Eng. 180: Rebecca, Gender and Power

Lots to catch up on!  First, the Chronicle posted an great article on teaching true crime, so the conversation on teaching in this genre/subgenre is definitely happening--and it's definitely a conversation we need to have.  Obviously, I feel very strongly about the need to teach crime literature, the need to explore it from a critical perspective, and the need to engage those authors who are writing those texts right now.

Today, I started off 180 with a clip from Hitchcock's 1940 adaptation of Rebecca, the scene where the narrator (so gloriously unnamed) comes down the stairs to the costume ball in her dress, the horror of Maxim's reaction, and in the movie, the narrator flees upstairs and confronts Mrs. Danvers about the plot--and it's there that Mrs. Danvers has her speech...and then tries to convince the narrator to jump out the window and commit suicide.  It's only the fireworks that signal a ship has run aground save the narrator, who does look like she's going to jump.  Of the chapters we read for today, I said shit happens...and then more shit happens, which made them laugh.

On Monday, I had them read Nicky Hallett's article "did Mrs. Danvers warm Rebecca's pearls? significant exchanges and the extension of lesbian space and time in literature" and we talked specifically about gender and sexuality, especially in terms of place.  I was a little leery of this risk, knowing this is conservative Nebraska, but my students seemed game.  I divided them into their small groups, something I just need to keep doing and not think that my large group discussions are going to get anywhere.  This class is incredibly shy and quiet and they will talk in their small groups where they don't in the large group.  As a result, I've been trying to figure out more small group activities that are more than me coming to class with questions for them to answer and then we talk about those answers in the large group.  

Friday's exercise was "Dear Diary," which, at the time, I didn't think went that well, but several students mentioned it as helpful and interesting in their Think Pieces that they turned in on Monday, so maybe I'm a poor judge of what works and what doesn't.  The idea came from Longman's website:  Have students role play as characters in the story. They respond to events of the story from their perspective. Each diary entry begins with a quote from the story; the students then write 100 words minimum per entry from the character's perspective concerning this quote. The diary can have as many entries as necessary—for example: 4 quotes concerning rising action, 1 quote concerning the climax, and 1 quote concerning falling action.  I only had them write from one quote.

Monday's exercise was to talk through the issues we were focusing on for the day--gender and sexuality--and I had them start with a free write.  This class definitely does better if they have some time and space to think through their pens.  

• What kind of spaces have we been exposed to?  Built spaces?  Natural spaces?
• What kinds of actions take place in which spaces?  Where do various plot points happen?
• How are these spaces gendered in a particular way (Hallett’s article:  the ball is gendered heterosexual, male-female dancing, etc.)

And then, in their groups, I had them talk through what they wrote and from there, I asked them to create a question that they would give to the next group to answer.  Here are the questions they came up with:

• Group 1:  How does Mrs. Danvers and the narrator’s relationship compare/contrast to that of Rebecca and Mrs. Danvers?
• Group 2:  What are the main examples of power and space that have led to the building of suspense in this novel?
• Group 3:  In terms of setting and place, where does the narrator feel most safe?  Where does she feel threatened?  Why does she feel those emotions in those places?
• Group 4:  When looking at the spaces of and around Manderley, where have you noticed different expressions of power?  Who has the power in those spaces—and where does that power come from? 
• Group 5:  How would you describe the struggle of power within nature, specifically how the natural world is used within the plot of the story?
• Group 6:  All of the spaces in Manderley and its environs belong to either Maxim or Rebecca.  How does place define their identities?  And how did they come to “own” those spaces in the first place?

Each group took their new question and answered it--and of course we ran out of time (my pedagogy has a real problem with these 50 minute classes)--and some of the depth we got to was really great.  I tried to bring back some of these in today's class, but we got very wrapped up in the actual plot of what was happening.

But it was worth mentioning that though we were in small groups today--and I did ask them to consider the specific gender and power issues in the exchange where Maxim tells the narrator the truth about himself and Rebecca after her boat has been found--that I brought up Jerome Stern and his book Making Shapely Fiction.  One of my favorite moments in that book comes when he is discussing scene--when you're a kid and you want an adult's attention, what do you do?  You throw a tantrum and make a scene.  As a fiction writer, if you want a reader's attention, you make a scene.  Why is the narrator's exchange with Mrs. Danvers important?  Why spent seven pages on it?  Why is it important to spend an excruciating number of pages on the lunch scene?  Why does du Maurier want our attention there?  Also, from the fiction writer's toolbox, if dialogue is what characters do to each other--why are these exchanges important?  It was neat to see new wheels turning in their heads in terms of what du Maurier as a fiction writer was bringing to her page.  It's more than just telling a story in which shit happens and more shit happens.

I did close out today's class by having them free write how du Maurier fits into this world of crime literature we've been reading.  This is the first real example we've had of crime literature that is not a detective story.  What did she learn from her predecessors?  What new angle is she bringing?  For myself, I want to explore what I was thinking today of the eco-gothic, that it's not Manderley or a human, really, that's holding the secrets that threaten to destroy the characters--it's the sea that holds those secrets.

But another thought for another day.

Interview with Ken Bruen

Over the course of a couple of days (21-23 Sept. 2012), I had a delightful email exchange with the Irish noir novelist Ken Bruen about his work, his craft, and the ways that place moves on his page.   Some really cool moments here, for anyone interested in either side of the page, the writer's perspective and the reader's perspective, the place of crime literature in the world of Literature, love of cities, love of bookstores.  

Ken Bruen is a prolific novelist of crime and noir fiction, with nearly three dozen novels to his name.  I first became interested in his work not just because he was writing Irish thrillers, which was electrifying to myself as a reader and myself as a teacher, but also because his Jack Taylor novels are set in Galway.  I started researching Irish noir (I really hate the term "Emerald Noir"), got deep into some cool scholarship, and then the expected happened:  I pulled out a blank syllabus on my computer, started putting a class together.  Then a Call for Papers from Eire-Ireland on Irish crime comes across my inbox.  A paper on Irish crime lit?  Yes, please.  So the next logical thing to do was strike up a conversation with this writer that is occupying so much of my thoughts and bookshelf.  In some places I changed punctuation to clarify, but in other places, I left his words as he wrote them, because the voice evoked is just awesome.

Lots to talk about here--enjoy!

***

What is your process like as a writer?  Do you write everyday?  What is your drafting process like?  Do you write longhand, with a computer, a combination of both?  

I write everyday, same time and so it's built in like ritual.  For certain projects, I write longhand to really get the feel, the frisson, the direct flow.  The laptop for speed and ease. 

What is your revising process like?

I read in to a recorder every night and if the music isn’t there, the beat to count cadence, I bin it. 

I'd like to follow up on you reading your work aloud.  It's something that I do as a writer--nothing gets sent out without me having read it aloud--and it's something that I recommend to my students, no matter if they're first-year composition students or creative writing students.  Reading it into a recorder, however, is a step I've never taken myself.  So, for practical purposes, the work takes on a doubling:  you're not only hearing the work as you physically speak it aloud, but you're also listening to it when you play it back?  How did you develop that strategy?

It's the failed actor in me and also, I used it a lot in my days as a teacher. It really helps develop how to write in different accents and tones. Walter Mosley does it also.

Are you conscious of how you structure these novels?  I've noticed a trend for your Taylor books to end at a place that the reader wishes for another hundred pages--yet it ends right in the middle of the action, a very important action.  What are your thoughts on your narrative structure?  

There is a point in my read, like a piece of Irish traditional music when the next move is a vacuum so you are done, it can be jarring but if you read the narrative again, like real life, this is where it cuts off, rather, get's cut off. 

What you said about ending a narrative at what might seem like a jarring point--but it's like real life, where it gets cut off.  Do you consider this a function of the genre in which you've chosen to write, this emphasis towards realism that noir prides itself on?  What do you consider the functional craft-of-fiction difference between realism and what is realistic?

If this doesn't sound too lame, the characters dictate the timing, as in, say a Jack Taylor, he literally won't talk to me any more, he's told me and that's it, no frills. In my life, realism is confined to the books I read, realistic is what confronts me every day I venture out and let the world have a shot.

Declan Kiberd famously wondered where the literature of the Celtic Tiger was, something that Andrew Kincaid in his essay "Down These Mean Streets: The City and Critique in Contemporary Irish Noir" argues that was being written, but not in the capital-L Literature that Kiberd seemed to be looking for.  The literature filling that need was appearing in this particular sub genre.  What are your thoughts about how stories always seem to fill the void and the need of society?  Just in terms of the crime-literature world, from Poe to Conan Doyle to Christie to Chandler to du Maurier to Mosley to Lehane to Paretsky and on and on (I realize my list is very Brit-American-centric), each of those new modes of telling the crime tale was in response to a very specific societal fear--and the storytelling easily adapted itself to it.  How do you see your work fitting into this societal fear and need?

I don't. I rarely fit the requirements of the analysts and thank fook for that. Crime fiction is pouring out of Ireland now, be it literature or not, who cares, I think for young writers, crime fiction is like the Punk movement, a chance to say screw you to the Custodians of The precious Irish Lit heritage and the rarefied few who wish to keep the jackals, and guttersnipes ( as I've been called) from their ownership of Joyce et al.  I read religiously (pun intended) and almost fervently the lit posturings and lit mags and want to shout, 'for fooksake, who cares, the barbarians are indeed at he gates and don't give a toss about your supercilious posturing.' 

What have you read lately that’s set your world on fire?  One thing I’ve read about you is that you and Jack Taylor share your love of books—what are you reading right now?

A slew of biographies, the dark ones, what made they so dark and how did that fire their art , followed by the Anne Sexton's poems then a motley crew of philosophers, throw in some Crews, Tom Waits and my head is ready to jolt.

On a similar note, I’ve read interviews where you’ve mentioned you share your love of books with Jack (which is, for me as a reader, one of the only things that redeems that character and keeps me reading until the next book--well done)—but I’m curious about where and how your experiences of the city match or do not match Jack’s.

Jack spends much of his energy on the past, me, not so much.  Jack doesn't do progress, me I try, a bit. 

Interesting what you said about "Jack doesn't do progress"--considering the movement of progress (and the movement backward, as well) and "obliterating" the cultural tropes that seem to still linger.  I read quite a bit of memoir as I worked on my comprehensive exams for my program and I started to wonder if the Miserable Irish Childhood Memoir is the literary antidote to that romanticism (something noir also offers) because it offers the consequences to the romantic tropes:  if the romantic view of Ireland is one of drinking and dancing and singing and such, these miserable Irish childhood works show that drink costs money and how rampant the poverty was, that sexy accents do not make for a good marriage and bad matches (and the gender roles and expectations enforced by society and the Catholic Church) cannot be reversed.  (As an essayist, I have issues with the memoir genre, but that's a different conversation--I much prefer Tim Robinson and Chris Arthur…)  Thoughts?

The Misery memoir industry continues to thrive here and I'm constantly being attacked due to my belief in Nature over nurture. I know close wonderful people who've had the most horrendous childhoods and are the best in the world and others who ‘Had it all’; and are the scum of the earth. True evil which is my main preoccupation is in my opinion something that begins at birth and peaks.  I correspond a lot with Andrew Vachss and it's worth your time to google him.

Are you aware or conscious of Galway as being as much of a character as Jack Taylor?  How do you, as a writer, construct the city to be more than setting?

The city is the fourth main character, shapes, coddles, beguiles and seduces and to do this, it has to be  ever present, like a banshee, just slightly in the mist, keening.

How do you notice that Galway has changed over your lifetime?  Physical changes to the city and the landscape, mental/emotional changes?  What have you noticed that is the most dramatic or the most interesting?  What specific changes do you think are the most visible tracks of the Celtic Tiger, both for good and ill?

Prosperity brought drugs, greed, obesity and the developers brought ugliness, luxury apartment buildings on site of lovely old homes. The very air is now one of....... money............ the stench of it, once it were the aroma of home stew and hope.  Now, we're like a dead end suburb of bum fuck nowhere in Des Moines.

How much of Galway is your own inherent knowledge of the place and how much is research specific to the book?  I mean, when you put Jack on a specific street at a specific time of day, do you walk it yourself?

I walk it every day, feed the swans, let my dog run in the Claddagh, light a candle in the churchs that don't have electronic one's, so I can use a taper and match and not electronic like a celestial vegas.  I get me books in Charlie Byrnes, have a pint in Garavans, and side skip the road kill of the literary bullshite they pedal. 

I'd like to hear about your affection for Charlie Byrne's, as a place.  How did you first come to it?  Why do you return?  I always feel like the best bookstores--and I prefer used bookstores to ones that sell new ones--always seem to give you the book you never knew you couldn't live without.  My sister once sent me a postcard from San Francisco that closed with the line "I'd like to travel by bookstore."  It was at Charlie Byrne's that I first found Synge's The Aran Islands, back when I was in college, and reading that book out there still remains one of the incredible moments of my reading life, that chemistry of reading a book in its setting.  Do you have other bookstores that hold a similar place in your imagination?

Vinny and Charly who own the shop began with a market stall over 20 years ago as my first novel had just come out, they thought I was a shady character, with a pea jacket and always travelling. Each year, I'd have a new book and they'd move to a premises then a bigger one so we kind of grew together which is a brilliant opportunity for a writer to literally grow with bookstore, like Larry Mc Murty in reverse.

My fav bookstore was The Black Orchid in NY

I did readings there with Ed McBain. 

The romance of Sylvia Beach and her Parisian store, and stores like the famous one in Charing Cross Road make me yearn.

What is it like to write Galway?  Is there a difference between writing a city and writing about a city?  I’ve read interviews where your purpose with Jack’s character—and, for that matter, Galway’s character—is to obliterate the tropes and assumptions about Irish men and their mothers, for instance.  The dark rendering of Galway (and Ireland in general) certainly seems to serve that purpose as well.

I want to obliterate the Ireland of The Quiet Man and merry priest and lovable Mum's and all that horseshite we lay under for generations, to have a cool unique city that young people can feel is theirs and not some relic from the years of grinding poverty.

As for the "cool unique city," can you point to any specifics that you see are leading to this?  I laughed a little at your comment about "a dead end suburb of bumfuck nowhere in des moines," simply because one of my favorite opening lines of all time belongs to the travel writer Bill Bryson, who wrote an essay titled "Fat Girls in Des Moines," which begins with "I come from Des Moines.  Somebody had to."  Because I'm interested in place, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that suburbia is The Great Unplaced, because suburbs are basically indistinguishable from another.  What do you see as the unique aspects that Galway has to offer, that makes it different from any other place?

Nice serendipity. I was a huge fan of Bryson and John Cheever. I quite madly think Mad Men owes a lot to Cheever!  My favourite cities have a vibe, it's in the very air like a charge, a jolt, an electrical frisson that is almost impossible to articulate and my cities are

Galway

Assisi ( a village in truth)

New York

Sydney

Venice

Madrid

Marrakesh

Hong Kong

Kyoto.............purely because I had my first young brush with fame there when I walked right into David Bowie who said

Hello

The test of a great city is if you wake in the wee hours and think, Thank fook I'm in this place.  “A Movable Feast” seems to me to convey that extraodinary sense of place that is unique to some cities. Too, Galway has a sense of irony and that is rare to rarest found and even better, the city would deny any such high falutin claim.

To apply the sublime test, on leaving a city, does it, like a great love affair, break your heart in smithereens and the dread you will never return. I'm haunted always by Macavafy's poem on Alexandria and Thompson's Hound of Heaven, they are part of my constant hand luggage.

I've read a 100 tomes on writing and the best advice to writers for me was from Paul Theroux who said

'Leave home'

Love that.

Eng. 151H: Mixing it Up

Today is one of those days when the work that's not due for a couple of weeks is much more attractive than the work you have to do right now, for tomorrow.  Today is my writing day and I need to get moving on the essays that will make up my dissertation (on the city of Galway), but I keep getting distracted.  I have books to read that look like more fun (like Declan Burke's Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Writing in the 21st Century which arrived this week)--and that particular distraction got worse this morning by a call for papers from Eire-Ireland that's looking for work on Irish crime for a special issue in 2014.  This, of course, sends me into a tailspin of wanting to take the previous informal writings I've done on the subject (here and here and here) and see what I can come up with.  Which makes me jot down notes to bring up when I meet with the vice-chair of the department on Friday to ask some questions about various things.  And then I get nervous because I haven't written the paper I'm giving at the American Conference of Irish Studies in less than a month.  One thought leads to another.  And this is not productive for the writing I actually have to do.

Because I'm reading at the No Name Reading Series on Friday the 28th and I want to read something new.

So, naturally, I feel the need to work on something else--like reflect on what's going on in my 151H class.

My 151H turned in their final drafts of their Silent Spring rhetorical analysis on Monday and we transitioned to the second Writing Project by watching the apple section of the documentary The Botany of Desire (which is instant on Netflix if you'd like to check it out).  The book (by Michael Pollan) is better, but this was a good way to give my students a little break in the brain area while still getting them to think in this new direction, to see how what we've been doing in the last few weeks transitions into what we will be doing in the next few weeks.  I've got a fondness for apples--published an essay called "The Inheritance of Apples" a few years ago in Silk Road Literary Review.  And I found out that yesterday, my sisters were going to pick up Gram from her assisted living, bring her back to their house, and make pies.  (Also found out that because Gram--who is 89--couldn't really do any of the tasks anymore, that made her extremely critical of everything--the apples were cut too thick, the pastry cutter wasn't as good as using a knife and fork, and more.)  I adore my grandmother.  She's a hoot.  And a champion pie baker.  So I get excited about apples.

The purpose of the project is to investigate food systems and for my students to consider the choices they are making and how the complications are related to what we're talking about in the class.  We talked about how the rhetoric of apples changed from the demon fruit that was getting America drunk to An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away.  I also brought up something I'd seen on the LIncoln Journal-Star that morning, about BPI (makers of pink slime) suing ABC news for defamation--and this was something that will get brought up when we watch Food, Inc. in a couple of weeks (I had no idea these veggies libel laws existed)--so what we're doing is incredibly current.  The point of the project is to become aware of the rhetoric used by all of these different groups, to explore why this idea of food systems is not as simple as either/or.

We had read the introduction to The Omnivore's Dilemma (which is our text for this project) for the day and I gave them a couple writing prompts to get the class started:  I pulled out a few quotes from the first couple of pages about the rules and traditions and such that govern how we eat, not just what we eat.  So I had them write about what rules governed their food lives.  Then I asked them to consider what issues and complications that Pollan brings up in this introduction that we should be aware of as we proceed.  This seemed to be a good way to start things off, to give them space to think through their pens.

We talked through what they had written and they brought up meals with their families, we talked about holiday meals and what rules governed those traditions.  They spoke of their holiday meals coming mostly out of cans, some meals were completely from scratch, one of my students said that her family actually goes out and shoots a turkey themselves.  One of my student's family has lutefisk as their tradition, which brought up "what is lutefisk?"  So he and I got to share that mental image of fish jello with the rest of the class--but the larger issue we connected to there was what that food (if one can actually call it food) represented.  It represented the food that was available, it represented a culture that needed to preserve food for the winter so they didn't starve.  Ah, they said.  I got to tell them the story of the Hunter's Suppers we had at my church when I was growing up, the lutefisk, the lefse, the meatballs and potatoes, the whole shebang.  That too, was part of a tradition.  The food system we are a part of is pretty complicated.

After Monday's viewing of the apples, we pulled out some of the complications--we talked about the role of business (small vs. large growers), we talked about culture and tradition and how that shifts and changes, we talked about how apples were part of how the continent was settled.  On Friday (tomorrow), they will have read the potatoes chapter of The Botany of Desire, so I'm excited to talk to them about what they find there.

Especially as I plan to mash some Yukon gold potatoes with butter and milk for my lunch.  Mjolk och potatis, to raise a fork to my Swedish grandmother.

Eng. 180: Monty Python Does Agatha Christie

Yesterday was the final act of "The Mousetrap," which I thought went very well in my class.  As I mentioned last week, I've determined that this particular class does much better when it's in small groups--much less intimidating to speak up--and so we spent yesterday in small groups.  There are six groups (they're divided up into groups for their author presentations, so I used those groups yesterday, so they'd get used to working with each other--also, one of my students had written in a Think Piece how much he enjoyed working with his small group and hoped we could do more of it).

But we started with Monty Python's Agatha Christie sketch.  It's Friday, after all, and there was actually serious reasons why I wanted to bring in the genius of Monty Python.  I wasn't surprised that few of my students had heard of Monty Python, but I've about given up asking such questions, because they just haven't and it makes me feel old.  Anyway.  I prepped them for this sketch by asking them to make note of what seems familiar and not just what they're making fun of, but why it's funny.

After it finished, I asked what sounded familiar and we talked about the locked door murder mystery, the bumbling policeman, assuming people are who they say they are, and more.  And then we talked through how the cast is making fun of those fairly stock elements in Agatha Christie.  My students may have been mystfied by the genius that is Monty Python, but I had fun with it and I think it loosened up my students on a sleepy Friday morning.

Mostly, I think any class that I can use Monty Python in is a success of critical thinking on the teacher's part.

And then we got into Act 2 of "The Mousetrap" and it was fantastic.  I'm a little sad to be leaving Dame Agatha behind, but it's hard to be too sad when next week means the Hard-Boileds and Raymond Chandler and Howard Hawks' 1946 film The Big Sleep.  This also means that there's a lot of reading I get to justify this weekend as "class prep."  I love my life.

Eng. 180: Creating Suspense

It's that weird week of Labor Day Week when Wednesday feels like Monday and everybody is scrambling to figure out what day it is.  I'm pleading extra ignorance today, with the second nasty headache of the week--and I'm blaming it on atmospheric cranky-ness and allergy hell.  Mostly, I always expect that when the calendar turns to September, it's going to magically be fall and sixty degrees.  But it's still in the nineties here in Nebraska and something isn't working with the AC in Andrews Hall, so weather-wise, it's just all uncomfortable.

We finished up Arthur Conan Doyle last Friday in my Intro to Lit class and it was great, for a few reasons.  The first is that it was the end of the second week and we, as a class, were starting to form some common vocabulary for what we're reading, what we're noticing.  We're getting enough reading material under our mental belts to be able to make connections between different writers, between different eras--and this is the exciting part of teaching literature.  Yesterday, we had our first day of Agatha Christie and "The Mousetrap."

I saw "The Mousetrap" in London with my family in 2000 and I'd actually forgotten whodunit (which was kind of surprising to me)--and I'd also forgotten that she'd asked that the story (not the play) not be published while the play was running, and it's been running continuously since 1952.  It's not been published in the UK, though it has been published in the U.S.  I'm not going to give away the murderer here, to honor her wishes (as the cast always asks the audience not to spoil the ending for those who have not seen it).

My students also turned in their Week 3 Think Piece (actually the second one they've done) and as I graded them yesterday, I was really surprised that so many of them had never even heard of Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie.  I wasn't surprised that they'd never read them (or just assumed that because they were old, they'd be boring), but I was surprised that they'd never heard of them.  I mean, it's one thing when you realize that as a teacher, you can't make Friends references like you did at the beginning of your teaching career, but to have never heard of Conan Doyle or Christie?  Boggles my mind.  And it teaches me something very important about assumptions.  For the most part, my students loved Conan Doyle--and that makes my little teacher heart go pitty-pat.  I have a few that are still stuck in the "like-don't like" stage of thinking about what we're reading, but most of them were floored that they enjoyed Sherlock Holmes and were able to articulate (at least a little) why that was, noticing things that they'd never have noticed on their own (which, of course, is the whole point of taking classes in college, right?).  

Yesterday, we started Agatha Christie, moving from Conan Doyle into the Golden Age/inter-war period of crime fiction.  My first group of students did a great job on their author presentation, which gave us background on Christie, the time period and culture, background on "The Mousetrap," and her position in the crime literature genre.  The Queen of Crime, after all.  Then I moved into a mini lecture that basically picked up where they left off, with the function of the English Country House sub genre of mysteries, the locked door/puzzle mystery, the rules of Fair Play, and such.

The success of a whodunit lies in our assumptions as readers.  What do we assume about the characters?  What do we assume about the plot?  What do we assume about the ending?  Well, we assume that the characters are who they say they are, for one.  We assume that given the rules of Fair Play (in this era, for this sub genre) we will be able to solve the puzzle, given all the clues.  We assume that the murderer will be caught and brought to justice by the end of the text.  Lots of assumptions--and the creation of suspense lies in those assumptions being wrong, in the ability of the writer to use block elements well.  We studied an article about those block elements (too little information, too much information (red herrings, etc.), contradictions, and false gestalt)--and for myself, I think they're fascinating.  Especially as Christie is brilliant at using them.

So, what is required to create suspense? 


Reader’s Assumptions:  How does the author set up the characters and the scenario so that we, as the readers think we know what is going on?  To what extent do we trust the author?  To what extent do we trust the characters?  What do we think we know--and how and why do we think we know it?  If there’s no trust to be broken, there’s no room for suspense. To consider:  Christie’s timing in the Golden Age, the rules of Fair Play, the rules of the Locked Door/Puzzle mystery.  What do we assume about Monkswell Manor?  What do we assume about the people who are gathered at Monkswell Manor?  What do we assume about our hosts?  What do we assume about Sergeant Trotter?  What do we assume about the murder of Mrs. Maureen Lyon?

What is at Stake?  If we don’t care about the characters, if we don’t care about what is happening or what might happen, there’s no possibility for suspense.  The first thing that happens is the wireless announcement of Maureen Lyons' death--so immediately that sets up life and death as what is at stake.  If crime literature is the literature of social order, what has been broken (or will be broken) and what must be restored to order?  What is the time period of the story?  The class structure of the characters?  Our assumptions about what those classes represent?

Control of the Clock:  There must be a time frame established, that if the murderer (or criminal of whatever variety) isn’t caught, then catastrophe will happen.  How many ways can this ticking clock be established?  How does “Three Blind Mice” function as the clock?  (Link to And Then There Were None and other stories that use nursery rhymes as a narrative structure?)

Reader’s Knowledge:  What do we know about our characters?  How do we know it?  How are we fed little pieces of information that don’t seem important at the time, but add up to everything we need to know--and should have been able to figure out?  What happens when we, as readers, know more about what is going on than the characters?  How does this create tension and suspense?

The Role of Place and Setting:  How does the physical world--both the built and natural environment function to create tension? The natural environment?  How does the weather function in the plot?  Either preventing or facilitating the movement of the story?  The built environment?  What role does the house play?

Breaking the Reader’s Trust:  In what ways is our trust broken?  How do we start to question who people are, what they represent? How does introducing doubt lead to tension and suspense?  Is there such a thing as coincidence?  The Christie Twist:  wondering if we can take the information and people at face value, wondering if it's a double-blind, wondering if it's a triple-blind?  And that's how she gets us to close our minds.

We only talked through Act One yesterday, ending with the murder of one of the characters (I'm not spoiling it for you if you haven't read it).  So, tomorrow, we'll finish the play and talk through Act Two.  I'm loving how many of them were really getting into it yesterday--not only a new author, but a new genre entirely (a play, after all).   Can't wait to talk about how our ideas of the genre change as the medium changes.  Can't wait!

Eng. 180: Arthur Conan Doyle

What a whirlwind week of Sherlock Holmes it has been--and I'm actually really sad to see him go.  Since none of my students signed up for the Conan Doyle author presentation (not really surprised, since it came up really fast), I did it--and that meant I got to watch the British Sherlock series and call it "research."  The movies themselves I didn't watch again until this week.  I love my job.  Watching the Robert Downey, Jr./Jude Law Sherlock Holmes yesterday, I picked up on a lot of things I hadn't on previous watchings--like Holmes wanting to dissect Blackwood's brain (Victorians were big on phrenology), etc.

Monday started with the author presentation, which was lovely if I do say so myself.  Then we jumped right in and talked about "A Scandal in Bohemia."  Whether it was Monday, only the fourth time we'd seen each other, the first day of a new author (and era), or something else, my class was sleepy and difficult to engage in conversation.  But we did get to talk about gender and class, as well as narrative structure and other fun things.

On Wednesday, I changed my tactics for our discussion of "The Speckled Band."  I divided them up into groups (hopefully covering those who didn't read their assignment), then assigned each group a specific question.

• What role does the built environment play in this story?  How is it being used?  Where can you identify where it is playing an active role in the plot (making things happen or preventing them from happening)?
• What purpose does the natural environment play here?  Where is it being used, to what purpose?
• How is the environment itself literally a part of the narrative structure?  (After all, this is actually a locked-door mystery.)
• Where can you identify where what Conan Doyle/Holmes/Victorian society values?  And how is what they value being threatened by the crime?
• Where is class reflected by how Conan Doyle uses place in this story?

I let them go for a while and then we came back together--and while we're still stuck in the question-and-answer stage of awkward discussion (rather them talking with each other), they mostly got what I was hoping they would.  The built environment--mostly in the use of Stoke Moran--plays an active role in the plot, because without the renovations that Grimesby Roylott is making to the house, Helen Stoner would not have been moved into the room where her sister died (and she suspects was murdered).  I just love that.  Nature is regarded as threat here, not a pastoral paradise.  Even when Grimesby Roylott shows up at 221B Baker Street and he is described in terms of the natural world (bird of prey, etc.), he's also described in terms of how he fills the doorway.  Brilliant.

Today, we finish up our Holmes unit with "The Red-Headed League."  We talked motive today, as that was our specific theme for the day.  Why do we do what we do?  I told them the story of my college math professor who once told us that the root of all conflicts was either money, sex, or power.  Yup.  In our class, we questioned not only why the criminal-villain does what s/he does--but an even more interesting question we rarely consider is why does the detective do what s/he does?  Holmes, for the most part, does it because it saves him from being bored, it's a mental challenge.  He doesn't do it for the greater good, to clean up the streets, for justice, or any other more noble calling.  I can't wait to talk about motive further as we keep reading--should be interesting when we get to Raymond Chandler... 

In the classic detective stories we've been reading, and specifically Conan Doyle this week, the mores of Victorian society, the ideals of honor, class, and gender roles are incredibly important--and a lot of the villain's motives are related to those elements.  That John Clay is the bastard of a royal duke is important, because it puts Clay outside accepted society--even as he invokes his grandfather's blood to get better treatment (and the aristocracy would have received better treatment anyway).  It is also important to remember that Holmes only investigates crimes of the "higher order," not the lower class of crimes, which I term to be crimes of survival (like stealing because one is hungry).  Murder is fairly rare in Conan Doyle, so the idea that more is at stake than the body is incredibly important.  In only one of the three stories we read for this week is there a murder.  Murder is much more common in contemporary crime literature and in many cases, motive is moot, simply because the villain functions as simply "evil," a psychopath or sociopath whose mind does not operate on the same wavelength as "normal" people.  Also, the theme of revenge/justice is also more common as a motive for crime in contemporary crime literature.  Should be interesting to explore as we move into Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" next week.

"The Red-Headed League" is different in the narrative structure itself--generally, there is no interaction of Holmes with the crime.  In this story, the crime he is investigating has not happened yet and his goal is to foil the plot.  In the classic detective stories of this type (and in modern times, the tv show Monk is a good example), the story is divided in two:  the story of the crime is self-contained and the story of the investigation is self-contained and never the twain shall meet.  Mostly.  But writers break their rules all the time.  Almost never in this type of story does the detective have a personal relationship with the criminal he is tracking--but in this story, Holmes has been after the culprit for quite some time.We spent the first part of class talking about all the rules that Conan Doyle is breaking here, narratively, what makes "The Red-Headed League" different from the other stories we've read--and the first thing one of my students said was that the crime hasn't been committed yet, that the plot is about preventing the crime, not catching the villain after the fact.  The other major thing my students observed is that Holmes has a personal relationship with the villain, John Clay--and this is another breaking of general rules, where the crime and the detection are separate, that the detective has no personal stake in catching the villain.  

Note to self:  this group does not say much when we're in a large group.  In the future, lesson plans must include some sort of group work.

In other news, congratulations to William Kent Krueger on the release of his new Cork O'Connor book Trickster's Point, which debuted at #12 on the New York Times bestseller list!  Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy and a better writer--and I can't wait to introduce him to my students, both in the first book in the O'Connor series (Iron Lake) and via Skype when we get to talk to him face to face.

And the good news this morning is that Dennis Lehane has agreed to do an email interview with my class (hopefully next time I teach a class like this it will fit better with his schedule)--so we still get to ask him questions about Mystic River!

Life is good.  I picked up some Ken Bruen and Declan Hughes at the library a couple of days ago, so if I get some free time this Labor Day weekend, I get to spend to take a tour of Galway's seedy side with Ken Bruen and Dublin with Declan Hughes.  And we (hopefully) get the bad guys.  Interesting to see how the literature of social order functions in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland...

Eng. 180: If It Bleeds, It Leads

Today, as I prepped to teach my English 180 Lit students about Edgar Allan Poe as the father of crime literature (though I actually sort of disagree with that, because crime lit can be traced back to ancient literature like the Bible), the father of the detective story (more people agree on that), I opened my Safari to see that Lance Armstrong will be stripped of his Tour de France titles and banned for life from the sport.  A gunman has shot several people at the Empire State Building.  If it bleeds (even it's emotionally), it leads.

Today's Reading:  Edgar Allan Poe.  "A Cask of Amontillado," "Fall of the House of Usher," and "Murders in the Rue Morgue."  Also, Margaret Kane, "Edgar Allan Poe and Architecture."

But that was a good way to segue into my class, as we're questioning what constitutes literature--and I referenced how many of them wrote in their Short Histories about preferring to read articles and such online.  Most of the exposure we get to crime "literature" is actually on the front page of our newspapers.  Food for thought, if nothing else.  And, I said, what I saw today just in those three articles is an extension of what I talked about on Wednesday.  If crime literature is the literature of maintaining social order, then to see that Lance Armstrong is being punished for cheating (regardless if you think he's guilty or not), to see that Anders Breivik is being punished for killing 77 people--that simply reaffirms that crime disrupts the social order and the purpose of whatever we write about it (of course, that's a huge generalization) is to reestablish that social order.

I started class by asking my students to free write for a bit, about where they're starting to see connections, where they're starting to see things showing up in what they're reading that becoming familiar.  I always find that students participate in a discussion much more willingly when they've had a few minutes to think through their pens and have an answer of a sort in front of them.  Had I just asked that question point-blank, I would have gotten nothing.  When we came back together, they had some good answers (and I hope they use some of them in their first Think Pieces, which are due on Monday) about being able to pay attention to what Margaret Kane was writing about (we read her 1932 article on Poe and architecture).  I came into class this morning, admittedly, pessimistic, wondering how many of my students would just read the Cliff's Notes...

Today's shocker:  when I asked how many had read Tom Clancy, nobody raised their hands.

We talked our way through Margaret Kane first, because this is their first exposure to a critical article.  Yup, not anybody's idea of fun.  But not all writing is here to entertain you (a dig at how many of them said they hated reading and literature because they expect to be entertained by it, they expect to be able to relate to it)--and I was fairly pointed on that fact.  And in the scheme of things, Kane is pretty tame.  I asked how many of them read the information about where and when it was published (nobody) and the looks of surprise when I said it was published in 1932, priceless.  Of course, I needed to mention that a woman writing literary criticism like this in the 1930s is pretty rare--and thus important.  I drew a map of sorts on the board (ironically, with a red marker) of Kane's article as we deconstructed it, made an outline, sort of.  My outlines never follow linear patterns.  They loop, they have arrows that go different places, and this article outline was no different.  But by the time we got through it, and I asked how many were starting to see what she was doing, I got nods from most of the class.

This is good.

I asked how many had read Kane first (not too many) and it's definitely a different reading experience when you read her first and then read the Poe stories, knowing what to look for.  So after we talked about the exteriors Poe uses, huge and old and decaying, and the interiors (the ways he uses irregularly shaped rooms, windows to control light, etc.) I divided them up into groups, gave each group one of the stories, and had them look for these things.  Because about half my class showed up without the stories or the article, it was hard, and by this point in the class I felt extremely rushed, because I hate 50 minute classes.  I feel like we just get into something and then we have to shut it down because the class is over.  So I rushed through what they found--and I also didn't want to make any more of how many of them did not bring their texts to class--and then I talked through the stories.

I started with "A Cask of Amontillado," mentioned various things about class and the built environment--and that it's a good example of what I talked about on Wednesday about early crime literature being in the realm of revenge/justice.  (Heads nodded when I said that--yay, connections!)  But the whole point of me assigning this story is not just the built environment leading to Fortunato's death, or that this is a story of murder without a detective--it is the story of the perfect crime.  Montressor never gets caught, not even after fifty years.  Admittedly, Gothic is not my specialty, but this strikes me as an anti-Gothic story--that a secret from the past that should threaten Montressor's present doesn't.  This is a story of the perfect crime.

In "Fall of the House of Usher," I asked my students how many of them knew what a "tarn" was.  Nobody.  How many looked it up?  Nobody.  Google is your friend, people.  In this case, it's important.  A tarn is a mountain pool that is formed in the circque created by a glacier.  (And in my head I could see Hart Lake at Holden Village, up in the Cascades of Washington State.)  The reason it's important is not just in terms of the natural environment, but it is a shaped environment, a built environment of its own.  We made the easy connections of equating identity with the built environment of the house, even to questioning whether it is the house itself which is killing both Madeline and Roderick.  I told my students that gender is really interesting in Poe stories, because the women are generally dying, dead, or completely off stage.  We didn't get time to talk about all the interiors Poe uses here, which made me sad.   We get the juxtaposition of pre-Enlightenment superstition against the post-Enlightenment reason--against the Victorian obsession with death.  (I talked about Victoria and Albert, but when Usher was published, Albert still had two decades in front of him.)  We talked about the Victorian fear of being buried alive (as this was an extension of the pre/post-Enlightment conversations about what happens after death.  We talked about how the good crime/suspense writers play into the contemporary fears of its audience.  For Poe, it was being buried alive.  For Tom Clancy, it was the Cold War.

And then we only had a precious few minutes to get through "Murders in the Rue Morgue."  I told my students that if they only skimmed this or if they didn't read it, go back and spend some time with it, because this is the first detective story.  This is the root from which everything else grows--either follows and imitates or goes the other direction.  (I got some nods.)  I talked about the divide between the police detective and the private detective.  The emphasis on reason.  The importance of physical data as a means of deciphering truth.

All in all, I was fairly satisfied with the day, our first real time together talking about the page.  I did assign too many stories, and maybe I'd choose to spend my class time differently next time so we could actually talk about the stories--but the reality is that it's Friday, most of my class didn't bring their texts so they couldn't really talk about the stories, so even if I'd assigned something different, I don't think it would have mattered in the long run.  On Monday, we start Arthur Conan Doyle--and I'm doing the author presentation for that one.  Should be interesting!  Might have to watch some Robert Downey, Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch for extra research.

Eng. 180: On the Student Need "To Relate" to "Like"

On Monday, the first day of class, I assigned "A Short History of Your Reading Life" to my Intro to Lit class, due yesterday (Wednesday).  The assignment served several purposes for myself as the teacher--diagnostic, to see if they could follow basic instructions (like MLA formatting), as well as getting insight into what they were bringing into my classroom.  I just finished reading and commenting on their histories--and the results are mostly what I expected, but a few things that shouldn't have surprised me did.

Across the board, the number of students (a great majority of them) admitted to flat-out hating reading.  Some of them used that as a springboard to talk about a parent or a teacher who then inspired them to the greatness of reading--but even as I wrote "have you told your teacher thank you?" in the margins (because I know that most of us don't thank our teachers, since we're so far gone from that atmosphere when the reality of what they did for us kicks in), I kept getting stuck at "I hated/I hate" reading.  (I got a lot of "I hate nonfiction," which was disconcerting to me as a nonfiction writer, though I'm pretty sure they have no idea that creative nonfiction exists, that they have a similar mindset to my sister K3, who once told me that "When I think of nonfiction, I think about books about sharks.")

What was clear, though, wasn't that they actually hate reading--they hate being told what to read.  And they're completely unaware of the irony of some of their favorite books (that they've identified) as coming in a class where they were required to read it...)  But I just wanted to write "tough shit" in the margins, because who says that who cares if you actually a like a book or not?  For myself, as I have said elsewhere, I loathe Norman Mailer, but that doesn't mean I didn't learn how to put a sentence together from him.  Sometimes there's a great teacher who teaches them that Shakespeare is relevant, that To Kill A Mockingbird is brilliant--but if these students can't relate to the character or the plot, then their default reaction is hate.  And this disturbs me on many levels, on a word-choice level as well as the default reaction itself.  One great observation was "I don't always enjoy assignments over lame books in class."  Sigh.  Not an isolated opinion.

When they talk about hating books and hating reading, about lame books that have no relevance to their 21st century life, the reality I am coming to understand is that that means the books should always be written to entertain them, on their terms.  The main characters should be people that my students should be easily able to slip into.  If you can't relate to Odysseus in The Odyssey (and they're reading that in high school these days???), who's fault is that?  How much responsibility do you, as the student, bear for making something relevant, important, thought-provoking?  But as their teacher, I see that as part of my great opportunity and challenge.

I suspect this mentality started in my generation and has trickled down to this Millenial generation, but I have no research to back this up--and I haven't done any research to see what we as teachers do to combat it, except teach better.  And since this is my first time teaching literature--having only taught creative writing and composition before--it's something I hope to gain more insight about as the semester goes on.

So, for those of you who are following along at home, here's your writing assignment for today:  in the comments section, write me a paragraph or two that encapsulates "A Short History of Your Reading Life."  You could choose to concentrate on a single book, a single person, a specific episode in your reading history--but really, it's wide open.  Can't wait to see what our histories look like!

The Night Before Christmas, I Mean, The Semester

It's the afternoon before the new semester and all through the 400 sq ft apartment, nobody is moving, not even the furballs who haven't budged since 9:00 this morning and who I occasionally check to see if they're still breathing.  The sun is brilliant through my windows that are not west-facing and it's just a great afternoon.  I spent the morning chatting with a friend I haven't seen for the summer and now I'm wondering what I do with the rest of my time before I head to bed, dream of dancing syllabi, and wake to the butterflies of the first day of class--and hope it's not the dream where I show up to the first day to a class I didn't know I was supposed to teach and I'm naked.

This semester, I'm trying something different:  I'm sending my reading list (and my syllabi) to various friends and family, in hopes that they might be interested enough to read along with my class and me (because what we're reading is really interesting, if I do say so myself)--so when I talk to them about what I'm doing in my classes, they'll know what I'm talking about.

So.  Here's the reading lists:

151H:  Silent Spring, Rachel Carson; The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot.

180:  Poe ( “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “Fall of the House of Usher,” “A Cask of Amontillado” ); Arthur Conan Doyle ("A Scandal in Bohemia," "The Speckled Band," "The Red-Headed League"); Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap"; the 1946 version of The Big Sleep (with Bogart and Bacall); Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca; Dennis Lehane's Mystic River; William Kent Krueger's Iron Lake; Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation.  And we'll read an excerpt of Joy Castro's novel, Hell or High Water, because she's kindly agreed to come to our class to talk about it.

There it is.  If you're wanting a more specific reading schedule, let me know and I'll send you one.  Otherwise, keep checking in here and feel free to comment when we get to a book you're reading along with us.  Here's to expanding our community of readers and writers!

On Re-Reading Andrea Barrett's "Ship Fever"

I returned from Montreal on Tuesday night, after a truly excellent conference meeting of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures. An amazing ten days in a city I'd never been to before, exploring not just the newer downtown areas of Montreal but Old Montreal as well, the sites of the World's Fair and the Olympics. But then, after the conference, I went on the post-conference tour to Quebec City and Grosse Ile. It's been nearly a week since I was there and I'm still struggling to find words for the experience. And so, as I'm unpacking my Jeep in Lincoln and trying to remember where things go in my apartment after being gone all summer, I pulled out Andrea Barrett's Ship Fever and felt the need to reread the story "Ship Fever."

 I've written before about that strangely intimate experience of reading a book in its setting--and if you haven't tried it, you must--and that experience doesn't change much if you read something after you've been to the setting.  Most of my memories of Grosse Ile right now are sensory and tactile, the absolute oppression of the sun, the way the wind picked up at a very specific moment (more on that in a moment), the movement of the ferry on the St. Lawrence River, the notes that Patrick pulled from his pipe, his flute.  I have much to write about Patrick, our musician, and Grosse Ile, but that's for another time, another place.

Patrick.

We arrived at Berthier Sur Mer about 45 minutes after leaving Quebec City and we had about an hour before the ferry would take us to Grosse Ile.  Grosse Ile is one of several islands in an archipelago in the St. Lawrence River, not the largest, and it was the quarantine station for the port of Quebec from 1835-1937.  It was never an immigration station, like Ellis Island; its sole purpose was to evaluate the immigrants for illness, specifically the ones most likely to lead to epidemics (cholera, typhus), quarantine them on the island until they passed inspection, and then they could go on to Quebec City or Montreal.  As we approached the island, an immense stone cross dominated our vision.

Grosse Ile, from the ferry.

This is the Irish Memorial Cross, erected in 1909, to honor the nearly 5500 Irish who are buried on Grosse Ile.  Here's the thing about Grosse Ile that stung me first:  In the whole of the island's 105 year history, there are 7553 buried on the island (they are very deliberate about saying buried, not died--more on that later) and 5424 of those died in 1847 in a six-month period.  These were overwhelmingly Irish, fleeing the worst of the Great Famine.  Reread that.  Three quarters of those who are buried on Grosse Ile died during six months, mostly of the typhus epidemic.  Most years, Grosse Ile processed 20,000-30,000 immigrants--but in 1847, the number was closer to 100,000.  There wasn't room for that many healthy people, let alone sick.  This is intellectual knowledge, not knowledge in your bones.  There's a difference.

We got a very brief history of the island from our tour guide, Pierre-Loup, and then we walked in the incredible heat, the umbrellas we'd brought against warnings of rain raised against the sun.  Then the rise of the landscape changed and at first all we could see was a mowed expanse and a picket fence.  And then the wooden crosses inside the fence came into focus, large white crosses placed at odd intervals.  We followed Pierre-Loup up the hill until we could fix the entire expanse in our field of vision.  What we were seeing was still not clear--I mean, I assumed it was a cemetery, but then Pierre-Loup told us what we were looking at.  

Yes, this is the Irish cemetery and there are nearly 5,000 people buried here.  I could probably have figured that out on my own.  But what I couldn't comprehend was what I was looking at and I blamed it on the heat, the fact I had no personal connection to what was happening here.

And then, what Pierre-Loup was saying finally clicked:  yes, this a the mass grave.  That much I could understand.  But I assumed that the people were buried on the raised portions of the cemetery--but that's not right.  Everyone who died on the island got a coffin and they all got their own coffin.  The coffins are buried three deep here.  And when the coffins and the bodies began to decompose, the land collapsed.  So the people are buried in those spaces where the land dips.  For some reason, that froze my mind in place.  I had no more thoughts, no more associations.  

Memorial for the physicians who died tending the sick, 1847.

And then Patrick began to play a lament.  Margaret read a poem.  And some of our group began to weep.  I did not.  But I let Patrick's music grieve for me.

Cholera Bay, 

where ships carrying cholera docked, away from the main wharf

So, then, rereading "Ship Fever" after seeing the landscape for myself was, again, that incredibly intimate experience I've come to recognize as what happens when you know a book's setting.  I tried to imagine the St. Lawrence choked with tall-masted ships, the water thick with debris tossed overboard in an attempt to ease the quarantine inspection, all the human voices, the smells of the bodies, the sickness, the death, the constant burials and the constant hammering of coffins.  But as I read the story of Lauchlin Grant, Nora, Susannah, and the other characters, I knew the landscape of their stories, knew it as it was windblown into the pores of my skin and baked by the sun.  It matters that now I know what the approach to Grosse Ile looked like, felt like.  It matters that now I know what happened here, how it happened, because now I know what Grosse Ile felt like, to me.  It's a type of empathy, but not quite.  And so "Ship Fever" is all the more affective to me, because now I know the bedrock of Barrett's words planted into that soil.

So, today's question:  what works of literature have you read in its setting (or works whose setting you know intimately)--what is your experience of reading when you know the landscape the writer is writing about?