Pam Webb

a writer's journey as a reader

Archive for the tag “Literature”

14 Dec 2012
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Getting Lively with Dead Poets


Poetry

Poetry (Photo credit: Kimli)

Tuesday marked the start of our AP Poetry Unit.  I am so excited we are finally onto poetry!! Poetry is the curry of prose.  It’s the sprinkles found in exposition.  It’s the center of the Tootsie Pop because it’s that delightful surprise unexpectedly found in the middle of the everyday. 

Poetry is not just rhyme.  It’s not just meter.  It’s not slavering on about metaphor and simile.  It’s bounce, giggles, shock, and awe.  Poetry is the dance of words.  Poetry is that note of praise found nestled in the staunch flow of sentences, paragraphs, and text.

It’s sing.

It’s song.

It’s the azure found in the sky.

It’s the You before I.

It’s older than the page before you.

It’s Homer before he became a Simpson.

And the Dead Poets are the best because their words formed the path for the rest.

Oh, hello Emily, Robert, William, Byron, Coleridge, Sylvia, Langston, Gwendolyn–I’d like you to meet my students.  I’ve been telling them about you.  I can’t wait for them to know you like I’ve gotten to know you.  And I can’t wait to learn more about you as I learn from my students.

Poetry. Word colors of our world.

when I said "I ate all your tootsie pops&...

when I said “I ate all your tootsie pops” (Photo credit: hmmlargeart)

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08 Dec 2012
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Jane Eyrror


Disclaimer: my commentary (not to be confused with a diatribe) is by in no means a diss upon those authors who have achieved success in their ability to appease the hunger of a ready populace for further forays of their favorite literary characters. I applaud publication success, even though I may not applaud the content.

The Janes of my reading life have left me wanting.  Wanting more that is.  Having read through Jane Austen and desiring more of Jane Eyre, I have continued to found solace in the many continuations that are currently available.

As we all know, there truly is no satisfying replacement for the original.  However, when you crave a Godiva and only Hershey, sometimes you are willing to settle for less when the best is no longer available.  In my Search for More Jane (not a book title, but wouldn’t it be a fun one?) I have scoured my GoodReads lists to find plausible reads.  I attempted several titles and grew weary in my searches for a true Elizabeth and company.  Only JA knew Elizabeth best. Besieged by the plethora of Pride and Prejudice knock-offs, I have turned to other novels of classic inspiration.  Jane Eyre is one such hopeful.

I dutifully read Wide Saragossa Sea since it ranked a place on the AP Suggested Reading List. Touted as the prequel to Jane Eyre and hailed as a classic, I braved through the novel ever hopeful it would answer those nagging questions of how Edward Rochester became smitten and taken in by Bertha.  The novel turned out to be more of a stand alone than a companion read.

I then chanced upon Death of a Schoolgirl  by Joanna Campbell Slan at my local library on the new releases shelf.  Seeing it featured Jane Eyre in her married state of Mrs. Rochester I quickly plunked it into by book bag.  Overall, I enjoyed this as a weekend read with its premise that Jane’s curiosity and tenacity makes her a rival to Miss Marple in sleuthing skills. A fun read, granted, it offered only a shadow in terms of the depth of Jane.

image: amazon.com

 

I then remembered reading a book review about a contemporary version of Jane Eyre.  Setting the intrepid ET upon the search, she found Jane by April Linder. I too checked it out.  Here is the catalog summary:

Forced to drop out of an esteemed East Coast college after the sudden death of her parents, Jane Moore takes a nanny job at Thornfield Park, the estate of Nico Rathburn, a world-famous rock star on the brink of a huge comeback. Practical and independent, Jane reluctantly becomes entranced by her magnetic and brooding employer and finds herself in the midst of a forbidden romance.

Book Jacket for: Jane

image: amazon.com

I read it anyway.

No, Jane had not been what I had originally been looking for, and fortunately I found the lost review buried under my get-to-it-someday stack.  The Flight of Gemma Hardy, proved a much better replacement crave read and definitely proved the glowing review it received.

image: amazon.com

Set in Iceland and Scotland in the fifties and sixties, Gemma Hardy’s life parallels that of Jane Eyre’s in travail and hardships.  Gemma is a young woman who becomes an au pair for the precocious niece of a Mr.Sinclair, who infrequently visits his Scottish home.  Gemma’s journey and subsequent flight adequately pays tribute to that of Jane Eyre’s, yet manages to be a distinctive and well-written plot twist of its own merit.  I reluctantly finished Livesey tribute novel, quite satisfied with having found a glimpse of Jane through Gemma.  I am looking forward to discovering her other works.

Sometimes the best way to find a continuation of a familiar voice is to discover a new acquaintance.

Conclusion: There is real no “eyrror” in finding replacement reads for Jane; it’s only a matter of discernment.

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27 Nov 2012
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Words APtly Spoken (and Written, too)


As Vera winds up her month long adventure with writing about writing a NaNoWriMo novel, I also am winding up my adventure of doing the same.  One thing I really like about Vera is how much she likes words.  Hmm, maybe a little bit of me slipped into my protag.  I’ve never had a French foreign exchange student as a BFF nor a crush on anyone named Eddie though.

Like Vera, I have collected a few words along the way as a writer, reader, and teacher.  I love to store them up, and find they pop out unexpectedly. My freshmen tend to give their, “What did she just say?” look when this happens.

Over the last week I’ve been preparing a list of words which will be handy for AP students looking and learning to broaden their working literature vocabulary.  Currently I have close to 160 terms that we will cover.  Most will be known; however, some might be new. I know there are a few I’ve just made acquaintance:

1. aphorism: a terse statement of known authorship which expresses a general truth
2.caesura: a pause within the line of verse.
3.Deus ex machina:a phrase from Greek plays where an actor was lowered onto the stage to solve the plot; an artificial contrivance that forces the solving or terminating of a plot.
4. doggerel: crude verse that contains clichés, predictable rhyme, and inept meter and rhythm.
5.enjambment: when one verse runs into another verse
6. hamartia: the central flaw of a character, usually in a tragic hero
7. litotes: a form of understatement whcih makes an affirmative point by denying the negative, as in “It isn’t very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.” (Catcher in the Rye)
8. metonymy: from the Greek meaning “changed label”; it’s basically a substitution, as in “the White House sent out this new announcement” instead of saying “the President issued an announcement.”
9.portmanteau word: an artificial word combining parts of other words; e.g. brunch
10. semiotics: semantics the study meanings of which they signify; semiotics studies the signs themselves

The whole “words aptly spoken” proverb takes on a new meaning and direction as I apply these to our Advanced Placement Literature lessons.

They say the best way to get an education is to become a teacher.  I couldn’t agree more. I’m always open to new terms.  Know some?  Send them my way!

English: So many words to keep track of!.

English: So many words to keep track of!. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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25 Nov 2012
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Fan (of) Fiction


Caterpillar using a hookah. An illustration fr...

Caterpillar using a hookah. An illustration from Alice in Wonderland (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With six days left Vera has finally started her NaNo novel.  Her inspiration is a hybrid of Hamlet and Alice in Wonderland with a bit of Lost in Austen thrown in. It’s fan fiction at it’s *finest*.  Okay, cut the kid a break–she’s only fifteen and has never written anything of length beyond the required English essay.

Actually, I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to fan fiction, even though I’ve come across some which is entertaining and well-written, I can’t help but think, “Couldn’t you come up with something original?”  Then again there is something to be said for being inspired by good writing.

For example, Wide Sargasso Sea is on the AP suggested reading list and can be considered the prequel to Jane Eyre.  What?  Fan Fiction considered classic literature?  Told you I was a literary snob.

An ardent admirer of Ophelia of Hamlet and Alice of Wonderland fame, and totally grooving on the Lost in Austen premise of switching places with Elizabeth Bennett, I couldn’t help but have Vera weave all of them together.

 

NaNo–the most grueling, yet satisfying form of writing under pressure.  Sissies need not apply.

 

 

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24 Oct 2012
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Just Another Gothic Girl


English: Gothic girl.

English: Gothic girl. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT THE GOTHIC TO WHICH I REFER

I have admittedly strayed from my AP book list and I am in the midst of coasting in my reading tastes: the gothic romance novel. oh yeah.

I’m not talking your acceptable-found-on-the-list novel like Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre. Nope, I’m talking about the forgotten books by a forgotten author that needs rediscovering.  Maybe I will start a resurgence of Dorothy Eden readers. You  never know.

Intrigued by what constitutes a gothic romance novel I Googled to find a most excellent site called Virtual Salt, which is written by Robert Harris, former professor and general busy guy.  He’s got an exciting menu of topic choices on his website and it is a recommended stop by.  I chose “Element of the Gothic Novel” and will definitely be borrowing from and referring to his article once I get to Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre in AP Lit.

Currently I’m cheat reading and have discovered amidst the buried “E”s when I was last shelf shopping,  Dorothy Eden, who had once upon a time a long writing career spanning from the 1940s into the 1980, being known primarily for writing these smashing gothic romances with heroines exhibiting contemporary tendencies.  I’m deep into my second one and these are exactly what I need,  having come off of a grading campaign of freshmen poetry notebooks.

Here is Gothic Romance Elements 101 in a Nutshell.  For in-depth article investigation I encourage you to investigate Robert Harris’s site.

A Gothic Romance needs to have the following:
1.  a castle
2. inexplicable events
3. suspense
4. a damsel in distress
5. overwrought emotions
6. metonymy of gloom and horror *

*refresher for metonymy: it’s a type of metaphor.  For instance, in movies to get some immediate gloom and horror tone going the script will throw in some approaching footsteps and of course you gotta have the sudden torrential downpoour complete with thunder and lightning.

Here’s what Dorothy Eden fare I’ve dined upon so far–the title alone, let alone the cover art, indicate a GR is within the grasp.

The Shadow WifeI couldn’t improve on Amazon:

There was something about the tall, dynamic Dane that disturbed Luise Amberley. But he was so attentive, so charming, that she silenced the small warning voice within her and yielded to his passionate persuasions. The wedding ceremony was hasty, almost furtive, but Luise was too wildly infatuated to care. Even his insistence that their marriage be kept a secret did not seem unreasonable. Otto Winther was, after all, a Count…a man whose ancestors were royalty in Denmark. Not until they left the small seaside resort where they had met and arrived at Maaneborg Castle did Luise become aware that something was wrong. It was not merely the coolmess of the welcome. There was an atmosphere of desperation and danger. They were hiding something. And Luise was determined to find out their secret, no matter what the risk. She did not want to remain a SHADOW WIFE.
It’s actually much better than the description. Considering the publishing date was 1967 I found myself surprised that the following being mentioned: a)computers b)open love affairs within a marriage c)abortion.  Plus Luise is no fainting Melba.  She does not easily whimper off or get locked up in a dungeon.  She reminds me a lot of Jane Eyre, one of my all time fave heroines.
I’m in the middle of Winterwood and once again I will let Amazon do the honors.
 WinterwoodSee the castle?  See the damsel in distress?  Gloom and suspense?  And you know that inexplicable event is about to happen.
Enough of the blogging.  I must return to my saga of the socialite forced by circumstance to become governess to the wealthy family consisting of handsome husband, aloof wife with a myriad of light illnesses, and two spoiled children.  I did mention the dying, extremely rich aunt, did I not?
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08 Oct 2012
14 Comments

Has Dewey Metis Match?


SLJ1210w FT Dewey Are Dewey’s Days Numbered?: Libraries Nationwide Are Ditching the Old Classification System

image credit: School Library Journal

Recently I received a shock: the Dewey Decimal system might be at death’s door.  Yes, sit down.  I can see the news has hit you just as hard.  My first thought is, “What’s next? Abandoning order in the grocery store? Arranging by content or by color?” Metis is menacing the time-honored and respected DDC system. Then I thought I should be more  opened-minded. Maybe there is a sound reason why Dewey might possibly be ringing the death knell chimes.

After reading the SLJ on-line article my open-mindedness gave way to absolute rejection of the new kid on the block: Metis. The Dewey Decimal Classification system was thoughtfully developed to create order out of chaos.  Before Dewey came along, libraries would willy-nilly shelve their books.  Some methods included alphabetizing, shelf placement, and random subject designation. Then along came Mel.

Melvil Dewey, the designer of DDC, was an amazing guy.  I could write an entire blog post about him, and if you are interested in finding out more about you should link over to this article  to become enlightened to how dedicated he was to libraries.  He even risked his life saving books from a library that was on fire.  That’s my kind of Book Booster.

The SLJ article focused on a real-life library that has changed over to what they call Metis, who was the Greek goddess Athena’s mama. Metis supposedly reigned in the clever department, and the Metis system relies on clever deductive association when searching for a book. The librarians in the Metis library believe the system is much better for kids since it encourages them to associate ideas into reality.  For instance, Johnny the second grader, comes bouncing in and says, “I want to read a mystery story because Dad and I watch Sherlock Holmes and I want to be a detective, too.”  Betsy, our intrepid librarian points to the shiny sign that says, “Scary, ” and says, “That’s where you’ll find it, sweetie.”  Yup, mysteries are scary because they are associated with the unknown, and the unknown is associated with being nervous, and nervous is associated with frightened, and frightened makes leads to thinking of ghosts which are as you know, scary.  This If You Give a Mouse a Cookie logic is not working for me.  A mystery to me is how anyone could think this Metis system is going to fly.  Dewey’s been doing fine all these years.  Why the sudden backlash against shelve and order?

If you aren’t familiar with Dewey, here is a crash course.  It’s divided up into categories and those categories can have subcategories.  It’s quite neat and tidy.  Take a look:

HOW DEWEY DECIMAL CLASSIFICATION (DDC) WORKS

000 General Works (Miscellaneous)

100 Philosophy

200 Religion

300 Social Sciences

400 Languages

500 Pure Sciences

600 Technology (Practical Arts) including medicine, engineering, business accounting, agriculture, salesmanship, etc.

700 Fine Arts (including architecture, painting, photography, music, amusements, etc.)

800 Literature

900 History, Geography, Biography

What is there not to like about this system?  One reason, declares the article, for the reconsideration is because kids don’t even learn their decimals until fourth grade.  Umm, excuse me.  Dewey’s decimals are filing markers and not mathematical.  This associative logic and deductive reasoning could explain why Metis is so appealing to these particular librarians. And what will these students do when they go to their public library and it’s still the DDC?

I’m thinking as I read the article, “One giant leap backward for mankind.” Dewey put order into the system.  Order is a good thing.  Metis is kind of subjective touchy feely nonsense organization that could create unilateral universal chaos.  One person’s science could be another person’s science fiction.

Now, I ask you, are we dumbing down our society even more by taking away Dewey’s decimals and putting up shiny poster board subject signage?  If you want to read up on Dewey, you can find him in the 921 section of your friendly neighborhood library–any library that speaks Dewey.  Or you could get Metisphysical and look for the sign that spouts “People Who Once Were Alive And Are Now Dead.”

 

English: From left to right: R. R. Bowker, Mrs...

English: From left to right: R. R. Bowker, Mrs. Dewey and Melvil Dewey (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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04 Oct 2012
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Continium of Encouragement to Read: BB Week #6


As a librarian at heart and an English teacher for career, with a side of writer squeezed in, I positively adore books. My blog is primarily about books and I keep a running list of unabashed Book Boosters.  Here is a slew of posters, banners, and stickers that encourage reading.  BtW: celebrate Banned Book Week with a good read, or maybe a bad read–it’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?

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28 Sep 2012

The Naughty List: BB Week #4


Cover of "The Great Gatsby"

Cover of The Great Gatsby

Banned Book Week is around the corner: define your mind with censored or challenged literary lines. As you decide on additions for your next TBR you can make like Santa by checking your list to see who’s been naughty or nice.

 

  • Cover of "Their Eyes Were Watching God"
  • Cover of Their Eyes Were Watching God

 Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
Native Son, by Richard Wright
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway

The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin

  •  All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren
  •  The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
  •  Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
  • A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
  • In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
  • The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
  • Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron
  • Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
  • Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
  • A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
  • Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
  • Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh

    Cover of "Lord of the Flies, Educational ...

    Cover of Lord of the Flies, Educational Edition

  • Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence
  • The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
  • Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
  •  An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
  • Rabbit, Run, by John Updike
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25 Sep 2012
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When Chick Lit Goes Bad: BB Week #2 entry


Cover of "The Awakening: And Other Storie...

Cover via Amazon

While Lady Chatterly’s Lover made the Banned list, Kate Chopin‘s The Awakening did not.  Both miffed, shocked, and outraged many a reader upon its respective appearance; but only Lady Chatterly’s wanderings provoked the censors to add D.H. Lawrence’s offering on venturing outside the lines of socially acceptable behavior of women of the 19th century.  Here’s Lady Cha Cha’s rap sheet according to ALA.org:

Banned by U.S. Customs (1929). Banned in Ireland (1932), Poland (1932), Australia (1959), Japan (1959), India (1959). Banned in Canada (1960) until 1962. Dissemination of Lawrence’s novel has been stopped in China (1987) because the book “will corrupt the minds of young people and is also against the Chinese tradition.”

Admittedly, it did have some naughty language, even for today’s standards, and some rather risqué scenes, which explains its appearance in a 1959 obscenity trial.  The book went on to fame and fortune, appearing in various forms, even a BBC 1993 mini-series with Sean Bean and Joley Richardson. Bad girls don’t go away, they continue to spice up literary history,

However, a point to consider is that D.H. Lawrence wrote the book from a man’s point of view.  Perhaps he should have borrowed the POV Gun from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Lawrence is a writer of merit and his works have lasted the fickleness of time and reader tastes, so I can’t fault him for his chick lit bad girl book.  But honestly how can a man know what a woman’s feelings are?

Enter Kate Chopin.  She wrote The Awakening with a woman’s point of view in mind.  Like they say, “It takes one to know one.”  If not familiar with her 1899 novel, here is the micro precis:

Edna Pontellier awakens out of her expected role of wife and mother and goes against the tide of conventionality and is last seen swimming somewhat unhappily ever after into the sunset.

If Chopin had put in the naughtiness, her novel certainly would have made the BB list.  Instead it was censored for its open depiction of a female protagonist exploring her wild side.  This chafed against expected 1899 norms of decent behavior.

Reactions to her novel ranged from hostile condemnation (“We are well-satisfied when [Edna Pontellier] drowns herself,” “Poison”) to critical lambasting (“It was not necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter the over-worked field of sex-fiction,” (Chicago Times Herald), to lukewarm chastisement (“”next time I hope that Miss Chopin will devote that flexible, iridescent style of hers to a better cause.”–Willa Cather).

Some compared The Awakening to Flaubert’s 1856 Madame Bovary (another BB list member).

So even though Chopin did not include the naughty stuff, she still received censure for writing about how a woman had become dissatisfied and wanted to flap her wings a bit.  That was considered bad form.

The moral is here that Chopin never wrote another novel.  In fact, she didn’t publish much after The Awakening‘s disappointing reception.  The irony is that Chopin ushered the advent of many a literary foray into a woman’s point of view, including Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, Henry James, and Tennessee Williams.

After recently finished Chopin’s novel I am saddened to not have the ability to continue reading more of her work.  The critics too well censored her without ever lifting their pen to add her name and novel to their list.

Enjoy a good book this week, even if others deem it bad–it’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?

English: First ed title pg

English: First ed title pg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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22 Sep 2012
10 Comments

Burn and Turn: Censored and Challenged Books/BB Week #1


What have To Kill A Mockingbird, The Awakening, Huckleberry Finn, and The Hunger Games all have in common?  Easy. Besides making the bestsellers list, they have also made the banned books list. And let’s pause this opening for a bit of clarification. Banned Book Week is actually misleading, since books aren’t technically banned anymore–they are challenged, since we all have, at least in the US of A, the ability to procure what we want to read.

Banned Book Week is the annual emphasis that occurs during the last week of September, and serves as a reminder how society, during given points and times in history, get tweaked about what is available to read.  However, it is not only in the United States that books have created ire in the powers of say so.  Read Tweak happens around the world.  For instance:

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland:  Used to be banned in the province of Hunan, China, beginning in 1931 for its portrayal of anthropomorphized animals acting on the same level of complexity as human beings. The censor General Ho Chien believed that attributing human language to animals was an insult to humans. He feared that the book would teach children to regard humans and animals on the same level, which would be “disastrous.”

Then again sometimes banning is not good enough–let’s just burn the bugger and totally purge society’s ability for intellectual discernment.  Burned books would include:

  • Ulysses, by James Joyce–Burned in the U.S. (1918)
  • The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck—Burned by the East St. Louis, IL Public Library (1939)
  • The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway–Burned in Nazi bonfires in Germany (1933)
  • Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut–Burned in Drake, ND (1973)

Although there haven’t been any recent burnings, Ray Bradbury (rest in peace, Ray, you are missed) foresaw a day when all books would be burned. Not because of poisoned opinion, offended sensibilities, or societal outrage–no, Ray thought books would be burned due to lack of interest.  Intellectual thought via the printed page would be overridden by the quest of Jello entertainment(that ubiquitous substance which has form but no true nutrition and is quite similar to most television programming). In the near future Bradbury believed it would be illegal to own or read books so the government created a mockery out the fireman and had him burn books instead of saving that which would burn.  The paradox is stunningly brilliant, which is why Bradbury and his insights will be missed.

The book I refer to is, of course, Fahrenheit 451. The delicious and sad irony is that F451 was censored for its language in order for school districts to allow it on reading lists.

This week I will be posting views, trivia, and insights about banning, censoring, and challenging intellectual matter, because it does matter.

Banned Book Week.  Read a book and challenge your brain.

Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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