Raining Cats and Dogma

This afternoon, I fly to LA for the Comparative Drama Conference, which way back in 1999, was the first professional conference I had presented at, and the journal in which I garnered my first publication. Hosted by Loyola Marymount University, the conference is being held at the Marina del Rey Hotel. It will likely be an expensive conference, but fortunately, I've got travel funds to cover it.

Problem is, I just found out today that funds for my last conference (20th Century Lit. in Lousiville) didn't get covered. There's a reason for this, but I don't like it.

Unlike at previous jobs, WVU has funds divvied up into several discrete pots of money. International travel comes from one pot of money, domestic travel comes from another, and there is this third pot that is designated for "faculty development." Faculty may apply for money from each grant source once a year. Because the Narrative conference (next week's destination) is in Ottawa this year, we'll chalk that one up to international travel. And the Comparative Drama Conference uses up my domestic travel request. The thing is, while I knew there was risk involved in applying for this third conference as faculty development, I had also been told that lots of folks did it this way, so I wasn't too concerned.

And I know that the sum total of the reimbursement I've applied for is more than most places dole out. But the fact of the matter is that I wouldn't have even gone to Louisville if I knew that the funds weren't there. I certainly won't make that mistake again.

Posted by at 9:49 AM | Permalink

Welcome, contestants, to the judging of Round 2 of TOP NOVELIST. This week, your challenge was to look around you for your inspiration, and turn it into vivid prose. You will find all of the responses here.

We must start by saying how unsurprised we were that 11 fiction writers couldn’t follow the rules. We asked for a description of a place, and we got descriptions of people, of mindsets, and in one case, some smack-talkin’. And so this week’s results.

Julia, we were pleased to see that at the very least, you described a place in detail. But Tolkein posters and a cat? You need to get out more. But not this week. You’re still in.

Patricia, your protest description was vivid and energetic. Your optimism makes us gag. And really…were you actually at the protest when you stopped to write this? We aren’t fooled (well, one of us was, which was enough to keep you in this week).

N., what we know about your setting…umm…there’s a desk there. And a creepy mouse. But creepy mice go a long way in fiction, so you’re in.

Daniel, were you a virgin, like, last week? Get a grip, man. She’s just your girlfriend, and you could maybe try to find a way to describe her that isn’t exactly how 5,000 college boys describe their girlfriends every single day. While we’ve got words for BILL and his trash-talking, about you this week, he was right. But for the time being, you and you cliché girlfriend can stick around.

Nels: prison of the mind, indeed. (We’re not sure what this comment means, but we weren’t sure about your entry either. We’re not very bright, after all). You’re around to try a prison break again next week.

And now, for the top three writers this week:

Suzanne, while you patently ignored our advice to break out of trappings of genre in which you are so ensconced, we couldn’t ignore the fact that all of the admins at TOP NOVELIST HQ were a-twitter about the dashing Jarod Jefferson IV.

Perry, some of your fellow contestants may insinuate an unfair advantage, since your genre allows you a narrator who notices every detail about setting, but when that setting contains a wood chipper in an office space, well, that takes cojones. But enough with the Vincent D’Onofrio schtick. This ain’t Law & Order.

Phillip, after a week of silence, we were pleasantly surprised to receive your entry. Welcome to the competition, a bit late, but we suspect that may be the story of your life. But we digress. Your description is both vivid and evocative. The undercurrent of self-loathing made us glad that it was brief, though, unlike say, Perry’s.

And the winner of Round 2 is . . . Perry. Congratulations, and no, Bill, Perry doesn’t get immunity from elimination next week. Neither do you, but that’s another story that leads us to . . .

The bottom three writers this week:

Bill, your entry for this week revealed how much of your fiction is autobiographical, as you are clearly a prick. This in and of itself is not cause to be kicked off the show, but not answering the question might be.

Lucy, we were hoping for a red velvet boudoir, a tent in the midst of the Saudi desert with incense burning within, or at least—if you’re going to describe an airport—a description of someone being initiated into the Mile High club. Instead we got, well, an airport on what? a Wednesday?

Sadie, our multinational corporate sponsors have politely requested that we cease and desist offering you a forum for the spouting of your liberal rhetoric. Go write pamphlets for Patricia to pass out at her next rally.

Bill and Lucy, congratulations: you’re in this week. Sadie, this is your rejection letter.

A quick administrative note: Since the east-coast-centric Updike is no longer around to insist upon a noon EST deadline, we’re moving the posting deadline to 7pm EST on Thursdays. You’re welcome, West Coast. Don’t forget to post snarky comments below, and check back for the next challenge on Monday.

Posted by at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Almost every semester, I try to assign one work that is not only new to me, but also that I try to read along on the same timetable I ask of my students, so I'm able to really model the process of critical reading, not just the end result.

This semester, that text has been Virgnia Woolf's Orlando. Now, I've read plenty of Woolf already--To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, Between the Acts, A Room of One's Own, and I'd seen the lovely but very different Sally Potter film starring a transcendent Tilda Swinton. But given that the theme of my semester is to look at constructions of the ideal Englishman (with both "English" and "man," nation and gender-- up as terms for analysis), Orlando seemed to be an obvious choice, and a text that I had been hoping to get around to for a long time.

Sometimes (as I mentioned over at New Kid's excellent teaching roundtable post), when I've taught a text a few times, the spontaneity that drives my best teaching, and the great student driven conclusions that arise slowly congeal into a series of really great points that I want to make to new classes. Instead of allowing them to be free to come to similar or different excellent conclusions on their own, I often shrink from the equal risk that they'll come to very little useful on their own, and I drive them to find some of those same conclusions. When this happens too often, students begin to sit back, and wait for me to point the way--Look here. OK, now look here. OK, now let's put these two pieces of information together. OK now let's throw in a dash of X critical approach. What does that taste like to you?

So I get excited by these opporunities to keep if loose, and based on how my students have been doing with this incredibly rich text, I should remember to trust them more often. Yesterday, as we read chapters 3 &4 of Orlando, we discussed how Woolf's opinion about masculinity evolves over the course of the novel, how the middle section of the novel enacts a feminist critique, how that critique is able to separate out the pleasures of gender from the constrictions of gender, and how that critique extends to masculinist views of history and biography. 75 minutes. 200-level. damn.

It helps that I am adoring the novel ... yes, am adoring, since I, like my students, have not finished reading the text yet. This may seem like irresponsible teaching, but I don't think it is. First off, I am re-reading and re-re-reading each chunk of text as it is assigned before moving on to the next one, so my copy is annotated, underlined and well traveled before I teach it, and as I think yesterday's class illustrates, it helps me focus on the text as it's happening, and helps me resist the impulse to go 'big picture" too early and instead stay rooted in close reading, an impulse I struggle with.

In the mid 90's Frank Lentricchia publicly abandoned political criticism in favor of an approach that indulged his less critical love of reading. I find that this approach is letting me have it both ways, because I am naturally retaining my excitement about the text, my giddy love of beautiful, or funny, or powerful passages, while still pushing students to more sophisticated (and indeed, often politicized) conclusions.

And of course, I am also doing the silly, light-hearted things that keep my classroom light. Yesterday, as we worked through the transformation scene, and looked at Woolf's almost theatrical use of the silver trumpets of Truth, Candour, and Honesty, just as the final horn blast of THE TRUTH, I pulled out a paper party horn and tooted a little note. On the one hand, it drew a laugh, but it also helped draw students' attention to the almost Brechtian device Woolf is using here, the playfulness with which she giddily pokes holes in the seriousness of biography. And it was fun.

Posted by at 9:15 AM | Permalink

When you post something on a Friday afternoon, you should generally expect that fewer people than usual will read it.

When you post something that you been thinking about a lot on a Friday afternoon, you may realize that your timing was poor.

When you post something you've been thinking about a lot, on the same Friday that most everyone in the field you're posting on is away at the major conference in that field, you might think that you might as well have posted it on the underside of your desk.

To wit, if you happened to teach composition, you might have something to say about this.

Posted by at 9:20 AM | Permalink

Good writers know that place is as important as character, plot, and theme. This challenge asks you to turn the place where you are right now into art. In your own distinctive style, describe the scene you see around you as if it were part of a story or novel.

You have until Thursday at noon Eastern Standard Time to post your response in the Mont Blancâ„¢ comments field, at which point our celebrity judges will not review your work, because, as we may have mentioned, they all killed each other, but we will review it, and devise cranky things to say.

Good Luck!

Posted by at 8:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

The CFP for the collection I'm editing, entitled Writing Against the Currculum: Anti-disciplinarity in the Writing and Cultural Studies Classroom dropped a week or so ago. The collection grows out of an article I co-authored with Rachel Riedner last year for Enculturation.

Since the CFP's gone out, we've gotten a few nibbles of interest, and a few critiques: One, from someone at the imprint publishing the interested series on Cultural Studies, Pedagogy, and Activism, asked me to think in more complex terms about how we're using Foucault on discipline to think about "disciplines." OK, point taken, and I'm looking into it.

Another, from a colleague at GW for whom I have the higest of respect, suggested thinking about ways that anti-disciplinarity in the academy draws on a much wider history of non-disciplinary activism outside of the academy. And that's a great point, and perhaps explains some of the reason why teaching activist stances in the classroom draws so much fire--because activism not only cuts across disciplines, but frequently rejects them as limiting. I hope he will contribute something, ultimately.

Another, from someone I respect immensely here asked me via email how we could challenge disciplinarity and disciplinary conventions when our students can barely even define the terms. At first, I thought maybe he was just being playfully combatative, and while his question doesn't shake my commitment to the project of this book, it forced me to think about how this project might translate in very very practical terms.

Obviously, at the highest level, the notion of using the composition classroom as a space to challenge disciplinarity has plenty to do with syllabus and assignment design, with reading selection, and with how and how much we emphasize critical reading and writing. But when it comes to addressing the topic point-blank, what do we tell our students about the disciplines, about disciplinarity, and about how to think about it?

With this in the back of my mind, here's what I did today in class:

Today I introduced their final position paper, an 8-12 page argument that takes a stand on the issue they've been researching (in this semester, one on advertising and branding), and argue for a change. There's plenty of apparatus to the assignment, including the research bibliography and an audience analysis. But I also hand out a sheet called "Avenues for Critical Writing" (I mention it in the Enculturation article). In it, I describe five tasks, intellectual activities to apply to students' writing.

We start by defining critical thinking, which they had heard of, but had only an abstract grasp over. Then we talked about how critical thinking might translate into critical writing, and what that might look like. The had some great ideas about not taking sources at face value, about finding their own voice and thinking for themselves, but when we started to talk about questioning underlying assumptions in the discussion, a few faces started to go blank. So we discussed the five avenues. Here they are, as they appear on my handout:

Interdisciplinarity: Sometimes academic disciplines (engineering, English, business) are so bogged down in their own way of thinking that they cannot see the benefits of other ways of thinking.
• Can your argument work across some of these boundaries between disciplines?
• Can you attempt to make new knowledge by crossing their modes of thinking?
• Can you use a variety of texts that represent many different ways of thinking?

Self-awareness: It is important to be clear and critical of your own background and position when you make an argument; you appear to be more even-handed, and better informed about your own place in the discussion.
• Does your argument acknowledge your own identity and the position that you are arguing from?
• Do you pay attention to your honest motives even if they don’t always make the most forceful case?
• Can you question the rhetorical tactics and motives of other texts?
• Does your argument avoid a false sense of neutrality or objectivity?

Power Relations: One of the things that we can use powerful writing for is to help level the playing field for the disempowered voices in the discussion.
• Can you look beyond the positions established by the dominant players in the discussion?
• Can you critique the positions of those who abuse positions of power?
• Can you open up topics of discussion that may shake things up a bit?
• Can you wrestle with some of the grey areas of the discussion, and acknowledge the difficulty of coming to a single position?

Papers as Critical Interventions: Some of the best arguments actively try to make a change in the world, either arguing for a new way of looking at a problem, or encouraging a bold action to be taken.

• Can you move beyond straight reporting into intellectual analysis?
• Can you suggest changes in the present and encourage future possibilities?
• Can your argument make a real world impact beyond the page, the classroom, or the university?

Historicize: Strong arguments show some awareness that debates don’t exist in a historical vacuum, that ideas change over time, and that our approach to them is influenced by trends in thinking as much as by common sense.
• Can your argument take into account the specific historical moment that we’re living in?
• Can you see the historical factors, like publication modes, influencing your research?
• Can you point out ways that the ideas, the groups of people, and the organizations that you are examining are parts of larger trends in history?

With the Interdisciplinarity section (I wasn't ready to introduce anti-disciplinarity yet) we started by defining "disciplines" which for them roughly translated to "majors." We discussed what makes a discipline a discipline, and began to think about how they might be somewhat limiting ways of thinking. I told a story about a friend of mine who was taking an MBA course in something International Business Ethics something. I asked him how much of the course took into account ethics of the disenfranchised, ethical conduct on a larger scale, not just "are-you-breaking-the-law?" ethics. His answer was "We kind of leave that to you humanities folks." OK, so there's a case in point where disciplinary thinking is limiting, and may make the world a worse place.

I raised another example of a Princeton professor I heard on NPR the other day who is a professor, I think, of International Affairs and Geo-Sciences. We talked about how he was uniquely placed to think across some of the boundaries in debates about global warming and international environmental policy. This was interdisciplinarity.

They were with me. And then came, "But the fact that he's such a unique guys scares me, because this means that most of the people thinking about global warming and international policy are thinking often in one vocabulary or the other--few people can think across those lines of discipline." This is why disciplinarity as an organizing pronciple is dangerous, I think.

I asked them to jot down in their margins what disciplines might have a stake in their topic. Then they brainstormed ways that one or more of those disciplines might contribute to the discussion, and then ways they might be limited.

"What does your discussion need then to bring it all together?" They were shocked when the answer turned out to be them--someone still outside the disciplines, someone not yet inculcated into a specific way of thinking. Sure, their thinking isn't yet terribly disciplined (in the sense of rigor), but it's also not yet deeply disciplined (in the sense of limited epistemologies).

OK, so do I expect a set of 22 groundbreaking activist, anti-disciplinary papers? maybe not. Have I persuaded maybe one business major, or advertising major, or engineering major to keep other ways of thinking in mind when they write their senior thesis? maybe.

And in my own little way, this is how I teach anti-disciplinarity to students who barely know what disciplinarity is, let alone its conventions.

Posted by at 2:30 PM | Permalink

This week on TOP NOVELIST, the challenge was to select your favorite word, explain its significance to you, and use it in a piece of fiction. This challenge is to measure your vision for language, your economy with words, and apparently, your ability to follow guidelines and meet deadlines. Our judges, John Updike, Michiko Kakutani, and Dave Eggers, have all died in a catfight over what consitutes good literature, thus leaving the producers to judge the remainder of the contest.

This week, Phillip exercised his single "Writer's Block" lifeline (Hey, we steal from all kinds of shows) to sit out a week. Writers may use this Writer's Block excuse to get one free pass out of a week's contest. Use it wisely.

First of all, the following writers have remained in the pages of the contest:
Lucy, your prose was, well, overHEATed, but it was certainly competent, and spicy enough to keep the judges interested.

Julia, try to broaden your scope. While this was beautifully done, we worry about your ability to go beyond the confines of your own experience.

Perry, You have chosen a remarkably beautiful word, particularly given its disturbing use. We are looking forward to seeing more of your work.

Patricia, Your writing tends toward the sentimental and the cliched. Like Julia, you'll need to expand your scope or your best work will be the work you've done in your activism.

Suzanne, you know your genre well, but we fear your skill in this genre may be masking a deeper shallowness.

Our top three writers this week are Daniel, N., and Bill:
Daniel, you use your language beautifully, and your characters may be more mature than you are. Don't pat yourself on the back too much with those prizes though. Unless they're giving you a book deal, they don't mean a thing to us at TOP NOVELIST.

Bill, while your description was stronger than your actual fiction, both were full of pulsing energy. If you can sustain that drive in your writing, and that unflinching impulse to uncover mendacity, you will be a force to be reckoned with.

N., you met the challenge of economy by using a word that isn't even a word, but is in fact the absence of a word. So compelling, so provocative. Even though we all know you just wanted to drop the F-bomb twenty times, we found your entry playful and visionary.

The winner of this challenge is...Bill.

The remaining three contestant have things to worry about.

Sadie, you are clearly very smart, but we had no idea what you were talking about. Catachresis? WTF? Remember, Sadie, you have readers. This week, though, you're in.

Nels, we like your no-nonsense approach to language, but we wished we had seen it in your actual fiction. Like most academics, though, you will be forgiven for not quite following directions. You're in.

Devorah, this is TOP NOVELIST, not TOP PLAYWRIGHT, and even if it were, this would still suck. Not only is your language trite, but it doesn't even sound nice. Devorah, this is your rejection letter. Pack up your typewriter.

Contestants, please feel free to comment on the judges' feedback. You are encouraged to be bitchy.

Posted by at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I've upgraded my Movable Type templates (with the massive help of Jason) to generate this new, infinitely more readable look.

But now my banner looks sloppy. Ah well. For another day.

Posted by at 3:28 PM | Permalink

While a few contestants have been granted short extensions (ahem, Perry, Bill, and Phillip), Top Novelist is up for viewing. And commenting. Lots of snarky commenting.

Posted by at 12:31 PM | Permalink

Jeffrey Williams, editor of the minnesota review, will be speaking here next week, and so I was poking around looking at both his work and the journal he edits. In doing so, I ran across his fairly recent essay in that publication, entitled, simply, "Smart".

In it, he argues that this term "smart" has become the marker of merit and disctinction in the profession, growing out of earlier terms like "sound," "intelligent," and "rigor," and parallel to "excellence" that empty term famously exposed by Bill Readings' The Unviersity in Ruins. These are all terms that are still in operation today, to be sure, but none with the ring of finality, authority, that being deemed "smart" currently holds--an argument can be rigorous, for example, but plodding, banal. But if it's smart, brilliant even, we can forgive a bit of sloppy scholarship here or there in deference to the gleaming kernel of smartness that can, in due course, or with sufficient revision, or a bit more research, could, in theory easily support.

For Williams, this is not merely the innate quality that we often like to think of ourselves as possessing, the one that distinguished us in grade school from both the lower performers who beat us up, or even the similarly high performers who were likely to put the brains to the service of something as crass as financial gain. It relies on a kind of "life of the mind" purity, and Williams notes (rightly, I think) the degree to which this sort of purity smacks of the same kind of class distinctions made by many pre-Marx writers.

"In short," Williams argues, "'smart' resides at the intersection of class and merit, or rather of merit and its dissolve into class." I recall a blogospheric discussion of academic class from not long ago, and this essay clearly dovetails with that discussion, one where I am always ambivalent in gauging the ways that my own conduct and aspirations place me.

But I am also interested in what other terms we might come to use as a standard of valuation (for it seems like we will always find use for one). I myself have found myself turning to ethics as a source of personal and professional valuation, although I cannot seem to abandon my attachment to my own perceived smartness, and my anxieties that I might not have enough of it, in comparison to my peers--an academic penis envy if I've ever heard of one. What other terms do you favor? What distinguishes a colleague or a student if not "smartness"?

Posted by at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For this week’s challenge, you must tell us your single favorite word to use in your writing, explain why you like it, use it in a short passage that you feel illustrates how the word functions for you in your fiction. This challenge asks you to crystallize your vision for language, to articulate that vision, and to do so with economy and precision in this single word.

You have until Thursday at noon to post your comments in the Mont Blancâ„¢ comments field, at which point our celebrity judges will review your work.

Good luck contestants!

Posted by at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Oh Lord how much better it is. After three weeks of the Tempurpedic debacle, we have found ourselves on a lovely Sternes and Foster mattress. It's sooo firm, which is something we are very happy about. Seriously, it's like sleeping on a very comfy box spring.

I know, it sounds downright spartan to some, but I've slept better in the last three nights than any single night of the previous three weeks.

Posted by at 8:50 PM | Permalink

I had these visions: 9 days of break, 5 of them withe the kids at daycare. Long expanses of time to write, read, exercise, do things around the house, hang with Ann, maybe even take a nap or two.

Nine days later, 6 and a half days ofsick children, and now 1 day of not-feeling-great Ann, and break is gone. Yes, I got a lot of stuff done around the house, and I even got one of the two conference papers written. But this was supposed to e the week where I got ahead of the game, and instead I'm behind. I have papers coming in early next week, most of the stuff in the Brit Lit class is stuff I've never taught before, and in early April, I've got two conferences in two weeks (one in LA, the other ithe Narrative Conference in Ottawa).

So, buh-bye vacation. The good news? TOP NOVELIST starts tomorrow with a full slate of players. That oughtta be fun.

Posted by at 4:31 PM | Permalink

As seen, colorfully, everywhere . . .

and for the full report . . .

My Personal Dna Report

God I'm so addicted to these things . . .

But here's what I like about this one...it doesn't assume that masculinity and femininity exist on the same continuum. WHile I'm "slighly low" on masculinity (which I'm fairly pleased about) I'm not prportionately high on femininity. This tacitly acknowledges that gender roles are not necessarily co-constructed, and have their own, odd, arbitrary rules. Also, it says I'm more open that pretty much everyone.

Posted by at 3:06 PM | Permalink

From Nels, via Scrivener . . .

Go to your music player of choice and put it on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question. NO CHEATING [yeah, right].

How does the world see you?
"La Vie en Rose..." by Cyndi Lauper. Charmed life, I guess.

Will I have a happy life?
"Camera" by REM, which I don’t know what to do with. The runner up? “Good Enough” by Sarah McLachlan, which sounds more like it.

What do my friends really think of me?
"Divine Intervention" by Matthew Sweet. You tell me what this one means . . .

Do people secretly lust after me?:
"Bolero" by Simon Standage, from the Moulin Rouge Soundtrack, not by Ravel. Next, “Don’t Stand so Close to Me” by the Police. No, I am not kidding. Either way, I have a hard time believing it (although I now have a Ratemyprofessor.com chili pepper, so, who can tell?)

How can I make myself happy?
"High Speed" by Coldplay. Don’t know what to make of this one

What should I do with my life?
"Murder, He Says" by Tori Amos, from the Mona Lisa Smile Soundtrack, Runner –up, “Imagine” covered by Eva Cassidy. Again, I like the second better than the first, which is gruesome, but admittedly kind of funny.

Will I ever have children?
”Pressure” by Billy Joel. I won’t explicate this one, because there are so many ways to go with it, but since I’ve already got 2, I’ll let you make something of this one.

What is some good advice for me?
”Closer to Fine” by Indigo Girls … but what advice? Shall I go to the doctor? The mountains, Shall I look to the children? Or drink from the fountains? Tell me, O meme!

How will I be remembered?
”Reelin’ in the Years” by Steely Dan, followed by “Talkin’ ‘bout a Revolution” by Tracy Chapman. Wishful thinking on the latter. I’m not what to think of the former.

What is my signature dancing song?
”El Tango de Roxanne,” again from Moulin Rouge, an excellent bit of synchronicity.

What do I think my current theme song is?
OK. Weird one here. The first time I did it, I got Joni Mitchell’s “Blue,” which I thought was totally un satisfactory, So I kept going until I could find something else (cheating I know) until I gave up and moved on. After the rest of the songs, I came back to this one, and tried again, and got “Blue” again. So I’ll take my favorite line from this one: “Everybody’s sayin’ that Hell’s the hippest way to go; well, I don’t think so, but I’ll take a look around.”

What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
“Superman” by REM. I can take this two ways: the first would be to believe that people actually think I’m some kind of superman, which is untrue, and vain, to boot. The other way is to read the irony in the song, which would mean that others think I’m a pompous ass, which I hope is as off base as the first interpretation, but who can tell? Either way, I guess it’s better than “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” by the Smiths, which came next

What song will play at my funeral?
”Besame Mucho” covered by Chris Isaak. [I can only hope that people don’t take this literally, but this is a song I often sing around the house, particularly when we’re making lasagna, when I change the words to “Bechamel, Bechamel mucho!”

What type of men/women do you like?
Men: "April Fools” by Rufus Wainwright. I’m not sure what this means, but it’s not auspicious.
Women: First was George Michael’s “Freedom,” which might suggest that I like supermodels, but next came "Lady Pilot" by Neko Case, which seems to at least be more accurate.

What is my day going to be like?
"Passionate Kisses” by Lucinda Williams. Keep your fingers crossed!

Posted by at 2:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

While Scrivener apparently had enough free time to blog his daughter recent stay-at-home illness, he doesn't have twins in the same day care who get sick simultaneously. Since Saturday, our two have been home sick, with middling high fevers, nasty junky coughs, and enough snot to replace Niagara.

Did I mention that this was my Spring Break?

So instead of writing the two conference papers coming up, reading Orlando to teach in a week or so, and actually spending some time with Ann, I've been watching lots of Sesame Street and Dora, and doing things around the house that can be done with one or two two-year-olds helping: cleaning rooms, building pre-fab bookcases, folding laundry, wiping noses.

While this has been productive in its own way, it's not getting the writing done.

Today though (!!!!) they both woke up with fevers merely of the cabin variety, and so we packed 'em up and sent 'em to daycare for the morning. We'll bring them home for lunch and naps, just to help keep them healing, but thank jaysus the 5-day encampment is over.

And now I've got a conference paper to attend to.

Posted by at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I suspect that posting Friday night wasn't best plan in soliciting people to play along with our little reality-show-blog-thing, but we're serious--we want people to join in the silliness. Check below for which contestant identity you'd like to play, and let me know by Friday.

Posted by at 11:33 AM | Permalink

[Note: This is a parody. None of the people named herein have had anything whatsoever to do with this parody]

This season on . . .
TOP NOVELIST

By the watchers of PROJECT RUNWAY and TOP CHEF.

Episode 1: The Write Stuff…

New York Times Book Critic Michiko Kakutani, novelist John Updike, and maverick author and publisher Dave Eggers have reviewed the work of hundreds of aspiring novels, choosing twelve to come to New York to compete for the title of TOP NOVELIST. The winner earns a publishing contract with Simon and Schuster, a $50,000 advance, and a really really nice Mont Blanc Pen.

Let’s introduce the Contestants

Suzanne: 29, Single, Staff Writer for Lucky Magazine.
Genre Chick Lit.
Admires: Helen Fielding and Jane Austen
Sample Sentence: “I knew my wretched luck was finally turning around when the heel of my Jimmy Choo snapped off and rolled across the elevator floor—right against the shoe of our gorgeous new VP of Marketing, Fritz Fontaine.”

Sadie: 41, Professor of French
Genre: International Literary Fiction
Admires: Chinua Achebe and Nadine Gordimer
Sample Sentence: “We spat at his imperialist heels as we chased him out of the village.”

N.: 33
Genre: Postmodernism
Admires: Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino
Sample Sentence: “You are now reading this sentence. And now you have moved onto this one.”

Perry: 48: Mystery Book Shop Owner
Genre: Mystery
Admires: P.D. James and Edgar Allen Poe
Sample Sentence: “In life she had, no doubt, been strikingly attractive, but with half of her face missing and the remaining shreds of an eyeball hanging in threads against her cheek, it was hard to tell.”

Daniel: 23, MFA Student, Iowa Writers Workshop
Genre: Literary Fiction
Admires: Jonathan Franzen and John Updike
Sample Sentence: “It wasn’t coincidence that the mercury hit five below the day I truly understood my father’s heart.”

Devorah: 37, Playwright
Genre: Literary Fiction and drama
Admires: Samuel Beckett and Truman Capote
Sample Sentence: “’Tell me the truth,’ she demanded. [beat] ‘You and your damn truth,’ he sneered back.”

Julia: 36 Stay-at-home-Mother
Genre: Literary Women’s Fiction
Admires: Toni Morrison and Anita Shreve
Sample Sentence: “Sometimes, Rachael wondered what it would be like to eat eggs benedict just before noon instead of soggy Cheerios as her children boarded the school bus.”

Nels: 35, Assistant Professor of English
Genre: Academic Fiction
Admires: Umberto Eco and David Lodge
Sample Sentence: “Although none of them were Renaissance scholars, no fewer than five of his colleagues had emblazoned above their office doors, that famous vision of Dante as he entered the Inferno: ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here.’”

Lucy: 66, retired dentist
Genre: Romance
Admires: Judith Krantz and Linda Howard
Sample Sentence: “The question was: did Cannes in the Springtime call for the see-through black chiffon evening gown or the deliciously prudish blue velvet pantsuit that nonetheless revealed her white breasts right down to her nipples if she wore it without a camisole. Chloe stood in front of her open suitcase, paralyzed with indecision.”

Patricia: 44, Activist
Genre: Memoir
Admires: Frank McCourt and Amy Tan
Sample Sentence: “Try as I might, I couldn’t hold back the tears for those who I saw suffering around me. My life was changed irrevocably that day.”

Bill: 26, Barista
Genre: Testosterone Fiction and the Road Novel
Admires: Chuck Palahniuk and Jack Kerouac
Sample Sentence: “’Naw Man, you don’t know shit about shit. Marriage is just a way to keep your ass at home.”

Phillip: 41, High School English Teacher and debate coach
Genre: Literary Fiction
Admires: The New Yorker and Vladimir Nabokov
Sample Sentence: “Richard looked around the bookstore coffee shop and realized that he had devolved into cliché: The black coffee, the black rimmed glasses, the copy of Pale Fire, the secret predilection for women who spoke French and didn’t shave, the stoop of one who wishes to avoid the blows that life was dealing him daily, the shame of his nightly dream of turning into a kafkaesque cockroach rummaging through the dustbin of eternity.”

Posted by at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Not merely a co-authored parody by Ann and I, Top Novelist seeks wacky and witty contestants for its weekly challenges. Every week, we’ll design writerly challenges from the sublime to the ridiculous, and—-in character-—you’ll compose responses. Don’t worry, they’ll be short and sweet . . . until the final challenge where we just might ask you to write a short story or something.

If you’re interested in taking on a role, email me at ryan [dot] Claycomb [at] mail [dot] wvu [dot] edu with the roles you are interested in. Preference given to people we know in real life and blogs I read regularly. Please be aware that every contest will have a contestant eliminated, and it may have nothing at all to do with quality. The creators (Ann and Ryan Claycomb) decide this all by ourselves. The winner will get bragging rights and a little giftie both cool and writerly.

When we choose our cast, we’ll email you some more details about your characters and announce the cast here on Cats and Dogma. Looking for contestants now . . .

Posted by at 10:31 PM | Permalink

Barring my little cyber-happy-dance in the last post, and my ambivalently posted but much read prior post, I've been out of blogging sorts now for three or four weeks now. There have been some very good reasons, and then some other reasons.

I've been grading for a month straight. OK, boohoo, but whatever stroke of genius had me collecting papers from all three semesters on the same day last semester, evolved into a stroke of genius wherein papers/midterms came in every Monday for four weeks, so while I was never buried in papers, I was also never free of them. And since I can seem to stop myself from writing about 500 words in end comments for evey one, well, I was busy.

My conference in Louisville had me working on other stuff. Louisville was a nice conference--a bit of travel in late february can change the scenery a bit--but based on some odd geography, it would have taken about as long to fly as to drive, and so I drove the six hours to Louisville by myself. Blecch. the first two hours straight down through the Appalachians were bad enough, but the two hours from the Kentucky border to Lexington may have been the most boring two hours of highway in my (admittedly east-coast-centric) life. And I was only at the conference itself for a short time. The paper went well, and was well received . . . byt the other panelists and the one person in the audience. Ah well. Anyway, the goal was to use the conference to get me writing this new chapter, and if that's the case, then mission accomplished.

One very bad word: Tempurpedic. I know, I know. It's supposed to be this miracle bed. But after two weeks on the thing, my back isn't getting better; it's getting worse. And my back wasn't bad to begin with. It's supposed to take a few weeks to get used to the thing, but I haven't slept well since I was in a hotel bed in Louisville. I suspect that by this time next week, we'll have an exchange set up in our house. Something nice and firm, and traditionally spring-supported.

General malaise of the very minor variety, but I just generally dislike February and March.

Subconscious Blog ambivalence. Guilt mostly. Guilt about that "I deserve a higher grade" post, which felt disingenuous, but then got linked by IHE, and it seemed to resonate with a lot of people, and hey, it brought some more readers. But I feel conflicted about the whole thing because the actual student who prompted the post handled himself like a real grown-up, and I'm afraid that my post reveals the opposite about me. Get out the hairshirt, I guess. Also, with so much academic writing to get done, blogging feels like an opportunity cost activity. Which it may or may not be. So instead I've just been commenting profusely (for me at least) on other people's blogs, and reading new ones that I've never hit before. Which reminds me. I need to update my blogroll.

So anyway, Spring break is nearing, I've got stuff to post on (like my yearning for early 90's Brit pop like the Stone Roses, my anxiety about designing a grad class, this great article by Jeffrey Williams I read on the use of the term "smart" in the humanities as a standard for academic status, more hairshirt blogging, NCAA basketball, strategic planning and the first year prof, and my upcoming conferences to LA and Ottawa within a week of one another).

OK. Time to shut up and make dinner (baked penne with goat cheese, almond pesto and baby peas. Yumm).

Posted by at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After three years on the job market, I swore that I'd take some time off from the anxiety-fest that is MLA. Looks like that time off is only one year...

Up until now, I have gotten every conference paper abstract I've submitted to a conference accepted...except that is for anything I ever submitted to MLA. I once got a special session paper accepted, but then the session didn't make the cut.

This morning, after years of futility, I learned that my paper "The Inscrutable Terrorist and the Righteous Rioter: Violence, Dialogue and Representability in Oral History Performance," is accepted for the Literature and the Other Arts panel on "Performance: Riots, Uprisings, and Terrorism."

What's interesting (to me, at least) about this is that the paper will feature some discussion of Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, which I saw at Studio Theatre in DC last fall, and which I generally didn't like. I thought initially that the trip was something of a professional waste (although socially, a winner).

Anyway, after lots of conferences and a few articles, I felt like an MLA paper was one of the last things I wanted to check off the list (that and a book contract). So now it looks like I've got that monkey off my back . . .

After my shortish bloggy hiatus, I've got some less self-congratulatory stuff to post (like my ambivalence about having that last post linked through IHE, or some notes on the conference I attended last week), but those will have to wait until I'm done slogging through a stack of grading. But this was just the pick-me-up I needed to get me through that (since the girl scout cookies still haven't materialized . . .).

Posted by at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)