Jardinière

Turning Over a New Leaf

2007-09-08T12:00:00.000-04:00

For various reasons, some spoken, some unspoken, it seemed time to make a fresh start. So, if you're interested, I'm over here now. Come on over.

My thanks to Blogger for providing me my first online plot. I will be pruning out this site to remove the dead wood and to retain what (I hope) will perennially endure (besides my fondness for variations on the word perennial).

Thank you, too, for visiting. I hope to see you over at Jardiniere, part deux.

On y va. . .

Garden Spot: Oxford Edition

2007-06-29T16:20:00.000-04:00

Unlike my colleagues who have spent their time productively transcribing, taking care not to inspire the wrath of special collections librarians, my time here in England has been spent taking care of children, as we visit with their British relatives.

In a comment for the last post, Muse offered her favourite pub in Oxford, the Royal Oak on Woodstock Road. Thinking about her post, I realized I'm hard pressed to identify my own favourite, as many pubs have either changed hands or gone corporate (a sad development), and my criteria have shifted over the years, from quality of atmosphere -- and of the lager -- to the pub's capacity to accommodate my children (. . . so I can enjoy the atmosphere and the lager. Cue the Underworld, "Born Slippy": "Shouting lager, lager, lager, lager. . ."). In that respect, I suppose I do favour the Fishes -- off the beaten path, indeed off the Isis tow path, but with a super garden, climbing frame, and Aunt Sally pitch for the kids. A good time can be had by all.

Where children and an aging liver make pub crawls impracticable, garden tours are still in the offing. Though funny, showing Stroke around today, we did actually hit a couple of high-profile pubs: the King's Arms, across from the Bod and the Sheldonian Theatre (the pub where British academics go to see and be seen), and the Turf (known for its Bill Clinton apocrypha), with a quick stop in ye olde Bear as well. I trusted her to find the Eagle and Child herself (and thus the "famous pubs of Oxford" tour is about complete).

But as I haven't posted from my own garden for a while -- I reckon that bleeding heart has about petered out by now -- I submit to you some shots from today's meandering. Above you can see the garden outside Christ Church, as you head into the meadows. Below we have a magnificent row of lavender:

This last shot, taken in the private garden behind Christ Church, put me in mind of Andrew Marvell, so I follow it with "The Mower, Against Gardens."

LUXURIOUS man, to bring his vice in use,
Did after him the world seduce,
And from the fields the flowers and plants allure,
Where Nature was most plain and pure.
He first inclosed within the gardens square
A dead and standing pool of air,
And a more luscious earth for them did knead,
Which stupefied them while it fed.
The pink grew then as double as his mind ;
The nutriment did change the kind.
With strange perfumes he did the roses taint ;
And flowers themselves were taught to paint.
The tulip white did for complexion seek,
And learned to interline its cheek ;
Its onion root they then so high did hold,
That one was for a meadow sold :
Another world was searched through oceans new,
To find the marvel of Peru ;
And yet these rarities might be allowed
To man, that sovereign thing and proud,
Had he not dealt between the bark and tree,
Forbidden mixtures there to see.
No plant now knew the stock from which it came ;
He grafts upon the wild the tame,
That the uncertain and adulterate fruit
Might put the palate in dispute.
His green seraglio has its eunuchs too,
Lest any tyrant him outdo ;
And in the cherry he does Nature vex,
To procreate without a sex.
'Tis all enforced, the fountain and the grot,
While the sweet fields do lie forgot,
Where willing Nature does to all dispense
A wild and fragrant innocence ;
And fauns and fairies do the meadows till
More by their presence than their skill.
Their statues polished by some ancient hand,
May to adorn the gardens stand ;
But, howsoe'er the figures do excel,
The Gods themselves with us do dwell.

Source: Luminarium.

If you don't hear from me, it means I am in Italy and without internet. Arrivederci!

Oxford Times

2007-06-26T06:35:00.001-04:00

Ordinarily when I come to England we stay with my mother-in-law, in Iffley Village, Oxford (right above the Iffley locks, it's a short run down the Isis tow path to the Abingdon Road, at the Head of the River, then up to town). Beautiful.

This time, however, we're staying with brother-in-law somewhere in Cowley (having spent the day yesterday disoriented from jet lag -- minding the children seems to intensify it -- I'm not entirely sure of my coordinates yet). Said bro-in-law and wife are scads of fun, and have wifi (I think mum-in-law still has only BBC1 and 2 on the old "wireless": bless). So here I am, gumming up the interwebs up the road from where Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile. I'll be showing Stroke that ring a little later (it's yer basic track; you gotta mentally cue the Chariots of Fire to get any gestalt from the experience).

But I realized that some early mod online greats are in the vicinity. Flavia? Muse? Anyone fancy a pint?

Sod it

2007-06-15T09:23:00.000-04:00

Meet my magnificent bleeding heart:

Beauty, eh? At its peak it measured more than five feet across. Since then the blooms have fallen, and I'm waiting to see what happens once it goes dormant (i.e., bleeding hearts, like astilbe and other plants, wholly retire once they've bloomed). What will I do with that five-foot-square plot?

It’s odd, playing adoptive parent to someone else’s garden. That garden is mine now, of course, but I didn’t plant what is now finally emerging with confidence (from a soil less alkaline than my last patch of clay, though still far from acidic; which is to say, big blue hydrangeas? don’t count on it). Plants — and insects — are cropping up that I don’t recognize, and I’m having a hard time telling friend from foe at this point. Are those hardy geraniums I’m seeing in patches? Lovely; I hope so. Those fire engine-red beetles? The kids like them, but they don’t look too friendly, at least not to those asiatic lilies. And lo: asparagus! (That’s how it grows!? You don’t say.) And so forth. I’m resolved to play wait and see for some time, which is exciting, though I’m impatient: I’m ready to get busy and mix it up, make it mine.

I do find myself missing my old garden, wondering how it’s getting on, and what the new owners are doing with it. Did they cut back the butterfly bush? Are they training the clematis? Yes, I have even thought of driving past to see, were I to return (though that Chicago trip has now been deferred to December, as my MLA panel has been accepted).

For those who have been here for a while, you’ll remember that my old Garden Spot ran in a column in the sidebar, and featured photos from the Chicago garden. Much like moving from the US to Canada, the translation from Old Blogger to New initially did not go well: the move altered (irrevocably) much that I liked about my old template; I've had ongoing formatting problems; and, ironically, the new sidebar options (meant to simplify formatting for users) made doing the G-Spot column (which I used to work in, old-fashioned-like, inserting HTML into the template) more difficult. Somewhere in there there's a metaphor for emigrating.

I started scouting out new turf for Jardiniere, but since the bee and other recent developments, I've decided it's probably best to stay put and work through all of the transplant shock (a term for when plants experience a "growth check" upon being transplanted, but I trust you're with me here on the symbolism). This means that my garden posts will now be incorporated into the main frame: if you don't care about gardening, hopefully you'll find some digital respite resting your eye on the photos.

If you were reading last autumn, you know that I moved everything (which wasn’t much) from the two front east-facing beds to the side of the house — to clear that palette, as it were. I had intended to bury a blast of bulbs, but . . . well, if you were reading at all last autumn (there wasn’t much to read), you know not much happened other than emigrating, parenting, teaching, and dissertating, and I was fortunate to have accomplished any of that. (I just discovered the bulbs in a box in the garage.)

But this past spring, amid grading, road trips to Toronto and Montreal, remaining talks to give at Queen’s and some dreadful illness it took weeks to kick, I managed to make the rounds of a couple area nurseries and get started in the front beds. Measuring roughly 5′ x 20,' they border the front of our limestone house, so I’ve decided to work the grays and blues, accented with muted pinks and whites: delphinium (let’s hope they come back for me here!); foxglove; globe thistle; Russian sage; artimisia; campanula; phlox; salvia; iris; stonecrop (I love the variegated variety); perennial baby’s breath and miniature mums; and other assorted plants to make for a cool-themed herbaceous border. The plants are young (i.e., immature, aka relatively inexpensive), but they should fill in nicely in the years to come.

What is wood on our house is gray with white trim, so I potted all white annuals for the front porch: big chunky pansies (I find the small ones too mincing, and too unforgiving if you get behind on the deadheading); african daisies (the vanilla ones with the deep eggplant centres); creamy snapdragons; verbena; etc. As you can see, the annuals are fairly prosaic (again, aka affordable) — but all white and grouped together, they make a lovely soft statement against the gray.

Indeed it’s the first time that I’ve gardened white (and I’m pleased with it). My last house, in Illinois, was mustard brick, one of those midwest split-levels designed to look like the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. While there were a dozen such houses in our neighborhood (i.e., hardly one of a kind!), I worked the faux-prairie style as much as possible, and white didn’t work. I suppose it's only apt that it works so well here in the Great White North.

Here's my handiwork so far:

Beauty, eh?

By the way, they say that "summers in Kingston are the best." And they're right.

My Tale of Two Cities

2007-06-12T20:43:00.000-04:00

I've come to realize that, living where I do, I've inadvertently returned to the cartography of my childhood. Don't get me wrong: I live in another country (yet another post that's been on the potting bench for a while. . . I'll get to that request about "Canadianizing my vehicle," I promise). But just as I grew up in the exurbs of a small, prestigious university city, I now reside in a rural township east of Kingston and Queen's. Hop on I-95 in Connecticut, and you could head for Boston or New York City. Two hours either direction on 401, and I can be in Toronto or Montreal. I finally hit both in the past month or so, to two strikingly, and surprisingly, dissimilar experiences.

Sure, Toronto has the non-threatening, prosaic feel of a midwest American city, and Montreal is just so . . . French. In Toronto, I attended the annual meeting of the Canada Milton Seminar. In Montreal, I saw Arcade Fire in concert.

At one venue, the atmosphere was hot, the audience was on its feet, and you couldn't hear yourself for all the commotion. At the other, the attendees sat in stern and solemn silence, cool and reflective throughout the event.

You probably think the latter was the Milton conference, right?

Nooooo, mes amis, that seventeenth-century indie rocker John Milton has one serious, and spirited, fanbase.

While I "do early modern," I am not a "Miltonist"; I attended the Seminar to become more conversant in Milton studies, and to meet my new colleagues at the University of Toronto. I was nervous going in, as this gathering is a relatively intimate affair, and the in-jokes and asides traded over morning coffee confirmed that the Milton community is a pretty tight group. By the end of the day, however, these Renaissance scholars were dressing each other down in ways that would've made the fiercest Roman orator blanch.

Of course it's tempting to summon anti-academic truisms about battles fierce and stakes small, but it was captivating to see celebrated scholars so passionate about their subject that professorial politesse went the way of the Tudor bonnet. Given the way initial hugs and "how are you's" degenerated to finger-pointing and loud shouting across tables, I have come to call the event the "Milton Family Thanksgiving." (Which, as a staunch Puritan, Uncle John couldn't really mind, right? Of course, let's see if I'm ever invited back! Once a black sheep . . .).

As for the Arcade Fire show, I've never been so infuriated by a concert audience. While I feel critics did the band a disservice by overhyping them in ways that invited a backlash -- and I do think that Funeral is superior to Neon Bible -- the somber demeanour of this hometown, "neighborhood" crowd -- why I was determined to see this **particular show -- was, well, mystifying, verging on maddening. I confess that I abandoned all professorial politesse, trying to rouse at least a couple rows of Quebecois to their feet. (Maybe they sniffed out that I was American: they viewed me with cool and utter disdain.) Thankfully, my companion, though Canadian, was fully game and in good form: Stroke and I danced like fools to a tight and predictably talented set, as well as its -- sniff sniff, I'm still whimpering in disappointment -- sole encore.

Win, if you're listening: I don't blame you. I would've shoved that drumstick up 'is bleedin' arse. And the next time I make the drive (where "No Cars Go")?

I'm bringing some Miltonists.

Final round

2007-06-10T09:52:00.000-04:00

Flavia has been busy being fabulous this past weekend, but I wanted to follow through on her comment about the spelling bee protesters, to remark how the protests held yearly at the national bee relate to disputes about spelling in early modern England.

The demonstrators outside the Washington Grand Hyatt represent the Simplified Spelling Society, which campaigns to replace our current orthography (or "right writing") with a strict phonetically-based spelling system (gotta luv the placards: "Enuf is enuf!" "Spelling shuud be lojical"). Promoting what it calls "the alphabetic principle," the society echoes several sixteenth-century humanists, such as Thomas Smith, John Hart, and William Bullokar, who sought either to amend or to replace the Roman alphabet we use with an alphabet in which each letter designates one, and only one, English speech sound.

(Everytime I write that last phrase I think of Monty Python's Life of Brian: "How much do you hate the Romans?" "A lot." Humanists in England didn't hate the Romans; to the contrary, they wanted to be just like them. As the Romans adapted the Greek alphabet to Latin, spelling reformers attempted to adapt the Roman alphabet to English.)

Here's a portion of Thomas Smith's reformed English alphabet (from De recta et emendata linguae anglicae scriptione, dialogus [1568]; from EEBO):

Far out, huh? Suffice to say that these early spelling protesters were unsuccessful, at least in reforming a scheme defined by systemic variation (i.e., we still spell some words phonetically, some according to etymology, some language of origin, etc.).

Where these reformers were successful, however, and why we owe to them the present-day spelling bee -- where their phonic-hooked descendants get their annual fix -- was in promoting the idea that everyone should conform to the same spelling. I have written how a spelling bee is only competitive, or suspenseful, when systemic irregularity is the rule, not the exception. Even more fundamentally, however, a spelling bee requires consensus that there are "correct" and "incorrect" spellings, and that correct spelling -- being a "good speller" -- is admirable and worthy of public reward. As these humanists sought for their crude and unruly language the rule and regularity of classical Latin and Greek, they saw an opportunity to distinguish themselves by making a contest out of correct spelling.

Somewhere along the line, though -- well, the lines got crossed, as reciting the letters of orthographically complex, even dubious, words became the index of mastery in the mother tongue, and parrotting the standard spelling of obscure terms became a mark of distinction and exceptionality. (It's a paradox, no doubt, though one we rarely think about; rather, we tend to displace our discomfiture at this sociolinguistic oddity on to the spelling bee contestants themselves . . . ) Historically speaking, the ends of humanist spelling reform, to advance to higher rounds of social status via language, far outlived its initial phonetic means, indeed "the alphabetic principle" (ding!).

Instead, as the reformers' newfangled alphabets gave way to other innovations, spelling reform inadvertently generated the texts we now regard (and admire) as the repositories of standard English. Realizing that noone would use his reformed orthography unless taught, John Hart writes what is arguably the first English textbook, A methode, or comfortable beginning for all unlearned, whereby they may bee taught to read English (1570; still, noone really buys it, except for one fabulous exception, Thomas Whythorne, who writes his autobiography in Hart's orthography; now there's a read!). Other schoolmasters object to the prospect of a new English alphabet, but see in English pedagogy -- that is, in the process of teaching English as a subject of learning (it had been known chiefly as a "mother" tongue, learned at home) -- a means to teach "uniform," or correct, English, indeed (chiefly) English spelling.

Writing his Elementarie (1582), Richard Mulcaster additionally proposes a book in which extant spellings could be "fixed," both corrected and stabilized, in print. Reprinted this year (yep, that's 2007!) by U of Chicago P, and reviewed here in Inside Higher Ed, Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall (1604) usually gets the credit as the "first English dictionary," but this title is misleading. First, foreign language dictionaries -- i.e., Latin-English, French-English, etc. -- had been in print for some time, for the benefit of enterprising humanists and courtiers traveling abroad to the continent. Attempting to "define" "hard wordes in plaine English," Cawdrey's volume takes the model of the foreign language dictionaries, but applies it to the vernacular -- i.e., yielding an English-English dictionary -- effectively suggesting through translation how "learned" English comprises a second, or foreign, language. More than 20 years earlier, however, Mulcaster had printed a list of words expressly for the purpose of establishing the correct, or standard, spelling. Having printed what amounts to a "reference text," Mulcaster and his Elementarie get my humble nod for the "first dictionary."

Of course, some early modern dictionaries aspired to deviate from emergent standards in English. Appearing to flout the very process of language standardization, so-called "cant dictionaries" compiled terms in use by "rogues and vagabonds," the criminal underclass. You'd think that humanists would have applauded this exercise, having stomped out scholasticism by conceiving language not as divine dictation (the "word(s) of God"), but as the product of human, or social, consent. To the contrary, spelling reformers were among the most vocal in their contempt for cant "standards" and "reference texts." In Logonomia Anglica (1621), Alexander Gill writes:

Regarding that venomous and disgusting ulcer of our nation I am embarrassed to say anything at all. For that detestable scum of wandering vagabonds speak no proper dialect but a cant jargon which no punishment by law will ever repress, until its proponents are crucified by the magistrates, acting under a public edict. But since this entire jargon, together with the filthy language of criminals, has been described in a strange book, and because it offers no benefit to foreigners, I shall exclude it from my discussion. . . (104)

Feel "crucified" by English spelling? You should, if you're not mixing with the right crowd. (Again, with the Life of Brian: "Crucifixion or pardon?" "Pardon. . . nah, just kidding, crucifixion!") For Gill and other early English language zealots, the criminality of these "wandering vagabonds" lies as much in their deviation from legal codes as in their presumption to devise their own code of language. Make no mistake, Gill protests how "that detestable scum," in developing their own argot, filch humanists’ (newly acquired) jurisdiction in English.

With dictionaries now in print on everything from unix code to classic rock, we are accustomed to the idea that dictionaries translate arcane jargon into "other words" used more commonly in English. (See Bryan Curtis's piece in Slate on a recent variation of the "cant dictionary," Randy Kearse's Street Talk (2007), which Kearse wrote while in prison.) What endures in this conceit is the notion that there are "correct" and "incorrect" usages, that there's such a thing as right and wrong, and that there are stakes in choosing to conform and/or deviate (interestingly, I just learned that Richard Rorty has died: RIP, great pragmatist, and condolences to his friends, family, and followers).

What also endures is the competition among social groups to determine what qualifies as "correct" -- indeed, dems be da stakes, and it's in this light that we might view the Simplified Spelling Society (which bears the most unfortunate of acronyms; were ya thinkin about the letters there?). That is, by privileging their spelling system over that now in use, the, er, SSS proposes to challenge not only the ortho-lexicographic powers that be(e) -- aka Merriam-Webster, McGraw-Hill, etc. -- but also a society that, having deferred to humanist innovation in language, has publicly consented to the importance of correct spelling, enough to yearly, if often satirically, admire and reward it.

Guud luk!

With that offhand gesture, I conclude this year's series of posts related to this year's bee. (See you next year? Dunno.) I welcome the new readers who have come here as a result of this year's competition, and especially welcome their forthright expertise; by all means, stick around, keep me honest! (If my blog were a bee, I wouldn't have made it into the second round . . . ding! ding! ding!).

I would be lying, however, if I did not confess some distress, and not a little hand-wringing, over the considerable traffic (we're talking thousands at this point) generated by searches for Evan O'Dorney and autism. At first I was mystified, as the number of inquiries (and visitors) progressively increased while the bee itself began to recede. Conducting a few searches of my own, however, I realized that Evan's post-bee appearances (on CNN, the Today Show, the Jimmy Kimmel Show, etc.) prompted the surge.

I've been dismayed by the tenor of discussion on some of the online message boards. The venomous ignorance, about everything from spelling to autism to home schooling to, well, basic facts about adolescence, is enough to make you want to ferry your kids to a deserted island, far far far from the madding crowd. I'm grateful that none of that intemperance has appeared here, though, just as I was concerned about the propriety of my initial remarks, I have since worried that what I wrote functioned to fan the flames, by making a further spectacle of this impressive, though vulnerable (and who isn't at 13?), young man.

Now as ever, I wish Evan O'Dorney and his family all the best for the future, and, without getting too preachy (believe me, I know I tend to the ponderous!), I hope that this site has offered those searching, whether "neurotypical" or somewhere "on the spectrum," some resources for further research and reflection.

Next up (in no particular order): Horace's compendium of advice for grad students; my tales of Toronto and Montreal; decisions about Jardiniere (ach, I think I'll just do my gardening bit here); and I suppose I should say something about Sgt. Pepper . . .

A New Start

2007-06-05T08:58:00.001-04:00

This post is for the many readers who have been coming to this blog on a search for "Evan O'Dorney and autism" (or suchlike). As I wrote in both my conclusion to my live bee blog post as well as in the comment section, I am neither professionally qualified to diagnose Evan nor personally willing to render the kind of assessment (on the basis of a few minutes' observation, in exceptional circumstances) that Evan and his loving family may not be prepared to hear. (And for all we know, they're fully on board, and merely choosing not to lead with that information -- to which I say, fair play.)

Rather, I, like you (and all for our various reasons), need to learn more. No doubt our concern for and about Evan prompted these searches. But wherever his journey leads him -- to math camp, hours spent "expressing himself" at the piano, and hopefully time well-spent with family and friends -- we can all benefit from a little more understanding.

So here are some resources on Autistic Spectrum Disorder, sometimes known as Pervasive Developmental Disorder. As I confessed in a comment, I have not read all of these exhaustively (and again, am not professionally qualified to rank them). In selecting what to put here, I have prioritized those sites and resources that contain information related to the identification and diagnosis of autism as well as its treatment and other forms of support.

Given the context in which we're approaching this issue, it seems appropriate to start with some definitions. Here are links to the (US) National Institutes of Health, the (UK) National Association of Mental Health, and the Autism Society Canada, each of which give fairly comprehensive overviews of the condition (and its related conditions) as well as information on resources in each country.

As for books, I can recommend Quirky Kids (suggested by our neurologist back in Chicago), and a pamphlet called "Talkability: People Skills for Verbal Children on the Autism Spectrum," available through The Hanen Centre (and which came recommended by the speech therapist on my son's "team"). The former speaks more generally about kids with developmental disorders, and the latter gives practical advice for helping kids with autism "connect" in a day-to-day setting.

I have not read, but am interested in reading, the following: Ten Things Every Child With Autism Wishes You Knew, and Ten Things Your Student With Autism Wishes You Knew; 1001 Great Ideas for Teaching and Raising Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders (which seems overwhelming, but would appear to appeal to Evan's interests in math!); and the work of Temple Grandin.

Resources online include Autism Inspiration and ABA Child (clearinghouses for information, materials, and strategies), The Autism Acceptance Project (which promotes public awareness about autism), and The Autistic Self-Advocacy Project (which provides resources and support for adults with autism).

If you live in Kingston or Ontario (I've got to help out my neighbours; after all, it's been plenty hard for us to learn the system here), there is the Autism Intervention Program at Pathways; the Play-Talk Program at the Child Development Centre at the Hotel Dieu; and if you have young children in need of pre-school or child care, Community Living Kingston will help support the program you select, and has an excellent resource handbook for "Services for Children with Special Needs." I have yet to check out Autism Ontario, and a new program called Leaps and Bounds.

Finally, it wouldn't be right for me not to point all of you to blogs, which, as with blogs generally, provide the salve of recognition and understanding (dare I say connection?) that professional sources may not supply. The Autism Hub claims to collect "the best of autism blogging" (though I have yet to spend decent time with it, to make the match that's right for me). I do hope to follow the recently launched Normal is Overrated, written by "Cody" (who also blogs at Cody's Journal), and as I noted, I am starting my own, but writing it anonymously (so get in touch -- there's an email link in the Profile -- if you'd like to follow it).

This list is just a start, but I hope it is helpful to you. I am grateful to any of you who write in with other resources, and grateful to Evan O'Dorney, too, for inspiring us all to learn a little bit more about ourselves and one another, indeed the many different ways we all learn and communicate.

Coming up: a post-bee wrap-up relating today's competition to debates about spelling in early modern England; and my contribution to Horace's compilation (at To Delight and Instruct) of advice posts to those either starting or considering grad school. He's collected a worthy crop so far, and to be commended to undertaking the task. It seems only apt for me to discuss (and I think I can say I am qualified here) grad school, academia, and family concerns (i.e., bearing and raising children). Even more apt? That I can't write that post right now . . . the kids are screaming!

More soon.

What is the main idea of this paragraph?

2007-05-02T09:33:00.000-04:00

And how does it relate to your thesis?

Sentence fragment. Nice choice of quote, but explicate it further: your reader won't understand it the way you do. This is a claim that requires analysis and evidence. Comma splice. Put your end-quote after the period. Nicely put. Put the page number in parentheses before the period. It's = it is. Very original idea. How does this paragraph relate to the last one? Don't add ideas: relate them. Unclear. Pair vivid subjects with active verbs. Omit needless words. Shrewd and astute.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz........

Yes, we're all doing it.

Back soon.

More from the Virginia Tech English Department

2007-04-18T16:22:00.000-04:00

I am reprinting from The Chronicle.

English Department Tries to Help Instructors and Students 'Get Their Bearings'

Blacksburg, Va. — Last semester, when Ross A. Alameddine came into Edward A. Weathers’s professional-writing class at Virginia Tech, Mr. Alameddine issued a challenge: “I’m going to be either an English major, business minor, or a French major, business minor,” he wrote in a note to the instructor the first day of class. “That decision depends on this class. No pressure.”

Mr. Alameddine liked the course enough to declare English his major earlier this semester. But when classes resume next week, he won’t be here to pursue that path. He was one of the 32 victims of Monday’s massacre.

Mr. Alameddine sat in the center of 12 students taking Kelly A. Pender’s technical-editing class this semester. Ms. Pender, an assistant professor of English, talked Wednesday morning about what would happen when her class resumes next Tuesday at 9:30 a.m.

“Ross was the kind of student who you wanted to be there every day because he made the class work,” said Ms. Pender, 32, sitting in her office in Shanks Hall. “I’ve dealt with grief in my life, but I don’t know how the class will proceed.”

Nick J. Kocz, a graduate teaching assistant in the English department, also lost a student, Emily Hilscher, in one of the classes he teaches. She died in West Ambler Johnston Hall on Monday morning.

Carolyn Rude, chair of the department, is trying to help young professors and graduate teaching assistants deal with the final weeks of classes. She has asked the university to send a counselor to talk to them.

“We teach 6,000 students in any semester,” she says. “That’s why it matters what English does. We have 33 dead, but we have 26,000 or more trying to get their bearings and reclaim their lives.”

Some English professors have decided to leave it up to students whether to take the grade they have earned thus far or finish their last assignments.

“My students had their final paper due on the 22nd,” said Carlos Evia, an assistant professor of English. “That’s not going to happen. I can’t push them.”

Mr. Weathers, the instructor who taught Mr. Alameddine’s professional-writing course, feels the same way: “I don’t know how after all of this I can ask someone to do a paper on the history of the American penny, or the role of peanut butter in the American diet.”

Mr. Weathers feels a particular loss, since it was his class that persuaded Mr. Alameddine to major in English. Mr. Weathers plans to send the note Mr. Alameddine wrote him on that first day of class, and all of his other writings, back to his parents. — Robin Wilson

Other links related to the English faculty:

Chronicle forum: "The English department should have done more to prevent the VT massacre"

CNN: Cho's [Playwriting] Professor to Classmates: Don't Feel Guilty

Chronicle: Poet Nikki Giovanni's Address (audio)

Meanwhile, let's not forget engineering:

Chronicle: Questions Abound for a Homeless Engineering Department

The Mourning After

2007-04-17T12:58:00.000-04:00

I am still too stunned by yesterday's events to offer any insight into them. I think we are all waiting for more information to help us make sense of the tragedy -- realizing what little sense there is to "make" of it (i.e., no matter what details might emerge).

I respond to the event on many levels, and through several different lenses -- as a parent, as a prof, and, naturally, as a citizen on this planet where violence is all too common, everyday.

It's as a prof that I write this particular post, in that I have been wondering what support the faculty community might give to the community at Virginia Tech. The fingerpointing is already well underway, and we can only hope that the blame game leads to insight, and not mere calumny. What role can and should faculty play here? I wonder.

I was mulling over this question (i.e., what can *I do?), when I went to the Chronicle and discovered this item, which I reprint below. It is *not how I answer my own question, not at all, though it does narrow the "role of faculty" generally down to English professors in particular, and the relationship we have with our students viz. their writing.

Student Was 'Troubled,' Says English Department Chair

Blacksburg, Va. — Cho Seung-Hui, the student responsible for yesterday’s mass killing at Virginia Tech, was a “troubled” student, said Carolyn Rude, chair of the university’s English department, today.

Within the past two years, she said, faculty members repeatedly reported their concern about things the 23-year-old student had written in his creative-writing courses.

The chair of the English department at the time, Lucinda Roy, passed those concerns along to administrators, Ms. Rude said.

“Enough faculty called it to the attention of the then-chair,” Ms. Rude said. She would not elaborate about what Mr. Cho had written, nor would she describe his behavior, saying she did not know him. —Robin Wilson

Many "troubling" questions here -- no answers, certainly. Your thoughts are welcome, on any of the above, but certainly on the question of what faculty might do.

Post-script, April 18: I understand that there are sites on Facebook to pay one's respects. I created a site, but found that while people visited, they were not posting, which I wholly understand; it did not feel right to leave the site up, though. We're all responding in our own ways.

Monday Mourning

2007-04-16T13:52:00.000-04:00

Immense sadness at what has occurred at Virginia Tech today. Warmest thoughts to all of those affected by this grievous tragedy.

I am inescapably alarmed at how our nation's students are under perpetual attack.

April is the cruelest month.

Peace.

"Tony" Scott, Renaissance Scholar

2007-04-06T13:25:00.000-04:00

Perusing the news a little more leisurely this morning (see below), I had to chuckle at A.O. Scott's review of the Robert Rodriguez-Quentin Tarantino double feature Grindhouse, in which Scott purrs that "I could listen to Sydney Tamiia Poitier and Tracie Thoms, two of the movie’s motor-mouthed heroines, talk through the whole three hours of 'Grindhouse,' read the phone book or recite 'The Faerie Queene' on tape in my Volvo in the middle of a traffic jam."

I trust you're familiar with the phone book. But if you don't know Edmund Spenser's epic The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596), and would like to be in on the joke, allow me to introduce you to the Red Crosse Knight . . .

A gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,
Y cladd in mightie armes and siluer shielde,
Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine,
The cruell markes of many' a bloudy fielde;
Yet armes till that time did he neuer wield:
His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,
As much disdayning to the curbe to yield:
Full iolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,
As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.

But on his brest a bloudie Crosse he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead as liuing euer him ador'd:
Vpon his shield the like was also scor'd,
For soueraine hope, which in his helpe he had:
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but euer was ydrad.

Vpon a great aduenture he was bond,
That greatest Gloriana to him gaue,
That greatest Glorious Queene of Faerie lond,
To winne him worship, and her grace to haue,
Which of all earthly things he most did craue;
And euer as he rode, his hart did earne
To proue his puissance in battell braue
Vpon his foe, and his new force to learne;
Vpon his foe, a Dragon horrible and stearne.

A louely Ladie rode him faire beside,
Vpon a lowly Asse more white then snow,
Yet she much whiter, but the same did hide
Vnder a vele, that wimpled was full low,
And ouer all a blacke stole she did throw,
As one that inly mournd: so was she sad,
And heauie sat vpon her palfrey slow:
Seemed in heart some hidden care she had,
And by her in a line a milke white lambe she lad.

So pure and innocent, as that same lambe,
She was in life and euery vertuous lore,
And by descent from Royall lynage came
Of ancient Kings and Queenes, that had of yore
Their scepters stretcht from East to Westerne shore,
And all the world in their subiection held;
Till that infernall feend with foule vprore
Forwasted all their land, and them expeld:
Whom to auenge, she had this Knight from far compeld.

Behind her farre away a Dwarfe did lag,
That lasie seemd in being euer last,
Or wearied with bearing of her bag
Of needments at his backe. Thus as they past,
The day with cloudes was suddeine ouercast,
And angry Ioue an hideous storme of raine
Did poure into his Lemans lap so fast,
That euery wight to shrowd it did constrain,
And this faire couple eke to shroud themselues were fain.

. . .

Dead sexy.

To follow the RCK, Una, and the lowly Dwarfe on their adventures through Faerie lond, click here. . .

Rodriguez-Tarantino double-feature gore-fest? Pfft. Wander ahead to Errour's den, a couple of stanzas away, and you'll be reaching for the popcorn.

One for the Record Books, One from the Archives

2007-04-06T09:26:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I delivered the last lecture of my first year as a tenure-track professor in Renaissance Poetry and Prose at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

My metaphor for teaching the past couple of weeks has been the Wolfe Island ferry, the vessel that takes passengers and vehicles from Kingston to Wolfe Island, one of the many residential islets in the Thousand Island region. Every day -- indeed the highlight of my day, every day -- I drive over the Rideau Canal across the Lasalle Causeway, the low-lying bridge connecting the "east side" of Kingston, the rural district on the St. Lawrence where I live, to the city's historic downtown. As Kingston Harbor lies next to the Causeway, I frequently witness the ferry making its way into the docks.

Heading into the final weeks of the course, I knew my job was to bring the ferry in, both squarely (i.e., coherently) and on time (i.e., having effectively covered Paradise Lost). Loading the single passengers (all those lyric poems and individual prose texts spanning the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries), the passenger vehicles (e.g., the sonnet sequences, epyllia), and the heavy-lifting equipment (the epics, The Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost) on to the vessel -- the syllabus -- is relatively easy compared to the day-to-day work of navigating the craft.

As I told Jim Lang at the Chronicle at the end of fall term, I fell behind schedule often enough to worry about my credibility when it came to the syllabus, even though I felt we typically fell behind for good reason -- that is, to pursue ideas that helped advance and fulfill the intellectual objectives of the course. This term (my courses are year-long), I knew I had to stay on schedule and help students hunt down those ideas ("since in a net I seek to hold the wind" -- Thomas Wyatt), and captain the ship a little more firmly.

I delivered, as best I could; a little shaky, but we pulled in. There was one more point I wanted to make about Adam, but come 12:50 yesterday, I knew where we had to be, with Adam and Eve, exiting Paradise:

The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through EDEN took thir solitarie way.

At the end, I thanked the students for their attention, for their hard work, and, most of all, for their ideas. They applauded -- loudly, vehemently, for some time.

I confess I felt unworthy, even embarrassed.

At this point, it's true that all I can see now are ideas for classroom activities that I didn't follow through on; the fact that I didn't stay up-to-date on my course website, as I'd hoped (and promised); the points I should have made in class, and didn't, or feel I didn't make well enough. Sure, I'm writing it all down, so as to revise for next year -- and yes, I am now wedded to the idea of syllabus as thesis, not contract.

And I'm also trying my best to take in my students' appreciation and acclaim, which was genuine and heartfelt, and which I would be a fool to disrespect. Queen's students are Canada's brightest, and they work damn hard, harder than I ever worked as an undergrad.

Rising this morning -- after little sleep tending to my feverish daughter all night -- I nonetheless had the leisure to spend a little more time reading the headlines than I usually would. Plugging through my "news and mags" bookmarks, I usually skip over the link to Harper's, which, until recently, has been a mere shell of a site, barely an ad for the current issue on newsstands.

Digital shell no more: the new online Harper's is fantastic, with links and archives going back to 1850, and I've been whiling away the morning hopping back and forth arbitrarily on the absurdly complete and user-friendly time line.

One of my first finds? The following piece, from February 1965, from the editor's column -- "The Editor's Easy Chair"; John Fischer then seated -- titled "Is there a teacher on the faculty?" As it speaks not only to the assessment of teaching in higher education (what I've been musing on for the past day, if not the past twenty-four weeks in my classroom), but also to concepts of academic labor and measures of our work (related to the academic blog discussion, recently reprised), I present an excerpt from Fischer's column here. . .

. . .

First, however, it may be useful to take a look at the reasons why so much college teaching is so poor.

The main reason, I am persuaded, is that we do not now have any objective, impersonal method to measure the quality of teaching. It is true that nearly everybody on the campus knows who are the good teachers and who the bad ones; but this information is acquired by a process of hearsay, student gossip, and osmosis. There is no solid, safe yardstick that a dean or department head can use to justify raising the pay of a good instructor, or firing a poor one. He dares not depend on his personal judgment, however sound it may be. That way lie recriminations, accusations of favoritism and injustice, and probably a fight with the American Association of University Professors, one of the most powerful of trade unions.

Consequently, in doling out rewards and punishments the administrator falls back on something that can be measured: research and publication. The number of column inches in learned journals, the pounds of books published, the foundation grants awarded, the prizes won -- Nobel, Bancroft, Guggenheim, or a dozen others -- these are tangible, indisputable tokens of some kind of academic achievement. (The quality of the research is hardly relevant. After all, an administrator isn't expected to be able to judge whether a finding in biochemistry is really significant, or whether yet another critical evaluation of Henry James adds anything to those already on the shelf.)

Now everybody will agree that research ought to be an important part of academic life. Ideally, we are told, research and teaching go hand-in-hand; the good professor adds to the store of knowledge at the same time he is dispensing it. In practice, alas, things seldom work out that way. So long as research alone pays off, in cash and fame, the temptation to scamp on teaching is almost irresistible. Hence the lectures delivered year after year from notes compiled a generation ago . . . the section men who conduct their classes with unconcealed distaste, begrudging every minute stolen from the lab. . . the perfunctory seminar, the brushed-off questions, the impatient stifling of a student's bothersome zeal. Indeed, human nature being what it is, we should be amazed that so many academics do sweat to teach the very best they can, ignoring self-interest for the sake of the young and their own sense of mission. These rare souls are the saving leaven which can make the college experience worthwhile (sometimes) in spite of everything. But they are bound to dwindle like the whooping crane if (in Dr. Logan Wilson's words) "the faculty itself regards relief from teaching as the chief reward for accomplishment, or as the highest status symbol."

It is idle, however, to rail against the publish-or-perish syndrome, with all its baleful effects, so long as publication itself is the only acceptable measure of achievement. A healthy balance between scholarship and teaching probably can never be restored until a reasonably objective yardstick is devised for testing -- and rewarding -- performance as a teacher. The difficulties are obvious; but, as we shall see, they may not be insuperable.

. . .

February 1965. . . plus ça change?

Let me redirect you

2007-03-28T17:02:00.000-04:00

. . . if you're coming to this blog from this post on the Valve: I made plain here what I meant by my question at the MLA.

But let me make it clear, one more time: I do not in any way wish for THIS PARTICULAR blog to "count" in any way on MY PARTICULAR tenure file. Just so's you know. (Thanks.)

And if I sound defensive, it's surely because I'd like to be known as something other than "that woman Berube swatted at that MLA blog panel." Ironic, isn't it? That a question related to blogging and the construction of academic reputation would, through its summarial rejection, construct my academic reputation?

Indeed, it's ended up motivating me to get my journal submissions and book proposals in -- at the expense of this blog, of course -- so that I also can be known as, say, that early modern scholar who does interesting work on early English pedagogy and English letters. Who also happened to be swatted down by Michael Berube, for sure. But I'd like to change the lede.

Meet my son, the hot doctor

2007-03-02T20:45:00.000-05:00

Last week was Queen's "reading week," a week off from classes during which, I was assured by my students, little reading is actually done. I did little reading myself and, I admit (for those who are still hanging around here), no writing (truth be told, I'm in a bit of a muddle, as Forster would say. But perhaps more on that another day).

We went to Mont Tremblant, in Quebec, for my first bona fide vacation (i.e., non-family-related travel) in seven years. I had learned to ski at a small hill near Tremblant -- called Gray Rocks -- when I was six years old, and looked forward to teaching my own children. My daughter, now six (I was pregnant with her during my last vacation), took to the slopes like a duck to water: smooth and determined. My four-year-old son, otherwise exceptionally athletic, presented something of a challenge.

When placed on a slippery incline bolted to two sleek boards, most humans will tend to, well . . . tense up. Not my boy. Ready to go. Loose as spaghetti. Built for speed. In development-speak, Oliver has "low danger awareness."

This means he has no fear.

Oliver also has a language disorder that makes it difficult for him to process speech -- in particular, to comprehend what is said to him and to respond appropriately, either through speech or behavior. Otherwise known as "listen to directions."

No matter how often I flanked my own skis in a snow plow (as a model), or got down on the ground and placed Ollie's skis in the same position, or put my verbal instructions in the most concrete terms possible, nothing was going to prevent that boy from going down the mountain as fast -- and potentially out of control -- as possible. Needless to say, I did not relish the prospect of peeling Ollie's dairy-soft skin from the bark of a mountain pine.

In a moment of inspiration (otherwise known as frustration), I physically engulfed my son from behind: I planted my skis outside his (his tips were linked by a "ski bra"), gripping his hips with my knees; fastened my poles as a horizontal bar in front of his chest; reached under his shoulders to grasp the poles in front of him, thus bracing him with my arms; and told Ollie to hang on to my poles. We skied together, as one, for the rest of the week.

Delightful.

Those who know Ollie know how naturally exuberant he is: the combination of the ongoing warmth and closeness of our two bodies and his unvarnished exhilaration at the free-sweeping movement downhill, well. . . where was Master Card to capture it? It was priceless (though admittedly facilitated by copious amounts of ibuprofen and apres-ski hot-tubbing).

Not surprisingly, my little thrill-seeker sought any opportunity to "take air." We skied on broad flat green runs the whole week, but even those trails have ravines on the edges where the adventuresome might divert briefly before popping back up, with a jump, back onto the main slope. Ollie took it upon himself to scan the trails for every such opportunity.

"So, you're a hotdogger, eh?" I chided him initially. "Ok, hotdogger, let's have fun." The squeals of delight when I would lift him up (most concerned to maintain total control, I was actually lifting him out of the jumps) were exquisite -- indescribable -- and I admit I indulged his (what I called) hotdogging.

At the end of the day, waiting for the shuttle van, we ran into someone we had met from the hotel, who was kind enough to strike up a conversation with my tyrolean tyro.

"So, Ollie, did you enjoy skiing today? Are you a good skier?"

"No, I'm not a good skier. I'm a hot doctor."

Work it out.

Priceless.

Campaign rhetoric

2007-02-06T18:54:00.000-05:00

Note: Obama has now officially pronounced his candidacy, and the Times has posted the text of Obama's campaign announcement. I'll let it speak for itself, save for noting the "humbling" early on, and the "battle" cries that make up the peroration, near the end. The guy's done his homework, and knows what he's doing on the stump.

Senator Biden’s characterization of rival Presidential candidate Barack Obama has received a thorough fourth-estate workout. I don’t have much to add to the current discussion – that is, on how Biden’s words code in contemporary American society – but thought I’d point out some connections in early modern culture, or to Shakespeare in particular, as they speak to enduring assumptions about race and rhetoric.

In a piece in Sunday’s Times on “The Racial Politics of Speaking Well,” Lynette Clemetson records the discomfiture blacks experience when they are praised for being “articulate.” Rounding up quotes from Anna Perez, Michael Eric Dyson, and D.L. Hughley, among others, Clemetson notes that “when whites use the word [“articulate”] in reference to blacks, it often carries a subtext of amazement, even bewilderment. It is similar to praising a female executive or politician by calling her ‘tough’ or ‘a rational decision-maker.’”

As Clemetson’s piece implies, the “amazement” springs from a racism that assumes that blacks are not capable, essentially speaking, of eloquence. The astonishment also stems, I think, from overlapping expectations about race, class, and education in America. That is, white eloquence satisfies expectations that whites are well-schooled, having been raised in the right school districts and availed themselves of opportunities for higher education. By contrast, despite a thriving black middle class, any black public figure perceived as eloquent is presumed to have overcome “poor” schooling. Having not been “left behind,” as expected, “articulate” blacks instead stand out, to unspeak (to use Steven Poole’s term) both racist assumptions and economic inequities.

As Clemetson also goes on to point out, “such distinctions discount as inarticulate historically black patterns of speech,” as a “black rhetorical tradition” developed independently of a “white” one. Clemetson quotes Tricia Rose, professor of Africana Studies at Brown, as noting, “Al Sharpton is incredibly articulate . . . But because he speaks with a cadence and style that is firmly rooted in black rhetorical tradition, you will rarely hear white people refer to him as articulate.”

Bill Clinton was known for his facility in the latter tradition, and for shifting register as the rhetorical occasion demanded – that is, for adapting his “cadence and style” to his audience. For some, this verbal dexterity marked Clinton as empathic, as his ability to speak to diverse audiences suggested the possibility that he could relate to their problems ("feel their pain"). For others, Clinton’s verbal dexterity marked him as politically opportunistic, if not craven (Slick Willie unleashing the gift of gab). Yet as Clinton’s rhetorical minstrelsy could be seen as another instance of whites coopting black modes of expression (cf., rock n roll), its politics went relatively unchallenged by critics left or right.

Shakespeare himself was famously damned with faint praise when fellow playwright Ben Jonson praised him in spite of his “small Latine and Lesse Greeke.” Compared to Jonson's abundant classicism, Shakespeare’s allusions to Cicero and Horace are relatively (and one might say, gratefully) few.

Shakespeare’s debts to the "white rhetorical tradition" he studied at his Stratford Grammar School are nonetheless evident in other forms of verbal dexterity. Students in humanist grammar schools would learn to write, and then orate, by imitating the style of their classical exemplars. In particular, students were taught to cultivate their own rhetorical style by putting the ancients’ ideas in their own words; the more copious – which is to say, the more faithful and prolific -- the imitation, the more distinctive the student. When we laud Shakespeare for his ability to “see all sides” of an issue, we are marking his skill in “varying the phrase,” his ability to articulate any given idea in other (indeed many other) words.

In fact, I (personally) believe Shakespeare has endured as an icon because we cannot pin him down, with exact certainty, to any one position. Where Ben Jonson is relentlessly didactic, to the point of closing off discussion, “ambiguity” in Shakespeare enables us to keep talking about him, and to continue to discover contrasting points of view. Harold Bloom has thus described, and lauded, Shakespeare as “bottomless.” For a U.S. Presidential candidate, however, it's known as “wishy-washy,” or “flip-flopping” (Slick Willie indeed).

As he frequently links oratorical prowess with battle strength, Shakespeare gives us much to talk about with regards to the politics of campaign rhetoric.

In Troilus and Cressida, Ulysses delivers his show-stopping speech “on degree” as the Greeks deliberate how best to thrash the Trojans. Scholars have debated to what extent Ulysses’s distinctly measured oration squares with his own covert calculations (it doesn’t), and the extent to which this speech on social order fits in this rhetorically and politically disjointed play (ditto). As with so many Shakespearean quotations, however -- that is, lines typically quoted out of context -- the speech is credited to Shakespeare as having articulated – articulately – some universal truth.

Moving on to the epyllion (or mini-epic) The Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare equates rhetorical power more squarely with physical might. Prompted by Collatine’s loose-lipped boasts of his wife’s beauty, the tyrant Tarquin abandons the Roman war camp to wage a campaign on Lucrece’s virtue.

The conflict is expressly rhetorical. First, “set” to conquer Lucrece by Collatine’s speech, Tarquin “disputes” with himself whether and how he should proceed, and, twisting his own words to suit his ends, finds ways to interpret Lucrece’s chaste gestures as come-ons. Far from silent, Lucrece responds by imploring the tyrant to withdraw, to exercise discretion in both word and action. As she has no real voice in Roman society, however, her words carry no weight: rendered in few words, Tarquin’s physical overpowering of Lucrece is the tragic and perversely logical conclusion of his brutal manipulation of language.

In the end, Lucrece’s speechless, self-mutilated body becomes a Roman dumb show, indeed the bloody foundations for the Roman republic. That is, as the Tarquins and monarchy are banished in favor of Senators and consuls, an abuse of speech by a white male public figure precipitates the founding of a government based on the speech of white male public figures. Some tradition. We're still living it.

The Tragedy of Othello, however, presents the most germane analysis of race, education, and rhetoric. Like The Rape of Lucrece, the tragedy relates facility in speech to martial strength. When, in the play’s opening scenes, Othello is called upon to account for his seduction of Desdemona, Othello initially responds, “Rude am I in my speech,/And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace” – before he proceeds to describe, with great eloquence, how the Venetian maid was swayed by his tales of battle.

When Othello humbles himself before his Venetian prosecutors, he exercises rhetorical and political decorum. That is, were Othello not a Moor, his initial apology for his “speech” would read as a standard humilitas maneuver, as orators in the “white rhetorical tradition” conventionally humbled themselves before their audiences (stooping to conquer, as it were). Here, however, Othello’s “rude”-ness speaks to his race, and vice versa, as a gesture that places the speaker before his audience reminds the audience of Othello's alien status in Venice.

Demonstrating rhetorical facility that Shakespeare relates, as with Tarquin, to military might, Othello overcomes the challenge to his marriage, subduing those leaders who would sentence him for "stealing" Desdemona. When Othello concludes his speech, the Duke of Venice pronounces: “I think this tale would win my daughter too” (1.2.171).

"Amazement"? That's only the half of it.

For what is ethically straightforward in The Rape of Lucrece is abundantly complicated in The Tragedy of Othello. That is, there is nothing to commend Tarquin, as Shakespeare depicts his rhetorical abuse in ways that flesh out the king's storied perchant for violence (that is, as Shakespeare read him in his Livy). Othello, however, has been vital to the Venetians' rule of the Adriatic. Swayed, as Desdemona was, by Othello's considerable rhetorical brawn, the Duke elects not to punish Othello for his conquest, but to enlist him in the Venetians' war against the Turks. Othello may be a "savage," but he is the Venetians’ savage for hire. (In this respect, it is hard not to connect this play to Venetian hypocrisy in The Merchant of Venice: the Christians may condemn Shylock's practice of usury, but use him, they do.)

Othello is eventually undone by professional jealousy, as, envious of the Moor’s military advancement, and assuming Othello’s essential animalism, Iago conjures Othello's sexual jealousy by counterfeiting visual scenes of theatre (involving Desdemona’s handkerchief, for example), to render him “rude” and in-articulate: “O Desdemon! dead, Desdemon! dead!/O, O!" Iago is apprehended for his misdeeds, but readings of Iago as "evil incarnate" vastly oversimplify matters by discounting the ways the character has been scripted to carry out the culture's dirty work -- to reduce the Moor, ultimately, to silence.

As I spent a dozen years in Illinois, I have seen Barack Obama in person, and can speak to the inspiring effect he has on an audience. His promise extends beyond Illinois and the Beltway, however. A year ago, when I was weighing the move to Canada, I visited the Kingston area and met with various faculty and Ontario residents. Discussing the then-recent US elections, I was humbled by the Canadians' extensive knowledge of American politics. (It's always humbling to discover how better informed other citizens are of our nations' business; then again, those citizens have a considerable stake in the effects of our policies. It's so easy for us to forget that.) My dinner companions especially enthused about Obama and the hope he seemed to offer -- and this was a year ago, when he had only been elected Senator -- to the extent of voicing concerns about his safety. Humbled even more intensely by our nation's history (some might call it a tradition) of silencing its most inspiring figures, I observe the Obama campaign with the interest and concern of my (new) fellow country folk.

And hope that being called "articulate" is the worst he'll have to combat.

NYT Sunday (Academic) Book Review; or, Thomas Mallon, we Hardy knew ye

2007-01-28T09:10:00.000-05:00

My apologies to those who kept checking in this past week only to see my ursine shout out to friends back in Chicago. It was a busy week here at the Kingston office: in addition to teaching (my students and I read Francis Bacon this week), I had job talks to go to (our department is hiring); and on Friday, I subbed in a graduate seminar on the topic of "close reading."

While the weekend couldn't come fast enough, how dismaying it was to turn to this Sunday's Times Book Review, to read yet another surge of anti-academic sentiment in the Gray Lady.

In this week's prefatory editorial column, titled "Up Front", the Editors introduce, indeed valorize, the critic Thomas Mallon in the following terms:

“The only really bold thing I’ve ever done,” Thomas Mallon insisted in a recent telephone conversation, “was to give up tenure at Vassar and start trying, in my mid-30s, to live the kind of life I might have had in my 20s.” Although his aim was to be a novelist (his first, “Arts and Sciences,” was published in 1988; his seventh, “Fellow Travelers,” is due in May), it was literary journalism, not novel-writing, that set him free from the constraints of academic prose. Mallon’s informed but accessible style, evident in his cover review of Claire Tomalin’s biography of Thomas Hardy, has been a feature of his contributions to the Book Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and other publications for the past 20 years — and in “Doubting Thomas,” the column he wrote for GQ magazine through much of the 1990s.

Because, you know, we literary scholars are just a bunch of uninformed, inaccessible cowards, cleaving to the "constraints of academic prose," if not the shackles of tenure, and living unfree, unfulfilled lives. So much for liberal education, eh?

But you know who's really bold and free? Claire Tomalin. In Mallon's review of Tomalin's biography of Thomas Hardy, Tomalin receives the following ringing endorsement:

Tomalin herself examines the novels with the confident judgments of a critic, not the hedged and sometimes overawed appraisals of a scholar. Appreciative of Hardy’s genius, she still finds his body of fiction “exceptionally uneven.” “Tess,” the novel that made him rich, remains by Tomalin’s measure an awkward production in spots, and yet it “glows with the intensity” of Hardy’s imagination. In a fine example of biography’s usefulness to criticism, Tomalin notes that what Hardy called Tess’s “invincible instinct towards self-delight” was a quality the novelist “himself possessed in very small measure,” and thus, perhaps, judged all the more laudable in his heroine. “Jude the Obscure,” written when he was in his mid-50s, reprised Hardy’s earliest “theme of a penniless young man with ambitions and radical ideas.” But so inexhaustible were his feelings on the subject that even today, as Tomalin puts it, “reading ‘Jude’ is like being hit in the face over and over again. ... It was Job retold for a godless world that offers no final consolation or redress.”

Mallon concludes his review on the following note:

[Tomalin] has visited each important locale of Hardy’s life, noticing the large and seemingly simple things academic scholars often miss: “Most of his characters are prodigious walkers. Tess and Jude both walk themselves through the crises in their lives, and Jude effectively kills himself by walking in the rain.” This is an observation that helps readers to square the circle of recognitions, to remember Hardy as a writer whose books they would once finish with the sudden need to get up from the chair and out of the house, to walk, alone, filled with the ancient surefire feelings of pity and fear.

Those of you who followed the post-MLA "academic blog" debates may recall that I had mused whether blogging might help intervene in discourses such as these. I'm still thinking about that topic, as Carrie Shanafelt awaits a long-overdue response from me over at the Valve; and I have much to say here, about Mallon's claims here, and the Times' claims for him, and what they imply and assume about our work.

For once, I am going to resist the urge to be overly didactic, however, or to perform a "close reading" of these passages, and instead put the questions the Book Review raises out to my readers. . . is there no such thing as bad press, when the press misrepresents scholarly work to the general readership, indeed our own consumer base? What do you think of Mallon's claims and assumptions here -- in what ways are they valid, in what ways unmerited? Do we turn the other cheek, take it lying down?

Interplanetary Orthography

2007-01-20T16:39:00.000-05:00

I watch precious little TV these days, but am working on the laptop in the same room with my son, who is watching Christopher Reeve's first Superman movie (Ollie was Superman for Halloween).

Remember the scene when Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) “interviews” Superman on her balcony – in her negligee? She inquires what planet he’s from; he responds.

Lois Lane, taking notes: “So that’s Cripton, with a c, r, i . . . ?”

Superman: “No, actually, it’s Krypton, with a k, r, y. . .”

Because of course superheroes from other planets use the same romanic alphabet we do.

Spousal Limitations on the Campaign Trail: Or, is X the new Y?

2007-01-20T12:07:00.000-05:00

Hillary Clinton's official announcement, that she is entering the race to become U.S. President number 44, has journalists trying out all sorts of ways to represent her relationship to number 42 -- or more specifically, deciding what facts about her marriage are relevant to reporting the campaign.

For numbers 41 and 43, the relationship was technically straightforward -- father-son -- though, as Maureen Dowd likes to remind us, psychologically fraught, having eventually played an untoward, if not grotesque, role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. For x-chromosome Clinton (née Rodham) and y-chromosome Clinton (né Blythe), the journalistic options are thorny from the outset: at what point in any given article does one note her marital status and mate? Must Monica Lewinsky appear in every item? Would it not be perverse, in these years when U.S. and Iraqi citizens are dying to settle the Shrub's old scores with Dad, if the 2008 campaign became a replay of Bill Clinton's impeachment trial?

Seeing in every weighty public matter its funhouse mirror image in pop culture, I present yet another link to The Onion: "Kevin Federline, Wife Divorce." My favorite bit? The part where the unnamed "spouse" is defined as "a 24-year-old entertainer who worked as a singer and foreground dancer at Federline performances." Foreground dancer! Priceless.

Superfluous Letters

2007-01-16T18:26:00.000-05:00

Because my work concerns alphabetical letters, I must post this link to Bill Poser's post on Language Log, on Saudi Arabia's ban on the letter x.

English has its own checkered history of attempts to expunge particular characters from the alphabet. The first aspect of the language humanists attempt to reform, spelling forms the grounds of the sixteenth-century English standardization movement. In 1568, Sir Thomas Smith writes the following on the letter c:

Now tell me what you make of it. Does not this letter seem to be an Hermaphrodite, neither male nor female, and yet both and neuter, a monster among letters, not a letter; an example of ignorance, not art? For art is founded on certain rules and on the constancy of nature. But this c which we use, or rather abuse, in our common pronunciation of Latin, I know not what letter it is, nor what it is. For if s is a letter, and k is a letter, as the Latin alphabet (which you wish me to follow), shows; what force or power is left for this vagabond c, but to be a sort of monster or Hobgoblin, appearing now make, now female, now a serpent, now a crow? And by such willful impostures it is driving out both s and K from their houses and lands. So that these two letters might lawfully sue it under the edict Unde Vi, and I doubt not that if the Praetor be just, c will be easily convicted. What do you think?

And on the letter q:

I cannot understand what this letter means. For if we take k for the sound which when joined to a makes ka, and when joined to u makes ku, what is q doing, or what purpose does it serve? If I were the Prince of Grammarians, with authority to make eternal laws, valid throughout the whole world of Romans and Germans, I should cast out q as beggarly and intruding, and wrongfully and unnecessarily occupying the space of a real letter, and should command its exile far away; as Sarah did to Hagar and Ishmael as soon as Isaac began to grow strong. Q is really a slavish letter, deformed and decrepit, powerless without us as its staff, and with it no better than k. Do you think I am speaking my mind clearly? . . . I shall therefore soon make an end of this and other letters, and you shall at last be released and purged. So listen. Whatever q is like, we have it, always walking before its u like a proud maidservant.

Linguistically, or in principle, Smith objects to "superfluous letters," letters that represent sounds designated by other letters. As you can see here, however, Smith depicts superfluous letters' transgressions by way of the Old Testament (Saudi Arabia's ban is religious in basis) as well as other violations of social rule, be it gender (c is a hermaphrodite), status (the letters usurp others' rank), or property (they displace other letters from their rightful place).

Smith proposes a new English alphabet, one in which each individual letter corresponds to each and every individual sound, or phoneme, in English speech. Needless to say, Smith and the subsequent spelling reformers are unsuccessful in their bid to regulate English writing in this way. As we spell some words phonetically, some according to etymology or language of derivation, systemic variation remains a feature of English ortho-graphy, or "right writing."

We nonetheless owe to this footnote in the history of the English language -- a footnote I converted into a dissertation, and coming soon, a book! -- the first pedagogy developed to teach English (schoolmasters such as Richard Mulcaster propose teaching English as a subject of learning, versus rewriting the alphabet), the first dictionaries ("hard word lists" are initially published as spelling guides, to fix extant spellings in print), and the enduring notion that "spelling counts" -- not only as a (dubious) measure of language ability (my daughter has just started taking "spelling tests") but also a mark of one's advanced literacy, or place in lettered society. To be a "good" or a "bad speller" says something about you, something that may or may not square with how "well read" you are or your general facility with language.

In early modern English lit, the most explicit reference to the movement appears in King Lear, at the end of Kent's harangue to the impertinent servant Oswald, or one banished figure wishing to banish another: "Thou whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter!" (2.2.64).

For those who are interested (what, you don't find it fascinating?! I know, I am the *closest of close readers), I've written at length on the recent bumper crop of spelling bee entertainments, and how they gesture to this peculiar chapter in English language history: here, in an online review of The 21st Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which supplies more of the history of the American spelling bee; and here, on Akeelah and the Bee, which asks why spelling, why now, in this era of standardized tests and No Child Left Behind.

And I am repeating myself utterly here, but must follow up that Language Log link with one to the Onion's report on the letter D, who pulls his sponsorship of Sesame Street when a new gay muppet, "Roger," joins the cast. It still cracks me up.

Early Modern Surges

2007-01-14T12:50:00.000-05:00

After so many posts related in some way to my own self-fashioning (via blogs, nametags, Facebook, etc.), it was liberating to bang out a fairly straightforward and relatively inconsequential post on sports.

That said, I admit to burying the day’s highly consequential lede. The Beckham signing was announced the day Congress took aim at the U.S. President’s “surges,” also known, though little recognized, as the 21,000 flesh and blood men and women who will put their lives on the line for a war unsupported by two-thirds of the citizens who front the monies that fund those soldiers’ salaries as well as said unsupported and tragically mismanaged war. Whew. Also the same day I taught “new world narratives” by Walter Raleigh (about Guiana), Francis Drake (Nova Albion, or San Francisco), and Thomas Hariot (Virginia).

Welcome, then, to this term’s edition of “What century is it?”

Last term’s game was played the week I was teaching Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) and Bob Woodward’s State of Denial (2006) came out. As I noted then, Woodward’s portrayal of Bush among the flatterers echoed Raphael Hythloday’s observation that sixteenth-century foreign policy gets perverted by courtier self-interest.

This week, Raleigh’s tract administered the most potent dose of das Heimliche. When I prepared my students for the reading, I called attention to the two contradictory gestures framing the title: “The Discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and golden city of Manoa (which the Spaniards call El Dorado).”

“Discovery” suggests dibs -- that is, that Raleigh and his fellow journeymen “discovered” the region in such a way they can lay claim to it. Of course, we all know Europeans didn’t unearth territory that had already been there, indeed inhabited and civilized. But what’s amusing about Raleigh’s title is that it initially purports to report the discovery of Guiana, only to acknowledge, eventually and parenthetically, that the Spanish got there first – and already named the place. The subsequent tract will call on Queen Elizabeth I to send “surges” of British troops to reclaim – and one would imagine, rename -- the territory for England.

Raleigh does not begin the treatise so transparently, however [btw, I’m working with the excerpt in the Norton Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Volume, eighth edition]. Rather, the tract begins rather innocuously as a personal eyewitness account of the region. Raleigh waxes poetic that “we beheld that wonderful breach of waters which ran down Caroni; and might from that mountain see the river how it ran in three parts, about twenty miles off, and there appeared some ten or twelve overfalls in sight. . ." Sounds luverly, dunnit?

Only further in does Raleigh's survey of the landscape begin to take on a whiff of recon. Amid references to "hills so raised here and there over the valleys, the plains adjoining without bush or stubble, all fair green grass," Raleigh notes "the ground of hard sand easy to march on either for horse or foot." What begins as pastoral reverie becomes increasingly military in outlook.

Indeed: sand . . . uranium, WMDs. Far from a comprehensive and objective assessment of the region, the evidence is hand-picked to support Raleigh's proposed mission for England to colonize Guiana. Writing “I never saw more beautiful country nor more lively prospects,” Raleigh's choice of prospects is significant, for it reads doubly, to refer both to peaks in the landscape, and to prospects for England, were British troops to set foot there.

Raleigh proposes the Guiana mission in particular because he claims the gold found there will fund the operation. He launches a new paragraph, “I will promise these things that follow, which I know to be true,” and proceeds to report that “The common soldier shall here fight for gold, and pay himself, instead of pence, with plates of half a foot broad, whereas he breaketh his bones in other wars for provant and penury. Those commanders and chieftains that shoot at honor and abundance shall find there more rich and beautiful cities, more temples adorned with golden images, more sepulchers filled with treasure, than either Cortez found in Mexico, or Pizarro in Peru.”

Gold, oil. You do the math.

The narrative progressively surges to where Raleigh assures the Queen that, “if there were but a small army afoot in Guiana, marching towards Manoa the chief city of Inca, he would yield to her Majesty by composition [or by voluntary contract; my italics] so many hundred thousand pounds yearly, as should both defend all armies abroad and defray all expenses at home.”

Small army. “Greeted as liberators.” Pay for itself. ‘Nuff said.

While most of these narratives were written in the sixteenth century, I chose to use these texts to launch the second, seventeenth-century-based term of my year-long survey of Renaissance Prose and Poetry, not only to work the “new term,” “new world” angle, but also to flag nuances in the term “empire,” a word central to Raleigh’s title and mission, and etymologically and conceptually related to empiricism, a concept our class will discover in seventeenth-century prose authors such as Francis Bacon.

When Bacon proposes new territories (e.g., the “New Atlantis”) for learning, he works the “new learning,” “new world” angles himself. The so-called “father of modern science,” Bacon is concerned to “discover” and rename modes of knowledge previously claimed, indeed cornered, by the humanists viz. classical rhetoric. Bacon writes: "men began to hunt more after words than matter; more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention or depth of judgment." Substituting "things" for "words," Bacon demands that learned men redirect their attention from the study of language and devote their study to "things" and "matter."

As I asked my students in my first-day-of-term overview, what role will language nonetheless play in advancing this new brand of “learning”? After all, The Advancement of Learning (1605), the treatise Bacon writes to introduce this new mode of knowledge, is written to King James I, specifically to implore the king to direct his “magnanimitie,” aka reach for his cheque-book, to fund Bacon's new mission (the groundwork, in fact, for the Royal Societies).

But as we see in Raleigh’s treatise, as well as the obfuscations of the neo-cons, facts aren’t facts, strictly defined, when summoned in the service of a fundamentally rhetorical exercise. Traced to the Latin imperium, and thus to imperre, or to command, both empire and empiricism presuppose the use of language to survey the available data -- and then summon the troops.

In this light, there is something more to take from the report of Sir Walter Raleigh, “stupid get.” For, far from proposing neo-con notions that the arrival of the British military will result in a healthy restructuring of the region (a "domino effect"), Raleigh is eventually quite blunt (after his cagily worded title) that the purpose of the mission is to fortify British rule: “For whatsoever prince shall possess [Guiana] shall be greatest, and if the king of Spain enjoy it, he will become irresistible. Her Majesty hereby shall confirm and strengthen the opinions of all nations as touching her great and princely actions.”

“The opinions of all nations” confirmed, that the U.S. cannot be trusted to act in the world's interests, can someone please tell the President to lay down his Camus and pick up a couple of these Renaissance strangers?

Words and things. Liberal education indeed.

Post Post-script, Jan. 15: Two things. First, I haven't blocked out those long quotes (MLA style) because I'm having an issue with block quotes in Blogger (the subsequent text gets misformatted for no reason). More important, I suppose I should note that I did not teach these texts through the lens of the Iraq war, but through the lens I described when referring here to my teaching. I teach modes of analysis (how to think -- the *many ways -- versus what to think), and my primary allegiance is to the (course) material. I clarify that because, after all, I was the one who made a big stink about how blogging represents our work. In that respect, I concede that the blog -- and here I actually mean *this blog, versus blogging in general -- remains extra-curricular, in that it offers the opportunity to settle any unfinished business I may have with a text, business that's relevant, and hopefully compelling, to a general readership. It's all a work in progress, when you think about it.

Going Hollywood (or, from the MLA to the MLS)

2007-01-11T16:37:00.000-05:00

Long before I got tongue-tied at the MLA and was featured in the Chronicle for beginner's mistakes, the most popular (i.e., visited) series of posts in la Jardiniere concerned English football and the 2006 World Cup. It is for those readers who've hung around since then (and who must be wondering what all the fuss is about "academic bloggers" and "academics who blog" -- what, is that like shirts and skins?), that I post the following -- to me, utterly unsurprising -- news: David Beckham -- Soccer Spice -- has signed with the L.A. Galaxy.

I don't watch a lot of TV these days, but with my significant other being not only English but also a former professional footballer, "GolTV" is on a lot in our house. The other day I walked through when the channel was running a Biography-type special on Becks -- at the point when he signed with Real Madrid, after a brutal locker room bust-up (for which Posh Spice was blamed, Yoko Ono style) with Alex Ferguson at Man U. I looked at the clock and saw time remained in the show -- but noted to whomever was in the room (perhaps to myself), "Well, nothing more to show. That's the peak. It all goes downhill from there."

Afforded precious little playing time on a star-studded Spanish side, and limping home from Germany this summer after a piss-poor performance as England captain (only to be asked "not to return" ouch to the national side), pretty boy Becks has seen better days.

I have a certain fondness for the skirted one. First, it took guts to apply himself, as he did, to proving his service to England after that boot of Diego Simeone at the 1998 World Cup (a match-turning red card that should have taught Rooney to keep his cool in the pretty, but malevolent, face of Ronaldo). In addition, as my son's "special needs" became more and more apparent, said spouse and I would black humor ourselves by musing, "well, maybe he's the next Beckham" (where Becks hath not the gift of gab, my son has a language disorder and is also exceptionally athletic).

On the matter of Beckham's MLS signing, I will repost here what I wrote about the league shortly after the U.S. team's dismal sending off from the World Cup. Responding to Robert Weintraub's post-mortem in Slate, I wrote:

Finally, a sound assessment of the state of affairs. Weintraub doesn't trace the problem back to AYSO, as I did, but gives a credible account of how MLS contributes to U.S. disappointments abroad. He points out that, if we are going to build a truly competitive national team, US players should not be pressured to support the MLS (by playing in it), but instead be encouraged to play in the European leagues, in which the competition is stiffer -- and faster, as I have pointed out (i.e., watching the MLS is like watching the European leagues play in slow motion). What he also could have pointed out is that European players look at the MLS as we do Florida: the place to wind out their (slower, less agile) golden years. If I had a dollar for every time I heard a European player say he looks forward to moving to America (with his riches) to "retire" in the MLS . . .

I was thinking of Becks here when I wrote that last line, and toyed with the idea of predicting outright that he would follow such a course. No matter. That the most image conscious football star of the modern era would end up in Hollywood has been long written in the stars.

Which doesn’t mean that such a move -- from the top of the English Premiership to the top of Serie A to . . . the bottom of the Western Conference of the MLS – isn’t bittersweet, and to European football fans, fairly galling. (I spent a dozen years in Chicago, from the year Jordan, that other number 23, returned and triumphed, to win the Bulls three more titles, through his second retirement and less than enchanting reappearance as . . . a Wizard. At least Chicago is finally rebounding, slowly but surely, after those long post-Krause travesty years. Thanks, Pax.)

But let's also look at the Beckham deal from the perspective of the MLS. The MLS will only pay $400K of Beckham's salary, the maximum for the league. A.E.G. (a major sports conglomerate based in L.A.) and Adidas ("impossible is nothing") are ponying up the rest of the dosh. Still, the numbers they're talking are staggering for a (cough cough) U.S. soccer player. Can the league really afford him, even with such backing?

I know many would say that the league cannot afford *not to have such a star signing. The most immediate comparison, of course, is to Pele and the New York Cosmos. But while Pele helped boost attendance at professional soccer games by 80% between 1975 and 1977 (source: ESPN), even the King couldn't save the North American Soccer League.

"Impossible is nothing?" For U.S. soccer? It remains to be seen.

It also remains to be seen whether Beckham's star will shine as bright in a city where just about everyone lives to see and be seen. The Ono myth a hard one to quell, of course Posh is being pegged for the choice of destination (kinda hard to see the Beckhams in Kansas City). Ever so "euro" in fashion and outlook, it will be interesting to see how the family takes to life in America -- and if and how America takes to them.

Were Beckham's star power to fade like his famous crosses, might the signing end up crippling the league?

Post post-script, Jan. 12. Weintraub has since written, and skeptically, on the signing as well.

I Have a Cunning Plan

2007-01-10T19:53:00.000-05:00

I admit that I'm repeating myself here, by turning into a post a reply I gave to a comment on my MLA nametag bit below.

See, it's only the MLA where I haven't worn my nametag. I do at other, smaller conferences, especially those in my field. There, where the groove tends to be more casual and the feeling more "we're all in this together," I see the nametag as functioning more aptly to generate conversation. I'm thinking of GEMCS (Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies?) here (not the RSA, which is pretty formal), where a tag-sight is more likely to prompt an introduction -- precisely because there is a more palpable *context for such an overture.

Anyways, the last GEMCS I attended was in Orlando, and naturally I took the kids (to that most unnatural of family destinations). Back in the hotel room, my daughter, who sees in every flat white surface an opportunity to "tag" herself, took the initiative to decorate my nametag. Colorful marker. Flowers. Stars. A couple princesses, no doubt.

I didn't wear the nametag afterwards, but wouldn't it be a hoot to customize one's MLA nametag -- you know, pimp my ride?

Imagine the looks!

Looks that would show up the very phenomenon of MLA nametag decorum.

It's a plan. And I invite you to join me. (See you in Chicago . . .)

Getting a Dose from the Doctor (but then feeling better about it)

2007-01-10T09:19:00.000-05:00

Turns out the audience members at that MLA blog panel thought my post-panel question was as lame as I did. Dr. Crazy, over at Reassigned Time, blogged my query thus .

Feeling (as I've written) as though I misrepresented myself and my interests, I tried to post a comment, but Dr. Crazy's comment function is on the fritz, so I corresponded with the Doc via e-mail instead. We've since had a very positive exchange (noted here by the Crazy One), and I, for one, am glad to have made the connection.

Here's what I wrote:

This is going to sound like splitting hairs, but I never used the word "count" in my question. What I did say was "how do I get my blog on my tenure file?" It was a cheesy, misworded way to end what I felt was going on too long (i.e., my own question; I should've thought about it more, but took the opportunity I thought I otherwise wouldn't get. L'esprit de l'escalier. It happens.).

In all honesty, I couldn't care less about getting my particular blog on my particular tenure file. The holy trinity (research, teaching, and service) is going perfectly well for me thus far.

Rather, what I'm really interested in -- long term, in the big picture -- are "surges" (if I may use such a loaded term) of anti-academic sentiment that see the tenure system itself as the root of all evil (especially in the humanities). Academic freedom is a pretty hard sell to parents ponying up 50K a year, or to corporations funding new football stadiums and research facilities, in a political climate where sneering at "tenured radicals" has become increasingly acceptable, if not de rigeur.

It's in this light that I do believe blogs perform a valuable service (as I wrote) in demystifying academic labor for the general public, and I'm all for the idea of blogging as service.

I also fully respect any academic's wish to sort out his or her blog from his/her academic persona. By all means, post anonymously, and raise a "Don't Tread on Me" flag in the banner. Up until I started working here [at my university], I saw my own blog in just such terms -- as an escape pod, if anything.

But in speculating whether blogging might have something to offer us _as scholars_, I am wondering whether the technology might be used -- and yes, valued -- to generate form(s) of "publication" other than those we typically produce, ones which would perform the "service" of rehabilitating the humanities in the public eye, while *also serving as an additional outlet for research. Something for us, and to get the NEH off our backs (or at least on our side).

I make no secret of the fact that I really don't know what that could possibly look like (which is probably why I fudged my MLA question). As Flavia points out to me -- and I agree (again, something I was going to get to) -- the "group blog" seems to be the going thing where "scholarly conversation" is concerned (and how hilarious was it when David Greenberg claimed to have "invented" it for TNR??).

I'd like to get a group blog going, for sure. Or I think. But I also like to post on idiosyncratic things, like the relationship of the Beatles to humanist imitatio or J.K. Rowling's deaf ear.

So, no, I don't have any answers, just questions. But my questions are more thoughtful and less crass than I represented them in Philadelphia. No, I don't care about "counting" -- in fact, what I *object to is the way in which _market values_ -- both academic and commercial -- have infected the way we think about our work, to enumerate and tabulate it in (indeed) such crass ways. We are constantly having to *prove our value, and the value of our research -- to one another, and to the culture at large.

If blogging can play a role in intervening in that phenomenon, then, by all means, count me in.

As a final question (the one I could have asked -- woulda coulda shoulda): why is it, do you think, that when speaking on blogging in a professional forum such as the MLA, people seem to feel the need to "relate" it somehow to some historical antecedent, in "eighteenth century tabloids," "nineteenth century newspapers" or what have you? (Hell, I write on sixteenth century print -- why not trace it back there?). I read that impulse, that attempt to "historicize," versus saying blogging is "marginal" -- as a contradiction. That is, one the one hand, they're saying -- look, blogging is so important it has ancestors -- it's "scholarly," legitimate because historical . . . on the other hand, nah, it's just marginal, part of my personal time (bug off). Which is it going to be? And for that matter, why participate in panels at the __MLA__??

Much more to say, but I've got a big day at the office. Thanks to all of those who have been weighing in, here and elsewhere.

The Curse of the Blue Pencil

2007-01-08T23:08:00.000-05:00

Spend a lot of time editing, either one's own writing or others' (in my case, student papers), and the impulse to tweak becomes hard to stifle.

Exhibit A. Scholastic has released the title of the final tome in the Harry Potter series: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Hmmm.

Scratch, scratch.

My inner ear wants to hear "Harry Potter and the Hallows of Death."

Prosodically, I find the latter more pleasing: Har-ry Pot-ter and the Hal-lows of Death. J.K. Rowling is shooting for trochaic pentameter; where iambic pentameter places the stress on the second syllable, in the trochee the accent falls on the first. Thus Har-ry Pot-ter and the Death-ly Hal-lows.

The trochee is often considered a "childlike" meter, one frequently heard in children's verse -- or, say, in William Blake's "Ty-ger, ty-ger, burn-ing bright." But what makes Blake's line scan is the broken foot at the end of the line, the way our eyes and ears are forced to pause on the final word: "bright."

In this sense, and semantically as well, I think "Death" would punctuate the title -- and thus the series -- in more arresting fashion.

But grammatically . . . what's with the gruesome choice in "Deathly"? Technically speaking, the word functions as an adjective describing the "hallows." To all appearances, though, it looks like an adverb -- the OED has entries for both parts of speech -- and therefore (or once again) seems out of place.

In his book On Writing, goresmith Stephen King updates Samuel Johnson's epigrammatic "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" by noting, "The road to hell is paved with adverbs." In my first year of graduate school, in fact -- filled with good intentions -- I had a professor who observed that I had a "adverb fetish."

He was right; and King is right, too, that a well-placed adverb effectively [sic!] modifies. Used to excess, adverbs say you're trying too hard. Better to Strunk and White and come up with a more precise verb.

Might we nonetheless divine precious narrative clues from J. Ro's awkward wording? After all, I know she and Steve share a mutual appreciation (as reported by King in Entertainment Weekly. Yeah, I get around).

The third book (the one with Lupin) being my favorite in the early Potter series, I stopped reading after the fourth, though I enjoyed Mike Newell's film version of that entry. Known for his comedies of British manners (e.g., Four Deathly Weddings and a Funeral), Newell wittily captured the indignities of English boarding-school life.

Nevertheless: might we surmise from the title that someone (who shall not be named) will be taking the adverbial path to hell?

Welcome to the Margins

2007-01-07T08:49:00.000-05:00

As I noted below, my winter break was punctuated by my partaking in the MLA (the festivus for the rest of us, indeed: it is held annually in the week between Christmas and New Year's). I presented my paper on the first English literacy textbooks (part of a three-part panel -- a trilogy -- on "The History of the Book"), and attended other panels, some in my field of early modern English literature, and some on (drumroll) . . . the academic blog.

I had thought that the visibility of the genre in this year's program would herald its arrival as a legitimate academic medium. After all, I myself have speculated that profs might utilize blog technology (blogology?) to commune on matters related to teaching -- that the convenience, immediacy and *reach of a blog post would enable us to confer, in near real-time, on pedagogical conundra (or crises). Even more, I have noted how blogs offer a study in contrast to the way we (academics) ordinarily communicate through publication. The path from research (to draft to submission to editing) to publication is protracted and obstacle-strewn; a blog post appears quick as a pixel.

I thus attended the MLA panels hoping to hear how we could develop the academic blog to exploit its reach and immediacy (on the one hand) and to render the medium a legitimate forum for scholarship (on the other). That is, obstacles exist on the way to publication in order to preserve the integrity of the academic product; but anyone with a keyboard can produce a blog post, and write just about anything they like.

Philip II of Spain really wrote the works of Shakespeare!

See? Just like that.

Though he would likely credit others with this distinction, the poster child for the academic blog is one Michael Bérubé, the Paterno Family Professor of Literature at Penn State (and please, Professor Bérubé, tell me you work that title in your own pedagogy, with line calls such as "first paper? First down!" and "How do we write a list of works cited? Let's consult the playbook. . ."). Busy completing my own PhD (touchdown), starting my first tenure-track job (free agent no more), and acclimating my young family to life in Ontario (a two-point conversion), I confess I have not yet read Monsieur Bérubé's books, and should (I will). Where he writes on the academic profession and the place of the intellectual in contemporary society, I specifically conceived my own dissertation to trace the idea of an English literary persona -- the man [sic] of letters -- to the emergence of English as a literary language (. . . in the sixteenth century). In fact, this very blog complements, and means to update, my scholarship by reading its findings through a contemporary lens.

In person, Bérubé cuts an interesting figure; the best word I can coin is dashing. Dashing because witty and charming; he has charisma, no doubt, and works it. But dashing also because he speaks at speeds that suggest he is already late for his next engagement. His prose-style rangy, glib, and diffuse, Bérubé himself is a study in contrast to the ponderous, stentorian English professor, the stereotypical man of letters. A vital advocate for our profession, and vocal champion of the academic blog . . . Bérubé views blogging as incidental, nay "marginal" -- *his word -- to scholarship.

I blame myself for my disappointment in hearing this. You see, I had the temerity to ask the first post-panel question, and while rangy, glib, and diffuse, my question was no doubt unwieldy and unfocused. I launched it in terms of how we represent academic blogging to our own colleagues in the department, and eventually (I know, groan) wrapped it up by asking "how I get my blog on my tenure file." What I was really interested in -- a touch of l'esprit de l'escalier here -- is how we might view, and value, blogging as a legitimate form of academic labor, beneath, though in some way beside, the holy trinity of research, teaching, and service.

You reap what you sow, however, and my pithy conclusion about getting my blog on my tenure file prompted Bérubé's equally pithy (though no doubt more humorous) response, replete with a witty replay of run-ins with his more ponderous colleagues (i.e., "Michael, I see you have a [get out yer finger quotes here] 'web-log'"). But while Bérubé had noted in his talk the role academic blogs play in demystifying academic labor for the general public (a point I had also made here), he responded to my question by saying that he considers the blog "marginal" to his "other work" -- potentially an "aspect of service," but chiefly part of his "personal time."

I was surprised to hear him conceive the arrows going only in one direction -- that is, from academia out to the public sphere. And while I don't wholly disagree with him, given the lack of stop-gaps in place to qualify blogging as scholarship (never mind gnarly issues concerning copyright and intellectual property), I would like to see this new medium of the public sphere generate new, and vital, ways for us to communicate as scholars -- that is, to have the arrows point the other way as well. It remains to be seen whether and how this could happen, and I, for one, will continue to mull on that question here.

For now, however -- and this is a special welcome to those who might be coming here from the Chronicle (in which my blog is featured, in fact, as having grown increasingly incidental to my academic life) -- welcome to the margins.

New Term Resolutions

2007-01-06T08:54:00.000-05:00

Classes resume on Monday (where does the time go? gotta do something about that holiday getting the way of my holiday), and this weekend is devoted to preparing for the new term. More than selecting readings and plotting assignment dates, the task involves surveying last term: assessing what worked, what didn't, and revising accordingly.

If I have a thesis for what I plan to do differently in my teaching this term, it could be summed up in Hamlet’s advice to the players: “suit the words to the matter, the matter to the words.”

In this respect, the first matter of concern would be the syllabus. I am hardly the first professor to go “off-syllabus” (I hope!), but I learned that what it means to go “off-syllabus” – that is, how it matters to the class – depends on how you conceive the syllabus itself, and thus the whole course. As I reported to Jim Lang at the Chronicle, I entered fall term subscribing to the notion of syllabus as contract. That is, I used the syllabus not only to lay out the dates and assignments, but also to spell out the learning objectives for the course – what students should know (content), and know how to do (skills), by term’s end.

I found that these two functions came into conflict, as in going “off-syllabus” –- aka, “getting behind” on the readings –- I felt that we were getting behind for good reason, that is, to fulfill the learning objectives. Indeed the most intellectually productive classes were those when we were, technically speaking, most “off-course”! So I do plan to rethink the number and pace of assignments . . . dare I say, assign less reading? (hear the cheers from southeast Ontario!) and so “suit the words to the matter” more effectively in that document.

But I also plan to use the occasion of “going through the syllabus” (in the first days of class) to advance the notion of syllabus not as contract, but as thesis. For as we teach our students, a thesis is an argument, a binding idea, or initiative; but a thesis is always provisional, contingent on the discovery of new knowledge, evidence, even new frameworks or contexts for understanding -- and therefore perpetually subject to revision.

We'll see how that flies (students can be relentlessly litigious).

The second matter of words in need of reform pertains to the discussion groups I assigned for my lectures. At the university where I teach, discussion groups are not a matter of course for lectures. Operating from the philosophy that knowledge is produced through conversation, I felt that discussion was important to the operations of the course, and so broke the class roster down into groups, and set aside time for groups to meet during class time. Alas, as I conduct my lecture as a large-scale seminar –- that is, class discussion is a vital component of the lecture period –- I found that the students who regularly contributed to those discussions were the ones who chiefly contributed to their groups. In this way, the class was only repeating itself on a small-scale (and not progressing), and, worse, that we were losing precious class time to the logistics of changing course mid-lecture, i.e., to reassembling into the small groups.

Heading into the last class of term, I had prepared a survey for my students to assess how much and how well they were learning (in fact, I reproduced the “learning objectives” from the syllabus on the survey to this end). I had this hunch about the groups mirrored back to me and confirmed, as students frequently noted that the groups were “not working.” But they also frequently enthused about the large-scale class discussions!

Going into the second term -- for others, new courses (my courses are year-long) –- I find myself in the position of having to revise my own thesis about the place of discussion in the course. Will I eliminate the groups? Rework them? I don’t know yet (that's this weekend's task). But I am learning, or re-learning, that dialogue is a means, and not an end in itself, and, as I have seen in my students’ writing -- another "matter" of "words" –- just because some students do not contribute verbally to the class does not mean they are not vitally engaged.

In short, I have to have the courage to go back on my own word(s).

The students’ astute responses to my survey, while humbling, give me the nerve to reverse course –- and even more specifically, to re-order my lectures. For many new professors, “writing the lectures” takes up most of their time, as they are assembling and framing material (much matter indeed), in ways they never have had to before. I learned from my students that I was frontloading in my lectures the material that they already knew. I thought I knew what I was doing; that is, I was working from the rhetorical premise of moving from the known to the unknown. But I was also inordinately concerned that students were “getting it,” in that I devoted the initial class time to reinforcing material, to make sure they had learned it before we moved on to new ideas. So anxious was I to review, in fact, that I would typically end up rushing through the new material (“we had to get through”) at the end of classes, when both the students and I were least fresh. Thus one student sagely pointed out to me that s/he would prefer to hear the new material when she was most prepared to digest it. (Indeed words cannot express, in fact, how much I learned from their assessments of how, and how well, they were learning.)

Students are prepared to learn when they enter the class. Just as important, they want to learn new ideas. What a humbling discovery! And, in retrospect, how obvious. But a discovery which dictates not only that I reverse the order of my lectures, but also . . . relax. The students are getting it – they’re learning – move on.

Of course, Hamlet might not be the best inspiration here. After all, he hardly achieves his own learning objectives in failing to determine, from Claudius’ reactions to the play, whether the usurper had in fact murdered his father. Did the words suit the matter, the matter the words? We don’t know, because he doesn’t.

Maybe he should’ve handed out a survey?

Close Readers at the MLA

2007-01-05T00:04:00.000-05:00

Why do we wear nametags at the MLA?

I've just returned from the annual convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA), the umbrella organization for academic professionals in the fields of language and literature.

This is my third MLA in a row: last year I had job interviews (conventionally held there); the year before, I presented a paper on English lessons in Shakespeare (I can trace my current job to that paper: amen); and this year, I presented my research on the first textbooks printed (in the sixteenth century) to teach English. It went very well, thanks (indeed, many thanks to those who were in attendance, who fielded such great questions).

Conference participants receive their nametag as a form of receipt upon registration. To my knowledge, however, the nametag itself is only needed, or tendered for show, to enter the "book hall," a quasi-marketplace where academic publishers vend their goods at a discount to convention registrants.

And yet, hours after the book hall has shut and every panel has wrapped for the day -- nay, every waking hour of the conference, in hotel lobbies, at restaurants, in coffee houses, and all along the street -- you will see Spanish teachers and Wordsworth experts with nametags dangling from their necks.

(An easy mark.)

Far be it from me to reproduce stereotypes about the anti-social character of academics, but we are not the glad-handing type. That is, when I imagine conventions in other industries, I presume that the nametag performs an essential function related to networking. The MLA, indeed any academic conference, means to foster communication between members of the field. For better or for worse, however, our field comprises individuals who relish their solitude while they read, or write, or conduct research. The chief mode of communication at the academic conference is the panel presentation, in which three or more speakers stand at a dais to read prepared papers to an assembled audience; a question-and-answer period is mandatory, but perennially (and often sadly) brief. Finally, no protocol exists for one faculty member (or graduate student) to approach an unknown colleague with a hearty, "Hi, I'm Gwynn, from the Kingston office. I see you're based in New Haven. . ." No, that's not the done thing: wouldn't be seemly.

Such meetings of the minds a dream deferred, what happens is that MLA nametags incite close reading -- not too close, mind you, you don't want to get caught -- as we surreptitiously eye the names and institutions displayed on oneanother's chests. . .

I know: as if furtively contemplating ces documents du décolletage is any more seemly? (Nay, I know not seems, madam.)

In my reading of the phenomenon, the MLA nametag provides the opportunity either to say to one's familiars, "I was just on the elevator with Stephen Greenblatt," or, if you're Stephen Greenblatt, to show that you are (and go up and down the elevator?).

I'm picking on Greenblatt arbitrarily here. For all I know he doesn't wear a nametag; I haven't worn mine, but chiefly because I felt I didn't have a name worth reading (which is to say, worthy of reporting). That the book hall is the one place where just about everyone drops in at one point -- wearing their nametag (dems be da rules) -- speaks volumes about our professional character(s), in that we visit the hall not only to purchase our stock, but also to consume one another (most discreetly), and see how we stack up.

In that sense, the MLA nametag does more than prompt close reading. In a field that rewards scholarly individuality and distinction, the nametag gives us a name, which is to say, an identity, at a convention whose calling card could be professional anonymity, if not anomie.

Each year, the MLA attracts tens of thousands of academic professionals. At any given time, there might be a hundred different panels in session on an equal number of different topics. College and university departments hold their own independent receptions, and thousands of job seekers arrive for their job interviews. Finally, conference participants are housed in a dozen hotels throughout a given city (this year in Philadelphia; it was supposed to be held, pre-Katrina, in New Orleans). Far from convening its members so as to promote collective identification, let alone effervescence, the MLA is positively post-modern in its scatteredness, and must send many of its participants home feeling alienated to the operations of the mother ship.

In this respect, the MLA nametag grants its wearer an essential badge of belonging, a symbol of attendance, in ways that compensate (as a form of receipt) for his or her otherwise benign neglect. Read between the lines and the nametag says, "not only have I registered, but I have also arrived. You can see it, right here. Right here on my chest."

In a field so preoccupied with the powers and limits of language, if not with naming itself -- from Platonic nominalism to Renaissance self-fashioning to post-modern identity politics -- I find it charming, even sweet, to see so many individuals proudly brandishing the kind of sign they might otherwise parse or deconstruct (as I have).

No, I didn't wear my nametag in Philadelphia.

Maybe next year.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Forum

2006-12-20T11:11:00.000-05:00

In a word, I got Facebooked. A group of students put out an online bolo on me, and it’s taken me some time to process the charge, especially in light of what I was preparing to post. If you recall, I had promised to put the Daphne Merkin-Laura Kipnis disagreement to bed with a discussion of Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh, and, more specifically, with some reflections on the dynamics of the university lecture.

You see (or alas?), I just censored myself. Full disclosure: I was initially going to write on the erotics of lecturing. No, not on how I present myself sexually in the classroom: heaven – which is to say, my dignity and my tenure file – forbid.

Rather, in my view, the Merkin-Kipnis dispute turned on the relationship between gender decora and standards of writing. Merkin, known (to her chagrin) for a piece on spanking that appeared in The New Yorker, chastened Kipnis for writing in the kind of chatty girl-talk that Merkin deemed unfit for a serious argument. Kipnis, known (to her delight?) for her unconventional views on sexual fidelity, claimed that adopting girly-mag prose enabled her both to countenance and counteract its rhetorical frailty.

Am I sounding academic yet? Yes, academic prose, too, has its own standards and decora, often functioning to veil, and thereby diminish, heady ideas, even as it appears to trump them up. It’s hard to get it right (whatever the idiom).

For my part, I had planned to use the Marlowe and Raleigh poems – poems I lectured on this term – not only to reexamine each writer’s claims, but also to share how these matters of discourse figure in my own classroom. I had not planned, of course, for my own students to coopt – wittily, though provocatively – the very “love poems” we had studied in class in order to figure me, of all people, as an object of desire. Again, full disclosure here: the students’ site was titled “Gwynn Dujardin is a FOXXX!!!” (groan); and each member of the group, roughly a dozen, of mixed gender, was tagged by a quote from a sixteenth-century poem, slyly rewritten to address me.

As I noted in my online response to the site – professionally and pedagogically, I felt it warranted a response – the syllabus coverage was pretty impressive. Skelton, Wyatt, More, Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Wroth – nearly all the authors we had read were represented. What’s more, the lines they excerpted were key ones, phrases on which our own readings turned. Finally, and most important, the way the students adapted those lines to the occasion at hand testified, at some level, to their understanding of a critical theme of the course: that sixteenth-century authors reform the language of their immediate and classical predecessors in the service of a revised understanding or goal.

As we had discussed, “love is not love” in Elizabethan “love poetry,” but a vehicle for exploring the power(s) of writing. When Philip Sidney opens his seminal sonnet sequence by writing, “Loving in truth, and feign in verse my love to show,” the word "feign" is central both to the line and the 107 sonnets that follow. That is, the speaker may claim to love “in truth,” and desire “to show” that love “in verse,” but feign reads doubly, suggesting both the poet’s eagerness to show, or disclose, his love in verse, as well as his recognition that verse, or writing itself, is a form of “feigning,” a kind of fiction or untruth.

Addressing poems to a cruel mistress who refuses to requite the speaker’s love (N.B. Shakespeare is a notable exception here), Elizabethan poets assume the pose of unrequited lover in order to reflect on the powers of language – that is, on the possibility to “move” readers, in desired ways, through writing. Indeed: were the poets’ love to be consummated, there would be nothing more to write. With this in mind -- and this is addressed to the academics in my audience -- who needs Lacan to teach us about desire in language? (For my non-academic readers, see Robin Williams in The Dead Poets Society, on the idea that the purpose of poetry is to “woo women”).

Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is “about” – pronounced a-boot up here, of course -- desire in language. On first reading, the poem could not appear more benign: in the poem, a shepherd attempts to entice “his love” by entreating her, tempus fugit-carpe diem style, to join him in the serene “pleasures” of pastoral life. Yet those “pleasures” are rendered serene through language, indeed through mellifluous verse. In this respect, the phrase “a thousand fragrant poesies” is central here, in that posies are not only flowers, part of the pastoral landscape, but also a pun for poesy, or English poetry. Concluding “and if these pleasures may thee move,/come live with me and be my love,” the poet is not merely “feeding her lines” with promises of earthly pleasures, but asking “if these pleasures,” or lines of poetry, are compelling enough to “move” her, or his readers, to "come."

When I planned to write on these poems here last week, I was going to share a moment from class when I “lowered myself” -- as Daphne Merkin would have it -- responding to a student’s skepticism that a “belt of straw” would appeal to the poet’s “love.” Off the cuff, I responded something like: “No, in Pastoral-land, straw belts are serious bling.” I was almost embarrassed by the pronounced laugh the line got (after all, I aspire to “teach and delight,” not audition for Second City). But Merkin’s irritation at Kipnis’s colloquialisms got me wondering whether I am too glib in class – that is, whether I pander to my own audience by using terms unbefitting a thirty-nine-year-old (i.e., “ye olde”) professor of English Renaissance literature.

Imagine my pause, then, when I subsequently viewed “my” page, in which one of my student’s tag-lines reads “[student’s name] wants to live with Gwynn and be her love” -- and the rest, even more clever, follow in kind. Oh, I was moved all right. To don the nearest burlap sack.

In effect, I went from weighing the importance of register and diction, a key matter of dispute between Merkin and Kipnis, to experiencing, quite acutely, the stakes for women whose professions trade (and I am quoting myself here) on techniques in withholding and revelation, concealment and display. For the erotics of lecturing does not refer to any sexual pose I strike in the classroom (again, heaven forbid), but to the fact that lecturing, like writing, involves deciding what information to put forward or hold back, when to suppress, when to disclose -- so that students may choose to “come live with me” in being moved, or persuaded, by my talk. As a writer selects his or her words carefully and attempts to pace the flow of information, like verse, so, too, do I measure carefully how I conceive and impart my material so as to bring my students to a desired result.

Upon witnessing my own "foxxxy" online exposure, I immediately worried that I had somehow revealed too much.

I eventually got over my spanking discomfiture, however, when I saw how deftly the students had reworked the poems, and *understood that I was not the object of their desire but rather a vehicle for engaging with the dis-course of the course (that is, just as "love is not love," the "foxxx is not a fox"). I am passionate about the course material, and devoted to teaching it: no doubt. If they're feeding intellectually off that affect, I can't complain. And I realized, too, that my students were merely carrying out online the kind of discussion my peer group would have conducted (and did!) over a late-night twelve-pack in the dorms: only the forum differs.

But in deciding to deem me “DUna,” the student’s lesson, or what I should learn from their disclosure, became clear. That is, “DUna” puns on the first syllable of my last name (DUjardin) and Una, the character Edmund Spenser assigns to direct the Red Crosse Knight through Book I of The Faerie Queene. Representing England (and ultimately deemed St. George, as in “and the dragon”), the Red Crosse Knight must heed the guidance of Una, the “one true faith” (in sixteenth-century England, aka Protestantism), to complete his journey towards self-realization. Una has an alter, though, in DUessa, a Circe figure who waylays the epic hero from his quest via pleasures unmistakably associated with the powers of poetry. Una and Duessa – one v. two; virgin v. whore; faith v. heresy; truth v. feigning ; reality v. poetry; Merkin v. Kipnis – this ancient dualism underwrites the Merkin-Kipnis dispute and reveals the stakes for scribbling women of any political or historical stripe.

Siding ultimately with Kipnis – I think (all knowledge is provisional) – I think “bling” worked, in that it worked to “move” my students to a desired, favorable, and, most important, mutual end, in understanding how pastoral symbols, while benign on the literal level, veil a poet’s will to power, indeed his will to express the power of poetry. Raleigh’s “reply” – in which Raleigh stoops to conquer by ventriloquizing the “nymph,” just as Merkin channels chatty girl-talk – both reveals and contests that power, by pointing out that pastoral pleasures are fleeting in the “real world,” and that, in feeding her those lines, the poet presumes to silence her voice, Philomel-like, in ways that preclude any meeting, or mutuality, between them. (See Shakespeare’s Sonnets to the Dark Lady for an attempt to render a meeting of “wills”; and for an object study in the vagaries of female authorship, read Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. Merkin and Kipnis: take note.)

Eventually thinking better of the burlap sack, I now embrace my DUna persona: resolved to guide my students steadily through the journey of the course, but keenly aware of the dualism inherent to that, or any, identity -- indeed how truth in language is forever a matter of feigning.

Plus it’s a great pun. Consider me deemed!

Post-MLA P.S. I tried to introduce myself to Laura Kipnis at the MLA; alas, she wasn't having any of it. . .!

Making Light of One's Own Abundant Ineptitude

2006-12-16T15:19:00.000-05:00

We all find ourselves in situations we can't ever seem to get right -- and the harder we try, the worse it gets. Nettled by that feeling earlier today, I remembered Chris Farley's "interview" of Paul McCartney -- in some ways, the best I've seen of either of them (Macca does well to remain silent and subdued. . .). Let the hair-pulling commence:

Chris Farley Paul McCartney

Video credit: Buzz Humor

"Kipnis v. Merkin": A (Not-So-Brief) Debriefing

2006-12-10T08:52:00.000-05:00

I've mulled it over in chambers, and here's how I make sense of the knicker-twisting debate.

1. "Knock" Slate's Book Club, not feminists (I am quoting here from Slate's weekend subhed, "Laura Kipnis v. Daphne Merkin: A Knockdown Feminist Brawl").

As I noted in my initial post, the Slate Book Club is rarely (ever?) a take-down. The premise is promising: instead of merely posting a review based on one critic's provisional response to a book, the exchange allows the critic to air his or her comments directly to the author, and invites the author to respond and comment in turn. Ordinarily two ships that pass in the media night, the critic and author drop anchor for a spell and let the ideas flow.

A lively discussion, of *ideas? How ingenious!

Well, it hasn't always worked out that way. As I implied in my first post on this particular Book Club, I've harbored doubts about Slate's commitment to the cause, as it seemed as though critics were suaded to flatter authors (to get the latter to the table?) in ways that made for a shallow swim. Add that to the fact that the Book Club frequently appeared when a book was either about to, or had just, come out, and the column may as well have been Larry King (especially in its over-weening obsequy). Overall, the genre itself had -- as we say in my business -- reified, or taken an all-too-familiar and predictable form.

As it looked as though Merkin and Kipnis were out to break the mold -- and Kipnis' The Female Thing has been out since October 1 -- I was initially enthused by their first entries and looked forward to a substantive debate. Playing the part of the "critic," Merkin challenged Kipnis on her colloquial diction, both in Kipnis's recent book and 2003 career-maker, Against Love. Kipnis (in the role of the "author") parried, claiming the time-honored strategy of imitating a given discourse in order to subvert and redefine its terms.

So far, so good, at least from where I was sitting, in that the Book Club was "selling" neither The Female Thing nor itself, but instead raising questions of method and idiom central to any meaningful cultural polemic.

But then insult led to injury, if not a pound of female flesh.

First, Merkin accused Kipnis of side-stepping questions in order to burnish her image as feminist iconoclast. (Fair play. Continue.) From this daring opening, however, Merkin went on to protest (you *could say too much) (a) what Kipnis evidently thought was a compliment -- if not grounds for mutual gal-pallery -- in designating Merkin as "bratty" and (b) Kipnis's own (obsequious?) allusion to Merkin's decade-old New Yorker piece on spanking. In effect, what started as a jibe against Kipnis's own well-honed reputation became a forum on Merkin's own, as Merkin patently refused to grant Kipnis a chair on the same dais.

(N.B.: A panel presentation does feature here: Merkin accuses Kipnis of lying about having been in the audience for a talk in which Merkin participated: in effect, what Kipnis extends as a gesture of "this is your stage, I'm only sitting in the cheap seats," Merkin rebuffs as gratuitous and insincere.)

For my part, I kept thinking of Portia's line when she enters the Venetian courtroom (crossdressed as a law clerk) to settle the dispute between Antonio and Shylock. Portia's inquiry -- "which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?" -- functions to question the characters' own reified differences, and puts Christian society itself on trial, for having erected those differences in the first place. As for me, in this case, I was thinking: which is the critic here, and which the author?

Fraysters lunged ad feminem at Merkin and Kipnis, decrying their "estrogen-laced" comments as self-indulgent feminist (self-)parody; when, in fact, what was being parodied, inversely and by contrast, was the (self-)indulgence of the Book Club itself. That is, the genre assumes that a fairly well-known author will deign to countenance the solicitation (if not the solicitousness) of a (usually) lesser-known media critic (to generate book sales for the author, as well as downloads for Slate: i.e., a win-win).

Perhaps piqued from the outset that she was cast in the latter (i.e., lesser) role, Merkin emphatically wasn't on script. To the contrary, she used the occasion to decry Kipnis's own theatricality, citing Kipnis's colloquialism as a lack not only of gravitas but also, or by implication, of intellect. Meanwhile, Kipnis must have felt utterly blindsided, not only by Merkin's indisputable rancor, but also because, or *unlike Merkin, Kipnis already has in-house status at Slate. Like Antonio, who assumes a "fair" hearing in the Christian court, Kipnis wasn't prepared to have her own character put on trial.

So is it really that these two women were prickly ("bared their claws"); that feminists (of any stripe) are generally small-minded and intolerant; or even (more feasibly) that two generations of writers were shown to be divided by a common language (i.e., gravitas v. slang) -- or that the Book Club itself could not generically withstand deviations in form? Sort out the fact that it was two women writing on topics related to "feminism" or "women's issues" (or whatever label you want to give it), and what destabilized the entire exchange from the outset was its striking recasting of roles, i.e., its assigning to the more established -- though less au courant -- writer the part of fawning minion. You could fault Daphne Merkin for being ungenerous and self-interested, but, on the other hand, I think I might be a bit prickly, too.

2. A First-Wave refresher course: the personal is political.

Of course, we cannot wholly discount the fact that what gave the exchange its particular frisson was the fact that two women were trading barbs on the matter of erotic "confessionalism." To be sure, the fact that the dialogue got so personal is what made it come across, ultimately, as so petty. (And Fraysters' calls to "get the jello" -- and Slate's own sensationalist subhed [did Meaghan O'Rourke know about this?] hardly lent the column intellectual weight.) In this respect, I can hardly be the only dismayed feminist who felt as though I were witnessing a spectacular car crash (i.e., I can't look, I can't look; oh, but I have to. . .).

After all, I myself had speculated -- eagerly, no doubt -- that Merkin and Kipnis were in on it together, to call us all out on our own erotic provincialism, i.e., our own eagerness to see something "hot" in two women hitting the rhetorical mats. Upon seeing those hopes dashed, I held back on commenting any further, specifically to resist the (equally gendered) urge to "make nice" of this consummately unconsummated affair. No, if feminism (again, of any stripe) is to have any intellectual currency, it has to allow for -- nay, encourage -- vigorous debate, and even allow that debate to go absolutely *nowhere from time to time (high-minded premise of the Book Club notwithstanding). If grudges turn on sticking points, then sticking points themselves demand a ritual airing if we're ever going to get anywhere.

In this respect, the fact that the debate itself turned on the definition of terms, the meaning(s) of discourse -- or, more specifically, on the authority of confessionalism versus that of colloquialism -- shows us, for better or for worse, where we're at -- which is to say, deciding what kinds of stoops rhetorically conquer.

For the first wave feminists, the personal was political because what had passed as natural or common sense viz. labor -- i.e., "housework" versus "a paying job" -- needed to be rhetorically denaturalized (or shown as bunk) in order to make way for economic restructuring. That we are now arguing over terms may seem like progress (to some; and to others, reason to enjoy our paychecks and quit our bitching), but nonetheless testifies to ongoing -- and weighty -- imbalances when it comes to our writing.

For where Merkin and Kipnis appear to agree -- at some level -- is that powerful writing trades on techniques in withholding and revelation, concealment and display; and that female writers in particular are acutely aware of the stakes, and potential gains, of any given pose they strike.

[To keep up the Merchant analogy here: recall that Portia herself stoops before the shallow Bassanio, describing herself as an "unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractic'd," before she proceeds to pronounce sentences on Shylock, Antonio, and eventually her own husband. To what extent does her power in the courtroom stem from the gravitas of her own rhetoric ("the quality of mercy is not strained. . .") or from her *appearance as a court-appointed clerk? Tough to say.]

Arguing that the appearance of her spanking piece in The New Yorker in particular is what lent that writing both its thrill and its authority, Merkin maintains the importance of context to the meaning of any public disclosure. Yet by publishing on spanking in that particular venue, Merkin had nonetheless upheld its (pre-Tina Brown) writerly scruples, and conformed to an authorized, if not formal, register of language, even as she defied the zine's normative standards of content.

For her part, Kipnis sees in appropriating informal girl-talk a method to put a magnifying glass to its weaknesses, and (if I understand her rightly here; I have not read her books [they're in modern English!]) the possibility to imbue that talk with some credibility, if structured and accompanied by the kinds of ideas that ultimately make for a persuasive argument. A reader ("robt") just weighed in minutes ago here, to express doubts that Kipnis's freewheeling word-play will signify as *she hopes outside the semiotic recesses of academe -- which is to say, in the so-called school of life, where the word "girl" on the page still conjures. . . a girl.

Again, tough to say (especially for me, happily hiding out in those recesses), but I find it compelling that Kipnis gets the most "sympathy" in the Fray -- for having capably withstood Merkin's chaste lashing or shown her willingness to oblige her senior confessor?

Tough to say.

I have one more point to make, on the matter of erotics and language (cf. Marlowe and Raleigh, below), but I'll throw in my own towel here, for today. Like the Book Club itself, I suppose this is a serial . . .

Renaissance Reconnaissance (aka homework)

2006-12-09T10:29:00.000-05:00

I'm mentally formulating my response to the Merkin-Kipnis slatemate -- ha! what a typo! I meant to write "stalemate." Slate/stale/mate. Typo stays.

As I'm still gestating my ideas -- while I complete assorted holiday tasks with the progeny (fa la la la la) -- I give you what I plan to use as my lede: Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"; and Walter Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd."

You are probably familiar with Marlowe's poem:

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flower, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

But here is Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply," as well:

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complain of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy bed of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.

I know you're thinking: what do two sixteenth-century poems have to do with Daphne Merkin's pique at Laura Kipnis' having designated her as "bratty"?

On first read, Marlowe's pastoral ditty seems benign, even endearing (it's meant to). As Raleigh's "reply" shows, though, the poems are about language and persuasion, register and context: the issues at the core of the Merkin-Kipnis debate.

I'll explain shortly. After I cut some more snowflakes (out of my dissertation, of course).

Book club porn?

2006-12-08T13:33:00.000-05:00

Gentle reader, I assure you I shall indeed return soon, after I complete my end-of-term duties. I've got a backlog -- a backblog? -- of topics to cover.

One of them concerns the recent steamy "Book Club" exchange over at Slate, between prickly erstwhile New Yorker contributor Daphne Merkin and "adultery is cool, therefore I am" Laura Kipnis. Check it out for yourselves and tell me, sincerely: is this to be believed?

Some context here. Here's how Slate's Book Club, an e-mail exchange between a critic and an author, usually goes:

Critic: Oooh, love the book. Talk more about this bit.

Author: That bit? There? Happy to oblige. You like?

Critic: Oh yes, I really enjoyed that. Have I mentioned I love the book?

Author: Not sure, but now that you mention it, I could use some stroking just. . . *there. . .

In other words: yawn. Often wincing. But no more intellectually titillating than the false exaggerations of dust-jacket ad copy.

With Merkin and Kipnis, however, we have fur being thrown.

The Fray at Slate is all in a lather -- ooh chick fight -- but I have to wonder whether the dialogue has been manufactured to stimulate such predictable responses . . . which suggests what about the "discourse" of post (whatever you want to call it) feminism?

Or rather: which is worse -- or better? -- that Merkin and Kipnis may have colluded on this "club" -- or that they didn't, and that this is the striking result?

More soon. Check it out.

6:43 EST: The exchange just concluded with a winsome shrug on Kipnis' behalf. Given the bruised feelings and egos in evidence on both sides, it would appear as though my hypothesis has not only not been borne out, but also reflected some wishful thinking on my part. That is, I wanted to believe that we were being played, and that what seemed at first like a touchy, if not prurient, tete-a-tete, might be redeemed by the revelation that they were so much smarter than we are (i.e., silly us). One look at the Fray -- sadly? (though I want to avoid emotionally charged language here) -- shows that neither combatant emerges seeming wise (to quote Hamlet, yet again).

The exchange matters to me, or to this blog, because their debate turned on uses of language. So, before I comment any further on the exchange, I do want to *think about it some more -- to rise above the Fray, as it were.

Once again: more soon. And next on the docket: Sir Philip Sidney on the current travails of Ian McEwan.

To Do, or Not to Do, List

2006-12-05T08:46:00.000-05:00

Now that the PhD is done, I have a lot to do:

1. A whole lot of absolutely nothing. Remember what it was like to have homework due on Monday, how you never could really relax? I've been in that mode since I was in my late twenties, and I'm looking through the cross-hairs at 40 right now. So if there's one thing I'm going to do, it's relax (if I can remember how. . .? I'll start by just breathing, I guess).

2. Catch a movie. In a movie theatre. Suggestions? I'm thinking Borat and that yummy new James Bond, for starters, but I know there are other ones I should catch, i.e., that haven't been featured on magazine covers I've seen at the grocery check-out line. The only "entertainment reading" I've allowed myself is Doonesbury (and I especially appreciated the recent series on Alex at MIT: "no nerd left behind," indeed).

3. Read a book. In modern English. Again, suggestions? The major outlets are coming out with their year-end lists, but those lists can tend to the random, despite claims of methods in the madness.

4. Work out. Yes, I enjoy that (it's not a task), but have had precious little time to. I'm eager to start running in the area around our home: there are hills! (I like running hills). T'weren't hills in flat Illinois.

5. Enjoy my kids. Sure, I always enjoy them, and love them dearly, but it hasn't been healthy, either for them or for me, to have a Mom with a monkey on her back. Bye-bye, monkey: hello, angels. As Hamlet says, I shall hereafter be more myself. Not that that helped him any, in the end, but, unlike Hamlet, I actually realized my quest for knowledge. Hamlet could never reliably ascertain whether Claudius killed his father, and ended up murdering his loved ones in the process. Rewrite!

6. Catch up -- and stay up -- with friends and family, most of whom must have felt like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, dispatched off to some barbaric island (known as England, in the play), and mystified as to the whereabouts -- and sanity -- of their one-time pal. In this respect, the monkey is a real friendship killer, in that it makes you not only think you have "more important" things to do (an utter fallacy), but also feel positively crummy about yourself -- and I'm *terrible about ringing people up when I feel crummy (i.e., I won't do it). Rather, it sounds trite, I know, but there is no way on earth I'd be even considering this list were it not for the enduring support of my friends and family. So, I'll be in touch soon, I promise -- and thank you.

7. I know there's more, much more -- it's a work in progress! -- but suffice to say here that the other item on my list is to maintain the blog.

I look forward to all of it.

More soon!

Mellow Yellow

2006-12-04T06:46:00.000-05:00

Yes, by now you've all heard the sad news that Greg Page, lead singer of The Wiggles, is leaving the band for health reasons. The yellow-turtlenecked one will be replaced by one Sam Moran, his understudy.

Of course, by now you're all wondering why this is getting so much press. Has the Brian Epstein of the band shrewdly seen to make as much of the transition as possible? Are Australian children truly expiring on the pavement, as when Paul married Linda that fateful day in 1969? Or are news agencies so in the pockets of parents with disposable incomes that they're willing to give this news space away?

Several comparisons spring to mind. First: Blue, meet Joe. Joe, meet Blue. (and Steve, we hardly knew ye.) The transition from "Steve" to "Joe" on Blue's Clues was smoother than Elmer's, in large part because the show *didn't make a big fuss over it. And I dunno about you, but we're still watching. Love the squares.

Next, thump-thump/rap-rap-rap-rap. That's blog for Bill Berry's tight drum riff on the "Eponymous" version of REM's "Radio Free Europe." Like Greg, Bill Berry left his band for health reasons, after having suffered a brain aneurysm on tour.

Like the Wiggles, the band made a fairly big stink over it. You could say the band was already verstinken at that point. But a wee listen to REM's recent reissue of "the early stuff" speaks volumes to Berry's importance to the group, his tight traps off-setting Michael Stipe's ethereal mumblings. Hot.

Of course, the odd thing about Berry's retirement was not that a significant member of a major rock group elected to leave voluntarily, but that he left before he died. When I was young, Virginia, rock stars didn't retire. . . they choked on their vomit. . .

. . . and then got replaced by the lead singer of another band. What on earth was Brian May (a lovely bloke, as they say) thinking when Queen went on tour with Bad Company's Paul Rodgers at the mike?? You don't wait until the band itself has no currency to suddenly pluck an idle singer out of your Rolodex! Don't get me wrong: I like Queen, and I like Bad Company. I *even liked the Firm, Paul Rodger's collaboration with post-Zeppelin (i.e., post-Bonham) Jimmy Page. But Rodgers playing the part of Freddie Mercury (the rainbow Wiggle)? Nuh uh. I don't buy it.

No, if there's a model the Wiggles should follow here, it's AC/DC, who did it -- smooth as Elmer's -- after Bon Scott's death, indeed at the peak of their fame. Brian Johnson's spirited delivery (a similar timbre of voice, in fact) and the "dedication album" (Back in Black) made it work. Plus they had that schoolboy thing going with Angus Young.

Now. As for poor Sam Moran. Poor Sam Moran. (It's got a little lilt to it, dunnit? yummy yummy yummy yummy poor Sam Mor-a-a-an!). Let's hope the toddler set can see beyond their devotion to Greg and not throw their juice boxes at poor Sam Moran. Full disclosure here: I have seen the Wiggles in concert. Even more: I was tempted to hurl my own sippy cup on stage when I saw that "Anthony," my (er) personal favorite, was "being played by an understudy." Hey -- sometimes it takes a little imagination to cotton on to this kid stuff (translation: mmmmm, Anthony.) But the kids went with it. Didn't even wanna know about it. Where the hey is Dorothy the Dinosaur? Henry the Octopus? More important, where's Jeff? Relax, everyone. The kids will sort this all out like string cheese.

Feel better, Greg.

In the end

2006-12-04T06:43:00.000-05:00

I looked like Sawyer on the last episode of Lost: on my knees, smelly and disheveled, and with a gun to my head.

But I *completely finished the dissertation. Remains to be seen whether they will in fact let me graduate.

P.S. If Sawyer goes, *I go.

Forgiving Capitol Offenses

2006-10-17T18:59:00.000-04:00

Some time ago, I issued a request to iTunes to do more with visuals in their program. I reflected that where much has been gained, for many (though not all), in having immediate electronic access to music, something has also been lost, since the CD era, in the way of album art. I opined that iTunes had the technology to return us to the days when pouring over album covers was as vital to the experience of listening to music as pricking the lint off the needle before laying it on the turntable.

My call has since been answered (lint-free!), as you can not only retrieve album art from music you have already purchased (from a button in “Advance” preferences), but can also – as I specifically advised at that time – click the thumbnail on the bottom left of the screen so that the album cover takes up another window in your monitor.

You’re welcome. (Yeah, as if I had anything to do with it.)

But I had also mentioned in that post how Beatles music had yet to be released online, what with Capitol records, the purveyor of Beatles music from 1964 to 1968, milking its devoted fan base of every possible dollar through every conceivable reissue of Beatles music (cf., One); and the remaining Beatles being as parsimonious with electronic editions of their music as they are profligate with lawsuits to “protect their brand."

Well, I can’t speak for Paul and Ringo, but Capitol has gone and done it again, this time with a reissue of the Beatles albums issued on Capitol records in the States – that is, *as they were issued in the States. As any hardcore Beatles fan will tell you, up until Revolver, released in 1966, the Beatles albums issued in America – the long plays, or LPs – differed in content from the extended plays, the EPs, issued in Britain. Naively, I used to think it had something to with “album technology” (or something like that) in each country. But no, the system American record companies used to tally up music royalties differed fundamentally from the system that English record companies used. It’s the economy, stupid. Hence different releases (and more specifically, shorter American LPs than British EPs).

Hardcore Beatles fans will also tell you that that’s how the most prized item of Beatles paraphernalia – the “butcher cover,” as it’s known – came about. That is, by 1966, the Beatles had already issued a store of songs on EPs in the U.K. that hadn’t been issued in the U.S. To (er) capitalize on this trove, Capitol released all of those songs on one album, Yesterday and Today, and the Beatles, gruesome wits, shot the album cover sitting in butcher coats stained with blood and laden with dismembered baby dolls and other gross offal -- a statement on how their own music was being pieced apart and reconstituted (check out the menace on George's face!).

As this album appeared not long after the flap over “we’re bigger than Jesus,” Capitol records, upon receiving droves of complaints from offended parents, reissued the album under another (sublimely benign) album cover. So few “butcher covers” went into circulation that it remains the Holy Grail among Beatles collectors.

I wish I could slam Capitol over their latest release, but I can’t. You see, American fans such as myself discovered and experienced the Beatles in the Capitol format. But when Beatles albums were initially remastered and issued digitally on CD, they were reissued according to the British EP releases on Parlophone. After all, CDs could contain that much information (not that albums couldn’t do so all along . . .).

But how could I ever listen to Rubber Soul without “I’ve Just Seen a Face” launching the album, that brisk and thrombing acoustic guitar leading into Paul’s plucky faux-country voice? The U.K. Rubber Soul begins with “Drive My Car.” Catchy. Still a crowd-pleaser (Paul played it at the Super Bowl). But that song –- a single (a corporate choice) -- doesn’t compare to the innovative, post-Dylan-goes-electric intro of “I’ve Just Seen a Face” (which appeared deep into the Help! album in the U.K.). It’s been years since I cued up one of my old scratchy Beatles albums, and I’ve tried to grow accustomed to the Parlophone versions – the British version of Help!, for example (with “I’ve Just Seen a Face”), is my favorite among those editions; and I’ve used the playlist function on iTunes (having ripped those CDs) to rearrange songs in the order I know them.

(Sidebar: There was much talk that the iPod and its technology -- the shuffle feature -- destroyed the album as a genre, because albums were no longer allowed to tell a story, from one choice beginning to an equally deliberate end. I harumphed at that critique, as I organized my iPod according to album, and didn’t turn on the shuffle. Fret not, rock snobs: your Led Zep II can remain intact.)

But rediscovering all the Beatles songs (not every song was issued on Parlophone either), and in the order in which I first heard them, has been a delirious diversion bordering on the sublime.

This is especially the case for the very first albums issued, or those collected in “The Capitol Albums, Vol. 1.” Of these, “The Second Album” stands out for one rip-roaring rock performance after another. Meet the Beatles, the one with that iconic image of the Beatles’ faces in half shadow, contains those songs that had been written and produced under the watchful ear of producer George Martin (late of the Goon Show and BBC Classical records: the perfect blend of experience for his witty and musically curious protégés). These are the sunny pop tunes we all know: “I Want to Hold Your Hand”; “I Saw Her Standing There”; “All My Loving.”

For The Beatles' Second Album, Capitol reached into that repertoire of songs – largely covers – the Beatles had played for years in the Cavern Club in Liverpool, and mastered during their punishing shift on the Reeperbahn (which is to say, playing squalid strip clubs) in Hamburg, Germany. On Meet the Beatles, the band sounds eager. On The Second Album, the Beatles sound hungry. (And when do we ever hear appetite in a sophomore release these days? If a band has made it that far, they're taxing our patience with ho-hum laments on the price of fame.) Choice cuts: George's punchy rendition of "Roll Over Beethoven" (the first track, a dynamite intro); John's throaty growl in "Money" ("that's. . . what I want!"); and Paul's tenor holler in "Long Tall Sally" (sorry, Ringo fans, no token track here); each tune firmly driven by John's pulsing rhythm guitar (fret work for which he received little credit).

Capitol also upped the ante by packaging the set so that each CD comes in its own mini-album cover, wholly duplicated from the original -- from the dingy earthtones, to the punchy 60s graphics, to the hilarious cover copy itself: "Electrifying big-beat performances!" "Never before has show business seen and heard anything like them!" Show business! What a hoot. Capitol’s efforts to reproduce the album experience, even on a mini/digital scale, detracts from the cynicism of its entire reissue enterprise.

So to those of you reticent to shell out yet again for yet another Beatles disc (each volume runs around US$60), I say: you’re excused. Shell away. And to iTunes I say again: are you listening?

Can you spell D-V-D?

2006-10-17T18:51:00.000-04:00

I understand that Akeelah and the Bee has come out on DVD down there (in the 48 contiguous). For those of you who might watch it, check out my very first post on the blog, a review that also took on Starbucks' promotion of the film.

I am the Christian Right's Worst Nightmare

2006-10-09T21:38:00.000-04:00

I am going to use The Colbert Report to teach the English Reformation.

Coz it's all about The Word.

Any questions?

Happy Thanksgiving!

2006-10-09T01:06:00.000-04:00

Yes, you read that right. Today is Thanksgiving in Canada (the True North, Strong and Free).

In an odd way I feel as though I've come full circle, in that it was the third Thursday of November last year when I received the dossier request from Queen's. I was in the full heat of cooking -- I usually roast farm-raised game hens, instead of turkey; it's much easier, you can do more with them, and everyone gets to carve their own bird -- when, on a fluke, I checked my e-mail. When I saw "dossier request" on the subject line, I thought, "Whuh? What school would order a dossier on Thanksgiving?! Is this a test?" And panicked: "How am I ever going to reply punctually, what with birds in the oven, guests downstairs, and my hands pasted with giblets?" Then ohhhhh, it's that Canadian university I fancied. Silly Canadians, they celebrate Thanksgiving in October.

Little did I know that I'd be here contemplating how we should celebrate it today (coz -- not to sound like Oprah, but -- you can never have too many opportunities to be thankful).

I played the mock-ugly American in my classes all last week, needling my students about "Thanksgiving on a Monday" (!?) and how it can possibly be Thanksgiving if there's no football game to watch. Of course, I've also been probing them about how Thanksgiving here differs from ours in the States. Interestingly, there's no arch-narrative everybody recites on cue. My U.S. readers likely remember many elementary school days devoted to the "story of the Pilgrims," how they "escaped religious persecution" for "freedom in the New World," and, btw, didn't have the slightest idea how to make popcorn. That narrative has changed in recent years, as awareness and appreciation of the Native American populations has gathered more space in standard-issue textbooks (though I imagine that most first graders are still making pilgrim hats and Indian feather head-dresses . . .).

Three themes have emerged in my quasi-research on Canadian Thanksgiving: 1. "Turkey." 2. "We have a different harvest season." and 3., most interestingly, an account that, prompted by my inquiries, one of my seminar students sent me -- we call her "Itchy," she watches the clock for me so I don't go over time -- about the occasion for the first Canadian Thanksgiving (this from one "Steve Holland"):

The first Thanksgiving was observed around 1578. Martin Frobisher, an English navigator who was searching for the Spice Islands, landed on Baffin Island. He established a settlement and held the first ceremony of thanksgiving in what is now Newfoundland. The celebration was to give thanks for surviving the long sea journey. As other settlers arrived, they continued these thanksgiving celebrations.

Note, of course, that the 1578 date puts the first Canadian Thanksgiving some 43 years before the first "American" one in 1621. And it's nice to know that English navigators were as lame with a map as the Portuguese ones were (i.e., where Cristobal Colon thought he found India on Hispaniola, Frobisher was looking for the Spice Islands in Newfoundland). I was excited to see Frobisher featured here -- he's on my syllabus later in the year, when we'll be reading reports of and from the "New World." But what strikes me most here is how the "thanks" being offered relates to the voyagers' hardiness in having survived the rough elements, their physical resilience and ability to endure. I might be informed otherwise (Q-link?), but the emphasis on fortitude strikes me as characteristically Canadian (versus the "holier than thou" chronicle with which we're indoctrinated in the U.S.).

Well, anyone who's read my blog recently knows that we found it tough to settle here ourselves, even if careless drywallers and lackadaisacal moving companies made up the rough elements we had to endure. We are grateful to be here, however, and are especially thankful for both old and new friends. Have a happy one, wherever you reside.

P.S. I'll be grilling some organic turkey legs -- the big Henry VIII ones -- with glazed parsnips, p & c, my own stuffing recipe, and mashed sweet potato with rosemary. . . and punkin pie! Can never have too many opportunities to eat punkin pie! (Now that sounds like Oprah. . .)

Have a great day.

2 Moons, 2 Great Lakes, Whatta Looney Year

2006-10-06T22:14:00.000-04:00

The Harvest Moon rose tonight. Sorry, I should've told you all beforehand, so you wouldn't miss it. The Harvest Moon is bright, orange, and ginormous when it first emerges at the horizon. (It's my belief that that's what Linus has seen and has been waiting for in the Pumpkin Patch.) While we can attribute its initial immensity and color to an illusion related to its position in the sky, its subsequent brightness is what has given the moon its name, as farmers have used the light of this moon to work through the night to collect their harvest.

My children and I watched the moon rise tonight over the point where the St. Lawrence river and Lake Ontario meet (truly breathtaking); and we are observing it now, from our house, its bright light shimmering on the surface of the river near our home.

I remember last year's moon quite vividly, too, watching it rise -- on a sultry autumn evening in Chicago -- over Lake Michigan. I had taken the kids to a park in Evanston on the lake, with the express intention of watching the moon rise. Harried and addled as I've been since we've moved here, I knew the moon was coming but was not nearly so together as to plan how we would observe it. Thanks to Blythe's friend Martha, who's having a birthday party tomorrow, we drove into town (to fetch a present), and then returned home, driving east, at just the right moment. Wow.

Of course, as my children are now old enough to remember "a year ago," it made for a nice homecoming, or housewarming (depending on how you look at it). I could see in their reaction why mariners would have been soothed by the reliability of fluctuations in the night sky.

Yo Seymour

2006-10-05T19:52:00.000-04:00

I'm from Oxford. Do we know eachother?

I'm talking about Seymour, CT, here, although the word always reminds me of the neatest pick-up line I have ever been on the other end of. I was in Spain (this is decades ago), sunbathing with girlfriends (slathered with baby oil, SPF fuggedaboutit) on the roof of a Madrid hotel. Never one for light beach reading on the order of Cosmo or Danielle Steele, I was reading J.D. Salinger's collection of short stories, Raise High the Rooftops, which includes several of Salinger's "Seymour Glass stories." More tortured and afflicted than Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, Seymour Glass is Salinger's misfit prophet par excellence.

There was a group of young men sunbathing near us, one of whom had apparently taken a fancy (I'll be humble here) to my choice of reading material. As we americanas began to collect our things, said gentleman struck up a conversation with me about Salinger (to fits of giggles from my companions), and asked ultimately if he might borrow my book for the afternoon; he promised he would leave it at reception for me.

When I collected it later, the following message was written on the inside flap:

Seymour sees more.

I would like to see you

if you would like to see me

at la Plaza Mayor at 10:00 p.m.

Are you groaning? Is it awful? Yeah, I suppose. But pretty effective for lit geeks like me. Alas, by the time I retrieved my book from reception (after a night out in the Madrid clubs), I had already missed the appointed rendezvous. . .

Ursus major?

2006-10-02T20:29:00.000-04:00

"Chicago Bears" and "Super Bowl" -- is it true? These words are being uttered in the same sentence, somewhere other than some South Side bar?

Naaaaah. Must be something wrong with my Canadian TV.

Pop Quiz

2006-10-01T10:42:00.000-04:00

Identify the work, its author, and date.

1.

"Now in a meeting like this one, where so much is at stake, where so many brilliant men are competing to think up intricate strategies of war, what if an insignificant fellow like me were to get up and advise going on another tack entirely? Suppose I said the king should leave [a foreign country] alone and stay at home, because the single kingdom of [the home country] all by itself is almost too much for one man to govern, and the king should not dream of adding others to it? Then imagine I told about the decrees of the Achorians, who live off the island of [yet another country] toward the southeast. Long ago, these people went to war to gain another realm for their king, who had inherited an ancient claim to it. . . When they had conquered it, they soon saw that keeping it was going to be as hard as getting it had been. Their new subjects were continually rebelling or being attacked by foreign invaders, the Achorians had to be constantly at war for them or against them, and they saw no hope of ever being able to disband their army. In the meantime, they were being heavily taxed, money flowed out of their kingdom, their blood was being shed for the advantage of others, and peace was no closer than it had ever been. The war corrupted their own citizens by encouraging lust for robbery and murder; and the laws fell into contempt because their king, distracted with the cares of two kingdoms, could give neither one his proper attention.

When they saw that the list of these evils was endless, the Achorians took counsel together and very courteously offered their king his choice of keeping whichever of the two kingdoms he preferred, because he couldn't rule them both. . .

[So] suppose I told the . . . king's council that all this warmongering, by which so many nations were kept in turmoil as a result of one man's connivings, would almost certainly exhaust his treasury and demoralize his people, and yet in the end come to nothing, through some mishap or another. And therefore he should look after his ancestral kingdom, improve it as much as he could, cultivate it in every conceivable way. . . How do you think, my dear [name], the other councillors would take this speech of mine?"

"Not very well, I'm sure," said I.

2.

“It was only one example of a visitor to the Oval Office not telling the president the whole story or the truth. Likewise, in these moments where [name] had someone from the field there in the chair beside him, he did not press, did not try to open the door himself and ask what the visitor had seen and thought. The whole atmosphere too often resembled a royal court, with [name] and [name] in attendance, some upbeat stories, exaggerated good news and a good time had by all.”

1. _________

2. _________

A. Bob Woodward, State of Denial, 2006 (Source: NY Times)

B. Thomas More, Utopia, 1516

Gold stars for those who correctly marked 1B, 2A, as the differences between them are slight: plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Western Civ grads likely recall More's treatise most for its fictive portrayal of the island of Utopia (from the Greek ou [not] + topos [place] = "noplace"), whose every facet of life and government More contrasted, implicitly, to conditions in England under Henry VIII. Raphael Hythloday's monologue on the isle takes up only Book II of the volume, however. Book I begins as "Thomas More" and his companion, Peter Giles, implore the Utopian traveler to "enter some king's service." As Giles entreats him: "Your learning and your knowledge of various countries and peoples would entertain [the king], while your advice and your supply of examples would be very helpful in the counsel chamber." Raphael refuses, and the book recounts his reasons for rejecting public service, chief among them his observation that counsel chambers typically stifle the airing of contrary views, and serve to reinforce the self-interest of their members. Have a look, Bob; it might give you some prose.

Indeed the *central question of Utopia is what role men [sic] of letters and learning should play in the creation and critique of public policy. This was the great call of the humanists: while the scholastics had directed their intellect to matters of theology (no less a public cause, at that time, but different in focus), and counsel chambers were attended chiefly by courtiers who had inherited their rank, it was humanists such as Thomas More who argued that the end of education (for them, the study of ancient Greece and Rome) should be public service.

How interesting then, that our "education president," who spouts humanist truisms like a fidgety bingo caller, should create in his chambers his own fictive island, where he reigns with the obtuse indifference of the Achorian king.

Of course, the weekend's political chat shows, especially those of the Fox variety, have been animated by attempts to "shoot the messenger" (a phrase we owe to Shakespeare, from Antony and Cleopatra), but I reckon it will be hard to bury big Bob, whose previous two books on "Bush at War" disqualify him as an dyed-in-the-wool Bush-basher, and whose message in this book merely restates what is already the conventional wisdom.

Thus another quote from Shakespeare (this from Henry IV, Pt. 1): wisdom cries out in the streets, and no man regards it. . .

Post-script Weds. Oct. 5: I shared this riveting parallel with my students this week. I can do that up here; you're not likely to find many pro-Bush undergrads. What's more, I wanted to show them the way in which the central concerns of Utopia remain vital and relevant. Finally, we observed how Woodward's title could be read as a variation on More's: how just as U-topia means "no place," state of denial -- where a denial means "no" -- also means "no state." Surely a dystopia if ever there was one.

Suffice to say . . .

2006-09-28T00:06:00.000-04:00

I have been too consumed with my new responsibilities to post (or think), and am grateful to those who have kept checking in.

On the personal front, I have been dealing with ongoing habitational matters. When I first arrived here with the children, the new (dream) house was not habitable, as the folks we had contracted to complete necessary work on the place had not only not completed their work, but also caused significant damage in the process (hello, upstairs toilet leaking in the kitchen. . . . ?! lovely). That was the first week or so -- and then, as you know, our moving truck was, well, in Illinois. . . in Illinois . . . in Illinois . . . and then managed to arrive three weeks later. At this point, we've got all our stuff -- but the folks who did complete work want to get paid (er, have I mentioned we *still haven't sold the house in Chicago? it's pretty thrilling to have mountains of debt in two countries. . .).

Just as stressful, if not more, I have been trying to settle our children in the best possible school situations. My readers in the US might not know that four-year-old children in Ontario (though not all Canadian provinces) attend Junior Kindergarten, aka JK. Despite my best efforts, it did not appear that JK in the public school system here would be best for our Ollie, and we have identified another private school more ideal for him, and have been trying to transfer and situate him most peacefully there (all while weighing whether and when his sister should join him, having endured, now *successfully, what was initially a tough transition for her to Grade One in her local public school).

Suffice to say. . . my head feels as though it might explode at any minute from the rigor of deciding what is best for my children.

We can thank the New York Times, however, for some material to allow me briefly to return to old form. There is an article today about the nation of Kazakhstan's ongoing indig•nation at the comedic turns of one Sacha Baron Cohen, the British comedian whose character Borat "visits" America on its "behalf." As the Times reports:

Now Mr. Cohen has a feature-length film, opening Nov. 3 in the United States, called “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” with a title as malapropos as Borat’s sendup of Kazakhstan as a backward land of poverty, prostitution and bigotry.

I know I will sound like Borat when I say this (and I hope to, somewhat), but: tell me, what is this word, "malapropos," I do not understand, eh?

Is it intended, as spelled (from the French), as mal-à-propos, or "inappropriate"? Or is it related to the dear Mrs. Malaprop, of the Sheridan play, The Rivals, whose droll mal-locutions in English led to her namely addition to our language (via the French etymon)? After all, the "title" of the film conveys Borat's own wayward way with our words. Might the Old Grey Lady indulge in some jouissance -- which sounds more like something Ali G might fancy -- in conjuring several such meanings and associations at once?

Ah, yes, the pleasure of the text. . .

(Can you tell I'm an English professor now?)

Some thoughts on my purpose here (Vol II)

2006-09-14T21:41:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I know the crickets have been chirping here again (thanks, Jim). The chief reason for the inactivity here continues to be the rigorous ongoing adjustment to our new lives here in Ontario; but I also started teaching this week. I am delighted to share that I have *thoroughly enjoyed it, and look forward to a terrific year, if not career, teaching the bright students here at Queen's University.

Indeed I've been bursting to write about my experiences in the classroom, but have serious reservations about doing so, wanting not only to protect my students' privacy, but also to preserve their sense, to which they are entitled, that they have their own unique forum in our classroom (without their prof going off and blabbing about it to the ether . . . ). Also, even prior to this week, I had been mulling over how my blog forms part of my "brand," and how being on faculty now -- i.e., assuming another, quite distinct, public persona -- might be complicated or affected by my posts here. Again, I am thinking of the best interests of my students, and, as all professors do, about how I conceive myself as a representative of my discipline (others might call it how I "conceive my authority").

I have no answers on these topics yet, but that's what's been on my mind here. In truth, I have been considering launching a group blog for some time (i.e., long before The New Republic claimed to have invented it), in the interests of dialogue as well as to keep myself out there, but less frequently (i.e., less onerously), and so as not to lose my valued readers (and perhaps to gain some). As David Greenberg was informed, to his chagrin, there are several vital and valuable academic blogs online (as you know, I chiefly subscribe to Language Log). And I know there are teaching blogs, but (in my cursory search, I could be wrong) they appear mostly to concern primary and secondary school teaching. I am curious whether an academic blog on college and university teaching might prove a valuable resource -- if not recourse -- for interested writers and readers.

Academia has been in want of new models and protocols for some time: might this vehicle offer new, and fruitful, avenues for exchange, in a way that might also benefit our students? Is there a way in which the essentially provisional quality of an online post -- its status as a response to a fairly immediate stimulus, its expectation of other responses in turn -- could prove valuable not only to instructors, but also to students (who might see in the dialogue the way we weigh the stakes in our choices, aka "teaching moments"), and perhaps, ideally, a reading public increasingly skeptical of the quality of teaching in colleges and universities, indeed our dedication to that craft?

Of course, the beauty of the academic blog is that it allows scholars to engage one another both swiftly and directly. That is, the primary mode of scholarly exchange is publication, but the length of time from draft (to acceptance, to revision, to publication, to review) to widespread conversation is considerably protracted. Academic conferences go some way towards expediting the transmission and receipt of new work, but the academics among my readers know how ungratifying such conferences can occasionally be as well.

On the other hand, the flip side of academic blogs -- as with those blogs that pretend to journalistic integrity -- is that they remove from the transaction the various stop-gaps in place to ensure the veracity and integrity of the academic product. Editors and peer reviewers are there (ideally) to preserve the value and legitimacy of the discipline, if not of scholarship itself.

And, as stated, I worry myself that the directness and swiftness of the blog as a medium -- really, I'm dying to write about what happened in lecture today, and get feedback on it -- somehow compromises the integrity of the classroom itself, in that my students (some of whom, as I know, have already googled me and discovered my blog) are not empowered to speak for themselves. I believe it's not fair for me to write about them, even anonymously, as, even when speaking laudably about them, I might misrepresent their views. To me, that's an abuse of power I do not wish to commit.

Of course (other academics are thinking), I have my department colleagues to turn, or crow, or cry to; and my university has followed many others in establishing an excellent teaching center (here it's centre, of course). But is there a way in which the group blog can become a reputable and responsible resource for college and university teaching (and, one would hope, scholarship on that topic)?

Think think (said Pooh, as he scratched his head, in his thinking spot). Comments welcome (from both my academic *and non-academic readers, who might identify more with students), in whatever way you see fit.

For the time being, I will keep my posts here related to more personal developments and observations. . . have I mentioned how beautiful it is here? (Indeed the crickets are chirping. . . how lovely . . .)

A million thanks

2006-09-08T23:19:00.000-04:00

. . . to those of you who sent me birthday wishes. Your thoughts are especially appreciated this year.

The Pasta Salad Recipe

2006-09-08T09:58:00.000-04:00

This is one of those meals (or sides) that followed the familiar household libretto, “‘what’s for dinner?’ ‘I dunno’ ‘what do we have in the fridge?’ ‘I’ll see what I can throw together.’” An oldie, and as in most cases of des-, er, inspiration (at least in my kitchen), a goodie.

Ingredients

Pasta • I prefer farfalle – the bowties – or orzo – looks like rice -- for this recipe
Olive oil • the more virgin the better
Fresh Garlic, minced
Pine nuts (pignoles)
Feta, crumbled
Tomatoes • I prefer grape tomatoes, halved, but have been using these lovely sweet golden cherry ones I get from a farmer here. Luscious. And as ever, never refrigerate your tomatoes, folks; turns ‘em into styrofoam.
Fresh Basil • Fresh is a must here: dried won’t do.
Black pepper

I know, you’re looking at this list and thinking, how is this pasta salad any different from the cold lunch special at my local B or C-list restaurant? It’s all in the technique, friends. And in the amounts. You’ll note I didn’t specify any here – it’s all by taste and feel, what gets your groove on. It’s the way I cook.

Which is why I don’t go for pastry cheffing, which requires the kind of mathematical precision that had me wrecking my grade-point average in sophomore chemistry (really, what’s so wrong about an unbalanced equation?). Indeed it’s why I’m not keen on growing roses either (of the few perennials here at our new home, there are a couple of rose bushes), which are similarly persnickety. Big concepts that allow for lots of creativity in the details, that’s me.

Ok, let’s get to it.

As you heat your water for the pasta (say, a box of farfalle or a bag of orzo), pour olive oil into a large sauté pan (say, a quarter-inch). Brown your minced garlic and pignoles together (to taste) in the olive oil while you cook the pasta. Meanwhile, crumble the feta in a large mixing bowl.

Drain the pasta and dump the pasta on to the crumbled feta. Then pour the olive oil/garlic/pignoles onto the pasta. Mix while hot: the pasta will absorb much of the nutty flavor from the hot oil mixture and cheese.

Now, you can add the other ingredients now and serve the meal hot (which I have, often with a protein source on top). For the cold salad, cool the pasta mixture enough to put in the fridge overnight (to give the pasta more time to absorb the flavor). Then, right before serving, take the mix out, add the tomatoes, the fresh basil (ribboned), and the cracked black pepper (no need for salt, there’s plenty in the feta), and mix. Again, everything is all to taste and sight (it’s very pretty), but you should know I don’t hold back on anything here. If the pasta seems dry, add more olive oil to juice it up – but not vinegar! (Vinegar detracts from all the other lovely fresh flavors). Serve and enjoy.

Trivia Question of the Day

2006-09-08T07:59:00.000-04:00

What do Richard the Lionheart, Sid Caesar, Peter Sellers, Patsy Cline, David Arquette, and Pink all have in common?

Open Season on "America's Top Academics"

2006-09-05T11:58:00.001-04:00

The New Republic online has launched a new feature titled "Open University," in which "America's top academics" blog on the news of the day. As David Greenberg introduces the feature:

To the best of our knowledge, this blog is unlike any other out there. It's dedicated to thinking about not just the news of the day but also the news from the academy: Controversies in campus politics that warrant thoughtful discussion. Scholarship from our various disciplines that we think deserves a broader hearing. Ideas we had in doing our research that seem eerily relevant to something we read in The New York Times today. Our bloggers range widely over the political spectrum. They include both novices and old hands . . .

I implore the academics among my readers to check out TNR's list of contributors to the feature, and to weigh in here with any observations you might have about TNR's selection of "America's top academics" . . . Also, are we really to believe the mag's assertion that the series is "first-of-its-kind"? I'm dubious, though this particular academic is more concerned with being on top of her own courses (which start next week) than with marshalling the evidence to refute that claim (though I think you can expect me to pipe up at "OU" at some point, from the rear of the classroom, here up in Canada . . . ).

In the meantime, for those non-academics among my readers, I plan to make up for my recent (stress-induced) absence here by posting the recipe for my pasta salad. Will that do?

Update, Sept. 6 5:37 EDT: Jacob Levy, professor of political theory at McGill, just up the road, wisely calls Greenberg out on his specious boast. Greenberg eats crow, only somewhat. Pasta salad recipe still forthcoming.

Starry Starry Night

2006-08-24T23:08:00.000-04:00

Ok, I think I might be ready to return. It has been a grueling couple of weeks here, camping out in our empty house (the moving van finally arrived on Tuesday), sleeping on the floor in the same room with my children, trying my best to help them cope with the upheaval, and enjoying no break (in the way of child care) to collect myself and my sanity. I have not had the opportunity to allow any random or extraneous thought enter my head, and anything I might've posted during this sojourn would've been sour, if not bilious.

Taking out the recycling tonight, however, breathing in the clean river air and looking up at the sky -- which bursts here with stars from every horizon -- I finally felt some peace. I use the word peace with some trepidation and due reverence, as -- sorry to go somewhat maudlin here -- the one thought that kept entering my mind -- that is, each time I felt I was on the verge of losing it -- was it could be much worse, my kids could be in Beirut.

For as long as I can remember, the word "Beirut" has coded for a generic sense of chaos or disorder. Were world events not as they are at the moment, I'm sure I would have said at some point, in the past day or so, with boxes and belongings strewn about the house, that it's "like Beirut around here." One cannot be so flippant these days, however, as the reality of "Beirut" recently became vivid to us all in a way that renders its generic, metaphorical usage in our argot indecorous, if not callous. It's not like Beirut here, no, not at all.

Indeed where we now live could not be farther (a word for distance) or further (a word for concepts) from the bleak reality of Lebanon's capital city, and it was that very sense of general safety and imminent well-being that helped me endure, even when my special-needs son was unleashing his third or fourth unendurable tantrum of the day. (An interesting loop here: recall my series of posts on the Italian football [soccer] player Materazzi, who claimed he didn't know what the word "terrorist" meant, and that he only used it to describe his young child. . . I know what he was driving at, but still . . . ugh).

Ironically, this sentiment became most present to me on an occasion when my children were keenly frightened: we had a blackout a couple of nights ago. Sure, we lost power from time to time where we last lived, but in a suburb only a couple of miles from the Chicago city line, it never really gets dark. Here, however, a blackout means black. The only lights I could see were those twinkling in the distance from upstate New York, far across the St. Lawrence. Blythe and Ollie were (as they say) seriously freaked (especially in the house, which was still empty), but to "redirect" them (as they say in parenting lingo), I took them outside to look at the stars, indeed to behold an assemblage of sky lights such as they have never seen.

The Milky Way washes across the sky above our house, and all the major constellations (e.g., the big and little dippers, Casiopeia, Andromeda, etc) are crisp and clear. That night we saw two shooting stars (August is high season for them), and I taught them the difference between a satellite (a steady light that moves swiftly across the sky) and an airplane (which has blinking lights), as well as how you can tell a star (which twinkles) from a planet (which doesn't: whither Pluto?). Enthralled by the sight, they nonetheless remained anxious, and I marvelled, empathetically, at the sense of disorientation my children felt in being precipitously disconnected from the electronic media that had been an ineluctable part of their world (views).

It reminded me of when I was teaching in East LA, and had helped chaperone a field trip a new and innovative biology teacher ("Mr. Libby") arranged for his sophomores to visit the desert. Joshua Tree Monument Park, to be exact (where that U2 album cover was photographed). These kids were so accustomed to the unrelenting din of the inner city -- the music, the street noise, (yes) the gunfire -- that they were visibly and audibly unhinged by the silence of the desert. They "acted out" by making as loud a ruckus a hundred or so fifteen-year-old Mexican-American boys can possibly make. It was too quiet for them -- they had to compensate, somehow make that tranquil ecosystem their own.

Being the nature groupie I am, undaunted, if not buoyed, by the delectable silence, I led the boys off on all sorts of excursions, and, leading them down off of Jumbo Rocks, proceeded to fall into a crevice and break my arm. But that's another post (Miz Doo-har-deen, Miz Doo-har-deen, are you okay?) . . . though, as I think about it, not really. In the middle of the California desert, on a steaming school bus, no hospital for miles and miles, my arm visibly (nauseatingly) very broken, we finally reached a care center: but the medics wouldn't give me any painkillers because I was still technically supervising children. Ouch.

The beauty of that story is this: that on the long trip back to East LA, I had fifteen-year-old Mexican-American boys offering me their gang bandanas to soak in water and lay on my arm. Despite my pain-induced delirium, I will never forget the sight of red and blue and white bandanas -- the colors of opposing gangs -- wrapped together around my zig-zag forearm. A beautiful sight -- really, the kind one would hope to see in places such as Beirut.

Asleep right now in Arcadian Ontario, my children won't see the likes of the inner city for some time (until they follow their mum to work there of their own volition). For them it's another peaceful starry starry night. I wish the same peace for everyone's children, from East LA to Baghdad to Beirut.

And yes, I am consciously citing Don MacLean's "Starry Starry Night" (which has been threading through my head since I first began this), MacLean's tribute to Vincent Van Gogh. . .

"And when no hope was left in sight on that starry, starry night, you took your life, as lovers often do . . . but I could've told you, Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you . . ."

Bon nuit.

Breakfast in Ontario

2006-08-11T20:43:00.000-04:00

When I first moved to the midwest US in the mid-1990's, I was immediately struck by how often I heard John (ne Cougar) Mellencamp on the radio and at parties (back when I was so green that parties were still keggers). Sure, we'd all heard "Small Town" and "Jack and Diane" aplenty in the early 80s, maybe even tapped along, and (surely) couldn't miss the videos. But to this day in the American midwest, as when I first traced Ferris Bueller's path down Lake Shore Drive, the pride of Bloomington, IN, still gets a conspicuous amount of radio play.

Likewise, if you ever travel to the northeast (the tri-state area of NY, NJ, and CT, where I'm originally from), you can't scan the dial for long without hearing the distinct tenor of Billy Joel. I was away for ten years or so and hadn't heard one tortured line from "We Didn't Start the Fire," one gratingly peppy clip of "Uptown Girl," when, bam, I keyed up whatever rental car I had hired at the time to have "Movin' Out," then "Piano Man," then "Big Shot," then "Tell Her About it," immediately and incessantly assault my ears.

Of course, John and Billy made their careers as local boys, so it's apt that their tunes serve as regional soundtracks.

Here, however, in Ontario, Canada, who might you expect to dominate the buttery-clean airwaves? Shania Twain? Alannis Morrisette? Rush (yep, they're from Canada)? Nope.

Supertramp. Can't get away from 'em. (And they're from the U.K. -- part of the Commonwealth, with Canada, I know, but still hardly local.) "The Logical Song.""Long Way Home.""Give a Little Bit.""Dreamer." I've heard them all, several times over, since we've been here (and many for the first time since the late 1970's).

In fact, the first night we tuned in to Canadian TV, none else but Canadian Idol was on (ha!). The celebrity guest? Rodger Hodgson, lead singer of Supertramp. And Dennis DeYoung of Styx, too, but I haven't yet been aurally afflicted by "Lady." (I suppose "Renegade" wouldn't be all that bad, for the laff with the kids, you know, just to embarrass them. Mommy, stop singing, pleeaase . . . Sorry, kids, Mommy's feeling 13 again)

Of course, Supertramp's Canadian club has been only one surprise, and easily the most benign, since we've arrived. . . the others shall make up the next post (I'm just easing us all back into this; thanks to those who have kept checking in).

There but for the grace, go we, as we are here, and the area is indeed so lovely. Tomorrow we vacate the extended-stay Days Inn on Division to move in to our (St. Lawrence) riverside house, though saying we move in is something of an overstatement. It'll be more like squatting, for a while. That is, for reasons that fail comprehension, our worldly goods, which (as reported here) I had packed and witnessed being loaded on to an Allied truck on August 2, remain in Illinois (musically accompanied by the Cougar, one would think). But again, that's another post of a wholly different tenor.

Besides (rock snobs bedamned), I kinda like Supertramp.

O Canada

2006-08-05T00:01:00.000-04:00

By the time most of you read this, I will be in Kingston, Ontario. As I'm not sure when I will have internet access, you can expect a lull in the next few days. I look forward to reporting all my discoveries (and errors) in Canadian English. All best, friends. Peace.

My spelling bee comfort counselor is not allowed to leave my side

2006-08-03T12:38:00.000-04:00

Responding to my 8/2 post, a kind reader anonymously informs me:

A Canadian dollar is spelled "loonie." A "looney," generally, is someone locked up for his or her own protection.

Take me away, and lock me up, for it would appear that I have orthographically gone off the rails.

I will allow the misspelling to remain below, as evidence of my abundant need to be committed. Good thing I found this out before I moved to Canada on Saturday (though I've got precious few loonies at this point to spend).

P.S. to my kind anonymous reader: I note that you're visiting here from Queen's, where I will be taking up my appointment in the English department. Don't be a stranger! There's an e-mail link in my profile.

Weighing my words

2006-08-03T10:28:00.000-04:00

There is an article in the Times this morning about married men who come to full awareness of their homosexuality, and wish to pursue relationships with men, but are reluctant to leave the comforts and stability of married life (through divorce). The piece reports on one such husband who openly pursued other relationships with men, but had promised his wife that he would not have sex with them (a promise he was evidently unable to keep):

But she wasn’t fooled and forced him to move into an in-law apartment in the family home, a way station to a more formal separation.

Reading this, I was immediately struck by the term "way station." I thought the term was spelled "weigh station," foggily assuming that the locution was related to off-road service stations for trucks, i.e., where trucks get weighed; and, that the term captured not only the sense of "off-road," but also the idea that "weigh stations" were places where one weighed things, weighed one's options, before resuming one's journey (as it were).

Ding! (I'm making my comfort counselor work overtime these days, aren't I?)

No, the term is indeed "way station," and derived not from trucking but from trains (my train-mad son would be appalled). Also known as a "way-side station," a way station is an "intermediate station on a railway route" (OED). I think I like mine better, but that's not the way these things work.

Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus (at Slate) and Andrew Sullivan (at Time, and his blog, The Daily Dish) are currently embroiled in an online spat about decorum in writing (or speaking) about homosexuality. In this vein, it might be noted that there is no word from the article about marriages in which the wife pursues other relationships with women. (No way! Way.)

You know, knick-knacks, trinkets, curios . . .

2006-08-02T22:24:00.000-04:00

. . . Tchotchkes! If I only had a (Canadian) dollar (a looney) for how many times I heard someone say this week that they didn't know how to spell it. The "correct" spelling is perhaps remote, related as it is to Yiddish. Still, I've been surprised that a phonetic spelling (say, chotchkies?) was so untenable as to give my helpers pause when marking our boxes.

Regardless, the Allied truck pulled out today, with far too many boxes marked "tchotchkes," and boy are my dogs barkin'. I've got Barney Rubble feet right now, they're so tired and swollen.

To make matters worse, my associates and I were so thorough these past few days that in preparing to sit down now, finally, I couldn't find a corkscrew. Curses. When was the last time you shoved a cork into a wine bottle with a screwdriver? (I started with a phillips, to create the necessary aperture, and then used a flat-head to jam the cork into the unsuspecting Pinot Gris. Splash! Relief.) Next thing you know I'll be setting up beer bongs and doing upside-down margaritas. That's right, kids, professors gone wild!

The OED informs me that another Anglicized Yiddish spelling variant of tchotchke is tsatske, and that there is also a diminitive form of the word (yeah, all those little buggers impossible to dust and which require far too much newspaper wrapping), which is spelled tsatskelah. I'm surprised that the OED only dates the word back to 1965, to a W. Markfield text titled "To an Early Grave" (?); but in my work in early modern English, I regularly find earlier usages of words than the dictionary has thus far recorded (FYI).

L'chaim, no doubt, and to peace and well-being.

Gross Headline Pun of the Day (8.01.06)

2006-08-01T18:08:00.000-04:00

Oh, man. Posted today on Slate:

Mel, Atonin'

The hed to an NPR broadcast, featuring Slate contributors, on Mel Gibson's late apologies.

On a scale of one to ten: zero. First, because there is no rational semantic link between skin pigment and Mel G.'s regret for his malignant bacchanalia. Second, because you've got to a. work through a comma and b. grasp the upshot of the apostrophe in order to c. get (I refuse to say appreciate) the pun.

Pretty gross. And far too much work for little (to no) payoff.

I suppose I should post my evolving rationale for my point system, but am I pressed for time at the moment. A look at the last entry should clue you in until then.

My budding linguist

2006-08-01T10:48:00.000-04:00

Out of the mouths of babes. Yesterday my six-year-old daughter inquired: "Mommy, why did the person who made up words make up bad words we can't say?"

Why indeed, as once again I found myself speechless.

More nosh (as I find myself eating my own words)

2006-07-29T20:41:00.000-04:00

When I first posted my entry on Iran's attempt to expel Western words from Farsi, I wrote the sub-hedder as "Gnoshing on National Language Policies." The word is not spelled gnosh, however, but nosh (score another point for Occam's razor). Like many spelling bee contestants, I overthought the word. But I wasn't really thinking -- I think I was gnashing, and assuming an onomatopoeiatic spelling of the word related to the sound of chewing. Ding! (I exit the stage, tearful and red-faced, in the arms of a comfort counselor.)

Thankfully I have had food on the brain all day today (though, sadly, not comfort food), because it was only when I sat down to write this post did it occur to me to check that spelling.

I have had food on the brain all day due to two compelling articles I read online, pieces which are poles apart in terms of occasion and point of view, but nonetheless strike me as interrelated. In the first, Julia Keay at the British journal Literary Review writes a review of the book The Bloodless Revolution: Radical Vegetarians and the Discovery of India (Harper Collins), by Tristram Stuart. Keay's review, titled "How to be Lank, Fleet and Nimble," presents an adept and fascinating precis of Stuart's account of the history of vegetarianism. . . falling short only in failing to clue me in as to how Stuart relates that history to 'the Discovery of India.'

For like language, food is power, as cultures define themselves according to what they include and exclude in their native cuisine. In this respect, you are what you eat. Openness and/or resistance to foreign assimilation might be gauged by the diversity of available and acceptable food offerings; and, like language, it is hard to stem the influx of foreign influences, once they start pouring in. I am keen to learn, then, how vegetarianism, a positive form of gastronomic asceticism, relates to the covetous process of colonization, especially in India (mmm . . . korma). Might just look that one up.

Meanwhile, at the emphatically more prosaic online mag Salon, the iconoclastic and (recently) itinerant chef Anthony Bourdain has written an account of his past week spent in Lebanon, where he had been filming a segment of his Travel channel show, "No Reservations," when the bombs started falling.

Bourdain is one of those characters I'm not entirely sure what to make of. I'll be honest -- I find him kinda captivating. He found a niche in which to hone a distinctive voice (long before the likes of Gordon Ramsay arrived on shore to assault our ears); and, being French myself, and tending more to the omnivorous than the ascetic, I find his program absorbing viewing, especially when he takes care to derive the origins of the name of a particular food-stuff, and to spell out the cultural importance of that food-stuff to the society the program is featuring. Oh, who am I kidding, I just dig his passion (you should see me and my father sit down to a meal).

Writing this, though, I am keenly reminded of a graduate student party I attended years ago where I blithely commented that I didn't mind Tom Snyder (ugh, I can still hear the groans of the effete soughing across the room . . .). Whether Bourdain is your cup of tea or not (and many justifiably dislike him, he does strive for noxiousness), his dispatches from Beirut make for provocative reading, a biting first-person account that cuts through the conventional, sterilized media reports.

Mangia.

Elastic Loaves! Get Yer Fresh Hot Elastic Loaves!

2006-07-29T09:14:00.000-04:00

*Noshing on National Language Policies

An AP article in today's Times online reports that President Bush's prolix pen-pal, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has ordered all Western words deported from Iran. The article is short enough to copy here:

Iranian President Bans Usage of Foreign Words

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 29, 2006
Filed at 6:53 a.m. ET

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as ''pizzas'' which will now be known as ''elastic loaves,'' state media reported Saturday.

The presidential decree, issued earlier this week, orders all governmental agencies, newspapers and publications to use words deemed more appropriate by the official language watchdog, the Farhangestan Zaban e Farsi, or Persian Academy, the Irna [Islamic Republic News Agency] official news agency reported.

The academy has introduced more than 2,000 words as alternatives for some of the foreign words that have become commonly used in Iran, mostly from Western languages. The government is less sensitive about Arabic words, because the Quran is written in Arabic.

Among other changes, a ''chat'' will become a ''short talk'' and a ''cabin'' will be renamed a ''small room,'' according to official Web site of the academy.

Astute readers will recognize in the decree the kind of linguistic lock-down that historically accompanies the consolidation of geopolitical power. Hitler was renowned for inventing German words to refer euphemistically to Nazi operations, e.g., Einvolkung ("one people"), to refer to Aryan assimilation, and Sonderbehandlung ("special treatment"), to execution. But the attempt to exterminate languages deemed foreign and threatening to national interests crosses all geopolitical boundaries and sensibilities.

Among Western European languages, the promotion of the native tongue accompanied the vernacular impetus of the religious Reformation and the centralization of the nation-state, as native languages replaced Latin as the language of religion and official state business.

In Italy, the Renaissance poet Dante Alighieri launched the Italian vernacular movement with his treatise De vulgari eloquentia (ca. 1300), in which he privileged the native tongue (locutio prima) over the learned languages, Latin and Greek. As Italy's city-states vied for dominance of the Appenine peninsula, la questione della lingua had Italians perennially debating which regional variety of Italian should be privileged as the vernacular standard.

In England, the London idiom, "the flower of English," was assumed to be superior to all other regional dialects. Instead, sixteenth-century English humanists protested the influx of words “englished” from Latin and Continental languages: Sir John Cheke opined that “our tongue should be written clear and pure, unmixt and unmangled with borrowings of other tongues”; and Thomas Wilson, who wrote one of the first rhetorics written in English, lamented that “some seek so far outlandish English, that they forget altogether their mothers' language.”

Wilson's use of the word outlandish is key here. Referring to language spoken in the "out-lands," and defining that language as irregular and eccentric, the term links English's linguistic boundaries to the country's national borders, as England looked to fend off any form of foreign invasion.

Unlike France, however, as well as present-day Iran, England never established a formal academy charged with policing the purity of the native tongue. In this respect, it is significant that the Times article does not specify what punishments will be meted to Iranians who continue to use the banned words: Who will regulate the new decree? How will offenses be prosecuted?

It goes without saying (at least in this blog) that language usage is nigh-impossible to police, and language change impossible to stem. That said, we cannot underestimate the punitive stakes of the legislation, or consider such a futile attempt to regulate speech immaterial (read: human rights advocates, on alert).

Nor can we consider the law foreign to our own legal and linguistic sensibilities, an outlandish instance of Islamic fundamentalism. After all, the "English first" campaign here is inseparable from debates over U.S. immigration, and millions of immigrants stand to suffer materially from what is legislated and enacted in both.

What will domestic enforcement of the Iranian language policy reveal more broadly about that nation's will to global power? (Here we might note that the word "Iran" is an Anglicized form of the name of the country, derived from same Sanskrit root as the word "Aryan.") How might "English first" policies be feasibly -- and responsibly (i.e., Constitutionally) -- regulated here?

Something to chew on while you eat your pizza (from Italian) in your summer cabin (from Spanish). Indeed, feel free to chat about it -- chat is native to English.

Update 6:04 CDT: Seeing as Mark Liberman at Language Log was kind enough to offer me a hat tip, let me return the gratitude with the link to his post, which he has just updated with a fascinating paper on Farhangestan guidelines. Do check it out.

*As I note in my subsequent post, I first misspelled this word as gnoshing. Mea culpa.

Oh the Thinks that Can Stink!

2006-07-28T12:23:00.000-04:00

In keeping with my current project to check off “things we should see and do before we leave Chicago,” I took my six-year-old daughter and a bevy of her friends to see Seussical, the Musical at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) on Navy Pier.

Before I continue, I should note that I have served as a “Preamble” scholar at the CST for the past four seasons, delivering pre-performance lectures on the plays audiences were about to see in production. As words cannot express how abundantly I enjoyed these occasions, my readers should know that I am loathe to criticize, publicly, any production at that theater, and that my ensuing comments are directed to Seussical, the Musical, one of the many children’s productions the CST has featured (to their credit), and not to the CST itself. Are we abundantly clear on that issue? Okay.

Whoo, boy, what a stinker. Not worthy of Midsummer Night Dream’s Snout, the tinker. If I had my choice, I’d have raised up my voice, and said, the only Whos Who would watch this were drinkers.

I can’t keep this up, but you get the idea.

I knew that the musical had fared badly during its Broadway run, but was cheered, or encouraged, by reports that the entire production had been revamped for its national tour. For me, of course, the interest lay in how the musical would translate the distinct and idiosyncratic language of Theodor Geisel to the theatrical stage. This is a topic I took up regularly in my Preamble talks on Shakespeare: that is (I would say), if you found yourself having a hard time following the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English, you could look to the other unique resources of theater – gesture, tone, body language, blocking, setting, props, music, lighting, sound, etc. – which help convey the meaning of Shakespeare’s language and thus help you understand and follow the play.

My guess is that the CST might have thought this particular musical would illuminate this intricate process of page-stage translation. Having viewed the production, however, my feeling is that Seussical’s writers and producers would have been well served if they had observed some contemporary productions of Shakespeare (before turning to write their own). For what Seussical, the Musical fails to do is effectively translate the linguistic originality and whimsy of Dr. Suess to a theatrical medium.

Rather, by choosing to subsume several Dr. Suess stories under one overarching and, sorry to say, tedious narrative plot – anchored around Horton (he who heard the Who and who also hatched an egg) -- the musical underplays the vitality of Dr. Suess’s language, so as to render the musical ultimately and ironically un-Seussical.

It is easy to see the writers’ thinking behind this (though in theater, if you’re second-guessing the writers’ motivations, they have failed): they have tried to devise a dominant story-line to focus and hold their young audiences’ attention. In this respect, and perhaps I was off-base in my expectations, I thought the musical would comprise a series of mini-productions of Dr. Suess’s many -- and most -- popular books, such that each mini-production would be narratively contained and coherent. Instead, the production asserts one major story arc, but periodically inserts into this arch-story other highly abridged and varied Dr. Seuss plots. In all honesty, I had a hard time following along (and I’m used to sorting out Shakespeare’s plots, so it’s pretty hard to lose me . . .).

It would be easy to carp that the musical also didn’t feature many of the books we most associate with Suess, and hold dear: would one mere reference to Sam, and to Green Eggs and Ham, have been so hard to cover (sad I am)? Anticipating the occasion, I had prepped my daughter for the musical the night before by reading some of our favorite Dr. Suess books . . . and felt embarrassed (a horrible feeling, for a parent) that as the show progressed, I saw none such books theatrically represented.

While I didn’t see the original Broadway production, I understand from online reviews that it tried too hard to cover too many bases, such that Sam I Am, and Green Eggs and Ham, and Fox in Sox, and One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, and that environmentally forward-thinking Lorax, and, and, and – Oh the places you can go! – might have fallen prey to theatrical editing. Still, a Suess devotee, I was hard-pressed to recognize some of the characters and plots that were retained and featured, and, what’s more, the way they were represented invited scant interest (the object of theatre being to make you care about characters you don’t “know”). I kept looking around to see kids mostly fidgeting, and none of the rapt wonder Dr. Seuss should inspire.

In the end, it comes down to this: those of us who love Dr. Suess love the sound of his words, and the way they feel, the way his words trip over our tongues and lips -- and eyes! -- when we read them. Any production of Suess, whether in our children’s bedrooms or at a major city venue, has to foreground and feature that delight in language. I can think of myriad ways this might be achieved in the theatre – why couldn’t they?

The Queen is Dead, Long Live the King

2006-07-27T21:07:00.000-04:00

After an impressive run of 5 consecutive wins on Jeopardy, Lady Celeste was defeated today by Eugene Manning, an Army officer from Honolulu, HI. In light of the next post, do you reckon I should swear about it? Nah.

Celeste, it was a wonderful run -- so impressive, so entertaining. Brava!

Vigilus Salutus

2006-07-27T20:57:00.000-04:00

Always vigilant, I saw that there was a piece in the Washington Post about soldier morale in Iraq, which I thought might help me save some face from an earlier post. The article, unmincingly titled "Waiting to Get Blown Up," notes (yet omits) the soldiers' abundant profanity when commenting on their role and responsibility there. If you recall, in my first post on the latest Ken Burns documentary, I had expected the profanity uttered by Burns' martial subjects to be directed to our current occupation of Iraq (when in fact the doc, titled The War, presents soldiers' recollections of World War II). Just covering all the (military) bases for swearing here (and there are indeed many).

Just heavenly, Celeste!

2006-07-26T17:03:00.000-04:00

Now a five-day winner on Jeopardy (click here for my report after her three-day win). I really thought this might be the one to take Celeste down -- "Matt," a literacy tutor from Richland, WA, was pretty sharp. But CelDi pulled it out on final Jeopardy, on a world capitals clue that was also something of a word game: to what African capital could you add two letters to make up the name of its nation?

***

6:48 CDT. Many are arriving here looking for Celeste, and I am happy to play the go-between. I have asked Celeste if she has anything to say to her fans.

7:39 CDT. Commenting on the program televised today, Celeste writes: "Well, all I can say is that I thought that Matt had me for sure. He was a demon on the buzzer, and hard as I tried, I could not squeeze a 'ring in' out of my signaling device for most of the game."

Well, if you were having clicker problems, C, it didn't show -- sometimes I think contestants make a big show out of the clicker when they just plum don't know the answers. I know from my aunt that the timing is tricky: you've got to wait to buzz in until after a series of lights surrounds the play board (though maybe they've updated the system since then. . .). Some people have that eye-mind-hand coordination down, and some people don't.

Hmm. Let's get Tim Rosendale in on this.

Meanwhile, are there any specific questions I can relay to Ms. D?

Hard Day's Nights at PBS: A Shout-Out (using our 'inside voices') to PBS Hostess Melanie Martinez

2006-07-25T13:24:00.000-04:00

A couple of posts ago, commenting on the gauntlet the F.C.C. is throwing down to PBS regarding the latest Ken Burns documentary, I recalled a piece from The Onion in which the letter D was reported to boycott Sesame Street on account of the program's introduction of a gay muppet ("Roger"). Now comes word from the Times (through the AP) that Melanie Martinez, hostess of the PBS Sprout night-time program, "The Good Night Show," has been fired for having appeared in film shorts which "spoof" sexual abstinence PSAs. Not pornos. Parodies.

Before I carry on as usual, allow me to point out the rhetorical similarities between the Times report on Martinez and The Onion's scoop, er, spoof, on the letter D. Uncanny, no? No doubt The Onion has the discourse down pat, but I find the PBS release even more amusing: specifically, their claim that these videos are going to "undermine [Melanie's] credibility with [their] audience," (which is to say) two- to five-year-olds . . .!? Yeah, when they're jonesing for a toon, my kids are all about the cred. Good grief.

So how interesting, then, that while Ken Burns will campaign (successfully, I would think) to have his program on World War II aired, profanities intact, at the 8:00 hour, our gal Mel M. has been fired from PBS for airing her views (if you could call it that) off the clock, as it were, on her own time (in fact, seven years ago). And while I'm pretty keen on Mel M. for getting my children to do yoga (my son Ollie does a pretty mean "tree"), I have yet to see her slip in any messages about condoms (that is, between her introductions of "Angelina Ballerina" and "Thomas the Tank Engine"). Maybe that's what "Hush" the goldfish is mouthing, in his fishbowl off to the side ("wear some scuba gear, kids, if you know what I mean. . .").

As I could have made more explicit in that earlier post, the FCC policies the PBS Burns doc is negotiating attempt to restrict profanity from hours when children might be watching. Such regulations stipulate that, should the profanity remain, The War should be televised at 10:00 p.m.; Burns was expecting the prime time slot of 8:00 p.m., and not planning either to bleep his subjects or otherwise edit his program.

Besides stretching the bounds of their morals clause -- really, I would not have been aware of Melanie's participation in that parody had PBS not gone and fired her, and told us all about it -- and speaking out of two sides of their mouths -- that is, pushing for the profanity restrictions on the Burns' doc to be lifted, while firing one of their own, for questionable "dialogue" uttered off network -- PBS execs are missing what I thought was the entire point of airing a night-time show for kids: that is, PBS Sprout is the one place we parents can turn to when the main PBS network (and the rest of the cable roster) is showing something otherwise objectionable and inappropriate for children.

Now, you Puritan types who object to any and all TV for kids might object to airing any childrens' programming at night. When PBS launched the network, I myself was apprehensive that I would be fighting the clicker battle well into the wee hours.

But I have a child with a chronic illness that occasionally keeps her up at night. On these occasions, I have been exceedingly grateful for something to sedate her -- I am of no illusions that TV functions that way -- and that it was benign, (often sickeningly) saccharine PBS fare, and not the paean to violence featured on Jetix, or the mature innuendo-laced humor of Adult Swim. (In this respect, I should add that I believe that no parent can be expected to provide enriching, non-televised activities for their children 24/7; just as important, what child, sick and miserable at three in the morning, wants to feel pressured to be enriched?) For some kids, for various reasons, and under certain circumstances, the very self-medicating properties we (think we should) condemn of children's television can be a salve of limitless benefit both to the child and his or her family members, who may need the rest in order to care for others.

Indeed, just as it is wrong to assume that families come in only one flavor, it is wrong to assume that every family schedules their lives according to the false exigencies of "prime time." The industrial revolution structured the vague calendar of agrarian life in order to maximize factory output; we owe to unions the regulation of work and its restriction to the (more or less) standard 40-hour work week. Just think, however, of the extent to which our lives have been further regulated by television programming -- when we should, or should not, expect to be diverted from the said work week -- in order to maximize commercial (i.e., advertising) output. Even PBS, which claims not to advertise but finds other ways to make its sponsors known, subscribes to the outdated prime time model.

The truth is, just as many families do not fit the conventional mold, many families also do not follow the conventional schedule. I am reminded of this whenever I drive past the hospital where I gave birth to my two children, where there is a 24-hour day-care center for children whose parents work overnight at the hospital. But think of the many other non-conventional jobs and professions, which have parents working all sorts of hours, not only so they can provide for their children, but also so they can spend time with them, whenever they can.

The relative beauty of the balkanization of television (into the hundreds of assorted cable networks) is that people can choose not only what, but also when, to watch. And let's not forget that, with one slip of the clicker, children might view former prime time, now syndicated, and ineluctably adult shows (say, Friends, or Seinfeld) at five or six o'clock. When you look at the current media market, the F.C.C. regulations make no sense, and strike me as a form of collusion with the conventional networks to claim some last vestige of prestige for conventional "prime time."

So Melanie, while my dentist bills have spiked since you and your sticky sweetness have been on air at Sprout, I genuinely hope you land on your feet from this little kerfuffle, and that we'll be seeing you in something else soon. It just isn't right, kids, for so many reasons. Bon nuit.

We've heard it so many times before. . .

2006-07-25T12:49:00.000-04:00

. . . but now that I've got own rendition I have to share it.

We had to vamoose the casa today for yet another brokers' open house, and I'm trying to use these forced exits as opportunities to cover things we want to do before we leave Chicago. Today we escaped to the Chicago Botanical Gardens: Blythe likes to play hide and seek in the English Walled Garden; Ollie goes nuts for their Model Train Gardens; and I bask happily in the beauty and fragrance wherever we are. A win-win-win situation if ever there was one.

In the car on the way, though, Blythe asked if there would be a "plejalli" in Canada.

"I'm sorry, Blythe, I didn't hear you right. A what?"

"A plejalli."

"Still not getting it. What do you mean?"

"You know, like I-pledge-allegiance-to-the-flag-of-the-United-States-of [and here she astutely paused]. . . Canada?"

"No, Blythe, you won't say that in Canada. I'm not sure what you'll say. Uhh, can I ask whether you know what you're saying when you say that?"

"No. I don't know what a plejalli is. And I don't know what a jence is."

There you have it. The morphological argument for libertarianism.

Three Cheers for Celeste DiNucci!

2006-07-24T22:00:00.000-04:00

Now a three-time champ on Jeopardy, and erstwhile grad school confrere. Both students of the Renaissance, Celeste and I used to work with the same faculty member, who (as faculty members do) left for another university. I changed dissertation topics; she changed graduate programs.

As she noted in her chat with Alex on her second appearance, Celeste hosts annual "Shakespeare Jeopardy" competitions on Shakespeare's birthday -- she's a marvel at coming up with nifty topics (such as "Name that Cuckold"). In the one I last participated in (during a party in which we also assembled a miniature of the Globe theatre, a prop I use in my teaching to this day), one category was on stage directions, and I was abashed not to have come up with the most famous of all, from A Winter's Tale: "Exit, followed by a bear." What's worse, I think a "Victorianist" came up with it (grad student egos are unconscionably fragile).

With this shame in mind, I know that despite having won again today, and racked up a sum any hungry grad student would die for, poor Celeste is now suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune -- in the form of stunned e-mails and phone calls -- having missed the first clue in a category on "characters in Shakespeare plays" -- for us, a Cliff Clavin category if ever there was one. The answer: "Benvolio, someone else I can't remember, Mercutio." Piece of cake, no? High school students across the nation delightedly barked, "What is Romeo and Juliet?"

Well, here's the funny thing: I said the same thing as Celeste, in the form of a question, at exactly the same (televised) moment: "What is Merchant of Venice?" Go figure. My aunt, whom I was helping to move today and who was on Jeopardy herself in 1986 (having missed her final Jeopardy question on languages [!], marking Spanish, not Portuguese, as the official language of Brazil), was there to witness our synchronized error and our mutual chagrin. Thankfully, we easily sussed the rest of the category, and Celeste went on to win very capably, her run of the rest of the Shakespeare answers putting her well ahead of her two competitors.

Would that knowledge of Shakespeare would generally be so lucrative! When friends humor me by calling me doctor, I retort that I am available to treat any routine Shakespeare ailments: I need a gloss on this soliloquy, stat! . . .This Troilus is not going to go away on its own . . . Yes, I'm afraid you're suffering from an acute case of Coriolanus. . . Take Two Noble Kinsmen, and call me in the morning . . . (You get the idea.)

Keep it going, Celeste! We're rooting for five acts and an enriching denouement for our spirited protagonist.

Gross Headline Pun of the Day*

2006-07-24T14:27:00.000-04:00

White Webbing

From today's Chicago Sun-Times, hedding an article on couples who webcast their weddings.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it an 8, because the pun effectively links the two subjects of the article, but the word "webbing" isn't actually in use by the internet community (hence 2 points short); and for having put that Billy Idol song in my head, and thus making the article good to dance to. Readers unfamiliar with American Bandstand are forgiven for missing the latter allusion. Perhaps you might have caught the Sesame Street, though, in which a Billy Idol-styled muppet rocks out to the "rebel L" . . . ?

* See my July 14 post, in which I announced that I would be starting a collection of gross journalistic puns.

Swearing In

2006-07-22T23:29:00.000-04:00

My apologies to the loyal readers who have been visiting la Jardiniere in the past few days only to keep seeing that inside joke -- i.e., a joke that only makes sense within my own perverse mind -- in which I imagined the recent G8 summit as a fantasy football match. (My thanks to those who have gotten it, and have written me to say so . . .) I continue to be swamped with last-minute diss revisions, trying to sell our house, pack, emigrate, see friends, care for my children, etc.

I also have to admit that since I started reading Language Log on a regular basis, I have started to feel the kind of creeping self-doubts that loopy literary types like myself might feel around a bunch of hard-core linguists. Like, whoa, those folks can marshal statements resembling something like fact. (As you've seen, I tend to fly off on flights of fancy close reading.)

Oh well, gotta play to my strengths, such as they are.

Like Eric Bakovic at the Log, I was immediately struck by the headline in the Times today concerning the FCC troubles PBS is facing regarding a war documentary containing, er, "salty language" spoken by soldiers (that's the Times attributing sailor talk to soldiers, not me). Censorship, and self-censorship, of the fourth estate being a recent thread here, I was of course immediately interested. In all honesty, however, my first thought was that the featured soldiers would be those either in, or having returned from, Iraq. In fact, without having clicked on the link to read the story, I projected an entire narrative -- going off on one of my flights (few emergency exits) -- in which I assumed that the profanity was related to the war campaign in which we are currently (and ostensibly indefinitely) involved: even more specifically, that what would be objectionable to federal censors about the televised profanity was not merely the words themselves, but that they were directed to a government-sponsored occupation in a show on a government-sponsored network. How could those contradictions be logistically and ideologically reconciled, I wondered?

Well, I got the story wrong. The documentary is Ken Burns' latest six-year-production-in-the-making on veterans' recollections of World War II. Remember them? "The Greatest Generation."

As Elizabeth Jensen's article reports, "A new Public Broadcasting Service policy that went into effect immediately when it was issued on May 31 requires producers whose shows are broadcast before 10 p.m. to adhere to tough editing requirements when it comes to coarse language, to comply with tightened rulings on broadcast indecency by the Federal Communications Commission." Jensen also reports that "Mr. Burns, perhaps best known for his prize-winning series 'The Civil War,' insisted that 'The War' would be shown in the preferred time slot of 8 p.m. He said he was 'flabbergasted' that F.C.C. policy was being applied to documentaries, particularly when President Bush himself was inadvertently heard using vulgar language, broadcast on some cable newscasts, at the recent Group of Eight summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia."

Ah, yes.

Just think of the peculiar confluence of events, preoccupations, and, yes, hypocrisies here. After all, veterans' recollections of Guadalcanal, D-Day, and the Battle of the Bulge are hardly equivalent to a "wardrobe malfunction" inadvertently broadcast on a national sporting event. And, "Swift Boat Veterans" notwithstanding, we're all aware of our President's shabby showing during his own stint in the National Guard, let alone his recently reported profanity, and media outlets' angst in reporting it. In the end, while I feel abashed to have learned that the objectionable program is not about Iraq but about World War II, I still feel as though the kind of censorship the Burns program is negotiating, whether externally or voluntarily imposed, effectively serves to squelch any discourse about the experienced realities of war, which affects any statements, perceptions, or (dare I say) critiques of the current one.

And here you will find the difference between me and the folks at Language Log. They do have more answers there, whether their statements are facts or merely resemble them. I, on the other hand, tend to raise questions, voice doubts, and air anxieties, and play fast and loose with the facts and their contexts to see connections -- like those between the G8 summit and a fantasy football match -- that others, certainly not hard-core linguists, might not see (though that backrub Dubya recently offered Angela Merkal is starting to make my cheeky reverie look increasingly plausible. . .)

While I tune in for the occasional Frontline or Charlie Rose, I still associate PBS largely with Sesame Street, the chief purveyor of language and letters for children of my generation. I recall a piece in The Onion a couple of years back, during one of the GOP's most recent attempts to squelch the network, in which the letter D was reported to have pulled his "sponsorship" of the show on account of the new gay muppet who had joined the cast. I couldn't remember the new muppet's name -- my fits of giggles must've hampered my long-term memory -- but sunny day, wishing the clouds away, here's the link. Simply brilliant.

Of the roster of muppets we are all familiar with, who do you think would be most likely to indulge in salty language? I'm envisioning a scene in Grover's dressing room in which he takes long pull on a Pall Mall non-filter, and spits contempt at the effers in Congress . . .

Helloooo everyboddeeeee!

If the G8 Summit were an Adidas ad . . .

2006-07-18T18:37:00.000-04:00

Now that news agencies are going for more than just the shit, it's amusing how much their attempt to transcribe the entire tete-à-tete between Bush and Blair resembles my recent series of posts in which I attempted to translate the Jose + 10 ads.

In this scenario -- the G8 as World Cup, or, perhaps more aptly in Dubya's case, a fantasy match he plays with and against the world's biggest players -- I cast Blair as the stern Jose, and Bush as the jocular Pedro (aka Gordito).

Now reimagine the conversation . . .

From the selection of players:

Bush: Putin! (Vladimir Putin, of Russia, late of the KGB Squad)

Blair: Harper! (Stephen Harper, of Canada, of the Calgary Southwest)

Bush: Juni! (Junichiro Koizumi, of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party; we'll assign Koizumi the Brazilian mononym; I think Dubya would)

Blair: Prodi! (Romano Prodi, of Italy's l'Unione, who recently edged out Silvio Berlusconi for a place on the team)

Bush: Thatcher!

Blair: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

(but you never know: like Beckenbauer, the Iron Lady herself just might turn up. . .)

And then the game itself:

Blair: (nudging Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkal aside) Pita! (Pardon me, Angela, but I believe the bell has rung for dinner)

Bush: Vengamos! Come! (Come on! Eat!)

Blair: Aqui, Harper! (If you could be so kind, Stephen, to pass me the salt)

Harper crosses the salt over to Blair.

Bush: Oye, Putin! (Yo, Vladster!) as he directs the Russian President's attention to the rapidly advancing Harper. Putin tackles -- okay, shoots -- him; Harper falls to the ground and considers it a foul. Putin responds with a clipped Sorry! and carries on to attempt to deliver it to Bush, but drops it.

Bush: Tu, al banquillo! (You, to the bench!) Condi, ven! (Condi, come! He calls in US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, from the bench)

Meanwhile, Merkel has collected the salt and attempts to deliver it, but falls short of the mark, complaining about the lack of coalition support. Kofi Annan, on the sidelines, raises a flag. Unfazed, Bush hollers, "GOOOOLLLL!!" (Mission accomplished!), and runs triumphantly around the room, arms in the air, while Blair and Merkel argue over whether in fact the salt reached the table.

They are still arguing over the table when George Bush, Sr., emerges, having just vomited.

Papa: Junior!

Bush: Que? (What?)

Papa: A casa! (Come home!)

Bush: Shit!

Bush reluctantly exits his fantasy, as James Baker and Brent Scowcroft suddenly appear to escort him home.

Impossible is nothing.

On the Docket: Two Presidents

2006-07-18T08:04:00.000-04:00

I'm swamped with completing various moving-related tasks, as well as preparing the final print of my dissertation. I've been reading Language Log quite a bit these days (and have some notes on "notes to self" to send Benjamin Zimmer), and think they've got the right idea over there, to have a steady rotation of different posters . . . While I'm still flying solo here, and running into some turbulence, I present in brief what I'd like to be writing about, and hope to, when I get the chance:

¶ Do you reckon that Laura has a swear jar for Dubya? (Maybe it pays for her secret smoking habit.) As with so many things these days, I'm of many minds on the stir. That is, who gives a shit if the president says shit, so long as the Middle East is still burning? The story, of course, lies in the President's hypocrisy (as Salon reports, Bush's erstwhile media-mom, Karen Hughes, once claimed she had never heard the President swear), and the administration-wide disconnect between speech and action, policy and reality. Really, wouldn't many of us appreciate more candor, even of the four-lettered variety?

Meanwhile, as said-Zimmer notes in his notes on the shit, U.S. news outlets are having tortured bowel movements as to how they should report the story -- that is, the word -- itself. Recall I mused recently on this topic in relation to Italian soccer player's words to Zidane, and objected myself to a recent sub-hedder in Slate, which I did not reprint. Isn't it odd that words themselves should impede our reporting on them?

¶ Jack Rosenthal, President of the NYTimes Foundation, subbed for William Safire this week in Safire's Times Mag column "On Language," the same week we're getting more information about Valerie Plame (from Robert Novak, however, not Judith Miller). Any takers on a connection between Rosenthal's Sunday musings on language and the late trials and tribs of the Gray Lady? Rosenthal's lede word: insolation.

I've been meaning to start a series of responses to Safire, whose practice of philology I find pretty objectionable, but perhaps it's apt if we start with the President. Where does the buck stop?

For now, however, back to packing and editing.

sPunmeisters: A Heddy Inquiry

2006-07-14T11:40:00.000-04:00

Why do so many news headlines pun?

I've been mulling this question for some time, because Chicago editors especially revel in punning hedders. I, too, have been guilty of a few here: for example, "Between the Posts," the hed for my "Thinking Woman's Guide to Soccer," traded on three different meanings of the word "post."
1. Between the goal posts, or the frames containing soccer goal nets, and therefore what happens on the pitch, or how soccer is played. 2. Between the blog posts, as up until then I had been posting mainly about spelling bees and so forth, and thought that that post would be a one-off on soccer (not realizing how much I would generate from the World Cup) 3. Between the legs, as I began that piece with a riff on male private parts, to lead into observations concerning masculinity and sport.

If I were really keen here (and looking for a clever segue out of the World Cup), I should have started this post with some punning quips relating journalistic hedders to headers in soccer. After all, witness the many punning heds spun about ZiZou's devastatingly macho header on Sunday. But we're trying to move on here. Also, while I have been mulling this post for some time, it was finally precipitated not by Zidane, but by an argument I had with an editor at Slate over a sub-hedder there whose pithy salaciousness (I felt) was demeaning to both writers and readers of the on-line mag, inviting responses (in Slate's reader-response feature, "The Fray") of the worst, which is to say, ad hominem, kind. (Suffice to say, I gave it a red card for unsportsmanlike conduct.) It was an interesting exchange, and we managed to reach a fairly satisfying detente (the sub-hed having since been removed) . . . but the question remains for me: why pun at all? Aren't there other ways of grabbing readers' attention?

Of course, when I first learned that in journalism, the term is "hedder," not header or headline, my first reaction related to spelling. How interesting, I thought, that this field of professional writing distinguishes itself from other fields -- indeed from Standard American English (SAE) -- through spelling. Every trade has its jargon, but here the distinction in language extends to orthography. (Someone should write a dissertation about that -- oh, that's right, I did!)

Now: I am not a journalist, and have received no formal journalistic training. I am a lit crit type, and acknowledge full-out that academics are the worst culprits when it comes to punning titles (the paper I will be presenting at the MLA this year? "Manual Labour: Learning to Read the First Literacy Textbooks" -- mea culpa). But it strikes me that what's going on with academic puns has something to do with the way we revel, as a field, in the plasticity of language, our object of study (and our need, no doubt, to show we are clever).

Journalism works from a different set of materials and objectives. (Doesn't it?) While we are well beyond the stage when we expect "just the facts," and both writers and readers are now well-versed in spin, I find it peculiar that news stories, whose authority rests on "getting the facts right" (if such a thing were possible), lead off with phrases that effectively mislead the reader, by directing the reader to other meanings of words often wholly unrelated to the story that follows.

I wonder, do some types of periodicals pun more than others? That is, if we go down the journalistic hierarchy, from the first-tier publications to the broadsheets, would we find more puns in headlines, or puns of a different variety? The English tabloids, for example, thrive on gross puns: could we associate their punning with their avowed sensationalism, and the headline decorum of the Times or the Guardian with their waning stately manner? (anybody get that one?! tee hee I am terrible) Is there an ethical connection between the semantic scrupulousness of any given paper's headlines and its pretense to a certain journalistic integrity (to the extent that punners in blogs can get away scot-free. . . did they cover this at that KosMart out in Vegas)?

In the spirit of research, I'm going to start my own collection of gross journalistic puns. Not necessarily salacious. Just interesting. (To heady nerds like me.)

All right, I give. . . (simplement une petite blague) . . .

2006-07-13T11:58:00.000-04:00

Whatever your stance on la tete-a-poitrine (it is time to move on), you gotta marvel at the brisk ingenuity of the folks who came up with this little fixture, within hours of the final.

N.B. July 14: The game has gotten considerably more challenging -- and less satisfying? -- since I first posted it.

Voilà: The Word from ZiZou

2006-07-12T23:55:00.000-04:00

I am copying this from BBC Sport. Am I allowed to do this? Folks from Adidas have been looking at my blog, and I'm suddenly paranoid. A scholar by training (and a wonk at heart), I feel anxious not supplying footnotes and complete lists of Works Cited at the end of each post . . . In one of my parallel lives (though this is another post), I would be a lawyer specializing in intellectual property -- that is, as a literary scholar of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when no such thing as "copyright" existed, I find the whole concept of intellectual property pretty fascinating: how can you own an idea? A set of words?

But I digress. Yes, I am copying this post from BBC Sport -- see? the _link_ functions as the twenty-first century (hypertext) version of attribution of due credit (wow: look at all those obfuscating nominalizations, how lawyerly of me!).

If you live in the States, please watch one or two of the many tedious forensic dramas on BBC America and buy one of those lawn mowers they relentlessly advertise, so the BBC can feel as though they're getting something back from this. As for my many valued international visitors, I am now well aware that you watch BBC World, and have yet to see what landscaping tools they foist upon you (I am, after all, ever the constant gardener).

But as we say in the classroom, let's turn to the text, which was translated by the BBC (and, yes, you can count on la Jardiniere to hunt down the French and assess the translation):

Zidane explains

Zidane spoke about the headbutt incident for the first time.

France captain Zinedine Zidane was sent off in Sunday's World Cup final defeat for headbutting defender Marco Materazzi in the chest. The midfield star, who has now retired from football, appeared on French television on Wednesday to explain his actions.

Here is a translation of what he told the TV channel Canal Plus about the Materazzi incident.

Interviewer: You know the Italian players well because you played in Italy for five years. Did you have any problem with any of them beforehand?

Zinedine Zidane: Not at all. You always have friction with certain players...that is the game, it has always been like that. But I never had any clashes with anyone.

Interviewer: Nor Materazzi?

Zinedine Zidane: No, never. There was nothing beforehand and nothing in the match until he started pulling my jersey.

He grabbed my shirt and I told him to stop. I told him if he wanted I'd swap it with him at the end of the match.

That is when he said some very hard words, which were harder than gestures. He repeated them several times. It all happened very quickly and he spoke about things which hurt me deep down.

Interviewer: Everyone wants to know exactly what he said...

Zinedine Zidane: They were very serious things, very personal things.

Interviewer: About your mother and your sister?

Zinedine Zidane: Yes. They were very hard words. You hear them once and you try to move away.

But then you hear them twice, and then a third time... I am a man and some words are harder to hear than actions. I would rather have taken a blow to the face than hear that.

Interviewer: He said these things about your mother and sister two or three times?

Zinedine Zidane: Yes. I reacted and of course it is not a gesture you should do. I must say that strongly.

It was seen by two or three billion people watching on television and millions and millions of children.

It was an inexcusable gesture and to them, and the people in education whose job it is to show children what they should and shouldn't do, I want to apologise.

Interviewer: You apologise to them but do you really regret having done it?

Zinedine Zidane: I can't regret it because if I do it would be like admitting that he was right to say all that. And above all, it was not right.

We always talk about the reaction, and inevitably it must be punished. But if there is no provocation, there is no reaction.

First of all you have to say there is provocation, and the guilty one is the one who does the provoking. The response is to always punish the reaction, but if I react, something has happened.

Do you imagine that in a World Cup final like that, with just 10 minutes to go to the end of my career, I am going to do something like that because it gives me pleasure?

Interviewer: No of course not. But at the moment you exploded...

Zinedine Zidane: There was provocation, and it was very serious, that is all. My action was inexcusable but you have to punish the real culprit, and the real culprit is the one who provoked it. Voilà.

Yes, voilà. I have to give some thought to this, and, as always, welcome your comments.

A demain.

A Prayer for Midnight's Children

2006-07-11T23:35:00.000-04:00

La Jardiniere has had the honor of receiving many visitors from India. My thoughts go out to those suffering in Mumbai. Be well.

Pulling no punches

2006-07-11T13:26:00.000-04:00

A compelling graf (rare these days) from The New Republic:

. . . Zizou turned, then crucially, he paused. This was no red mist--as neither was there in [Eric] Cantona's moment in 1995; back then Cantona had paused too, considering his best options (which turned out to be studs to sternum--we still shout, hurrah for it!). What was in Zidane's pause, more than a decade later? A consideration of centuries of unfairness, years of cheating and back-passes and Cattenacio, of Mussolini and the horrors of Sicily and rats in Naples; of the current, only-in-Italy scandals of entire organizations paying off referees; of how Fiat cars rust before all others; of grown men attending business meetings in leather shoes of the highest quality, but no socks? Against this Zinedine might have weighed the power of French wine, the sweep of the Loire, the heroic Résistance, and Paris. He was charged, at that instant, with bringing intellect to bear upon brutes--he used his mind against muscle, he had no choice--he, in the words of The New York Times, "approached Materazzi and head-butted him in the sternum." Oh, oh, down my joy, my heart! We were so proud of you, Zizou! Even the Times thought to choose its words carefully--the sternum!--the exact locus of Cantona's studs years earlier--Zidane, at that instant, showed how well he knew his history. It was not a cheap shot, Mr. Z--we love you for the cost of that pause--in that pause, you spoke to us all, all of us straining in our own lives against the inane, against hatred, against the numbing power of negativity.

Source: Luke Dempsey, TNR Online

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones . . .

2006-07-11T08:06:00.000-04:00

. . . but calling ZiZou a "terrorist" is really gonna hurt.

Am I alone in feeling sadly ruminative since the final? In part, of course, because it's over now, and we all have to wait another four years -- not just the U.S. team. Well, not quite. Like the summer and winter Olympics, the European championships take place in the off-even years between the World Cup (the next tournament in 2008): a stop-gap for those of us who support European sides (and also fear having to see our sides play Argentina and Brazil).

But the dust -- and our stomachs? -- haven't yet settled over Zinedine Zidane's precipitous sending off on Sunday. Accounts from the conventional press have by and large (1) made it the sub-hedder (2) only referred, ever so briefly, to an "exchange of words" between Materazzi and Zidane (3) have not reported what those words were and (4) attempted simultaneously to venerate Zidane (from pre-match copy planned for "farewell" encomia?) and to condemn him for his actions.

Oddly, I can relate to the journalistic schizophrenia -- who hasn't furrowed their brow, and yet felt peculiarly gratified, upon hearing that Zidane was awarded the Golden Ball of the tournament? It doesn't feel right, and yet . . . hmmm.

Here's where my site monitor becomes an interesting index of where the conventional press is missing the ball. Many are arriving here now due to Google searches the likes of "reason head-butt Zidane," "Zidane sending off Materazzi," "why Zidane headbutt red card."

People are looking for answers.

In the most crass, or "crash," sense -- the kind that makes us leer at car wrecks -- people are looking for the actual words Materazzi said. After all, we know why Zidane was sent off -- a head-butt for the ages. We want to know what made him lunge. In Aristotelian terms, we know the material cause, what the thing is. What we're after are the efficient and (I suppose the pun here is inevitable) the final causes, what made the event happen, and why.

And it's not just the conventional press that's being evasive. Zidane himself (as of this writing) has not come forward to report what was said. Yet witness the wonder of Materazzi's own statement:

"It is absolutely not true, I did not call him a terrorist," Materazzi told Italian news agency Ansa.

"I'm ignorant. I don't even know what the word means.

"The whole world saw what happened on live TV."

Source: Sky Sports

Is Materazzi speaking philosophically here? Can we really believe that a 32-year-old European man does not know what the word "terrorist" means? I've devoted ample space in this blog to conducting translations (could we really be dealing with language barriers here?), but cannot come up with a lexicon to interpret these words, spoken in Anno Domini 2006.

A friend recently praised my posts on the World Cup, specifically how I haven't "lapsed into academic density." I fear I am regressing here, but also fear that we're seeing density abound -- on the part of Materazzi, on the part of the press, on the part of those who would feel Zidane were somehow justified (if that's indeed what Materazzi called him), as well as those who pontificate that there's "no excuse" for Zidane's actions.

So for those looking for answers, I have none here (density indeed), only guesses and hunches at how this incident is playing in our murky post 9/11 world.

My gut tells me that journalists are being evasive because no small part of us wants to shield this revered athletic competition from the real-world troubles of terrorism. I wonder, in fact, whether FIFA -- whose motto for the tournament was "A time to make new friends . . . Say no to racism" -- has been working round the clock to discourage inquests and analyses of this kind. ZiZou said no, all right. We all witnessed it. His reaction taps into our doubts about how exactly one should respond to terrorism (a problem we can only trust our leaders are working round the clock to solve).

His violent response, however, strikes us as intolerable, especially when we acknowledge that he was responding -- only? -- to words. Here's where the PC police (the Anti-Defamation League?) ought to issue a statement, if (only) to clarify for us when and how language really matters. Is there such a thing as verbal terrorism? Or are crimes against property the only ones we can prosecute?

Several weeks ago, I was taken aback when I unrolled the morning's Chicago Sun-Times to two competing headlines: on the top, in bold red, "Sears Tower Terrorist Plot" (discovered and foiled), taking up a quarter, maybe a third of the front page; more than half of the page was devoted to the Chicago White Sox coach Ozzie Guillen's MLB suspension, for his indecorous characterization of sports columnist Jay Marriotti. This struck me as wrong, that the ill-chosen words of a baseball coach should be allotted more space than a terrorist plot that would have affected all of Chicagoland, if not the nation and the world. Then, as now, though, I stopped to consider the power of words, and whether my personal response was justified. After all, a PhD in English, and a specialist in its history, my business is language, and my job entails trumping up its significance.

The doctor has no answers here, however, only more questions.

¶ What should Zidane have done, under the circumstances? Lunge for the ball, not Materazzi, for sure, but how else can one respond to such despicable slurs? Hail the ref? Tell the press? The situation calls for fresh analyses of a tournament previously, and widely, excoriated for the practice of diving.

¶ Would printing what Materazzi said have been tantamount to endorsing it? Does repressing language effectively negate its import, or only call more attention to it? I think of the old BBC injunction on IRA operatives: that is, perversely, the BBC would dub the voices of Sinn Fein leaders with that of a properly English speaker. I hardly think the policy prevented another Omagh or Enniskillen.

True to form (i.e., not shying from controversy), English tabloids such as the Daily Mail have employed lip-readers (conversant in Italian, no less) to translate what Materazzi said. And yet, I myself feel squeamish about reprinting them, or even supplying the links. I have to think about it. For now, however, you know what to search for. . . hope it gives you some answers.

Forza Italia! Viva la Azzurri!

2006-07-10T00:11:00.000-04:00

I had the kids for much of the final, so I can't say I saw every moment of the match. That said:

The five worst moments of the World Cup 2006 final:

¶ When I learned that Dave O'Brien and Marcelo Balboa would be calling it. I'm sorry (and while I praised Robert Weintraub's article in Slate on the U.S. team, I disagree with him on this score): for a tournament of this magnitude, there shouldn't have to be a learning curve. Thankfully, I was watching the match at our local, the Celtic Knot, in Evanston, IL, where most of their inanities were drowned out by the crowd.

¶ Thierry Henry's substitution -- for his initial head injury, less than a minute into the match? Or a leg injury? Dunno. But a loss for France and World Cup fans alike.

¶ Francesco Totti's substitution. Ditto (except for the bit about the French fans.)

¶ Without a doubt, Zinedine Zidane's sending off, for head-butting (sort-of) Marco Materazzi. (1) You knew France was going to be in tough shape once their captain was sent off. (2) It's a shame to see ZiZou leave his last match for retirement under such circumstances, especially as . . . (3) To my knowledge, he was responding to Materazzi having called him "a filthy Arab" (so much for the World Cup theme of "A time to make friends. . . say no to racism"). I certainly hope to learn that that was not the case.

¶ That the match went to penalties. Call me crazy, but (again, in a match of this magnitude), I want to see the players fighting it out for a Golden Goal, until they're bleeding and crawling on the field, and the medics are coming out with defibrillators.

The five best moments of the World Cup 2006 final:

¶ Overheard at the Knot, (most evidently) from a French fan: "You remember when England invaded the Falklands?" "Yeah." "Well, Italy surrendered just in case."

That's why you go to your local (even when you've got a wide-screen TV the size of Cook County. . .)

¶ My husband stuffed the raffle box. . . (Shhhhhhh)

¶ Again, overheard: "If that had been an England player giving a head-butt, Materazzi would be lying bloodied on the pitch. If yer going to head-butt, finish 'em off."

¶ That spectacular Zidane-Buffon exchange: brilliant midair header by Zidane, breathtaking save by (Italian goalie) Buffon. Truly a clash of the Titans that should go down for the ages, if Zidane's sending off doesn't (sadly) eclipse it.

¶ That the match went to penalties. I knew that if France couldn't win during regular play, we would see a master class in goaltending from the phenomenal Gianluigi Buffon (I said as much in my post on the quarters, going so far as to say then that they would be indomitable). Give Buffon the Golden Ball.

For now, though, the entire Italian team is caressing the World Cup*. I look forward to the analyses . . . after all, it can't be over, not yet!

* In my original post, I called the trophy "Jules Rimet." A keen reader corrected me: the trophy has not been so called since the 1970 tournament, won by Brazil. Brazil was permanently awarded the trophy then, for being the first national team to win the tournament three times. Sadly, the trophy was stolen and melted down by thieves (in 1966, after England won, the cup was lost and found by a dog named 'Pickles' [!]). Just as well, then, that Jules rests in peace and the FIFA World Cup Trophy remains unscathed.

Dr. Dujardin's Definitive Translation of the Adidas Jose + 10 Ads (World Cup Final Edition)

2006-07-09T20:21:00.000-04:00

The doctor is in.

I defended my dissertation on Friday. (Successfully.) In the spirit of this capstone experience (a pleasure I could hardly deny my readers), I submit the final draft of the Adidas Jose + 10 ad, which I first proposed and outlined on June 14, drafted and revised on June 21, and have enjoyed as thousands of world-wide readers have since poured in (many more than my dissertation will ever see!). A final edition only seems fitting on the day of the World Cup clash between France and Italy, a match I could see going either way. I'm rooting for good football.

As with the PhD, this accomplishment would not have been possible without the help of many careful readers (in this case, none of whom I know personally): my thanks to Brian Bremen, "thetraytiger," Jordan, Jan from Germany, and several other anonymous posters for their shrewd input on the ad. I will note where each has contributed here, but please go to the comments section of the last draft to see their notes in full.

Dramatis personae:

¶ Jose
¶ Jose's amigo Pedro, aka Gordito
¶ A world-wide roster of professional footballers (sponsored by Adidas . . . after all, they ain't playing for charity!)

You can see "Jose" and "Pedro's" audition here:

As I noted, however, responding to an anonymous poster who pointed out that Jose's friend is named Pedro, I have yet to hear his name actually spoken in any version of the ad: has anyone? For me, he remains Gordito: cheeky, I know, but I'm very fond of the boy, whose imperious demands and loose body language bring his character into sharper focus than Jose's over the course of the match.

One more time, for posterity, the ad goes like this:

I. Equipo (the team)

As the ad opens, Gordito is bored, chilling out in an old arm chair (next to an abandoned car) outside, as Jose bounces a soccer ball off the wall nearby.

Gordito: Jose? Jugamos?/ Jose? Shall we play?

Jose: Si/ Yes.

The scene cuts to the courtyard where Jose and Gordito play even-odds to see who gets first pick of the players. As "Jordan" posted: "I think the game that they play is called shooting fingers, or odds/evens in English, and the "pares" means "evens." . . . On 'three,' they both hold out either 1 or 2 fingers. If the sum is even, whomever called evens/pares wins (2 in 3 chance)."

Gordito: Pares -- uno, dos y tres!/ Evens -- one, two, and three! (They each shoot some fingers, Jose loses the draw.)

Jose: Ach!/ Ach! (the international language of frustration). Gordito gets first pick; the players arrive, running in from various angles of the courtyard, some in their native team gear, some in their club kits, and some in more casual warm-ups.

G: Cisse!/ Djubril Cisse, of France, who broke his leg just prior to the Cup, and so will not appear in today's final against Italy. [Cisse played for Liverpool, but as of 7/11, will be going on loan to Marseilles.]

J: Kaka!/ Kaka, of Brazil (remember, lots of them go by one name), who plays for AC Milan.

G: Zidane!/ Zinedine Zizane (Zizou), captain of France, who is planning to retire after Sunday's final, both from national play and Real Madrid.

J: Beckham!/ David Beckham, captain of England until their loss to Portugal; also at Real Madrid (quite a powerhouse).

G: Defoe!/ Jermaine Defoe, a forward for the Tottenham Hotspurs, who was not selected to play for England in the Cup. . . tsk, tsk, Sven!

J: Kahn!/ Oliver Kahn, German goal-keeper, who won the "Golden Ball" (ringing Austin Powers?) at the 2002 World Cup, but was controversially benched in this tournament in favor of Jens Lehman; Kahn plays for Bayern Munich.

G: Messi!/ Lionel Messi, of Argentina and FC Barcelona.

J: Mm, Beckenbauer!

G: . . . [realizing what Jose had just said] Beckenbauer!? ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

The joke that they're sharing is that Jose has selected the player Franz Beckenbauer -- which sounds like "bake-un-bow-yea" in their idiom -- who was a German star (and former national team manager) from the late sixties and seventies (and an Adidas icon to boot). Just when they're laughing, however, Beckenbauer turns up, in the era-appropriate kit (and his old number, 5). Oliver Kahn is especially dumb-struck, and Beckenbauer approaches him first to shake his hand. Still a neat moment.

But having cottoned on to the kids' m.o., Zidane whispers in Gordito's ear the name of a French football icon from the late seventies and eighties, Michel Platini -- G: Platini! -- who duly arrives to hug his no. 10 heir, Zidane (i.e., Germans don't hug. . . though I know they could use one now. . .).

The players are stretching, smiling, and getting to know each other while they warm up, but Jose and Gordito are all business.

G: Oye, Defoe!/ Listen up, Defoe! Gordito throws Defoe the goalie gear, surprising -- and amusing -- because, as I've noted, Defoe is a forward; but we've established that these are the kids' teams, as Jose then makes explicit.

J: [the coin toss; Cisse stoops to pick it up; Jose swipes it from his hands] Soy capitan!/ I'm the captain!

G: [calling out to his players behind him] Oye, cuatro cuatro dos!/ Four four two! The standard soccer line up of four defenders, four midfielders, then two forwards, or strikers.

J: [to his team, very seriously] Cuidado Cisse, porque el corre muy rapido. . . vale? vale. / Watch out for Cisse, because he runs very fast . . . All right? All right. (Cisse nods and wags his finger in agreement). On this exchange, an anonymous poster generously contributes: "in the part where you say Jose says "Cuidado" I'm hearing "El cuidad con (something something)" but at least the meaning is still there =]." Further comments?

G: [pointing to two players in his backfield] Lampard, Robben, venga, ramos!/ Lampard, Robben, come on, to the wings! (or sides, of the pitch, with a gesture that tells them to switch -- which they do).

And that's Frank Lampard, of England and Chelsea (who has no reason to smile these days -- as he does in the photo above -- given the way he played for England in the tournament); and Arjen Robben, of the Netherlands and Chelsea (uh huh, another powerhouse).

II. Partido (the game)

The match begins when Jose shoves German player Michael Ballack to the side and says either pita!/ the whistle (has blown), or quita!, get back, referring to the ten yard clearance rule; "thetraytiger" hears quita, I still hear pita -- regardless, Jose takes the first touch and play begins.

G:Vengamos! Venga, corre!/ Let's go! Come on, run!

Jose tackles -- okay, trips -- the rapidly advancing Robben, who considers it a foul. Jose shrugs off his protest with a clipped sorry! to continue play.

J: (dwarfed by opponents) Aqui, Beckham!/ Here, Beckham! (who produces his trademark bending cross; I take it Jose doesn't ask much of him defensively).

Kaka ends up with the ball, advances, shoots, and Defoe -- remember, a forward -- manages to deflect it, with a laugh. Jose, disappointed in Kaka, orders, Tu, al banquillo!/ You, to the bench! -- in which the joke is who benches Kaka?! -- but then he shouts, Duff, ven! / Duff, come! Damien Duff, of Ireland and Chelsea, comes in off the bench. Play continues.

G: Oye, Zidane!/ Hey, Zidane! (whom he passes the ball). Zidane. . . eventually to Cisse. As Cisse heads up the wing, Capitan Gordito yells A Lampard!/ To Lampard! (thank you, anonymous poster), who is running up the center and ready for a cross.

Lampard collects the cross and shoots; the goalie, Kahn, grabs it.

G: Gol!

Kahn: "Nooooo!"

Lampard and Gordito's team consider it a goal. Kahn disagrees, and argues with Jose over the goal line. As Brian Bremen brought to my attention, this goal recreates the controversial cross-bar goal from World Cup 1966, won by England over Germany (funny how the English celebrate such a dodgy triumph). But as "Jan" from Germany added here, Kahn is saying "'hey, der war auf der linie, der ball!' which means as much as 'hey, the ball didn't cross the line!'" (danke schon, Jan!) Kahn and Jose are arguing when . . .

Jose's mother calls from the balcony: Jose!

J: Que?!/ What?

Jose's mom: A casa!!/ Come home! He shakes his head and throws up his arm in disappointment, and heads for home, as the camera pulls back to reveal noone on the "pitch," save for Jose and Gordito, reluctantly exiting their fantasy. . . Interestingly, I find it hard to pick out Gordito here, though assume he is there: was he part of the fantasy?

As we draw to a conclusion here, I want to add once again that in translating the ad to the letter (so to speak), I am aware that I am violating the spirit of the ad, which rightly supposes that kids all over the globe -- and fully-fledged grown-ups -- play "fantasy football," so that you don't need to know what Jose and his friend are saying to "get" the ad. But knowing what they are saying, and appreciating the sly wit rendered by the kids' particular choices, adds an additional level of fun, no doubt. I truly have yet to tire of it, especially given how slyly Adidas has put out the ad in so many different versions.

A round-up of other related information:

¶ You can see the making of the ad here, which includes other players not mentioned in the ad:

Can someone translate Kaka? Truly, a blur to me, given that Portuguese slurrrrs the sharp consonants of Spanish.

Such humble and generous readers! Since I posted this earlier today, an anonymous contributor has answered the call: "Found Kaka's translation on Adidas Performance's website in the Behind the Scene clip: 'They were great. They obviously played around, they are kids and want to have fun. They were good actors and behaved very well during the recording. They were truly fantastic children.'" Fantastico! Muchas gracias! (You'll still see this post in the comments . . .)

¶ In the first half of the ad, the tune is D'aloutte, by RJD2, which you can get on iTunes. In the second half -- that skimming "If you don't give my football back, I'm gonna get my Dad on you. . ." -- is by Jim Noir, the tune Eanie Meany. I have skimmed my way through many days since with that tune.

¶ As for Adidas, its initial press release for the ad can be found here.

That article includes the full roster of Adidas athletes appearing in "Impossible Team," many of whom I don't mention (or picture) here:

José’s team:

Michael Ballack Germany, FC Bayern Munich
Franz Beckenbauer Germany
David Beckham England, Real Madrid CF
Du-Ri Cha Korea Republic, Eintracht Frankfurt
Damian Duff Ireland, Chelsea FC
Steven Gerrard England, Liverpool FC
Kaká Brazil, AC Milan
Oliver Kahn Germany, FC Bayern Munich
Juan Román Riquelme Argentina, Villarreal CF
Bastian Schweinsteiger Germany, FC Bayern Munich
Patrick Vieira France, Juventus Turin

Pedro’s team:

Djibril Cissé France, Liverpool FC
Jermain Defoe England, Tottenham Hotspur
Kevin Kuranyi Germany, FC Schalke
Frank Lampard England, Chelsea FC
Michel Platini France
Shunsuke Nakamura Japan, Celtic Glasgow
Alessandro Nesta Italy, AC Milan
Lukas Podolski Germany, FC Köln
Raúl Spain, Real Madrid CF
Arjen Robben The Netherlands, Chelsea FC
David Trézéguet France, Juventus
Zinédine Zidane France, Real Madrid CF

Also, there is also an article on the English-language site of the German periodical Der Spiegel.

I myself am waiting to read a follow-up piece on how Adidas fared as a result of this ad (and, who knows, may write one myself . . .), though it would be hard to sort out the Adidas sales from this ad from the fact that Germany hosted the World Cup (Adidas is a German company). I trust there are people employed to do this kind of sorting.

¶ If you pick through the FIFA World cup site, you can find World Cup (and Adidas sponsored) players' "+ 10," or fantasy teams.

Michael Ballack's, for example, is here:

•Lionel Messi's

•Zinedine Zidane's

•Franz Beckenbauer's

•David Beckham's

¶ Finally, do read the international comments posted about the ad on YouTube, e.g.: spettacolo, or spectacular, in Italian; simplesmente fantastico, simply fantastic, in Portuguese; Que grande anuncio y grande cancion! What a great ad, and a great song, in Spanish; and (we'll let the Germans have the last word here), Ich find sie ganz cool, I find this pretty cool.

Those comments, as well as the number of countries represented thus far by readers in this blog, testify to the truly global reach of the World Cup. Kinda neat, and as I've said, a great way to feel as if I'm participating in this quadrennial event.

Looking forward to a good final today: Vale? Vale.

Fin

Jonesing for a Star

2006-07-08T10:48:00.000-04:00

This morning I told my daughter that "Mommy passed her test yesterday." Blythe gave me a big squeeze (ahh), and, then, back to all business, asked if she could see my star.

"My star?"

"Yeah, if you passed your test they have to give you a star. Can I see it?"

For once I could think of nothing to say. Parenting is kind of an on-going defense, innit?

De-fense! De-fense!

2006-07-07T17:23:00.000-04:00

No, I'm not talking about Italy's back line.

I just defended my dissertation.

Call me Doctor Jardiniere. . .

Calling Malcolm Gladwell?

2006-07-06T11:30:00.000-04:00

Just kidding. I used to like his New Yorker articles, but think his books are kinda silly, and his persona even more so.

The reason I ask, though, is that la Jardiniere has indeed passed a tipping point, now welcoming between three and four hundred unique visitors a day -- that, despite the fact that I have been consumed with preparing for my dissertation defense and have been posting very sparingly. (And England is out of the World Cup: I did manage to call the France-Italy final, though, no? Looking forward to it.)

I am under no delusion that visitors are pouring in to read about my preparations to move to Kingston, Ontario (though, funny enough, MalGlad was born in England and raised in Ontario). No, my guests are coming for Jose. Plus 10. And then some. And some more.

Having benefited from the wisdom of several visitors who have contributed their thoughts on what is said in the ad, I do plan to post a final edition of the translation (before the final, but after I defend).

Here's my question, though: why has la Jardiniere suddenly been graced by so many visitors from Asia? At this very moment, visitors from Taiwan amount to nearly 60% of the blog's readers, followed by Singapore and Hong Kong. I have noted how very few countries remain unaccounted for here, and how delighted I am to participate in the World Cup through the passing and volleying related to that post. But I am unavoidably curious as to how and why my blog has suddenly found such a readership out east (so to speak).

My theory is that the Adidas ads have just started to be shown there, and thus just sparked an interest in their translation.

But please, kindly visitors from Asia: enlighten me! Do me the honor of telling me how you have come to la Jardiniere . . . I am interested in how these blogs go viral . . . More than anything, however, I am grateful for your attendance.

Who needs a PhD in English, when American Idol and the World Cup supply such rich material?

There Will Always Be an England . . .

2006-07-04T01:56:00.000-04:00

No joke, one of the headlines from today's issue of The Sun:

I cut Ronaldo's nuts off
Racehorse owner has colt named Ronaldo gelded in red card revenge

Priceless.

This is for you, Sandra. . . grrrrrr

2006-07-04T00:20:00.000-04:00

We're all trying to get past England's loss, I know, and the fact that England continues to repeat history -- well beyond tragedy and well into farce -- is worth remembering. I, for one, lay a great portion of blame for this particular exit at Sven's feet. Sure, Lampard stank up the joint. Also, one would like to think that had Beckham not torn his Achilles, he would have played the captain's role in diffusing the situation that led to Rooney's sending off. Finally, the loss contained all the hallmark features of a typical England tournament: 1. The critical player (Rooney) gets injured before the tournament, putting everything up in the air, and putting the English players themselves on edge. 2. England gets to the quarters, not without a little drama, but they get there. 3. Said critical player gets red carded, and is sent off. 4. The quarterfinal match goes to penalties, which they lose.

It's just silly, how many times I've seen this script replayed.

But Sven's tactics played a huge role in their questionable play throughout the tournament: that is, Sven chose to bring a forward (Theo Walcott) he never intended to play (just insanity, at a World Cup), which forced him to use that ludicrous 3-5-1 formation once Michael Owen was injured. If you have the right forwards, you're scoring, and it doesn't go to penalties. Further, had Sven had more strikers in -- er, why sub Crouch with Carragher, when the match is likely to go to penalties?? -- they might not have bombed the penalties so badly. While Rooney is famous for his temper, and I don't forgive him for that, noone was there to get him the ball, and if there's one thing Rooney doesn't do, it's dive -- which he could've easily done during the play in question. He wants that ball, and will stay on his feet to fight for it and play on.

Having said that, then, it's come to my attention that some of my mates haven't seen the replay of this critical scene concerning his sending off, so I have to present this. (Thank you, Sandra, a Leicester lass, for making me break my silence -- it was hard to talk about for a couple of days there . . . though perhaps the rest of you aren't so grateful!) I am now to the point where I do look forward to the next three matches. . . if Germany and Portugal lose, that is . . . Bile churning. . . grrrrrr . . . and of course this is all a creative distraction from the fact that I defend my dissertation on Friday . . .

But let's take a moment to review:

Just galling. No doubt, Ronaldo cannot return to Man U.

Nice to see Alan Shearer again, though. . . (mmm).

And the qualifiers for Euro 2008 start in a month.

The Bright Side of Life?

2006-07-01T17:57:00.000-04:00

Too gutted for words. Enjoy this instead.

Though aptly (at this moment), my favorite bit is when former England captain Alan Shearer red cards the ref.

11:21 a.m. CDT: 61' in England v. Portugal

2006-07-01T12:25:00.000-04:00

I know it ain't over til it's over. . .But it's over. Rooney was just red carded. I've come outside, can't even watch.

Something like this happens every tournament.

In fact (trying to cool down here), maybe this is why the World Cup takes place every four years. It takes that long to get over the regrets of the last one.

103': After two extra-time periods, it's going to penalty kicks, which favors Portugal, no doubt. I have yet to see England win a match on penalties; Beckham is off, injured; and the remaining English players are dog tired.

I have been whiling away the rest of the match by playing Monopoly with my daughter. Ever the innovative competitor, Blythe came up with a rule that the bank pays you when you buy a house. Considering our current real estate woes, I found the new rule pretty gratifying (even though I still lost). On to the penalties.

It's over.

Today's World Cup Quarters

2006-07-01T00:58:00.000-04:00

The two matches today: Germany v. Argentina, and Italy v. Ukraine; Germany and Italy move on to the semis. Two powerhouse teams that, historically speaking, you wouldn't be surprised to see in the final weeks of any World Cup. But my impressions from each match are surprising to me: that is, Germany is vulnerable, and watch out for Italy. Not at all what I was expecting to see from the day's play.

I admit I missed the first half of the Germany match to take my daughter to have her cast removed (she had broken her arm). I saw the second half, however, which was the half worth watching, apparently. Argentina scored first (the score was nil-nil at half time) -- but then proceeded, unexpectedly, to lose the plot. By contrast, it's always interesting to watch Germany react to such dire circumstances -- i.e., when they're down, on the home pitch -- because the Germans are an inherently cautious team, much preferring to take risks early on to score once, and then to sit on that score (often quite literally) in front of their net. For this reason, it was exciting to see the German players show some zeal (or anxiety), and to see whether they would in fact rebound effectively after Argentina's first goal.

I personally don't think Germany won the match, which went to penalty kicks in the end. Rather, Argentina lost the match -- they got disorganized, verklempt, not only allowing a German equalizer, but also failing to mount any subsequent offense (which sent the match into penalties). Was (Lionel) Messi's absence truly felt there? Possibly. It's hard to say what happened there, other than that they dithered between playing predominantly offensively or defensively, and ended up playing neither effectively.

But Italy shoud take heart from the Germans' lack of command in this match, when the Azzurri confront them early next week. Indeed Italy looked possessed in their match against the Ukraine.

The Italian side is suffering from a series of handicaps, including the injury sustained by their galvanizing full-back, Nesta, and the Azzurri legitimately verklempt by the recent suicide attempt by former teammate Gianluca Pessotto. I hadn't considered them a favorite until now -- but now see them as potentially indomitable, especially if Nesta returns. Watching the Ukrainian Andrei Schevchenko is like watching a master class in soccer; but the Italians played like a world-class team, offensively, defensively, and their goalie Gianluigi Buffon, truly inspirational.

That said, however, home-pitch advantage lends all sorts of odd powers, and Germany may come back roaring from the team's near defeat. In the meantime, we have yet to see England play Portugal -- to settle the score from Euro 2004 -- and France play Brazil -- a rematch of the World Cup final in 1998. The Portuguese are even more disabled than Italy in this next match, what with the slew of red cards handed out their chief players in their win over Holland. But as the Italians have proven, sometimes adversity proves the best possible motivator; and the England team is famous for blowing a sure thing. As for France and Brazil -- yeesh, I call Brazil, but hold in my mind the fact that no South American team has ever won a major tournament on European soil.

I had thought the Germany/Argentina match would be one for the ages (it wasn't), so feel apprehensive about saying the France/Brazil match might be. At this point, the greatest suspense lies in seeing what each clash of the Titans -- for no Cinderella teams remain, only the usual suspects -- might turn out to be . . . (how's that for a mixed metaphor?!). Enjoy.

Coasting . . . and Bordering.

2006-06-30T01:31:00.000-04:00

I have perennially suffered from what I term "bad travel karma." When my father travels, he is routinely bumped up to first class, and given a free ticket for the trouble of having to move his carry-on bag. As for me, if there is a flight that sits on the runway for hours, without refreshments or air conditioning, I am on it, and in the middle seat, with a hyperactive toddler. The one flight canceled? That was my reservation. Luggage lost? I can fill out those forms with my eyes closed, and wonder to this day where my knickers have traveled. You could attribute my poor track record to flying in and out of O'Hare, as I have for the past twelve years -- but, truth is, I had been jetlagged and waylaid for years before I moved to Chicago.

Unfortunately my bad karma is currently preceding me as we prepare to move to Kingston, Ontario (to take up the most enviable academic appointment a freshly minted PhD could hope for). When I went for my interview, in late January, I had to dial only the seven digit phone number, without -1- and an area code, to call my interviewers (or simply next door). That's since changed. The cost of electricity has gone up so much in Canada in the past month, due to deregulation, that we are having to get gas lines directed to our house, and to rebuild the interior to accommodate them. Setting up a bank account is trying, what with parts of the Patriot Act forbidding the transfer of funds that might signal a terrorist account. Finally, there was that al-Qaeda plot discovered in Ontario recently, which I've been in denial about -- except for the part about it being foiled. Thank you, Canadian Mounties; Dudley Done Right.

But while I have been coasting this week on Jose's popularity and not been concerned with refreshing the blog, I have learned something news- (or blog-) worthy: there is a commercial embargo on moving to Canada in the month of July. That is, so many moving trucks are traveling up to Canada, and none coming down, that moving companies have had to impose a substantial financial penalty on those who insist on moving to Canada during the month of July; and some refuse to move anything northerly at all. Being skint, as we are, having not sold our house here, we are thus planning to move the first week of August.

I have to wonder whether our President been supplied this information, in his famous (or infamous) daily briefings. Debates over U.S. immigration have focused predominantly on who enters, or who has already entered, from the U.S. border to the south. Meanwhile, like an upwardly mobile, nationwide game of "there were ten on the bed, and the little one said, roll over, roll over," U.S. residents are spilling over the northern border into Canada, in droves. An accurate picture of U.S. immigration would have to take this development into account.

Meanwhile, if our truck manages to cross without further karmic retribution (for what? I'm not sure yet), I reckon I'll see many of you there soon -- our number is 1, 613, . . .

Clash of the Icons: Shakespeare, the Beatles, and Wayne Rooney

2006-06-27T00:03:00.000-04:00

Those of you accustomed to reading my reflections on language and culture may have been a bit taken aback by my World Cup fever of late. For one thing, I have had few decent thoughts since I finished my dissertation revisions, and have reveled in analyzing sport instead of letters. For another, that translation of Jose + 10 does derive from my interest in language -- I started out in Spanish, went through several other assorted languages, before making a career out of sixteenth-century English. But since I've let my brain go soft in the past week, I've also become addicted to YouTube. I know what you're thinking -- especially since my late ode to iTunes -- aren't you a bit late to the game, Gwynn? Yes, dissertations will do that to you. But it's been so much fun finding these clips on YouTube, clips of things I love, thought I'd never see except randomly. I thus present to you three such clips that show how my passions do in fact intersect. . . all under the rubric of Anglophilia, I suppose, but not entirely. . .

In this first clip, we have the Beatles performing the "mechanicals'" performance of Pyramus and Thisbe, from Act V of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream (I write on Shakespeare).

This was evidently an attempt to have the Beatles attempt to match wits with the Bard, although at a very early stage in the Beatles' ascendance, in April, 1964*. . . Very forward-thinking, on the behalf of those who thought the Beatles might reach that status in England; and it's interesting, how the Ox-Bridge types in the audience attempt to put them down . . . are they consciously mimicking the rudeness of the mechanicals' gentle audience in MND?

In this next clip, we have Sesame Street -- a childhood icon of mine -- perform "Letter B." My dissertation concerns letters and spelling, so this clip is especially dear to me. I mentioned it -- even sang a bit -- during the Q & A at my job talk at Queen's University, though have yet to learn whether that counted for or against me . . . I doubt their other candidates were so unabashed.

You gotta love the floppy orange beatle wigs.

Finally, I present this hilarious video about English striker Wayne Rooney, which shows the lengths the British will go to to render an anthem for their favorite football players. Personally, I preferred "Michael Owen scores the goals, hallelujah!" (to the tune of "Michael, row your boat ashore"), but my beloved square-mugged Michael tore his ACL two minutes into the Sweden match (yes, I am indeed eating crow on that); Michael being from Liverpool, we might've had a chance at a Beatle coming up with a tune. This video nonetheless proves my point, however, about the intersection of British icons, and, if you watch it full through, brings us full circle . . .

Come on, weren't you a little bit inspired? I know, the lyrics are so painful they're funny ("Beckham's free, Beckham's free. . ."). I promise I'll get back to thinking when I can. In the meantime, a little TV in small doses can't hurt. . .

* When I first made this post, I had said that this program was shown in 1963, before the Beatles arrived in the States (in February, 1964); my error, I have corrected it. My point nonetheless remains the same.

Jose + 10 Special Features!

2006-06-25T10:45:00.000-04:00

The Making of Jose +10

Cool beans! (or frijoles . . .)

Sorry, I can't translate Kaka.

England v. Ecuador, 10:00 CDT

2006-06-25T09:38:00.000-04:00

Listos!

Oye, tres, cinco, uno!/ Listen up! Three, five, one! Sven's midfield-heavy line-up for the match. Let's hope Lennon and Gerrard are starting, though I understand Carrick will be coming in. As for Beckham. . .

Tu, al banquillo! / You, to the bench, unless you plan on defending today.

On the flip side, England must play aggressively and score. Don't let the match go to penalties. (Ach!)

Post-match comment (11:52 CDT): Exhale. Going in into half-time, it did not look good. A shout out to Captain Becks for the special teams free kick -- but do we have to wait until he is vomiting on the pitch to sub him? That Lennon kid -- boy's a bit special. Get him in sooner. Thankfully, the team was energized by the Beckham goal, and played much better thereafter. Oye, Lampard?! Get where you need to be -- you were off pace in several plays. Finally, note to Sven: 3-5-1 is not going to cut it from here on out. You need someone to get Rooney -- no looker, but truly brilliant -- the ball.

Onward and upward. For those watching this afternoon: Portugal v. Netherlands should be a great match. And I can't wait for Argentina v. Germany. . .

R.I.P., Team U.S.A., Part 2

2006-06-23T20:05:00.000-04:00

Finally, a sound assessment of the state of affairs. Weintraub doesn't trace the problem back to AYSO, as I did, but gives a credible account of how MLS contributes to U.S. disappointments abroad. He points out that, if we are going to build a truly competitive national team, US players should not be pressured to support the MLS (by playing in it), but instead be encouraged to play in the European leagues, in which the competition is stiffer -- and faster, as I have pointed out (i.e., watching the MLS is like watching the European leagues play in slow motion). What he also could have pointed out is that European players look at the MLS as we do Florida: the place to wind out their (slower, less agile) golden years. If I had a dollar for every time I heard a European player say he looks forward to moving to America (with his riches) to "retire" in the MLS . . .

But Weintraub's article is worth the read: http://www.slate.com/id/2144414/

R.I.P., Team U.S.A.

2006-06-23T13:19:00.000-04:00

You know what they say: there's always four years from now.

Jose say what? A Full Translation of Jose + 10See the full ad here!

2006-06-21T20:24:00.000-04:00

Consumer alert! I have posted a definitive edition of the ad's translation today, July 9, in honor of the World Cup Final, and working in all the suggested revisions. To read the most polished and comprehensive version, go to the new post.

Gracias!

*************

I've noticed that la Jardiniere has had several visitors interested in the Adidas Jose + 10 ads (which I admired in my June 14 post, "My favorite part of the World Cup so far. . ." ). Many have been looking for translations; I only translated a couple of choice lines then, so allow me to put my Spanish to further use. I don't know that it will get much airing in Kingston, Ontario; I'm just getting used to using the French pronunciation of my last name -- dooh-shjahr-deh[n] -- instead of the Americanized doo-jar-din. Not that I haven't enjoyed saying it, in French, without having had to spell it thereafter.

As for Jose and his amigo Chubby -- Gordito? -- the Jose + 10 ad goes like this. You can see the two ads that are out together in an extended version here:

As the ad opens, Gordito is bored, chilling out in an old arm chair (next to an abandoned car) outside, as Jose bounces a soccer ball off the wall nearby.

Gordito: Jose? Jugamos?/ Jose? Shall we play?

Jose: Si/ Yes.

The scene cuts to the courtyard where Jose and Gordito do their version of "rock, paper, scissors" to see who gets first pick of the players.

Gordito: Pares -- uno, dos y tres!/ Stop -- one, two, three! (They each throw a hand in, Jose loses.)

Jose: Ach!/ Ach! (the international language of frustration). Gordito gets first pick; the players arrive, running in from various angles of the courtyard, some in their native team gear, some more casual.

G: Cisse!/ Djubril Cisse, of France, who is injured for the Cup (broken leg).

J: Kaka!/ Kaka, of Brazil (remember, lots of them go by one name).

G: Zidane!/ Zinedine Zizane (Zizou), of France.

J: Beckham!/ David Beckham, of England.

G: Defoe!/ Jermaine Defoe, who plays for Tottenham, but is not playing for England in the Cup.

J: Kahn! Oliver Kahn, German goal-keeper, who won the "Golden Ball" (ringing Austin Powers?) at the 2002 World Cup.

G: Messi!/ Lionel Messi, of Argentina.

J: Mm, Beckenbauer!

G: . . . [realizing what Jose had just said] Beckenbauer!? ha ha ha ha ha ha ha/ The joke that they're sharing is that Jose has selected the player Franz Beckenbauer -- which sounds like "bake-un-bow-yea" in their idiom -- who was a German star (and former national team manager) from the late sixties and seventies (and an Adidas icon to boot).

Just when they're laughing, however, Beckenbauer turns up, in the era-appropriate kit (and his old number, 5). Oliver Kahn, the current -- and great -- German goalie (in the middle of the photo to the right), is especially dumb-struck, and Beckenbauer approaches him first to shake his hand. Neat moment.

But having cottoned on to the kids' m.o., Zidane whispers in Gordito's ear the name of a French football icon from the late seventies and eighties, Michel Platini -- G: Platini! -- who duly arrives to hug his no. 10 heir, Zidane (i.e., Germans don't hug. . .).

The players are stretching, smiling, and getting to know each other while they warm up, but Jose and Gordito are all business.

G: Oye, Defoe!/ Listen up, Defoe! Gordito throws Defoe the goalie gear, surprising -- and amusing -- because Defoe is a forward; but we've established that these are the kids' teams, as Jose then makes explicit.

J: [the coin toss; Cisse stoops to pick it up; Jose swipes it from his hands] Soy capitan!/ I'm the captain!

G: [calling out to his players behind him] Oye, cuatro cuatro dos!/ Four four two! The standard soccer line up of four defenders, four midfielders, then two forwards, or strikers.

J: [to his team, very seriously] Cuidado Cisse, porque el corre muy rapido . . .vale? vale. / Watch out for Cisse, because he runs very fast . . . All right? All right. (Cisse nods and wags his finger in agreement).

G: [pointing to two players in his backfield] Lampard, Robben, venga, ramos!/ Lampard, Robben, come on, to the wings! (or sides, of the pitch, with a gesture that tells them to switch -- which they do). And that's Frank Lampard of England, and Arjen Robben, of the Netherlands.

The match begins when Jose shoves German player Michael Ballack to the side and says, pita!/ the whistle (has blown), and takes the first touch. I'm not going to call every touch of the match itself (unless pressed).

G:Vengamos! Venga, corre!/ Let's go! Come on, run!

Jose tackles -- okay, trips -- the rapidly advancing Robben, who considers it a foul. Jose shrugs off his protest with a clipped "sorry!" to continue play. . .

J: Aqui, Beckham!/ Here, Beckham! (who produces his trademark bending cross).

Kaka ends up with the ball, advances, shoots, and Defoe -- remember, a forward -- manages to deflect it, with a laugh. Jose, disappointed in Kaka, orders, Tu, al banquillo!/ You, to the bench! -- in which the joke is who benches Kaka?!-- but then he shouts, Duff, ven! / Duff, come! Damien Duff, of Ireland, comes in off the bench. Play continues.

G: Oye, Zidane!/ Hey, Zidane! (whom he passes the ball). Zidane to Cisse. As Cisse heads up the wing, Capitan Gordito yells something I can't make out (he's running, and huffing and puffing); whatever it is, he wants him to cross the ball in . . .

Lampard collects the cross and shoots; the goalie, Kahn, grabs it. G: Gol! Kahn: "Nooooo!" Lampard, and Gordito's team, consider it a goal. Jose and Kahn argue (in their respective languages) over the goal line when . . .

Jose's mother calls from the balcony: Jose!

J: Que?!/ What?

Jose's mom: A casa!!/ Come home! He shakes his head and throws up his arm in disappointment, and heads for home, as the camera pulls back to reveal noone on the "pitch," save for Jose and Gordito, reluctantly exiting their fantasy. . .

In my last post on the ad, I had expressed my desire to see who would win Jose's match (and how). Having watched it several times now, I think I was wrong to assume the match would continue over the course of the tournament -- I think it's over when Mama calls Jose home (which is apt). I would like to see it resume and reinvented, though, in some equally ingenious way.

In translating the ad to the letter (so to speak), I am also violating the spirit of the ad, which rightly supposes that kids all over the globe -- and fully-fledged grown-ups -- play "fantasy football," so that you don't need to know what Jose and his friend are saying to "get" the ad. After all, the body language -- e.g., Gordito's pre-match neck and shoulder roll -- speaks volumes. But knowing what they are saying, and appreciating the sly wit rendered by the kids' particular choices, adds an additional level of fun, no doubt.

It is also fun reading the international comments posted about the ad on YouTube: spettacolo, or spectacular, in Italian; simplesmente fantastico, simply fantastic, in Portuguese; Que grande anuncio y grande cancion! What a great ad, and a great song, in Spanish; and (we'll let the Germans have the last word here), Ich find sie ganz cool, I find this pretty cool.

As in any great ad, the music is sound (muy grande!) as well. In the first half, the tune is D'aloutte, by RJD2, which you can get on iTunes. In the second half -- that skimming "If you don't give my football back, I'm gonna get my Dad on you. . ." -- is by Jim Noir, the tune Eanie Meany. As far as I know, Jim Noir's album is supposed to be released on July 10. Sweet ride, that one, when you hear it in toto: http://www.jimnoir.com/.

As for Adidas, its close ties to the World Cup, and how the + 10 ads began (with all pros), there is an article on the English-language site of the German periodical Der Spiegel: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,420456,00.html.

Finally (talk about huffing and puffing), if you pick through the FIFA World cup site, you can also find World Cup players' "+ 10," or fantasy teams. Michael Ballack's, for example, is here: http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/060619/1/7wka.html.

One stop shopping, for all your World Cup promo needs!

Ole, ole, ole, ole . . .

2006-06-21T11:17:00.000-04:00

England drew with Sweden 2-2 to progress to the knock-out stage; they play Ecuador on Sunday -- much better than Germany on Saturday! (and if it's Thursday, it must be Belgium. . .). The fact that they only drew with Sweden, though, does not bode well. They looked much more sharp in the first half -- more aggressive, more crisp, finding each other much better on the pitch. Joe Cole, in particular, was especially quick on his feet, depositing the first goal to put England on top.

The defense was abysmal, though, especially in the second half, when Sweden scored twice. Calling Captain Beckham? Stop yer bending and start defending. You were not marking your man when that Sweden goal went in, and would be to blame for at least two of those close calls. If soccer were played like American football, Beckham would be on England's "special teams," dispatched only to make corner kicks. Show some leadership, Becks, by requesting to come off (we know Sven wouldn't sub you), and have Lennon come in, if you're not up to playing all sides of the game. Overall, the team's response to Sweden's set pieces (i.e., from free kicks, corner kicks) was verstinken. Look to be on that Ecuadorian team like terriers.

Meanwhile, the folks at ESPN must have clued O'Brien in to his cluelessness -- resulting in an ear-bending stream of logorrhea read straight off of crib sheets and teleprompters. (Balboa, meanwhile, continued to issue his contempt for the England side. He's going to be dining out for days on England's defensive lapses. Just who are you rooting for, Marcelo?)

But it wouldn't be England if they didn't make us sweat. And they are through to the next round. Go England!