Homework: by the time the bats' wings beat silver

Next week, we’ll be joined by Special guests Gene Yang and Tobias Wolff.

Our homework is to read and respond to Gene Yang’s graphic novel American Born Chinese as well as point the class to another comic or graphic novel online. Do this on our blog. Let’s have our responses posted by Monday night (deadline: when you see the flashing silver of bats’ wings as they return to roost under the big dish) so we all have a chance to read them on Tuesday. This is a class of writers, so feel free to flex your interpretive muscles when it comes to understanding how this book is working. Our goal, as always, when it comes to examining a work of literary art, is to ascertain how technical choices the author made supported and illuminated the character and story. I’m sure your posts will be longer than average, as you will have much to talk about.

Certainly, there will be questions of genre, and about how it pertains to this particular work. Why is this story a graphic novel? Graphic memoir? Could it be told to lesser or greater effect in another form? How do the visual and literary function in this work, and what does the author choose to render in image and word? Does the use of image suspend our disbelief as readers, by which I mean lull or doubtful minds, or does it engage our beliefs, by which I mean convince us by satisfying our doubts. Does image amplify or hinder conflict and tension? Does an image-based narrative have the same sense of time and progression as a text-based narrative? Is less left to the imagination by depicting the actual images and descriptions, rather than leaving them to the readers’ conjuring? Would you say this novel is told (depicted?) in the first-person point of view or the third? And are the perspectives of the different sections clear? Much time passes in the book; can you tell what the point of narration (immediate past, distant past, etc.) is? Would you say the story is present tense or past tense? Can a graphic novel be past tense? What role does myth play? How does Yang reveal the inner lives of his characters? Why does he start with the Monkey King? And there will be general questions of scene selection, character arc, stylization, pacing, structure, and so on. I’m not asking you to address these particular questions in your responses; just providing a sense of range in terms of all the interesting discussion points this work raises. I hope you enjoy the book a great deal, and we look forward to your thoughts.

Oral History and New Media

We're going to tackle Oral History next. Be sure to read the handout called "Making It Through Hard Times." This chronicles some of the WPA Interviews of the 1930's. Then, take a spin around the web to these sites.

Story Corps is an NPR project. All audio files. To my mind, this is new media at its very best. Do read about the project, and listen to five or six interviews. They're only about 3-4 minutes each.

Our friend Stephen Elliott has written an series of interviews called An Oral History of Me.
Basically, he interviews his friends about how they remember him as a teenager. Give some of them a read.

A Day in the Life of a Bike Courier is a terrific article about the San Francisco hills, streets, and bike lanes. This is one of my favorite articles on the web.

This is a defunct blog, but it was by a public defender, overwhelmed by her caseload. It's a smart look inside a stressful career.

From the McSweeney's archives. Interviews with people who have interesting or unusual jobs,

So, we've got audio files, personal narratives, second person oral histories, blogs, and short interviews. There are lots of other ways to feature Oral History on the web. Your assignment for next week:

1. Complete the readings.
2. Post three Oral History sites that you find interesting on the What's New Media Wiki. Include a short description and links for each.
3. Write your own Oral History. This can be about yourself, someone you know, or a total stranger. The key: use elements of new media to tell this story. Use links, audio or video files, flash, photographs, or whatever you deem fit. Post this on a site of your own making (Google pages or our class wiki if you like), and then link to it with your name in the next post.

We're looking forward to next class.

-- Tom and Adam

Homework for Tuesday, January 23rd

We want to look at how other artists have approached writing in the new media. The Electronic Literature Organization has collected over fifty stories told in a variety of new media formats. So, visit the site (click Volume One), choose two stories: one that you admire, and one that you don't, and blog about them on our New Media Blog. Be prepared to talk about both of them in class.

And then try a pastiche or imitation of one of them. Use whatever format you'd like. Approach this as we did in the "Spreeder" exercise: 300 words, along with whatever new media you'd like. Stretch. Don't be afraid to fall on your face. Do something outside of your comfort zone. Have it available for class next week. You can put it somewhere on the web, or keep it on your computer. Wow yourself and us.

Adam spoke about "The Long Tail" at the end of last week's class. The readings for next week are Chris Andersen's Wired article on the subject, the weblog popularity long tail, and the long tail of English language words.

Then, find two web spaces. Whatever you choose. One should be at the beginning of the popularity tail, and one should be in the second half of the tail. In other words, find a popular site, and then find a hidden gem of a site. Blog about them on our New Media weblog.

On Tuesday we'll begin to turn the class toward our own creative writing. No Wiki homework this week. So, to summarize, the homework is...

1. Choose two ELO stories and blog about them.
2. Write one 300 word new media story that imitates or is influenced by an ELO story.
3. Read The Long Tail articles and sites.
4. Blog about two web spaces, one near the front of the tail, and one near the end.
5. No wiki homework.