The Trimbur article seemed to be focusing heavily on organization and how a text stands in a larger context. He touches on anthologies and whether some texts should even be placed in and anthologies at the risk of changing their meaning. Personally, I always found texts in anthologies to be less cannonesque or less literature than the text on its own. Anthologies are sort of like a dictionary or greatest hits of English literature. Works grouped together almost become more referential and less meaningful to the reader.
It's also interesting to think of writing as types of signs. I immediately thought of the crowed bulletin board near the sub or a single stop sign with the word "war" graffitied underneath. Space, place, color, and other signs all factor in to how one relates to signs. I think this can easily be applied to various texts. There are definitely text that appear more visually boring than others, so I tend to pay attention less. Stream of conciousness writing with short paragraphs appeal to me. Long-winded paragraphs where the point is hidden deep behind metaphors appeal to me less.
I like your thoughts about writing with signs. There are definitely more attention grabbing ways to get your point across than just words on a paper. And usually those attention grabbing messages are short, sweet and to the point. If they weren't, i don't think they would be as attention grabbing. I think some essayists need to adopt this idea and make their writings shorter and to the point, if they did, i don't think i'd hate reading them so much.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with your second paragraph. when i can read a short paragraph and get the information I am much more inclined to read it. When i look at something (IE:some blogs) and the posts are basically novels I choose not to read them. That is also what I like about online news sites. they put all the important stuff in the first paragraph, if you need more info you can get it. Do you think students would get more out of readings if there were lots of short paragraphs and points, or are a few long articles more effective?
ReplyDeleteThanks for discussing Trimbur, I could not focus while attempting to read him. I agree that anthologies kind of take the fun out of literature, but there is still some good stuff in them—I'd never buy one for pleasure reading, but for classes they are convenient and relatively compact. Or at least that's what Lisa Eckert says. However, the fact that anthologies exclude works that would certainly fit into them makes them less desirable, because if you're only relying on the anthology you're always missing something.
ReplyDeleteBut I gave up long ago on reading everything, I agree with you that the more visually appealing a text is and the more short paragraphs it has, the more I like it.