Weekly Response #15

Emily Schmitt

ENG 280

Natalie M. Phillips

12/7/12

Weekly Response #15

“And actually more than that: it had completely reverse the received historical explanation of these matters: because if the compromise between the foreign and the local is so ubiquitous, then those independent paths that are usually taken to be the rule of the rise of the novel (the Spanish, the French and especially the British case)—well, they’re not the rule at all, they’re the exception” (Moretti 60)

“Chapters in books are usually given the cardinal numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on. But I have decided to give my chapters prime numbers 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 and so on because I like prime numbers” (Haddon 11)

Q: what can we define as the foreign standard, and local materials? Is it possible that even though Christopher is English himself and working with the standard materials, that his ‘local materials’ create his variation of a standard novel?

A: My meaning is that even though at a glance, Christopher’s novel would appear to be the foreign standard, he still married his own ideas with what a novel is ‘supposed to be’. I picked this quote from The Curious incident to demonstrate that the construction of Christopher’s novel and its deviations from the norm were deliberate, and based on what Christopher liked and knew. Christopher’s self, influenced the way he wrote the book even though it could be argued that he is a part of the foreign standard. Isn’t it then possible that every writer, regardless of his or her background and resources, are adapting to a foreign standard. I guess what I’m saying is that this idea of a standard novel is perpetually foreign. There is no one who is native to the foreign standard, and everyone is always adding their own local understanding to what it should be.

Works Cited

Moretti, Franco. “Conjectures on World Liturature.” 2008. Print.

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. New York: Random House,

2003. Print.

Weekly Response #14

Emily Schmitt

ENG 280

Natalie M. Phillips

11/30/12

Weekly Response #14

“The very process of making sense of what we read appears to be grounded in out ability to invest the flimsy verbal constructions that we generously call ‘characters’ with a potential for a variety of thoughts, feelings, and desires, and then to look for the ‘cues’ that allow us to guess at their feelings and thus to predict their actions” (Zunshine 198)

“Siobhan said that I should write something I would want to read myself. Mostly I read books about science and maths. I do not like proper novels. In proper novels people say things like, ‘I am veined with iron, with silver and with streaks of common mud. I cannot contract in the firm first which those clench who do not depend on stimulus.’ What does this mean? I do not know” (Haddon 4).

Q: How does a writers understanding of character feelings and actions affect what the reader can infer about what they are reading. Further what does an inability to interpret these signals do to the reading experience?

A: In my extremely inarticulate question, what I wanted to bring up was that even though Christopher is different in that he can’t interpret the bodily cues and language that we can, we are all still limited by our own understandings of what is what. Perhaps the passage was meant to demonstrate to the reader how Christopher approaches the text, but we the reader are also left floundering at the short excerpt that Christopher has quoted to us. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that even if we do not suffer to the same degree, we can all understand what Christopher is referring to because all of our interpretations of body language and textual cues are learned and arbitrary. It is often that we can misunderstand those cues, like Christopher who just doesn’t know what they mean at all.

Works Cited

Zunshine, Lisa.  “Theory of Mind and Experimental Representations of Fictional

            Consciousness”. Cognitive Narratology. Print.

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. New York: Random House,

2003. Print. 

Weekly Response #12

Emily Schmitt

ENG 280

Natalie M. Phillips

11/16/12

Weekly Response #12

“To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility” (Benjamin 1237).

(Satarpi 95)

Q: In an era where nearly everything can be easily reproduced or reimaged, what is to stop even the most complex and sacred works of art to be subjected to reproduction, and is this accessibility a bad thing.

A: As far as the images in Persepolis go, it is very obvious that they were meant to me simple and easy to understand, and by and by, easy to reproduce. I had little to no trouble recreating the panel when we did the poster project, and I might not be too bad of an artist myself, but I don’t believe I have any exceptional skill that cannot be learned with lots of practice. Persepolis was made to be easily reproduced and understood. The article is dated however in that it’s clear that at the point this was published it was still largely accepted that art not created in an easily reproducible medium wouldn’t be reproduced. This is not the case any longer. Due to advancements in technology I would venture to say that there is virtually no image that cannot be captured and reproduced. The shear accessibility of things like copiers, and cameras, is revolutionizing the idea that there might not be anything that is completely un-reproducible at all.

Works Cited

Walter, Benjamin. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. “Literary

Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rikvin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 4. Print.

Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis. Pairs: L’Association, 2003. Print.

Weekly Response #11

Emily Schmitt

ENG 280

Natilie M. Phillips

11/9/12

Weekly Response #11

“Avoidance may take many forms, such as keeping away from reminders, ingesting drugs or alcoholin order to numb awareness of distressing emotional states, or utilizing dissociation to keep unpleaseant expirences from conscious awareness” (Kolk and McFarlane 494)

“Markus was proud of me. So Proud that he told the whole school that his girlfriend had contacts at the Café Camera. This is how, for love, I began my carear as a drug dealer. Hadn’t I followed my mother’s advice? To give the best of myself. I was no longer a simple junkie, but my schools official dealer” (Satrapi 222).

Q: Is Marjane’s involvement in drugs and dangerous behaiour a result of her tramautic past, or a resut of circumstance and peer pressure? How are we to make this distinction in the rest of the population as well?

A: You must excuse me if I am making a stretch here, the entire time I was reading this article all I could think about was its relevance to Batman. Getting that out of the way, I did come across the thought that while Marjane does do drugs and participate in dangerous activites, I do not think it is a direct result of the expirences she had as a child. I don’t think, that had her environment been different, and those circumstances been more favorable, that she would have had such a foryeah into drugs and alcohol. Her spiral towards these vices can be explained by the lack of social support and need to fit in with her new environment. So while she does do drugs, and she has had a tramatic past, I believe that they are mutually exclusive faucets of Marjane’s story.

Works Cited

Van der Kolk, Bessel A., Axlexander C. McFarlane. ‘ The Black Hole of Trauma. “Literary

Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rikvin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 4. Print.

Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persopolis. Pairs: L’Association, 2003. Print.

Weekly Response #10

Emily Schmitt

ENG 280

Natalie M. Phillips

11/2/12

Week #10

“As students move deeper into the mode of hyper attention, educators face a choice: change the students to fit the educational environment or change that environment to fit the students” (Hayles 195).

Q: As we shift from Hyper to deep attention can we expect more books like Persepolis? What kinds of change are we going to see in areas that are usually dominated by deep attention?

A: I believe that as society shifts from one form of attention to another we can anticipate that we’ll be seeing changes in how we construct and consume literature. Persepolis is a unique combination of comic book and memoir. The way it is constructed mean that the readers attention is moving rapidly across the page and their attention can be multiple places at once while the consume the story, (The picture and the accompanying text). As we move forward I whole-heartedly expect to see more changes like this. I think we will see things like shorter chapters, more action, quicker pacing, and more characters within standard novels. We have already fallen into a period where Hollywood produces a significant number of movies based on books. How long before writers are writing with the intention of having that turned into something visually representative. I’m interested to see how the ‘classic’ novel adapts to accommodate the changing audience.

Works Cited

Hayles, N. Katherine. “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive

 Modes.” Profession. (2007). 187-199. Print.

Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis. Pairs: L’Association, 2003. Print.