Getting so Meta That it Hurts

How To Not Write Comics Criticism: http://www.dylanmeconis.com/how-not-to-write-comics-criticism/

Dylan Meconis’ article How Not to Write Comics Criticism is a plea to reviewers to treat comic books with the same respect they would give novels or movies. To do so effectively, he takes an angle that simultaneously welcomes the uneducated and rags on the willfully disdainful; helping the clueless along the road while pointing out everything that they should not become on their journey.

Probably his most striking tactic, Meconis uses imagery and figurative language in one fell swoop, scattering images around his article that bring to mind common and every day sayings. Nothing could be more fitting, considering the fact that his article is a discussion on comics themselves. Often the drawings are captionless, but frequently they draw obvious parallels between what he was just discussing and what is being illustrated. For instance, this image:

 follows up a discussion on people who resent having to read and review comics, and dislike them off the bat simply because of the media they represent. The picture, without saying anything directly, immediately points the reader’s mind towards the saying ‘to stick one’s head in the sand’ Another example of a visual metaphor he uses is this:

  when talking about an artist’s seeming choice to make a comic rather than a more traditional form of art. Again, nothing is directly stated, but the obvious connotation is the phrase ‘like a duck to water.’

His logical leaps aren’t limited to images though. Often, he will take a statement to its logical extreme solely to point out how ridiculous it really is. Under list item 3, explaining why movie successes aren’t related to comic popularity, he asks if a reviewer would start with “’With the box-office success of Twilight, novels have proven their appeal to a wide audience’?” The title for number seven is a jump in itself that doesn’t make sense until you read what follows, saying that “This muffin is so good that it’s actually a bagel” to poke fun at those who are terrified of calling a comic ‘good’ and must elevate it to some type of hybridized novel status.

Regardless of the technique he uses, he is constantly comparing poor reviewers and close-minded people as being unprofessional and illogical in the techniques they use. Without ever having to overtly say ‘you are being an idiot for doing this,’ Meconis manages to convey it. He never says ‘people who do this are stupid,’ he says ‘doing this is stupid, and this is why.’ It is an excellent tactic, when the purpose of his article is considered, because it doesn’t directly make an attack on anyone for doing what they do. Instead, it attacks what has been done, which is something that hopefully, no one will take as a personal criticism. Even with his informal tone and his use of witty comics, Meconis keeps his work at a professional level by refusing to directly attack anyone.

Meconis also addresses this fear of the word ‘comic’ very explicitly, and in doing so puts a great emphasis on diction and its importance. He takes an entire section to define ‘comic’ along with the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel (which he describes as barely relevant) but also takes a moment to ponder the denotations of some terms that cycle the comics world. Going all the way back to novel, which he mentions once connoted “’sordid fad that is corrupting our women and children’” as well as the fact that graphic can also mean violent and adult material. He has fun with ‘graphic memoir’ as well as a non fiction graphic novel, because “novel implies fiction” so a non fiction graphic novel ends up meaning “book length work of non fiction comics fiction.” While Meconis allows for the fact that there is no true set of terms, he expresses a wish “to hear ‘comics’ replace ‘graphic’ and thus hear about a ‘comics novel.’” In another section, he goes out of his way to define terms referring to the construction of comics themselves, like ‘word balloons,’ ‘panels,’ and ‘gutters.’

Also in that section (#6) he expresses the idea that reviewers should assume that readers are “capable of looking up terms they don’t recognize” having already explained terms that we, the readers, weren’t expected to know. While this may seem insulting, when put together, it really only serves to highlight his purpose- to educate comics reviewers and show them how to do things in a way that doesn’t insult the genre they’re reviewing.  Meconis starts out by inviting the uninitiated, teaches them the basics, and then, with his final visual metaphor,

 

he sends them on their way.

It Builds Character

1980. A recurring theme in literature is the classic war between a passion and responsibility. For instance, a personal cause, a love, a desire for revenge, a determination to redress a wrong, or some other emotion or drive may conflict with moral duty. Choose a literary work in which a character confronts the demands of a private passion that conflicts with his or her responsibilities. In a well-written essay show clearly the nature of the conflict, its effects upon the character, and its significance to the work.

            Living in sin is an outdated concept to those of us living in the present, but back in the days of corsets and feathered bonnets, the idea of living as man and wife without being actually married was shocking to say the least. To a young girl raised from birth to be devoted to the Christian faith and doctrine, the very idea would be synonymous with degradation and an assurance of hell in the afterlife. To a young girl hearing this proposal from a broken man who needs her, and the one man she’s ever been close to, the idea is far more tempting. This very scenario, the choice to throw her principles away or cling to them and suffer, is presented to Jane Eyre on the very day she was meant to be married to the same man, and the choice she makes defines her character and sets the moral tone of the novel that shares her name.

            Jane was taught at Lowood, a charitable school for orphans comparable in its rules to a nunnery, from the age of ten to sixteen. In her first year there, she met everyone who would come to shape her mind from then on, most notably a girl called Helen Burns. From Helen, she learned much of Christian morality that escaped her childish mind. Doubtless, more of her religious morals sprung from Helen than from the mandatory church service the girls attended and the scrimping man who ran the institution strictly on the principle of debasement. Helen, a soft, gentle, forgiving girl, is far more likely to capture the affection of a ten year old girl than a freezing cold church and a freezing cold man. When Helen dies, she achieves a near sainthood to Jane, further cementing her importance to Jane’s moral fiber.

            Also at Lowood, Jane meets Maria Temple, who takes on a motherly role in her life. Ms. Temple is serene, compared to the moon on her introduction, and Jane uses her as a role model in all she does. As long as Ms. Temple is at Lowood, Jane is content to be there also, through her six years of training and two of teaching. Then, however, Ms. Temple is married (notably to a minister, whom Jane describes as being ‘the only man worthy of such a woman’) and leaves the school, leaving Jane alone. Without a calming influence, Jane becomes restless and eager to explore the world, and her true character shines through. Jane is still young, and still eager to taste all that the world has to offer her. She is daring, not the docile pale thing she appears to be. With Ms. Temple gone from Lowood, it is not long before Jane follows her, getting a post as a governess and making her way into the rest of her life alone.

            With her new job, Jane meets new characters, and the most important person to come into her life- Mr. Rochester, master of Thornfield, and a harsh, sardonic sort of man. He represents more than he seems, though, because Mr. Rochester has traveled. He’s seen all of Europe: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and he’s more than willing to share and discuss this knowledge with Jane. Through Rochester, she finds a freedom she had never had before. She grows closer to her actual self then, inquisitive and sharp. Not only that, but she becomes Rochester’s confidante and moral center as he comes to depend on her more and more. Despite her better interests, she falls in love with him, but the way she handles her affection is very telling. At the ‘legal bar’ of her brain, she allows her emotions to rage and pine, but then she carefully allots herself a ‘punishment’ to ground herself in reality. Her inner will is stronger than her inner passion, and it is a strong hint at what is to come.

            To Rochester’s earnest and true proposal, Jane gives a hesitant yes, sure that he is tricking her in some way. Once she is assured otherwise, their honeymoon phase is radiantly happy, but on her wedding day it is discovered that Rochester has a living wife, and for Jane to marry him would be sinful and unlawful, to the custom at the time as well as to Jane’s own principles. After the day has unfolded, and Jane has suffered her grief alone, Rochester makes her his offer. He gives his story of grief and wrong, and pleads Jane to take pity on him, and live with him. This presents Jane with a conflict of interests. Does her responsibility to herself and her moral fiber outweigh her desire to comfort and soothe the man she loves? Is her real responsibility not towards Rochester, rather than herself?

            Jane would not be Jane, however, if she bent ‘the laws given by God and sanctioned by Man’ to her own desires. The choice breaks her, and she compares it to ripping her own hearstrings, but she chooses to hurt not only herself but the man she loves in order to keep herself true to the teachings that had been pressed upon her over her entire life. The decision to leave doesn’t stop at hurting her physically. It sets her homeless once more, and almost kills her. Better a death as a righteous woman than a ruined one, however. She makes her peace with God on death’s door, and she is rescued. The people she meets and the freedom she earns on her own merit convince Jane that her choice was the correct one. Instead of being drunk on love but completely degraded, she becomes a schoolteacher, helping country girls to better themselves and making her own way in the world free of outside influence. Because of the choice she made- to leave Rochester and keep true to herself- she finds her own family and her own fortune. Instead of being Rochester’s woman, she is her own woman, so when she returns to him, she comes as an equal rather than a dependent.

            Jane’s happiness at the end of the work is the true indicator of the moral nature of Jane Eyre. It carries the idea that those who make the right choices will always be rewarded, as well as throwing a strong bone towards feminism. Had Jane chosen the path that Rochester wanted, she would have become subservient. Instead, she made her own way with her own life and job, and came back an independent woman and an equal contributor in her own marriage. Not only did she maintain her responsibility to herself as a human being, she also kept her own values, and was rewarded for it. Jane’s choices are indicative of her will as a character, and her choice to leave Rochester turns the entire book into an argument about willpower, morality, and marriage in an era where those concepts were seemingly set in stone.  

100% Reason to Remember Whatever it Was we Did this Week

It is truly astonishing to consider how much I've done in this class, considering it's only the first week of school. Of course, to really do that, one would have to count the mass of summer homework I managed to complete during crunch time, but regardless of the exact date that I started absorbing course material, I've certainly sucked in a lot.

Considering this is my fourth blog entry, as opposed to about my third time having a sustained conversation in class, I feel that the best place to start is fittingly the first day of school, when Ms. Holmes said something along the lines of "I've come to know you as writers, and as people, but I cannot attach names to faces just yet." It really got me thinking that our lit teachers, whether we like it or not, probably know the most about us as people. There's really no way to avoid giving away your personality when you write- it's in every word and every space that you put on a page. That is especially apparent in this class, with this summer homework, where we were seen only online. All we had to offer in terms of personality were blog posts and forum comments. It kind of makes me wish I'd thought through what I posed a bit more, to be honest. Heh.

On the topic of things hiding in writing, I feel it is only fair to mention how frequently the Foster presentation blew my mind. While reading the book, Foster made pretty reasonable parallels to classic works, things in the public eye that had been there for a while (spoiling the ends of many in the process, I add to my dismay). It was a whole 'nother kettle of fish for me to try and apply it to the things I love and experience without: a) leaning too heavily on one particular show or movie, b) not using examples that Foster had already given, and c) falling back on Jane Eyre or Shakespeare or other old things that I read and love but aren't considered 'pop culture.' Much time was spent staring hopelessly at my bookshelf. Certainly my most memorable victory was working on the chapter involving politics. Never in my life had I ever tried to put a political angle on anything I'd ever read, ever, but as luck might have it, I was doing AP Gov homework concurrently. Something put the Turner Thesis in my head, and suddenly I had a massive realization that Star Trek was continuing to encourage rugged individualism in the modern age. Even the phrase "Space: the final frontier" had never hit that particular switch in my head, and I definitely never would have made the connection without Foster pointing out that political writing can be nonspecific. It isn't necessarily 'vote democrat' so much as it is 'dictatorships fail and communism is bad' (Animal Farm) or 'if you overextend power it is inherently unstable' (Yertle the Turtle). It legitimately blew my mind.

The forums were not my strongest suit, but they were certainly an interesting exercise in my inability to pick up on color symbolism. Or any other kind of symbolism. Every time I think my analytical ability has improved, I'm met with a massive wall of other things I failed to notice, or things that I haven't yet been taught about. My biggest challenge was not so much finding things to talk about as it was finding a way to express my idea without simply parroting my peers. I recall looking in the forum for example posts, and seeing one that said almost verbatim what I meant, and a friend of mine looking at mine later on and having the exact same experience. Complete agreement makes commenting difficult as well- it strikes me that true analysis doesn't always question, per se, more that it builds off of what it has been given, and takes it in a new direction, or further along the path it was already travelling. It also strikes me that with the ability to pick out things in poems that usually escape me will come the ability to pick things out of people's statements to examine and dissect.

As I seem to be going from my strengths to my weaknesses, I feel 'The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing' fits the next to last slot perfectly. While I found the book immensely frustrating at times, when Harvey would make edits 'due to context' without providing the context for us, it had several useful tips and tools that I know I should make use of. His book brought up many of my bad little writing habits. However, his writing instructions seemed to me to be for a very specific type of writing. Such strict commands always make me want to set an author down with a mug of their beverage of choice and an e e cummings collection to wean them from their drug of choice. However, there is a place for everything, and Harvey's writing tips are tight as a battleship. Whether they were applicable to the Sedaris essay we had to apply them to was another story, but I couldn't help trying to apply Harvey's tips to his own book. Editing a book on grammar must be a royal pain, because any mistake is going to be that much more glaring in the face of the small folio you just published on fixing people's grammar. I know for a fact it made me self conscious as I was writing about it- which may in fact have been Harvey's point. Even if you don't absorb everything on the first read through, you begin questioning yourself. "Is this as succinct as it could be?" you ask, staring at a run on sentence, "am I using the passive voice?" Questioning my own ability is doubtless the first step to improving it.

And finally, the mother of all depressing things, the terms test. For someone who 'started making flashcards in the last week of August' I feel I did fairly well. Not good, certainly, but not enough to warrant dismay. It all comes down to practice, which is why it kind of chafes me that I can't see the mistakes I've made. I understand it in this context- same exact test, wouldn't want to give out the answers, but the way I learn best is by constant trial and error. Certainly, there are a few practice sections online, but not enough to provide practice that doesn't quickly become memorization. If I know myself at all, though, I'll start asking myself 'is this a caesura? what is this supposed to symbolize?' when I'm reading something for pleasure, and I'll know that the claws of analysis have dug into my brain.

If I had to give this first week of school a purpose, it's purpose would be to tell me 'you are not as good at all of this as you thought you were, now sit down and think about it. Hard.' It's been a week of basic run downs that will take time to drill their way into my head. Each class comes with its own set of rhetoric, its own rules on essays, and its own testing quirks and thought processes that are most helpful. All of the AP Lit rules were just tossed into my arms- now it's my job to sort them out. We've had a run down of the basics on essay writing in terms of grammar, essay writing in terms of rhetoric, essay writing in terms of argumentative structure, and what parts to pick out to prove your point when you write an essay. It's certainly enough to think about for now.

Me(I) (will) Talk (speak) Pretty (clearly) One Day

            The first thing to consider when looking at the effectiveness of David Sedaris’ writing is whether the purpose of his work is the same purpose held by academic essays. That isn’t to say that academic essays can’t be entertaining and witty, but essays also exist as conduits of information to an audience of scholars. Although Sedaris’ “Me Talk Pretty One Day” takes the format of an essay, it doesn’t attempt to educate or sway the reader; it is a story. It can be assumed, then, that any conscious obedience, convenient coincidence, or discrepancy with Michael Harvey’s The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing serve to fuel Sedaris’ narrative.

            Sedaris is a comedic writer, and considering that Harvey relates good sentence timing to good comedy, calling the turn from familiar material to the surprising new facts the “punch line technique” (Harvey 28), it is unsurprising that this very technique shows up in “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” However, instead of using it to pull in a reader, Sedaris uses it to set up an actual punch line as he recalls his mother listing the things she loves: “…a good steak cooked rare. I love my cat, and I love… Tums” (Sedaris 12). Another technique that Harvey recommends and Sedaris utilizes is the idea that “lists feel balanced and complete when they contain three items” (Harvey 53). In his descriptions of the pros of his student pass “…a discounted entry fee at movie theaters, puppet shows, and Festyland…” (Sedaris 11), and the things he’s afraid to do after his teacher’s harassment “Stopping for a coffee, asking directions, depositing money in my bank account” (Sedaris 14), he makes not only his lists but the world of his tale feel more fleshed out and real.

The purpose of Sedaris’ work also allows him to practice with ease some of the things that Harvey assumes are the most difficult for academic writers to swallow. He uses leading questions such as “How often is one asked what he loves in the world? More to the point, how often is one asked, and then publicly ridiculed for his answer?” (Sedaris 12) without having to worry about being “too lively for formal academic writing” (Harvey 44), because his writing is not academic. Since his narrative is driven by the actions of living, breathing characters, he has no trouble using the active over the passive voice as Harvey suggests on page 16, or keeping the actions in line with the character that is performing them (Harvey 23).

            However, Sedaris’ work does not always fall neatly within Harvey’s suggestion box. Most notably, he changes tense with an alarming frequency. First we see “I am returning” but then he “was issued a student ID” (Sedaris 11). He explains that “I’ve moved” but once he gets to his class “Vacations were recounted” (Sedaris 11). The tense shifts are jarring, a little disappointing, and totally out of sync with Harvey’s insistence on clear and consistent writing. The realization slowly hits, though, that Sedaris is narrating the essay as if he were speaking straight on with the reader. Each tense shift is an aside to the person he is telling the story to, and it draws attention by creating a deeper bond between the reader and the invisible narrator. He also uses techniques that Harvey, writing with academic instruction in mind, would never think to suggest. Sedaris’ comparisons are clever and pithy, as he displays one girl with “front teeth the size of tombstones” (Sedaris 12) and their teacher moving in to pick on a student, saying “She crouched low for her attack…” (Sedaris 12). This kind of color is integral to keeping Sedaris’ essay engaging and readable, while it would be dangerously inaccurate in an academic climate. Even the title of his essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day” comes from the dialogue between hopeless French students as they reassure each other, in abysmal syntax that would have Harvey whipping out a red pen with a disappointed shake of his head, that “People start love you soon” or “Much work and someday you talk pretty” (Sedaris 14). This type of transgression is entirely forgivable in dialogue, because dialogue establishes characters- characters that an academic essay would not have.

             Judging Sedaris’ work by Harvey’s standards is only fair if one considers that the two were writing with different purposes in mind. It is certainly true that Sedaris tends to add random details, mess with his tenses, and exaggerate until he’s blue in the face, but all of that is fair game when the writing in question is intended to make people laugh, and viewed from a literary point of view as opposed to an academic one. Even with that allowance, Sedaris does make highly effective use of some of Harvey’s tips and tricks, proving that both of them have points worth listening to when considering the effectiveness of any given text. Just don’t ask Sedaris to go over your lab report.