May 25-26, 2013: Crowd-Sourced Beach Reads Redux

[Last year, I helped celebrate summer with a series on American Studies Beach Reads. It was a lot of fun, so I’ve done the same this year. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the suggestions of fellow AmericanStudiers and beachgoers—please share your nominees to give us the most options for our tan-inducing page-turners!]

Kelly Sloane suggests, “1Q84, anything Junot Diaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Tennessee Williams, or Sandra Cisneros’ Caramelo.”

Erin Kingsley writes, “If I had time, I would read Wolf Hall, The Orphan Master's Son, then Where'd You Go, Bernadette. If I had time...”

Chance Lee writes, “Karen Russell's Swamplandia! is an excellent beach read. It's set in Florida -- oh land of meth heads, sinkholes, Disney World, and alligator-filled swamps -- and Russell does a great job portraying all the different sides of this strange state (drugs! theme parks! alligators!) and transforming them into a compelling coming-of-age story. There's even a little bit of Florida history tucked in for bonus educational value. It's sticky and sweaty and weird; so: perfect for summer reading.”

Wesley Raabe writes, “If your contemporary lit friends are reading 50 Shades, then you could whip out Maria Monk's Awful Disclosures.”

Susan Stark writes, “My recommendation is Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. While apocalyptic-type novels have been done to death, this one manages to catch onto a few interestingly complex ideas. If there were only a handful of people left, what parts of your culture would you be capable of carrying forward? How long could you live like a parasite off of the remains of a system that no longer exists? And how do you start over when you are surrounded by the crumbling remains of a dead society? In one of the most poignant scenes, the main character tries to express to his children (born after the ‘disaster’) the importance of reading so that they may learn all of the things their forefathers have already figured out. But to the children, the library is a source of fuel for their fires, not their minds. How would you let it all go? And what things are truly worth fighting to save? Good stuff to think about on the beach!”

Steve Railton writes, “My favorite summer reading includes RE-reading, i.e. to make sure I take one book I read some time ago and loved, and give myself the chance to see what the experience of reading it is like now.”

Since I wrote this week’s series, I’ve also come upon another great historical novel that rivals Sayles’ in summer readability (if not quite in size): Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day.

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What are you bringing to the beach this summer?

May 24, 2013: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part Five

[Last year, I helped celebrate summer with a series on American Studies Beach Reads. It was a lot of fun, so I thought I’d do the same this year; I’m doing so a good bit earlier this time to give you some good options for your Memorial Day Weekend reading. Please share your nominees for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll kick off its shoes and settle into the hammock!]

Five more nominations for great beach reads, drawn from past blog posts:

1)      Ross MacDonald’s hardboiled PI novels;

2)      Lucille Clifton’s collected poems;

3)      Ambrose Bierce’s short stories and nonfiction;

4)      Susan Glaspell’s Trifles;

5)      Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father.

All worth your seaside time! Crowd-sourced reads this weekend,

Ben

PS. So what would you nominate as an AmericanStudies beach read? I need suggestions for my towel time too!

May 23, 2013: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part Four

[Last year, I helped celebrate summer with a series on American Studies Beach Reads. It was a lot of fun, so I thought I’d do the same this year; I’m doing so a good bit earlier this time to give you some good options for your Memorial Day Weekend reading. Please share your nominees for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll kick off its shoes and settle into the hammock!]

On the biting autobiographical novel that also packs an emotional punch.

I’ve written about Fanny Fern at length in two prior posts, so in lieu of my first two paragraphs I’ll just link to those:

This post about her unique and amazingly modern voice and style;

And this one on her inspiring partnership with and third marriage to James Parton.

Any of Fern’s writing would keep you good company on the beach, but here I want to make a brief case for her autobiographical first novel, Ruth Hall (1854). It’s true that if you know the real-life people on whom many of the novel’s character are based, it takes on an added layer of sting; but even without that knowledge, Ruth offers the same striking combination as Fern’s best columns: a mixture of sarcastic humor and poignant emotion, of sly wit and painful honesty, of social satire and confessional roman à clef. Like Sylvia Plath’s The Bell-Jar (1963), with which it has a good deal in common, Fern’s novel will make you laugh and cry within the same page, or even the same sentence—and that pretty rare feat makes for some great beach reading if you ask me.

Final beach reads tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Nominations for AmericanStudies beach reads? Share ‘em please!

May 22, 2013: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part Three

[Last year, I helped celebrate summer with a series on American Studies Beach Reads. It was a lot of fun, so I thought I’d do the same this year; I’m doing so a good bit earlier this time to give you some good options for your Memorial Day Weekend reading. Please share your nominees for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll kick off its shoes and settle into the hammock!]

On the two one-woman shows that are just as evocative on the page as on the stage.

In this era of tablets and smartphones (which Word doesn’t identify as a spelling error, just to drive the point home), there’s no reason we’d have to limit beach reads to written texts. You can watch a YouTube video clip just as easily, and when it comes to theatrical performances, there’s a lot to be said for doing so, for getting at least a sense of their performative (that one Word underlines, but I’m going to keep it) qualities. So I’d be remiss if I didn’t first link to this opening part of Anna Deavere Smith’s Fires in the Mirror (1991) and this trailer for an adaptation of her Twilight: Los Angeles (1992).

As the first clip’s introduction notes, Smith works in a very unique and compelling way: interviewing hundreds of people in response to a particular historical event (New York’s Crown Heights riot for Fires, the 1992 LA riots for Twilight), and then turning their words and voices into a crowd-sourced document that she performs herself in their various characters (although the above-linked Twilight adaptation uses multiple actors instead). Smith is as talented a performer as she is a writer, and so again there’s much to be said for watching and hearing her take on these voices and stories, as you can do (if you have an hour and some good wifi) with all four parts of the above-linked version of Fires.

But if you’re on the beach without internet access or a high-tech 21^st century device? Well, I was introduced to Smith through the published, textual version of Twilight, and I can say with certainty that she makes these voices and characters and communities come to life just as powerfully in that form. Indeed, there’s something to be said for the opportunity to hear them all in our own head, with no performance choices filtering them, distinguishing them from one another, perhaps rendering one or another sympathetic or annoying to our ears. Their subjects are the height of divisive and violent controversies, moments that pitted Americans against Americans in the worst ways—but the texts offer us the chance to hear all sides, and, as Walt put it, “filter them from your self.” Pretty good way to spend some quality beach time if you ask me.

Next beach read tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Nominations for AmericanStudies beach reads? Share ‘em please!

May 21, 2013: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part Two

[Last year, I helped celebrate summer with a series on American Studies Beach Reads. It was a lot of fun, so I thought I’d do the same this year; I’m doing so a good bit earlier this time to give you some good options for your Memorial Day Weekend reading. Please share your nominees for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll kick off its shoes and settle into the hammock!]

On the ginormous historical novel that’s well worth your (substantial) time.

If you’re like me, I probably don’t need to convince you to read John Sayles’ 955-page A Moment in the Sun (2011). Which is to say, if you share my belief that Sayles has directed some of the best American films of the last half-century, and moreover share my sense that it’s both his novelistic style and form and his willingness to engage with the complexities of history that make those films as compelling and successful as they are, then I bet all I have to say is that Moment traces the lives and experiences of more than a dozen compelling American characters in a perfectly realized late 19^th and early 20^th century world—that it’s like a great Sayles film on the page, ready for you to dive into and immerse yourself in at your leisure—and you’ll be picking up a copy.

But if you’re somehow not on the Sayles bandwagon already, would I still recommend Moment for your beach reading list? Hell yes I would, and I’m glad you asked. Like all the great historical fiction, Sayles’ novel really takes you there—to the frozen wasteland of the Yukon Gold Rush, to the sweltering jungles of the Filipino insurrection, to the terrifying streets of the Wilmington massacre, and to numerous other historical settings and moments that comprise, in each case but even more so collectively, under-remembered and potent American histories. You’ll look up at the sand dunes and have to remind yourself that you’re not actually climbing those frozen stairs with all your belongings on your back, desperately hoping that you’ll find a hot meal and perhaps a traveling companion you can trust at the top—and what can fiction do that’s better than such total immersion?

Not much; but when a novel can be that compelling and immersive and yet at the same time feel profoundly salient to our own moment and issues, can take you far away from our world and yet at the same time leave you feeling as if you better understand where we are, well that’s an even more worthwhile read. And Sayles’ novel does that—not in the somewhat pedantic manner that sometimes characterizes his second-tier films, but simply by telling these American stories and creating these human characters, fictional experiences and identities that resonate with our own histories and lives and give us a chance to consider the worst and best of what America has been and continues to be. Believe me, I know what I’m asking—but bring this doorstopper to the beach. You won’t be disappointed.

Next beach read tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Nominations for AmericanStudies beach reads? Share ‘em please!

May 20, 2013: American Studies Beach Reads Redux, Part One

[Last year, I helped celebrate summer with a series on American Studies Beach Reads. It was a lot of fun, so I thought I’d do the same this year; I’m doing so a good bit earlier this time to give you some good options for your Memorial Day Weekend reading. Please share your nominees for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll kick off its shoes and settle into the hammock!]

On the book that takes us back to one of the most complex and inspiring American summers.

One of the topics that came up a good deal in my just-completed English Studies Capstone course (about which I wrote last Thursday) was the coming summer, and how the students might be able to use it to move into or toward different careers, interests, passions, next steps of one kind or another. As you might expect in our current world and economy, work is a key component for these students—even those who were considering unpaid internships had to figure out how to balance them with compensated employment as well. But nonetheless, I consistently made the case that they need to consider not only what they need but also what they want, and what can inspire them—and one great model for the latter would be 1964’s Freedom Summer.

Of the more than 1000 volunteers who traveled to Mississippi that June to help register African American voters, the three who were murdered in the first ten days are by far the most famous (and rightly so). Yet I would argue that many of the experiences of the other volunteers were just as extreme and lasting, if of course in less tragic and more evolving and inspiring ways—and I know that because of Doug McAdam’s pioneering and compelling Freedom Summer (1990). McAdam balances interviews with former volunteers and sociological analyses of their community and experiences with historical contexts and sweep; his book is as much about the afterlives of the volunteers (most of which do not at all fit the stereotypical ex-hippie-turned-yuppie narrative) as about their 1964 experiences, making it a history of late 20^th century America on multiple, interconnected fronts.

That combination of depth and breadth makes it a significant AmericanStudies text, but the book is also a great beach read for two additional reasons. For one thing, it’s a page-turner—we may know what happened with the Civil Rights Movement in general post-1964, but we don’t know much about these individual lives and identities, nor those of the communities with which they were engaged in that summer; and McAdam makes sure that we care a great deal about what happens to them. And to come back to my initial point, it’s also hugely inspiring, makes you want to get out of that hammock and do something to make the world a better place. Can’t think of a better cure for any potential summertime blues than that!

Next beach read tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Nominations for AmericanStudies beach reads? Share ‘em please!

May 18-19, 2013: Next Semester Thoughts

After a week of reflections on the semester that’s ending, I thought it made sense to look ahead for a moment to the one that’ll start in a few months. I already spent a week blogging about my Major Author: W.E.B. Du Bois course, so here are quick thoughts on the other five courses I’m scheduled to teach this fall:

1)      My Next ALFA Course: Haven’t gotten too far into planning this one yet, but one thing that came up in the last ALFA discussion this time was the idea of pairing under-read 19^th century American authors with compelling 21^st century ones: Sui Sin Far and Gish Jen, for example. Suggestions for other such pairings very welcome!

2)      Grad Historical Fiction: I’m extremely excited to be teaching, for the third time, a graduate course (in our Master’s program) that I created, on American Historical Fiction. It should probably be called Ben’s Favorite Authors and Novels: Hawthorne, Sedgwick, The Marrow of Tradition, Absalom, Ceremony, Oscar Wao, Lahiri…Yes, I’m drooling. Don’t judge.

3)      Approaches to English Studies: I’ve never taught our gateway-for-majors course before, although I’ve taught grad lit theory many times and plan to use many of the same overall strategies (at an undergrad level of course). But more than the content, what really excites me about this course is the chance to work with a cohort of English Studies Majors at the outset of their time in the department, and help get them started on the best possible foot.

4)      American Literature I: The only course I’ve taught as frequently as Am Lit II is, shockingly, Am Lit I. But this will be the first time in two years that I’ve done so, and I’m excited to introduce a new group to Cabeza de Vaca’s amazing narrative, John Smith’s stunning third-person mythmaking, Judith Sargent Murray’s and Olaudah Equiano’s Revolutionary lives and voices, the single best chapter in ante-bellum American fiction, and much else besides.

5)      First-Year Writing I: It’s been four years since I taught first-year writing (for reasons related to the topics of these two posts), and I’m beyond thrilled to have the chance to do so again. Does it hurt that I teach close reading through a unit on song lyrics, and so get to spend some class time analyzing “The River”? No, no it doesn’t. But beyond even Bruce, the fact is that no class allows for a closer connection to students—to their writing, yes, but also their voices and perspectives and goals—than does this one. Seeing former Writing students graduate remains one of my favorite teaching experiences, and I can’t wait to meet this new batch!

A lot to look forward to! Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What are you looking forward to this fall (or summer) (or any other time)?