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Here are a couple of longer assignments. Students generally have about a
week to do them. Sometimes we talk about them; sometimes we don't. I
often ask for rough drafts the class period before the final drafts are due.
Demonstrate you have learned something about writing this semester. Don't
bore me and don't be solemn. Think about people, places . . . think about
stuff. Think about your own, personal reaction. Be tough, critical, fair.
You can use anecdotes; but don't write a paper that's one big anecdote in
chronological order ("One Day in the Life of Dorothy Parker" "The Time I
Met John" "My Life as a Dog" "How I Finally Discovered Something to Say"
"How I Went About Writing This Dumb Essay--Step-by-Step, Hour-by-
Hour").
If you use other sources, document them.
Pick something from the NYT and write a one and a half
page discussion of it. Do this
critique three ways using Walker Gibson's notions of "tough, sweet and
stuffy."
(Style often affects content--so your task isn't, simply, to "translate" from one
style to
another; go with the style to see where the style leads the content; think
about your
different intentions and try to maximize results.
For now, consider these guidelines:
Here are some concepts. What do you make of them? (Don't simply
tell me what you find.) Be as complete as you can be. Explain your points;
make your point early and illustrate it.
a. fat lips
b. baldness
c. chin slide
d. wattles
e. crow's feet
f. glass jaw
g. slack jaw
h. webbed feet
i. gapped teeth
j. saddle bags
k. pre-puberty pot
l. waffle-butt
m. skin wings
n. shelf butt
o. crater face
p. bug eyes
q. piano legs
r. red cheeks
s. beer belly
t. maple bar feet
u. sweet cheeks
v. red neck
w. sparrow's eyes
x. peach fuzz
y. snake eyes
z. cold feet
[Hint: Think lists.]
Want to see how Hashimoto wrote this
assignment?
Want to see how Hashimoto wrote this?
Here's a bit from a book on old people in England by Ronald Blythe. Is his
assertion at all relevant?
. . . the aged and the young wail from their different states of impotence,
and out of great passions for which those in middle life on their more
pragmatic levels have no use. They wail because they are dead serious in a
world which finds them either too young or too old to take seriously. Old
age sometimes recovers the seriousness of youth, which middle age lost or
put aside because of its inconvenience. Similarly, it can also mock the
stolidity of the adult-controlled universe with words and attitudes which the
young find conspiratorial. They know that just as in this universe the young
are thought not to have politically, sexually and economically arrived, the
old are assumed to be politically, sexually and economically finished, and so
theirs is often a wail to prove life and breath. It has to be remembered that
some of the most radical, as well as the most reactionary, letters in the
newspapers are written by very old men and women, and where a little
incaution is required to get things going, the aged can be as much counted
upon to provide it as the young. Both have an indignant sense of being
dictated to. The old challenge authority because they have exercised its
pretensions, the young because they cannot believe that they will ever have
to. [The View in Winter, p. 72.]
Think academically. Think lists. Think about more than one side to the
issue.
Want some examples of lists?
Here's a short bit from Samuel L. Clemens. Write something academic
about it.
Now as to the matter of lying. You want to be very careful
about lying; otherwise you are nearly sure to get caught. Once caught, you
can never again be, in the eyes of the good and the pure, what you were
before. Many a young person has injured himself permanently through a
single clumsy and illfinished lie, the result of carelessness born of incomplete
training. Some authorities hold that the young ought not to lie at all. That,
of course, is putting it rather stronger than necessary; still, while I cannot go
quite so far as that, I do maintain, and I believe I am right, that the young
ought to be temperate in the use of this great art until practice and
experience shall give them that confidence, elegance, and precision which
alone can make the accomplishment graceful and profitable. Patience,
diligence, painstaking attention to detail--these are the requirements; these,
in time, will make the student perfect; upon these, and upon these only, may
he rely as the sure foundation for future eminence. Think what tedious
years of study, thought, practice, experience, went to the equipment of that
peerless old master who was able to impose upon the whole world the lofty
and sounding maxim that "truth is mighty and will prevail"--the most majestic
compound fracture of fact which any of woman born has yet achieved. For
the history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with
evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
There is in Boston a monument of the man who discovered anaesthesia;
many people are aware, in these latter days, that that man didn't discover it
at all, but stole the discover from another man. Is this truth mighty, and will
it prevail? Ah no, my hearers, the monument is made of hardy material, but
the lie it tells will outlast it a million years. An awkward, feeble, leaky lie is
a thing which you ought to make it your unceasing study to avoid; such a lie
as that has no more real permanence than an average truth. Why, you
might as well tell the truth at once and be done with it. A feeble, stupid,
preposterous lie will not live two years--except it be a slander upon
somebody. It is indestructible, then, of course, but that is no merit of yours.
A final word: begin your practice of this gracious and beautiful art early--
begin now. If I had begun earlier, I could have learned how.
Don't organize this chronologically in some story format and include one
LIST.
Here are some instructions to a student by John of Garland, in
Morale Scolarium, trans. L.J. Paetow. Is this advice any
good?
Learn how to entertain at table, to provide food and the
sauces that go with the various dishes, and to serve seasonable wine in
modest quantity. Once again I touch critically on manners in polite society
so taht my readers may become more genteel. According to good custom
you should place the sauce on the right, the service plate on the left; you
should have the servant take the first course to him who sits at the head of
the table. Take hold of the base of a goblet so that unsightly finger marks
may not show on the side. Polite diners pause over their cup but gluttons,
who live like mules and weevils, empty it with one draught. Pour wine
properly with both hands so as not to spill any. Always serve two pieces of
bread. Have several well dressed servants in readiness to bring clean towels
and to supply the wants of the guests. Lest I should seem to be in charge of
the cooks like Nebuzaradan, I shall not go into the art of preparing fine
dishes. Carve the meats which are not to be served in the broth, and
skilfully take off the wings of fowl while they are hot. He who takes a walk
or a brief nap after dinner preserves his health. If you wish to regain your
strength as a convalescent, and keep your health when you are well, drink
moderately. All Epicureans live impure lives; they lose their eyesight, they
are rude, unclean, and are doomed to die a sudden death. [thirteenth
century]
Think academically. Think restatements. Think about more
than one side to the issue.
Take a look at an article in the "Living Arts" section of the
NYT and see if you can find/ recognize a few bluffs. How
would you explain the ones you found? (Look for evidence of bias, of
value-laden descriptions, of vague language.
Think academically. Use your liberal arts training; use your specialized
academic knowledge.
Here's a short statement by Bob Dole at the Economic Club of Detroit
(NYT 9/25/96):
Remember last week, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt
was roaming around out West and he thought of another tax, endorsing a
Federal sales tax on outdoor equipment . . . .
Backpacks, canteens, mountain bikes, hiking boots, skis, scuba gear,
binoculars, even birdseed would be hit with a 5 percent tax. That would
stop a lot of birds . . .
There would be a new tax on sport-utility vehicles, which must be
greeted with great enthusiasm here. I know you're crazy about it. That's a
tax on some of your most popular lines, the Ford Explorer, the Chevy
Blazer and the Jeep Cherokee . . .
Someone saw that bird flying over and said, "There's something we
haven't taxed. We can't catch the bird, but we'll tax the seed." They tax
you when you work. They tax you when you save. They tax you when you
take some time off with your family and go to the park.
If they get their way, you won't even be able to escape the I.R.S.
when you're hiking. They'll suddenly be walking along with you, somebody
from the I.R.S. saying: "You having a good time? Have you paid your
taxes? Have you fed the birds? Have you looked in your binoculars? If
you haven't, you don't have to pay the tax. You don't feed those birds,
you're all right."
Well, I say it's time to put the shoe on the other foot and tell the big
taxers to take a hike! Take a hike!
Your task for this assignment is to write a one-page response to this passage
in sort of the style of Joan Didion. (Think about sentences, turns of
phrase.) You may change subject-matter, order, structure--but you must
make your paper obviously copy or flow in the spirit of Didion. You can lift
phrases, words from Didion, but try not to lift so much that youdon't leave
yourself enough room to mess around on your own. (You want to blow up
this style, make it obvious, but see where it takes you with your own vision,
too.)
For this assignment, you don't need to have a formal thesis statement--
although you ought to have a point, a focus--and you shouldn't simply tell a
little story for a whole page.
Here are examples of interesting sentences. Write imitations of at least
seven of them. Choose your own subjects, your own data, but keep the
form of the sentences the same. Your sentences do not have to be linked
thematically. Just number them and write them. Think about punctuation;
think about shifts; watch the rhythms. Obviously, some of these are
reasonably long, but try not to shorten your imitations much . . . the exercise
is to feel/capture a whole effect, not a truncated version of the effect.
1. At the action climax of "White Squall" Scott unleashes a
furious torrent of sights and sounds, an all-out assault on the senses: sails rip
apart; masts crack; lightning bolts stab into the sea; great sheets of water
sweep crew members off the deck; people trapped below scream and flail in
the rising water; fragile lifeboats struggle to stay upright in the waves; the
ship--a sturdy-looking brigantine--lists perilously and then tips over on its
side like a toy in a tub. [Terrence Rafferty, Wet and Wild," The New
Yorker, February 5, 1996, pp. 75-76.]
2. I have a bed on a wooden platform--three steps up--and I lie nested at
the window, from which I can see midtown and its changing parade of
towers and light; birds flying past cast shadows on me, my face, my chest.
[Harold Brodkey, "This Wild Darkness," The New Yorker,
February 5, 1996, p. 54.] [Watch the very end list--catch the rhythms.]
3. I was always crazy about New York, dependent on it, scared of it--well, it
is dangerous--but beyond that there was the pressure of being young and of
not yet having done work you really liked, trademark work, breakthrough
work. [Harold Brodkey, "This Wild Darkness," The New
Yorker, February 5, 1996, p. 54.]
4. God is an immensity, while this disease, this death, which is in me, this
small, tightly defined pedestrian event, is merely and perfectly real, without
miracle--or instruction. [Harold Brodkey, "This Wild Darkness," The
New Yorker, February 5, 1996, p. 54.]
5. I looked back to see Andy replace the sign on his shoulder, Sophie
standing beside him holding my "ARE YOU BOMBING WITH ME,
JESUS?" sign aloft in her hands, he towering over her, the West End sign
towering over them both, the West End patrons straggling beat out behind
them, following the carriage-pushing mothers along the park. [Dotson
Rader, I Ain't Marchin' Anymore (NY: Paperback Library,
1969), p. 30.] [Watch out--missing words create rhythms.] [The
constructions here are called "absolutes"--in a pattern I call "green frog"
sentences.]
6. I have seen this same aloofness in old miners who drift into the Brown
Hotel at Denver, their pockets full of bullion, their linen soiled, their
haggard faces unshaven; standing in the thronged corridors as solitary as
though they were still in a frozen camp on the Yukon. [Willa Cather,
A Wagner Matineé] [more absolutes]
7. There were three or four of us eddying along, blown like leaves through
vacant lots, sticker patches, asphalt streets, steaming cindered alleys and
through great clouds of Indiana grasshoppers, wading through clouds of
them, big ones that spit tobacco juice on your kneecaps and hollered and
yelled in the weeds on all sides. [Jean Shepherd] [restatements here.]
8. He ate more and drank more and was more dramatically profane and
threw more money away and had more fun and fell sicker and tipped higher
and drove a car faster and laughed more and blubbered more fat man's
beery tears and was kinder and knew more priests and visited more
orphanages and hospitals and grabbed more tabs and staked busted guys
more and made more people happier and bet horses more and had a
heavier stomach and pitched more scoreless innings in a World Series and
struck more home runs and had been paid more wages before inflation and
ferocious taxes and was fined more and awed more big league ballplayers as
well as boys and straightened out baseball when the Black Sox scandal had
ruined it. Babe Ruth is the greatest, and baseball finally admitted it.
[Jimmy Cannon] [The term for this sort of linkage with "and" is
"polysyndeton"--and you can do it with "or" too.]
9. Of course she is right, and at first glance the Picayune-Moon doesn't look
like much, only about the thirty-first worst newspaper in America, not even
a contender, full of blither and blather and foamy stories about the same
hundred ditzy celebs and "life-style" stuff about lives so banal you'd be
thrilled to be dead and stock photos from the Liturgy of Pix (Tots, Pets,
Nuns, Grandmas, and Silly Jock shots) and the obligatory headline puns and
a regular brothel of columnists taking their pants down every day--all of it
tricked out in bilious blue and gooseshit green and virulent yellow like a ten-
dollar hotel room and ten minutes later you can't remember a single
sentence you read. [Garrison Keillor, "That Old 'Picayune-Moon'"
Harper's Sept 1990, p. 68.
Two Longer Assignments
Dorothy Parker Assignment
Here are some poems by Dorothy Parker. Write something about them.
Epitaph for a Darling Lady
All her hours were yellow sands,
Slipping warmly through her hands;
Patted into little castles.
Shiny day on shiny day
Tumble in a rainbow clutter,
As she flipped them all away,
Sent them spinning down the gutter.
Leave for her a red young rose,
Go your way, and save your pity;
She is happy, for she knows
That her dust is very pretty.
To a Much Too Unfortunate Lady
He will love you presently
If you be the way you be.
Send your heart a-skittering,
He will stoop, and lift the thing.
Be your dreams as thread, to tease
Into patterns he shall please.
Let him see your passion is
Ever tenderer than his. . . .
Go and bless your star above,
Thus are you, and thus is Love.
He will leave you white with woe,
If you go the way you go.
If your dreams were thread to weave,
He will pluck them from his sleeve.
If your heart had come to rest,
He will flick it from his breast.
Tender though the love he bore,
You had loved a little more. . . .
Lady, go and curse your star,
Thus Love is, and thus you are.
Hearthside
Half across the world from me
Lie the lands I'll never see--
I, whose longing lives and dies
Where a ship has sailed away;
I, that never close my eyes
But to look upon Cathay.
Things I may not know nor tell
Wait, where older waters swell;
Ways that flowered at Sappho's tread,
Winds that sighed in Homer's strings,
Vibrant with the singing dead,
Golden with the dust of wings.
Under deeper skies than mine,
Quiet valleys dip and shine.
Where their tender grasses heal
Ancient scars of trench and tomb
I shall never walk; nor kneel
Where the bones of poets bloom.
If I seek a lovelier part,
Where I travel goes my heart;
Where I stray my thought must go;
With me wanders my desire.
Best to sit and watch the snow,
Turn the lock, and poke the fire.
Portrait of the Artist
Oh lead me to a quiet cell
Where never footfall rankles,
And bar the window passing well,
And gyve my wrists and ankles.
Oh, wrap my eyes with linen fair,
With hempen cord go bind me,
And, of your mercy, leave me there,
Nor tell them where to find me.
Oh, lock the portal as you go,
And see its bolts be double. . . .
Come back in half an hour or so,
And I will be in trouble.
Inventory
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
Résumé
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful'
You might as well live.
Day-Dreams
We'd build a little bungalow,
If you and I were one,
And carefully we'd plan it, so
We'd get the morning sun.
I'd rise each day at rosy dawn
And bustle gaily down;
In evening's cool, you'd spray the lawn
When you came back from town.
A little cook-book I should buy,
Your dishes I'd prepare;
And though they came out black and dry,
I know you wouldn't care.
How valiantly I'd strive to learn,
Assured you'd not complain!
And if my finger I should burn,
You'd kiss away the pain.
I'd buy a little scrubbing-brush
And beautify the floors;
I'd warble gaily as a thrush
About my little chores.
But though I'd cook and sew and scrub,
A higher life I'd find;
I'd join a little women's club
And cultivate my mind.
If you and I were one, my dear,
A model life we'd lead.
We'd travel on, from year to year,
At no increase of speed.
Ah, clear to me the vision of
The things that we should do!
And so I think it best, my love,
To string along as two.
The Veteran
When I was young and bold and strong,
Oh, right was right, and wrong was wrong!
My plume on high, my flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
"Come out, you dogs, and fight!" said I,
And wept there was but once to die.
But I am old; and good and bad
Are woven in a crazy plaid.
I sit and say, "The world is so;
And he is wise who lets it go.
A battle lost, a battle won--
The difference is small, my son."
Inertia rides and riddles me;
The wish is called Philosophy.
Indian Summer
In youth, it was a way I had
To do my best to please,
And change, with every passing lad,
To suit his theories.
But now I know the things I know,
And do the things I do;
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you!
Symptom Recital
I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind
I hate my legs, I hate my hands
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men. . . .
I'm due to fall in love again.
Fighting Words
Say my love is easy had,
Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad,--
Still behold me at your side.
Say I'm neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue,--
Still you have my heart to wear.
But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!
Autobiography
Oh, both my shoes are shiny new,
And pristine is my hat;
My dress is 1922. . . .
My life is all like that.
Biographies
1
Now this is the story of Lucy Brown,
A glittering jewel in virtue's crown.
From earliest youth, she aspired to please.
She never fell down and dirtied her knees;
She put all her pennies in savings banks;
She never omitted her "please" and "thanks";
She swallowed her spinach without a squawk;
And patiently listened to Teacher's talk;
She thoughtfully stepped over worms and ants;
And earnestly watered the potted plants;
She didn't dismember expensive toys;
And never would play with the little boys.
And when to young womanhood Lucy came
Her mode of behavior was just the same.
She always was safe in her home at dark;
And never went riding around the park;
She wouldn't put powder upon her nose;
And petticoats sheltered her spotless hose;
She knew how to market and mend and sweep;
By quarter-past ten, she was sound asleep;
In presence of elders, she held her tongue--
The way that they did when the world was young.
And people remarked, in benign accord,
"You'll see that she gathers her just reward."
Observe, their predictions were more than fair.
She married an affluent millionaire
So gallant and handsome and wise and gay,
And rated in Bradstreet at Double A.
And she lived with him happily all her life,
And made him a perfectly elegant wife.
2
Now Marigold Jones, from her babyhood,
Was bad as the model Miss Brown was good.
She stuck out her tongue at her grieving nurse;
She frequently rifled her Grandma's purse;
She banged on the table and broke the plates;
She jeered at the passing inebriates;
And tore all her dresses and ripped ;her socks;
And shattered the windows with fair-sized rocks;
The words on the fences she'd memorize;
She blackened her dear little brother's eyes;
And cut off her sister's abundant curls;
And never would play with the little girls.
And when she grew up--as is hardly strange--
Her manner of life underwent no change
But faithfully followed her childhood plan.
And once there was talk of a married man!
She sauntered in public in draperies
Affording no secrecy to her knees;
She constantly uttered what was not true;
She flirted and petted, or what have you;
And, tendered advice by her kind Mamma,
Her answer, I shudder to state, was "Blah!"
And people remarked, in sepulchral tones,
"You'll see what becomes of Marigold Jones."
Observe, their predictions were more than fair.
She married an affluent millionaire
So gallant and handsome and wise and gay,
And rated in Bradstreet at Double A.
And she lived with him happily all her life,
And made him a perfectly elegant wife.
Tough, Sweet, and Stuffy
Tough talk:
Sweet Talk:
Stuffy Talk: