Tag: writing

Writing as Transcribed Reality

/ Derek Mueller

From Berlin’s Rhetoric and Reality, a crumb from today’s exam reading:

Current-traditional rhetoric did undergo a number of changes during this
period [1920-1940], even though none of them were substantive. One new
addition to the classroom was the use of the research paper. Requiring
students to engage in library research was a predictable outcome of a course
taught by teachers whose major source of professional rewards was the
accumulation of research publications. Furthermore, the research paper
represented the insistence in current-traditional rhetoric on finding meaning
outside the composing act, with writing itself serving as a simple
transcription process. The first article in English Journal to discuss
the teaching of the research paper appeared in 1930 (Chalfant), but use of the
research paper was commonly mentioned in program descriptions in the twenties.
Textbooks that included discussion of the research paper began to appear in
significant numbers in 1931. After this, no year of English Journal appeared
without a number of articles on approaches to teaching the research essay.
It should also be noted that the widespread use of this assignment was
influenced by the improvements in library collections during the twenties, as
well as by new ways of indexing these materials for easy access–the
periodical guides, for example. (70)

Here, the point about research paper writing sparked by indexing
systems jumps out at me. A good collection (institutional or personal; for the
greater good or for my own good) needs only to be indexed when it is housed with
other collections, right? The index associates and disassociates. It preserves a
minor degree of granularity while introducing scalable ties (one with one,
one with many, many with many). Or not. Not exactly, anyway. Still the
thought of research writing before the convenience of libraries–collecting,
tracing, indexing, tagging, associating–is somehow refreshing. There is a small, pleasant jolt
in the reminder of something less systematized, less comprehensive: a
pre-indexical aberrance.

Emig, “The Tacit Tradition”

/ Derek Mueller

Emig,
Janet. "The Tacit Tradition: The Inevitability of a Multi-Disciplinary
Approach to Writing Research." (1977). The Web of Meaning.
Dixie Goswami and Maureen Butler, eds. Upper Montclair, N.J.: Boynton/Cook,
1983. 145-156.

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Katamari Walking

/ Derek Mueller / 3 Comments

Before Saturday night, I’d never played
Katamari Damacy.
In

Datacloud and again in
"Katamari
Interface," I read about the princely roller pushing the tacky (magnetic?)
ball through the game’s byways, gaining in things, some strategic, many
accidental. All of them counted, catalogued. They’re persistent in my own
Katamari-like memory, the projects I mention, their framing of Katamari Damacy
as an installment of the database logic implicit in much digital writing. Like
toaster ovens placed enigmatically in the middle of the street (what’s that
doing there?), Katamari logics have joined the clump that is my plan for
WRT302 this fall, too.

Speaking of stickiness (or glue), I’ve been walking
Y. most days
lately. Mornings. We’ve jogged, too, but whether or not I’m jogging,
he walks, mocking me and my slow, laborious pace. Puppies are voracious
collectors; Y., particularly so. He aggregates the street, its detritus,
its unseen flavors. Leeches miscellany: cig. butts, sticks, wilderberries,
leaves, wrappers, styrofoam bits, and so on. This gets at the deep tension in
our relationship (Dr. Phil, Y. takes into his mouth every tiny speck of crap and
debris in reach!). He’s learning "drop." It’s a sweeter
lesson since he’s come to understand that I’m not afraid to dig my fingers into
the dark depths of his kibble-pipe to retrieve the salivascraps rather than have
him ingest them for good. Back to the point of what I was getting at: Y.
is a collector.

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