Advertising

When I was in college, class titles were kind of self-explanatory. I took stuff like Restoration Literature, which was literature of the Restoration period. (Surprise, surprise.) And World Lit was literature of...wait for it...the world.

My daughter (the math major) is registering for classes in spring semester. And she’s getting emails from professors about their classes. They explain the classes they’re teaching. For example, “Non-Linear Operations Research.”  The blurb is “using scientific methods to determine the best way to analyze, operate, and predict (yada, yada, yada).” Then the professor listed “celebrated applications” of this type of math study. Celebrated? Really? Does anyone celebrate math?

But there’s more behind these emails. They’re worded like advertisements. Hey, take my math class, you’ll love it. It’s “celebrated.” I suspect the profs are trying to make sure that they have enough students for the class. You see, the department rotates professors through the classes that no one wants to teach. And who wants to teach remedial math? (Though most of those are taught by grad students; Ariel’s friend had a student whine, “You want us to memorize three formulas?! But that’s too hard.”)

Or perhaps it’s to combat RateMyProfessor.com. Here is a sample of an average entry of a math professor: Nice guy, who’s really good at math. However, he has only a nodding acquaintance with English. The average grade in his class is a 30, but it’s okay because at the end he distributes a few good grades just for the heck of it.

So I can understand why they’ve resorted to advertising (i.e., propaganda). Maybe the lit departments should consider doing something similar. I can imagine how they’d advertise Restoration Lit. Instead of “obscure literature written by giddy royalists who never met a clause they didn’t love,” it would read “forgotten plays and essays by writers who are thrilled to be rid of Milton/Cromwell and are pre-modern precursors to the bawdy situation comedy.” Literature studies would never be the same.

Encouragement

The other day I read a blog post that gave me pause. A writer had been castigated by another writer because she was looking for an agent instead of self-pubbing. Now given all the changes in Amazon’s algorithms and how that’s radically affecting indie e-books, it’s pretty foolish to think e-pubbing is the answer to everything. Click here to learn more.

Regardless of what path or paths you decide to choose in presenting your work to the world or even if you write in a notebook and never show it to a living soul, we ought to be encouraging one another.

As I was mulling over the whole situation, I realized how rare it is for someone to encourage someone else. I don’t know if it’s our culture or if it’s human nature, but real encouragement is rare. And I’m not talking about the cheap politically correct “everyone is special” mumbo-jumbo, but real, thoughtful encouragement. Can you remember the last time you encouraged someone else? What about the last time someone encouraged you?

I remember a professor I had in college. Dr. Brown. He was an elderly man who smoked way too much, but he had two rare gifts. First, he was a true genius. The only one I have ever met. Two, he knew how to encourage. He encouraged me. He wrote insightful comments on my papers and exams. He called on me in class and complimented what I had to say. And guess what? I never worked as hard for any literature class, ever. I spent every free hour learning everything I could about critical theory and Restoration Literature, which I hate (except for Tristram Shandy—a marvel of wit that breaks every rule of writing and does it with style). I was ready should Dr. Brown say, “Connie, give me a Hegelian reading of Dryden’s ‘Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day.’” And I would have been able to do it, even though I hate Hegel, dislike Dryden, and the ode—meh. I became a Pamela expert, despite that fact that Samuel Richardson poured every ounce of his prodigious tediousness into the novel. And I did that all because this man encouraged me.

Can you imagine what we could do if we encouraged each other? What about you all? Any stories of encouragement you’d like to share?

Click here to read this week's post on the Screwing Up Time blog.


Click here to read A.B. Keuser's interview of me.

Bad Classics

Several weeks ago, I asked for suggestions on classic books that I hadn’t read. Thanks for everyone’s suggestions. (I ended up starting The Picture of Dorian Gray because it was shorter than the rest. Bad reason, but with everything going on I though short was better.)

In the midst of the comments, we started discussing what determines a classic, what makes a book a part of the canon of great literature. And, of course, we don’t always like “the classics.” So this is my question for you all today. What classics have you read that you haven’t enjoyed? And why?

Here are mine.

1. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. (My least favorite book ever—I hate pronouns without referents.)

2. The Aeneid by Virgil (It seemed like a total rip-off of Homer’s Illiad)

3. Tess of the d’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy. (I’m pretty sure I read this in high school, but I don’t remember anything about the plot. All I remember is wanting to poke my eyes out.)

4. La Modification by Michel Butor. (I had to read this French modernist book in French. I had no idea if I understood the story. So I found an English translation and read them side by side. I still couldn’t figure out the story. The only thing I know is that some woman rode a train a lot.)

5. The poetry of a famous poet who shall not be named, lest you be tempted to look him up. (Why do I hate his work? Because he was a professor of mine and a wretched individual, who never seemed content unless someone was crying in class. His favorite technique was Xeroxing people’s papers, passing them out, and saying that it was the worst tripe he’d ever read—tenure protected him. He was an equal opportunity villain and did everyone’s paper, though he seemed to target sorority girls more than anyone else. Of course, it never seemed to occur to him that not everyone’s paper could be the worse thing he’d ever read. But logical fallacies weren’t strong suit. Being heinous was.

BTW, my mom’s showing signs of improvement. If all goes well, she may be home by the weekend. 

How to Kill the Classics

I admit that I have a tender spot in my heart for the classics. I have a literature degree so I love everyone from Homer to Shakespeare to Elliot. (I hate James Joyce, but that’s another story.) I realize that sometimes it’s hard for modern readers to delight in the cadences of the Iliad. After all, we’re not used to listening to recited poems so hearing Helen referred to as “Helen of the white arms” over and over doesn’t make sense—it’s an aural literary device used to help listeners identify the characters.
But that’s what lit professors are for. They’re supposed to help us bridge the chasm of time and culture to appreciate works of literature that have transcended human constructs. So I was very disappointed to Ariel complaining loudly about her literature class and the books she has to read. What made it stranger was that Ariel had read all of the books when I taught her ancient literature, and she enjoyed them. What was up?


“What’s up?” Ariel said in an indignant voice. She read me a passage, “Princess Nausicaa says, ‘Daddy dearest, could you lend me the carriage so I can wash clothes.’”


My jaw dropped. “What is that rubbish?” I asked. Apparently it’s a modernized version of the Iliad. Modernized versions are the newest fad in literature. I investigated these versions. I’m sure that the translators meant well, making culture more assessable to the masses (sounds kind of condescending, actually). But the problem is that it destroys tone and voice. Every time a modernized phrase pops up in the text—they’re scattered here and there like poppy seeds—it takes the reader right out of the narrative. You have to blink, refocus, and force yourself back into the text. Maybe these translators and professors should have taken a few creative writing classes. Lesson 10 in creative writing is create a voice and tone and infuse it into every word of the text—it’s the only way to capture the reader. Everything else is painful and laborious. And it only makes the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Orestia, etc., even more difficult to read. What students need is an accurate translation so they can lose themselves in the story just like everyone has done for the last couple thousand years.

Math

I am a bit bemused by the title of this post. How is it that I’m writing about math?! But I live in a home of mathematicians. No, not my husband. He’s with me—two art-loving humanities type people who ended up with four math-loving children. I’m still not sure how it happened. We read together as a family—we still do. They get assigned all the classics: Homer, Hemingway, Austen, etc. When I bemoan the fact, Luke says to me, “Mom, we love Shakespeare. It’s really the best you can hope for.”
I’m still assigning the kids lots of reading—the younger boys are making their way through the Odyssey now. When someone mentioned the volume of reading, Jacob said, “Yeah, it’s amazing how much you can read when you don’t sweat comprehension.” UGH. Somebody pass me the smelling salts, quick.

P.S. Please note the prefered subject is everywhere--calculators, graph paper, math books, economics, etc.