This post was designed and dedicated to Linda and her students. Keep up the great work. @LLumiss
For Teachers:
Did you ever flip through a book and find a surprising artifact inside? I frequent a really good used bookstore and I often find random and often strange things tucked into books. Imagine, someone in another time, reaching for something to tuck into their books to hold a spot, mark an idea, or just keep something hidden from someone else. Some of my favorite finds are a four-leaf clover, a letter from one person to another about the poet of the book, and pictures tossed as a place holder.
More than just holding a book and leafing through it is this idea of inserted things. When J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorset set out to make the book S. they took this concept to an extreme. The book is merely the vehicle in which the story is given through inserted things, letters, postcards, margin notes, and other things. For a better understanding of the book, The Story of "S": Talking with J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst from the New Yorker will give you an insight into the complexity and the focus of this fascinating book. Showing this book to readers in better than just showing them a book, because it shows the mystery and the complexity of what could also be added and inserted into the mix. This is a great book to show to a group of students and let them see all the elements inside.
This leads to the idea that books are influenced by what surrounds them. Gerard Genette, literary critic, coined the phrase "paratext", he described these around-the-edge-of-a-book elements to influence not only how a book is read, but what expectations might be found there. Paratext includes blurbs, authorial comments, reviews, illustrations, footnotes, endnotes, and more. To dive into that world, check out his book Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, which is worth perusing to understand his vision of thinking. His vision of how text around the main text influence the reader is significant.
Ideas and Starters for Students
For some students looking at a book and holding it is not a familiar thing to consider. Book lovers and librarians ruminate about how they adore books, but we are in the minority.
Part One: Have students look at books and consider all the parts. Books with prefaces, introductions, indexes, endnotes, table of contents, footnotes, and other texts help them see the connectivity. Ask them to identify the different elements of the book and why they think they are important.
Then ask them what they think of a fiction writer using a footnote in a story that they made up. Why would they do this? Why would this be useful?
Louis Borges used made up books and connections to make his story seem more applicable and ground some of his more abstract ideas. Other books like the confusing and complex House of Leave by Mark Danielewski also works to confuse matters.
Part Two: Collect random ephemera, postcards, sticky notes, napkins, little slips of paper, notes to friends, receipts, anything that can be concealed in a book. Have the students flip through the book and consider what the book is about. Then have them take out all the things in that book. Have them write a story of who they think owed the book and what happened according to the found things.
Part Three: What kind of artifacts would students like to leave in a book? Would this hide a letter, underline the funny words, or make the entire book into a complex cipher. (I don't condone defacing books for the sake of these ideas). Have the students create a statement on an index card that makes a statement or a request from the reader who finds it. What would happen if someone read this card? What would happen if it was found in 100 years?
A cross-over type of social activity would be tapping into BookCrossing where students could read books and then release them in their environments and see where they go. This is a fun way for physical books to be considered in real time as they travel about.
This would probably entail using donated books and then sharing them back into the community. It is a free resource and it shows that books can have a life of their own and a lot of people who may not have access to books, still love to read. -- # September 2017
by Ron Samul from We Are the Curriculum
Please send fun classroom feedback, pictures, or general connections to this post to ronsamulwriter@gmail.com / Would love to see what you are doing in the classroom.
Ron is an expert at the Digital Human Library and connects with teachers all over the world to inspire creativity in writing, books, and critical thinking.
I've always been interested in telling stories in different ways. And when I saw the makers cycle for this week, and I read the description about telling a story through pictures, it brought me back to a concept that I had a long time ago.
The idea was to create the image of a house destroyed by a tornado and bring that to the computer. By clicking on the interactive screen, people could read about the various clickable pieces of debris and from the story they think is important, based on their desire to click on elements in the debris. That being said, I never found the right way or even the possibility of doing that project.
For this cycle, it is important for me, as a writer to hold on to the writing part of my projects but still do something that is animated in some way. I still wanted to create something similar to the tornado story, but I had a vision. The concept and the vision came all at once. I would write The Fire. It would be 10-20 flash fiction stories woven together based on an image of a fire. Using an image from the tragic London tower fire, I am trying to connect and make the story work.
The first part will be the stories and how they connect. The next part will be navigation. And finally, the overall look will be important to the story. While I know that not everyone will love reading this and connecting the concepts, the most important element is to try it. Prezi seems to do the job right now and I think it will work out in a linear fashion. I think my vision of clicking into a space and having it tell you a story would work, but for this first prototype, I will have to let the presentation play itself out in order.
CLICK HERE TO SEE MY EXPERIMENTAL STORY
Storytelling can be interconnected and there are a lot of different elements now to teach and tell these stories. I worked with students to create panel cartoons to tell stories. I gave the students complex stories and asked them to tell those stories in five panels. In some cases, it was near impossible, but there is something important to cutting it down to just the basic story and attempting it. I also had them create their own superhero or (as some preferred) anti-superhero to create their own satirical space for storytelling. I created the Dyslexic Man comic because of my own issues and created the dread "homonym brothers" who always confused people with their confusing words.
The infusion of image and word and the evolution of the digital age has brought us to an interesting time and space. In The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, the visual need to engage the world is returning. And the coded (male dominated) alphabets and convoluted languages are falling away. Storytelling and the modes to tell our stories will certainly change. With abbreviated text-language and memes evolving into shorthand, we are already speeding along in a new way of seeing the world, laughing, and making complex and satirical points about society, politics, and our own experiences.
Over the last five years, it feels like my passion isn't in creating a lasting digital legacy, it is about contributing to something. When I was a student a Western Connecticut State University getting my MFA in Creative and Professional Writing, I started a digital literary magazine. This is where I saw my imprint on the world as a publisher and editor and I really enjoyed it. But what I thought was a project turned into a very significant organization. To this day I am grateful to that community that fostered my experience in editing and publishing. However, it was a massive undertaking and the saving grace was how naive I was about creating something like that. After more than three years, I finally let Miranda Magazine. Not because it wasn't productive, but I couldn't keep up with the hundreds of submissions, deadlines, and the support of the people who were helping me.
In 2015 I started immersing myself into a community that was different than poets, writers, and artists. I immersed myself in teachers and learning gurus. I joined the Rhizo15 - a Massive Open Online Course and my whole world shifted. There were so many ways to approach learning, creative things, and there were tools and connections to make these things happen. Not only did I meet some of the most prominent thinkers in the field of online learning and thinking, they were also some of the kindest in supporting the course and the community. I then participated in Digital Writing Month and then continued with groups as they emerged over the last few years. During this time, my thinking shifted. I didn't want to make websites that created massive organizations, I didn't want to create three hundred page websites. I wanted to make projects.
I introduced the concept of Digital Humanity Projects to my students and why that is important. How to create a directory of resources is better than explaining one source. I spoke to them about collections, curation tools, and learned that students would gravitate to their own interests in a project. For example, we wanted to catalog historical buildings on campus using an interactive map that would explain how and why all the building are campus came to be. We discussed and created QR codes that we put on bookmarks for virtual book reviews that students could read. I wanted to make tools that connected.
What does that mean? I didn't want to create a massive product and sell it. I didn't want to create a service and sell it. I wanted to make something that connected people - students, writers, scholars, and just browsing people. In CLMooc - creating and making things digital and real is the cornerstone of the community. But I had been thinking about websites, blogs and connections that were smaller, different, and useful to other people - if only in how they might use it.
This year I made a few specialty blogs including a political art blog Art from the Resistance and a literary science blog about the ocean titled The Ocean Journal: Writing and Art from the Sea. These two sites are collectives of ideas and connections and not meant to be a complex web magazine. And they create an opportunity for writers and artists to collaborate on topics and ideas that wouldn't find mainstream acceptance. If a fiction writer wrote one obscure piece on falling into the ocean, then it might be an excellent match for the Ocean Journal. Beyond that, perhaps there are marine science writers who like to write essays on their favorite locations and connections. And of course, everything would be a welcomed consideration.
This year, I created a website called The Experimental Novel Index. Every entry is an explanation of an experimental novel and connections. While there is room for people to write critically about these books, share links to scholarly articles, the point is to connect. Creating tools and resources is practical. And while you create them, you may also find a community who would also use them. We see the all the time as teachers using shared resources. It doesn't need to be epic, you don't need to create an LLC, it just has to connect to something that is meaningful.
Ultimately I want to create fiction. But what is fascinating to me -- is to take up the challenge. Look around you, what resources are missing in your creativity, in your life, and why? And then start thinking of a process, a way, and creative entry point to make that resource and sustain it. We are in a new era of making. Building something electronically, physically, artistically, or methodically is easier now than ever before. It is a form of creativity, just like writing a poem or painting a canvas. All you need is a little inspiration. The rest will happen.
Feel free to discuss what you make and how it came about in the comments section. Would love to hear from you.
The Ocean Journal
Experimental Novel Project
QR Code Project
Introduction
Ask anyone and they will tell you that I am fascinated with process in writing and in order to understand the way we write, we have to understand that we can find specific reasons or connections to the choices we make. From names of characters to motivation to plot, process is important. The more I can identify some reason and function for my choices, the more I understand where I am going and why. That being said, one of my favorite topics to read, research, and share is my love of experimental novels. And in order to really understand why it matters at all, we have to define what they are and why they differ from other novels. And then, by looking at some novels that I consider experimental, it will also help find characteristics that are relevant in watching the evolution of experimental novels and ideas over the years. This series is part book review (of experimental novels), part idea building, and part process discussion. So, it won't always feel like the typical blog post. Sometimes, it will feel like a hyper-focused discussion about one book. Other times, it will talk more broadly. And sometimes, it will be connections and random thoughts. If you would like to share your ideas, feelings, or refer books - I would be happy. The comment sections will be open for that purpose.
I will post a working list of experimental novels HERE, as a shared document. Feel free to add your favorites.
Experimental isn't cutting edge. In fact, experimental novels of the past paved the way for how we consider the novel now. Even a common high school literary experience like Moby Dick by Hermann Melville might be considered experimental at the time. The experimental novel isn't new. In fact, all innovations in novel writing were and are considered experimental. Some are more pronounced, but they all have fed into the discussion that will be evolving here on this website, through the sources, and through other connections. In looking at some titles, it will be necessary to put the novel into historical context. What was happening in the world around the book? What was the author thinking? Why this experimental concept at this moment? And what did it mean?
Perhaps any artist that attempts to find the edges of their craft will eventually consider some kind of experimentation or variation on what is considered the normal balance of art expectations. Often, experimentation with poetry, paints, and other modes of art feel like they absorb and use experimentation as a constant in their understanding of the craft. While the novel, stands in a slow pattern of change. Forever on the edge of extinction, the novel moves through slower changes. And I don't think the heralding of the long form's untimely death has ever done anything but strengthen its resolve to continue forward. In the last twenty years, I've posed the idea that the novel isn't dying or even in elder care - but changing into things that don't make sense to critics and literary crepe hangers. It is believing the television will never change, only to find everyone talking about a show on Netflix, that thing you didn't subscribe too because it seemed like a scam. Perhaps then, the novel will change with the technology, change with the vision a future forged in strife and chaos rather than bucolic suburban dreams that disappeared shortly after the second invasion of the Iraq. The novel might be on the move. It might be expanding. But until we use some of our tools and innovate their use on experimental texts, we will never really understand the edges of the novel world. That is my goal to discuss, view, and understand where the novel has been in terms of experimentation and evolution so that we can innovate and embrace the new vision of novel writing, style, and process involved in continuing his vast and stunning legacy in letters.
