Yeah, it’s been a while. Like George and Liz and maybe others, the ol’ blogging well’s felt a little dry of late. Copying a pasting a conference CFP once a week does not a compelling blog experience make, I know. So what’s been going on? Well, classes for one thing: undergraduates and grad students this semester are all hard working . . . and smart. I’m having a great time with both groups. My class blogs are also thriving: my undergraduates have left 300+ comments (and we’re still only half way through the semester) and the group authoring experiment with my graduate class is turning out well too. The blog is a nice way for us touch base in between our once a week class meetings.
Still, it’s spring break here all next week, and it’s nice to have a little time off; hopefully I’ll be able to catch up on some things. Here’s my to do list, in no particular order:
If I can get all or most of this done then that will clear the decks for writing for the rest of the semester and the summer.
Kari and I are also going to be taking a letterpress printing course at Pyramid Atlantic, just down the street from us at the end of next week. More to come on that from both of us I’m sure.
A little more reading it’d be nice to get to. Jay Clayton’s Charles Dickens in Cyberspace (Oxford 2004), which is not the sequel to Hamlet on the Holodeck but rather by all accounts a smart and prescient attempt to grapple with continuities between the Romantic and Victorian age and our own postmodern present. Babbage and his engines, Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the telegraph all make appearances. The Victorians seem more and more with me: partly its because I’m such a Gibson fan, and Gibson has a pronounced Victorianist fetish; but it’s clear, from Clayton’s book as well as recent work by Lisa Gitelman (just down the street at Catholic U.) and John Picker (who I knew at UVa—see his Victorian Soundscapes, also new from Oxford) that the Victorian age was a point of major technological rupture, and certainly the most relevant of recent “information revolutions.”
Also picked up Scott Bukatman’s Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century (Duke UP, 2004). Bukatmann’s first book, Terminal Identity, has long had a place of pride on my shelf, and this volume collects a number of great essays (including “Gibson’s Typewriter” and “The Artificial Infinite: Special Effects and the Sublime”). All fun stuff, and it’s a gorgeous production job. Thanks to Andrew in my grad class for tipping me off.
Then there’s George Pelecanos’s new novel, Hard Revolution, set on the mean streets of DC during the ‘68 riots. Pelecanos fans know how important music is in his writing, and Hard Revolution comes with a CD soundtrack (Wilson Pickett, Albert King, the Impressions, and of course, Otis). Mmm. This’ll likely be my next read after The Bug (students, take note: work before play).
And last, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope to get some gaming in this week.
Well. I guess I better get started on some of that. Thanks for (still) reading, and I’ll see if I can get back some of that old blogging mojo.
Posted by mgk at March 18, 2004 01:23 PMMatt,
It is nice to read your account of what has been occupying your time. It, as well as Liz Lawley's juggling of blogging and travel, gives me some reassurance that the dry spells and writer's block that I have been reading about in a particular cluster of academic blogs are not intimately connected with a rebound effect from what was the texture of blogging in some quarters about a year ago -- just a theory about collective memory of high affect periods and the "anniversay effect". Good luck squeezing all that activity in one week!
From the sound of it, (rimshot), I think I'll have to put Pelecanos on my summer reading pile. Curious though, is the CD an actual "sound track"? That is, something to be read in sync with the novel (thereby assuming a certain pace of reading), true accompaniment? Or is more a companion to the book, perhaps the songs play a role on the printed page, and the CD is a quick access contextual provider?* A sort of sonic gloss. I've seen some flash comics (Broken Saints, and the Little Ninjai)attempting to mix printed words with a paced soundtrack, with mixed results, and a colleague has told me of the existence of a printed comic with sound accompaniment, though neither of us have experienced it first hand.
*In that sense, it would be a perhaps more carefully currated supplement than similar projects conceived for "hip hop" novels I had heard about a few years back (no idea if the genre -- which may only have made it as far as the drawing board of record labels -- has any relation to the "street lit" getting so much buzz from newspapers these days), though I don't know if any of those every played out.
Posted by: Midnight Platypus at March 20, 2004 12:24 PM | Link to CommentThanks, Francois. MP, you're right, the "soundtrack" is much more like a simple companion to the book. Pelecanos's novels comprise an almost archeological excavation of popular music from the fifties to the present, and no one who's read one hasn't had the experience of saying, "Gee, I wish I could hear that right now." So it's a bit of a gimmick, but no one has earned the right more than GP. I'd definitely recommend anything he's written for your summer reading.
Wow... so neat to see the items crossed out. Inspires me to some list making of my own. Good luck on the remaining three items.
Posted by: Francois Lachance at March 26, 2004 03:16 PM | Link to Commentwhy did'nt you tell me you were giving a printing course on mom's birthday!!you could have added a happy birthday to the web site-march 26-remember!!!!!! and why when i search your site for "linda", "no pages found pops up"??
PS I find watching charlie do the laundry fulfilling!!