11.4.08 Lost in the Funhouse day2

1
11.4.08 Lost in the Funhouse day2

• Schedule
• Attendance Questions?
• Common areas for improvement
• Lost in the Funhouse Discussion.
• HW Read Jackson. Link will be up after class.

• Goals
• Identify and evaluate the role of the reader in
  the realization of a story.
• Identify areas for improvement in their writing.

2
Paper comments.

• You may have noticed I write a lot.
• You may also have noticed that my comments can be
  pretty blunt.
• The reason for this is that I take what you write
  seriously. I read it as you telling me what you
  really think, as an actualization of your
  reading, thinking, arguing, as you trying to tell
  me something and add to academic discussions.
  So, I get into it and if I dont buy what youre
  selling Ill tell you.
• Please dont interpret my tone as anything other
  than enthusiasm. I get really excited seeing you
  all think through these things.
• If you have any questions about the comments you
  received, please do make an appointment to talk
  with me. I would love to walk through them with
  you.

3
Common Areas for Improvement

• MLA
• Page numbers
• Heading
• Works Cited
• Stuff (Ryan 78).
• Blockquote.
• Proof reading.
• Loose Lose
• Book titles are underlined or in italics.
• Second person pronouns and the reader
• Remember that they refer to the person looking at
  your paper. So, when you say they do something,
  they better agree with you!
• Defining terms / criteria
• If you introduce a term, you need to define it.
• If you are evaluating something, you have to give
  us criteria that we will agree to

4
The first person.

• We talked about how it is hard to presume how
  others read and I suggested this is one reason
  why we focus on what happens in the text rather
  than in the mind of the reader.
• Several students reacted to the problem of other
  minds by writing their essay in first person as
  an account of their reading experience.
• While not in itself problematic, the way most
  folks used their personal experience prevented
  them from generalizing their reading in
  productive ways, shutting down discussion.

5

• The argument from most folks boiled down to, I
  was not immersed and these are the elements that
  ruined it for me.
• The challenge of writing this way is that you
  have to move from your personal experience to
  something that matters to your audience.
• In this case, that probably meant making a case
  for how your experience reveals something about
  immersion as such.
• It was this move that folks werent making, which
  meant that what was at stake in your essays was
  YOUR PERSONAL immersion. In other words, you were
  assuming your audience cares whether or not you
  felt immersed. Unfortunately, it really doesnt
  in a professional context.
• In the end, it is important to be able to
  distinguish your particular taste from what a
  text is trying to do. For example, I dont
  particularly like ICB, or Ryan for that matter,
  but I find what it is doing useful for some of
  the ideas Im trying to work out.

6
The I cant read argument.

• You would be surprised how often my students have
  thought this was a strong point to make.
• This argument claims that something is the case
  because the writer found it difficult to read the
  text with ease.
• In this case, it took the form I found such and
  such confusing so it cant be immersive
• Aside from the obvious problem that this argument
  undermines ones own authority on a text, it also
  has problems with regard to audience.
• Remember the audience of folks you are writing
  for. This class, yes, but this class takes place
  in a national university in a nationally
  recognized English department. In short, you are
  writing to a group of aspiring professional
  readers.

7
Biggest problem leaving out the HOW

• Here is an example of the logic many papers used
• Immersion is space-travel. sidenote many papers
  had definitions of immersion that had nothing to
  do with what they were trying to show happening
• What does space-travel mean?
• We get immersed when we feel emotion for
  characters.
• How is feeling emotion space-travel? How is it
  immersive?
• Perry is described in the text, with a history of
  his bad life.
• How does the description produce a readers
  emotion? How is it immersive? this was the big
  one
• Because it describes his life as bad, the reader
  is immersed.
• How do you know that the quote you gave immersed
  me?

8
5-Paragraph essay

• Is really good for identifying something that
  appears in a text and showing multiple examples
  to prove it is there. You all are great at
  identifying qualities in texts.
• The next step, what will get you to college-level
  writing, will be to go beyond identification of
  what is there to analysis and theorization.
• It is not enough to say a text has x,y,z and is
  therefore immersive, but you have to explain HOW
  x,y,z produce immersion and what that immersion
  is.

9

• Barth's story contains three distinct voices.
  these include the author's narration of the
  events in the story, the author's self critique,
  and the authors presentation of possible
  critique from the reader.    Lets ride the
  old flying horses! Magda cried. Ill never be an
  author. Its been forever already, everybodys
  gone home, Ocean Citys deserted, the ghost-crabs
  are tickling across the beach and down the
  littered cold streets. (Barth, 7)    So far
  theres been no real dialogue, very little
  sensory detail, and nothing in the way of a
  theme. And a long time has gone by already
  without anything happening it makes a person
  wonder. We havent even reached Ocean City yet
  we will never get out of the funhouse. (Barth,
  3)The last of these acts as a substitution of
  the authors thoughts for the readers. the
  author appears to be telling the reader what to
  think. Why does the author include this type of
  voice? How does this affect the reader's role in
  relation to the text? Does the author destroy the
  interactive experience by forcing his thoughts
  upon the reader? Or does this promote interaction
  in a different way?