Beware Doll: Bob Dylan in the University

The first thing that a visitor to my office generally notices is the relative absence of ornamentation on my walls, and I admit that if one’s office walls are the windows to the soul, I guess that makes me something of a blank slate. I like to think that I am partially redeemed by the second thing most visitors notice: a signed photo of Bob Dylan (looking very “Another Side of Bob Dylan”) that I use in a desperate attempt to give myself some credibility by giving the illusion of intimacy with Mr. Zimmerman (if I’m being entirely honest, it was a gift from my wife, who bought it on ebay; I’ve never really met the man). Depending on how Dylan-savvy my visitor is, this has the potential to lead to endless conversations about favourite songs, albums and various other Dylan minutiae, but, given the setting, I often find myself fielding questions about the role of Dylan in academia.

One question that I am asked from time to time is, “have you ever considered teaching Dylan as poetry?” Well, yes and no: yes, I’ve thought about it, but no, I’ve generally written off the idea as way too self-indulgent. As much as I would hope that my enthusiasm for the subject would transfer to my students, I am also very conscious that it can be very hard to teach something that one is too close to (I don’t even teach my beloved Byron—arguably the Dylan of the 19th century… but that’s another story—in my English 200 class). Nevertheless, this question, hitherto always posed in the abstract, became the subject of more concrete reflection the other day when, leafing through a sample poetry anthology sent to me by a publisher, I noticed the inclusion of two Dylan songs, “The Times They Are A-Changing” and “Tangled Up in Blue” sandwiched between some of John Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” and T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (in case you’re wondering, this anthology was organized in alphabetical order—ooh, edgy!).

The sight of these songs/poems triggered a variety of reactions. As a Dylanophile and self-confessed pedant, my initial reaction was horror at the way that a song that exists in so many different musical and lyrical guises as “Tangled Up in Blue” should be fixed in print as a single authoritative set of lyrics. Where are the subtle modulations between third and first person that have marked the evolution of the song from its original version (later released on Volume 2 of The Bootleg Series) through the “official” Blood on the Tracks version through Dylan’s alteration of the song over the years in live performances? What about those incredible alternative lyrics, such as those preserved 10 years later on Real Live? (I have always, for example, been fascinated by Dylan’s determination, in the last verse, “to find someone among the women and men whose destiny is unclear.”) As a practical, professorial type, however, I quickly accepted that it is in the nature of textbooks to create canons and impose authoritative readings. The price of canonicity is invariably the stifling of the experimental, the edgy, and the uncertain.

I was left puzzling over the larger implications of this newfound canonicity; what, for example, would be the effect of putting Dylan on a course with the luminaries of English literature? That Dylan is a poet is beyond doubt (and if any doubters do remain out there, I refer them to Dr. Keshen in the Philosophy department; he will set them straight on that score more resoundingly than I). Certainly, it would certainly be possible to analyze “Tangled” in terms of diction, rhyme, meter, point of view, and to ask all the necessary literary questions about it. It could work quite well, for example, in a sequence of poetry about love from the courtly love tradition to the modern (Is the “Italian poet from the thirteenth century” mentioned in the song actually Petrarch? Unlike me, Dylan was no pedant, and maybe “fourteenth century” wouldn’t have sounded as good.) But, however academic I can make it seem, the question would still be why study Dylan rather than, say, poor old Prufrock on the facing page?

One possible answer would have to be relevance. Dylan has songs for any listener and for any occasion, and it would be possible to select texts that most students would respond to. For example, I imagine that many local students would feel the poignancy of “North Country Blues,” a song in which Dylan adopts the persona of a miner’s wife, lamenting the changes that have taken place over the years: “my children will go/ As soon as they grow/ ‘Cause there ain’t nothing here now to hold them.” Certainly, there is here a more directly accessible kind of angst than Prufrock’s description of an evening laid out “like a patient etherised on a table.” (All right, I’ll stop picking on poor T.S. Eliot; I’ve got nothing against him really, he just happens to be ready at hand.) Or, if my choices are dictated by the textbook (as they so often are), “Tangled” is itself a heartfelt reflection on love and loss that has a universal sort of relevance. The star-crossed lovers with disapproving parents, and the modern sense of disillusionment and anti-romance, for example, might certainly be used to attract students and to argue for the “literary” quality of the song.

On the other hand, another answer would have to be strangeness; Dylan is not what people usually consider literature, so studying him would allow one to open a whole host of questions about what literature is, and to bridge the gap between popular culture and so-called high art. If a song can be studied as a poem, that might make the study of English literature seem less elitist. The question that still troubles me, however, is this: wouldn’t the inclusion of Dylan on a course syllabus be an inherently self-defeating gesture? It would assert the canonicity of a figure who is being evoked precisely to challenge the idea of canonicity, and would risk being perceived by students as yet another authoritative voice (and I’m sure that there’s nothing Dylan would hate more than becoming canonical). So, if I teach Dylan because I think he’s a great poet (which I do think), I undermine the motive of teaching something substantially different. On the other hand, if I teach Dylan because he’s relevant in a contemporary way that “classic” literature sometimes isn’t (which I also do think), I beg the question: why not teach, say, Nietzschean readings of Kanye West’s “Stronger” (“what does not destroy me makes me stronger”) or Coldplay and the French Revolution? This cultural studies approach helps to defamiliarize common uses of language, and to make students see that there is no cultural product that is not a carefully crafted manipulation of discourse; it is not simply that literature is a privileged discourse that professors “read into” to discover meaning. But this approach seems to necessarily call for a shifting of its object from year to year; if contemporary relevance is what is required, then the class must shift as cultural tastes change (which they do about every 15 minutes).

So, after several digressions (is anyone still reading this?), I’ve boiled it down to two arguments; I can teach Dylan because he is the same as and equal to other canonical authors, or I can teach him because he is different from and opposed to them. But perhaps the real lesson here is that he is both; he offers an example of one who has been an icon of popular culture and is now anthologized as a poet. If nothing else, it invites questions about how such a transition might be possible, and what is at stake in the decisions made by textbook editors. Is literature to be defined as the reproduction of certain “norms” of literary language, or precisely as the experimentation with language and the disruption of such norms? If it is the latter, doesn’t that invalidate the whole idea of a stable canon? Literature would be an approach, not a final product. Literature would be whatever comes next. I would certainly like my students to consider this point of view, and if I can use Dylan to make this point, I could—possibly—be convinced to change my mind and “see it from a different point of view.”

Nat Leach

Why spelling matters

This month sees the beginning of the 2009 Canwest National Spelling Bee. Nationwide, something like a quarter of a million kids will be taking part. The event culminates with the national finals in Ottawa in April.

I have been involved with the spelling bee as an official for the past couple of years, and people are often curious to know more about it. Many (understandably I should add) do pose some tough questions. Should we really be encouraging this kind of competition among kids? How does spelling really help kids use language in the real world? Isn't this just an exercise in memorization? Does spelling even matter any more in the age of computers?

Let me see if I can answer all these in a coherent way. To begin, I should point out that spelling competitions seem oddly subject to questions that we do not pose about other competitions, which are usually taken to have value in themselves. Hockey, for instance, does not build specific skills applicable in the real world (unless you live in Ottawa and can skate to work on the Rideau Canal), but we don't really care, nor should we. For one thing, hockey at its best is great fun for players and fans. For another, it builds broader aspects of character like sportsmanship, grace under pressure, discipline, and so on. But, of course, competitive spelling does all these things too. Last year at the Halifax bee, one of the two finalists looked at the other just before the final rounds were about to start and said with all sincerity, "I hope I win, but good luck." I have rarely heard a better formulation of the competitive spirit.

As for the more specific concerns, spelling is not just an exercise in mindless rote learning. The best spellers realize that to know how to spell well is to understand what words are and where they come from. Top spellers learn not just the letters, but the origins of the words, and how they are related to other words. Of course, these things help with the spelling, but it also opens up for kids the remarkable landscape that is the study of human language, with its incredibly vast detail, and its intricate history. They learn that the history of every people is not just written in its language but on its language.

And what of the competition? What of the crying children who must leave the stage after spelling hamadryad or hypobulia incorrectly? Well, trust me, they get over it. And if they have good parents, they have a chance to talk about some important truths in life. That one cannot always win, but that one can always compete with dignity. Sports parents, one hopes, take advantage of their children's losses and setbacks to teach this vital lesson. But not all kids are athletes. Not all kids are blessed with natural physical ability. Some are smart, and this is their chance to compete in the arena in which they excel. And to learn the lessons -- some thrilling, some heartbreaking -- that this arena affords.

And that's why spelling matters.

Todd Pettigrew

Another blog on blogs, or my New Year’s resolution

My New Year’s resolution this year is to write. Just to write. To see what I might have to say. The blog, which I’ve never written, seems to make manifest the desire behind all writing—to be heard by someone you know but don’t know, someone you can’t see who is nonetheless extremely close. Someone (or is it something?) not exactly there and yet potentially reachable in the act of writing.

One of my favorite poets, W.S. Graham, wrote to this unseen auditor all the time. Knowing he had someone to write to who could never quite hear, and yet was part of a contract for communication that both subscribed to, gave Graham a way to write. And that’s what I’m looking for this year: A way to begin. To say what might need to be said. Here’s one of W.S. Graham’s poems on the subject:

THE CONSTRUCTED SPACE

Meanwhile surely there must be something to say,
Maybe not suitable but at least happy
In a sense here between us two whoever
We are. Anyhow here we are and never
Before have we two faced each other who face
Each other now across this abstract scene
Stretching between us. This is a public place
Achieved against subjective odds and then
Mainly an obstacle to what I mean.

It is like that, remember. It is like that
Very often at the beginning till we are met
By some intention risen up out of nothing.
And even then we know what we are saying
Only when it is said and fixed and dead.
Or maybe, surely, of course we never know
What we have said, what lonely meanings are read
Into the space we make. And yet I say
This silence here for in it I might hear you.

I say this silence or, better, construct this space
So that somehow something may move across
The caught habits of language to you and me.
From where we are it is not us we see
And times are hastening yet, disguise is mortal.
The times continually disclose our home.
Here in the present tense disguise is moral.
The trying times are hastening. Yet here I am
More truly now this abstract act become.

Graham lived a life of solitude and poverty in Cornwall, in a small cottage without plumbing. He spent his time trying to speak to someone (“Dear Who I Mean,” he entitles one poem), to find something to say. Waiting for “some intention [to] rise up out of nothing” was his dream, and my dream, of what writing might do. That it might connect one to an/other. That it might make something / new. That it might shine a light, compose a dawn, draw the faint starting of a path for change. Not necessarily the “yes-we-can” kind, but a more tentative “maybe”: maybe something’s/someone’s out there, waiting.

So this is my New Year’s resolution: to write, to try. And it is also an invitation to others. You don’t need anything to write but the will to begin, to move a line forward, to start on a tentative path where an intention might just rise up, out of nothing.

Mark Silverberg

On essays, blogs, and walls

Most teachers have the challenge of making their material come alive for their students. We all try, in whatever way we can, to persuade them that what we teach in here also exists out there. In my department, this is often a challenge of convincing students that the books we read have currency beyond the margins of the syllabus: that Gulliver’s Travels is really good, or that people used to line up to get the next installment of David Copperfield, or that Gabriel Garcia Marquez eventually pawned his blender to finance the writing of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

In non-literary composition courses, however, the problem is a bit different. I have to convince my students that the thing I’m teaching actually exists. They know they have to periodically pass in essays in order to pass their courses. Since sometime in Junior High, when we move beyond the diorama phase of our education (special skill: I can make a mean killer whale out of plasticine), the essay has become the main method of evaluation in many disciplines. It’s an old friend, or an old albatross, in any case, it’s familiar. What that familiarity in part obscures, however, is that the essay is a genre, in the way that the Bristol board collage is not, beyond the walls of the school. Good enough for Montaigne, Bacon, Jo(h)nson, Kant, Carlyle and Eliot, the essay has been a way of honing ideas, of bringing the private conviction into the public sphere for a good long while now. When I urge my classes to try to look beyond Virginia Woolf’s (wonderfully) meandering obscurity in A Room of One’s Own, or to not be deceived by Orwell’s apparent simplicity in “Shooting an Elephant” (no, the essay is not about shooting an elephant, it’s about imperialism), I tell them that Woolf and Orwell are two of the most respected essayists of the twentieth century. Why, they ask, does that mean anything?

I decided one possible way to answer this question was to invite my students into the public sphere of discourse and ideas. I decided to make them read blogs. The blog, I told my class, simulates a modern version of the immediacy of the essay. Sure, there are some uninteresting, poorly written, self indulgent blogs, but that is true of nearly everything. A good blog offers inspired writing, on a wide variety of subjects—my favourite is Theory of Ice, which raises the love of hockey (and the habs) to an intellectual pursuit of the first order. Even something like gofugyourself.com, the product of two catty girls who like to make fun of the sartorial slip-ups of celebrities, often has brilliant comic timing and tone—a difficult success in composition. Whatever the subject, the blog has current, dynamic examples of how critical thinking (and good expression) is a way of life that can be applied to daily experience, and not just an archival, dusty, controlled exercise for the classroom.

As with most trends, it turns out I might be too late. Wired, the magazine for the hip and techno-savvy, has declared, to my dismay, the blog to be “so 2004”. In his article for the October issue of the magazine, writer Paul Boutin suggests “the time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook or Twitter.” He points out that the so-called blogosphere has become inundated with “paid bilge.” Once a forum for personal expression, it is true that the blog has become increasingly professionalized and corporatized. Wired’s website itself hosts a long list of affiliated blogs. I wonder, though, at the relevance of this point. Aren’t many things a struggle between the corporate and the independent? According to that logic, Eastside Mario’s precludes the possibility of Allegro.

My main concern, however, is with Boutin’s cavalier dismissal of the virtues of the blog. He suggests that the blog is being happily replaced by Twitter, because of its limit of 140 words per post, and Facebook, because of how easy it is to post visuals, saving time otherwise spend “fretting over words.” Surely to fret over words is to think carefully. Boutin predicts and celebrates the end of what I think was a particularly triumphant moment (apparently located somewhere in 2004) for composition. At its best, the blog values the careful, considered paragraph. As long as that’s still on the table, who cares about its worst?

Emily Doucet

What is this blog?

This blog has been created to be one of the online venues for the Department of Lanuages and Letters at Cape Breton University.

Here, faculty members will post their thoughts on topics related to literature, culture, language, or whatever strikes their fancies.

Check back for posts. Join our Facebook group to keep up to date (CBU English).

Todd Pettigrew