The Painful Nowning Process

Not for me, at least (she boasted vainly), I think because I seem to have a pretty good visual memory, but even so I usually find that I have to come back and fix one or two careless spelling errors in these postings, just because I’m not always paying attention. However, everyone agrees that English spelling is gruesome, because the language is a glorious jumble of different base languages that was “frozen” in print before reasonable (i.e., phonetic) spelling rules could be imposed. British/Canadian and American spellings differ as well. Nevertheless, English spelling can be conquered without resorting to replacing to/two/too with “2″ with some care and attention to rules, exceptions and mnemonics.

These guidelines note that if you really want to improve your spelling, you’re going to have to practice, practice, practice. And note rule #9, which is more about punctuation:

Watch out for the “grocer’s apostrophe.” This gets its name from a spelling error traditionally made by greengrocers on signs in produce sections. Unfortunately, this error is popping up in all sorts of places these days. Remember that an apostrophe with an “s” shows possession. Correct: “The banana’s skin turned brown.” You do not use an apostrophe to form the regular plural of a noun. Not correct: “Special on banana’s: 49 cents.”

JMNR reminds us that the sciences need the humanities:

Knowing what a thing is made of, after all, does not tell us what it is.

. . .

Literature, the fine arts, theater, and music teach humans what it is to be good, true, and beautiful. They point to meaning. What does it profit a man to learn all mysteries of matter and energy if he does not have love? Science can only simulate or stimulate the feelings of love, but . . . cannot create one real passion.

That first sentence, as Reynolds very well knows, is a paraphrase from a conversation in C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

“In our world,” said Eustace, “A star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”

“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of….”

How I hope that the makers of the movie don’t lose or obscure that particular bit of wisdom!

In the south, it’s “lhude singe mockingbird,” even though we have “cuccu”s, they aren’t nearly as remarkable as the English ones. So, exams and final papers are done, grades are filed, graduation and its celebrations have passed. We said farewell to several of our finest English majors, as we do every year. Some have plans, some–are still planning, but we expect they’ll do well whatever they do.

I’ll be cleaning up my office (or at least organizing the clutter a bit), preparing the courses I’ll be teaching this coming fall, and writing a paper for a conference in June. Not necessarily in that order.

What are you doing this summer?

That is, write stuff people might actually want to read, as opposed to that highfalutin lit’rary stuff and po’try that nobody can understand, not even you. Okay, I’m sort of kidding about that, but you can make a living writing. Unfortunately, the days when Alexander Pope could live very comfortably off the proceeds of his best-selling translations of the Iliad and Odyssey are long gone. Instead, you might have to try writing without inspiration.

Does this mean you’ll never be inspired? No. Inspiration will still come, but the problem with inspiration is … none of us can predict when it will hit. So cherish inspiration, but instead of waiting for it to produce writing, strive to produce without being inspired.

I’m not negating inspiration; I’m simply trying to guide you around it. You’ll still need inspiration to complete good writing. And it can come from a variety of places.

This is good advice for anyone who has to write, whether you hope to earn a living at it or simply produce a paper for a grade.

You can also write popular fiction. English majors galore have taken this road-more-traveled and proven that popular doesn’t have to mean trashy or poorly-written. English majors seem to enjoy reading mystery novels, and some have become very well-known as mystery novelists, including: Dorothy L. Sayers, Thomas Perry. Robert B. Parker. Amanda Cross (Carolyn G. Heilbrun), and James Lee Burke. Charles Ardai writes neo-noir “hardboiled” mysteries under the pen-name Richard Aleas, drawing on his background as a literature major. Then he and a partner launched a publishing enterprise devoted to “pulp fiction,” Hard Case Crime. Oh, and before that, Ardai was the founder and CEO of Juno.

However, if you really want to make money in the pop-fiction world, romance is the game.

We’re wrapping up our semester and the seniors will be commencing out into the dreaded Real World. I turned my calendar over to May and found these words of advice for those entering new cultures (such as high school, college, or full-time employment) from Buffy’s sister Dawn:

People may say something to you you don’t understand. Just don’t be afraid to keep your mouth shut and pretend like you know what they’re saying. . . . People may say something like “My protein window closes in an hour.” Just smile and nod. Mm-hmm. (”Selfless” BtVS 7.5)

As a Third Culture Kid, I must say that this approach has brought me success in many, many situations. Sometimes, of course, you do have to ask questions.

One of the courses I’ve been teaching this semester is an upper-level seminar on Postcolonial Literature, mainly books and films from British/Commonwealth and former British colonies.

Nita’s Wide Angle View of India posted this interesting summary of a comparative study of “cultural variables”:

Hofstede laid out certain ‘dimensions’ of culture which he used to compare different nations. These “dimensions” are not individual traits…but simply “averages” or “tendencies” of whole groups. The Hofstede dimensions are as follows:

• Power Distance (PD) The attitude of people towards differences in power and wealth …countries with a great power distance will have strict hierarchies and this will be accepted by those in the lower levels of the hierarchy.
• Individualism Collectivism (IC) This measures the ability to live in groups or choose ones own path, regardless of what the group/community is thinking or doing. Individual achievement is highly valued.
• Masculinity (MF) This measures a culture’s “masculine” traits like competitiveness, aggression and giving importance to material things and “feminine” traits like sensitiveness, empathy, importance given to quality of life. This masculine/feminine terminology has also been dubbed as Quantity of Life vs. Quality of Life. [...]

Uncertainty Avoidance (UA) This dimension (added later by Hofstede) shows how people react to uncertainty in their environment. This dimension also shows the level of tolerance in a society for differences

Where does your culture or the culture where you grew up fall on the these scales? But note the possible exceptions and criticisms of these hypotheses, footnoted at the end of the post.

In case anyone’s interested the Postcolonial Lit seminar, three intrepid explorers*, has read:

• Possession, by A.S. Byatt (England)
• Anthills of the Savannah, by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
• The Secret River, by Kate Grenville (Australia)
• The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy (India)
• Running in the Family and Anil’s Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje (Sri Lanka and Canada)
• Foreign Bodies, by Hwee Hwee Tan (Singapore/Netherlands/USA)
• Tsotsi (film–South Africa)
• Lagaan (film–India)
• My Brilliant Career (film–Australia)
• The Dish (film–Australia)

In retrospect, I think (and students agreed) I would have chosen Rabbit-Proof Fence or Whale Rider as one of the films representing Australia/New Zealand. Nevertheless, overall it has been a horizon-expanding semester. Also, I chose Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah, because I figured most of us had already read Things Fall Apart. Anthills is so oblique, however, and depends much more on the reader’s being fairly familiar with modern African culture. We all agreed that re-reading Things might have worked better.

*The small size makes the class, officially, three independent studies meeting simultaneously. Still worthwhile, though.

Regular public radio listeners may be familiar with The Writer’s Almanac, presented daily by Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame. Every day, a poem and some literary events associated with the day—authors’ birthdays, book publications, etc. In case you miss it on the air, you can read it and listen to the poems online. Today’s is House, by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Billy Collins.

Speaking of Collins, his “Introduction to Poetry” is in our first-year Introduction to Lit. anthology. Sometimes I think it takes a bit of the pressure off poetry analysis for my students. Sometimes I’m not sure.

The English 102 classes have been reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream and viewing parts of the film version directed by Michael Hoffman (with Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania, Rupert Everett as Oberon, Stanley Tucci as Puck, and Kevin Kline as Bottom). One enterprising student found this clip of the Beatles doing the “Pyramus and Thisbe” play-within-the-play:

The extremely enthusiastic audience participation gives you an idea of an actual Elizabethan performance. Or perhaps not.

Micah demonstrates why MS-Word spellcheck isn’t particularly useful for serious scholars:

Hasmoneans: suggest replacing with Tasmanians, Houstonians, Harmoniums. Really, what good is a spell checker that can’t keep Hasmonians straight from Harmoniums?

Such a good question.

Pre-registration for fall is just around the corner. Time to think about whether majoring in English is really a good idea. Careerbuilder.com compares English majors future earnings prospects with economics and electrical engineering. Turns out English majors end up having more fun, so they feel fine about making an adequate, if not exorbitant, amount of money.

“The lowest earning English majors continue to have more tolerance for careers that just do not pay well, while an electrical engineering major is a guarantee of at least a good, if not great, salary,” says [Al Lee, Ph.D. and director of quantitative analysis for PayScale.com].

I’m sure electrical engineers really enjoy their jobs, too.