I promise, today, that I will be back. I've been looking at this blog all semester, daunted by a 5th class I took on as an "overload." (Why didn't I think that if the UNIVERSITY calls it an OVERLOAD, that somehow I wouldn't feel OVERLOAD-ED?)
Anywho, I've got some new ideas "proofing" (yes, that's a self-aggrandizing metaphor), related to gardening (I've got a teeny one!) and recipes in line with seasonal items available at the farmer's market. In fact, I think I'm going to move quite closer to the food aspect of this blog, at least for awhile, and insert whatever "Teachable Moments" I can find--whether business, communication, or life-skills. I'm constantly discovering and wanting to share, and quite frankly I think that's the whole impetus for teaching, right? Just looking to convey what we know and love to those who care to listen...
Perusing the web for an article on active and passive voice usage in business communication (for my professional writing students) I stumbled across Ed Barr's really great blog.
I think this concept of "concision as emphasis" is fabulous for professional writing students, and in some ways can be a basis for creative writing as well. It's not always about how much detail you can add. It's not the fancy words or the beautifully extended metaphor. Often the most profound messages stand out simply because of their, well, simplicity.
To me, these statements share another commonality, (which I've fixated on since I just prepared a lecture about sentence structure). These two-word sentences only include a subject and a verb. An object is not included, not necessary. These sentences focus on the action of a single entity, and declare a type of singularity. One person, one action, one moment, one impact. These sentences expand emotionally because they define only a single point out there somewhere. It is the reader's responsibility, then, to position herself in regards to the sentence. "How does this change me, now?" she might ask. What has ultimately been accomplished, then, is a sentence that necessarily engages the reader by not dictating how she must relate to that new information. Relationships are made, but they are more profound since the reader is part of the process. She understands.
Sunday, I finally convinced the hubby to for the successful new film Julie & Julia.
First Impression: Good (Great? I'm so bad with praise) movie.Why? I absolutely loved Meryl Streep here, her uncanny voice, and addictive awkwardness which (I'm going to have to gather because, frankly, I've never heard the voice of Julia Child, to my memory) must surely be a dead-on impression of the magical woman. In all honesty, Julia, if this IS accurate, reminds me of said hubby, who was being very quirky and fabulously awkward the entire weekend. So it could matter who is sitting next to you (slouched in his seat, fiddling with a pair of Ray-Bans like a baton twirler from Britain's Got Talent. Ok, so maybe not quite like that...I digress.
Verdict: See it. Theater-viewing optional. It's a perfect Saturday afternoon flick to get you motivated to cook something delicious for dinner. Actually, you probably DON'T want to see this movie UNLESS you have time to cook afterward. It's that appetizing (can I even say no pun intended here, is this a pun? Help me Englishy people out there...)
Reservations: My only issue with the film is based off my background. I'm a writer, so books-come-movies always are a difficult genre to, um, swallow. This spring I had, coincidentally, bought off a rack of "$4.99 Bargain Books" the first 2005 edition Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (which I have to say has the most hideously bland yuppie cover for such a multi-faceted narrative...bad editor, bad, BAD!). I later discovered a book was being made about the film, and vowed to read the book before the movie, in case anything was going to get "spoiled" by the film (how many freakin' food metaphors can I accidentally use here...another post surely). And oh how the film spoiled so so much.
Poor Julie looks like every aspiring writer, aspiring cook, aspiring wife, sometimes even aspiring ADULT. One friend, C., who didn't read the book ask, "What was the whole point of the story, though?" Exactly.
First Words Out of the Theater: "I'd be pissed if this was the movie that they made out of my book. She comes across like such a whiny bitch." Such a departure from the at-times-tear-inducing Julie Powell of the book.
Ultimately my beef is with the marketing of this film. You think, oh, it's a movie version of the book. FALSE. It's a combination of TWO BOOKS, Julie Powell's memoir, and Child's autobiography, My Life in France. So of course Julia steals the show. You can't put a budding NY writer up against the tour de force that was Julia Child. And especially never can you cast Meryl Streep without full knowledge that her character will not be overshadowed by, no offense, a newcomer.
And frighteningly I just made the connection that this isn't even the first time Amy Adams and Meryl Streep have shared a screen (2008's Doubt, also starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, also recommended). That's how much this movie has dazed me!
There's an A.V. Club review that point out the same problem, but I'll take it a step further. Maybe I didn't see the narcissism, since Julie Powell comments on her awareness of blog-as-self-idolatry. It just seems so damnable to criticize someone who already beat you to the punch with self-criticism.
Wishful Revisions: What do I wish the movie really portrayed? Powell's memoir is more than just a cutesy romantic-comedy blog. I was really struck by the metaphor of what's missing. Julie doesn't have the sense of direction all her friends seem to have. The memoir is her finding of inspiration. But Julie works for an organization that deals with the fallout from 9-11, and the conference room looks out over "Ground Zero."
In my eyes, it's a subtle post-9-11 narrative told through the eyes of a woman who may or may not realize that she's being so universal. I wanted to see THAT type of collective literary catharsis, the connection on the screen of food and soul and loss and being lost. I wanted JULIE to shadow Julia, the real triumphing over the mythic. Ephron's film to me is a Bifteck Sauté Bercy that's missing the marrow and the rich, meaty, intensity of a "life, well lived" (Powell's description) that deeply richens the original memoir.
I thought I'd share part of an old poem of mine that seems a fitting close...
I remember after the funeral, playing hide and seek
with my brother, and crawling under the bed finding, alone,
my grandfather’s reading glasses. Surely, they could have only
fallen from his face as he collapsed, here, beside the bed. It was
too much of the past to stomach, like a funeral banquet grander
than any wedding feast because the caterer knows we must
always fill ourselves against a loss: the meal itself, a new story,
the first bite an opening line repeated like a chorus for hours.
And I thought I knew just about everything, j/k...
I'm teaching 3 sections of a professional writing course this semester, and, as always, the first assignment proves to be a bit of a challenge for my students, i.e. omg wtf do you want me to do?!?
The Assignment: Write a memo evaluating a sales message for effective communication.
The Question: "I don't have my book yet, so I what is 'memo format'?"
The Answer: I'll just google "memo format" and get something easy as a proxy.
The Complication: This article, which I desperately want to share, but seriously, not as the very first thing I show an assignment-overwhelmed student. HA!
The article provides a cogent, near-academic (but somehow SO NOT academic) approach to the science of visual rhetoric, document production, and the ills of worshipping at the altar of Word Defaults. The writer is truly taking the audience-centric "You" attitude I preach, and is considering (on a tab and space and leading level) how we actually SEE a memo and the DECODE that information more or less quickly. It's brilliant, and frightening, and, well, the kind of stuff that just gives me the willies.
I have never so seriously considered my entire writing life with a healthy dose of oh-god-did-I make-the-Example-3-mistake!?! dismay. In some ways it is an epiphany and a radical departure from everything I've ever thought to consider about the banality of business document composition. In other ways, it's the kind of tedious, nit-pickingy type of thing students despise instructors for expecting. Thus the perils of the academy and its academicians perched precariously on the edge of obsessive attention to curricular detail (we so desperately want to teach everything, really, even the crazy, tiny stuff like this).
I'm thinking now that this blog might just be the best thing going for my teaching. I can obsess and digress, they can inquire and be inspired, and we can carry on these fabulous discussions without the formality of the classroom, or the stingy "allotments" of the classroom.
If only I can get them all to read it...at least a little...without me.
