We will be watching the Carr's documentary "Page One" (2011) today. While this is about the New York Times, a print publication, I'd like you to think about the implications it has for electronic literature. I'd also like you to think about the experience we are about to have together in creating Volume 2 of The Lying Cotton Review. What roles/positions would you enjoy [or not enjoy]? What are some problems we should anticipate? What things can we do in order to have the best/most productive experience?
Please think about these things individually and have an online conversation here.
In my opinion, there are three reasons for this article to be a good literature.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the word choice is very accurate. Sometimes it's common and informal like "you know," but sometimes it's academic like "tropical." These words all fit in the atmosphere that the author wants to create, and therefore it provides readers with a sense of reality.
Second, there is strong tension in this article. The themes death, innocence and sex are blended, creating the creepy atmosphere for the article while bringing meanings at the same time. The narrator describes the death like a routine and he can even predict the death. However, in real life, people usually exclaim, "how could such good people die in that way!" Those words show that people cannot expect when the death will come. The article challenges normal views, which successfully attracts readers' attention.
At last, after readers finish reading the article, there are some things left for them to perceive. For example, as to me, after I read the article, I think about the symbols(death, children, gerbil, sex and etc.) underlying this article. What do they mean? Do they mean something else in real life? How should I interpret this? These kinds of questions indicate that the article is a good article. Also, I may interpret the symbol from one way, while others may interpret differently. I think that the article that makes readers have multiple interpretations can be called a good literature.
The School is about a group of students and a teacher who repeatedly witnessed the death of plants, animals, and human beings. They were all frightened, but the students held different attitude from the teacher. The students began to be suspicious about the school and tried to find out the real value of life while the teacher behaved to be experienced, maybe a little negative, and comforted kids with the words that “just a run of bad luck”. The students wanted to see their teacher make love with his teaching assistant, but he refused, and instead, the assistant embraced him. Finally, a new gerbil walked into the classroom which made the students cheerful.
ReplyDeleteThis short fiction, to my understanding, can surely be regarded as an art, a valuable literature for three reasons. To begin with, the fiction does well in organizing. The author tries to achieve the humor through escalation: starting with ordinary situation, accumulating more recognizable failures, finally spreading death to humans. The extensive lists of fatalities make the story preposterous, and also arouse readers’ curiosity successfully. Secondly, the setting of characters and plots are surprising. For instance, the students seemed just like innocent children at first, but then they were able to ask so many profound questions about life and death, and even asked their teacher to make love with his assistant that is impossible to happen in our real world. Thirdly, the whole fiction is filled with philosophical thoughts. Not only the questions asked by students but the surreal end that a new gerbil walked into the classroom can lead to readers’ deep thinking about the relationship between life and death, a permanent topic. For me, the fiction wants to tell us the idea that life will constantly continue, even if they are doomed to death. Being significant for people, for the society to consider is a necessary characteristic of a great work.
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ReplyDelete“The School” is about a strange story that happens in a school. In this school, all the trees the students plant, the animals the students feed, and even the kid they adopt died in a short time. Students feel frightened, and although the teacher tells them do not be frightened, the teacher is often frightened. People think there must be something wrong with this school. After reading the article, I also think so. There must be something wrong, and not only the bad luck.
ReplyDeleteThis article is a good literature as for me, and there are several reasons why I think so.
First, the description and explanation about the theme is detailed vivid. For example, in order to explain why people think something wrong with the school, the author gives us enough examples and evidence. From these examples, we can easily feel the strange condition of this school.
Second, the end really gives me a good surprise. It is so crazy that the students want to watch their teachers make love, and they even put forward this amazing demand. As an ordinary story, the teachers will refuse this request and educate their students that it is wrong to have this idea. However they accept, if there is not a gerbil they may really do a crazy thing in front of their students.
Although I think the end of this story is a surprised end, I do not understand it clearly. Why the students change the topic from death to making love suddenly? According to my understanding, maybe the end wants to express the kids are easily being attracted new things, and their feeling of freshness is temporary. However I still feel confused about the theme this article want to delivery, maybe we can discuss it in class.
“The school” is a good and valuable literature. Firstly, the tension is obvious. The theme of this story is about death. The death is inevitable, from plants, animals to human beings. All things may die, just there is no exact time or way of death. Death is always opposite to life. However, death is still so closely connected to life. As children asked, “is death that which gives meaning to life?” What is the meaning of life? The topic or purpose of this story just appears. In the last sentences, “new gerbil walked in and children cheered wildly”. These sentences exactly are the correct response to death: to continue engaging in the activities of life, to enjoy life. Secondly, Barthelme uses light and gentle mood to discuss a serious topic: death. The trees dies. Then the snakes, herb gardens…Death approaches steadily and continually. But readers cannot feel a sense of sadness or heaviness. Barthelme produces a feeling of such joy and lightness. It is a little “dark humor”. Although readers do not feel sad, they still realize the death is inevitable. Moreover, readers cannot smile again in the end, not like in the beginning. The beginning is light; the ending is so heavy. Thirdly, the content is arranged from small to big. The organization is cumulative progression. At first, plants died. Animals died. But the phrase about the Korean orphan is the first mention of human victims. The following deaths are all about human beings. The topic of death has gradually become heavier. Barthelme does not want readers to accept information at a time. He needs readers to digest content, from less to more, from thin to thick.
ReplyDeleteI think this article deserves to be literature.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, it raises conflicts. For example, at the beginning of the article, while the narrator is watching his students planting trees, he starts to talk about the death of trees, the snakes, and all kind of creatures, including human beings. His tone of mentioning the deaths is apathetic and insensitive. While the kids took it hard and thought there was something wrong, he was totally fine with it and believed it was just a run of bad luck. The narrator is not human beings alike. His sayings, behaviors and thoughts are against people’s conventional attitudes toward death. Barthelme’s long and concentrated description about the narrator’s attitudes toward death has challenged and disrupted readers’ traditional understanding in real life and made readers focus on his fictitious world.
Second, this article confirms the value of death. When animals and even people keep vanishing from sight, the children begin to ask where they went and consider the intimate relationship between death and life. Death prompts us to ponder over the subject of life and try to craft meanings on it. As the children are frightened and require an assertion of value, they ask the narrator to make love with his teaching assistant. The children tend to regard reproduction as the meaning of life. When people are confronted with death, we tend to want to procreate, which might be a way we attempt to achieve immortality.
My definition of great literature is 1) it evokes empathy in readers 2) it may not be written using sophisticated lexicons but written with subtle expression of theme. I believe "The School" falls into the category of great literature, and it is a thought provoking one. Barthelme keeps using black humors at the beginning of the story, listing a series of predictable deaths of plants and animals, which reads funny and a little bit sad. However, when the death of a Korean orphan Kim is mentioned, the humorous tone of the story suddenly transforms to a more serious one. Continuous accumulation of deaths, including deaths of human beings related to schoolmates seem overly cruel and odd, in a sense that these group of innocent happy children start pondering over philosophical questions whether the death is what adds meaning to our life. After being confirmed of the meaning of life, the children still yearn for love, and in return they witness Helen embracing the narrator-- the pure display of love instead of erotic expression. With the advent of new gerbil, the children is cheered up again and ready to welcome new presence of life despite former failure in raising different kinds of animals. Deaths do not all happen in the school, but also outside of the school, when some schoolmates lose their parents or grandparents. Or rather, not just students, people who have already stepped out onto the society are still learning how to accept deaths of a family member or loss of a favorite pet. School is everywhere, whether you graduate or not, deaths are facing you. As the narrator says, life instead of death is what gives meaning to life, which children and adults eventually learn as they live.
ReplyDeletehttp://xuqiqi4081.blogspot.com/2015/09/response-to-school.html
ReplyDeleteI think The School is a piece of good literature. The language Barthelme uses throughout the story is simple as someone is talking to me. There are a great number of oral phrases like “you know,” “well,” which do not affect the value of the thesis but make the short story more intriguing. At the beginning, Barthelme’s tone in the story sounds mocking and absurd, that the death of the orange trees, snakes, herbs, tropical fish, and Edgar is due to “bad luck,” but when he refers to the death of Kim, Mathew, Tony, Billy’s father, and many of the students’ parents and grandparents, his tone is quite serious. The comparison of Barthelme’s tones indicates his view of death, that “death is not that which gives meaning to life but life is.” Although the animals the students raise and the plants they cultivate all die in the end, the happiness the students and the animals and the plants experience together forever stays, so the existence of the people they love becomes the everlasting memory in their hearts, which gives them the meaning of their lives.
ReplyDeleteI pretty like the subtle description of the experience of raising the puppy – Edgar, because the students’ happiness of having that puppy is very vivid and powerful. The puppy is found under a truck and everybody soon accepts it as a very good friend before asking the permission from the teacher. Because of the puppy, the entire class becomes energetic and lively. Although in the end Edgar dies, and tragedies are still happening, the life still gives the students chance to love life and live happily, like in the ending, the new gerbil comes. The joy is temporary but profound.
I think the story “The School” is a good piece of literature. When I first read this story, I find it quite absurd. The title of the story is “The School,” but the content is almost about death. As I continue reading, I gradually found the highlights of the story.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the author shapes a good character which is an important characteristic of a piece of good literature. Edgar is a teacher in the school, but his tone of voice is not qualified with his status. His words like “seem, maybe, I don’t know” make him more like a child towards death—evasive and immature. Besides, when a puppy was given the name “Edgar,” he did not feel angry but enjoyed it. It makes me have more interests in this person.
Second, this story successfully arouses my emotion. At first, I was confused why plants and animals died. Then I began to worry, what will happen next. When children’s parents die, my nerve was in high tension like a tense string. All of these things forms a big puzzle in my mind. When I reached the end, I was astonished by children’s behavior of asking Edgar make love with Helen in the classroom. This is where the conflict appears and the climax begins. To be honest, I was eager to know what will happen next. What was more surprising is that a gerbil walked in after Edgar and Helen kissed. A picture formed in my mind that a cute gerbil peeped into the classroom, and then the children cheered up widely.
Good characters, conflict and the ability to arouse sympathy are what I think the characteristics of a good literature. As this story is qualified with these characteristics, I think it is a good literature.
This short story is absolutely a good literature. I think good literature is worth of repeated reading. Like The School, though it is short, I can find something new every time I read it. To examine it, there are two aspects: techniques and the theme.
ReplyDeleteWhen I refer to techniques, I mean the author’s ability to use language efficiently. To identify a good literature, its language must look “literary”. For example, my class notes cannot be literature although I use language. It is very important how the author tells us a good story. Barthelme is mean to use words; there is no cliché in this story, and every sentence has its function to push forward the plots. Additionally, he uses words logically. At first, I think the story makes no sense, but in fact, there is a hidden line on which death keeps closer to people. Thus, I think Barthelme is a master of using language.
Despite the techniques, I would like to say that the soul of a good literature is the theme. About this story, it actually concerns a serious issue-death. In my opinion, good literature must care about human beings so that the themes are always some perpetual topics such as love, truth, death, freedom, etc.. No matter people lived thousands years ago or people live today, no matter where they are, the same thing is that people never stop thinking about these issues. Meanwhile, these topics have been interpreted in various ways, they worth deep thinking, and that is why they should be valued. Barthelme chose to talk about death, which is discussed by countless people. The author has his own understanding about life and death, “is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said no, life is that which gives meaning to life” (Barthelme). These sentences lead us to think because we care the meaning of death.