I’ll expand this post. I’m thinking of how to convert this into a set of Keynote presentation complete with short videos.

The Watchmen is where it all started; it’s the hulking gorilla doppelgänger to Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Both graphic novels took the form into places where adult themes and complexity were welcome. Still, where Maus was personal and rooted in memoir, The Watchmen is a superhero comic in which all of the conventions of the genre have bent, twisted, and spindled to the point of unrecognizability. Nominally, the main story follows the search for a killer of “masked avengers.” Someone, somehow has broken into the Comedian’s (a sort of anti-hero hero who enjoys death, destruction, and furthering US Department of Defense war aims) apartment and thrown him out the window. As other attempts on costumed heroes continue, Rorshach–a bitterly misanthropic vigilante with an ever shifting mask–attempts to find who is behind the killings and why.

The story careens down an ever shifting landscape of betrayal and human weakness. Events of our own time are altered to react to a what-if world of masked, betighted superheroes who fight crime. The US wins the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon escapes Watergate and rewrites the Constitution to re-elect himself several times. Interestingly, only one of the heroes actually has a superpower. Dr. Manhattan has the ability to bend matter to his will after being obliterated by an atomic test and gradually figuring out how to recreate himself into a semblance of his original form. Unfortunately for Dr. Manhattan, with great power has come overwhelming ennui and disinterest in humanity.

Alan Moore is a clever, complex writer who delights in paranoia and a sense of impending collapse. He mixes perspective, time, genre, and theme nimbly and finds ever more ingenious ways to combine storylines. Sections of the main story are layered with selections from memoir excerpts, magazine articles, pirate comics, academic journals, police reports, and magazine interview profiles. The sense that the magazine occupies an entire alternate universe is painstakingly constructed throughout.

However, just as in Huck Finn, students might have a hard time recognizing that the thoughts of the characters don’t necessarily represent the ideas of the writer. For instance, Rorschach has the bulk of the voice overs and he is constantly obsessing over the moral decay of society–to the point that he comes off as racist, sexist, and any other ist you might think of. There is even a copy of the right wing periodical The New Frontiersman which gives a taste of the xenophobic ramblings he obsesses over (”I’ve had it up to hear with those coked-out commie cowards…”).Teachers would need to directly remind students that the opinions of the characters might not be opinions the writer is advocating. Still, this technique neatly subverts traditional comic conventions as none of the heroes occupy the moral high ground, but neither do they lack at least some measure of sympathy.

Art Review

The art has a classic comic book style with 3-panel formats predominating. Gibbons mixes perspectives and angles well in telling the story, but there isn’t the innovative, impressionistic style that came later in graphic novels such as The Killing Joke or The Dark Knight. For students, the style’s clarity and simplicity helps tell the story and create a sense of paranoia without adding extra difficulties in comprehension.

Recommendation

Highly Recommended with Reservations. This is clearly a book for high schoolers and perhaps upperclassmen as well. Undoubtedly, The Watchmen is a classic of the form and excellent in its sophisticated exploration of power, authority, history, and the human condition. However, it’s also filled with graphic violence, sexual themes, controversial politics, homosexuality, and unreliable narrators. A teacher would need to be careful to explain the use of irony and to allow students to question Moore’s perspective on American history and politics. Parents should probably be asked to sign off on using it in a classroom setting.

Influencer feels like an updated How to Win Friends and Influence People and is clearly attempting to use the very techniques it espouses in the copy of the book itself. This is a helpful look at the advantages and disadvantages of the techniques it suggests. The prose is breathless. Take a look at the title. There is much talk of Influence Mavens (or Poobahs or Gurus or Wizards) who vaguely control vast swaths of territory or who count thousands of souls under their control.  Usually, they’re stopping AIDS or meteors from crashing into Earth.  It’s when you get to the fine print you realize the suggestions break down into: 1) Show that what you want people to do is both possible and worth it 2) Look closely to see what one small change will have a big effect.  And…that’s pretty much it. It is from a set of writers who focus on business issues.

Nudge is both more humble and more useful. It comes from two academics (they blog here).  They espouse something they call libertarian paternalism–governments and other institutions using persuasion techniques to help people do things they want to do anyway.  For instance in a cafeteria, putting salads and healthy food at eye level and the desserts in a corner under a heavy blanket. This is a much more believable set of ideas but they tend to congregate in the How to convince people to save more for their retirement end of the spectrum rather than How to convince people to learn better. Still, it has a much more enjoyable prose style with just the right level of humor and irony to leaven the ideas.

What can we take from all of this? Teachers are always going to be persuaders; our power to use institutional persuasive tools (grades) is never strong enough to achieve our goals (student learning). We have to learn how to leverage persuasion and influence to convince students that hard work is worth it. Not only that writing that paper will give us an A that will get us into Harvard, but that learning itself is a pleasure and a practice that has dividends in all aspects of our lives.

Of course, it’s easier to convince someone of something if it’s actually true.  Influence reminds me that students need to be shown that it is entirely possible to do what I’m asking them to do and that the result of doing it is better than not doing it.  But that needs to be true to work. Nudge reminds me that I need to set up a classroom where the choices they face make it easier to do what will be helpful in learning rather that what will be more fun.

Both books are good choices for a class in rhetoric to analyze and explore.  Otjhers might be:

• Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
• Influence by Robert Cialdini
• 150 Ways to Influence Intrinsic Motivation in Children by James Raffini

Junot Diaz is a hero to me. Not that he is much like me. He is a writer who was born in the Domenican Republic and then moved to New Jersey. Somehow he created a writer’s voice which finds a way of combining a hip hop machismo with a literary fiction Jonathan Frantzen-y insight gently marinated in a sci-fi vinaigrette.

His novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao followed his short story series by 11 years. So, I figured he has writer’s block; he has Ralph Ellison disease. Actually, no. Watch the video above and you realize Dude doesn’t really like to write that much. He says he writes for a few hours in the morning and then basically reads all day. This is basically my idea of heaven. When school starts up again, that will disappear, but summers for me are these idylls of reading in which I’ve now introduced two twin serpents of discord: writing on this blog and for my little novel (page 30, sigh).

But Junot did it. It took 11 years. He also had gigs at MIT and such but he did it. And here’s the other trick. He has high standards. He mentions that he would write a page and the other pages would tell that page, “Hey youc an’t hang with us.” But see, I can write something bad and then say, “It’s ok. Be bad. I don’t mind. I still love you.” Of course, I won’t win a Pulitzer, but it does give me hope to keep writing.

The other gem from the interview? Diaz’s next book is about werewolves (or vampires or something supernatural)? You can see the 1st few paragraphs here. Now, if he could just add Dr. Horrible into it, perfectness would result.

When I was a kid, when we never ever loitered on the lawns elderly, cheap verbal irony (aka sarcasm) was one of the best only ways to show superiority over everyone. It was so easy to use! Chuh! I’d love to take out the garbage. It’d be, like, the highlight of my life Mom! This made me fun to be around. Wait! Did he mean what he said…or was he being ironic!

As I grew older and consequently more vulnerable to what other people thought of me, I could use irony to shield myself from ridicule while discussing cultural products that I might possibly find non idiotic. The trick was to discuss my interests in a world weary tone and to pitch my voice at just the right timber wherein it would be impossible to know when I said, I think Bon Jovi is one of the most underrated geniuses of the fauxmetal era. (Insert irony mark) whether I was serious…or ironic!

Now that I’m a teacher, I use irony in class all the time but mostly as a tool of attention. Believe me when I say, this sentence diagramming exercise will change your live and blow your mind. Honestly. Of course, it’s all still pretty much cheap irony. It mostly involves larger vocabulary words attached to my preteen sarcasm. Bad teacher!

But I love teaching irony! Take Alanis Morissette’s Ironic. A cottage Internet industry has sprung up to dissect the song (see here, here, here). Most takes suggest that Morissette was sleeping during that class in LA10 (It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife), but a highly influential conunterintuitive contingent has defended her, suggesting either that a) the song is ironic because it is called Ironic and yet has little irony in it or b) it is an example of cosmic irony. Still, all is forgiven because of the awesome My Humps cover.

I’ve always been a B man myself even if Alanis disagrees with me. The song seems to suggest that all of these bad things are happening to her because the Gods or the Fates have it in for her. Kind of the flip side of the common “Everything happens for a reason” (in this case, because the Gods hate my guts).

However, definitions of irony are almost universally useless. See Bartleby’s definition:

1a. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. b. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning. c. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See synonyms at wit¹. 2a. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: “Hyde noted the irony of Ireland’s copying the nation she most hated” (Richard Kain). b. An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity.

A) Is crazy. If I say “That shirt is black” when it’s white, it ain’t ironic. B) Is crazier. What’s the difference between apparent and intended meaning? C) Is better but misses other uses of irony, including philosophical or eschatological. 2) gets into situational irony (the Firehouse that’s on fire, Richard Simmons is fat, etc.). None of them get at the traditional Greek idea that the Gods like to build up people only to destroy them later (Oedipus, Croesus).

While teaching irony in writing though, I’ve always wanted to impart to my students the power of a writer who can play with the intention behind his or her words. We expect people to be more or less earnest when writing to us or to be clearly ironic (i.e. Swift’s A Modest Proposal). But one of the innovations of modern writing is the ability to shield or make ambiguous the author’s intentions in writing a piece. This is especially effective in personal narratives or memoirs (see Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius or the short stories of David Sedaris). I like to have students take a sentence in their essays and reshape it to either hyperbole or understatement. Or to say the opposite of what they mean to say.

Irony can be the ultimate expression of self-satisfied condescension or it can be an intricate expression of humility and self-criticism. It’s a testament to the power of language to communicate and conceal…all at the same time.

Image Credit: Abbyladybug CreativeCommons license

Image Credit: Flickr Playstation by Stebbi

I’ve had student blogs for a few years now and in our schedule we have a short Monday class (40 minutes) that I’ve used for SSR and quick updates on the week’s plan for learning. Next year, I want to expand blogging to go beyond class assignments and have them choose topics and ideas they are personally interested in and blog on those. That sounds easy but looking around the ‘Net it’s clear that it isn’t. Here are some of the sets of knowledge, skills, and habits of mind students will need to have for the whole project to work.

Of course, some of this becomes ingrained as bloggers blog. They learn these things by doing, but a little front loading should decrease the learning curve steepness.

Terminology

• Links (in a typical class less than 30% of my students already know how to create a link)
• Heading
• Posts
• Attribution
• Comments
• Spam
• Backchannel
• Blogroll
• Flaming, lurking, trolling

Skills

How to write for a blog. Slate magazine published a useful explanation about how style affects readership. Also, it’s important to explain the write then link rule otherwise students get stuck in searching for links rather than putting their ideas in a reasonable order.

How to find content to play with. It’s not always easy to find someone who is writing about their deep obsession with dragon orchids. RSS feeds are exotic for students. Start with Alltop or iGoogle to get the ball rolling and then move them to Google Reader or something similar. When it comes to searching through blogs, I may be idiosyncratic in finding Google’s Blog search to be more useful than Technorati. Of course, a del.icio.us search could work as could using popurls for a general spur for creativity and interest.

How to comment well. This is less technical. Students need to be convinced that commenting on other people’s blogs is a good deed. It demonstrates gratefulness for the work they’ve put out and it creates a potential for a conversation. Also, remember to comment back to those who comment to you. They also should learn how to agree constructively and disagree without contempt or condescension. A quick scan of comments even after NYT articles will show that even adults fall down on this.

How to follow copywrite laws. Students need to know what Creative Commons is and how to give credit for images they use. They need to be at least aware of the 4 factor rule and what is respectful of the intellectual property of others. See this FAQ from the EFF about student blogging rights.

Habits of Mind

Some of the previous bits included some habits of mind, but these are meant to be inculcated as well.

Blogging is about creating a community of constructive conversation: It’s easy to get caught up in ego battles and bush wars of various kinds (especially if someone on the Internet is wrong!), but attention should be paid to establishing a generosity of spirit that welcomes debate, encourages others, and participates in the discussion of ideas with creativity and civility.

Blogging is about becoming a lifelong learner: At it’s best blogging gives people a voice but also a collection of ears. Starting a blog or participating in a blogging community is a way of transcending distance, ennui, and inertia to create something important. We learn what we couldn’t have learned before; we teach to people who would never have met us otherwise.

Blogging is fun. It’s difficult to get students to forget that they are being graded. A superior teacher would be so zen that she could make students forget that the whole blog thing was her idea in the first place. In a reasonable world, students would find themselves drawn to blog to such a degree that it would continue even after the class is over.

This is where I’m at with this now. As time goes on, I may add a bit and refine it. Any other must-include parts of the blogging curriculum?

Resources:

Defining tools for a new learning space: Writing and Reading class blogs by Sarah Hurlburt

Image Credit: Flickr. Tap, Tap, Tap! by Weird Irish Sister

Of course, the world does not need another blog. Still, I’ve set this place up to at least record some of my thought on a few things:

• Teaching English in the 21st Century
• Using technology in the classroom
• The ways in which technology affect how we write and how we learn to write
• The novel I’m writing (of course I am)
• What I’m reading and how that affects me

I’m not so good with people so only time will tell if this actually involves other people in a conversation. Mebbe so. Mebbe not.