chris at 1:53 PM |

Thursday, June 05, 2003

 

Bullets & Literature

Curiouser & curiouser, my dear Watson: a mini-mystery involving 3-D literature and 2-D "bullets" is trying to solve itself right before my objectifying eyes each day in the classroom. That same, most curious of students (go figure: business major: why does this happen with business majors [she asks, as if she can't know]?), former military--whose college ed is being paid for by military benefits (taxpayers)--from the other day when he asked why literature is required, now has more to say. This is the same one from the *other,* other day, who would have ambushed and completely defeated the Native American oral tradition/tales ("3-D" because an on-going tradition and practice, as in, three dimensional via alive) with Biblical elements and interpretations, if I had not offered a word of caution about reductive spins and/or over-interpretation. He has now made another controversial declaration involving "bullets" (and more than a bit of cock-a-doodle-doo, I have to add).

Time, time, time (mad hatter, anyone?) and bullets, bulleting (Dr. Phil quilt, not guilt?): Because they are the "wave of the future," Power Point "bullets" ("2-D": ink on paper or dots on screen) would be the best way to teach anything about literature and literary criticism, this student declared in yesterday's class. "Bullets" are also the best way because time is so short for everyone all the time, and the "bullets" would save the time it takes to "wade through" all that other stuff no one needs to know since it won't be on the test or it is just wrong (non Biblical). [And anyway, gee: why doesn't the instructor just give out all the answers to the test beforehand to *really* save time, too?]

I am not yet despairing, tho it could happen.

Although it sometimes takes a lot of impetus in a classroom to get students to say meaningful things, it was comparatively easy here. In fact, I'm happy to say they rose to the occasion all on their own. The majority of other students are not convinced by this one's utilitarian and (slash/burn reductive) argument. According to them, it seems there are important things to be gained from literature beyond either the Satanic or the Spartan. I rather like that for Texas students. Very nice.

So, I was greatly relieved to hear this response to the Spartan (he actually seems to be an affable person--certainly no simmering caldron). A majority of the rest of the students did defend their right to read literature in full, in its fullest forms and outreaching connections, intertexts & etc., and to learn about critical perspectives, approaches, systems. I was a little impressed. :)

Then again, I have to wonder, too, whether their response was motivated more because they felt literature a worthy cause for defense (my preference as teacher, I suppose), or if they responded more out of feeling personally insulted that an aggressive utilitarian ideology might usurp their romanticized notions of rights (understandable but not as applicable to the focus because slightly more applicable in a composition and rhetoric course rather than a lit course, tho it's also reflective of shades in the current state of US politics, so something of a personal preference for me, too, I suppose). Probably a combination of the these motives. Interesting. Will be watching this little contradictory state of classroom affairs for the rest of the course.

Perhaps I should say, too, I'm assuming that what is called "literature" is a valid path to and a form of knowledge, thus worthy of study. So post post-Eagleton that it could seem merely prior, if that makes sense. Or, certainly somewhere after "Diving into the Wreck." Exponentially, and on dry ground. But this is cryptica for noting there are many in lit and history of rhetoric studies who argue or start all agument from the position that literature is a dead item--corpse of the social *corps*--or that it is a dead discourse, not a viable form of knowledge. Do I care about that? Hmmm... maybe it's all best filed circularly under "Bullets"?

I don't really believe that, of course. Who can afford to believe all that? Me, I'm too invested (the costs of graduate school for a single parent assure, insure, the reproduction of this value as, keenly, a literal investment) to give literature's various kinds of lack and the charges of lack any neutral, much less distanciated spin. Literature: Love it or Leave it! comes close to how this economy works--funny old slogan, no? Can't something analogous be said of Mr. Bullets, too?--invested to the hilt, as it were. But then along comes this image from James Merrill's "Days of 1964" where the narrating lover goes vertiginous on realizing how helpless he is in love's economies of investment, lack, and dire need, and the sword cliche of being *buried to the hilt* in some version of love/need/investment is vaguely recycled to re-mean something resonant once again, momentarily. That's one way literature works to make a better world, right?

But hey, why not just be honest: forget the fucking "bullets," Bud: so much is about Literature, Lack 'n Love: why not just embrace?--make love with wow--make life, not war?