Erasure Revisited

This is another post about Erasure by Percival Everett. Previous post on this book done on June 30th.



I find this book fascinating for what it says about publishing and academia. It exposes all sorts of hypocrisy and I love it for that. I'm a little conflicted though because all of the in jokes and references to other texts show that I am all too aware of this other world that he is writing about. I cannot congratulate myself too much on it because it means that I am part of it then. This understanding comes with responsibility. I just reread "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack" (a great article my office mate suggested. available on-line by googling it) and I think that the rereading of that article partnered with the revisiting of Erasure is making me dwell on aspects I had not picked up on to begin with. Plus, something Denise said has me looking at it again too. She observed that Monk/Everett does not identify characters by race. Very interesting.

So here I am thinking out loud on the blog about the book. This is free form reflection that may or may not make sense, but is an example of my trying to make sense of something I have not yet formalized in words.

Denise and I talked at length about a week ago about the paper that Monk presents at the conference and whether or not it is meant to be understood. On first read, I just kind of glanced at it to see what it was but didn't really read it. I had the thought that it was part of the whole Structural movement I was forced to learn about in a Literary Criticism class but never really fully understood. I knew for sure that the instructor teaching that class didn't really understand it either. Denise and I talked about how we didn't really expect students to get it but thought we should give them something to show that it is real and that this comes from somewhere. I now see that paper as an important part of the whole book though its importance is difficult to understand.

It all rests on the idea that there is something being represented. As soon as something gets represented, it gets associated with the representation while at the same time cannot be the same as the symbol because the symbol is just a symbol. In the case of Monk's paper, he is explaining (or at least I think he's explaining) about that symbol and the thing the symbol represents and says that the key to it all and what makes it really interesting is the slash between them. While I don't entirely get all of that paper and all of the stuff that Sausseure and all the people associated with the stuff I didn't get as an undergrad, I do think there is a level of all of that going on in the book with the different angles of the book.

For instance, in the beginning of the book, Monk says he's the type of person to say Egads. When he is in his Lee alter ego, he also says Egads, which suggests that that alter ego cannot entirely be an alter ego; there are bits of himself that come through. When he's talking to his publisher (before My Pafology) about how he cannot get published, he is told to write something like My Second Failure. That book was his biggest commercial success but he said he hated writing it and said it was about how a character didn't understand why his lighter skinned mother was ostracized by the black community, so he went and killed a bunch of people. How is that so different from My Pafology? Isn't it just an upscale hoity toity version of the same book he later writes and hates? The layering in this book is unreal! You have Native Son retold in My Pafology while the frame story is essentially a more modern version of Invisible Man. I know Monk is not as underground as the protagonist in Invisible Man, but academics and obscure authors, I am sure, feel the types of things the Invisible Man protagonist writes about. Ok, so we have the layers in the actual fiction. Frame story mimics Invisible Man. Novel within the novel mimics Native Son. The novel within the novel also mimics another novel the narrator has written, one that is barely mentioned. All of this representation is explained (kind of) in the paper the narrator presents at a conference but the paper isn't understood. All of this mess (all of the racism in the book and real life) is talked about and talked about and is talked of by people living it, by people outside of it and it is just all talked around and about and upside down, but is it ever understood???

The irony of it all is this is fodder for a paper that could be presented at a conference. But who would be there to hear the paper? A bunch of tenure-seeking people who also write obscure papers to prove that they are academic enough to teach classes that half the time get taught by grad assistants so the "real" teacher can pursue his research. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I appreciate my tenure-track position at a community college, where if I want to take a class or write a paper, it is because I want to and not because I have to. Of course, it wouldn't bother me at all to have a grad assistant help me with the grading... : ) But then, I don't have lecture hall class sizes. And a portion of the closed classes always disappears around mid-term, so that my 20-25 students dwindle down to 12-18 students in the end. Again, community college wins from a teaching perspective! Teachers here are encouraged to experiment with their classes and to do faculty development that filters into how they teach their classes.

I'm building steam to write a longer post about academia that I don't really feel like writing right now. Perhaps another day.

My t.v. habits

Ok, not that I think anyone cares, but for some reason I feel the need to clog cyberspace with my thoughts on what's on t.v. this Fall.

Thursday nights
I used to love Thursday night t.v. I remember watching The Cosby Show when I was younger and then Friends and other shows when I was in high school and college. When Kevin and I were newly married, we would cook an easy newlywed dinner (i.e. frozen pizza, toasted ravioli and the like) and camp out in front of the t.v. together to watch Survivor and then CSI and even, dare I say it?, Gilmore Girls back when it was on Thursdays. This year, we have made the decision to just say no to Thursday night t.v. Well, Survivor lost its appeal to me long, long ago. CSI used to be one of my favorite shows, back when it cleverly referred to Sherlock Holmes mysteries and led viewers to actually care who did the crime. Now, it just gets more far-fetched with every year and the people who commit the crimes are just nasty psychopaths or people with really ridiculous motives...so Kevin and I are saying "Goodbye" to Thursday night t.v....which is just fine since Monday night has taken over as the night for us to vedge out together to watch shows we're both interested in.

Finally, a reason to like Mondays!
We've been hooked on Heroes since it started last year. I admit it; we wanted to know how saving the cheerleader would save the world. Really, I think we both watch it because we love Hiro. I like it because it makes me try to guess what will happen next. I don't want to just mindlessly watch a t.v. show. I enjoy overanalyzing it. And I love that the Heroes website puts a new graphic novel up every week to supplement what happened in the show. I am just geeky enough to go to it every Tuesday to read it while I eat lunch. The strangest thing about Heroes is that I constantly mutter to myself that it was mildly disappointing that they didn't show more or reveal more, but it is that same quality that keeps me coming back for more every week.

Over the summer, I got hooked on How I Met Your Mother. This show reminds me of my college friends. It doesn't remind me of any specific friends, but just the kind of weird inside jokes and conversations about things that were really meaningless but also not meaningless. The way they would say, "wait for it" was like the stupid little way any word ending in "er" could be made fun of with the rejoinder, "____-er? I barely even know 'er," but I digress. The show was one I enjoyed but could live without. It has since been replaced by....wait for it....

Chuck
I love this show. What's somewhat funny (not laugh-out-loud funny, admittedly) is that everyone who knew about this show would tell my husband he should watch it. Kevin is a computer technician and he pretty much conforms to the computer technician stereotypes. Until a month ago, he had the same haircut he had worn, well, since forever, really. He wears khakis or colored khakis every workday. He's constantly attached to his phone which is also a PDA. So, we both take great joy in really liking Chuck. Kevin thinks he could be Chuck. Kev's also really surprised that I like Chuck maybe even more than he does.

Some concerns with the show though...I could live without the gratuitous weiner girl fight each week, but I also find it funny. It reminds me of how Alias used to construct the most implausible situations for Sydney to fight in. I think as long as a show is somewhat making fun of themselves as they do it, it will remain cool, but as soon as they lose sight of that self-deprecating level, it becomes absolute nonsense.

And that reminds me of another reason I love Chuck: John Casey. I had no clue one of the agents from The Matrix could be so funny. I also have no clue when I'm going to stop inserting "Mr. Anderson" after pauses in the actor's speech. We shall see. I still have trouble refraining from adding "Dude" to whatever Keanu Reeves says. John Casey is this NSA guy who is supposed to be watching and protecting Chuck, a guy who has this super-confidential computer program installed in his brain. John Casey is the kind of guy who takes his work way too seriously and that's why he's so funny. Last episode, he tried to make a joke. And it wasn't even that funny, but when he laughed at his own joke, I couldn't stop laughing! I'm laughing at it right now even. Which makes Kevin laugh at me.

This November will mark our 8th anniversary. We only watch shows that we will watch together. If the other one doesn't really get into it, it doesn't become a priority...but the ones that are priorities get taped and watched after the kids go to bed. Come to think of it, the tape that we have been taping everything on has been in use since we would tape West Wing and watch it that way so we could rewind and figure out what it was the characters had actually said....and we stopped watching West Wing ages ago. I can't believe the tape has lasted that long. Many people have tried to convince us to get TiVo or even to get cable, but as geeky as we are, we're even more cheap. Why pay for those things when the VCR works just fine? Why pay for cable when it would only make us watch more useless television? As it is, we can find ourselves too easily distracted by the unintentionally funny drama of America's Next Top Model or Beauty and the Geek. I can't believe that I just admitted I may actually watch those shows from time to time...

Just venting

I have no idea what my brain has been doing while I've been sleeping, but I've woken up with songs stuck in my head the last few days and also have snippets of dream imagery pop up as I go about my day. I have had "Larry Boy" from a Vegggietales show stuck in my head all morning. It was "Love Hurts" by Nazareth all day yesterday. There's something cathartic about knowing I may have gotten one of those songs stuck in someone else's head just by mentioning them...of course, it hasn't helped to get the song out of mine yet... : (

The Progress of my classes so far this semester:
Mid-term is as likely a time as any other to pause to think about how things are going. It's interesting that the one class that I will not be teaching in Spring 2008 is the one that I am most happy with at the moment.
ENG 005: Basic Writing
My 005 classes have really surprised me this semester. I think I'm at the usual drop-rate by now, but the ones who remain are stronger than in past semesters. There are many who already strike me as students who will skip over 006 and we've only written 2 papers. It makes me excited to think of what they'll do in the remaining two papers. The students who are not succeeding at the moment also seem to admit that it is their own fault that they haven't progressed as much as they or I would like them to. I wish all students had their maturity level.
ENG 101: Learning Community Rhet. Comp I
I'm sad to say Denise and I felt the need to do a mini-intervention yesterday. I think there was a lot of frustration all around. I was really sad and cranky after the first final papers came in. They averaged below a C+, and that was with Denise saying I had been generous in some of the grades. It seems like we have a number of students who are A-/B+ writers who did not "bring it" in the first batch of graded essays. That really confused me because their first drafts looked strong, but then the revision that was needed didn't get done or strange decisions were made during the revision process. There don't seem to be any students right in the middle either. It seems like the grades fell into the B+ or D categories. That means there's a whole group of students who are learning in the classes, but it's not showing in college-level writing yet. And that scares me!

So, we surveyed students to find out how much work they are putting into the classes. A little under half of them admitted to spending under 3 hours a week on preparing for the two classes! 3 hours a week is what students should spend on one college course alone, minimum! No wonder I was disappointed with the papers. I spent at least 6 hours grading the 17 papers that were turned in. And that reminds me-- the vibe I got from Sue McClure (our intervention facilitator) was that for the students to put more effort into the homework, we're probably going to have to grade more of it on a regular basis. Oh, how I do not want to do that. I hate book-keeping. Hate hate hate it. For several reasons. First, it cuts into time for what I consider to be my real work: offering useful comments on writing and preparing lessons. Second, it just seems so high school-ish. Or even junior high-ish. In the real world, people are not going to micromanage every little task you are assigned. And I don't want to either. Another important reason is that it often makes the work seem even more like busywork. It turns learning into a performance and a task-list instead of an intuitive instrinsic thing and I HATE that. Loathe it even more than I loathe the paperwork portion of it. Want to smash thinking like that into a little pulp. A student wrote me to say she was "working her ass off" to complete assignments for the class. I feel the same way about preparing for this class and integrating it with the other one and then to add to that micromanaging 18 students' blogs and daily work to verify that they are doing what we just want them to do anyway so they can learn more effectively and fully. There's got to be a better way.

ENG 102: Rhet Comp II...i.e. the research class
It's amazing what night and day 101 and 102 are, despite there being only a semester's difference between the two classes. In 101, some allowance has to be made for the fact that this is likely many of the students' first college semester, and that results in rules and regulations and homework grading (see above). In 102, they have more of a "been there. done that" aura. I completely relax with my 2:00 102 class. They tell me what they need. They ask the questions they need to ask. I just kind of guide them here or there. If they do the work or don't do the work, they accept the consequences and we move on. I keep harping on them to read the textbook assignments. My only worry is that I have a strong sneaking suspicion that some of them are not reading it and are going to turn in a formulaic standard research paper and wonder what went wrong with their grade at the end of it all. I need to write an assignment sheet with guidelines on it. Whenever I hear the word "guidelines," I think of "parlay" (spelling??) from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Anyway...on to the on-line course. Apart from being swamped in electronic paperwork for that class, I am really pleased with the class overall. I can't believe the community and comraderie this class has established on-line. Though they are all on their own individual projects at the moment, they still offer feedback for one another in a courteous, genuine way. And most of them seem to be following their interests...which makes for better research papers in the end. I'm not on the mean satisfied with their second projects, so I think I need to be more directive with those next semester, but I think they learned valuable lessons about the need for focus and planning and the like before moving on to their next paper.

Wrapping this post up...
I have conferences with 005 students restarting in 40 minutes, so I am going to close this out, listen to something to purge my brain of the song that is still in it, finish my Dr. Pepper and use the bathroom and try to accomplish one of the assignment sheets I referred to in this post. But I feel better after venting.

Sample Blog for 102 classes: Title of source would go here

Source publication info would go here: Author's last name, first name. "Article title." Magazine title Publication date: page #s. If not PDF full-text, EBSCO info would follow. Long story short, do some bibliographic info and use your handbook to know for sure what to place here.

PART ONE: NOTES AND QUOTES
In this section, I would provide an overall summary of what this source had to say.

I also recommend putting in any commentary that will help you distinguish this source from the many others you will read while researching. (Highly readable, a little obscure, good info for this point I want to make in the later part of my paper, etc. etc.)

Direct quotes from the article that are very good. Make sure to put " " around them. It is best to copy and paste them directly from an electronic source whenever possible, so you do not mistype something. For overkill, you could put the words "direct quote" or DQ behind it as well.

Paraphrases. In addition to direct quotes, give serious consideration to paraphrasing what was said in portions of the article as well. Make sure you put it IN YOUR OWN WORDS and do not borrow the original phrasing. Put the word "paraphrase" or some abbreviation for it behind it to indicate that it is not the original wording. These types of notes record what was said or the gist of what was said when the wording is not particularly interesting to begin with.

PART TWO: REFLECTIONS
In this section, write about what the source made you think about your topic. In this section, you may choose to write about what you thought about the source specifically, but branching out into what you now think about your topic helps tremendously too. Having full reflections in your blog will help you when you go to write your first draft later on.

It should be noted, however, that the reflections should also pertain to your topic. Keep your focusing question in the back of your mind. The reflections should help answer that question in some way.

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Whew. I have finished reading all of the LC Book Club books. This one was just a reread.

Interesting timing for this reread because we're about to read "The Story of my Body" and I can see all kinds of overlap (Yolanda wanting to be strong and also being perceived as an exotic person in college years, Carla being ashamed of her hairy legs and such, Sandi admiring the flamenco dancers, all 4 girls being called "spic").

Upon my rereading, I wondered why Fifi had such a small role in the book. We don't really learn anything about her as a young child except what is mentioned in the other girls' sections in a casual way. Julia Alvarez has admitted that Yolanda is a sort of autobiographical character, so it is clear why so much of the book is about her. Carla was just sort of boring, which (sad to say since I too am the oldest) is kind of the role of the oldest child. Sandi was really interesting to me but not a whole lot was done with her adult character.

As a lit person, I like to examine the structure of a book. There is a chapter that doesn't seem to fit-- the one on Chucha, the nanny/cook. She gets to wrap up the part where the family leaves to go to New York. As an outside observer, she gives the most inciteful comment about the girls: they will forever be affected by the things that have formed them in their homeland whether or not they realize it. This is so true. The problems that Yo and Sandi have can be traced to specific times on the island. Carla's insecurities are traced to more general familial role problems but also her transition to becoming American. Fifi-- we don't have enough on her childhood to know if her issues stem from that time, but I can't help but think there is something up with the different codes of behavior allowed for men and women and that double standard of men being congratulated for the "macho" behavior of sowing wild oats and passing their name on to boys instead of girls and the like while the young women are to be protected and chaperoned and are not allowed to enjoy their sexuality unless they are belong to a toss-away social level and even then, they are supposed to enjoy it in a subservient way (from the part with Vic, the American).

How did we end up with sex in all four of the book club novels?
Frank in Catch Me If You Can was always chasing a new girl. Garcia Girls had far too many penis references. No Telephone to Heaven had disturbing sexual behavior. She's Not There had the safest, tamest sexual references and it is about getting a sex change!

The Learning Community is covering gender right now. While we've briefly talked about the double standard that happens with men and women and housework, we haven't done much with other double standards. I think they are really changing right now. When I was in college, there were much different "rules" for guys and girls. Now, not so much.

Anyway...to draw this back in to How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, there seems to be such a difference between real identity that the girls have on the inside and the identity they show to the world. The parts with the SIM showed what was said and unsaid with just body language. The part with Yolanda and Rudolf something something the third (my favorite section of the book) showed how conflicted she was and seemingly confused about which codes of behavior to follow and which to toss out. Interesting stuff, well, to me anyway.

No Telephone to Heaven

This is one of the Book Club selections for the Learning Community.



Gotta say-- I didn't particularly enjoy this book. I expected more than it was. The character development was really interesting, but the flow of the novel was just off to me. I don't like it when I don't know what the overall structure will be. I don't want predictability, but I do want to know if it will be about a different character or a different movement in the book or whatever. When it shifted to another part, I couldn't tell you why it shifted or who it was now about or even why I should care.



The most interesting character in the book was Harry/Harriet and he/she never got a section of her own. She/he did at least get to have his say more than once.



There is much to the book in terms of identity, race and gender (our themes for the class). Jamaica had much going on with different color lines. The fairer the skin, the more wealth and power. They had labels for the different gradations. Most of what was going on with Clare seemed to be because she felt guilty that she was fairer skinned than her mom and sister and she seemed to be mad at the fact that she could "pass." Like most people, Clare seems to think about things like our themes without realizing she's thinking about those things. It seems like she thinks around them. I think that's quite natural. It's not like people who are daydreaming all of a sudden say to themselves, "Ok, I'm going to think about my race right now and what impact that it has had on my life," but they might find themselves thinking about something else and it trails into the race area of thought without race being officially the target of the thought.

Interesting that this book has some overlap with She's Not There (transgendered character) and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Ok, it's been a long time since I read the Garcia girls book, but I seem to remember it being divided into sections in the same way that No Telephone is. Of course, I wasn't bothered by the Garcia girls division the way I was this one. I think it was the poems and quotes in the beginning of each new section. (My apologies to Tony here...) "I'm not going to lie to you" I didn't get them. Half the time they were in a different language. The other half, they were obscure poetry. I suppose I would understand them more if it were my second time reading the book, but for a first read...Nope. Didn't get it.

The violence also got to me. Why was the Christopher chapter in the book where it was? Harry/Harriet said the thing that happened to him/her had no bearing on how he/she turned out, but did it? The part with Bobby brought home something I already knew about war: the soldiers who return need more than physical healing. There are mental/emotional scars that will be open for a long time, possibly forever.

That reminds me...the book isn't essentially a bad book. The author obviously has skill. It's just that the meaning of everything is unclear to a first-time reader. I think that some things should be discernible on a first read or who's going to read to the end? It's fine to have deeper meanings embedded in the text, but if there are no surface meanings and connections, then it's like wandering through an unfamiliar house in the dark. Sure, you know that's a couch and that is an end table, but what the heck is that weird freaky shadowy thing over there? Is it important? Is it not as weird as it appears right now? Who knows until the lights are turned on, you know?

This reveals another thing about me. Deep down...well, actually not that deep down....Anyway...I was going somewhere with this--- ah, yes. I was going to tell you or myself or whomever that I am not a poetry person. I have always valued prose far about poetry. It's because I don't like images coming at me here and there without background or explanation. That's really how I felt about this book. It's like poetry. It may even be good poetry, but the fact that it has complex images presented side by side with other complexities and leaves it all up to me wasn't enjoyable to me.

I'm curious to see what the Book Club people think about it.