The Salt-Box

The July Bookslut went live today, and I’m delighted to say that it includes my long interview with Lisa Appignanesi about her recent book, Mad, Bad, and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors. People who study Freud will know Appignanesi from the book she co-authored with John Forrester, Freud’s Women; writers of all stripes will know her as president of English PEN, and a novelist and memoirist. The interview was terrific [don’t take my word for it: Mindhacks calls it “fantastic”]–she was very generous with her time, and thoughtful with her answers. Here’s a taste:

Inasmuch as symptoms feed into diagnoses and diagnoses feed into symptoms, it almost seems as if, given the medicalization of mental health, you would expect a huge proliferation of syndromes, and this alleged explosion of mental health disorders in the population.

I think that’s right. We sometimes find what we look for, and as the mind-doctoring professions have really colonized our mental and emotional life, we have more and more things that are disordered, that are seen through those spectacles. We find more and more depression, where at one time we would have found unhappiness, or poverty, or any of a multitude of emotional and social problems. But we look to the mind doctors for their cures. At the moment, at any case, mind doctors would rather be released from being the omnipotent source of remedy because of course they can’t cope with all these things. They’d like to help in many cases, but often they just really don’t know how. So they, too, are caught in a kind of bind over this. Various studies have shown that if you go walking in a group that can alleviate depression. Well, of course! Because we’re sad, and we’re lonely, and that doesn’t have to be diagnosed as something that can be cured by pills. It can be seen in many other ways.

One of the interesting things for me about this research has been to really clarify that, because of seeing the ways these patterns emerge over time — seeing these things that haven’t been illnesses before becoming illnesses. The easy one, of course, is ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), where more and more children are being diagnosed with an inability to pay attention. Well, it’s very hard to pay attention when the kinds of quick cuts you have on your television and films, or in computer games are such that you’re not asked to pay attention in a particular way. It is quite possible that we develop emotional and neurological ways of coping with this which to an older generation will look like a disorder! But in fact it’s a much wider social imperative than it is simply an individual’s problem.

Be sure to read the whole thing*! You can find an archive of my long-form interviews here.

*It was about 13 pages in typescript!

A couple of weeks ago, the boy graduated from preschool. Yes, graduated. With cap-and-gown and everything. We went, mostly because he thought his best friend was going to be there (alas, she wasn’t). I don’t mind saying that I’m a little horrified at the whole concept: You have to think that the person who came up with the idea of having these ceremonies wasn’t held enough as a child or something. Has our desire to flatter the self-esteem of children grown so insuperable that even this–perhaps the smallest amount of achievement possible–has to be recognized and honored?

On the other hand, we did get a chance to have a friend snap this photo, which is one of the few in the wild of us all together:

I’m not sure what that claw is coming out of the back of my head; I’m looking into having it removed, or at least pimped more stylishly.

This list of “The Books That Changed Your Lives” at Lifehacker (via Mel) reminds me of this lyric from The Hold Steady‘s “Hot Fries”:

All your favorite books, they wouldn’t seem so well-written, if you were just a little more well-read.

Rand? Tolkien? Herbert? Card? Dawkins?  Adams? King?  *Rowling*, for chrissakes?  NB: I admire many of these writers.  I’ve read the four main Tolkien books hundreds of times–and we read The Lord of the Rings to the boy when he was in utero.  But “life-changing”?  *Really*?

Our university has a lovely tradition of inviting professors who’ve just been promoted or tenured to recommend a book for the library to purchase.  Usually, I think, the idea is to recommend a book that’s been influential in some way on your decision to become a professor, and you write a little paragraph or so nominating it.

Last year, when I was promoted, my recommendation was Civilization and Its Discontents; this year, for tenure, I’m torn between a Dickens (probably Bleak House or Oliver Twist?) or an Eliot (almost certainly Middlemarch), or the other Eliot (probably Four Quartets).

One of the main traffic drivers in my archives has been a frustrated post from a year or so ago about my problems with VitalChek, the public records provider for many states.

Well, today someone named RayRay has posted 1) a customer service # for the company, and 2) a heartwarming tale about the company’s founding.

But, look!  Here’s the whois lookup for RayRay’s IP address: http://ws.arin.net/whois/?queryinput=66.241.32.158

ChoicePoint!  Does ChoicePoint own VitalChek?  I think they do!

My little blog’s all grown up.  Sock puppets and everything. I’m so proud!

[Last year’s switch from MT to WordPress cost me most of my archives. Here’s a post from last spring that still seems to draw traffic, despite its non-existence, so: ]

Last week, Dr. Crazy wrote an excellent post about how she got her book contract. Her core recommendations are: be close to a finished ms before you start sending out proposals; don’t be afraid of simultaneous submission; a diss is not a book (and, most important, READ GERMANO); and self-promote away. She’s also asked people to describe their own experience, which I think is a good idea. There is something strangely opaque about the transition from dissertation to book, especially since most people probably work out that transition on their own–as, for instance, the only Victorianist or medievalist or whatever in the department.

My book came out in October with Ohio State as part of their Victorian Critical Interventions series. Like Dr. C, my experience has been atypical in some ways–for example, this was the only proposal I sent out–but I do think that there are some points that might be generally useful. (This won’t be narrated in the same detail, largely because this blog isn’t anonymous, but hopefully it will still be of interest.)

• It is true that a dissertation isn’t a book, and it’s also true that, from a certain point of view, the best dissertation is a done dissertation. Letting the perfect be the enemy of the “good enough to finish” can, obviously, be counterproductive. However, especially in the overpopulated humanities disciplines (English, history, insert your discipline here) focusing on your prose while you still have committed readers (i.e., your committee, perhaps a dissertation support group) can help differentiate your project.
• A related point is: If what you want is to publish a book quickly, then choosing the right committee matters. (And, “right” here just means, “a committee with a savvy sense of the book market.”) Pay attention to the post-grad-school trajectory of students in your area.
• Another related point is that there’s no special merit in publishing a book quickly, unless you’re at an R1 school (or a school with R1 envy). A clear-eyed look, not only at your work, but also at your school’s promotion & tenure criteria, can help you distinguish self-imposed anxiety from legitimate concerns about your future. Too, if you’re hoping to “write your way out” from a first job, it’s not exactly clear what the marginal benefit of book publication is over several well-placed articles. It probably depends on the press, on the journals, etc. I’m not aware of any statistically meaningful analysis of this question.
• If you’ve decided you want to revise your diss toward book publication, don’t get trapped into a specific image of what “the book” has to look like. Any given project might take several different forms, depending on the press (and, where applicable, the series). Your editor and the press’s readers will have a lot to say about its ultimate shape. For example, I had always thought that I would need to write two additional chapters to turn my dissertation into a book; in fact, this was not true. Because the Victorian Critical Interventions series has a specific model in mind, I actually had simultaneously to condense (“sweat down,” as one reader put it) some of the chapters, while making some theoretical claims more prominent. I think the resulting book is actually shorter than the dissertation. Had the project been declined by the series editor, however, even at the same press I would’ve needed to expand the ms.
• Thus, it actually makes sense to research presses & series “too early,” long before you think the project’s ready. I had seen the VCI series announcement on Victoria when I was still in graduate school, and bookmarked the web page. Then, once I’d heard good things about the OSU P process, I was ready to move quickly. Had the press declined the proposal, I would’ve embarked on the new chapters. There’s no reason to think that that longer book would have been better, and, more to the point, it would have had no additional impact on my p&t process. Plus, once I had the book in hand, I could start on new projects, etc.

  To put this slightly differently: Had I waited to submit my proposal until I had written those additional chapters, not only would my book still not exist, but I probably wouldn’t even have a contract. I also presumably wouldn’t have my subsequent contracts with Broadview and Valancourt Books, because part of the hook-baiting with those presses was the completion of the first book. Dr. C has it exactly right: No one can say ‘yes’ if you don’t submit your proposal.

• If you have even a passing acquaintance with someone who’s published at a press you’re interested in, ask them about it. One thing that sold me on Ohio State UP was that a friend from graduate school spoke so highly of her acquisitions editor. (And I would echo her recommendation: The staff at Ohio State UP are incredible.) I also did this with Valancourt: They had put out a request for proposals on Victoria-L, and, again, a former colleague had done an edition with them, so I took a flyer. (Because the press is small, though, the process was much more informal.)
• The process at Broadview was different. I had known someone in marketing/promotions from her visits to our campus and to a conference I frequent. Since I use a lot of their editions, we’d chat, and she put me in touch with an editor as a likely person to do an edition. Then, the editor and I e-mailed back and forth over some possible texts, until we settled on one. Finally, I submitted a proposal for her to take to readers and to the board.
• That reminds me: If you notice that certain presses sponsor book tables, not just at your discipline’s national meeting (MLA), but also at your specific area’s conference, then you should probably talk to whoever the rep is. Maybe it’s someone from marketing, but marketing people know editors. And maybe it’s an editor–for example, the person in charge of my book is always at the NAVSA conferences, chatting up interesting people. There’s no reason that can’t be you.

To recap:

1. Pay attention to your writing while you have a captive audience, before you graduate and move to a school where there’s no one else in your area of specialization.
2. You are not writing the One True Book about your topic; your project might take several different forms depending on the needs of your press.
3. Wait until you have material to send before circulating a proposal, but don’t wait until the whole project is “finished.” There is no “finished,” anyway: There’s just the latest FedEx pickup time on the day before your deadline.
4. People you know–friends, former colleagues, mentors, marketing and promotions people who’ve talked you into an examination copy, editors you’ve met at conferences–are an important resource in winnowing your list of potential presses. Don’t be shy about asking how a particular press works.

From the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th Edition:

If a quotation runs to more than four lines in your paper, set it off from your text by beginning a new line, indenting one inch (or ten spaces if you are using a typewriter [chuckle–ed.]) from the left margin, and typing it double spaced, without adding quotation marks. (3.7.2)

Verse quotations of more than three lines should being on a new line.  Unless the quotation involves unusual spacing, indent each line one inch (or ten spaces on a typewriter) from the left margin and double-space between lines, adding no quotation marks that do not appear in the original.  (3.7.3)

Note that this does *not* say: “Double-space everything *except* block quotations, which should be single-spaced.” Apparently this confusion is widespread, judging by the papers I get.

MLA style dictates that EVERYTHING, even the identifying information in the upper-left-hand corner of page 1, be double-spaced. If you’re wondering, “how should I format this block quotation in MLA style,” the answer is: double-space. If , more generally, you’re wondering, “in MLA style, should I double-space [anything]”, the answer is: YES.

According to the MLA, thou shalt double-space.

Now, there’s no especial virtue in double-spacing or not, but if you’ve been asked to use a style guide, then use the style guide!

That is all.

PS: Some other time we’ll deal with the widespread conviction that “quote” is a noun. (I.e., “I’ve got my quotes . . . I’m all set.”) For this post, at least, let’s distinguish actual guidelines from pet peeves!

Kudos to my most digitally-orientated student (and frequent commenter), Short Round Alex, for landing an internship with the Consumerist megablog!

Not quite sure I understand how one fetches coffee and such in a digital environment, but that’s probably just because I’m old.

What else could be behind this evening’s announcement that they’re eliminating profiles?

Profiles are essential for any family with movie-watching children, as they give you an easy way to separate movies for everyone from movies for adults.  Likewise, it keeps my kid’s fondness for movies about sports-playing animals from influencing our lists of recommended movies.

No reason was given:

While it may be disappointing to see this feature go away, this change will help us to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

can only mean: “This was somewhat inconvenient for us, and we’d rather force families to buy a separate subscription for their kids.”

They’re drunk if they think that will happen.

The Hold Steady’s new album, Stay Positive, is available today on iTunes, a month ahead of its announced release date.  (Presumably this is a consequence of the album’s being leaked on the internet.)

Anyone who reads this blog would do well to listen to The Hold Steady.  I’ve been sitting on a proper review for a few weeks, waiting for the album to formally come out, but it is awesome. (Um, that’s not the formal review–I’m dashing off to teach!)
You can hear the album on their MySpace page. The opening song, “Constructive Summer,” is their most accessible yet, and only gets better the louder you play it.

Let this be my annual reminder that we could all be something bigger

I went to your schools & did my detention

but the walls were so gray I couldn’t pay attention

I read your gospel, it moved me to tears

but I couldn’t find the hate and I couldn’t find the fear

I met your savior, I knelt at his feet

and he took my ten bucks and he walked down the street

I tried to believe all the things that you said

but my friends that aren’t dying are already dead

RAISE A TOAST TO ST JOE STRUMMER

I think he might have been our only decent teacher

Getting older makes it harder to remember

We are our only saviors.

We’re going to build something this summer.

Nothing else you could possibly do this afternoon would make you as happy as downloading this album.

At the (private) request of Jason, this post explains how I’ve begun to use Ivanhoe, the game developed at UVA by Johanna Drucker, Jerome McGann, Bethany Nowviskie, and many others, in my literature classes.

Ivanhoe is, in effect, an interpretive game, wherein students make “moves” of various kinds in relation to a specified text or texts:

In simple terms, IVANHOE is a digital space in which players take on alternate identities in order to collaborate in expanding and making changes to a “discourse field,” the documentary manifestation of a set of ideas that people want to investigate collaboratively.

The Applied Research in Patacriticism group at UVA has developed Ivanhoe from a set of rules, into a full-blown open-source visual environment.   (It’s also been retro-fitted into comical mock-acronyms.)  I’ve not yet had time to figure out how to incorporate the visual environment in a productive way, but I think that Ivanhoe is beyond awesome.

My students agree: Last semester, 11 Digital Literary Studies students wrote papers arguing that Ivanhoe should be deployed in every literature course in our department.  Students report engaging more closely with literary works than they do when writing a paper, as well as profiting from thinking of interpretation as a game–it takes the pressure off a bit.

This is the simplified version of the game that we play:

First, we have a conversation in class about how we interpret works of literature in papers.  Students list such “interpretative moves” as: discovering historical context, finding out about the author, comparing a work to others in the same genre, identifying formal elements, and “rewriting” the text (“what this really means is  . . . “).

Then, I introduce the idea of the game: Students, working in groups of 3-5 (obviously no magic about those numbers), choose a text, and then take turns making a series of interpretative moves.  To make those moves, the students must take on a different identity, and the range of identities is quite large.  Maybe it’s a character in the text.  Maybe it’s an unseen editor, rewriting the text.  Maybe it’s a figure from real life.  (For example, if Hard Times were your text, maybe one person would be a factory owner, another a Chartist, etc.)  Maybe  you play the role of an actual critic who has published on this topic.  (“Hi, I’m Richard Altick, and I think . . . .”)

Once students have chosen their roles, the only constraint is that it needs to be clear that moves respond in some way to earlier moves–that is, one’s understanding of the text in question should evolve over the course of the game.

The way students set up the game is that they sign up for a free blog somewhere, and set up the permissions such that all members of the group can edit it.  (I usually ask to be set up as an editor, too.)  Students can make the blog readable only by themselves, by classmates, or by everyone.  Normally if they use a critic or other still living person, I ask them to make the blog private, to prevent self-googling issues.

Students make a pre-determined number of moves–say 4–over the course of a week, and then they collaboratively write a one-page paper about what they learned about the text from playing the game.  I also usually designate someone to serve as the coordinator, and encourage that person to keep track of how smoothly the process worked.  Finally, they usually make a brief presentation of their game to the rest of the class.

That’s it!  Some comments:

• The students, they do seem to enjoy it.  And they’re creative!  I’ve had groups play with short stories, plays, Green Eggs and Ham (re-imagined as a drama about high school drug dealing, shifting naturally from rhyme to prose, etc.).
• They also work much more naturally with the language of the text than they tend to in papers.
• Students tend to figure out ways to dramatize subtexts or culturally-relevant motifs when they adapt the text.
• A weakness: It’s hard to grade helpfully–or, more specifically, it’s hard to promulgate in advance criteria that would be helpful to students.
• Another weakness: Students are usually more interested in adapting texts than in doing a research-based game.  In  some classes I’ll be incorporating more than one game per semester, and so I might require one to emerge from primary or secondary research.
• Good news: Students widely report voluntarily re-reading their source text numerous times in order to pick up telling details.  (Which seems to be true.)
• Students who’ve played it in one class have been evangelizing about it to students encountering it for the first time.  (This isn’t always true with my online assignments.)
• In the fall, I’m going to be sequencing this: students will play an Ivanhoe game first, and then follow-on with a paper about the same text.  The game would then serve as a formalized brainstorming session.

Anyone else playing Ivanhoe?  Comparable  interpretative games?