More Short Fiction

From the same "book:"

Annalie sat somewhere in the middle third of the lecture hall. She was wedged inbetween the metal chair and its battered desk-like offspring, as well as inbetween her own backpack and the bags of the students on either side of her. Having managed to pull the miniature pretend desk out of the metal arm of the immobile chair, she had discovered that it operated on a slant, which kept her heavy Physics textbook in continual danger of sliding down into her stomach. She wondered where she would find the room to take notes, should notes ever become necessary.

Note-taking, however, wasn’t very important at the moment. Annalie was in the 10:00 section of PHY 101, “Physics and You.” The electronic registration program Annalie had worked with over the summer had suggested PHY 101 as an ideal way to fulfill part of her general education science requirement, and Annalie’s father had suggested that it was best to get all of the gen-ed stuff out of the way as soon as possible.

So Annalie sat, five minutes into the first class session of “Physics and You,” listening to the instructor explain the course syllabus. She wasn’t quite sure why the professor wasn’t really a professor but rather a graduate student who looked down at the overhead projector as he read his own syllabus aloud, and she wondered vaguely why he didn’t trust any of them to be able to read it on their own. Annalie had already been to a music history class earlier that morning, and the professor had started them right away on a discussion of the differences between music and other forms of organized sound; now Annalie was stuck in “Physics and You,” listening to a shaky-voiced graduate student explain the attendance policy. College was strange, and – in Annalie’s mind – inconsistent.

Annalie could feel a slight breeze coming from one of the open windows. She ached to go outside. She had spent most of her free time outside when not busy with the demands of Orientation Week, wandering all around the campus. She had gotten Danielle to go with her once or twice, but it seemed like whenever she stuck her head into anyone’s dorm room, they were either logged onto their computer or attached to their cell phone. Libby, in particular – Annalie could not even begin to describe how disappointed she was about Libby. She had never had a sister; only Chris, who teased her and who was too old to be a really good kind of friend (besides the fact that he was her brother, which made some kinds of friendship difficult), and although she had had several friends in high school (mostly other choir dorks like herself), she liked the novelty of having a very close, sister-type friend. Someone she might actually be able to talk to.

For a while Annalie had tried to count the number of words Libby had said to her, but somewhere around forty she lost count and stopped caring. Libby’s mouth seemed to be continually moving, but none of her words were particularly directed towards Annalie. They were directed towards Troy, Libby’s boyfriend, who went to the nearby state school and who was on Libby’s cell phone so often, it was as if he were pumping some kind of vital life force into her ear.

Meanwhile, in “Physics and You” – Annalie had gotten distracted in her own thoughts – a real cell phone rang. Half the students in the room bent down to fumble with their bags. It played through a hyper-speed version of Pachebel’s Canon in D twice before its owner finally retrieved it and turned it off, tossing her permed hair over her shoulder and saying, for the benefit of everyone in the room, “Oh my god, oh my god, I’m so sorry.” Annalie shifted in her seat as much as she could, then stopped her Physics book from exercising its rights to the law of gravity and pressing itself into her ribs. The graduate student, irritated at the phone interruption, went back to describing his grading scale. The breeze was becoming more and more imperceptible by the minute.

*******************

(Clearly I have not managed character delineation; while Miri and Anna have different backgrounds and personal struggles to resolve -- the whole book got outlined as part of the assignment -- they seem to have the same opinion and viewpoint on the gen ed experience. ^__^)

Short Fiction on the Undergraduate Experience

Continuing the ideas from my last post: the following is an excerpt from a project I did for an undergraduate "writing for teenagers" course. Our assignment was to write the first chapter of a book (not the book itself, mind you) which could be marketed to high-school students.

My first chapter, incidentally, was determined to be too "complex" for teenagers to understand, and was judged to contain "too many references."

I'll let the story speak for itself. (It speaks best in Firefox; it'll look all jumbled in IE.)

********************

When Miriam had been in sixth grade, her parents had let her attend a camp for young gifted students. At the time, Miri had loved it; even the goofiness of the icebreakers and the other organized events like Pie Fight and Pajama Day. Now, however, she felt ridiculous.

She had just finished writing in her journal about Orientation Week, the oddly-chosen name for the four days before classes officially began in which first-year students were subjected to all kinds of team-building torture inbetween mini-seminars on important details such as How to Use the Library. The 120 residents of Bryson Hall had all had to run through an obstacle course, sing the Name Game Song, and then sit quietly while a university staff member explained to them how their meal plan worked.

Miri hadn’t known exactly what to expect, but she hadn’t expected this. She had, she supposed, expected something along the lines of Dead Poets’ Society, where intimidatingly charming professors engaged bright young intellectuals in stimulating discourse about life, truth, and the hidden secrets of literature.

Of course, Dead Poets’ Society was actually about a prep school.

This, however, had never appeared in any movie or book about college life that Miri could remember – the experience of being told how to do everything, from using an online card catalog (with which Miri was already rather familiar) to making new friends (Risa had already divided the third floor into clusters, and at the end of each day the clusters met for a few moments to talk about their experiences and play more goofy games). In the meanwhile, there seemed to be continual candy. The RAs were practically plying them with candy. In cluster meetings, every time a resident was able to call anyone else by her correct name, Risa threw that person a Tootsie Pop or a Mini-Snickers. Candy and ice cream and freezer pops – it was still much too warm in the un-airconditioned dormitory.

Miri was baffled, and more than disappointed. She had applied to college, but found herself back in summer camp.

**************

(Yes, before anyone asks, she's got the same name as my cat. ^__^)

Cold

It was too cold to sleep last night.

For a while I tried abandoning all frugality and cranking up the thermostat, but the drafts from my charmingly antique apartment blew out the warmth the way a kid might blow out a birthday candle.

So I turned the thermostat down again (no point in paying for heat one can't feel, not to mention the associated energy costs), and huddled in bed, layered like a baklava, wearing both slippers and earmuffs.

And, trying not to freeze, I suddenly thought of Coco.

I hadn't really thought about Coco DeLaurente since I posted on my "ten-year bookiversary;" but there she was, her grubby figure planted in my brain.

"Just imagine you're Coco. This is how Coco feels."

Coco was the fifteen-year-old heroine (and alter-ego) of my adolescent novel The Red Book of Cordia. She was, at the time, everything I wasn't, including impoverished, wily, mobile (she travels through three Cordian principalities -- Nelcordia, Wrylan Dos, and Eilcavert -- in the space of six months, while I paced the streets of my tiny hometown), and, of course, orphaned. These kind of protagonists generally are.

At the time, when my winter bedroom got even the slightest bit chilly, I would think to myself "this is how Coco feels, in her unheated room at the Waverly Home for Neglected Girls; remember it, so you can write it down effectively."

Now, in an apartment so cold that the air sliced through my face with every breath, the memory re-emerged and I had to laugh.

But it put me in mind of the other games I played, when I was young, starting with the ever popular "what would [name of character in The Red Book of Cordia] do in this situation?" I think I mentally ran every major decision in high school past the handful of primary characters in my novel, and usually decided to do whatever Tiva Shirala did, as she was the character that seemed to have the most sense. (Coco, in this case, was much too impulsive and emotional; plus she lacked life experience.)

Then my mind jumped me back five years and I remembered myself, following my parents through endless grocery stores and Home Depots, playing the game "if I had to use my ears only (a nicer way of saying "if I were blind," although that's exactly how I thought of it at the time), what would I be able to discover about where I was and what was around me?"

I also played math games, imagining I was given only $10 and had to purchase ingredients for a meal for X number of people (another situation that has become all too true in reality). One afternoon I trailed my parents through the grocery store and counted every occurrence of the word "real," as in "Real Cheese!" or "Real Fruit Flavor!"

Then an even older memory popped up, one so ludicrous that I could hardly believe I once imagined it. Little Blue, probably around fourth grade, in church and taking Communion... and imagining, the entire time, that she was a female version of Oliver Twist and the pastor was the cook, handing out tiny pieces of food.

So -- Team Readers -- own up. What kind of pretend games did you play when you were younger? Were they quite this bizarre, or is there a closet fraternity of secret imaginers out there?

Oh -- and what can I do to make my apartment less cold?

Another Story from Blue's Hometown

Because I'm too lazy to blog today, I'm giving you another story. My mother is always after me to write down more stories from my childhood, so... here's an old one, although -- as of yet -- unpublished.

Preemptive Editor's Note: To my grandparents, should they ever read this -- I love you both and have long gotten over the "Monopoly Jr." disappointment. Your gift, after all, sparked a story.

********************

Lauren had long stopped expecting a birthday present from her grandparents when it arrived. She came home from school to find a box sitting in the middle of the living room as if it were occupying a space of honor. It was a deliciously large box, going up past her knees almost, with the address written in black ink over an old label. Lauren peered at the scratch-out markings, pleased that she could discern her grandparents’ names under the ink. If there were ever a crime that needed to be solved concerning this box, she would have noted an important detail.

Her father took his keys – “honey, use the scissors!” – and tore through the packing tape. There was a layer of marshmallow padding, and then Lauren pulled out a wrapped package; small, flat, and undoubtedly the first of many.

Stubby nails served to tear the paper; it was a flat white box labeled “Nordstroms” – eew, but no matter; Grandma always re-used boxes – and then inside, wrapped in tissue paper, was a dress. A storebought dress, with four rows of tulle under the skirt. Shiny-shiny red polyester that felt like silk, with ruffles on the sleeves and a rose sewn to the waistband.

Lauren could not believe her luck. Imagine the stories one could play while wearing this dress. Imagine how the tulle would fly when she twirled. It was a movie princess dress, an Annie-finds-Mr.-Warbucks dress, the skirt as wide as Cartoon Alice. Lauren wondered if, when she jumped off of the porch or out of a swing, the dress would snap into a taut balloon.

“Lauren?” Her mother was holding a letter. “Lauren, Grandma and Grandpa sent our Christmas presents along with your birthday gift. Honey, that dress is supposed to be a Christmas gift for Jane.”

“This one’s the birthday present,” her father said, holding out a longer, flatter package. Monopoly Jr. – the same gift they had sent for her birthday last year.

And Lauren cried.

-~-

But Lauren did get to wear the dress; nearly two years later, after the calf-length hair of the Tropical Skipper she had bought with the store credit from the Monopoly game (a doll with hair that long could be Rapunzel, could be Melisande, could be herself in a few years) had long tangled past combing. It was the second annual “Celebration of Women” dinner at the Methodist church. At the first annual dinner, the good ladies of Kirkland had rustled up as many impromptu and make-haste “national costumes” as they could find, and did a parade of “women around the world.” There had been a kimono in Lauren’s size, and she had managed to disgrace herself during the Japanese portion of the presentation by stepping forward to describe the costume she was wearing and announcing to the entire Fellowship Hall that her obi was called a “boa.” To be fair, the makeshift obi was in fact a boa, and most of the people in the audience were unaware of the mistake, but Lauren flamed red for the rest of the evening.

For the second annual Celebration, the women were a bit more ambitious. They wanted performances, something to smile over; could anyone do a good Carol Burnett? This year’s theme was “women in entertainment.”

And thus Lauren, topping out at three-foot-seven and with seven months of tap under her belt, was asked to play Shirley Temple.

Lauren didn’t know who Shirley was, but by the end of the next week she had seen the two films available at the public library (Curly Top and The Little Colonel) and read Ms. Temple’s biography. She was more than envious that Shirley had gotten to play not only Sara in A Little Princess, but also Heidi and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm; Lauren could care less about the rest of the filmography. The song she had to learn was ridiculously silly, but she got to do a few shuffle-ball-change steps inbetween the verses, which meant that she got to wear her shiny black patent-leather tap shoes. (The only time patent leather ever touched Lauren’s feet was with those tap shoes, and it was only because they didn’t come in regular, more durable leather.) It also meant that she got to wear the red polyester dress.

The dress, by now, was too small for Lauren; it was almost too small for Janey. But the waistband crossed Lauren’s chest at the same place it crossed Shirley Temple’s, and the little skirt rode high on her plump, dimpled legs. The four rows of tulle helped the skirt stand out, though Lauren’s mother could not be convinced to add a fifth or sixth row and Lauren was extremely aware that the ruffles drooped a bit compared to Shirley’s. As did, unfortunately, Lauren’s hair, which was straight as sandpaper and couldn’t even hold a rag curl. Her mother’s answer was to braid Lauren’s hair and pin the braids across the top of Lauren’s head, which would look not necessarily like Ms. Temple, but was cute enough for anyone’s purposes – but Lauren had another idea.

“Can I wear Grandma’s wig?” she asked.

Grandma’s wig was one of the better presents Lauren and Janey had ever received; it was secondhand, like the dress and most of Grandma’s other presents (the Monopoly Jrs were odd exceptions), and their mother had screamed, accidentally, when the present was opened and a handful of hair removed from the box. But two little girls needed a wig for their dress-up games, and so the cheap, brown, nylon thing, styled in a 1950s-era permanent wave, held court in the playroom and adorned the head of Snow White, Lucy Pevensie, and, of course, Jo March, after she cut her hair.

It was nowhere near Shirley’s ringlets, but it was unmistakably curly. It was also, in Lauren’s mother’s opinion, unmistakably ugly; but in the end she relented and thus Lauren was allowed to assume the role of Shirley Temple in a dress two sizes too small and a wig three decades too old for her.

-~-

“C – O – W,” whispered Lauren into her friend Rachael’s ear at lunch.

“What?” Rachael asked.

“C – O – W,” Lauren said, trying to invoke a secret bond between herself and her pretty friend. They both went to the same church, and Rachael, who had jet-black hair and thick bangs and got to eat hot lunch at school, was performing in the Celebration as the young Elizabeth Taylor, wearing stretch pants under a starched white shirt and talking about National Velvet. Rachael was uninterested in the performance and would read her lines from a notecard, which made Lauren unashamedly happy. Perhaps with her curly wig and her dress she would be prettier than Rachael. Right now she wanted Rachael to be in her club, in her little club of two with their secret password, and perhaps in time they would become friends and solve a mystery like the secret clubs always do in books.

But Rachael failed to understand.

“Lauren, why do you keep whispering cow?”

-~-

The day of the Celebration came, and Lauren could hardly keep still. She wanted to wear her wig and tap shoes and dress all afternoon long, to “feel like Shirley;” but her mother put her foot down. Her father made chili for dinner, and Lauren refused to eat it, and was almost sent to her room because she could not explain to her parents (it was too embarrassing) that she was afraid to eat chili before she had to sing and dance, for what to her seemed like obvious reasons. At last she ate enough bites to satisfy her mother, and was freed from the table.

The wig was donned, the shining shoes carried in hand as they walked to the church (the humiliation of wearing scuffed sneakers with a glowing red party dress was barely felt, because Lauren knew her feet would soon be gleaming), and at last the Celebration began.

In the picture that exists, of Lauren’s performance, one sees a tiny girl (tinier than Lauren even realizes), wearing a dress that is, admittedly, too small, and a strange dark bunch of curls with a red bow attached to one side. She does not look very much like Shirley Temple except around her eyes, and a bit of her smile. Her face, the only part that Lauren didn’t think to alter, is the part that looks like Shirley – her eyes glow happiness, and her grin entices the audience to sing and clap along.

After everyone has performed; after the tight band around Lauren’s chest has begun to hurt, a little; there is a trivia contest. Women from the Social Circle hand out roses to anyone who can raise their hand to answer a question about one of the famous female entertainers they’ve just seen. Lauren has been watching carefully, and knows many of the answers, but her hand is slower or smaller than the others and it never catches anyone’s attention.

The wig has begun to slip down over her forehead; it’s making her sweat and she doesn’t like it, but Lauren is listening attentively, eagerly, to all the questions. She knows if she can put her hand up fast enough, she’ll be called upon and she can prove to everyone that she is just as clever as any of them, as any of these grown-up women. Rachael sits nearby, swinging her legs aimlessly in her seat. Janey has fallen asleep against her mother’s arm. But Lauren is eager, her hand tensed in her lap.

And then: “In what Shirley Temple film does she sing the song Good Ship Lollipop?”

Lauren’s hand ricochets towards the ceiling. The announcer finally turns towards her.

“I think we forgot to mention a rule. You can’t answer a question for the person you’ve played.”

There is a bit of gentle laughter, but Lauren’s hand drops, humiliated. It wasn’t fair. She had raised her hand for every question and no one had noticed; it wasn’t as if she was only trying to answer the one about her. And there were so many other hands up – if the announcer thought it would be unfair to call on Lauren, why didn’t she just call on someone else? Why did she have to single her out and make up a special rule?

And as Lauren sat and stared at the floor, she suddenly saw a hand reach into her lap and leave behind a rose. A stupid rose. They didn’t understand at all. She had never wanted the rose; she had wanted to answer a question. She had wanted to play the game. When Janey woke up, Lauren gave the rose to her, which Janey shredded on the way home, leaving behind petals at every step.

-~-

After the second annual “Celebration of Women” dinner, it stopped being annual. No one had the strength to create a third, although Lauren dreamed for months of the women she could play. Laura Ingalls Wilder, with her long, straight braids, or young Marie Curie, bravely protecting her Polish classmates by speaking to the school board in Russian. Eventually she played the stories out by herself, with her dolls. And eventually she turned to new stories.

The red dress was never worn, by either sister, ever again.

A Child's Christmas in [Blue's Hometown]

In honor of Christmas, I'm giving you a section from a (much longer) performance piece I wrote a few years ago. It's a response, of sorts, to Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales.

It sounds better when read aloud, so you'll have to imagine me reading it. Conversely, you could read it aloud yourself.

Preemptive Editor's Note: When Blue writes "literary non-fiction" about her hometown, she calls it "Kirkland." When spoken aloud, please swallow the last syllable so that it becomes "Kirklnd," because that's how us Midwesterners would say it.

**********************

At 5 p.m. Christmas Eve the church bells start to ring. Families park their cars the length of a city block, though few people live far enough away that they actually have to drive. The air smells quiet, sharp, a little cold. There is an enveloping sensation; a strange combination of peaceful and exciting which I still feel, even though I am no longer a child. It is the sudden collision of the holy night with the celebration; the witnessing of the Savior with the parties and gifts and sweets and wine and presents to follow. We all hope that the sermon will not be too long.

Everyone is dressed in their best clothes; little girls running around in red velvet and petticoats, young couples in chinos and turtlenecks, old women in stumpy heels against thick, tan stockings. The narthex is dark, and the sanctuary is dark, and we are each given a candle when we go inside.

Since we are Methodists, the minister changes regularly, and so the service itself varies – the sublime is all too easily interspersed with the ridiculous, as it was the year when a well-meaning minister baked blueberry and chocolate chip muffins for Communion, in an attempt to make it special for the children. There are usually several performances by my mother’s piano students, all tripping to the piano in shiny shoes and curled hair, getting at least three out of every four notes correct. There was a debate, for many years, over including the secular carols alongside the hymns; but our congregation is an open-minded one, and so we now hear “Jingle Bells” in church, along with “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful.” (To be fair, “Jingle Bells” is a lot easier for a six-year-old to play.)

The services all end the same way, though – with Communion in the semi-darkness, and then complete darkness as the first candle is lit from the Christ Candle and the light is allowed to spread throughout the sanctuary. We sing “Silent Night,” a capella, and process with our lit candles until we are outside. Then it is a bustle of coats and saying hello to people we haven’t seen since last Christmas, and then off to our across-the-street neighbors for eggnog and chocolate-covered pretzels and red-and-green Hershey’s kisses stacked on top of marshmallow snowmen.

Then back home for the presents – we open ours Christmas Eve because we are a family of late sleepers, and up until two a.m. admiring (or mocking) the gifts and all are asleep until at least eleven the next morning, although Santa always conspires to leave some kind of trinket (a Pez dispenser or a bag of Vitamin C candy) in our stockings for us to find when we wake.

Christmas Day dinner is around three p.m., the first proper meal of the day, and at our house it is lasagna because my sister loves lasagna (and, really, we all do). Then back to naps or playing with the presents or reading the books or writing the letters to the people who are not with us… writing to say my dear one, Merry Christmas, and wouldn’t I love for you to see it with me, here in Kirkland, where you could walk down to the river or sit in the hushed and expectant church or chase the toddlers around a marshmallow-fudge-eggnog dining room table or unwrap the Chia Heads or go up and stand in a room lit by electric candlelight, looking out the window at the dome of Kirkland College’s administrative building, the dome on which perches a giant, glowing, electric star to shine its light over our tiny town, to pierce through Dylan Thomas’ close and holy darkness, as if to say “wise men – kings from more important lands – on your way through your life’s journey, on the way to find your own purpose and salvation – stop here.”

Now I Really Want A Book Deal

From the NY Times:

Katherine Russell Rich got a book deal for writing about her experiences learning Hindi. She also got a Modern Love column out of it; apparently, learning Hindi made her sexually aroused, so she made out with a fireman in an elevator in NYC. (No, seriously. That's the jist of the article. And then she slams us with 9/11 at the end of it.)

Come on, you guys. I've been writing "the book" about my Indian experience (offline, separate from the blog) since I arrived. All I need to know is how to hook up with a publisher. ^__^

Junie B. Jones Will Fail Freshman Comp (actually, given grade inflation, she'll probably get a B, but that's another topic for another time)

I haven't done a post on education in a long time. I suppose I've been away from the classroom.

But an article in today's NYT caught my eye, and I may be inspired to write my first ever letter back to them.

The article is about parents who wish to ban the Junie B. Jones books, or -- at the least -- prevent them from ever falling into their own children's hands.

Junie B. is a spunky little seven-year-old who has thus far narrated 27 short books about her life and adventures. I've actually read one of her books, because I was curious to know what the fuss was all about.

Parents want to protect their children from Junie B. for three reasons: 1. she disobeys authority, 2. she answers back to people, and 3. she uses nonstandard (or "incorrect") spelling and grammar.

Most of the focus is on #3. This actually delights me, because I am so impressed that parents are concerned that a book might cause their children to absorb poor English.

The NYT and Sample English Doctoral Student Jill Ratzan -- were they really only able to find a grad student to give the expert testimony??? -- deflect the argument as follows:

Just because they read "funnest" doesn't mean they'll learn to say that. I've never heard a kid speak in a Yorkshire accent because they read The Secret Garden or say "Have you any wool?"

(Obviously Ratzan never knew a kid like me, or my sister, or my best friend from elementary school. We used to play Secret Garden and Little Women and all of that and would imitate the dialogue incessantly.)

But Ratzan seems to be missing the mark here. She's only making the connection between reading and speech.

Most people, when put to it, can speak. Speech, and its associated grammatical patterns, are easily absorbed. They're absorbed because we are surrounded by speech.

But there is another, equally important connection: that between reading and writing. I've taught my fair share of undergrads who can speak without any lapses in grammar or syntax, but cannot write a coherent paragraph.

And, strangely enough, there seems to be a missed connection between the two. When undergrads visit my office hours to ask about ways to improve their papers, I often have them read the first several sentences aloud. Or I pick a particularly mangled sentence and ask them to read it.

"Do you hear what is wrong?"

A few get it, but many say "no." Then I ask them to tell me what they are trying to say with the sentence. The spoken result is nearly always clearer than the written one.

My point is that speaking well seems to be a separate activity from writing well; that many people grow into adulthood learning how to speak coherently, but far fewer seem to grow up learning how to write eloquently and understandably.

And this, I think, has a direct correlation with what is read in childhood. We learn about semicolons, for example, by experiencing them; by reading them, becoming immersed in them, and finally understanding (on an intuitive level rather than a punctuation-test one) how they are used.

(Learning about grammar in ninth grade is about as useful as learning about French; it will rarely be mastered that late.)

And Junie B. does not use semicolons, or parallel structure, or subject-verb agreement. But Ramona does, as do Anne and Alice and Tom Sawyer. Even the Babysitters' Club provides readers with clearly presented ideas, even if the ideas themselves are a little dim.

(BTW -- the NYT poses the argument that Tom and Huck used slang and incorrect English and somehow generations of kids turned out all right. But Tom, at least, had Twain as omniscient narrator, telling about his adventures in slightly more standardized prose so that his comical errors might become even more prominent and pointed. Huck, as the sequel, lets Mr. Finn promenade his English-butchering exploits but assumes, perhaps, that the reader is already familiar with the regularities of the language and thus can enjoy the fun.)

I'm not at all advocating banned books. I would be the last person to suggest banning a book. I might suggest, instead, that publishers stop publishing the equivalent of literary junk food, but I can't even justify doing that because I am such a fan of the biggest junk food of all (comics).

So I suppose I can only suggest that perhaps the parents have it right -- that they should limit their children's exposure to Junie B. Give them Ramona instead; they're essentially the same stories (young girl gets into silly mishaps) but much better written. And any kid who can read at a Junie B. level can read Ramona the Pest.

What do you all think? And for the members of Team Parent: what have you done with your children to encourage reading, and what books have you promoted?

I Want A Book Deal

All right, team. We need to put our collective heads together.

I've been spending more and more time lately doing it "library-style" at the local Borders. Although the air-conditioning is a plus, it has somewhat dawned on me that the types of books I read while at Borders are... shall we say... less than literary.

For example: when I'm at home, I'm reading through the collection of Narayan that S. left me. But when I go to Borders, I read Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck.

It's not my fault; they always seem to put the crappiest books nearest the door, and I have a habit long since childhood of reading everything I see, and I see the pop-lit first.

But lately I've found myself leaving the store with a feeling similar to that of eating a Steak-n-Shake platter: to wit, that was a nice rush, but... ouch, my intestines.

(I feel bad about my intestines.)

Anyway. After spending a few weeks doing this I have come to the realization that there are people out there getting book deals for doing just about anything. Cameron Stratcher got a book deal because he decided he was going to have dinner with his kids. A. J. Jacobs got a book deal because he decided he wanted to read the Encyclopedia Britannica cover-to-cover. Tim Ferriss got a book deal because he knew that getting a book deal would generate passive income. Then he spent a week web-testing titles to see which one would induce the most people to buy copies.

(Sidebar/Holy Shit Alert: A. J. Jacobs was the original inspiration for Ferriss' "outsource my life to India" idea. See the essay here. No wonder the guy had time to read the encyclopedia.)

So I want a book deal too.

There seem to be a few ways of going about it:

1. Deciding to do something crazy/impossible/enviable and then writing about it. Coincidentally, the book deal itself will also help the thing get done. We all knew the One Red Paperclip guy was going to get a house, right from the beginning. There was no way he wouldn't.

Thus I should get a book deal for something titled "Bollywood Henna Mango Dance: How A Small Midwestern Girl Learned to Dance Alongside Bollywood's Hottest Superstars." Not only would I get the book advance, but I would also (by virtue of writing the book alone) get to dance alongside Bollywood's hottest superstars. Random House would work out the details.

2. Deciding to overhaul your life and then telling other people how to do the same. Thus we get things like Better Off (the book I read today), a story of a couple who move to Amish country and live for a year without technology. Or we get Ferriss' book.

There's a subgenre here, somewhat along the lines of "everything is better if you move to a magical foreign country." I was talking to S. about this last night, and he suggested this particular genre may have started with the bestselling Under the Tuscan Sun, which implied that Italian villas were there for the taking.

S. noted that the majority of these books (and their accompanying films) are set in nostalgia-inducing Old Europe, and that the market hadn't yet shifted over to freaky-sexy India. Although the new sensation Eat Pray Love might help push the trend (summary: white woman goes to ashram, finds self).

We discussed for a moment whether or not I should try to make a book of my Hyderabad experience ("Alice in Hyderabad: One Woman's Journey Into Directing Theatre, Loving India, And Finding Her Soul"). Unfortunately, it's probably ridiculously marketable (if only I had the right connections... hmmm....).

Then, however, we decided it would be equally worthwhile (and equally likely to bestsell) if I parodied/subverted the genre, writing a story not about a woman finding herself in a foreign land, but the reality of the smallness and simplicity of my trip (not to mention the heat and gastroenteritis).

S. suggested we call the book "Creative Bullshit in India."

It would probably sell. Books with an obscenity in their title tend to sell.

(Perhaps we could put a mango on the cover and have a worm crawling out.)

But seriously. How can I jump on the book-deal bandwagon while there's still time? And what should I write about? ^_^

A Kindred Spirit (or, Canada Is Always Best At Everything, Isn't It)

I realized recently that I had never finished reading L. M. Montgomery's journals, and since I now have much more time for reading than I could ever hope, I've managed to make a great deal of headway into them.

Reading these journals is absolutely fascinating. Where to begin?

Let's start with the language itself. Ms. Montgomery is remarkably articulate, as would be expected. However, she considers her education to be extraordinarily poor. She went to a one-room rural schoolhouse which changed teachers every six months or so (Montgomery's critiques of these various teachers are fairly scathing; however, I remember writing the same sorts of things myself, in my own high school diaries). From her own accounts she believes herself to have had a spotty, inferior education; and yet her use of language is phenomenally above any student in any modern high school I have ever had opportunity to encounter.

"Well, fine," you might say, "but Ms. Montgomery was smarter than the average bear." In return, I give you this love letter, written by a fourteen-year-old suitor, which Montgomery pasted into her diary:

Well, Polly [Montgomery's nickname], it must be done. I had at first intended to write quite a lengthy epistle, setting forth my poor opinion of myself, my very inferior personal endowments, my happiness, or rather ecstasy if your note proved favorable to my wishes etc. etc. etc. But I have altered my paln of arrangement and resolved to give you hard, dry, plain facts, for they may possibly appear as such to you, but they are nevertheless as true as gospel. Here goes: Of all my fenimine friends the one whom I most admire -- no, I'm growing reckless -- the one whom I love (if the authorities allow that word to come under the school boy's vocabulary) is L. M. Montgomery, the girl I shook hands with, the girl after my own heart.

Yes, Polly, it is true. I always liked you better than any other girl and it has kept on increasing until it has obtained "prodigious" proportions. Oh, wouldn't I like to see you reading this. But I must conclude or you will say it is very lengthy after all. Remember I am waiting for you to fulfill your part of the transaction with ever-increasing impatience.

From Nate.

Name one fourteen-year-old you know who can write like that. I know this blog has readers from several countries, so I expect a full survey of responses. Anyone?

Reading about Montgomery's adolescence and adulthood also gives me the strange ticklish sensation that in the "idyllic" days of the 1890s, even people in what Montgomery describes as a "backwards Island town" were... um... cleverer than we. In nearly every entry Montgomery describes attending some town event or another; lectures, poetry recitals, debates. She gives an analysis of a town debate about whether Napoleon or Wellington was the better general; 100 years later, I don't even know who Wellington is and I'd doubt anyone in my "backwards Midwestern town" could create any kind of debate on this particular topic.

It is also very interesting to watch how Montgomery changes after she leaves her small island town to attend college in Halifax. She writes about how wonderful it is for her to get a formal education; and yet as soon as she immerses herself in this formality, her own ideas and musings diminish and eventually disappear. Her journals are no longer philosophical and imaginative and instead serve as a collection of classes attended and meals eaten. This may be a byproduct of Montgomery's growing up (as adolescence seems to prompt flights of fancy) but it also seems directly related to her new ambition to memorize correct answers for the big-city (and therefore authoritative) university. After she leaves university, she slowly begins to regain her own voice. Thank goodness.

Finally (as I don't want this post to get too lengthy; if you want to know more you'll have to read the journals yourself), I was astonished to discover that like her literary alter ego Emily, Montgomery received, on average, four marriage proposals per year. And she was a woman who was clearly outperforming (in terms of both ability and ambition) all of the men around her. Clearly they did not fear strong women like their contemporaries do.

So in 1890s Canada, even backwoods students could communicate complex ideas with articulate and correct grammar, small towns were full of intellectual debate, and high-performing women were beleagured with suitors.

Plenty of people talk about wanting to move to Canada now. I would like to move to Canada then.

Ten Year Bookiversary

I just realized, the other night, that it has been ten years since I started writing my (unpublished, full-length) novel -- and eight years since I finished it.

Technically the bookiversiary, then, should be in 2009; but who knows where we, and the internet, and blogging, and all of that will be in two years.

So I'm going to celebrate my fifteen-year-old "starting the novel" self (as opposed to my seventeen-year-old "finishing it" self) today.

And, out of either pride or malice, I am going to post a sample of this book, titled The Red Book of Cordia. Started ten years ago this summer.

What was inside my fifteen-year-old mind?

Tiva Shirala stepped out of the door and closed it silently behind her, wrapping a torn brown shawl around her slender arms. She looked up at the sky -- blue -- and sniffed, wiping her nose with the corner of the brown shawl. She did not own a handkerchief. Tiva was one of the first ones up this morning in Wrylan Dos, and she walked briskly and sharply to the railer tracks, climbing into the waiting cart. Staring at the sky wouldn't make the work get done any faster.

Not that it mattered, thought Tiva, how fast or how slow you worked; there were always more jobs to do until the day was done, so you might as well take the time you could, if you were that kind of a person. Tiva was not that kind of a person. She pumped the little railer treadle with a firm, steady pace, and flipped the lever as she came to the crossing tracks just as she had flipped the lever every morning for almost a year.

But she was lucky; railer-riding was one of the easier jobs, considering all the work that needed to be done to keep Wrylan Dos up and running. She had been surprised that Jen had let her take the duty, when it was offered; but for some reason Jen Lindell liked her. And, Tiva reflected, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

All right. I cheated and found a passage I still liked. To make up for it, here's a passage that makes me cringe, a bit:

Coco backed away, crawling backwards on her hands. Lex Ravian??!!! All the stories that Coco had been told about the man came rushing back to her memory. Lex Ravian killed men, destroyed buildings, and did unspeakable things to women... If this was really Lex Ravian, then she would do very well if she pretended to be tough and fearless. Coco didn't realize that she looked very un-fearless crawling backwards away from a campfire.

"I've heard of you," Coco gasped out, trying to keep her voice as steady and tough as possible.

Lex laughed. "You've heard of me? I've heard of me, too. In fact, if I think of all the things that I've heard about me, I get scared."

Coco's eyes were wide with terror, but she did not move. Her long strange day had numbed her mind slightly, and she was exhausted. So she sat still, watching Lex cook the meat over the fire. Lex switched back and forth from watching the meat to watching Coco. Their eyes met often, causing Lex to grin and Coco to shiver. Coco hated the expression in Lex's dark black eyes. She hated the way he was looking at her; staring at her, practically. She glanced up at the jewel-starred sky and wondered if Lex was going to do unspeakable things to her.

If only my parents had shelled out $10,000 for a college admissions coach who would have tried to increase my chances of acceptance at Harvard by marketing my book to Alloy Entertainment (on the stipulation that I rewrite it to include more girl power). I wouldn't have screwed it up.

Cary Tennis Gets it Right

We were in a theatre class my junior year of undergrad. We had just finished reading August Wilson's Fences (lovely play). The professor steered the topic towards why the character of Troy "doesn't change," despite the events he lives through.

And then she asked "what do you think makes people change?"

Students threw out a few obvious answers; growing up, being involved in a political shift or upheaval; taking on a new career, etc.

My answer, however, was this: "I think that people only change -- only really change -- when they work to try to understand another person. And the most common way people do this is by loving someone else, so perhaps people only truly change through love."

My answer was summarily dismissed.

Well. Four years later, Salon columnist Cary Tennis writes a brilliant essay with a similar theme. This essay is in response to a poor Stanford undergrad who wants to know how he can bring "the spark" back into the relationship with his girlfriend... of fifteen months.

I'm taking the liberty of reprinting the entire response.

Dear Stanford Undergrad,

Thank you for adding the word "dormcest" to my vocabulary.

So how do I want to help you? I want to help you by reminding you that while Stanford is expanding your sense of unlimited horizons in personal achievement, personal relationships are a different matter. She is one course you are never going to ace no matter how much you study.

If you initially felt a profound, ecstatic love and desire that left you speechless and seemed to connect you with the very gossamer sinews of the universal cradle of consciousness, good man. You're probably doing it right. But it comes and goes, the majesty of entwinement.

Call me a mystic or a cynic, but this is what I recommend: Proceed in this relationship admitting that you know virtually nothing. Go forth wanting nothing but the naked truth of you and her, not to be a hero of right conduct and high ideals, not to be the perfect Stanford couple, none of that high-minded stuff. I say focus on the nitty-gritty, intractable mystery of individual lives and how they imperfectly intersect at best. Accept the ups and downs. Query yourself deeply: Are you being authentic or are you trying to show off?

Your relationship is not the stage where you display your triumph. It is instead the forest where you lose yourself in order to find yourself.

So let me tell you what I hope for you, apart from my hope that you get the relationship as right as you can get it, and don't sweat the small ups and downs, which come with the territory. Let me tell you what I hope. I hope that the awakening of your ideals and cultural power bestowed upon you by Stanford will be accompanied by an awakening of deep humility before the problems and challenges of American democracy. That is what I hope. And that is why I say that she is a course you are never going to ace. Because she is, by proxy, the real world you face, untamable and largely unknowable.

I speak to you now in your capacity as a future member of America's elite, for America's elite needs now to turn away from dreams of empire, to turn away from dreams of personal excellence, which have become synonymous with dreams of empire, to turn away from dreams of self-perfection, which have become synonymous with the will to power and a master civilization, to turn away from our own perfect reflection and see instead how much damage our self-absorption is doing in the world, and not just physical damage but moral and intellectual damage too, as lies infect our promise.

If you study economics or politics or science you will see how difficult it is to change institutions and nations, and I hope you will realize that one reason it is so hard to change institutions and nations is that individual humans are unimaginably complex, subtle and, at root, unknowable.

It is the mistaken belief that people can be knowable and thus malleable that lies at the heart of America's most wrongheaded and tragic behavior in the world.

What I mean is, you cannot even know what's going on in your own girlfriend's head. Consider what that means about the world you are soon to join.

I sense that you have high ideals, but I honestly think at this point in our history we need something like sobriety and realistic expectations, something like humility, to counter our tragic hubris.

So think of your girlfriend as the world. Consider yourself a guest there. Meditate on how unknowable it is.

Yes. Exactly.

Yet Another Temp Poem

I listen to you talk
About your remodeling,
Carpeting, trips to Florida,
Weddings to plan.

I smile but don't add
Anything of my own.

How can I? I live in a
Building where the
Next-door neighbors
Regularly throw dirty diapers
Out of their ground-floor window.

My stories would stain your carpets.

A Poem On Food

How can I eat the sesame laddus
Without you? The memory of your
Cracking through their hardness,
Taking them between your teeth and then
Passing them to me as a bird does,
Bit by bit, from your hand to my lips
Diminishes all possibility of my
Breaking my own without your assistance,
Turning the sweetness into a gnashing of teeth.

The khatta meetha is addictive, in its
Little zippered bag, red and cheerful,
With lettering in three languages, wrapping
My tongue around the syllables as it wraps
Around each individual peppered pulse.
The eggplant sits serenely, waiting for its turn
Among the oil and rice and garam masala.

But the gift that continues me back
And back again
Is the chocolate, nicer than any I've ever had --
The one flavor you do not remember from your childhood
But came, instead, from mine;
It is this gift which draws me
One more time to the refrigerator
To break off a single square from the tinfoil paper
And hold the taste of our combination,
Of my memory, made stronger by your attention,
Inside my mouth.

Another Poem (from a favorite poet)

I cannot say how much I heart Billy Collins. Which is kind of interesting, because my first exposure to him was through a Christmas gift I got from one of my aunts -- a copy of his book Picnic, Lightning. And I flipped through it, and here was a poem about ogling the girls in the Victoria's Secret catalog and here was another poem about wanting to undress Emily Dickinson... and I (at fifteen) thought "ick, misogynist/patriarchal/chauvinist pig" and didn't bother.

But I've since come around.

Anyway, because I am working on a marginalia project right now (that is to say, I am "marginalizing" a book before I give it to S.; he in turn will read the book as well as the letter I have interlaced within it), I will share one of my favorite Billy Collins poems.

Marginalia

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

A Poem (but not by me)

I Sing

I sing to use the waiting
My bonnet but to tie,
And close the door unto my house
No more to do have I

‘Till his best step approaching,
We journey to the day,
And tell each other how we sung
To keep the dark away.

- Emily Dickinson

(Note from the editor: She is learning a particular song, a few words at a time. When she has it learned, she'll let you all know.)

Love Like Salt IV: The Poem

Love Like Salt: An Upma Poem and Possible Riddle
Whose Answer Is Available To Those Who Look Carefully

She thinks, since upma is both flour and salt
That one should be one, and the other the other.

Flour is brown and salt lighter, but that is a pale
Description at best, and one she would like to avoid.

Flour is soft and salt harder, but that only raises
Innuendo's coy head, not her desired sentiment.

Salt is crystal and crystal is pretty and pretty is female --
But flour is nurturant, flour is motherly, female as well.

And she thinks: you are pretty, you could be salt if you wanted;
Each of its faces assigned to an aspect of your
Complicated and captivating mind,

Or you could be flour: sturdy, substantial, fundamental and solid;
In the world of the cookbook, everything good
Would then derive from you.

Or you could be both, the upma itself, substitute for your presence;
Me in the evening, alone but patiently content,
Belly full of your memory.

All of these things are him, or can be, if she tries --
But which is which, and who is who, and how to put them together.

And she's not a poet, and knows it -- her talent is
Wordplay at best, form but not metaphorm.

Not like his; his poems are the smells of cashew and coriander
And flour and salt, of course, that she's stirring even now.

And so, in the kitchen, she promises in silence:
You work out the poetry, and I'll work out the meal.

The Tale of the Terrified Teacher (Another Censorship Story)

Since I've taken on the role of "educational censorship town crier," I'll call to your attention this article from Inside Higher Ed.

Some background: We're at San Jose State's Center for Literary Arts. After Virginia Tech, faculty member Mitch Berman remembered that one of the students in his class turned in a disturbing piece of fiction as well.

The work in question is a story about a student who convinces a vampire lover to kill a hated English faculty member.

The student, thankfully, was not punished -- at least not yet. Berman received permission from the provost to teach the remainder of his creative writing course online, as both agreed that Berman's physical safety could be in danger.

To get the rest of the story, one has to dig a little deeper. From the San Jose student newspaper, we learn that Berman didn't follow through on his plan to teach online; and students, stuck in a course which had stopped meeting (either online or IRL) had to go to the department to beg for another instructor.

Which they received.

And then we reach the most telling part of the article: how Berman knew that the English teacher murdered by the vampire lover was supposed to be him.

In the body of the story (which I cannot find online... grrr...), the fictional professor tells the fictional student "You don't know jack shit about movies if you don't know Kurosawa."

Students in the course confirmed that Berman actually said this, expletives included, to the story's author earlier in the semester and had no problem addressing equally "blunt" comments to the rest of his classroom.

So here we have a faculty member who demeans his students in class, gets a story about a vampire who kills an English professor by eating his feces (did I mention that the vampire kills people by eating feces?), demands to be removed from his classroom and be allowed to teach online, and then fails to hold the online classes he is responsible to teach.

Yeah. Um... yeah. Blame the student!

Actually, though...

I do blame the student, a little. Not for putting the fear of death into Prof. Berman, but for writing a story about feces-eating vampires.

What Allen Lee Actually Wrote

Here it is, courtesy of the Chicago Tribune. (I've broken it into paragraphs because otherwise it's fairly illegible.)

Blood sex and Booze. Drugs Drugs Drugs are fun. Stab, Stab, Stab, S.-T.-A.-B., poke. "So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone?, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did."

Umm, yeah, what to wright about?? I'm leaving to join the Marines and I really don't give a (obscenity) about my academics, so why does the only class that's complete Bull Shit, happen to be the only required class?enough said. The model citizen would stay around to vote in new board member to change the 4 years of English policy, but no one really stays around to vote for that kind of local crap, so whoever gets there name on the Ballet with a pretty face gets to do what the (obscenity) ever they want with local ordinance.

A person is smart, but people are dumb selfish animals. We can't make rules for ourselves so we vote others to do it for us, but we can't even do that right, I meen seriously, Bush for President? And our other option was John Kerry who claimed to parktake in Vietnam Special Forces missions that haven't been declassified?.(obscenity) Bull Shit. So Power Flower Super Mario. Pudge, hook, rot, dismember "Fresh Meat."

Mostly new/young teachers are laid back, and cooperative with students as feedback and input into the curriculum and atmosphere. My current English teacher is a control freak intent on setting a gap between herself and her students like a 63 year old white male fortune 500 company CEO, and a illegal immigrant. If CG was a private catholic school, I could understand, but wtf is her problem. And baking brownies and rice crispies does not make up for it, way to try and justify yourself as a good teacher while underhandedly looking for complements on your cooking. No quarrel on you qualifications as a writer, but as a teacher, don't be surprised on inspiring the first cg shooting.

And here's Lee's "Author's Note," as suggested/approved by his lawyer:

Authors Note: This production of writing is done in the most accurate manner I can depict of the original writing. Grammar and spelling mistakes are included at the best accuracy possible. The first phrase in questions is in fact a Green Day song. The second reference to drugs is in relation to the schools history of drug problems. I am personally clean of all controlled substances.

The statement in quotes is done so as a non personal statement as I would have done in reference to a character for a story. The reference to the gun P90 is from a video game, combined with a reference to necrophilia as a comment regarding a seriously messed up situation. A situation such as the rape of villagers during a raid by U.S. troops in Vietnam.

I really do not care too much about by continuing academia as in relation to grades. I do however believe on continuing my personal education, and I am actually still working for my classes. My views on the graduation requirements explain themselves. The reference to Mario and Pudge( a DOTA character) are completely random as is this essay. The reference to a person being smart and people being dumb is based on a quote from "Men in Black." I generally do believe the public opinion is best.

The rest of the essay is rather self explanatory, the main statement in question I have already released a comment online about. I request that all information I have released is read together, and nothing given separately or as an excerpt as the administration has seen fit to do.

On an additional note, I have completed the MEPS (Military Entry Processing Station) examinations, and yes a psychiatric evaluation is included in the process. If I'm qualified to defend the country, I believe I'm qualified to attend school.

(As the Chicago Tribune notes, the Marines have withdrawn Lee's acceptance.)

So... what do we think of this essay? Looks like my suspicion that it was going to be "well-written" was off the mark. I am surprised that the original articles stated that Lee made no direct statements or threats towards anyone, as the last sentence seems fairly obviously directed at English teacher Nora Capron, and, though not necessarily a threat, is a strong insinuation and an inappropriate statement for a student to make under any circumstances.

The rest of the essay... pretty much garbage. He makes a few shock value statements about drugs, violence, and sex; gives a minor political rant; and denigrates his teacher. Not worth being arrested over.

I could easily have taken the grading ax to the story, on the grounds that it is inappropriate to directly accuse one's teacher in this manner, and I could even have sent him to the counselor, or, more likely, the principal's office for a quick talk about respect.

However, it looks like Capron painted herself into a corner with that one, as -- if you click on the Tribune sidebar and read Capron's assignment -- she clearly states that "you cannot fail this free writing exercise!"

I suppose it makes me wonder what grade the paper got. ^__^

My guess is that the charges will be dropped, and although Lee won't ever become a Marine he will have a nice time hanging out with Kaavya Viswanathan on the island where young, publicly humiliated authors go to wait out their time until they can work their way back into everyday society. Maybe Allen and Kaavya can hook up.

(And there, Ennis, is your desi connection. *__^)

Two More Pieces of the Allen Lee Puzzle

It's very likely that the entirety of Allen Lee's "arresting" story will make the rounds of the internet either today or tomorrow, as Lee stated in a Northwest Herald article that he had given a copy to a friend, who is supposed to pass it along to Cary-Grove students, who will, I hope, eventually pass it along to the internet.

The press have released two more interesting pieces of information, though.

First, the class assignment (from the Northwest Herald):

A copy of the assignment obtained Thursday night included the following guidelines for a “free writing” exercise:

• “Write nonstop for a set period of time.”

• “Do not make corrections as you write.”

• “Keep writing, even if you have to write something like, ‘I don’t know what to write.’ ”

• “Write whatever comes into your mind.”

• “Do not judge or censor what you are writing.”

The assignment included additional guidelines such as, “If your free writing is neat and coherent, you probably haven’t loosened up enough.”

Second, three excerpts from Lee's story, from the Chicago Sun-Times:

• “As a teacher, don’t be surprised on inspiring the first CG
[Cary-Grove High School]
shooting.”

• “Blood, sex, booze. Drugs, drugs, drugs are fun. Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, s..t..a..b...puke.”

• “So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P 90s
[submachine guns] and started shooting everyone, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did.”
what do you think?

I don't have a lot of time to spend writing today, so I will let you, Team Readers, comment with your own reactions.

And remember, if your comments are legible and coherent, you haven't loosened up enough. ^__^

A Calmer, More Thoughtful Response to the Allen Lee Story

All right. I'm back from rehearsal. I've calmed down.

*deep breath*

I've done some more research into the Allen Lee story and have found some details that have cleared things up a bit.

From the Kane County Chronicle:

When asked by a teacher to write an essay about anything he wanted, Allen Lee made references to violence, drug use, a song by the band Green Day, and the Super Mario Brothers video game, among other things.

[...]

The essay was the result of what Lee said was an in-class assignment in his creative writing class Monday. He said his English teacher, Nora Capron, told the students to write whatever they wanted.

They could even write “I don’t know what to write about” repeatedly for the duration of the class period, Lee recalled his teacher saying.

He said that he was not referring to himself doing the shooting and wrote the entire essay as a joke.

From CBS 2 Chicago:

The paper allegedly made a vague reference to a fictional school shooting in McHenry County but didn’t specify a school or district, a law enforcement source said.

Lee admitted mentioning school shooting in the essay, but downplayed it.

"At the very last sentence, I said that this teacher's method of teaching could lead to a school shooting," Lee said Wednesday. He said he'd intended the entire essay as a joke.

As I begin to piece this together, a picture comes to mind. I don't know if it's an accurate picture, but it is a perhaps plausible picture.

There's a classroom, and an English teacher who hands out a ridiculous assignment: mark your pencil across this paper for ninety minutes. She doesn't say that outright, of course; she calls it "free writing," which is an educational term designed to "free" students to "write" (it implies writing without boundaries, prescribed subjects, or rules -- without grammar or syntax even, if one chooses). She might even say "express emotion," as the Trib article stated.

But then she says "you can write 'I don't know what to write about' for ninety minutes if you choose," probably in a perky voice, intended to imply friendship and a sort of collusive understanding that really, when put to it, most of y'all students don't have much to say or maybe don't want to say anything, and that's just fine, I won't make you work at it! We're all good buddies, you and me!

And, if you're a clever student, like Lee might be, this could rankle a little. You could feel a little used, perhaps; you might understand, on a conscious or subconscious level, that here was your time, your opportunity to learn, being wasted. Squandered. You might even recognize the idiocy of the assignment and understand that whatever you turned in wouldn't receive any feedback beyond that of the most surface level -- "Nice job!" "Misuse of comma!" -- and wouldn't help you, at all, to become a better writer. (I recognized that, in high school, and was lucky that my family, in addition to taking the time to critique and support my writing themselves, helped steer me towards some faculty at the local college who were more than willing to read and comment on my work.)

And your mind might be full of a recent national event; a school shooting at a university (and, as a senior, you will be at a university next year) where the shooter was a person who looked somewhat, though not exactly, like you.

And you might write a story about an ineffectual classroom in a fictional school, taking care not to make it sound like your classroom in your school, sprinkling in a handful of pop-culture references because those are your only currency for wit (even Cole Porter, were he writing now, would throw in a reference to Super Mario), and ending your story with the idea that it might be classrooms like this that "lead to school shootings."

That's a dangerous statement to make. It even feels dangerous for me to write it in this blog. It feels disturbing, and I can understand why Lee's teacher was disturbed when she read it.

But then our fictional student (and our real-life one) gets arrested. He's over 18, so it will go on his permanent record and he will have to explain it away for the rest of his life.

And that, to me, feels even more disturbing.

I don't know what to do with this situation. There's something in me, deep within my gut, that tells me it is wrong to arrest high school students for writing stories. As a teacher myself, I've read plenty of student essays which have used foul language or racial slurs (believe it or not -- during my first years of grad school I taught an Introduction to Theatre course, and I would get some of the most appalling "play reviews;" the racial slur had to do with a student trying to fill up the page limit by describing how he went to Taco Bell before the show started, and he felt obliged to let me know his feelings about Mexicans). But I've never had an essay which disturbed me.

I've always had the grading ax to swing down on students who wrote to tell me that a certain play was "a three-hour piece of shit," with a reminder of our class discussion on academic vs. colloquial language written as marginalia. But I'm not sure the grading ax would work on Lee, particularly because I've got a sneaking suspicion that his story might actually be somewhat well-written. And how do you downgrade a piece of "free writing," anyway?

I suppose the smartest thing to do would have been to send him to counseling. Clearly Virginia Tech was on his mind, and perhaps he needed someone to talk to about it; to say that he was worried because was going to start college next year and he didn't know if he would be safe, or to say that he was worried about going to college and being stereotyped as another "silent-nerdy-creepy Asian guy," or to say that he was worried because he felt a bit like he understood why Cho did the shooting.

But they arrested him.

I guess I can't write any more until I read the story myself. My plausible scenario could be wrong, and Lee's work could be that of a deranged mind... who knows? (Even in that case, though, psych treatment would have been better than jail.)

As soon as it makes an appearance online, please let me know.