Chris Staples

So, this blog "Writing to comprehend" takes it's name from the Anna Kamienska quote, "I write to comprehend, not express myself."  This book of hers is fantastic.  So, originally I wasn't writing for anyone else - just myself.

Then of course, it took on another incarnation as my classroom blog - which was still reflective, cathartic, and beneficial for me.

But during the summer... Well... I can write what I want, right?

This may seem to go against everything the blog originally stood for, and make no sense on the classroom blog format.  I just bought Chris Staples new album: American Soft.  I'm including it here for two reasons.  Mr. Staples music has encouraged me for the past decade and a half, and it has helped me comprehend myself and my place in the world.  So it fits in with the blogs original theme.

And two: Staples isn't on some big huge record label bathing in hundred dollar bills.  (As far as I know...)  So, for the 1.3 people who read this each week - it gets him some free and well deserved publicity.  I can't force you to buy any of his stuff.  But if I could, I would.

Carnival

I've been out and about lately. I just wanted to mention that the educarnival has been posted. Check it out if you get a chance.

A Visit From the Goon Squad

Hopefully my students gathered that I genuinely like to read. (I'm not just blowing smoke. I'm not saying it because it's the 'teachery' thing to say... I really love reading.) I also hope I was able to pass that love to some of them.

I also like to think about what I read. As such, I'm posting my review of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize winning book A Visit From the Goon Squad here, as well as on goodreads.

While I wouldn't recommend it to students, I would recommend it to parents. It was very good.

Here's the review:

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars





When I was young, my favorite toy was a stuffed rabbit. I took him everywhere, and I can't remember a time I didn't have him. I remember the time at my grandfather's house in Lancaster, Pennsylvania when my brother cut off his right set of whiskers. I was old enough to know they would not grow back. (Maybe that suggests I was old enough to realize playing with stuffed rabbits is neither very cool, very masculine, nor very mature... I didn't pick up on that, and I loved my rabbit.)

I remember giving the rabbit to my daughter, hoping she would love it as much as I did. She didn't play with it much at first - and maybe I was trying to hard, but I backed off a little, and the other day she was playing with Rabbie and it was an incredible feeling. Now she plays with a dozen baby dolls, and one stuffed rabbit whom she has rechristened, "Molly."

My favorite page in A Visit From the Goon Squad is page 255. Here's what I like: "Mom Spots the Toy Horse: I keep it on my windowsill. It's made of apricot shells. She and Dad got it when they lived in Pakistan. Mom told me once, 'We thought our baby might like to play with that horse.' After Dad and Mom found each other again, she packed up her life in New York and met him overseas. 'I never looked back,' she says. I still play with the horse sometimes, alone in my room. ...Even though I'm 12. ...I like to make the prediction come true."

If you've read the book, you know there is no way to capture that scene, or that chapter. In fact, style-wise, the entire book is unlike anything I've read before.

She writes an entire chapter (save for the last line) in second person. She writes an entire chapter as a power-point presentation. I have never seen that before. (Or if I have, I haven't remembered it.) Perhaps an even greater feat is that they both work. Beautifully well. Romantically well.

I am not a literary critic. I did not go to New York University and study under Harold Bloom, or some other fancy-pants literary scholar.

I'm just a son, husband, father, teacher, musician who loves to read. And the book reached me as few books have reached me.

I understand that books speak to different people in different ways. We read this as a book club book, and some members disdained the lack of plot. Maybe you're the type of person who has to read a plot driven book. To you I say, that was not the purpose of this book. Some books are plot-less and rambling and incoherent and pointless. This book had a purpose. There was intent. I've heard it said that in writing, every word must have a purpose. This may be the first piece of literary fiction where that ideal was attained.

This book is life, a web of connections that crisscross and connect throughout the whole. It is relationships created, relationships forced. It is a time machine speeding forward at a rate we cannot yet ourselves imagine. It is love. It is loss. It is never having loved at all.



View all my reviews

No, originality is not dead. It was dead until I came along.

So you google searched the quote. Good for you. I hope you feel good about yourself.

Anytime you use it be sure to send $5.00 my way.

I suggest you figure out who you are and then be that person. Yeah! Yeah person reading this, I AM talking to you.

Here are 1000 original ideas:

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah one thousand.

Edu Carnival and Music Video

Well, my post Acceptability and Going Pro was accepted for publication in the Edu Blog Carnival.  My thanks to Bellringers for hosting.  If you click on the Bellringers link, it will take you there and you can read all sorts of good education posts.

I think my favorite this time was Samuel Alito Thinks Im Funny.  The card the student made was hilarious.  I wish our class got to go to the Supreme Court.

If you don't have time to watch any of that.  Just kick back and watch Jimmy Fallon.  It's the summer, and this video is AWESOME!