Literary Kinds

We were talking in class about the different forms of "reading" and how reading experiences can differe from listening experiences. That's all quite valid. The thing we didn't really talk about, however, was how very versatile somethign like a book is. For example, the fact that you can read, listen to, or even perform the text of a book is very impressive. Novels, poetry, and other fictional texts are very inclusive - they allow anyone, even those with audio or visual disabilities, to be part of the experience.

Graphic novels, bless them, are not inclusive. Not even a little. You cannot record a graphic novel on tape, and play it to a visually disabled invidual. Sure, graphic novels contain text, which is important to the story. The pictures, however, cannot be recorded, and a graphic novel can't be experienced through it's text alone.

You cannot create a braille version of a graphic novel. I'm sure that people have tried, and perhaps we'll develop, in the future, a way of translating pictures into text, and text into braille, but for the moment, that's not an option. (I've done a little research, but if you can contradict me on this last claim, I'd love to see what you found. That's not sarcasm - I'd be delighted.)

I'm not saying that graphic novels aren't valuable in their own right. We can all read them, and we can all enjoy them. That's excellent. I'm fond of the idea that a reading experience should be available to everyone, however, which is why I hope that graphic novels are not the novels of the future.

We started the class by listening to Jefferson Airplane's "Go Ask Alice" and signing up for movie discussion groups.  Anne discussed articles she has found online that could be interesting paper topics.  Then we read responses some of us had written online about the differences (or similarities?) between reading a physical book, reading a book online, and listening to an audiobook.  Rachelr and skindeep considered whether reading or watching/listening is a more imaginative activity, since watching or hearing something makes us do "less work."  Aseidman questioned whether it's necessary to do more work.  Anne suggested we might not necessarily work more but contribute more (in terms of interpretation and imagination) when we are only reading a text.

Since we are looking today at the way Alice has been transfered through genres/platforms, I thought it would be interesting to share this:

Although I only viewed  the first twenty minutes (I watched Neco z Alenky instead) of this stage play- filmed for TV- Alice in Wonderland, I did read that the set was designed from John Tenniel's illustrations of Alice in Wonderland:

while we spoke about reading and listening and what qualifies as reading in class i couldnt help but relate our converstaion to people.

when someone talks to me, there is a vast difference between them talking to me in person and them talking to me on the phone. because when you're spoken to in person, the level of interaction you have with the person is so much more -- intimate? deeper? (i cant find the word)

you get to read the person, you get a glimpse into what theyre thinking and feeling and whats said behind their words. on the phone, its so different, yes, your imagination gets to work better and you have to listen harder but the basic level of interaction that there is is different.

Class Notes

Start class off with 2 images. (From fluid to fixed)

Are we finding note taking useful? No one talked about it evaluations.

sweetp: When taking notes for the class I thought it was kind of fun. It was nice to kind of sit back and watch. I got kind of creative, but as a reader I know I never look at them.

Anne: Fun and interesting to do the note taking, but don’t really look at them.

rachelr: I don’t read them on a regular basis, but I found something interesting that Paul said that I used in my paper.

Michiko Kakutani's March 17, 2010 NYTimes essay on "Reading and the Web: Texts Without Context"

 Carroll's Alice in Wonderland is given a brutal, disturbing interpretation by Svankmajer in Neco z Alenky. In this darker portrayal, there is not much that is freeing about Wonderland, after all. Wonderland (or shall we call it Horrorland?) becomes the expression of the deepest, most disturbing, recesses of consciousness, from which Alice cannot escape. The narration in Neco z Alenky in particular draws attention to the fact that all the characters Alice encounters are figments of her own mind, as the camera zooms in on her mouth as she (rather eerily) speaks for each character.

 Today during our class I was confronted with many issues pertaining to how I think of what classifies "reading." Very similar to what others seemed to express, I think that audiotapes of books provide some sort of literary experience; however I think much of what is gained during reading is lost when we simply listen to the words. For me, it is a very personal thing: as I read, actually seeing the words float by on the page forces me to acknowledge them. However, on a less personal note I think what is most lost when listening to texts is one's ability to have creative authorship. When I read I imagine my own characters (of course based off of the text), I have my own version of how the characters voices sound, and how their words interact with one another.

Our conversation-beginning today about Alice as a "very sensible 7-yr-old, @ stage of development/education where the world appears completely explainable and unambiguous" reminded me strongly of the recent film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are.