For Monday, please finish Temple House and read Clotel, pp. 44-80.
For Wednesday, please get to p. 155 of Clotel.
I’ll be posting the next assignment by Friday night. Please post any comments you have from today’s conversation in the interim. I’m interested in hearing your thoughts about:
recovering texts
texts as historical documents
canonical vs. non-canonical readings
the uses of technology for classroom
the ability of technology to bind us together, to sustain or even create some kind of comradeship.
This is just an article from this summer that keeps coming to mind when we discuss e-texts. I was going to bring it up today but it never really fit in anywhere. It’s about Amazon deleting some copies of 1984 due to some copyright issues.
I can’t read this text without directly comparing what is going on in the plot with what Whitman wrote in the Calamus poems. Almost in direct contrast to the poems, we find family units that seem to care very little about one another on the one hand, and unrelated individuals in close relationships on the other. Even when Argus goes to bring John’s body back, he comforts Tempe for a brief moment, but soon gets impatient with her. Virginia and Mat Sutcliff seem to care for the Temple House and it’s residents more than anyone in the house does, and Argus was very ready to let any possible survivors of the shipwreck freeze to death. Marriage was seen (by John) as a way to possess Tempe, who, herself, was only in it to satisfy her own greed – she is in no way connected as one would think a married individual might be, and in fact calls it an “experiment” (ch 11). And outside of Temple House, when we see the family dynamics of the Brandes, we find that the Forge is a disconnected (thanks to the mom) and cold (thanks to the dad) place, although, compared to T.H. they are a nuclear family.
I get the feeling, from the start of this novel, that it functions to bring a realistic perspective to Whitman’s ideal of comradery. Yeah, it’s great to think that we would love strangers as we would love a significant other, or that we would naturally find an “adhesive” quality to bind ourselves to one another, but Stoddard seems to be telling us that it isn’t that easy. Whitman’s poetry is hopeful, but her novel reflects the situations of real life, where opinions, emotions, image and selfishness exist.
The further we read in Temple House the more intrigued I am about the subject of class and money, particularly in the case of Virginia’s love for the poverty that surrounds the Temple House. It particularly caught my attention when she is reminiscing about the night she stayed at Temple House after the sailor was rescued. She remembers the sleeping quarters and prefers them to her own house because “freedom was there” (109). There is something in the Temple House atmosphere that she does not get under the roof of her very controlling (and kind of creepy) father. Then, later, when she is talking to her father, she exclaims “Poverty is beautiful!” and his response is, “Yes, to only daughters, whose fathers are rich enough to allow them to contemplate it at a distance as far as Temple House” (114). I thought it was interesting that she called poverty “beautiful” since she once called Roxalana’s dress one of the ugliest she has ever seen. That dress embodies the poverty and freedom that Virginia is so drawn to. This lead me back to an early scene with Tempe, Roxalana, and Argus. Tempe wishes for more wealth and Argus tells her that she can only marry money. It seems that Virginia feels shackled by her wealth and Tempe by poverty. Both desire the opposite of what they have without truly understanding what it means. Tempe eventually marries into money but is in no way happy. What is Stoddard trying to convey about poverty and wealth in this book? As we discussed before, her narrative is rooted in telling so we are not given an in depth look into why the adult characters are content in their class status but the younger ones are not…
Sebastian is described as being “in eclipse [because of] an illness” he developed after his shipwreck (Stoddard 127). Stoddard observes that even after Sebastian healed from his illness, “it was certain that his mind was under a cloud” (Stoddard 127). This quote suggests to us that Sebastian isn’t healed in a psychological sense. Something still ails him. Though it was unclear what plagued Sebastian, many assumed that “he was haunted b y some recollection, or occupied with anxiety concerning the future…” (Stoddard 128). Clearly, Sebastian has been severely emotionally impacted by something. It was observed that that “for days he [would] either [sit] like a statue, in marble sadness, or [he would walk] about the house like a somnambulist or an automaton” (Stoddard 128). This description of Sebastian is chilling to me because it suggests to us that he exists, but only to a minimal extent. The use of the phrase “marble sadness” struck as me as particularly poignant because it is hard to comprehend the depths of that type of sadness. Further, the image of Sebastian sitting like a statue reinforces that he is experiencing a sadness that goes beyond typical sadness.
As I read this description of Sebastian’s state, I started to consider what could send a person into a “marble sadness.” I am not sure if I just am fixated on Whitman’s conception of “the love of comrades” because I just wrote about it, but I started thinking about how difficult it is to embrace “the love of comrades” when society isn’t receptive to that type of connection. I often wonder if Whitman was disenchanted by the fact that most individuals weren’t open to the possibilities offered by loving one’s comrades. In other words, I wonder if Whitman ever felt this “marble sadness” because he recognized that people would not fully support his conception of “the love of comrades.” Sorry if this post seems random/off topic. For whatever reason, I just thought about Whitman as I read this particular part of Temple House.
My name is Joe Roberts I work for the state
I’m a sergeant out of Perrineville barracks number 8
I always done an honest job as honest as I could
I got a brother named Franky and Franky ain’t no good
Now ever since we was young kids it’s been the same come down
I get a call over the radio Franky’s in trouble downtown
Well if it was any other man, I’d put him straight away
But when it’s your brother sometimes you look the other way
Me and Franky laughin’ and drinkin’ nothin’ feels better than blood on blood
Takin’ turns dancin’ with Maria as the band played “Night of the Johnstown Flood”
I catch him when he’s strayin’ like any brother would
Man turns his back on his family well he just ain’t no good
Well Franky went in the army back in 1965 I got a farm deferment, settled down, took Maria for my wife
But them wheat prices kept on droppin’ till it was like we were gettin’ robbed
Franky came home in ’68, and me, I took this job
Yea we’re laughin’ and drinkin’ nothin’ feels better than blood on blood
Takin’ turns dancin’ with Maria as the band played “Night of the Johnstown Flood”
I catch him when he’s strayin’, teach him how to walk that line
Man turns his back on his family he ain’t no friend of mine
Well the night was like any other, I got a call ’bout quarter to nine
There was trouble in a roadhouse out on the Michigan line
There was a kid lyin’ on the floor lookin’ bad bleedin’ hard from his head there was a girl cryin’ at a table and it was Frank, they said
Well I went out and I jumped in my car and I hit the lights
Well I must of done one hundred and ten through Michigan county that night
It was out at the crossroads, down round Willow bank
Seen a Buick with Ohio plates behind the wheel was Frank
Well I chased him through them county roads till a sign said Canadian border five miles from here
I pulled over the side of the highway and watched his taillights disappear
Me and Franky laughin’ and drinkin’
Nothin’ feels better than blood on blood
Takin’ turns dancin’ with Maria as the band played “Night of the Johnstown Flood”
I catch him when he’s strayin’ like any brother would
Man turns his back on his family well he just ain’t no good
So the theme that kept jumping out to me when we were taking about digital publishing yesterday was how we spoke about electronic books in terms of paper books. People were upset that they could not take notes in the margins. You couldn’t crack the cover, it was hard to read Temple House because we kept having to scroll down to read the last couple inches of text, etc.
This isn’t an unreasonable way to think about digital publishing. If it takes off, it will be a direct substitution for paper books. But while we’ll be substituting digital books for paper books, I doubt that it will look like what most people now expect it to.
Electronic books are currently more or less digital representations of their paper equivalents. The edition of Temple House that we discussed yesterday went so far as to be a PDF of the paper version. This isn’t uncommon when communication technology first starts out, though. Early television programs mirrored the radio programs that they grew out of, websites used to simply be a digital reproduction of a piece of paper, and electronic books are currently just a different medium for the same old book. But as the technology comes into its own, I’m sure that the way we think about books won’t be so paper-centric.
I mentioned in class that I thought that the ways that books were put out would be different. Writers would excerpt parts of their book early, blog about writing, maybe solicit comments on particular passages. The way we read them would also surely be different. Authors and publishers could link certain passages to other works (how many essays are written on specific passages in classic texts?). Dr. Stockton mentioned public commenting, which would be as simple as highlighting a piece of text, writing (saying? typing?) a comment and setting it as public or private (a pretty natural answer to the issue of writing in the margins). This could build an instant community or readers. We could even see electronic readers suggesting books in the same way that Pandora suggests music.
Of course, with the digitization of books comes major pitfalls. When the music industry switched from non-digital formats (cassettes and before) to digital formats (CD, MP3s, etc.), it threw the entire business into peril. Creating digital files meant that sharing (pirating, stealing) music was easier than ever. And with the Internet’s rise, you don’t even have to know the person that you are getting the files from. The music industry now sells a fraction of the records they used to and has had to switch to business model that relies heavily on touring and merchandise revenues. It is almost certain that books will have to deal with the same problems once they shift to digital (something I see as pretty much inevitable). If publishers and authors realize that they can’t make the same money selling books, what will they do? Will authors have to turn into celebrities who make their money from appearance fees? It’s something to think about…
for paper books. But while we’ll be substituting digital books for paper books, I doubt that it will look like what most people now expect it to.
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