Please note: the collaborative project has changed! It is now known as the collaborative book cover project as you will be designing book covers for if on a winter’s night a traveler. See Collaborative Project for more details!
Groups so far: Christina, Jamey, Kevin, Katie
Megan, Sam, Victoria
Marcus, Keely
Robert, Chris, Ed
Jovana, Saoirse, Lorraine, Krista
Posted: March 31st, 2008 under daily notes, multimedia in action.
Comments: none
Read through p. 102 at the least and if you can p. 160 for Monday’s discussion.
For Monday while you read:
Mark significant or interesting quotes and passages from either the frame story or the novel beginnings to add to the Passages post.
Make note of any inconsistencies, disappointments or successes and delights throughout the text.
Pay Attention to imagery, symbols, themes, etc. that seem to recur throughout the text.
Posted: March 26th, 2008 under homework, reminder, schedule.
Comments: none
If on a winter’s night a traveller
Outside the town of Malbork
Leaning from the steep slope
Without fear of wind or vertigo
Looks down in the gathering shadow
In a network of lines that enlace
In a network of lines that intersect
On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon
Around an empty grave
What story down there awaits its end?
For the sake of simplicity, let’s refer to each of these openings as a chapter. On the surface, each chapter seems completely different from all the other “chapters.” However, a closer look reveals that there are themes, ideas, symbols, imagery, etc. that recur from chapter to chapter. In other words, the chapters are not so different as they may first appear. As you continue to read think of the chapters relate to one another. Go beyond focusing on plot connections and concentrate on deeper connections. connections of ideas, symbols, themes, imagery, etc.
Posted: March 26th, 2008 under daily notes.
Comments: none
Posted: March 26th, 2008 under in-class activity.
Comments: none
Books You Haven’t Read
Books You Needn’t Read
Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading,
Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written
Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered
Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered
Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback
Books You Can Borrow From Somebody
Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too
Books You’ve Been Planning Top Read For Ages
Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success
Books Dealing With Something You’re Working On At The Moment
Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case
Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer
Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves
Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time To Reread
Books You’ve Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It’s Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them
New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You
New Books by Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general)
New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you)
Posted: March 26th, 2008 under journal entry.
Comments: none
“The novel I would most like to read at this moment,” Ludmilla explains, “should have as its driving force only the desire to narrate, to pile stories upon stories, without trying to impose a philosophy of life on you, simply allowing you to observe its own growth, like a tree, an entangling, as if of branches and leaves…” (92)
Somewhere the complete volume must exist; you look around, seeking it with your gaze, but promptly lose heart; in this office books are considered raw material, spare parts, gears to be dismantled and reassembled. Now you understand Ludmilla’s refusal to come with you; you are gripped by the fear of having also passed over to “the other side” and of having lost that privileged relationship with books which is peculiar to the reader: the ability to consider what is written as something finished and definitive, from which there is nothing to be removed. (115)
The first sensations this book should convey is what I feel when I hear the telephone ring; I say “should” because I doubt that written words can give even a partial idea of it: it is not enough to declare that my reaction is one of refusal, of flight from this aggressive and threatening summons, as it is also a feeling of urgency, intolerableness, coercion that impels me to obey the injunction of that sound, rushing to answer even though I am certain that nothing will come of it save suffering and discomfort. (132)
I asked Lotaria if she has already read some books of mine that I lent her. She said no, because here she doesn’t have a computer at her disposal.
She explained to me that a suitably programmed computer can read a novel in a few minutes and record the list of all the words contained in the text, in order of frequency. “That way I can have an already completed reading at hand,” Lotaria says, “with an incalculable saving of time. What is the reading of a text, in fact, except the recording of certain thematic recurrences, certain insistences of forms and meanings? An electronic reading supplies me with a list of frequencies, which I have only to glance at to form an idea of the problems the book suggestions to my critical study. Naturally, at the highest frequencies the list records countless articles, pronouns, particles, but I don’t pay them any attention. I head straight for the words richest in meaning; they can give me a fairly precise notion of the book.” (186)
“No matter. The place where you’re going now is a model prison; it has a library stocked with all the latest books.”
“What about the banned books?”
“Where should banned books be if found if not in prison? (215)
Posted: March 26th, 2008 under daily notes.
Comments: none