Not only am I proud to be a college professor, I’m also proud to be friends with college professors. None more so than my good friend Ken Morefield.

Having had to deal personally this semester with the negative stereotype the Evangelical sub-culture has of my profession, I’ve also had to deal with the more general negative views of my profession that permeate our culture. It is, therefore, with gratitude that I now plug Ken’s new article published by The Matthew’s House Project.

Thanks, Ken for doing the hard work of intelligently addressing the irrational. And thanks to The Matthew House Project for publishing it.

Special thanks to Grammar Girl for pointing out the diagrammatic sentence stylings of Kitty Burns Florey as she analyzes the sentence structure of Sarah Palin.

After one particularly gnarled sentence, Florey comments

To me, it’s not English—it’s a collection of words strung together to elicit a reaction, floating ands and prepositional phrases (”with that vote of the American people”) be damned. It requires not a diagram but a selection of push-buttons.

To be fair, Florey does grant that

diagramming usually deals with written English. We don’t expect speech to reach the heights of eloquence or even lucidity that the written word is capable of…But they’re also forced, from time to time, to answer questions, and their answers often resemble the rambling nonsense, obfuscation, and grammatical insanity that many of us would produce when put on the spot.

At any rate, it’s nice to see a grammarian getting some face-time in these fractious times.

One evil deed missed is a loss for all eternity.
–Grendel

Before Wicked turned Oz on it’s head and explored the life and times of the West’s wickedest witch, there was John Gardner’s Grendel. The 1971 novel by America’s moral fictionist delves into the mind and life of English literature’s earliest monster.

It’s not an easy task. Whereas Gregory Maguire was tackling an essentially human character and writing in a time when pop-psychology family dynamics provide all sorts of explanations as to why the Wicked Witch is so wicked, Gardner tackles a creature only presented as a monster, an animal, a force to be defeated. Interestingly, the one human element provided Gardner by Beowulf is one he discards: Grendel’s mother. She becomes a doddering, dementia-ridden, voiceless, creeping thing in the cave that Grendel finally sets “aside–gently, picking her up by the armpits as I would a child” (158). It’s a sad commentary that the recent Beowulf film adaptation did more of interest with Grendel’s mother than Gardner. To be fair, cast as a first-person narrative, Grendel’s story neccessarily ends before Grendel’s mother really becomes a force in the tale. But the jump from demented hair pile to vengeful she-beast seems a bit much to believe in Gardner’s telling.

Nihil ex nihilo, I always say.
–Grendel

If, as Wikipedia asserts, Gardner was weary of contemporary authors indulging in “‘winking, mugging despair’ or trendy nihilism”, what then does he bring to Grendel? Perhaps it’s a non-trendy nihilism. Or, perhaps, Gardner’s portrait of Grendel is his portrait of contemporary writing: there is no real heroism, there is only power; the self is only defined in pushing against the not-me. Throughout the novel, Grendel seems to ask what it is he is here on earth for, but never really engages in any true searching. His early stumbling attempts at interacting with humans are met with hostility, so he quickly abandons that avenue. The rest of his life therefore becomes a wallowing in a naturalistic, materialistic hell. Is it because of his reception? Is it because of a lack of intelligence?

Whether Gardner is shackled by the source material or a lack of imagination, his exploration into what turns the creature against mankind pales in comparison to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Both creatures blame are aware of their evil ways; both creatures blame their evil on the hypocritical failings of humanity; but Shelley is able to scribe that arc with much more precision and pathos. Perhaps Gardner’s choice to write Grendel in first person trapped him in a mind unable to comprehend the metaphysics needed to parse the cruel world in which he’d been set. Or perhaps Grendel is, in the end, nothing more than a physical manifestation of the nihilism described by O’Connor’s Misfit: No pleasure but meanness.

I generally think that the writing in our nation’s newspapers is abysmal and contributes to the destruction of knowledge in the hearts and minds of the average American. However, a recent Associated Press news story does more than the usual to illustrate how the pervasive “style” of journalistic writing not only shades meaning but also entirely convolutes the facts of the story.

The July 12th report of a boy who was struck by a foul ball at a Cubs game carries the headline:

Boy fractures skull after hit by ball at Cubs game

The first sentence of the short article begins:

Doctors and family members say a 7-year-old boy who fractured his skull when he was struck by a foul ball at Wrigley Field…

Look at those sentences carefully. How exactly was the boy’s skull fractured? Did the boy purposefully bring his head into contact with a batted ball? Did the boy through a fit after missing a foul ball and smash his own head into the ground? Did the boy, in fact, have anything to do with the fact that his skull is now fractured? No. But the AP seems to think that the boy did all the fracturing. Why else would you write “a 7-year-old boy who fractured his skull“?

I understand the AP’s desire to write in the active voice. In fact, I generally encourage my writing students to write in the active voice and avoid the passive. However, an overzealous and context-insensitive application of the rule has a negative effect on the goals of AP style. Dr. Michael Sweeny of Utah State University suggests that the unstated logic behind the AP style is:

1. Totally accurate.
2. Totally clear to anyone with a high school education.
3. As tight as can be, given No. 1 and No. 2.
4. Inoffensive, unless there is an overriding reason, central to a significant news story, to include potentially offensive words or concepts.

The AP story headline “Boy fractures skull after hit by ball at Cubs game” violates dictum #1. The boy didn’t do any of the fracturing. The ball fractured the boy’s skull. More accurately, the ball batted foul by Cubs pitcher Ted Lilly fractured the boy’s skull. By casting the sentence in the active voice with the boy as the main subject, the writer makes the boy culpable in his own injury. Surely that is not an accurate representation of the facts.

I’m sure someone could argue that being entirely accurate in this case is going to result in a sentence in which the active agent is not a person–A foul ball fractured the skull of a young boy. Shouldn’t the news story be focused on the boy? Yes, it should. Which is why the passive voice may be the best option in this case. Especially if the acting agent is included. A young boy’s skull was fractured by a foul ball. It may be in passive voice, but the young boy is up front in the sentence and the proper cause of the fracturing is represented.

I could rail about some narrowly focused style hound in the bowels of the AP whose myopic application of a guideline has not only obfuscated the truth but also placed implied blame on an innocent child. But the sad truth is that I’m guessing that this error didn’t require any such threatening visage. My guess is that the piece was written by some poor lackey who has had the rules beaten into his soft, malleable brain-mush and probably wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference even if he’d had a free-thinking neuron capable to notice what was going on.

Hillstrand, Andy, Jonathan Hillstrand, and Malcolm MacPherson. Time Bandit: Two Brothers, The Bering Sea, and One of the World’s Deadliest Jobs. New York: Ballantine, 2008. $25.

I have an image in my head of Malcolm MacPherson sitting at a table surrounded by piles of audio-cassettes and notebooks, head in hands as he tries to figure out what in the world to do with the hours of anecdotes, stories, histories, and process explanations that he has just collected in conversations with the Hillstrand brothers. That MacPherson was able to find a central narrative on which to hang all of these baubles is not as impressive as his ability to maintain a lively voice for each of the brothers.

Not having cable, I haven’t had the pleasure of watching the Discovery Channel’s show Deadliest Catch. After reading Time Bandit, I’m not sure that I need to. MacPherson uses the narrative of Jonathan’s rescue from being adrift alone during a salmon fishing run to organize the biography of these life-long fishermen as well as a brief lesson in the history and mechanics of crab fishing in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska. While the stories are told with first-person immediacy, the book doesn’t lose the narrative drive like the disappointing Jorgy. While some chapters may go on a bit, the overall rhythm of switching from Jonathan’s narrative to the related tales and obeservations is generally effective. The suspense of Jonathan’s situation carrying you over the wave ahead.

The “as told to” approach of Time Bandit robs it of the literary quality of the fisherman/authors collected in Leslie Leyland Field’s anthology Out on the Deep Blue: True Stories of Daring, Persistence, and Survival from the Nation’s Most Dangerous Profession or the memoirs of Linda Greenlaw, but Time Bandit is not simply two old salts telling war stories. Throughout the volume, both Hillstrands reflect often on the nature of humanity that would put themselves through such danger and also on what drives them personally to continue in an industry that will most likely kill them. Their ruminations go beyond hyper-masculine chest thumping to the questioning of human motivation.

At one point describing themselves as dinosaurs, the Hillstrands represent a unique brand of fisherman that was raised with the old, practically unregulated, system and is now transitioning to an era of fishing that is much more controlled by the government. The Hillstrands admit and illustrate the necessity and even effectiveness of the new regulations, but they also fear that the heart of the industry is being eroded by the encroachment of bean-counters and bureaucrats. Time Bandit may then stand as a salt crusted monument to the frontier long after it has been rationalized into the ground.

Rushdie, Salman. The Enchantress of Florence. New York: Random House, 2008.

“Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path.”

Strangers wearing long leather coats. Mughal kings reigning over an exotic court. Imaginary idealized women coming to life. The glory and intrigue of Renaissance Italy. Boyhood friends coming together for one last crusade. Pirates. Long lost uncles. Dark hints at the origins and demises of figures still casting shadows on contemporary politics. Inquiries into the nature of the self and the divine. Sensuality and sex.

Salman Rushdie’s newest novel, The Enchantress of Florence, certainly has it all. While Ground Beneath Her Feet recast an ancient story in contemporary time, The Enchantress of Florence keeps the setting firmly set in the past while weaving a new story in spaces left vacant by history.

In the 12th century, Genghis Khan united the tribes of northeast Asia and swept over most the continent. In the late 14th century, the Mongol Timur the Lame himself conquered much of central and western Asia. Generations later, claiming descent from both military leaders, we enter the court of Abul-Fath Jalaluddin Muhammad, known as Akbar the Great. With seemingly little else to do, we meet Akbar worrying about what happens to his identity when talking about himself in the third person. It’s serious discussion he has with himself, but a failure in referring to himself as “I” has ramifications far beyond the immediate uncomfortableness he feels.

The main plotline follows the fortune of a European stranger entering the court with a story to tell. His immediate history is suspect, and it is only his storytelling abilities (and the olfactory wizardry of an unlikely prostitute) that keep him from certain doom. Calling himself the Mughal of Love, the stranger claims a blood relation to Akbar. On the one hand, such a blood relation could solve the problem of Akbar having to pass his kingdom on to unworthy sons. On the other hand, the stranger’s story of proof opens many doors of hidden family history that are both unproovable and inconvenient.

It is the stranger’s story that makes up the second major thread of the narrative. Like Scheherazade, the stranger’s tale is told to save his life, for, having claimed kinship to Akbar, his life would be forfeit should he be unable to proove his claim. And also like Scheherazade, the stranger’s tale weaves together real history, fantastic adventure, and glorious romance. The tale concerns three friends of Florence, one of them the famous Machiavelli. One friend travels the world and becomes a fearsome warlord. One friend climbs the political ropes of power. One friend travels nowhere and lives a simple life until his last great adventure.

Rushdie’s brand of magical realism has the odd quality of simultaneously engaging you in a narrative you think should be interesting and distancing you from that very narrative. Told like a fairy tale, the tone constantly reminds you that you are reading, and that reading is an artificiality. However, ever mindful of the artifice, the reader then constantly wonders, what purpose then did the maker have in mind? Thus, along the way of this intertwined story, we begin to pay close attention to the asides discussing the way of kings, the place of lying, the role of religion, the truth of power. Like the religious pilgrim, it’s no good mindlessly entering the temple and going through the motions. You, dear reader, must work out the value of journey.

Lester, Jean. Jorgy: The Life of Native Alaskan Bush Pilot and Airline Captain Holger “Jorgy” Jorgensen._ Ester, AK: Ester Republic Press, 2007. $25

In the late 60’s my grandfather purchased an 8mm film camera complete with light bar. It was a hand-wound model that would only capture a minute or two of action before needing to be rewound. The movies he captured from that era featured select highlights: children crawling on the ground, adults gesticulating towards children to get them to crawl, birthday cakes being extinguished. The special moments were carefully selected and shaped. Watching them now is entertaining and effectively allows us to expand our memories.

In the 80’s my grandfather acquired a videotape camcorder. The inexpensive recording medium and lack of any processing time or fees meant that we could record every moment of every family event. And we did. A tripod was set up in the dining room so that whole family dinners could be recorded in their entirety; each and every Christmas present was unwrapped for the camera in slow succession. Watching these tapes now is an exercise in endurance. The lack of any selection or shapliness to the events reveals the banality of the majority of our conversation. Comments and remembrances that had us laughing till we cried or fondly remembering other family events are buried in the lengthy stretches of passing carrots and explaining mundane daily business. The documentarian of the past, sifting through the sands of the creek to find nuggets of gold, was replaced by an undiscerning strip mine.

Such is the effect of Jorgy: The Life of Native American Bush Pilot and Airline Captain Holger “Jorgy” Jorgensen. The book reads as though Jean Lester, the “as told to” author, merely transcribed hours of interview tapes with Jorgy Jorgensen. Events are repeated, fascinating side-stories are introduced and abandoned without care, rabbit-trails are followed at whim, and even seemingly unrelated political ramblings are included with little context or thoughtful development.

The shame of it is that the life of Jorgy Jorgensen appears to have been an interesting and important one. Here is a man who spent his early years subsisting in a mining village on the Alaskan frontier. After just an 8th-grade education, he stepped into the early years of Alaska aviation, helping to build important airstrips and learning to fly. Jorgensen had a front seat in watching the development of the Alaska oil and air industries. Had Lester collated the interviews and given them some kind of narrative shape, even as little as ironing out the temporal wrinkles that often appear when we tell stories about our lives, the events of Jorgensen’s life could have presented a compelling narrative of the history of aviation, Alaska, and the life of native peoples in the frozen wastes. As it stands, the considerable power and romance of the story is lost.

I still find myself wanting to go back and watch the old 8mm films my grandfather made, but I cannot remember a single fleeting desire to sit through a recorded family dinner. For dogged researchers interested in the facts of the area and period, the book will stand as a solid record of one man’s experience of Alaskan aviation. However, a solid record does not make a compelling biography.

Good friend Ken Morefield recently had an interesting essay on mentors and judging posted at The Matthew’s Project. Apart from his main point, he makes wonderful sense of a shared teaching experience we had.

In other news, while I don’t really think that I can be called a mentor, a former student of mine–Michial Farmer–has recently started living one of my early dreams by starting a PhD program at UGA (Georgia, for them’s that doesn’t know). You can read his interesting blog here. He has excellent taste in music, and he’s still energetic and idealistic enough to try getting freshmen to read and use T.S. Eliot. Rave on, Michial, rave on!

For the past couple years, we’ve been members of LibraryThing, a great online tool for cataloging your books. (In case you’re curious, we claim to have 1952 books in our library.) A recent feature added to the site is the opportunity to be a Library Thing Early Reviewer: you get the opportunity to acquire new books before they’re published in return for posting a review of the book on the site. You select which books of the available list in which you have interest, and if you are selected from the pool of interested folks, you get the book.

I jumped at the chance, and last week received my first Early Reviewer book, Salman Rushdie’s upcoming The Enchantress of Florence. I have to admit, there’s this fanboy part of me that thinks it’s just a bit cool that I’m getting to read new fiction before it’s available to the public. I then realize that having that feeling and expressing that feeling negate any coolness that might have accrued. And then I’m sad.

Of course, I’m also waiting for Jorgy: the life of Native Alaskan bush pilot and airline captain Holger Jorgensen, and that might also put a dent in my street cred.

At any rate, be on the lookout in the next couple of weeks for my thoughts on the new Rushdie.

Living out on the edge of nowhere, we don’t really get much in the way of film that isn’t mainstream, so in addition to missing many of the great films everyone’s talking about, I don’t see many films either. Therefore, my list of 2007 favorites isn’t limited to films of 2007, nor is it limited to film. Rather, my 2007 favorites list is going to be a list of favorite art/media that I’ve ingested this past year: film, DVD, TV, music, web, books. Ok, perhaps I’ll put one limiter on this; the list only includes NEW TO ME experiences. Otherwise things like Firefly and reading Tolkien would overtake the list. So without further ado, here it is:

Todd’s 25 Favorite Art/Media Experiences of 2007 In Alphabetical Order

1. 28 Weeks Later, film by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2007

   One of the purest representations of nihilism I’ve seen in recent years. Apart from being a fun zombie flick, the film is unrelenting in punishing severely anyone who even dares to play even the smallest heroic role or act on any human feeling.

2. Amazing Grace, film by Michael Apted, 2006

   While not perhaps ground-breaking or even remarkable in its film-making aspects, the story itself is compelling, and the film doesn’t get in the way of it.

3. The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, novel by Barry Lyga, 2006.

   Lyga paints a complex portrait of suburban America as seen by the kind of teen-age boy that many today would profile as a potential Columbine-like killer. That the boy has no violent intentions doesn’t seem to matter to those around him. What makes the story intriguing is that even the minor characters are complex, not fitting neatly into the stereotype boxes that they appear to be occupying.

4. Atonement, film by Joe Wright, 2007

   I generally despise frame stories and do think that the ending of this film could be lopped off with no negative effect to the narrative. However, when I think about what kind of love story I’d like to write, I’d like to think that I could do as a good a job of avoiding sugary-sweet sentimentality.

5. Bridge to Terabithia, film by Gabor Csupo, 2007

   While my 6-year-old nephew kept assuring me that it would “get better than this” throughout the film, I found myself not thinking it needed to. A rare display of showing restraint in the use of digital effects helped focus the film on the very real story of very real people rather than veering off into the tempting land of CG monsters and mindless action.

6. The Descent, film by Neil Marshall, 2005

   Perhaps the best horror film I’ve seen this century! While the general outline of the story is not terribly inventive, the execution of the tale is excellent. Marshall understands the concept of not showing too much, and does for spelunking what Spielberg did for ocean swimming. The DVD provides 2 or 3 different endings, which provides some interesting fodder for discussing changing film for different markets. (AKA, why American audiences make films stink).

7. Kôkaku kidôtai (Ghost in the Shell), film by Mamoru Oshii, 1995

   For about six-months–when I was 5–I was riding the cultural curve that brought Japanese animation to the US. Then I wiped out. I finally found my board and am tentatively paddling out into the surf again. Oshii’s 1995 anime classic is the best kind of sci-fi: a good story asking BIG questions set in an unfamiliar setting that gives people permission to explore issues. That, and the artwork and music rock.

8. Grizzly Man, film by Werner Herzog, 2005

   Like Into the Wild, Herzog takes a stark look at a somewhat unlikeable person to examine extreme aspects of the human psyche.

9. How’s Your News, film by Arthur Bradford, 1999.

   I haven’t felt this ambivalent about a documentary since Southern Comfort. I vascillated between wondering if these people were being exploited or at least endangered–psychologically if not physically–to being moved and fascinated as we watched the interactions between the developmentally challenged and, in some cases, the humanity challenged.

10. In Persuasion Nation, short stories by George Saunders, 2006.

    Perhaps not as strong a collection as Pastoralia, Saunders still brings the wonderfully fun satire. This time around, I was impressed with his consistency of voice and its verisimilitude to the kind of tone created by folks trying to sound sophisticated.

11. Live from Nowhere, Vol 2, music album by Over the Rhine, 2007.

    The group’s live interpretations of already good songs almost never fail to improve the material.

12. Life of Pi, novel by Yann Martel, 2001.

    A 21st century Robinson Crusoe tale. With a Tiger!

13. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War, history by Nathaniel Philbrick, 2006.

    I was a bit shocked when the story departs the actual Mayflower less than a 1/3 into the book. My interest waned quickly when I saw I wasn’t going to get the sea story I desired, but Philbrick reeled me back in with a complex look at a period in our history that is so often simplified and romanticized.

14. Never Let Me Go, novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005.

    Just what you might expect when the man who gave us The Remains of the Day turns his attention to the future.

15. Offside, film by Jafar Panahi, 2006 (Iran).

    How do young women pursue their passions in a highly repressive society? A good example of how an examination of an extreme situation can reveal truths about our own “enlightened” one.

16. Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families, edited by Andrew Carrol, 2006.

    This collection represents highlights from the hundreds of manuscripts generated by the Operation Homecoming project. While all war writing seems to fall into familiar tropes–glory of battle, horror of battle, tedium and stupidity of the military, inhumanity of the situation–each conflict also seems to give rise to unique stories rooted in the specificities of the environment. This collection runs the gamut.

17. Ratatouille, film by Brad Bird & Jan Pinkava, 2007.

    The Pixar formula continues to impress: compelling story + breathtaking art + humor = great film. What’s not to like about a rat guiding a noobie chef to greatness and melting the heart of a stone-cold reviewer? I especially appreciated that the ending allowed for a certain realism concerning the response of health inspectors.

18. The Queen, film by Stephen Frears, 2006.

    Excellent film all the way around. While obviously a study of why the Monarchy reacted the way it did to Diana’s death, I found in this explanation many parallels to the response of the evangelical world to contemporary times.

19. “Seven Deadly Sinners,” song by The Born Again Floozies, 2007.

    What’s not to like about a group whose rhythm section comprises two tap dancers and a tuba?

20. Sky Blue Sky, music album by Wilco, 2007.

    Two of my favorite records of the year feature formerly unhappy groups dealing with being happy. Some have criticized the “lightness” of this album, but I think Tweedy and company deal fantastically with the difficulty of not being blue.

21. Story of a Girl, novel and blog by Sara Zarr, 2007.

    Even if I didn’t know Sara, this would have been one of my favorite reads of the year. The story succeeds in being realistic and heartwrenching and hopeful all in one go. And, hey, I even liked the character.

22. Les Triplettes de Belleville, film by Sylvain Chomet, 2003.

    Been wanting to see this for a while. There’s barely a word of dialogue in the whole film, but Chomet draws us into a wholly realized hyper-stylized Paris and New York for a grand tale of a mother’s love and bicycling.

23. The Trumpet Child, music album by Over the Rhine, 2007.

    Like Wilco, OTR had to figure out what to do with being happy. They mostly succeed. Of course, a bad OTR day is still better than most good ones.

24. What Gets Into Us, short stories by Moira Crone, 2006.

    I read this initially to get an idea about who this person was who was going to be leading the fiction track at the Glen Workshop. Then I read “The Ice Garden.” Wow.

25. The Woman in White, novel by Wilkie Collins, 1860.

    As part of my Dorothy Sayers-a-thon, I read this classic novel that inspired Sayers to write a book about Collins. It’s got your pscyh asylum, your dilapidated castle, your evil baron, your sinister foreigner, your secret society. Heck, it’s got it all. And more.