Sunday, November 15, 2009

Don't Sink the Boat

Two videos. The first one is a music video for Flogging Molly's "Float" (lyrics). Basically, a bearded cotton swab collects a bunch of odds and ends and then assembles them into a raft (via). I won't spoil it by telling you whether or not it floats.

Second, a cut from Jan & Kjeld's performance of "Tiger Rag" in 1959 (via). I watched this for the first time on Thursday within earshot of Is., and ever since she has asked to watch it again and again, even claims it as her "favorite song." As if that isn't enough, she also said she favors Jan (right) over Kjeld. Perhaps because of Kjeld's impressively fearful (verging on creepy) expression--the wide eyes and sucked-in cheeks unmatched by his brother, she insists Jan is the more likable of the two.

I admit it, I'm growing weary of watching this second video. But I'll post it nevertheless because the chances are high I'll hear another fifteen or twenty requests to watch it before something else comes along.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Student Center

EMU Student Center

I am enjoying a few minutes of light computing in the Student Center at Eastern Michigan University right now: coffee, sunlight, email, Google Reader, Fantasy Football results. I try to spend an hour in the Student Center every Tuesday. The weekly, non-essential outing contributes to my New Faculty Continuing Orientation Plan. Basically, the NFCOP goes like this: leave your office every so often, develop a feel for the place. Frequently I run into students or colleagues as I make my way across campus, and we talk. Also, I walk alternative routes, get to know the landscape, the distances. These semi-strategic excursions are refreshingly ordinary, far less in the vein of anthropological scrutiny (a la Marc Augé) than in slow, deep, you-are-here mapping (a la William Least Heat-Moon). Walks less motivated by ground-truthing this "rhetorical country" than in walking, being here.

EMU's Student Center is impressive, well designed. It opened just three years ago, making it one of the newest buildings on campus (I can't remember which is younger, Halle Library or the Student Center; both are crisp, shiny, unworn). There's much to like about it: restaurants, lunch hour DJs, natural light, an Apple store, outlets, wifi, comfortable seating for Tuesday morning light computing. I'll be back in the Student Center twice tomorrow, once for a meeting with the Provost, who is also in his first year at EMU and who is meeting with small groups of faculty, and again between classes to meet with a friend from Ypsilanti who played basketball at Park a few years ago when I was working there. He's running a business in Belleville, Mich.; he called Sunday to see whether we could catch up this week, and it turns out we could. At the Student Center.

My hour here is almost up. I'll head back to the sixth floor of Pray Harrold where I will button down in my office for a solid three-hour working session. If all goes well, it will include gathering some materials tied to a conference paper and eventual article, reading and commenting a stack of Short Papers, putting the finishing touches on the final project prompt and example for ENGL328, re-reading three chapters of Lanham on the Paramedic Method, and, in whatever time remains, taking a look into setting up a felicitous Bootcamp and VMware Fusion installation on the Macbook. Pickup basketball at REC/IM comes next, and after that, I'll return to the office to close out this list, perhaps post a few thoughts on Paumgarten's short and cynical "Out to Lunch" in the latest New Yorker.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Short Sentences

Tomorrow in ENGL328, we're working with "Short Sentences," the first chapter in Virginia Tufte's Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style. The chapter presents four basic sentence types or kernels: equations with be, equations with linking verbs, transitives, and intransitives. In the first half of the chapter, Tufte attaches numerous examples to each type of short sentence. I find the types to be fairly intuitive and, perhaps because they are short, easy to identify. Only the equations with linking verbs give me pause because the linking verbs tend to stoke a deeper philosophical question concerned with being and transformation, i.e., whether the subject is altered by the piling on of noun complements.

In the second half of the chapter, Tufte switches scales, moving from the local logic of these four sentences to their paragraph-cumulative effect, whether one type is deployed repeatedly or whether they are working in combination with other types. Here the idea is basically that the two equative types stroll along at a slow pace, intransitives elicit slightly more movement or action, and transitives deliver the most bang because they maximize one thing's verbing of another thing (the direct object, required for the transitive form). Tufte's paragraph-long examples highlight the cumulative effect of these short sentence types in context.

A couple of tweets from students today have forewarned me (whether they were meant for me or not) that we will have a fair amount of skepticism to work through tomorrow. As far as I can tell (from their own short sentences, of course) the value of this framework is in doubt. That's fair. And, in fact, I'm glad to see that they are not only reading Tufte but tweeting about it before class. I think of Tufte's opening chapter as offering both an analytic method and a heuristic, or generative guide, for revision. The analytic method amounts to a vocabulary and a set of techniques for differentiating sentence types. It's difficult, without seeming enamored of current-traditionalism, to say that grasping such principles as these helps writers. But it does offer us a scheme for talking about prose style, for pinpointing in yet one more way a sentence's distinction.

Also, I'm interested in establishing tension between Tufte's approach and Lanham's Paramedic Method, which we will look at for Wednesday. Lanham, after all, insists on the importance of concrete subjects and action-packed verbs. Tufte's attention to equatives and to pacing lends something of value to the subject-verb or character-action patterns so conspicuous in Lanham's method (also in Williams' Style). So, while I recognize the value in keying on vivid subject-verb couplings relatively early in sentences, I also appreciate Tufte's recognition that equative forms may bear strategically on the acceleration (or idling speed) of a passage.