Because I care deeply about literature, I’m always interested to see new and innovative ways that others are coming up with to share literature on a broader scale.

That’s one reason I’ve chosen “Promoting Lit in the Digital Age: Electric Literature Co-Founder Lindenbaum on the Menu” by Amanda Ernst of Fishbowl NY for the next ProfoundNet. Here’s a snippet, quoting Lindenbaum, the founder of a new electronic literary magazine:

“We are trying to use new media and innovative forms of distribution to make sure that those stories are delivered back to the popular culture in the digital age. And we want to make sure that literature remains vital,” Scott said about the project. “So in order to do that, we kind of adopted a new distribution system where we distribute to the iPhone — we’re the first literary magazine to the iPhone. We also distribute in every digital form for all ereaders from Kindles to all ereaders in every file format.”

The journal publishes five stories per quarter. For hard copy request, the magazine uses Print on Demand to minimize costs and maximize payment to writers. Although the success of such ventures remains to be seen, I’m impressed by the  founders’ innovation and use of convergence to allow new literature to reach the greatest possible number of individuals.

For more information about the journal, or to subscribe, visit www.electricliterature.com.

Thanks, Amanda, for a thought-provoking story.

November Evening

Come, for the dusk is our own; let us fare forth together,
With a quiet delight in our hearts for the ripe, still, autumn weather,
Through the rustling valley and wood and over the crisping meadow,
Under a high-sprung sky, winnowed of mist and shadow.

Sharp is the frosty air, and through the far hill-gaps showing
Lucent sunset lakes of crocus and green are glowing;
‘Tis the hour to walk at will in a wayward, unfettered roaming,
Caring for naught save the charm, elusive and swift, of the gloaming.

Watchful and stirless the fields as if not unkindly holding
Harvested joys in their clasp, and to their broad bosoms folding
Baby hopes of a Spring, trusted to motherly keeping,
Thus to be cherished and happed through the long months of their sleeping.

Silent the woods are and gray; but the firs than ever are greener,
Nipped by the frost till the tang of their loosened balsam is keener;
And one little wind in their boughs, eerily swaying and swinging,
Very soft and low, like a wandering minstrel is singing.

Beautiful is the year, but not as the springlike maiden
Garlanded with her hopes­rather the woman laden
With wealth of joy and grief, worthily won through living,
Wearing her sorrow now like a garment of praise and thanksgiving.

Gently the dark comes down over the wild, fair places,
The whispering glens in the hills, the open, starry spaces;
Rich with the gifts of the night, sated with questing and dreaming,
We turn to the dearest of paths where the star of the homelight is gleaming.

Sorry for the recent scarcity of posts — the semester is winding down, and spare writing time will be pretty slim until mid-December. But in the meantime, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity…

In the 1930s, German cultural critic Walter Benjamin wrote an essay called “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”  In it, he talks about the loss of “aura” (authenticity, uniqueness) when art is reproduced and distributed en masse, appropriated by what fellow critic Theodore Adorno would call “the culture industry” for political or economic purposes, rather than aesthetic ones.

When that happens, has it ceased to be art (or literature)?

Bringing this debate up to the present, I recently came across an interesting discussion posted by Alexander Russo at This Week in Education: Poetry in Ads: Can We Live With It? and the related Levi’s Uses Rare Walt Whitman Recording To Sell Jeans. See video.

So does poetry lose its aura once it has been inculcated with a message for consumers?  I think there are several possible answers. On one hand, the advertisers are attempting to raise their product to the level of something artistic, powerfully American, and poetic. On the other hand, they are forging another link in the minds of consumers between art and consumption.

On one hand, they are acknowledging the power of the spoken word; on the other, they are, one could argue, debasing that power by employing a great poet to sell a pair of jeans. But then again, is this any different than hiring talented writers to inscribe Hallmark cards and magazine ads?

It’s worth considering. And to re-quote Seth Stevenson of Slate Magazine: “At least it’s not all about sex.”

Technology fascinates me, in part because I know relatively little about how it works, and I want to know more. The potential for responsible use of technology as a supplement to literary study is particularly interesting. The challenge, as I see it, is to keep technology in its proper place as a supplement, not a replacement for genuine thought.

That’s one reason I’ve chosen Plagiarism Software Finds a New Shakespeare Play by Gaelle Fauer in Time Magazine for the next ProfoundNet. Here’s a snippet:

Plagiarism-detection software was created with lazy, sneaky college students in mind — not the likes of William Shakespeare. Yet the software may have settled a centuries-old mystery over the authorship of an unattributed play from the late 1500s called The Reign of Edward III…. With a program called Pl@giarism, [Sir Brian Vickers, a literature professor at the University of London] detected 200 strings of three or more words in Edward III that matched phrases in Shakespeare’s other works.

As Vickers reminds readers, computers can’t do the work alone – human knowledge, skill, and judgment are still an integral part of the process. He says what he is hoping to do is “bring about a marriage between human reading and machine reading. If you distrust computers, you won’t advance at all; if you have just computers and know nothing about literature, you’re likely to go wrong as well.”

To me, this is a great example of using technology to advance the work of humans, rather than allowing technology to assume the role of primary agent and in the process rendering humans the subject of a passive sentence.

Thanks, Gaelle , for a thought-provoking article.

This week, my studies have been heavy on abstract, philosophical thought. In defense, I have resorted to a Lewis-Carrollian attempt to add a bit of lightness to the study of Walter Benjamin, David Lynch, and William Blake. Enjoy!

When Benjamin Met Lynch and Blake

When Benjamin met Lynch and Blake
They all went out for tea,
Except that Blake re-named the cakes,
And Lynch forgot the brie.

“No problem, friend,” said Blake to Lynch,
“I have this pound cake here.
But since the name has now been changed
We’ll eat it all as ‘Prear’!”

“Except, dear sir,” said Benjamin,
“There’s not enough for three.”
“But wait! But wait!” cried David Lynch
“Mix dirt in with the tea!

The taste, you’ll find, is not unlike
A bit of blood and worms:
Quite suited for the appetite
Of men who’ve come to terms.”

“He has a point,” said Benjamin,
“The aura is quite rare.”
“Well then, let’s dreat,” said William Blake,
“And sup this glooging fare.”

Since glooging fit the mood by chance,
They all agreed to “dreat”
And when they’d dreaten all the prear,
They called it quite a treat.

But after all was cleared away,
A feeling strange came on,
And William Blake asked David Lynch,
“That dirt you chose – a pond?”

“A puddle, Will,” said David Lynch
“With scum that has no peer!”
“Aha,” said Benjamin to Blake,
“At last it’s all come clear.

The sounds that whistle round our guts
Are not the Future’s art.
Instead, quite simply, what we hear
Is nothing but the start…

It’s Lynch’s first film coming true,
Except not six but three.
You see, our skills are better spent
On books than fixing tea.”

Lately, I’ve been exploring the questions, what is literature? and what does it mean to study literature? There’s so much great stuff to think about.

Another thought-provoking angle comes from a 1994 TIME article “Hurrah for Dead White Males!” by Paul Gray. Gray addresses literary scholar and critic Harold Bloom’s ideas about the purpose of literature.

In his book The Western Canon, Bloom argues “All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of one’s own solitude, that solitude whose final form is one’s confrontation with one’s own mortality.”

The article’s author suggests that “Such guidance was once the province of religion, and it is ultimately the religious experience that Bloom seeks in secular writing.” He quotes Bloom again: “Since I myself am partial to finding the voice of God in Shakespeare or Emerson or Freud, depending on my needs, I have no difficulty in finding Dante’s Comedy to be divine.”

The instinct to seek truth — or, as Bloom says, to seek  meaning and religious experience — in literature is, I think, somehow human. We are granted a glimpse of something bigger, grander, in truly powerful works of literature. (C.S. Lewis might have called it sehnsucht, fulfillment tinged with longing.)

Unfortunately, the nature of literary language (unlike the quality of mercy) is often strained between an attempt to mimic reality and an awareness that language is insufficient for even this task, let alone for describing Truth.

I am repeatedly brought back to the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and his theories of the Real. Lacan defines the Real as that for which we long, but which we can know only as the lack or gap we experience in the symbolic (language-mediated) world.

I wonder, then, if it is wiser to understand literature not as containing truth (which supposes truth to fit into the human mind and human language and would be a small truth indeed), but as pointing toward truth, truth being always just out of reach of explanation.

If so, it is a problem, unfortunately, that my blog is doomed to share.

This weekend, a professor at my university is hosting a discussion group on literature and literary language. The prospect has gotten me thinking even more about literature as literature: what it is, and what it means to study it.

As I’ve read further, I encountered one thoughtful perspective from Andrew Kern of the CiRCE Institute. It starts with this post, What is Literature Anyway?. Kern asks,

“Are there any schools that self-consciously regard themselves as carriers of that tradition, who deliberately set aside the relative trivia of the modern curriulum, and who teach their children deeply to contemplate those few masterpieces that sustain civilization and nourish our souls?

What am I dreaming about? A school that teaches its students only a few books and teaches them how to read them with all their hearts and souls and minds and strength. They read them, they translate them, they discuss them, they imitate them, they write about them, they live in their wisdom.”

Here Kern addresses the question of canon and “Great Books,” about which I have mixed feelings.

To me, setting up a select few works as “great” literature involves claiming an absolute standard that is, in its relationship to literature, vague and imprecise. Like it or not, these definitions are also closely linked to systems of power, and focus almost exclusively on the literature of the western world.

It seems to me that if great literature is based on great truth, that truth will not emerge only in the West, or, to quote the cliche, in the writings of “dead white males.”

On the other hand, without some judgment of what is true and valuable, meaning becomes generic, nothing more than an arbitrary construct; and I find that conclusion no more satisfying than the first.

I wonder if there is a place for acknowledging the presence (and absence) of quality writing, truth, and beauty in literature without categorically eliminating works that range outside the traditional canon.

As usual, my next question is, if so, what would that look like?

Lots of food for thought here. More to come…

Answering the question why read literature? is a recurring theme on this blog. That’s one reason I’ve chosen “How Fiction Reading Affects Empathy” by Aaron Schutz on the Education Policy Blog for the next ProfoundNet. Here’s a snippet:

We have discovered that fiction at its best isn’t just enjoyable. It measurably enhances our abilities to empathize with other people and connect with something larger than ourselves.

The post points to a set of neurological studies that develop this idea further. The author of the article “Changing Our Minds…By Reading Fiction,” Dr. Keith Oatley, writes this:

But is the idea of fiction being good for you merely wishful thinking? [...] Through a series of studies, we have discovered that fiction at its best isn’t just enjoyable. It measurably enhances our abilities to empathize with other people and connect with something larger than ourselves.

Oatley describes fiction as a simulation of the mind, one which allows us to construct the state of another person’s mind. He says empathy requires a similar simulation.

Oatley and the other psychologists in his research group surveyed what type of books (nonfiction or fiction) participants read and then gave two tests measuring perception and interpretation of social situations. Fiction readers scored higher on both tests. A related study suggested that reading fiction can actually alter an individual’s personality.

Of course, the results of any study can be skewed or contain alternative explanations or relationships between data. However, if reading literature has the potential to improve our ability to understand the people around us, that’s certainly impetus to pick up that novel that has been sitting beside your bed.

What is more, it is impetus to think carefully about the literature we do read. If reading a novel can alter the way I perceive the world–and I tend to agree that it does–my choice of reading material becomes a matter of much greater consequence.

Thanks, Aaron, for a thought-provoking post, and Dr. Oatley, for a thought-provoking article.

Being sick has very few advantages that I can name. Literary enthusiast that I am, I would not subject myself to illness simply to come upon insight about literature. However, it can happen.

Having been sick recently, I was reminded today how much of medicine is reliant on, first, self-diagnosis, and second, the communication between doctor and patient. As a result, the doctor’s role is far less different from a literary scholar’s than you might think.

The doctor can rely on certain objective (if all equipment functions and is used and interpreted correctly) measurements like weight, heart rate, lung sounds, blood pressure, and temperature. Similarly, literati can note (with some discrepancies) the meter, rhyme scheme, rhetorical devices, and shape of a poem.

After that, though, unless the diagnosis is serious enough to merit more tests, much of the examination is based on the patient’s response to questions:

• Are you in pain?
• How much pain?
• How often do you cough?
• Have you noticed improvement since you started the medication?
• Have you experienced any side effects?

Even I, a conscientious patient, notice the ambiguity in my conversations with the doctor. I ask clarifying questions, but I’m not always sure that we understand each other. I’m not sure if I’m describing my condition accurately or in the right terms.

Like it or not, some symptoms are subjective and not as “scientific” as medical personnel would like. It is the doctor’s job to take what I’m saying and try to translate that into what it means for my health. A poet does something similar, looking not simply at the words that are used, but how they relate to one another to produce meaning.

I am not making the argument that analyzing poetry is the same or as important as diagnosing illness. As much as I love literature, I go to see a doctor, not a scholar, when I’m sick.

What I am suggesting is that the broadest divide is one of knowledge, and to a lesser extent, purpose—not method. Both jobs require thoughtful consideration of words and the meanings they convey. Both require judgment skills. Both require the ability to synthesize individual pieces of information into a deeper understanding of the whole.

And in that respect, Pre-Med and English majors may have more in common than the initial diagnosis would indicate.

“The poet [of Beowulf] was reviving the heroic language, style, and pagan world of ancient Germanic oral poetry, a world that was already remote for his contemporaries and that is stranger to the modern reader, in many respects, than the epic world of Homer and Virgil.”
-Norton Anthology of English Language, 7th ed., Vol.1)

Oral poetry may be strange to modern readers, but if the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is any indication, storytelling may be experiencing a revival of its own. That’s one reason I’ve chosen “Storytellers Star At Edinburgh Fringe” from NPR’s Rob Gifford for the next ProfoundNet. Here’s a snippet:

Once upon a time, Scotland had a vibrant tradition of storytelling. But then wicked visual media and evil high-tech gadgets drove storytelling from the land. Until one day, the brave storytellers fought back, made their own castle and celebrated with a big festival in a town called Edinburgh.

According to Donald Smith, director of the Scottish Storytelling Center, “The tales have always been told in homes and in pubs. But now they’re entering the mainstream, as people search for something a little deeper than Facebook and Twitter.” He calls it a “magic space” that requires individuals to spend time together and embark on journeys in and out of time. ”People hunger for that,” he adds.

Imagination. Community. Delight.

Literature has the ability to provide all of these things. Perhaps it takes a few brave individuals “on the fringe” to remind us what stories – what humans – are capable of offering society.

Thanks, Rob, for a thought-provoking article.