University-Level Reading: Vision and Design

My English Department will need to re-design our Reading & Composition sequence to meet the new California laws requiring only One Year of courses to meet Transfer/AA requirements.  As we compose the new course outlines, I have one key question: Does our new sequence create, foster, and support university-level readers?  Writing follows reading; writing skills are dependent upon reading skills.  Will we train our students for competence and excellence at reading in sprints, in middle distance, and in long distance?  Will we be properly preparing City students for the demands of university work?  Can we not design with ambition and integrity and utility—all in the best sense—for our students?

Hubris, Desired

"Resolve me of all ambiguities."
--Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus"

--a line I had pinned to my bedroom door, so that I would see it each day upon waking and exiting, in undergraduate days.

Clay Vessels

Or, I need to find a summer studio, you know?

Exam Prompt: Channeling Peter O'Toole

The late great actor Peter O’Toole expressed something I feel is worth remembering:

"I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony.   I do not crave security. I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity."

How can we use this quotation to help us to understand the characters, the actions, and/or the outcomes in the books we’ve been reading? Connecting the quotation to Melville's Captain Ahab seems fairly easy, but what of Queequeg or, say, Ishmael? To Shakespeare's Prospero? To Kem Nunn's Ike or Preston or Hound? Would such connections be true ones or mere poses? Or . . . ?

Go deep into one long text, or use multiple texts in your response. Use clear references to explore O’Toole’s statement and its possible application to what we’ve read.


(Thanks to Jay Trinidad for leading me to the quotation; thanks to Peter O'Toole for the words and the life lived.)

A Novel Mirror

"The Antiquary was, indeed, uncommonly delighted; for, like many other men who spend their lives in obscure literary research, he had a secret ambition to appear in print, which was checked by cold fits of diffidence, fear of criticism, and habits of indolence and procrastination."

--Sir Walter Scott, from his novel The Antiquary.

Me: Scotch On The Rocks. You?

Thinking about Macbeth and Macbeth.

"My Aim Is True": Novel Navigation?

Or, By Bluff and Blunder?
Or, Compassion As Compass?
Or, Pin The Tale On The Donkey?

I'll stop with the subtitles, the alternative guides, and move to my central concern.  Here are three quotations that I've probably offered before, but the last few days I've found them resonating alongside a certain ambition to craft a full-length narrative of mystery and adventure.

1.  "But I had learned long ago that resolution by itself is not enough; we are what we do, not what we think and feel."
--James Lee Burke, "Heaven's Prisoners"

Here I am quoting from memory, but this is a quotation that sticks with me, that offers a rather pitiless ideal, which draws me in even as I want to bring or find more compassion than those words offer. "Resolution" in the first part of the sentence definitely means "completion" or "finishing," not merely "deciding upon" or "resolving to do." I think this quotation will help me to set up the conflicts in the "novel" I'm attempting to outline/frame.

2.  Let's listen to my second-favorite ancient Greek poet:


I over-reached
And another
Bears the bother.

--Archilochos
trans. Davenport

I take that short poetic fragment with ruefulness, with regret in the tone, not triumph, though I can see the psychology that would exult in that way. I can see such, but save me and all of us from such, I say.


3.  And the last of the triad, for now:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
--Maya Angelou

Fourth?  Frankly, on reflection, I can see how all three of the quotations above spiral around each other, twining thematically into one threefold strand, and so further sayings may be called for.  Somehow, the supposed opening line of my absolute favorite ancient Greek poet's lost comic-epic also horns in . . . .

"He knew many things, and all of them badly."
Homer, from his lost Margites . . . .


I'm quoting from memory again here, but I think you can see I don't plan to tell a tale overburdened by seriousness.  And a fallible, flawed, but well-meaning character?  Who wouldn't like a bit of that?  I mean, aren't we constructed in that way ourselves, however we may aspire and resolve to do better?

And, that fourth selection just may be another way to say "Pin the tale on the donkey."

Reading By The Crate: Fall 2011

Or, what my students will be reading this term:

A closer view, if that helps:

Oh, the titles of the books you can't quite see in the crate: The American Heritage Dictionary (marked with "Duck #3", a crucial tool), Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales, and the eighth edition of Silverman, Hughes, & Roberts Wienbroer's Rules of Thumb: A Guide For Writers.

The last is optional; that is, the students may substitute another standard composition handbook, if they already have one. I aim at affordability as well as at appropriateness, interest, and ambitiousness.

P.S. A nod to FL for the idea of exhibiting the term's reading via "the box."

Also, I don't know about you or about your teachers, but I'll be rereading all of those books this semester, even the ones I've taught before. I have an excellent memory for what I've read, but that doesn't mean I can coast on a past reading; notes alone won't do it either. I need to re-experience each book, especially as I prefer to emphasize that reading experience chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, and even sentence by sentence. If I don't reread, I lose the freshness and can't quite recall all the details and the sweep or the strategies that I'd prefer to.

I don't know how to do it any other way.

P.P.S. I've also left the Course Reader for Eng 46B out of the photo. I'd misplaced it for a while. Imagine another slim, but very full book . . . .

"Kindergarten Dropout"

I just remembered how at age 5 I announced to my mother that I would start kindergarten, but then I was going to "drop out."

1966.

And, now, I'm up late revising a final exam for my students tomorrow.