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Links of links and what they yield...
Feb. 26th, 2006 12:15 amThis article on the accessibility of texts is quite interesting.
Firstly, because I get both sides of the arguement with an intimacy that's kinda strange. I know very, very deeply what it's like to be the undergrad student with five (possibly six) classes, a job where you clock in fifteen minutes early and leave an hour late, a bazillion pages of reading to do by tomorrow and this pissant author who just wants to make your life *hard* instead of saying whatever the FRELL it is he's been trying to say for 10 pages. The kind where you go into an altered state of consciousness. The kind of rage where veins pop and you think it might be worth the jail time to mortar the author's house. Or grave (you know, the "I'm gonna dig James Joyce up and kill him ALL over again" kind of feeling).
I mean, it's a deeply frustrating experience. Especially if it'sforced assigned reading.
Call me a quitter, but if it's not school reading and I come across a book that doesn't do it for me, I don't get mad. I merely say to the book, "Dear book, it's nothing personal but your author has failed to make you worth any more of my time. Thus you are BAHLEETED from my attention. Have a nice day."
And if it's school reading I go hunting for cliff notes and other people's essays and try to pick out nifty quotes so I can pretend I did the reading for discussion. You'd be surprised how much absolute *crap* you can get away with in a senior-level undergrad lit course with the words "I didn't understand this (turn to page and insert specific quote)".
If you have mad, mad skillz, you can practically get the professor to write you an English to Third Grader translation of the text.
And if you take good notes of discussions, you can jerry-rig a paper on short notice.
But that's irrelevant. Useful, but irrelevant.
I get the frustration of inaccesibility, that's the point. I get the insult. Not only the insult of not being let into the club, but the insult of being made to confront this text and waste time on something that yields nothing.
But I also get how sometimes, that's not the author's fault. Mostly, because I've taken a poetry workshop as a class and for 12 weeks got the very enlightening if painful experience of week after week trying to carefully craft a meaningful set of lines that wouldn't get the "uh, yeah, dude, I didn't get what you were trying to say" o' doom from my peers.
The kind that you choose between writing a Dr. Seuss version of an Evanescence song "I feel my pain, I feel it in the rain, I feel my pain deep in my soul, I feel my pain I am not whole" (I will ignore how fun doing this for hours would be) or just putting up with the confused looks for 8 more weeks.
And I get what it's like when someone gets frustrated with you being vague and you know that you did your damndest to make your point obvious without spelling it out for them in bright red crayon on paper with huge lines with little dotted lines in the middle.
I get what it's like when you know you did your work as the author and the reader is just being LAZY.
I don't have an actual solution to what happens when it's a good reader and a good writer who just can't make the connection.
I just know that sometimes, you have to decide that every book is not for you and vice versa.
Sometimes, I come back to the book I *poof, BAHLEETED*. I wish people didn't feel like books had time limits and they have to be understood and figured out right this minute (another side affect of both our culture and academia, I fear). Sometimes it's just not time for me to read a book.
I don't fear using the pause button on a book. Leaving a dog-ear or a bookmark and letting it ferment 'til the boquet is right.
Sometimes I need to mature a few years or learn a few more things. Me and Plutarch were not friends to begin with. Plutarch seemed disorganized and meandering. Then, given a couple more years of Latin and a few more history classes and a better translation and suddenly me and Plutarch were gettin' on like a house on fire. Same with Beowulf. Same with Shakespeare.
Sometimes a piece of writing just needs to hit you at the right time in the right place to work. Not that you're not trying as a reader or the writer is being deliberately difficult - but it's not your time yet. Maybe this author is talking great spiritual concepts and you're just trying to get through the day at work and could care *less* and would like to read something that's more down to Earth. Maybe you need to get over something. Maybe you need to go through something.
Don't blame the book. Don't blame yourself. Agree to disagree, but be open to changing your mind.
Right now? I'm at odds with C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman, and Tolkien. But in five years, we might be inviting each other to dinner, having little chats by the lake, holding hands. It could happen.
Firstly, because I get both sides of the arguement with an intimacy that's kinda strange. I know very, very deeply what it's like to be the undergrad student with five (possibly six) classes, a job where you clock in fifteen minutes early and leave an hour late, a bazillion pages of reading to do by tomorrow and this pissant author who just wants to make your life *hard* instead of saying whatever the FRELL it is he's been trying to say for 10 pages. The kind where you go into an altered state of consciousness. The kind of rage where veins pop and you think it might be worth the jail time to mortar the author's house. Or grave (you know, the "I'm gonna dig James Joyce up and kill him ALL over again" kind of feeling).
I mean, it's a deeply frustrating experience. Especially if it's
Call me a quitter, but if it's not school reading and I come across a book that doesn't do it for me, I don't get mad. I merely say to the book, "Dear book, it's nothing personal but your author has failed to make you worth any more of my time. Thus you are BAHLEETED from my attention. Have a nice day."
And if it's school reading I go hunting for cliff notes and other people's essays and try to pick out nifty quotes so I can pretend I did the reading for discussion. You'd be surprised how much absolute *crap* you can get away with in a senior-level undergrad lit course with the words "I didn't understand this (turn to page and insert specific quote)".
If you have mad, mad skillz, you can practically get the professor to write you an English to Third Grader translation of the text.
And if you take good notes of discussions, you can jerry-rig a paper on short notice.
But that's irrelevant. Useful, but irrelevant.
I get the frustration of inaccesibility, that's the point. I get the insult. Not only the insult of not being let into the club, but the insult of being made to confront this text and waste time on something that yields nothing.
But I also get how sometimes, that's not the author's fault. Mostly, because I've taken a poetry workshop as a class and for 12 weeks got the very enlightening if painful experience of week after week trying to carefully craft a meaningful set of lines that wouldn't get the "uh, yeah, dude, I didn't get what you were trying to say" o' doom from my peers.
The kind that you choose between writing a Dr. Seuss version of an Evanescence song "I feel my pain, I feel it in the rain, I feel my pain deep in my soul, I feel my pain I am not whole" (I will ignore how fun doing this for hours would be) or just putting up with the confused looks for 8 more weeks.
And I get what it's like when someone gets frustrated with you being vague and you know that you did your damndest to make your point obvious without spelling it out for them in bright red crayon on paper with huge lines with little dotted lines in the middle.
I get what it's like when you know you did your work as the author and the reader is just being LAZY.
I don't have an actual solution to what happens when it's a good reader and a good writer who just can't make the connection.
I just know that sometimes, you have to decide that every book is not for you and vice versa.
Sometimes, I come back to the book I *poof, BAHLEETED*. I wish people didn't feel like books had time limits and they have to be understood and figured out right this minute (another side affect of both our culture and academia, I fear). Sometimes it's just not time for me to read a book.
I don't fear using the pause button on a book. Leaving a dog-ear or a bookmark and letting it ferment 'til the boquet is right.
Sometimes I need to mature a few years or learn a few more things. Me and Plutarch were not friends to begin with. Plutarch seemed disorganized and meandering. Then, given a couple more years of Latin and a few more history classes and a better translation and suddenly me and Plutarch were gettin' on like a house on fire. Same with Beowulf. Same with Shakespeare.
Sometimes a piece of writing just needs to hit you at the right time in the right place to work. Not that you're not trying as a reader or the writer is being deliberately difficult - but it's not your time yet. Maybe this author is talking great spiritual concepts and you're just trying to get through the day at work and could care *less* and would like to read something that's more down to Earth. Maybe you need to get over something. Maybe you need to go through something.
Don't blame the book. Don't blame yourself. Agree to disagree, but be open to changing your mind.
Right now? I'm at odds with C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman, and Tolkien. But in five years, we might be inviting each other to dinner, having little chats by the lake, holding hands. It could happen.
