Living in the Materiality Word

This post is for last week's readings on Opening New Media and Materiality. Sorry. Busy and sick last week, so just catching up now.

So, yesterday, I am sitting next to a woman on the train who is reading her Amazon Kindle. She either has poor eyesight or forgot her reading glasses, because the text was so big she was lucky if there were 10 lines of text on the screen. It drove me crazy watching her press the little side button every half a minute or so to turn the virtual page and it made me realize that it would not be fun or relaxing for me to read a book for pleasure (as opposed to reading for academic or other knowledge -- which is fine with me) using an Amazon Kindle. Granted I may not have to blow up the text that big (if I had my glasses) but the particulars of reading that kind of new media text is a materiality that is not friendly to my sensibilities as a reader. It is not a reading world in which I feel safe and comfortable -- at least not yet.

The texture, feel, smell, and physical presence of books is not something one can take easily away from a lifelong reader, scholar, and teacher of the written word. Although I get that I have to see text in a new way or become a teacher that is as obsolete as an IBM Selectric Typewriter or as clunky and ineffectual as a Hewlitt Packard Desktop Computer. However, I feel the need to pause for reflection here. Ten plus years ago when I was going through a divorce, a child custody battle, and changing careers, the only thing that would alleviate my acute attacks of anxiety was to go to a bookstore or library. Surrounding myself with books had a calming effect on me that was better and more positive than anything else I tried at the time -- including alcohol or prescriptions. During that time, I looked a lot like this well-known cartoon.

So, to quote the cliched statement that "books saved my life" is pretty significant for me.

To be practical, yes, it would be cool to have a device that makes text appear like magic and could be blown up to readable fonts when I forget my reading glasses. I am not saying new media text is bad -- and for many it is better -- but for some of us -- the "old way" is always going to be relevant or comfortable for us in ways that run much deeper than the opinion that we just need to get on the new media bandwagon.

But to recognize my own comfort levels with text only serves to make me realize that I must recognize, acknowledge, and celebrate the many levels of textual materiality in which my students are comfortable. Composing text in new media formats is something I already have my students utilize and I look forward to experimenting with more ways in which to turn student "writers" into student "composers" by unlocking creativity and ability through new media writing and the materiality of varied finished texts -- be they digital or crayon created!

Wysocki wants us to realize that "the materiality of writing might be understood to include social relations -- say, between students and teachers in the writing classroom; relations of rece, gender, class, ethnicity ,sexual orientation, generation, and region, among others within the classroom and/or the larger social realm . . ." This to me means that we cannot divorce ourselves from who we are as a person from who we are as writers and readers and teachers. So, it follows that we cannot expect our students to write or read or react to text or the materiality of text the same way we do or even the way the student next to them does. We all need to be comfortable "living" in the "materiality" of our words.

That being said, I spent an hour on Amazon. com last weekend doing searches for old, out of print books that I might want to buy someday and "preserve" in my collection. It had a familiar calming affect in the midst of the busy-ness of my weekend. Enjoying the experience of Amazon's virtual library of books may not be quite the same as surrounding myself with them in a building -- but it is a step in the right direction for me in opening my mind to new possibilites.

Leaving a 100-Year-Old After "Taste"

After reading all those English Journal articles from different time periods I can't help but marvel at how far we have not come. Most astonishing and bizarre to me are the things I mused about after reading Fred Newton Scott's "The Undefended Gate" published in 1914 -- almost 100 years ago. When he discusses that there is "no sign . . .that boys and girls of today like literature any better than those of a generation ago, or write any better" he could be sitting in the English department meeting I just attended today. The more things change, the more they stay the same I guess and there will always be some new barbarian at the gate we teachers of English must contend with in order to defend the "standards."

These "new and improved" Illinois State Board of Education Standards for English and Language Arts were the topic, by the way, of the English department meeting at my high school today. Without boring you too much, let me just say that the new standards are way more specific than they have been in the past and the word "Shakespeare" is actually written into one of the many new standards. Hmmm . . .

But getting back to high schools of yore (or is it yesteryear). In 1914, the year "The Undefended Gate" was published, Ernest Hemingway was a 15 year old sophomore at Oak Park High School (now known as Oak Park River Forest High School) just down the street from our fair city, the city, by the way, that this article was heard first as Newton Scott's Presidential address to the National Council of Teachers of English. This council meeting and what was later reported as a scandalous speech in The Chicago Tribune was held at the "Auditorium Hotel" in Chicago. You guessed it folks -- the very building which now houses our beloved Roosevelt University since 1947. See picture below.

It gets better. I found on line that "Ferdinand Peck, a Chicago businessman, incorporated the Chicago Auditorium Association in December 1886 to develop what he wanted to be the world's largest, grandest, most expensive theater that would rival such institutions as the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. He was said to have wanted to make high culture accessible to the working classes of Chicago."

"High culture" accessible to the "working classes" of Chicago, folks.

Does anyone else see the delicious irony in all of this?

So I got to thinking. Newton Scott is blaming poor performance in English studies on the evil daily newspaper but young Ernie Hemingway sitting in his high school class room is probably at that moment dreaming of becoming a newspaper man. Yes, this boy who is attracted to the "uncultured," "brutal," and "filthy" printed word of the evil daily, who may have gone home, sat down with a snack, and enjoyed the "crude drawings of the insane" in the likes of "The Katzenjammer Kids" or "The Adventures of Tin Tin," got his start as a newspaper writer. Hemingway, this icon of American literature, put on par at times with (dare we say it) Shakespeare was not only influenced by the style of journalistic writing, but this style helped shape the future of American fiction.

Yet Newton Scott, unaware of all of this during his speech, of course, states that he is "bound to say that less has been accomplished in raising the general average of proficiency in writing and of literary taste than might reasonably have been expected, and it is high time that we faced the condition of affairs and inquired seriously into the causes of it." His villain is the newspaper, and The Chicago Tribune's response at the time
comes across to us as something that is hard to argue against. They paint Newton Scott as a privileged, cloistered academic who has lost his grip on reality and has no business being a teacher. Isn't this how we now feel about NEA Chairman Dana Gioia as he blames the "death of reading" on the evil internet? As Gioia slams on-line writing, what Hemingway in the making is blogging at this very moment?

Newton Scott wanted the English teachers of his day to "train the students to speak and write English well, to become familiar with the best literature, and above all to become fond of the best literature." That word "best" was certainly thrown around a lot in those days. As a matter of fact, the motto of Oak Park River Forest High School since 1908 has been "Those Things that are Best." If you go to their website today, you will still see that motto, emblazoned over the picture of a smiling African American male student, giving the "thumbs up."

No, I'm not kidding. See http://www.oprfhs.org

But, just as the face of the student population of Oak Park River Forest High School has changed since Hemingway's time, hopefully, what is considered "the best" in literature and writing has changed as well.

Though I'd bet money on the fact that "A Farewell to Arms" is still required reading there.