A Google image search of "words" turned out to be quite fruitful.
You know you've made a good choice in grad school programs when a required class that you didn't expect to like finds its way under your skin. Such is the case with History of English Prose Style, which on its face sounds not at all riveting; in fact by the course description I really had no idea what the class was about:
This course seeks to make meaningful distinctions among various prose styles in two ways: first, by considering alternative theoretical approaches to the study of style, ranging from the purely impressionistic to the rigorously quantitative; second, by exploring the rhetorical dimension of stylistic choice by examining the intersection of style and rhetoric in English prose from the Renaissance to the present, including writings by John Lyly, Thomas Browne, Elizabeth I, Addison and Steele, John Ruskin, Thomas Huxley, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
I mean, that sounds impressive, but in practice I had literally no clue what the class would actually cover. I cheerfully signed up for it anyway and just hoped that it would somehow be useful in my development as a writer.
It turns out that it boils down to studying the style of writing -- ie the sentence-level elements like structure, word order, figures of speech, etc. Our working hypothesis is that you cannot strip away these stylistic elements -- for example, an author's incorporation of repetitive schemes like isocolon and alliteration -- without taking away some of the meaning. In other words, style and content are inextricably intertwined (hey there alliteration!), and if we understand why the author made the stylistic choices they made, then we can start to gain an understanding of the author's epistemic world view.
I'll insert a note here to remind the reader that I am a graduate student in the study of English writing, and yet this class made me realize that I was never once taught the basics of English grammar. Like, clauses and phrases and predicates and participials and basically why we put words in the order that we do. Understanding syntax -- the combination of words that indicates their relationship to one another in a sentence -- is apparently the key to being a good writer. A high school diploma and a Bachelor's degree, and no one really ever explained that to me until now.
Anyway, as one example of how style impacts prose, our professor had us read a piece written in 1578 by John Lyly. Think of it as a 16th century Oprah's Book Club choice. Everyone who's anyone read it, including a moderately famous contemporary of Lyly's named William Shakespeare. (He was 14 when it was written.) Lyly writes in a way that would make a high school freshman and a college professor weep, but for completely different reasons. (If you're super curious, you can read the piece -- titled "Euphues: The anatomy of wit" -- here. Jump to page 33.) Eventually the prose came to be seen as outdated -- think still talking like a 1980's Valley Girl in the year 2010 -- but it's a really amazing example of what can be done with antithesis and repetitive structures to reinforce the ideas expressed in the content of the piece. In other words, if you're going to compare two things, Lyly showed us how you can write it in a way where the sentences are balanced to the point of ridiculousness, to better make your point.
Lyly was also a big fan, at least in this piece, of playing with the sounds of words. A typical Lyly sentence: "[I]t is no marvel that the son, being left rich by his father's will, become retchless by his own will." See what he did there?
Our assignment for the week was to replicate Lyly's prose style. Mine isn't perfect, but I'm posting it up here as an example. Note the parallel structure and use of opposite ideas (lawless harmony, lascivious entropy) to make the point. Enjoy, and go forth about your day pondering how the public education system is completely failing us when it comes to teaching basic English grammar.
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It may be that a mother’s love is unconditional, a child’s trust complete, the bond between the two absolute—but what guarantees this connection? One look into the eyes of the infant born of her may be enough to bring any woman of any level of maternal nature to her knees, but how is she to maintain this relationship with one whose eventual humor she cannot foresee, whose sense of wit may be overlooked given the child’s garish characteristics? What natural fortune can this child expect, when her mother’s own unfortunate circumstance was to bear a baby amounting to such a ghastly abomination of nature?
Surely the father is not to be left out of blame; he was present when her entry to the world was painfully wrought, the future population perceptively wronged. Through her wide-set eyes stares the narrowness of a soul without a trace of means or modesty, a person whose holed pockets can do nothing to contain the whole of her ego. Her perfume may be stridently pungent, but her manner is surreptitiously repugnant. Her upbringing stressed lawful harmony, but her subsistence relies upon lascivious entropy. She prefers the payoff before the production, the profit before the performance, the promotion before the presentation.
I mean not to suggest, having evidenced my hypothesis that her existence is unsavory, that her very animation lends itself to the inanity, or even that her parents are to be shackled and shellacked—though I would be dishonest to claim that the thought had not entered my mind. Rather, would you not also conclude that, based upon the evidence, perhaps some sort of winch should be employed to ensure that this particular wench is denied admission to this painstakingly selective program of higher learning?
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Special shout-outs to Chrissie Watras and Liz Tavares, who will enjoy this post more than anyone else, and who also help me process my homework each week. Thanks ladies.
I give you my first piece for my memoir writing class. I'm still working on it, so comments or suggestions are certainly appreciated.
Taken the evening this story is based on.
Snow fell for the first time. It glittered like pixie dust in the light from the street lamps and landed on the ground softly, as if it didn’t want to cause a fuss. But there was no one around to be bothered; the streets and sidewalks were empty, hushed.
I stepped outside and filled my lungs with the cold air, watching my breath slowly leave me in exhale. I smiled. For the first time since arriving on campus I felt at peace, light on my feet. I’d just finished finals week, placing an emphatic period at the end of my first quarter of college. I was giddy, practically euphoric.
I started toward my dorm, where my friends were waiting to celebrate. I hummed. I knew I’d aced that test, and I looked around for someone to rejoice with before remembering that everyone else had gone home for the holidays already. The snow was my only companion.
To be alone in a place that is usually full of people and life and noise unnerves me, but on this night I reveled in it. I soaked it in and I felt like a god, alone atop my snowy mount. I walked with my head back, my face pointed straight up, watching the snow come down. My snow. The sky was a dark gray, almost black, and the white flakes were falling evenly, a perfect grid, as if it had been planned that way. I had planned it that way.
I’d moved to Hawaii with my family right before starting high school, and aside from the occasional visit to family on the mainland, I hadn’t seen snow up close in more than four years. Moving back to the Midwest felt like coming home, though my years on a tropical island had severely depleted my cold weather wardrobe. I owned two pairs of socks when I arrived at college, and no winter coat. One extreme winter clothing shopping trip later, I was fully outfitted for even the most arduous blizzard. My collection of long underwear was something to be envied.
On this night, then, the gentle snowflakes had no chance against my many layers of clothing. Still they landed on my cheeks, in my hair, melting in contact with my skin and dripping down the back of my neck. I shivered as I walked past the arch, the gateway to campus. It looked like a postcard. Untouched snow glazed every tree branch, every surface. It was beautiful. Everything was beautiful. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt as though everything in the world were just perfect.
I considered the fact that I was done with a third of my freshman year. I felt like a little kid, one that counted her age to the closest fraction possible so as not to be mistaken for too young. I wasn’t five, I was five and three quarters. I wasn’t a college freshman, I was one-twelfth of the way done with college. I would go on to harder classes, and a thousand new experiences, and I would walk this sidewalk hundreds of times. I would lead the marching band, join an a cappella group, dance for 30 hours straight (twice), and teach myself how to make giant papier-mâché ants. I would also gain 30 pounds, have my heart broken, and feel utterly lost more often than not. And I’d meet my best friend.
But at this moment, alone in my winter wonderland, I was blissfully unaware of all that lay before me. My life was uncomplicated. College was still a concept. I was still figuring it out. As I walked up the steps to my dorm I realized that, for the first time, I felt ready to handle whatever came next. I’d survived one quarter. I could certainly make it eleven more.
I had a short and late post this week over at LTP. Check it out here.
Feeling really good about my 'Cats this year. (I mean, I always feel good about my 'Cats, but it's an extra special good feeling right now.) I've been saving up already in anticipation of a post-season bowl game; last year's trip to the Outback was absolutely phenomenal, save the last 3 seconds of the game. Still, what a game, and you could almost see the college football scene start to take notice of the program at that moment. At this point we're just hoping Fitz is here for the long haul.
Next week is Minnesota, and I want to win as much as ever, especially because I want to bring back the "5 and 0" high-five from my senior year. So awesome. Go 'Cats!
This humorous piece in the Sunday Post is speaking to me this week, as I continue to be embroiled in the finer points of the English grammar system. Special shout-out to Chrissie, a goddess of lexicon. On the slate today: schemes and tropes. It baffles me that I never learned this stuff in high school, at least not to this depth. I learned the basics, of course - metaphor, parallelism, alliteration - but it seems as though my teachers avoided anything for which the term has only a Latin name. Epistrophe. Anadiplosis. Antimetabole. Paranomasia. At this moment, it's all Latin to me.
The goal is for it to make sense by 5pm today, which means I should probably stop here.
Seriously, it's absolute genius. OK Go is completely rewriting the rules on music videos.
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming: staring helplessly at a detailed guide to English grammar and wondering why your seventh grade teacher didn't warn you that someday you'd need to recall the differences between prepositional, participial, gerund, infinitive, absolute, and appositive phrases. Or really why she didn't teach you any of that in the first place.
As usual, I rounded off my week -- which included donating blood and NOT fainting, finding out my car is broken and I have to pay for it DESPITE having a warranty (curse you, Sierra Auto), boring things like eye exams and grocery runs, and completely and utterly freaking out re: grad school before realizing it wasn't as bad as I thought -- by talking about NUMB over at Lake the Posts.* Check it out, and have a great weekend!
* How's that for a complex sentence, Professor Mulderig?
In college I sang a cappella with the women of Ladies in Red, the a cappella group of the Beta Chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota. We graduated, and immediately were sick over how much we missed singing together. We got the band back together, so to speak, and are working on filling out our repertoire before beginning our grand tour of Chicago-area nursing homes, which was a favorite philanthropic pastime while at Northwestern. Bringing a cappella to the elderly masses, you might say. In the meantime we're performing for our friends in my dining room.
What I'm saying is, please like us. I posted recordings of all the songs we've done so far, which are (click on the artists' name to hear their original version):
Happy Ending by Mika (arranged and soloist Brittany Petersen) Hide & Seek by Imogen Heap (arr. Renee Altergott) Put Your Head on My Shoulder (arr. Megan Mitterer, soloist Elizabeth Bourgart) Walking on Broken Glass by Annie Lennox (arr. and soloist Megan Mitterer) Samson by Regina Spektor (arr. Laura Sloman, soloist Brittany Petersen) Wake Up by Sliimy (arr. Renee Altergott, soloist Megan Mitterer) When Sunset Burns and Dies, written and arranged by Renee Altergott Music has played a big role in my life -- to the point that I got a tattoo celebrating it -- and I'm so grateful to have an outlet to continue to perform, and the wonderful friends and lifelong sisters to share it with.
Old Ladies in Red (photo by Xixi Cheng)
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UPDATE: Check out a recording of Old Ladies in Red singing "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap.
I lose things. Often. It's not that I don't value my possessions, it's that I just can't seem to keep track of anything, which is surprising because I'm an incredibly organized person. One look at my planner will scare any errant agenda into submission.
So I wasn't that surprised when I lost my license last weekend in Nashville. I've come to expect such things. We drove down for a football game, and I took my ID into the stadium with me but left my purse in the car. Somewhere between the stadium and my car, I dropped the ID, meaning I couldn't go out in Nashville to celebrate the win with my friends. Worse, I was the driver, so I trampled all over my friends' fun for an hour while they tried to figure out how they'd get home without me. I felt bad, but again, it felt typical. On Tuesday morning I got a new license ($5 for a duplicate, a small price to pay for negligent stupidity) and went along my merry way. No use getting upset.
This morning I received an email from someone who had found my license. They had apparently Googled my name along with the word "Vanderbilt," come across Lake the Posts and therefore my email address, and figured it was the same person.
Moral of the story: If you do something stupid, make sure your web presence is up to date. From now on I'll be sure to blog incessantly about whatever city I lose my stuff in. Maybe lightening will strike twice.
Or maybe it's time for the government to start putting email addresses on IDs.* Just a thought.
* I checked, and "mclovin (at) gmail (dot) com" is taken. Damn.
My weekly NUMB post over at Lake the Posts, the venerated Northwestern football blog, was posted today. How many times can I say "post" in a sentence and still have it be legitimate?
A Google image search of "words" turned out to be quite fruitful.
