Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Martha Nussbaum)

Just bumped to number one on my reading list: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9112.html.  I hope to find an informed, intelligent articulation of some of my recent inklings about education, the liberal arts, and technology, and a lens to focus and expand my thinking about those issues.

I'll post my thoughts when I'm done, although it may not be any time soon.

The Theology of Speculative Fiction

Some of the most legendary writers of science-fiction have been thoughtful atheists (Asimov, Clarke), while some of the most important literary fantasists have been thoughtful believers (Tolkien, Lewis).  Yet the genres of fantasy and science-fiction are often lumped together (appropriately so) and share millions of loving readers.  (I'm one of them.)  Both are literatures of the imagination, about things contrary to known fact; both fall into the broader category of "speculative fiction" (as opposed to "realistic fiction").  How then, does one make sense of this common theological split between them?

True, it's not a dichotomy: Philip Pullman is an atheist writer of fantasy, Orson Scott Card a Mormon writer of science fiction.  Meanwhile, much science fiction, points out Adam Roberts in his The History of Science Fiction*, carries messianic themes (see Frank Herbert's Dune series, for instance).

But the theological split within the broad sci-fi/fantasy genre seems predominant enough to merit consideration.  Much (not all) science fiction is about transcendence achieved through technology (Asimov comes to mind, especially--see his book I, Robot, or his short story "The Last Question").  Much (not all) fantasy is about transcendence achieved through mystery and things unseen.  So then does a book like Herbert's Dune really belong more to fantasy than science fiction?  Perhaps this is the true dividing line of the genres, which at their best and most successful are narratives of transcendence.


*Roberts further argues that science-fiction is primarily "Protestant" in spirit, while fantasy is primarily "Catholic."  An interesting premise that views the genres somewhat differently than I have.

9/11/2010

Copyright David Galalis

Photos at Ground Zero taken yesterday by my brother:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/david_galalis/sets/72157624936246020/

Good Dog

One of the most moving scenes in all of The Odyssey is about Odysseus' dog.  Odysseus has returned to Ithaca, but he's disguised as a beggar.  He returns to his home (or his "manor," as Fitzgerald, the translator of this particular edition calls it--Odysseus is the king of Ithaca, remember), and no one recognizes him, except for faithful Argos...

While he [Odysseus] spoke
an old hound, lying near, pricked up his ears
and lifted up his muzzle.  This was Argos,
trained as a puppy by Odysseus,
but never taken on a hunt before
his master sailed for Troy.  The young men, afterward,
hunted wild goats with him, and hare, and deer,
but he had grown old in his master's absence.
Treated as rubbish now, he lay at last
upon a mass of dung before the gates--
manure of mules and cows, piled there until
fieldhands could spread it on the king's estate.
Abandoned there, and half destroyed with flies,
old Argos lay.

Essential Things

School's about to start back up, and we're a decade into the 21st century.  The reason I mention that is because I expect to hear a lot about what number century we're in this year in professional development activities.  Such talk is frequent in public education today, with lingo like "21st century skills," "21st century learning," "21st century learners," "21st century teaching," "21st century teachers," "21st century classrooms," "21st century schools," etc. ad. nauseam.  Apparently, someone somewhere noticed that the odometer has turned over onto... yes, the 21st century. 


What there is not a lot of talk about, disturbingly, is precisely what these 21st century terms mean.

Why Medievalism? (Part 1)

Something I've been wondering about lately: why has medievalism (or pseudo-medievalism) dominated modern fantasy literature for its entire history, going all the way back to J.R.R. Tolkien, and George MacDonald before him?  I've always enjoyed a medieval setting in a good fantasy novel and generally  avoided works of fantasy that break the medievalist mode.  I can vividly remember my childhood distaste at a book cover depicting a dragon in space.  There may have been lasers and a dragon-jet-pack of some sort--I'm not sure--but I distinctly remember thinking it was silly.  Dragons were for fantasy.  Lasers and space were for science fiction.

Of course that was a rather childish and limited view of the genres of science-fiction and fantasy...

Dig It

This is one of my favorite poems to read with freshmen.  It's rich, accessible, and every year students find new meanings and connections that I haven't seen before.  I think the first time I read it was as a senior in high school in AP Lit. with Mr. Desmond (who was a big fan of Heaney and all things both Irish and literary).  Some of these college professors love teaching it too.  Like I said, rich and accessible on many levels.  (Don't click the link until you read the poem a couple of times and give yourself a chance to think about it).  Enjoy.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging.  I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge dep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By god, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper.  He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf.  Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

                                      --Seamus Heaney (1966)

Dear Blog,

I have been a bad blogger.  I realize I'm not doing too well with the whole concept of a blog having frequent and regular posts (or at least semi-frequent and semi-regular posts).  Even though I haven't written, I have been thinking of you.  In fact, I have the beginnings of several new posts saved as drafts, with just no time lately to adequately develop them with the time and consideration they deserve.  Some people say the blogosphere moves too quickly anyway, for genuine dialogue and sustained reflection, so consider this hiatus my way of slowing things down, in keeping with the anachronistic part of your title.  (On a side note, is it strange that Blogger's spell check doesn't recognize the word "blogosphere"?  Silly red squiggle.) 

Don't worry Anachronistic Inkling, I haven't forgotten about you.

In the meantime, here's a little outside reading in defense of Amazon's Kindle.  (For those detractors out there--you know who you are!)

Good Friday

I'm a week late, but I meant to post this poem by G.K. Chesterton last Friday:

The Donkey

When fishes flew and forest walked
And figs grew upon thorn
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

                       -- G.K. Chesterton

A Day in the Life...

Today I'm going to blog about my day as a high school English teacher--the ups, downs, ins and outs of a regular old day on the job. Kind of a live blog, but not really, because I can't actually blog and teach at the same time. But I'll be updating this in draft form throughout the day, and post it at the end.

7:20 am
Got to school later than I would've liked. My schedule today: teaching first three blocks. Already prepped for my first block class (Honors British Literature), but I need to photo-copy a packet for my second block class, and I won't have time in between. Throw the packet on the copier and get to class--I can swing back by the copy room and get it between classes (assuming someone doesn't remove to someplace I can't find).

7:30 am (Class: Honors British Literature, Grade 12, twenty students)
Into the classroom. The lights are off and a student (one of my goofier ones) is standing across the room, opposite the door, wearing a sombrero and rings a bell (the type that you ring at a hotel desk) when I walk in.

A Reason to Get HBO

http://grrm.livejournal.com/136965.html

http://grrm.livejournal.com/137285.html

HBO will be producing a series based on George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones (and subsequent novels in the epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire). The pilot was produced this past fall, and HBO has reportedly ordered nine more episodes. The series is currently slated for spring of 2011, so there's still have time to read the first four books (A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows) and the fifth one (A Dance with Dragons) if it's finished and released in time.

Get excited. Now if only production of a certain fantasy film could speed up, 2011 would be a really good year for on-screen fantasy.

Inadequate

Reading over my previous post. So much more to think about there, so much more to unpack.

Towards a Better Definition of Myth

While searching for job openings, I've been browsing the course offerings of English departments at various schools I think I might be interested in. In particular, I'm interested to see what kinds and how many (if any) electives departments offer, as I would very much like to continue teaching an sf&f course, or something similar, either by proposing and starting a new elective wherever I end up, or taking on a preexisting course.

One course I'm always happy to see offered is Mythology, or some such variation. I'd love to teach such a course, but even if I never get to, I'm happy about a school where kids can study myths and mythology in a dedicated class. What upsets me is the misleading, oversimplified, and imprecise definition of "myth" that I've seen in more than one course description:

"Myths are stories ancient people created to explain what they didn't understand."

Not really.

Here's what I imagine when I read that definition:

Ancient Man 1: Hmm... I wonder what that big, bright thing in the sky is?

Ancient Man 2: That's the sun.

Ancient Man 1: I know it's the sun. But what is the sun? How did it get there and what's it made of? Why does it move across the sky like that?

Ancient Man 2: Hmm.

Ancient Man 1: I know, right? I just don't understand. I'm not really sure there's any way of knowing from way down here.

Ancient Man 2: Oh, well. So what?

Ancient Man 1: Well, my kid was asking.

Ancient Man 2: Oh, well why don't you just make something up?

Ancient Man 1: Good idea! I can say it's a golden chariot pulled across the sky by a team of horses and a god named Apollo!


It's an okay definition for elementary school, but it really sounds to me more like a definition of fable (a story created to explain something). The crux of the issue is this: ancient man didn't know he didn't understand natural phenomena like the sun, or death, or earthquakes, or thunderstorms, or the inner workings of the human soul. Myths were how he understood these things, much in the way that science is how we now understand these things.

I mention science because the problematic definition is one that reeks of scientific egotism. It's a definition for a modern, scientifically educated American who likes feeling superior in intellect to countless preceding generations of humanity. ("Those poor ignorant fools!"). But it's utterly wrong to see myth as some infantile, ancient human predecessor to science, as if those pitiable ancients couldn't comprehend our science, so they had to settle for myth. On the contrary: they did not know myth as we know it. To them myth was as inevitable as the human impulse to wonder. That's what I mean when I say that myth is how they understood--it was not consciously constructed to fill a void of ignorance. It was their knowledge.

If one accepts such a conception of myth (I don't assume it's inevitable that you do), then something surprising happens: myth and science become quite closely related in the human psyche. They become analogous modes of understanding the universe. I love science. I love myths too. They each offer greater understanding and opportunity for wonder in their own ways. To me, an infinite, ever expanding universe is just as magical and marvelous as the notion of planets on musical spheres or a god driving a flaming chariot across the sky. On the other hand, myth is as ill-equipped to explain the atomic (and sub-atomic) nature of the material universe as science is to explain death.

I'm well aware that hard-core, religiously scientific thinkers will disagree with me on that last point--theirs is the view that there is nothing that science does not have the potential to explain. Who am I to say that they're wrong? Like the ancients, I cannot even perceive what I don't understand. But I will say this: on the day in the far-flung, mystical future when science becomes omniscient and explains all, it will not have replaced myth in our imaginations. It will have become one with it.

Blue Book Inspiration

Well, not quite. More like analytical essay grading inspiration. But it will do.

I've been finishing up a set of essays on quest stories that my sf&f class wrote. They had to generate a theory of a quest story based on The Hobbit and Star Wars: A New Hope. There's been some good thinking in these papers!

Some of the more common elements my students have been identifying are a journey that causes the hero to undergo some positive change, and a eucatastrophe that results in the quest's success. One young man, though, merely said that "the hero has to experience change," to which I commented, "What kind of change?" His analysis, as the others', suggests that it should be positive change, but it got me thinking. What about a quest that causes a negative change in the hero? An "anti-quest," if you will.

An anti-quest, it seems to me, would be a quest story in which the hero undergoes a gradual demise, from noble and virtuous, to ill-willed and selfish, prompted by the premature death of a mentor. The eucatastrophe is replaced by a catastrophe and tragic turn of events (which includes the loss of the goal and failure of the quest), but ultimately causes a catharsis that redeems the hero, even as he is permanently changed (or damaged) in some way. Essentially, it would be a quest story informed by the elements of tragedy rather than by the traditional elements of a fairy-story.

Add it to my "to-write" list. It's quite possible that it's a completely unoriginal idea, but I think this plot might work well with one of the fictional worlds I've already got floating around in my head and my idea notebook. One more grandiose personal project on the back burner.

Blue Books

Have been grading exams this week... one of the least favorite parts of my job as a teacher.

Every now and then I remember the story about Tolkien coming up with the first line of The Hobbit, randomly, while he was grading exam papers and came upon a blank page, where he wrote, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." (And later had to find out what that was all about).

I haven't yet been driven by the tedium of my blue books to compose any brilliant first lines. But I'm still hoping.

Graceling

This weekend I finally finished Graceling, a novel by Kristin Cashore. I say "finally" because it became a chore at the end.

That's not to say I disliked it. Parts of the book were enjoyable, and some chapters were real page-turners. The problem was that the book outlasted the plot. Cashore resolves the most compelling of her conflicts about eighty percent through (alas, reading on Kindle forces me to talk in percentages rather than numbers of pages), and the remaining narrative lacks urgency. All that remains is the resolution of a conflicted romantic relationship between two of the main characters and some final character growth. Both of these aspects of the story were colorful, original, and interesting for most of the book but became mostly predictable (if not sappy) at the end, with the exception of one surprising twist. More twist, less sap would have been welcome.

If you don't mind following me backwards: the rest of the book (i.e. the first eighty percent) was great. The story follows a young woman, Katsa, who is a Graceling--one who has been "graced" with some special ability. Graces in the land of the Seven Kingdoms range from bread-baking to killing, the latter of which is Katsa's grace. Katsa grew up an orphan in the royal court of her uncle, King Randa of the Middluns, who uses her as his thug to threaten and punish unruly subjects. But Katsa, with her closest friends, is also member of the Council, a secret organization that works for justice, kindness, and generosity across the Seven Kingdoms, often contrary to the wishes of the seven kings. The story tells of her struggle to find her independence and live a self-determined life.

Katsa is a strong, culturally relevant female protagonist. She's also a genuine bad ass. (Her performance in the opening scene puts her on par with the likes of Batman, Wolverine, and Jason Bourne). Cashore weaves these two elements of the character quite skillfully together. Katsa, despite her indomitable physical prowess and strong conscience, acquiesces to the wishes of her uncle and king. She lacks agency and meaningful human relationships, and the story is as much about her inner struggle to find these things as it is about her physical battle for survival on her journeys through the Seven Kingdoms.

The real strength of Cashore's novel is her premise. Katsa is not the only Graceling in the book; Cashore has a knack for inventing unique, symbolically weighty Graces for some of Katsa's friends and foes, and more often than not, these Graces are more than what they seem. The idea is a really fun one that is well-developed and convincing. Cashore says she does not fancy herself a "world-builder" like Tolkien or Pratchett (I had the fortune to hear her give a reading and a talk to some of our students--a very gracious and engaging speaker), and it sometimes shows in what seems like more of a facade than a convincing fantasy world, but when she devotes her attention to sub-creative elements like Graces, she shines. I hope she reconsiders her artistic self-perception. A little more world-building would have added depth and consistent interest to the novel.

Fire, released this past November, is the next book in the series, and a third is planned. They're on my to-read list.

Inkling Fiction

Coincidentally, while Googling potential blog titles yesterday, I came upon a number of Inkling connections, some I was familiar with, others that were new to me. The most intriguing was a young adult fantasy series: The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, by James A. Owen. The first novel, now on my "to read" list, is called Here, There Be Dragons. Apparently, the three main characters, John, Jack, and Charles, are meant to be fictionalized versions of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. I didn't need to read anymore to figure out that this would be a fantasy story of how these three fantasists were inspired to create their fantasy literature. (Meta-fantasy?) Seems like a familiar trope, somehow, although I can't exactly put my finger on where else I've seen it (Becoming Jane? The Hours? Not fantasy, but quasi-fictionalized portrayals of the lives of artists), or if I have. I've certainly thought about writing a similar story, but again that's not to say I didn't get the concept from somewhere else. Nevertheless, it seems like a fun read that's right up my alley.

It's marketed as young adult fiction, so I'll be interested to see the extent to which these books provide some kind of commentary on or inter-text for the works of the three author/characters. If there's a genre in which YA fiction can also be serious literature, fantasy is it. Mixed editorial reviews on Amazon, and generally rave reader reviews. I'll post my own after I've read it. I have a feeling it will make it's way onto my Kindle this weekend, since I'm just about finished with Kristin Cashore's Graceling.

Genesis

So maybe I'll start and sustain this blog... we'll see. The idea's been kicking around for a while, and I'd like to do it. But then again, there are a lot of things I've liked to have done but haven't. I specialize in starting grandiose personal projects; there are about seventeen of them on the back burner right now. I'll try to keep this one cooking, with the hope that it will spark the others back to life.

PG