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In English 110, students write seventeen one-page papers (actually,
sometimes they write eighteen.) They write six four-page papers. (In past
semesters, they've sometimes written seven.) That's a lot of writing, but I
don't require students to rewrite and I don't expect them to perfect
anything, given the amount of time they have to write any one paper.
If you look at a typical writing course at, say, a big university,
you'll find that most teachers ask for around five or six papers--which
students
mull over, process, mess around with, rewrite, and rewrite again. Most of
that mulling and processing is done in the name of "The Process Approach"-
-which (Hashimoto's editorial comment) is often demeaning, busy work that
takes the place of intellectual
activity--writing, experimenting, trying out ideas for the first time, taking new
risks. (The notion that we have to get students to rewrite and rewrite and
worry over a single piece of writing for a couple of weeks is mostly baloney.
Most often such classroom rewriting becomes punishment that does little to
help students to write better. It only gets students to follow directions
better and do exactly what we tell them to do.)
Students often tell me that these assignments are strange and sometimes it
takes a while to get used to them, especially if they've been taught to write
about serious stuff and be solemn. In fact, I have doubts about showing
non-students my assignments and expecting them to understand them. All I
can say is that they are much more liberating and much more challenging
than writing about the character development in a story by Eudora Welty or
writing about the moral crisis in American education.
I've used these assignments in English 110 before. They aren't in any kind
of order, and I wouldn't use some of them again.
Sample Assignments
1. Here's a passage by Walter De Maria in 1960. Is he right?
Meaningless work is obviously the most important
and significant art form today. The aesthetic feeling given
by meaningless work cannot be described exactly because
it varies with each individual doing the work. Meaningless
work is honest. Meaningless work cannot be sold in art
galleries or win prizes in museums--though old fashion
records of meaningless work can make you sweat if you do
it long enough. By meaningless work I simply mean work
which does not make you money or accomplish a
conventional purpose. For instance putting wooden blocks
from one box to another, then putting the blocks back to
the original box, back and forth, back and fort etc., is a
fine example of meaningless work. Or digging a hole, then
covering it is another example. Filing letters in a filing
cabinet could be considered meaningless work, only if one
were not a secretary, and if one scattered the file on the
floor periodically so that one didn't get any feeling of
accomplishment. Digging in the garden is not meaningless
work. Weight lifting, though monotonous, is not
meaningless work in its aesthetic sense because it will give
you muscles and you know it.
Have a thesis of some kind that you can point to. Don't,
simply, tell me what De Maria says. (Well, tell me what
he says but don't take up all the space doing it. That's not
enough.)
2. Here is some information on rutabagas. What can you say about this
information?
a. There are limits to everything worth sharing, including
rutabagas.
b. Only the young truly believe in rutabagas.
c. If you've seen a true rutabaga, you've seen one, too.
d. To be truly wise is to understand something about
rutabagas.
e. No rutabaga is perfect.
f. Every rutabaga is generally boring, especially in stew.
g. Never share a rutabaga with someone you trust.
h. If you've seen a truck full of rutabagas, you've seen a
political convention.
i. Never confuse a true rutabaga with a butter clam.
j. There are rutabagas in space.
k. There are rutabagas in the left-hand canyons of the
mind.
l. Never share a rutabaga with someone you like.
m. If you put a rutabaga in the road, something will run
over it.
n. Throw a rutabaga up and it will come down.
o. People who dig in vacant lots with small shovels have
something in common with rutabagas.
p. Most people would rather be seen with a rutabaga than
with a net bag of Brussels sprouts.
q. If you put a rutabaga in your eye, it will hurt.
r. If you put a rutabaga on a stick, it will look like a
rutabaga on a stick.
s. There are many ways to step around a rutabaga on the
sidewalk.
t. Never substitute a rutabaga for a doorknob.
u. No one has ever seen a Ninja rutabaga.
Have a thesis of some kind that you can point to. Don't, simply, tell me
what you find out. (You can, for instance, categorize these assertions about
rutabagas, but simply describing the categories might not be enough. Tell
me what you think about what you find out, what you learn,
what you imagine.
3. Here is a passage from a novel by William Melvin Kelley. How would
your respond to it?
The questjung reminds still. Why, when those off us that gwhine that
way, run up Hattanhand, waving aside Malma-Mae to buy boy bye the
bearettes--why do skiers flie and fists flight? How do the tampors at
Camp Tiwayo get out the shatgrins and flupipointed hats? When do
the balls gangle over the palmbreaker's bedpost? Why such
constarenations?
[William Melvin Kelley, Dunsfords Travels Everywheres
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), p. 53.]
Cautions: Be careful about generalizations. Be very careful about talking
about vague, undefined "people," "society," "Americans." Do one thing at a
time. Don't assume that Hashimoto reads anything the same way you do.
4. Here's the opening paragraph from Moby Dick:
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how
long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and
nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I
would sail about a little and see the watery part of the
world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and
regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing
grim about the mouth; whenever it is damp, drizzly
November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily
pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear
of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos
get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong
moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping
into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats
off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I
can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a
philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword;
I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in
this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree,
some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings
towards the ocean with me.
Write something intelligent, substantial, and/or wise about it.
Cautions: Be careful about generalizations. Be very careful about talking
about vague, undefined "people," "Northwesterners," "environmentalists,"
"romantics." Remember that some people can't swim and there's a word for
people who can't go near the water. Remember lemmings and cabbages
and that movie where people run up and down the beach yelling, "Cynthia!
Cynthia!" Do one thing at a time. Don't assume that Hashimoto reads
anything the same way you, thinks Moby Dick ageless, thinks
anything at all about Ishmael. Think lists. Think stuff. Think more stuff
than you feel comfortable with.
5. Here are three quotations. Use or somehow account for at least two of
them in a one-page paper. For this exercise, use in-text documentation
(either MLA or APA) but don't attach a Works Cited page with your paper.
a. There's facts about dogs and there's opinions about
them. The dogs have the facts, and the humans have the
opinions. If you want facts about a dog, always get them
straight from the dog. If you want opinions, get them
from the human. [--J. Allen Boone, Kinship with
All Life, 1975]
b. There is only one fundamental difference between dogs
and humans. Humans can talk and dogs can't. If the day
ever comes when dogs can talk they will conduct
themselves just as humans conduct themselves, although I
do not believe they will ever become expert with the knife
and fork, or dice.
Humans and dogs are, after all, engaged in the same
basic pursuit: meat snatching. All that life amounts to, for
humans, is refined meat snatching. Humans are capable
of speech, so their meat snatching is polite. Two dogs,
being speechless, will simply approach a chunk of meat
and fang it. The dog with the greatest co-ordination, the
greatest speed, and the strongest jaws will get the chunk of
meat. If they were able to talk they would conduct the
transaction human-style. They would argue about it and
talk about sharing it and make promises and bargains and
each dog would have it in his mind to get all the meat.
That's the way humans do it. [Doc Rockwell, a friend of
H. Allen Smith, 1934.]
c. The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have
in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the
one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his
dog. A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in
poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the
cold ground, where the wintry winds blow, and the snow
drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side.
He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick
the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the
roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper
master as if he were a prince. When all other friends
desert, he remains. When riches take wings, and
reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as
the sun in its journey through the heavens.
If fortune drives the master forth as outcast in the
world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no
higher privilege than that of accompanying him, to guard
him against danger, to fight against his enemies. And
when the last scene of all comes, and death takes his
master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold
ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way,
there by the graveside will the noble dog be found, his
head between his paws, his eyes sad, but open in alert
watchfulness, faithful and true even in death. [George
Graham Vest 1830-1904]
[Caution: Don't assume that because you assert something I will agree with
you. Don't assume that you have to be an English major to understand
poetry. And don't cop out.]
6. Here are the opening paragraphs from "Rapunzel" as published by the
brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Is there anything significant about
these paragraphs?
There once lived a man and his wife, who had long
wished for a child, but in vain. Now there was at the back
of their house a little window which overlooked a beautiful
garden full of the finest vegetables and flowers; but there
was a high wall all round it, and no one ventured into it,
for it belonged to a witch of great might, and of whom all
the world was afraid. One day that the wife was standing
at the window, and looking into the garden, she saw a bed
filled with the finest rampion; and it looked so fresh and
green that she began to wish for some; and at length she
longed for it greatly. This went on for days, and as she
knew she could not get the rampion, she pined away, and
grew pale and miserable. Then the man was uneasy, and
asked,
"What is the matter, dear wife?"
"Oh," answered she, "I shall die unless I can have
some of that rampion to eat that grows in the garden at
the back of our house." The man, who loved her very
much, thought to himself,
"Rather than lose my wife I will get some rampion,
cost what it will."
So in the twilight he climbed over the wall into the
witch's garden, plucked hastily a handful of rampion and
brought it to his wife. She made a salad of it at once, and
ate of it to her heart's content. But she liked it so much,
and it tasted so good, that the next day she longed for it
thrice as much as she had done before; if she was to have
any rest the man must climb over the wall once more. So
he went in the twilight again; and as he was climbing back,
he saw, all at once, the witch standing before him, and was
terribly frightened, as she cried, with angry eyes . . .
7. Here is a statement by Lieutenant Thomas Glahn to Eva Mack in Knut
Hamsun's novel Pan, trans. James W. McFarlane. (Hamsun
was born in 1856 in Norway.) Do you agree with him?
You know, Eva, hope is a strange thing, something quite uncanny.
You might be walking along a path one morning hoping to meet
someone you are fond of. And do you meet? No. Why not?
Because that someone is busy that morning and is somewhere quite
different . . . I once knew an old blind Lapp up in the hills. For fifty-
eight years he had not seen a thing, and now he was seventy. He
imagined he was seeing better as time went on; things were improving
steadily, he thought. If all went well, he would be able to make out
the sun in a year or two. His hair was still black, but his eyes were
quite white. When we sat smoking together in his turf hut, he talked
about all the things he had seen before he went blind. He was tough
and healthy, without feeling, imperishable, and he kept his hope.
When it was time for me to go, he stepped out with me and began to
point in various directions. That is the south, he said, and that the
north; now you go first in that direction, and when you have gone a
little distance down you turn off that way. Quite right! I answered.
Then the Lapp gave a little contented laugh and said: You see, forty
or fifty years ago I didn't know that, so I must be seeing better now
than I used to. Things are getting steadily better. Then he bent down
and crept into the turf hut again, that everlasting turf hut, his home
on earth. And he sat as before in front of the fire, full of hope that in
a few years he would be able to see the sun. . . . Eva, it is truly a
strange thing, this hope."
8. Here are some of the most important things Alan Fobbs ever said. Write
about them in one page. Don't be simple-minded. Don't cop out. Don't be
boring. Don't save the best for last.
a. "The sky is blue unless it is full of clouds. Or unless
there is dust in the air or millions of dust mites or flying
autumn aphids or soot or sweet pea petals or dead skin or
powdered periwinkle flesh or pulverized walnut shells
borne aloft by Mt. St. Helens' breath on Sunday morning
after the grass fire."
b. "Some things float."
c. "Everything looks more or less like the last thing you
ate."
d. "If you look at a bird, it may not see you."
e. "On a bus, it is better to know your socks than your
neighbor's foot."
f. "You can tell a lot by what you think."
g. "Everyone ought to think about mittens."
h. "You should try to live a happy life unless you have an
unhappy one."
i. "There is no other side of a gray-green Pinto
stationwagon in the lonely desert outside Barstow."
j. "You can't carry many bricks in a box."
k. "Beware of tornadoes that come from disturbances of
the air."
l. "You can't put too many deer in an upright freezer."
m. "Every year, more and more people grow old."
Want to see a sample Fobbs paper written
by Hashimoto for his 110?
9. Here are two passages attributed to Pol Rhinehardt. Which is more
reasonable? (One is, in fact, a fake.)
a. The whole secret more or less of remaining somewhere
in spite of years, and even old gray hairs, is to truly cherish
comfort for oneself, by perhaps hermiting, by maybe
contemplating a little, by kicking rocks down the street, by
eating selected pharmaceuticals--that is, in fewer words, by
the conscious maintenance of something like a cherished
numbness in the soul. When we ourselves sense that
everything is someplace and know that we are someplace
too, we could learn to accept the perhaps disequilibrium in
the whole wok of God.
b. The whole secret of remaining in spite of years, and
even gray hairs, is to wallow in our loneliness--by
hermiting, by contemplating, by wandering, by fordorfing,--
that is, by maintaining a relaxed consension of the brain.
Consension is everything. When everything is surely going
to happen that is going to happen, and we are consensed,
our blood pressure rests for a moment in the ice cool, our
frustrations fizzle, and we ourselves become comfortable
enough to accept the whole wok of God.
Set up your solution with a small point and some kind of decent-sized list.
Use numbers or letters or bullets to set off items on your list.
Do not assume that Hashimoto thinks like you do. Be as efficient, as clear,
as insightful as you can be. Be aggressive, tough, and direct.
10. Here are three paragraphs full of strange, wonderful wordiness. Rewrite
them to make these paragraphs less wordy and more straightforward.
Worry especially about passives and unnecessary "be" verbs.
To make the passages read more clearly, you will probably have to add your
own words and simplify the writing. But don't simply shorten things by
leaving out whole ideas. Try to retain the essence of the discussion and the
details. Your practice here is in rewriting, not shrinking things down to five
or six words.
a. Writing is believed to be one of the great human
pleasures and is done by many in the energy of that
pleasure. It is clearly true that there is great professional
pleasure in teaching it, especially when students are in
their beginning stages and there is much enthusiasm on
our part.
b. Certainly how to write is already known by many
students who come to class, and such students are not
truly taught by us. Rather, they come and go just about
the way they were or are in the beginning. But there are
other students who are less knowledgeable in writing or
less motivated to learn or somehow less diligent--and we
are often judged when such students fail. Their failures
can easily be seen by others. They stand out like evil blots
on our pedagogical lives. Every effort may have been
made by us to teach them what they have not learned, and
it shouldn't be perceived as our faults when they fail, but
the disappointment is ours when we meet their crabbed
and deformed writing later or when papers they write are
read by our unforgiving colleagues, who exclaim with joy
and exhilaration that there is every indication that the
training by us has been terribly and sadly inadequate or
that our students' egregious deficits have not been
properly addressed.
c. One of the most tentative forms of solidarity between
us is when we each want the same thing, but nothing is
wanted by us from each other. We are united, say by a
common desire to get the last seat on the train, or to get
the best bargain at the sale. If such is the case, we might
gladly cut each others' throats. And while we may be
making such observations, we may nevertheless feel that
there is a certain bond between us, a negative unity, so to
speak. It is true that each of us perceives the other as
being unnecessary, that each of us thinks that the other is
one-too-many. In this case, it can be seen that we share a
desire to appropriate the same common object or objects:
that is, food, land, a social position, real or imagined, but
nothing between ourselves is going to be shared and we
are not going to wish that it be shared.
If you chose to keep "be" verbs, passives, etc., mark them with a (#) and go
on. Be prepared to explain your reasons for keeping them. (If you can't
explain your reasons, I will subtract points anyway.)
11. In about one page, discuss which of the following are (is) most cool.
1. You cannot get both fish and the palms of a bear.
[Chinese]
2. Once in every ten years every man needs his neighbor.
[Italian]
3. Old fish, old oil and an old friend are best. [John Ray,
English Proverbs, 1670]
4. Hasty pudding makes the heart grow into sleeping dogs.
5. A pale face is worse than a sleeping bush. [French]
6. A little rain stops a big wind [English]
7. They who eat much meat talk with foul breath.
[Hebrew]
8. Strange bedfellows eat sleeping dogs.
9. A fence lasts three years; a dog, three fences; a horse,
three dogs; a man three horses. [German]
10. A louse in the cabbage is better than no meat at all.
[Pennsylvania Dutch]
11. A bird Nellie's hat is worth two bushes full of sleeping
schnauzers.
12. Nothing is so clean as a clean bum. [Welsh]
Think about clumping and grouping. Include some kind of list somehow,
somewhere. Ask yourself if you can discuss the most cool without discussing
or accounting for the rest. Don't forget your explanations.
12. Here is a passage by Hugh Prather [Notes to Myself: My
Struggle to Become a Person.] Is he worth listening to?
Raping, hunting, throwing stones at wildlife, buying exotic pets,
picking flowers, criticizing prominent people, may at times be an
attempt to make contact with, even identify with, that which is
free and beautiful and so frightfully unlike us.
13. Here is a poem by Lucious Perks, a resident of East Palo Alto,
California. What do you think of it?
Sinus Ache at Dairy Queen, 1988
Downward grow the roots of the big fig
Below your left eyeball
Soft serve
Tendrils digging in and rooting
where the little man with the shovel
carefully digs out a cavern in my cheek for
wild tulip roots
Oh oh oh mydoze
Leaves squeeze out
cut off light
Let me
Sing and suck
The branches wheezing
Oh oh oh mydoze
Poor Ellen Smith
lying cold on the ground,
Me, too,
the stage revolving,
now caught up in choco chips and barking dogs
Smell the smoke from broken wheels
inside my head
(they can smell it too, out there
Raising plastic spoons and pointing
to New York
Root Canal
Rocky Flats
Thunder Dome)
Do one thing at a time. Don't assume that Hashimoto reads anything the
same way you do. Think lists. Think stuff. Think more stuff than you feel
comfortable with.
When you quote poetry, make sure the lines read like poetry when you
indent, and when you quote more than one line, use / to separate lines:
Example: Perks writes, "Root Canal/Rocky Flats/Thunder Dome" (22-24).
Example:
Perks writes:
Root Canal
Rocky Flats
Thunder Dome. (22-24)
14. Here's a list of people. If you owned one of their letters, whose letter
would you like to own the most? Explain your choice in one page.
Louie Duck
Duck Duck Goose
Betsy Eloise Robyn Smith-Joiner-Brown Estazz
Margaret Thatcher
Rute Canelle
Muhammad Ali
Donald "the Duck" Duck
William Shakespeare
Elizabeth Taylor
Thomas Crapper
Frank Osumi
15. Write a one-page paper using information and/or quotations from two
of the following three imaginary sources:
a. Kleinschmitz, Arnold, Jr., The Rise of Wonks
(New York: Zither and Sons, 1994).
b. Kleinschmitz, Arnold, Jr., "The Fate of Small, Trembling,
Stupid Dogs in New York City," Journal of Pets 6
(June 1993): 66-67.
c. Kleinschmitz, Bertha, The Autobiography of Bertha
Kleinschmitz (Boston: Duston, 1992).
Use in-text documentation. (But don't include a bibliography.)
Support your argument with solid reasoning, evidence, examples,
illustrations or other clarifications. Don't spend your whole time telling me
a small, speculative story about the Kleinschmitz family or certain members
of that family. Arnold Kleinschmitz and his sister are much more important
as scholars than they are as characters in history. (You can, of course,
provide meaningful background on the issue(s) you discuss.)