reaction MUST be at least a page and then upload the whole thing onto your blog AND bring in a hard copy to class on Wednesday (you must still come to our last class). This, then, will take the place of your presentation.

I would suggest if you did not put much effort into your blogs that you take this option.

House of Leaves Class Notes

Hey all (this is an aid to our class discussions):



I am really looking forward to talking about our book tonight--although, unlike other classes, I am sort of confused about how to do so. The nature of the book resists a logical format and I think most conversations will be circular and dip into all of these strange weird and convoluted discussions. Bring it on, I say! I'm willing to go where the class wants to go--the only thing I will not allow is for people to stay on the sidelines. Open the door and let's see what's in the darkness (okay, okay, I'll try to refrain from any more metaphoric hallway talk).



In fact, it's fairly easy to describe what this book is about. You all decided that House of Leaves is about:



"A HOUSE IS ONLY A PLACE TO KEEP YOUR THINGS LIKE YOUR FAVORITE VHS TAPES AND YOUR DOLLS' MINIATURE SHOES OR MAYBE A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS OR MAYBE TO BURY YOURSELF IN A MAZE OF MATERIALISTIC, MULLETHEADED, COKE SNORTIN' WHORES WHO REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE TRUTH BECAUSE REALITY FREAKS THEM OUT MORE THAN THEY WOULD ADMIT, NOT TO MENTION THEY CANT"



Okay, why did I do this? While, as Thomas said, it might sound like a drinking game, it was an attempt to show how this book is built upon readers interpretations. 8,000 blog posts have been posted to this "fan" site about HOL (see how cool this book is, it is referred to by its initials) and all of these weird wonderful and ridiculous posts about HOL and the Simpsons ; the amazing 5 1/2 inch margins that is connected to the 5 1/2 feet hallway or the music that you should listen to when reading HOL (btw, did you know that Danielewski's sister is Poe who wrote an album called Haunted meant to accompany the book? And that readers think, like me that you should actually listen to Godspeed You Black Emperor instead? Ah, but I digress).



In other words, this book does not stay inside the leaves of this book but expands with every reading. Well, you counter, doesn't that happen with every book? Yes, but HOL is the first book that I have read where this idea is built into the book so completely. It forces us to think about reader's reactions and you need others in order to fill out the dark spots of your understanding. This is a communal book meant to be shared and disseminated among groups of people. It was first written on the web and this seems wholly appropriate--work is put up and then altered and talked about and commented on and brought into all of these nooks and crannies. I went to a conference talk this past weekend about the future of academic writing when I was in Nashville and, crazy enough, the speaker was talking about the web--instead of the academic book--as being the site where academics will write their scholarly works that will be shared and discussed by others. There will be a lack of an author and instead authors. Go here to see her ideas. But this death of an author that postmodernists like to throw around at cocktail parties actually fits really nice here. Mark Z. Danielewski is the "author" of the book but isn't Johnny Truant, Zampano and The Editors (who, yes, are fictional but don't they take on a life of their own here--look how many people in class thought they were real people). And then how we have added in our posts that could be linked to discussion posts on HOL? It is a text that keeps generating more text (hmmm...sort of like an expandable hallway, huh?)................



Loved It/Hated It

This might be a good place to discuss your reactions to the novel. You didn't hold back in your posts and I want you to talk about here in class...here are just a few:

Loved it/Hated it

Thomas
•"I loved this book. Which is surprising because with an opening sentence like "this is not for you" comes off, in my eyes, as melodramatic and pretentious, everything that follows, from content to format, is just refreshing. In retrospect, such an opening is almost redeemed as the reader moves on. It has been a while since a book has told me to "take a deep breath" and essentially scare the shit out of myself by pretending to be in Johnny's shoes (pg. 26-27). What did it for me was the line, "find those pockets without sound," which echoed a Zen saying I heard and have loved since I was young, "It's the silence between the notes that makes the music." In this case, it was the silence between the train rattling, the baby crying, the iPod blaring next to me, the conductor over the sound speaker, the silence between all of these, that managed to scare me, even if it was a slight bit. You see, because the night following, cold and filled with a new suspicion thanks to the novel, proceeded to make me both laugh and pause to think about the novel. That's an effect that most books don't have on me. Not only am I thinking of a line from a favorite book, but I'm experiencing the mood of the line. Does that make sense? Well, that's how I know I loved this book. "

Kevin •"I approached this book as a challenge to overcome. As such, I couldn't bring myself to either love it or hate it. It was a reminder of a class I took in my senior year of high school, during which a teacher subject myself and my fellow students to Ulysses. It was scarring, and I received several headaches from reading it. However, I came to have an amount of respect for the author, which later became reverence.However, I cannot see myself falling for this new work like I did with Joyce. There is simply too goddamn much in here. I'd have to agree with Jessica on this point: you could easily devote an entire semester or a lot of time on the Internet to deciphering this book. (Incidentally, a lot of people have chosen the latter.) If I have any complaint at all, it's that we didn't have enough time to give this book the attention it deserves. I still don't hate it; it's too intriguing to hate. Jarhead, on the other hand."

Rich •"This book was absolutely, I don't want to say horrible, but it was extremely tedious and difficult to read. Overall I will have to say that I did not enjoy this book. The read was ridiculous because it was half story and half textbook. There was way too much lecture going on in this book that on two separate occasions I fell asleep reading, yet while reading Truant's part of the book, I did at times find myself interested but then he too would go off and have a five page metaphor on how he was feeling at that point and time. I can't take it anymore. This should have been a movie not a book and I don't want to read the psychoanalyzation of the freaking thing while I'm actually reading and trying to understand some messed up author's head nightmare. I can't even begin to explain what the hell is happening in the book but I can tell you that it is frustrating that we did not have class and could not discuss because I am truly lost and I think that is the largest factor of me not enjoying this thing..."

Matt
•"hate this book, present tense. For a long time now I have known that my reading comprehension leaves much to be desired. This book does its best job to make me feel even worse about my lack of skill in that department. For most of the works we have read this semester I have heard people discuss things or reference something that sounded foreign to me. I was forced to either ask someone or keep quiet about it to avoid feeling dumb. In the case of House of Leaves, I feel like that about a lot of things, maybe too many things. I'll admit that I did not enter this book with an open mind. How could I; it's the size of a textbook. All I can say is, when the supply of paper begins to dwindle along with the rest of the economy, we know who to blame."

Barry
•"The hatred comes during long passages of scientific BS like echoes (even though my favorite line/moment might be the last line of p.73) made even more annoying when Truant then points out after you've read the section how horrible it is and that he didn't want to include it blah, blah, bastard. All the fake article titles were funny the first two times maybe, but the 205th just pisses me off, because I still feel like I'm going to miss something if I don't look at it. Same thing with all the appendix and exhibit references. The "editors" even give you the choice of wanting to know more about Johnny's mom or not in a footnote - of course I feel I have to read it - then 45 minutes later I'm asking myself "Do I really want to decode this letter from his mother with the first letter of every word?" Of course not, its 3am, but what If this jackass author has hidden the whole meaning of this book in there, and he kinda seems like the type of jerkoff that would do something like that. Why the hell did I read those blue boxes - worthless! I definitely did not read more than 10 of the names/buildings. Why does everything have to be in French or Latin first if you are just going to translate it anyway? And could you please stop footnoting your footnoted footnotes that appear 5 pages in the future. I get the point - we are getting lost in this book, just like the hallway, but to be honest if it weren't required reading I would have probably stopped caring somewhere around page 45."



Form of the novel

Another idea that I think we need to discuss is the actual form of the novel. Let's start with the footnotes themselves. What do footnotes imply? Proof. We in academia always need to prove ourselves--our ideas, original as we may think they are, must still be connected to something true and tested. And as we can see in one of your assignments last week, there are plenty of footnotes that are true. But what about the ones that aren't. Do you then discount everything? Is the reverse true as well--you might as well just believe everything? Funny how this connected me to the election and the way that the candidates would say things and the next day there would be all these FACT CHECKS. And I would check sometimes...but why should I believe this website--who is funding the site? Is there word true? See, it keeps going and going......

****And what about the fact that the word House is blue all the time? What does this mean. One thing that has been discussed is that this was an original web text and so the house then could link to other things.....but I like Rob's idea better.

****What about the quirky format of the text? The boxes were mentioned by a few people (although right now I can't find the blog posts) and I like how one person mentioned about the actual containing of the text in a box is very strange and limiting (although we don't have this same problem with the "box" of the page itself).

****And of course, what about the blank space on the page? What does that do for us to look? Does it makes us want to fill it in (again making this a text of participation) or leaving it empty is a relief--finally a page that we can turn easily?

****Any thoughts about the font? Does the changing of the front reveal things about the individual characters?



WHAT IS THE HOUSE?



Another question that I asked from you all was for a video or picture of what you thought the house looked like. You did a fabulous job many of you and I want to talk about a few of them in class. Thom, Terrence, Barry, Matt; Jamie; Rich......(some video) Danaya;Terrence; Matt; Shanoa; Jessica; Kevin; Jamie and so many others that we are going to get into........



Questions?

I do at the end of this class want to make sure that we answer some of the larger issues/questions that you have so we can talk it through.....


•If the footnotes, in fact, are falsified, is what we're reading even truth?
•Why didn't anyone take a sledge-hammer and bashed down the wall on the side of the door to make sure that was the only way to get in. (or real for that matter)


•Did anyone else notice the checkmark in the bottom left corner of page 97? Why is that there? Did I miss something?
•Why does the story involving Minotaur have to do with the main story line? In connection to that, what is the main story line?


There are more than several biblical allusions in the text. On page XX of the introduction, Truant states that Zampanó, "knew from the get go that what's real or isn't real doesn't matter"... 1) Does anyone else agree that FAITH plays a major role in the text, i.e. Zampanó's FAITH in his scribes, Navidson's FAITH in his friends who are summoned to the house to investigate, Karen's alleged unFAITHFULNESS, our FAITH in the author and the veracity of this work?




Why does Karen choose to stay in a life that she seems to be unhappy with? Is it for the kids? For companionship? Or does she really just not see how unhappy she really is?

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?
I would like to do a character sketch of ecah one of these characters as I already asked you to do on your blogs. Who is Navidson, Johnny Truant, Zampano, Tom, Karen, Halloway, etc, etc.......

JUMPING IN
During the course of this class period, I would like us to go through this text randomly and just look at pages and try to figure out this novel non-linear. It worked for Burroughs, why not for us?




ODDS AND ENDS


Is this the picture of Delial here?



Listening to House of Leaves

http://markzdanielewski.info/media/5point5.HTML



The Idiot's Guide to The House of Leaves



Reading from HOL (Click on audio)






EXTRA CREDIT


Somehow, and I am not sure how, the semester has contracted and we no longer have many weeks. We have tonight and we have the week after Thanksgiving. That's all. And since our next class, I would like to spend the time having presentations about your semester long blogs, I want to give to you the opportunity to get extra credit for reading the rest of this novel. What you need to do for this extra credit (and the result will be that I will bump up your grade by a half or a whole--so if you were getting a c you would now get a C+ or a B-; if you were getting a B, you now get a B+ or an A-, etc, etc) is to a)Read the rest of the novel and B) write a long blog essay in which you talk about the transformation of a character. Here are the rules:

You need to talk about the character in the different stages of this book (If you were going to write about Johnny Truant then you need talk about him in the beginning, the middle and the end of the book. How has he changed? What has caused him to do the things that he has done? What are specific instances that he went through that are significant and why? But be imaginative--is the House a character?). You then need to have at least ten (10) relevant links that helps the reader understand the different stages that the character has gone through.

In order to do this well, I would think you would need to write the equivalent of 3-5 solid pages of strong text. This is due by December 8.

Nice job Read for next week 246-346

Hey all:

So here I am in Tennessee and I find myself skipping presentations to read your blogs on House of Leaves. Let me first say that although this is an extremely tough book to read and one that I think is specifically based on a challenge--are you willing to strip away everything you know about literature and come follow the author down this long, dark hall to nowhere particular?--many of you stepped up and faced this challenge head on. I would start listing specific posts but they are just too numerous.

At the beginning of this class I asked all of us to be intellectuals in a very practical sense--to challenge your concepts about what you know about literature, your self and your world view by asking tough questions and I see this willingness to do so in your posts. So keep up the good work. I virtual thumbs up to you all.

However, there were some of you who have dropped off the face of this class? Hopefully you didn't open any doors to oblivion. This might lead ala Navidson to some very long tough days. It will also lead to a bad grade in this class.

I will keep going back to your posts but for next week I want you from 246-346. For those of you who are having trouble (which is all of us) keep pushing through--there are even a few long jokes that are, in my opinion, laugh out loud funny. But think about the posts that you and your classmates have written as you read through the next section. I will not promise you that things will become clearer but the ride is a good one.

ONWARD!!!!

Virtual Class

[I wrote this message to you and sent it to your St Francis e-mail.)

So our virtual class is up and running.

Go to my blog--http://21stcenturyliteratureclass.blogspot.com/

and respond to my NINE (9) posts for this class. But be careful, follow the directions very carefully. Some ask you to respond to my post (you read the post and then press "comment" at the bottom and respond). Others ask you to go to your Web blog and respond there. Still others ask you to go to other people's blogs in the class and respond to their posts. Make sure you follow directions or you may lead yourself down hallways that never end.

Each post is an attempt to help you think about this book and in fact to do all of the things we were going to do in the traditional classroom setting. Our class normally lasts for three hours--and I expect that your work in these posts will take you a significant amount of time. While I doubt that it will take you three hours, if this only takes you 30 minutes, you are not doing the work you are being asked to do.

You have until 11:59 tonight to make your posts. Feel free to use St. Francis computers but you may also do these posts anywhere you would like.

IF YOU DO NOT SEE YOUR BLOG ON THE SIDE OF MY WEB PAGE, E-MAIL ME IMMEDIATELY WITH YOUR BLOG ADDRESS AND I WILL PUT IT UP.

GOOD LUCK!

questions

House of Leaves is obviously a tough book to read. Please use this space to ask questions. At least three. Press "comment" at the the end of this post and ask your questions.



They can be plot driven, "Does anyone know Delial is?" or "Wait a second, if Zampano is blind, how did he write this book?" to more abstract, "Is Johnny Truant and Navy really the same person?" or "Are the cameras just a rip off of The Real World confessional?"



Then I and the rest of your classmates will respond if we think we know the answer.



Please try to respond to at least three questions from your classmates throughout the night.



Let's help each other out----I'll get the fishing line and you get the radios. And we will beat Mr. Monster.



[if you didn't get those references, then you need to do more reading.