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Jimmer
Member
08-30-2000
| Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 2:22 pm
I find it distressing how many people are willing to accept as factual whatever they see in print, on the news, on the Internet and what they are taught in school. People should be encouraged to question the information that they receive and consider the source(s). As a student of history, I have some comprehension of the infinite number of ways that history has been misinterpreted (deliberately or unintentionally). Obviously, a historian must look beyond the surface – it is one of the fun and challenging aspects of the work. I do agree that given the above, Frey’s book has probably been singled out and he has received a disproportionate amount of criticism, given the circumstances (largely, I think due to Oprah’s embarrassment and her efforts to clear her name). Even so, I think we should still strive to promote and encourage truth.
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Legalboxer
Member
11-17-2003
| Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 2:47 pm
a lie is a lie and i do not see how we can just pick and choose which lies to accept and which to be angry about and fight back about.
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Babyruth
Member
07-19-2001
| Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 3:03 pm
In a few years, they can sell this book as "historical fiction" and everyone will be happy.
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Tishala
Member
08-01-2000
| Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 3:34 pm
My dissertation group was talking about this last week when we met and, for the first time ever, we all agreed about something. It's not only not a big deal, but not even something worth discussing. This whole episode points to the terrible job teachers (and, we suspect, literature professors at many universitites) do in talking about generic expectations for literary texts. I think it also point out what a bad idea it is to have someone like Oprah, who encounters literature as "feelings" rather than as a site of analysis, as a literary pied piper. Nobody has ever expected memoirs to be anything other than subjective because literature (and philosophy) have always problematized mimesis. As I said earlie in this thread, Ben Franklin took great liberties in his Autobiography and he did so to adhere to the narrative conventions of late-18th century literature, when literature was dulce et utile--pleasing and instructive. Fabricate a few experiences to instruct....add instruction retrospecitvely to experiences that really happened. Indeed, scholars of Puritan literature talk about the tropes of the Puritan conversion narrative--with few exceptions, they fit into a conventional form and employ conventional language to the genre (language, I'm sure, that isn't too far from memoirs of addicts!). They make "experience," such as it is, fit into those narrative frames, expand upon the depths of depravity to testify to the teller's sanctification, etc. These fabrications, then, are, and always have been, part of American "truth telling" and part of the ethos of American self-construction. [It is also trans-continental, as Rousseau's Confessions demonstrates very well. And, we might wonder, which portions of A la recherche du temps perdu are "memoirs" and which are "fiction"? How do we know the difference? Can even Proust tell the difference?] I'd say, really, that Frey's "believability" or lack thereof is directly related to how well he uses narrative devices, tropes, and language that manage to convince the reader of his or her own narrative expectations. That's why Frey's book is not like Japanese internment camps in World War II, though. Historians take facts and weave narratives out of them, but they necessarily have to disregard some things along the way or the history of something simple--say, typing this message--could go on endlessly. History requires certain frames, in other words, whereas memoirs do not. Memoirists bend experience into narratives that meet already-defined generic conventions, but, from the perspective of those who study literature, it's not dishonest thing to do, but part of the convention of memoirs as such. I've rambled long enough, I suppose, about something that is not particularly interesting, but about which I think most people who study literature agree. Oh well.
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Laralyn
Member
08-04-2005
| Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 6:40 pm
I learned about the Japanese internment when still in high school and that was way back in my past. I also learned that the civil war was not about slavery. I also believe in the old adage that whoever wins the war writes the history. About Frey, who is James Frey?? Oh yes, I have a book that he wrote. Think it would make a good movie. He is a writer, not an author but a writer. And I do believe there is a difference.
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Ocean_islands
Member
09-07-2000
| Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 8:03 pm
The difference between an author and a writer is that one is published. Most writers are never published at all. Regarding the convention of memoir, this is the problem of having someone like Oprah have a book club. While it's all very well and good to read books and talk about them, it's totally another thing to take yourself as some kind of arbiter of the quality of literature in all its forms. I do think she stepped over the line in that respect. And personally I had no problem with her asserting the validity of her emotional response to the book. It is, after all, the purest personal response. I don't think anyone is asking Oprah to be a leading intellectual light on the importance of veracity in literature in general. Or at least, I didn't think so -- because someone did, and that person is either herself or someone whose opinion she values very highly. I think it's sad that she's excoriated the author in this fashion at the same time as demeaning the genre of memoir as well as demeaning the validity of her own emotional response to the work. I fully expect that in the next several months she will be discontinuing her book club as she did the last time she got in a knot about a book, when one of the authors showed ingratitude about marketing efforts on the behalf of his work when chosen for an Oprah Book Club Selection. I guess in the end, its good that issues about reading a book make it to the front page or to the forefront of the media crush at all. It happens so rarely these days.
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Legalboxer
Member
11-17-2003
| Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 9:00 pm
I think its unfair when i see any statements that says "Nobody" or "Everyone" or even "most people". I make statements that only speak from my perspective and do not like it when i feel grouped into a belief that was never my belief. But as i said, i am only speaking for myself, but one disagreement does negate the case when the word "Nobody" is used.
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Tishala
Member
08-01-2000
| Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 9:15 pm
Which "nobody" are you objecting to? The "nobody" of the "Nobody has ever expected memoirs to be anything other than subjective"? If so, when has anyone expected memoirs to be objective?
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Legalboxer
Member
11-17-2003
| Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 9:45 pm
Well, I have expected memoirs, or anything that is presented as truth, to be objective and not subjective, if one goes by the definition ... I know there are many definitions of subjective and I am sure it can be argued that a combination of both subjective and objective thinking could be in memoirs since the reactions to certain facts are dependent on a person's view and thus subjective, but I have always expected memoirs or autobiographies to be based on true facts, - and I see writing about facts in your life as being objective. I have never approached any nonfiction book to be subjective even if there are subjective parts within it, which I expect to be clear as being subjective. And since I have never approached memoirs as being subjective, I take exception to your statement. Its fine if every other person may view things in one manner, but I differ on that view and so while I have always enjoyed hearing how others approach books, I also know that people always differ in some way and so would not make statements that encompass everyone.
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Teachmichigan
Member
07-22-2001
| Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 10:05 pm
Just what are we literature teachers doing wrong? Not sure I followed that argument, but I'm very interested in how we got dragged into it!
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Tishala
Member
08-01-2000
| Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 10:18 pm
Yes, this is what I meant about those who teach literature (and, frankly, history) failing to talk about genres and generic expections. The Oxford English Dictionary, the authoritative dictionary of the language, says a memoir is "Records of events or history written from the personal knowledge or experience of the writer, or based on special sources of information" i.e., a subjective account. All non-fictions, to be sure, have varying degrees of subjectivity: which events to include in a historical tome and which to exclude; which boundaries one subjectively embraces and which one eschews, etc. This is, and has been, particularly true of memoirs, as the examples I cite in my earlier post demonstrate. I'm sorry that you take exception to this way of understanding memoirs as a narrative structure, but it is one that has been axiomatic to me since my second literature class at Penn and one students of memoirs generally embrace because it provides a variety of personal knowledges and experiences rather than a singular one as a truth-function or "Truth." I copied an instructive piece of Paul DeMan's famous essay "Autobiography as De-facement" earlier today because I thought it said what I said earlier better than I did (I would hope this would be the case, though, for one of the most famous literary critics of the past 50 years!): Autobiography, then, is not a genre or a mode, but a figure of reading or of understanding that occurs, to some degree, in all texts. The autobiographical moment happens as an alignment between the two subjects involved in the process of reading in which they determine each other by mutual reflexive substitution. The structure implies differentiation as well as similarity, since both depend on a substitutive exchange that constitutes the subject. This specular structure is interiorized in a text in which the author declares himself the subject of his own understanding, but this merely makes explicit the wider claim to authorship that takes place whenever a text is stated to be by someone and assumed to be understandable to the extent that this is the case.. Which amounts to saying that any book with a readable title-page is, to some extent, autobiographical. But just as we seem to assert that all texts are autobiographical, we should say that, by the same token, none of them is or can be. The difficulties in generic definition that affect the study of autobiography repeat an inherent instability that undoes the model as soon as it is established. Genette’s metaphor of the revolving door helps us to understand why this is so: it aptly connotes the turning motion of tropes and confirms that the specular moment is not primarily a situation or an event that can be located in a history, but that it is the manifestation, on the level of the referent, of a linguistic structure. The specular moment that is part of all understanding reveals the tropological structure that underlies all cognitions, including knowledge of self. The interest in autobiography, then, is not that it reveals reliable self-knowledge, but that is demonstrates in a striking way the impossibility of closure and of totalization (that is the impossibility of coming into being) of all textual systems made up of tropological substitutions. […] The name on the title page is not the proper name of a subject capable of self-knowledge and understanding, but the signature that gives the contract legal, though by no means epistemological, authority. [emphasis in original] It is folly, to use an earlier example, to think that Sen. Clinton's account of Monica Lewinsky is anything but subjective because the point of Living History is really the title itself: Sen. Clinton never indicates that her version of history is the last word on her experience--as the discontinuities between her account and Pres. Clinton's testifies to--but that it is one version of truth or, as pop psychology would have it, "her truth." This was true of On Plymouth Plantation--this earliest account of Americanness, with various accounts contradicting what it says and interpreting events on the colony differently--and of Henry James' Notes of a Son and Brother. And of everything in between. And so it goes. Teach, I also teach literature, so I dragged myself into it.
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Teachmichigan
Member
07-22-2001
| Monday, February 06, 2006 - 9:34 pm
Can I say that a few reasons such detailed explanations are not a focus point in many high schools could be because 1) there are extensive benchmarks and standards created by the state so 2) there isn't time to go into that much detail and 3)comprehension many times is so difficult to achieve that more 'literary' discussions tend to get left behind. Mind you, I'm coming at this from a school where 30% of our population is a minority, the county's alcoholims rate is over 25%, we have 20-25% special needs rates per class, we are the third poorest county in our entire state and LESS than 15% of our adult population has a college education (guess who they are -- the teachers! LOL). Honestly -- if I find a book my kids connect with, I don't give a hangman's hoot WHAT genre it is nor if it "labeled" correctly. I HAVE had many a discussion this year w/my AP class regarding this topic, but we are NOT reading the book.
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Shadoe
Member
11-04-2004
| Tuesday, February 07, 2006 - 2:33 am
I hated literature in school, absolutely detested it. I failed literature 4 times in high school. You want to know why? Because the education system made reading NOT fun. They picked books and words apart so that it was just like dissecting a frog! I knew if I liked the book; I knew if it was interesting or boring. I hated to have to pick the thing apart later. I just liked to read. There are too many kids who don't read, and that's a crime. Like Teach said, you will only shoot yourself in the foot by all these discussions. You will drive some kids away from reading altogether. I really don't care what the kid wants to read so long as they are reading. If you want to work on literacy, I don't think an operating table is needed for every book. Make reading fun, enjoyable; don't make it a chore. I don't care if it's comic books, or even fabric books for babies. Eeyore has had books and written material in her life longer than she has had teeth. The day you discourage reading is the day you harm education; it's pretty tough to learn much if you can't or refuse to read the lessons in any subject. Let the kids read; discuss how they felt about what they read; stir up some passion, but leave the nitpicking and dissection alone.
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Teachmichigan
Member
07-22-2001
| Tuesday, February 07, 2006 - 7:39 pm
While I agree with the essence of what you said Shadoe, I should probably clarify one thing... In my AP class, we read, experience, interpret AND evaluate -- so there is a lot of nitpicking and dissection (close reading) because they'll be required to do this on the AP exam. HOWEVER -- the kids in that class usually enjoy reading and they spent almost 2 days this week ON THEIR OWN leading a "nitpicking" discussion of a 70 page book. The overwhelming response was that they really enjoyed the book. With my sophomores -- it's another story altogether. More than half of them HATE reading, so when we read To Kill A Mockingbird or The Crucible, I try to find the 'attractive' parts of the books to get them hooked before we start talking about "point of view" or "theme." Once they're laughing at Scout's disappointment at not being able to pee off the porch (like the neighbor) or furious w/Abigail's lying to the court, I've GOT 'EM! Then, and only then, are they ready for a bit of dissecting. 
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Wendo
Member
08-07-2000
| Tuesday, February 07, 2006 - 9:56 pm
I agree that encouraging children to read is a good thing. However, I also feel that discussion and dissection of texts is necessary as well. It's not just about nitpicking the text and stories, it's about teaching children about analytical thought. I have found that I use such tools in my everyday life and in my job. The dissecting, analyzing, and nitpicking help build the tools that children will later use as adults. I know because I am one of those adults and am glad that I had teachers who practiced such things.
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Wargod
Moderator
07-16-2001
| Wednesday, February 08, 2006 - 12:20 am
They also learn to be better writers through dissecting and analyzing what they are reading. My kids classes spend 2-3 weeks on whatever story they are reading during that time period, they discuss rather they liked the story or not and why, but they also take it apart and study it peice by peice...how is it written, how are paragraphs formed, etc. Sons class is more in depth discussions, but in each of them as soon as they're done discussing the story or what went into making it, they turn to writing and practice what they just talked about. Our school has a huge focus on making strong writers and a lot of what they do is set around teaching the kids better writing skills. I'm pretty lenient about what the kids read, and am fine seeing Caleb with a comic book if that's what he chooses to read that day. Heck, yesterday we got a tooth paste sample in the mail and Dakota set and read the pamphlet and I put it in her reading log, lol! At the same time, I buy books that I hope they'll enjoy but are also at their reading level so that they're not just reading comic books and crest tooth paste pamphlets. I want my kids to love reading, I want them able to read and discuss what they've read, and I want them to have fun while doing it. It's great when they read just for fun, but it's also great when they're reading and thinking about story structure and have the ability to analyze and discuss what they're reading as well.
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Max
Moderator
08-12-2000
| Friday, February 24, 2006 - 1:35 am
'Pieces' author's book deal nixed James Frey was set to write two more books for publisher Thursday, February 23, 2006; Posted: 12:25 p.m. EST (17:25 GMT) NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Author James Frey, who admitted last month he made up parts of his best-selling memoir "A Million Little Pieces," has been dropped by his publisher, Riverhead Books, Frey's representative said Thursday.
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Snee
Member
06-26-2001
| Saturday, June 24, 2006 - 11:28 pm
interesting discussion. i just want to say that i don't like being told what my entire profession is or isn't doing regarding this or that. tishala, 'terrible job'? that may be your opinion, but it is an uncalled-for generalization.
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