More Shelley Jackson

4) Is Jackson in favor of hypertexts because it is easier to persuade a reader by linking the reader with other texts?

This is one of the questions from Chelsea's blog and also the one that I chose to write about. I think that the Jackson in this piece is truly against hypertest. For me, this was a terrible thing to read because it kept getting off track, and not off track in a good way where there is a side story, but the story itself just got lost in nothing. At points in this article I went back to the beginning of the paragraph that I was reading, just so I could get some sort of understanding as to what I was reading. Every paragraph that she had for the most part started out fine, but as it went further n, I believe that Shelley got lost herself. It only seemed that she started a new paragraph once she had completely gotten of topic and almost as though she was lost in the woods, would jump onto another path, get lost again and find another path. My mind could not handle this. I hate it when writers get off track of their original idea, but it does not bother me as much when authors have side stories to get lost in, not just random metaphors as we see that Shelley has done here.

As I was reading this last night I began to wonder that perhaps Shelley had written this so terribly for a reason. Maybe she wrote this as the epitome of what a hypertext would be like, just as a way that she could completely denounce it. This was the only reason that I was able to come up with for this article being so bad and uncomprehensible. I am curious about the effect that the linear version had on readers, but I would not want to read it to find out myself.

Questions for Shelley Jackson

1. Was that really your intention as I pointed out, to write about a hypertext in a hypertext?

2. Would you have written this in linear text?

3. If you had, do you think that it would have the same effect on people while they were reading it?

4. Why did you chose to use so many metaphors in your article?

5. Do you think that people are able to comprehend better if there are metaphors?

6. Why do all of your paragraphs open up with a negative statement?

Why??

After reading Shelley Jackson's piece entitled "Stitch Bitch" I did not want to read another thing at all. I found this to be extremely confusing and lacking a certain point. It did however have a general concept of "hypertext". This article was for me was a terrible read. Her entire writing was drowned out with way too many metaphors. It began to make me wonder what I was actually reading about at a certain point because she lost me in all of the unnecessary context.

After I had gotten about half way done reading this piece, I for some reason remembered what we read as one our first homework assignments of the year about George Orwell. It was his piece about the english language and indeed how bad it had gotten when in written form. His idea about trying to use big words and metaphors to try and spice up your writing, I feel, parallels mine. I think that Shelley Jackson did exactly this. She lost me in her writing because of how she tried to formulate her ideas. The only parts of her writing which seemed to make the most sense were the first two or maybe three of every new topic. After that, in most paragraphs, she went on and on and began to lose focus of what it was that she was writing about. She kept connecting her topic to different ideas, but they always connected back to her thoughts on hypertext. After reading "Banished Body", (one of the paragraphs in her article) I began to realize what it was that she was trying to do. As I was reading that entire paragraph/list it hit me that she was writing a hypertext while writing about hypertext. By this I mean that all of the things that she listed in "Banished Body" all could be found in her actual article.

"It is unstable. It changes from moment to moment, in its experience both of itself and of the world."

"It has no center, but a roving focus. (It "reads" itself.)"

-Shelley Jackson

It is these two which stood out to me the most, mainly because they are the most obvious in her writing. Granted after reading this list it changed my whole outlook on this article, but I still do not like it. This list merely made me recognize what it was that she was doing. This did help me somewhat while reading it, but I still think that her article was terribly overdone in metaphors, which in the end made me get lost and lose track of what I was in fact reading about.

So Billy Collins.....??

My top six questions:

1. Is there supposed to be any deep symbolism in the objects chosen?

2. Was there any past experience in our life that made you want to mock love poems?

3. Why was it those first two lines that you chose to write about?

4. What was the rest of that poem like?

5. What made you want to criticize someone's writing like that?

6. What magazine did you get the article from?

My favorite question:

2. Was there any past experience in your life that made you want to mock love poems?

My honest guess to this question is that there was not a past experience. I know this is probably not the response that you thought I would use, but I have my reasons for it. Perhaps instead of their being a single past experience in his life, there has been many. Thinking about this seems perfectly logical to me. Being the great poet that he is, Billy Collins has probably not only written countless poems, but he has also probably read a great deal too. Perhaps it was that after reading so many of these love poems that all have no meaning, with their pointless symbolism always thrown in, it was about time, in Billy Collins' mind, that someone should write the total opposite of a love poem. In this piece that Billy Collins wrote, he completely mocks everything that poetry stands for. He turns what could be a love poem into a complete and total bash of the first two lines of someone else's poem. It's unfortunate for the author of the poem that BIlly Collins took the first to lines from to be criticized. There he was probably thinking about how great his poem is, with being published in a magazine and all, and there goes Billy Collins tearing his work apart. Billy Collins turns those first two lines into a complete mess. He makes us all realize in a way that all of this pointless writing which seems to be so deep and have so much meaning in of its symbolism, is actually pointless and has nothing to do with love at all. Just in the symbolism that Collins chooses to use, everything in that poem is turned into a sham. I personally enjoyed Collins' poem because I do not like poetry where authors try to be deep and hide meaning in their words. I prefer my reading to be straight forward, no matter what type of material the reading may be. For me this was the perfect poem because it just made fun of love poems entirely.

Why does Lethem find obsessiveness about influence (aka "plagiarism") a disadvantage for artists?

This article by Lethem is based entirely off of plagiarism and all of its forms. He shows us examples of plagiarism in books, movies, and music. Throughout this article he continues to flood our minds with examples of what should be considered plagiarism, but is not. He opens this article with an example of a story from 1916 which was later reused in another novel forty years later. Another example used is Bob Dylan who uses many lines from movies and plays in his music. Lethems idea on plagiarism is that especially in literature, ideas are going to be reused. The part that he obsesses over in his article is how it is a disadvantage for artists. The idea of usin reoccuring themes is a complete and total block to young artists today. My personal idea on artists today is that they are going to plagiarize in some form or another because it is impossible to not. Themes are a recurring idea and when young artists are given examples whether it be in music, art or literature, they are going to remember some of the ideas and unwilling use them. Or some might chose to just copy ideas directly. Also in his article Lethem writes how even when some things are placed into collages, they simply jog a persons memory. The objects do not serve the full purpose of being put out there to be interpreted by others. Since these ideas have already been used so many countless times in the past, the people who are viewing them now can not have an original feel for the ideas. Granted it is possible that some students might interpret things in an uncommon way, but the basis of that idea was most likely already published or thought of by someone else before them.

One other reason why it might be that Lethem is obsessing in this article is that even though there is always some room for modification in art, today it will most likely be thought of as stealing and plagiarism. He uses examples of Walt Disney in his defense, mentioning how he could have been yelled at for stealing from Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr. or even the existence of a real mouse. Lethem's point here is that artists should be able to, as he writes, "be free to capture an image without compensating the source." In this he means that people should be free to create without having to worry about who thought of it first and if it was created already. The artist should not have to worry about giving credit for everything tht they do. The problem here is that today almost everything is protected by copyright laws and is so limited in its use by others.

"But the truth is that with artists pulling on one side and corporations pulling on the other, the loser is the collective public imagination from which we were nourished in the first place, and whose existence as the ultimate repository of our offerings makes the work worth doing in the first place."

In this Lethem is concluding obviously that the public is losing out in the long run of copyrighting and the prevetion of plagiarism. This is only because on the one side pulling, the artists want to copyright their work and keep that ownership so that no one else can copy it, while on the other side, mass media is trying to take ideas and publicize them into mainstream ones. With both of these sides fighting and being put at a standstill, the public is losing out because we are now presented with more and more bad advertisements and main stream garbage because artists are so particular about what they create so that the media has such a hard time getting to it. An example of how the media has gotten to literature and used it in a positive way is in the Hansel and Gretel commercial. AT&T was able to put a positive and commercialized idea on it. They were able to use art and transform, which it should always happen. Art is never meant to be unchanged, it is art because it is creativity, and as long as there is a human mind somewhere, there will always be room for more change and creativity. An example in which we see the collective public imagination suffering is in any Geico commercial. They have the worst advertisement campaign other than the gecko. The cavemen are a terrible idea I feel and I personally do not like the idea of the pile of money with the googlely eyes either. There are no good ideas for the commercials because they, the media, are not pulling at any forms of art (literature, movies, music, etc.) to get decent ideas. Without any art to get our ideas from, the minds of the public suffer and struggle for creativity.

Mark Twain

"I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English–it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them–then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice."

Letter to D. W. Bowser, 20 March 1880

This passage written by Mark Twain is an example of how I feel writing should be. By this I mean that I think writing should be short, sweet and to the point, there is no need for the "fluff and flowers". All this does is drown out your original ideas in words and phrases that are unnecessary and can just completed be avoided. When this happens your audience will begin to lose focus and forget what the original point of your writing actually was. When Mark Twain explains how to use adjective and writes "They weaken when they are close together" he is explaining how when you use too many adjectives together it begins to make your writing lose focus. Do not over describe what you are trying to convey, just make your case clear and do not go overboard with adjectives. This will make your writing less meaningful because you are focusing so much on over describing one detail of your writing when you should focus your time on your writing as a whole.

"The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say."
Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1902-1903

What Mark Twain is trying to convey here is that you should only begin writing once you have all of your thoughts clearly laid out. When sitting down to write, you do not want to just jump into your writing because you often do not have all of your thoughts organized correctly and will not write your best material. This is a perfect example of how I write, because I go through many drafts of what I want to write before I find the perfect wording for it. Often when I write an essay I will type about 5 different versions of the same sentence until I like what I have. Then eventually I will pick a final version of what I want to keep in my writing.